THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
Tiki is where humankind begins in East Polynesian tradition. Maori accounts differ tribe by tribe: in most genealogies Tiki is the first man, fashioned by a god — by Tane in some tellings, by Tumatauenga in others. Edward Tregear's Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (1891) gathers the cognate narratives from New Zealand, the Marquesas, Tahiti and Mangareva, all circling the same sense of "first man" or "maker of man." The Marquesan version goes a step further: lonely, Tiki heaped up sand beside his dwelling and shaped it into a human form, the sand figure became a living woman, and their descendants peopled the land.
Tiki is also the general name for the carved human figure across Polynesia. Marquesan stone tiki crouch with enormous eyes and hands on the belly; the Iipona site at Puamau on Hiva Oa holds Takaii, at about two and a half meters the largest stone tiki in Polynesia. The Maori hei-tiki is a small greenstone (pounamu) figure worn at the neck, head tilted, eyes wide, passed down as a taonga heirloom that gathers the prestige of every wearer.
In the mid-twentieth century the word was borrowed in the United States for a fashion of Polynesian-themed bars and restaurants, torches, carvings and cocktails far removed from any genealogy. The figures themselves never lost their standing: the hei-tiki remains a conspicuous mark of Maori identity today.
