MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 October 1940, Page 8

MAORI MEMORIES

HAERE NOA (Travel). (Recorded by J.H.S., o£ Palmerston North, for the “Times-Age.”) Having by combined efforts planted their food for the coming season, old Maoris spent their leisure months in travel, once on foot or by canoes, later with the aid of horses. Our pioneer explorers came upon numerous plots of cultivated crops in isolated spots with not a human being within ten miles or more. These were effectively guarded against enemy tribes by the universal Maori law of Tapu (consecrated, sacred). There were no animals or imported bljghts to destroy them. Where many tribes lived as in the Waikato. even Captain Cook's wild pigs were all domesticated and held in large enclosures of fern lands, leaving their tribal owners free to travel at will. Their luggage was light, hospitality universal and reciprocal. Even old men, well over 80. would walk 10 miles a day for a month, clothed in a cotton shirt and flax mat, and with an old red blanket, one of the surviving bribes for his Ripeka (cross) as a signatory of the Treaty of Waitangi. In, canoe journeys they carried many presents of food and clothing for tribes to whom they paid surprise visits.