(1.) Tau is the name of the principal island of Manu’a.  Its principal village is also called Tau.  It is said to have had its name from the child of Faleile-langi—­House roofed by the heavens, that is to say, no house at all, and alluding to the remote tradition of a time when people had no houses.  This lady was the daughter of the god Tangaloa, and had a child who was dumb, and from that child she named the island Tau.  U expresses the hollow unintelligible sound emitted by the dumb.

Fitiuta, or Inland Fiji, is the name of a principal village.  It was formerly called Anga’e, or Breathing hard, from the hard breathing at its birth of a child of Rocks and Earth.  But the name was changed.  Moiuuoleapai, a daughter of Tangaloa, married the king of Fiji and went and lived there.  She was ill-used and sent to the backwoods of Fiji.  Taeotangaloa heard that his sister was being ill-treated, and went off to Fiji to see if it was true.  It was true.  He stood by her, cheered her solitude, and by a great yam and banana plantation he turned the bush into a fruitful garden.  The king of Fiji heard of it, went and made up matters with his cast-off wife, as he much wished the yams, which were scarce at the time, and hence the proverb:  “Do you call them friends who are but friendly to the yam?” The king named the fertile spot Fitiuta, and when Taeotangaloa returned to Manu’a he changed the name of the village from Anga’e to Fitiuta.

(2.) Olosenga is the central island in the Manu’a group.  This was called the land of the god Fuailangi, Originator of the heavens.  He dug up the earth on the land of the chief Niuleamoa on Tau.  The latter pushed it off into the sea as a floating island, jumped on to it with the god Fuailangi, together with a lady called Olo, and other two chiefs named Puletainuu and Masuitufanga.  Away they went to Tonga, seeking some place suitable for the residence of a war god.  They returned to Samoa, touched at Savaii and Upolu, and then went to Tutuila, but as the people there began to make a dunghill of their floating island, they went back to Manu’a, and rested between Tau and Ofu, as Fuailangi thought he could there fight at pleasure with the people on either side of him.

Senga, the chief of Ofu, looked out, was surprised to see the new island, went over to look at it, and soon after married Lady Olo.  They united their names, and called it Olosenga.  The god Fuailangi in after years was in repute, and dreaded.  He was incarnate in the sea eel, had an altar which the people carried about with them, and any persons cooking or eating the sea eel had their eyes burned and their scalps clubbed as a punishment.  Another story is that some parrots flew ashore from a Fiji canoe.  Olo means fort and Senga a parrot, and hence the island was called Olosenga—­the fort or refuge of parrots.

(3.) Ofu is the name of a third island at Manu’a.  Ofu means clothed.  Faleile-langi, the daughter of Tangaloa, had another child, and this one they clothed, and, in remembrance of the early tailoring, the island was called Ofu.