Otu, the son of King Pomare, had a revelation that the god Oro wished to be removed to Tautira from Atehuru.  The chiefs of that district protested, and Otu’s followers seized the idol, and went to sea with him.  They landed as soon as it was safe, and mollified the god by a sacrifice; and having no victim, they killed one of Pomare’s servants.  The island then divided into hateful camps, and Moorea joined the fray.  The mission sided with the king, and the crews of two English vessels fortified the mission, and with their modern weapons helped the royal party to whip the other faction.  Wars followed, the mission was again invaded, the houses burned, and the missionaries, not desiring martyrdom, fled to Australia, thousands of miles away.  But two remained, and kept at their preaching, and finally the genius of the Clapham clerics triumphed.  Pomare ate the tabu turtle of the temple, and a Christian nucleus was formed, headed by the sovereign.  For years a bloody warfare over Christianity distracted the islands, comparable in intensity of feeling to that between Catholics and Huguenots in France.  The Christian converts were slaughtered by the hundreds, and the pagans drove all the survivors to Moorea.  After a season the conquerors grew lonesome, and invited them to return and abjure their false god, Ietu Kirito, whom they had defeated, and who by the Christians’ own statement had been hanged on a tree by the Ati-Iuda, the tribe of Jews.  Pomare and eight hundred men landed from Moorea, and with the missionaries began a song service on the beach, and “Come, let us join our friends above,” and “Blow ye the trumpets, blow!” echoed from the hills.

Couriers carried all over Tahiti word of the outrage to the gods, and the incensed heathens rose in immense numbers and attacked the hymners.  Fortunately, says the missionary chronicle, the Christians had their arms with them, and after prayers and exhortations by the clergy, Pomare led his cohorts, men and women; and by the grace of God and the whites, with a few muskets, they smote the devil-worshipers hip and thigh, and chased them to the distant valleys.

Pomare, directed by the now militant missionaries, sent a body of gunmen to Tautira to capture the god Oro, whose principal temple was very near where stood my kitchen.  The iconoclasts, with the zeal of neophytes, destroyed every vestige of the magnificent marae, and, unwinding the many coverings of Oro, carried to the king the huge log which had been the national god for ages.  The king first used it in his cook-house as a shelf, and finally for firewood.