many Polynesian people; as the Israelites had a complex and
often arbitrary-seeming multitude of distinctions between clean
and unclean things, and clean and unclean states of men, to
which they attached great importance, so had the Polynesians
their notions of ceremonial purity and their tabu, an
equally extensive and strange system of prohibitions, violation
of which was visited by death. These doctrines of cleanness and
uncleanness no doubt may have taken their rise in the real or
fancied utility of the prescriptions, but it is probable that
the origin of many is indicated in the curious habit of the
Samoans to make fetishes of living animals. It will be
recollected that these people had no "gods made with hands," but
they substituted animals for them.

At his birth


every Samoan was supposed to be taken under the care of some
tutelary god or aitu [= Atua] as it was called. The help
of perhaps half a dozen different gods was invoked in succession
on the occasion, but the one who happened to be addressed just
as the child was born was marked and declared to be the child's
god for life.

These gods were supposed to appear in some visible
incarnation, and the particular thing in which his god was
in the habit of appearing was, to the Samoan, an object of
veneration. It was in fact his idol, and he was careful never to
injure it or treat it with contempt. One, for instance, saw his
god in the eel, another in the shark, another in the turtle,