MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 February 1939, Page 3

MAORI MEMORIES

NOMAD TRIBES. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Obscure clearings in a dense forest were chosen as the site for a village. The forest was its protection against tin enemy tribe or a pakeha militarj raid. The soil formed by centuries c; leafage and the ashes of a fire in past years, which produced the clearing in the bush, made an ideal garden foi the rapid growth of their food crops and these in turn were a bait for thousands of birds and rats for which snares and traps were laid with gratifying success. With the introduction of bullocks and ploughs in the early sixties, planting and harvest were native holidays. Hall' a dozen sturdy boys now did trie work of hundreds with wooden Ki. (spades), while the men lay in the fern smoking tnrore (strong Mam'igrown tobacco). The women sat scraping kumara and taiwa (poteitoeu to roast with a huge fat pig in the Umu (earth oven). Feasting, singing in tuneful unison, and sleepy hours followed. Peaches and apples introduced ley the pakeha. then free from -ell diseases, grew c'- eiywhere. In sea son there was an over supply from which the pigs tool; ;i?e:r share. Frmn the habit of scratching their backs tlrnv learned to shake the Irvifolf the trees, even to cracl; the stones and eat the I kernels! ' When tIK. soil is exhausted about i every fourth year the whole village moves to a frosh clearing. The bullocks 'and tiie women) carried everything, while the men snare birds and hunt pigs on the way. Thus were the Maoris compared with fiomad tribes of Bible history.