INTERESTING MAORI RELIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 871, 15 January 1930, Page 10

INTERESTING MAORI RELIC

FIND ON RANGITOTO NATIVE HONGI DISCOVERED A Maori liongi or stone oven was recently found on the summit of Rangitoto by one of the Rangitoto Domain Board wardens. The discovery has aroused lively interest among members of the Anthropological section of the Auckland Institute. One of the chiefs who came with the last big Maori invasion of New Zealand established himself at Narrow Neck and proclaimed Rangitoto as his bird preserve. No doubt hunting and Ashing parties camped on the island, but it was never settled in the ordinary acceptance of the term. Much of it was tapu from the fact that the numerous small volcanic caves there served as mortuary places for Maoris of rank. The road workers on the island last year came across a neatly-built but very long abandoned oven above the flat near the Beacon. A little further examination revealed a mosscovered but neatly-cut flight of stone steps leading to the platform where the oven was located. Reasons for a cooking place at the summit may be left to., fancy. Possibly it was a picnic place for Maori women in the summer when gathering tutu berries to make jelly. Perhaps fugitives from war vengeance or tribal justice found a sanctuary there, or more romantically an eloping couple—not unknown in the Maori social system—awaited there the appeasement of parental wrath. Less romantic, but more intriguing, a military look-out may have spent watchful days and nights on the cool peak waiting for tidings of threatened invasion and seeking glimpses of hostile canoe fleets.