Rongo's Peace: A Name Still Invoked

Rongo carries a same-figure-other-register edge to Deity 47124, whose own record states him actively venerated in a living tradition and names the specific present-tense form that standing takes: a gathering held to make peace is still conducted under his name in Maori tradition today, according to Te Ara, New Zealand's own national encyclopedia. That living association with peace-making stands apart from the historical cult recorded for Rongo's cognate figure in the southern Cook Islands, where the Akaoro and Orongo marae on Mangaia once served as centres of a war and harvest cult that required both cooked taro and, by the historical record, human sacrifice to secure Rongo's favor in battle. That older Cook Islands practice ended with nineteenth century Christianization and is not part of this record's claim about Rongo's present standing; the two are honestly kept distinct, a historical war cult on one island group and a living peace tradition recorded for Rongo among Maori today, rather than folded into a single undifferentiated account of ongoing worship. What survives and is independently attested in the present tense is narrower and gentler than what the historical record shows once existed, and this record states that difference plainly rather than letting an older, harsher practice stand in for what Te Ara documents as continuing now.