#14 - The Cook Islands

Our next port after Raiatea was Rarotonga, capital of the Cook Islands.  The islands were discovered by Captain Cook.  Maybe.  Some say Cook only did a sail by and they were really discovered by the Spaniards.  Our on board lecturer on this topic said the island of Rarotonga was discovered by two chiefs, one from Samoa and the other from Tahiti.  Both arrived at same time on their canoes.  Each claimed the part of the island where they landed.  They intermarried and are now one big happy family.  Well, that’s his version anyhow.

Many of these South Pacific Islands suffer from identity crisis and their origins are up for debate.  For example, the people in Tahiti, Easter Island, New Zealand and Hawaii all speak a similar language but with different dialects.  How can that be with such distance between them?

One way of shedding some light on this is by following the genetic changes of the various populations.  For example, they know that 7000 years ago migration started in the Pacific through the Philippines and further south,  The genes began mixing and then stopped again for another 1000 years.  Then they changed again.  Beats me how they know this.  I can barely trace my family tree back 2 generations.  According to our lecturer, the Maori in New Zealand believe they came from Cook Islanders.  Most scientists, academics, and story tellers all seem to agree that they did.  

In 1901 the Cook Islands were annexed by New Zealand.  The leader of the Islands at that time, Queen Makea, said she was cool with that because she was afraid the French were going to claim them and she wasn’t keen on the French. 

One of the biggest changes occurred when the Missionaries arrived.  They couldn’t understand the local language and feared that the natives were conspiring against them.  The dances done by the locals around statues was seen as heathenism.  So the missionaries prohibited dancing of any kind.  And they made the locals learn a new language in addition, of course, to converting them to Christianity.  

The missionaries also felt that walking around bare chested was not proper.  So they decreed that the people had to change from loin cloths to formal wear.  I’m trying to picture that transition.  Did they first go to formal loin cloths?  Maybe something made out of a tuxedo-like fabric? With a little bow tie to cover the important parts?  Not sure where the cummerbund would go.   

Today the Cook Islands are self-governing and their people carry New Zealand passports.  There are a total of 15 islands and the population is 19,000.  But there are 60,000 Cook Islanders living in Australia and another 90,000 living in New Zealand.  Hmmmm.  Might one conclude that once you get off the Islands, you are not too eager to return?

Well, we found the islanders to be very friendly greeting us with Kia Orana (May you live on).  Rarotonga is quite small.  In fact, it’s only 20 miles around.  They do have one small airport.  If you rent a car and see two airports you’ve gone around twice.  We opted to take the local bus around the island.  There are exactly two busses.  One displays a sign on the front that says “Clockwise”.  The other bus displays a sign that says “Anti-Clockwise”.  They both start and end in the same place.  If you get lost here, you are probably directionally challenged.  

Aitutaki was the second Cook Island we visited.  We opted to take a Seabourn excursion over to a remote island called One Foot.  It is a beautiful and stereotypical island paradise.  One of the episodes of the TV show “Survivor” was filmed here.

Some say it is named One Foot because it has the shape of a foot.  But others believe the legend that a Maori Chief, in ancient times, decided that the marine life of Aitutaki Lagoon had to be preserved for future generations.  So he banned fishing inside the lagoon.  There was a poor fisherman who was hungry and set out to fish with his son.  The Maori warriors spotted the hungry fisherman’s canoe and rushed to the Lagoon to catch the perpetrator.  

When he saw the Maori canoes approaching, the father told his son to lay low in the canoe so he could not be seen.  He then went around to the back of the island and told his son to run into the wooded area and hide up a pandas tree. After his son did this, the father followed precisely in the son’s footsteps making sure to only leave one set of footprints.   When the Maori Warriors arrived, they followed the prints on the beach and found the fisherman and killed him.  Because there was only one set of footprints the Maori thought there was only one person and so they left.  Hence, One Foot Island.