“Te Au Tārere – the Peace from Afar” is a new bookproduced by the Mangaian Historical Society as their contribution to theBicentennial of the arrival of Christian evangelists on Mangaia on June 15,1824. “Te Au Tārere – the Peace from Afar” is a new book produced by the Mangaian Historical Society as their contribution to the Bicentennial of the arrival of Christian evangelists on Mangaia on June 15, 1824. SUPPLIED/24060713 The book will be launched at the opening ceremony ofthe two-hundred years celebrations on Mangaia today, June 8.
The book, running to 328 pages, describes thesuccessful landing of two Tahitian evangelists in 1824, the story of the earlyconverts (the kai parau) and the unconverted (tutae ‘auri) and their eventualwar in 1828. A fourth chapter deals with the change to everyday life underChristianity and the relationship that developed between the church andtraditional leaders embodied in the concept of the church as the tama ‘ua (‘sonof the thigh’) of the aronga mana. In their introduction, the Historical Society explainsthat the title of the book “Te Au Tārere” derives from an old saying thatpermanent peace, absent from Mangaia for several centuries, was finallyintroduced in 1824 from outside the island – hence the subtitle, “the Peacefrom Afar”.
The Mangaian battle formation – spearmen in the first row, clubs in the second row for close fighting, sling shooters in the third row and, in the back row, women and children su.