The islanders, due to their isolation, had developed a pantheon quite distinct from their nearest neighbors and quite unlike anything else in Polynesia. Unfortunately, the last full-blooded islander had died in 1937 and social pressures had prevented the handing down of the traditional tales by any of his kinfolk.

An anthropologist had interviewed the islander, known as Georges, the year before he died and recorded the exchange on acetates. For better or worse, though, Georges was an inveterate prankster and Dr. Hewes was utterly credulous. So, while scholars agree that the resulting cosmology is a mixture of real stories passed down through generations and Georges having fun at the expense of his guest, no one is sure which is which.

Roakoanton, the god of fire embers raked in a counterclockwise direction, is probably made up. Likewise Koantuatuana, who Georges claimed was a powerful goddess that only aided women who had lost great-uncles to shark attacks. But what of Rotpota, said to be the essential god of outrigger canoe lashings? Or Koatpotaea, a spirit Georges said carefully controlled the islanders’ shellfish harvest in line with her own inscrutable motives?

No wonder, then, that relatives say that when Georges died–shortly after the first copies of Hewes’ book reached him–he died laughing.