MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 September 1939, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

MAORI VEGETABLE FOODS. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Before the coming of the Pakeha the Maori Pa numbered several thousand where there are now but a score or a hundred. We naturally wonder how they lived and in such abiding health, vigour, and endurance. The secret was undoubtedly strenuous effort in production and moderation enforced by scarcity. The first need was a stone axe made by years of careful chipping and friction, then with its aid and with fire, also produced by patient rubbing, they made the Ko (wooden spade). Patience was perforce a national virtue. They had three semi-tropic foods which no doubt came in thein canoes, the Kumara (sweet potato), the taro (like a leek), and the hue (a bottle shaped marrow) which when matured became their only means of carrying water. These all had to be protected from frost, hence the greater population in the far North. Other vegetable foods were Aruhe (fern root), dried and for winter, the pith of the young Nikau, and the Whar.aki (cabbage tree). The only nutlike fruits were the kernels of the Tawa and the Karaka berries which had to be specially treated to eliminate the bitter poison. We must not forget the abundant Rauriki, a delicious spinach now almost exterminated by imported animals. The Kiekie, the blossom of . which was the size of a man’s hand, was sweet and juicy at Christmas time, as also were the three fruit stems in winter, both eagerly devoured by men, birds and rats. They are now a rarity though hardly and easily grown in most soil and well worthy of trial, even as a rare and handsome creeper.