'Oro- Polynesian GodDeity"God of War"

Taputapuātea

Son of the creator god Ta'aroa, 'Oro's cult dominated Tahitian religious life in the centuries before European contact. Teuira Henry, drawing on Tahitian oral sources for Ancient Tahiti, recorded the traditions surrounding his worship.

The center of that worship was the great marae of Taputapuātea on Ra'iātea. Chiefs from across the archipelago traveled there for investiture and alliance. At the open-air stone temple, priests placed human victims on stone platforms before 'Oro's sacred to'o image. The victims were prisoners of war or ritually selected men, offered at the inauguration of a chief or the start of a military campaign. Subsidiary marae on Tahiti and the neighboring islands formed a network of sacred sites, all connected back to Taputapuātea.

The Arioi

The Arioi were 'Oro's traveling devotees: performers and priests who moved between islands staging dramatic spectacles in his honor. They danced, chanted, performed satire, and enacted mythological scenes. Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks watched Arioi performances during their visits to Tahiti and left some of the earliest European descriptions. Douglas Oliver's later study of the society drew on both the European accounts and the Tahitian oral record Henry had preserved.

The To'o

'Oro was not carved in wood or stone. His presence lived in to'o: bundles of sacred objects wrapped in sennit cordage and decorated with red feathers plucked from specific forest birds. Priests kept them under the strictest tapu, bringing them out only for ceremonies. The red feathers carried concentrated mana. Warriors carried a to'o when they went to fight, and the god went with them.