This time...Lapaha

With the might of the Catholic School Board behind me, I ventured once again to Lapaha determined to see the langi with my form 6 (grade 12) history class. It was, especially for the kids, a trip to remember. That’s mostly because they rode in the back of an open truck and it rained. When it rains, it pours. But it Tonga, when it rain, it pours in a torrential onslaught. Luckily for me, it stopped when we got to Lapaha and I remained dry. Unluckily for them, we hit another storm on the way back.

One of our deputy principals had spoken several times to the Mu’a town officer, who had assured us that the site would be open. But it’s Tonga. So when we got there and found it locked, I was much less surprised than I would have been had I taken this trip when I was still new to the culture. This time, with a cell phone call, I got the key and unrestricted unsupervised access to the richest concentration of archeological remains in Tonga!

The history lesson that follows comes largely from Wikipedia, meaning it could just have easily been written by Leo as by someone who actually knows something about Tongan history. Still, I also found the key stuff in the only book on Pacific history I have, Howe’s Where the Waves Fall.

The Tu’i Tonga Empire was a powerful Pacific Empire, centred in Tonga with an influence that extended to Fiji and Samoa. The empire began around 950 AD. To put that in perspective, its around the same time the Eastern Roman Empire was at the height of its power, Vikings were raiding France, and the Chinese used gunpowder in battles without actually coming up with the idea of a gun. The first Tu’i Tonga, ‘Aho’eitu, was the son of Tangaloa ‘Eitumâtupu’a, the Tongan God who came down from the sky, and a mortal Tongan woman. That’s because they knew the empire would be doomed to fail without at least an endorsement from a god, or better yet a half-god emperor to kick it off.

From the twelfth to sixteenth century AD, Mu’a, the town we visited, was the capital of the Tu’i Tonga Empire. And although the empire eventually disintegrated, Mu’a stayed as a kind of spiritual centre. The Tu’i Tonga lost political power but gained spiritual power, becoming high priests. My Wikipedia source says “they were perhaps even more awesome than as kings.” Coincidently this was about the time I started looking through the textbook too.

When the Tu’i Tonga died, they were buried in the langi – big man made hills surrounded by huge slabs of coral rock, usually in three or more tiered layers. There are 28 around Mu’a, 15 being “monumental,” but we focused mainly on the Paepae’o Tele’a. That’s because it’s the biggest and best preserved. And when you've seen the best, why settle for the rest! The stones are enormous, and legend holds that, through magic, the slabs were moved from ‘Uvea (aka Wallis Island) to Tonga. I am sorry to say that this was probably not the case. The Tu’i Tonga were powerful, but their magic was best adapted to making slaves move the big rocks around after they were quarried from the coral around Tongatapu.

The Paepae’o Tele’a was long thought to hold the body of Tele’a (‘Ulukimata I), a Tu’i Tonga from the sixteenth century who was one of the mightiest. His actual body may not be inside, because legend holds that he drown at sea and his body was lost. That didn’t stop me from taking a quick look while I was there, throwing the archaeological knowledge I gained from dozens of Indiana Jones viewings into practice.

The Paepae’o Tele’a - it's like they started to build a pyramid, and then with a true Tongan attitude decided, "meh, this is high enough," and took a nap.

My class, minus two students who may have skipped the trip, making them lucky this teacher doesn't include beats in his discipline plan! Really though, I don't know if teaching is supposed to be this fun. I look forward to every class because this group is good for a laugh but ready to work, every day.

Waving goodbye to the site, momentarily considering keeping the key for future access, remembering that I got it from the house of one of the most powerful chiefs in Tonga, then heading to the truck, to return the key.