atuan.

1769 J. Cook Jrnl. 28 June (1955) I. 113 Near the great Morie were many large Altars..on [which] were exposed meat for Eatua or God.

1773 J. Cook Jrnl. 17 Sept. (1961) II. 234 I then asked if they sacrificed men to the Eatua.

1773 J. Hawkesworth Acct. Voy. Southern Hemisphere II. i. xv. 165 It was a representation of Mauwe, one of their Eatuas, or gods of the second class.

1817 W. Mariner & J. Martin Acct. Natives Tonga Islands II. xviii. 103 Hotooas, gods, or superior beings, who have the power of dispensing good and evil to mankind.

1832 A. Earle Narr. Resid. N.Z. 241 The natives say, ‘It is Atua, the Great Spirit, coming into them, and eating up their inside.’

1851 J. C. Richmond in Scholefield Richmond–Atkinson Papers (1960) I. 103 Though he may have some faith in the atonement as a charm to exorcise ‘atuas’..his Xtianity does not go a great deal further.

1884 M. A. Martin Our Maoris ii. 35 He..told us that an Atua Maori,—that is to say, a man who professes to be possessed by a spirit,—had been disturbing the neighbourhood.

1902 E. Clodd T. H. Huxley iv. 160 The ‘atuas’ include gods good and evil, home and foreign, as well as the souls of men.

1928 W. Baucke Where White Man Treads (ed. 2) 211 Each tohunga diagnoses after his own skill, and in the ripeness of his wisdom applies what his atua has revealed to him.