478 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Quarterly, from p. 362 to p. 413, containing many lengthy 

 extracts, and is certainly a very ably written one. Indeed, 

 a thought (or something more fixed and stable) has occurred 

 to me that the reviewer of those able works, who wrote the 

 body of the said review, did not write the long note at 

 pp. 404, 405, the tenor, tone, and language are so very dif- 

 ferent, so discourteous, so largely exceptional, so far from 

 truth ! 



Aet. XLIX. — The Tradition respecting the Aboriginal In- 

 habitants of Whakatane. 



By the late Lieut. -Colonel St. John. 



Communicated by T. Kirk. 



[Read before the Auckland Institute, 2nd November, 1891.] 



Turning over an old note-book, I came across a note given 

 to me in 1872 by the late Lieut. -Colonel St. John, and, as it 

 seems worth preserving, notwithstanding its extreme brevity, 

 I send a copy of it herewith. If read at a meeting of the 

 Institute it may elicit a fuller account. It is as follows : — 



The first man who landed was Toe, of Ngapuhi. Disem- 

 barking at Kohi Point, and the clouds obscuring the sun, he 

 found it cold, and sang a tvaiata (preserved by tradition) for the 

 clouds to clear off. On Kohi, between Kapu and the point of 

 the headland, existed, at his landing, a pa containing aborigines, 

 v\^ith whom he dwelt until the arrival of the next party, which 

 came from Hauwhaiki, under a man named Taukata, who 

 introduced kumaras. The aborigines knew of no other food 

 than mamaku and fern-root, and did not know how to light a 

 fire. 



The remainder of the tradition is merely a genealogical 

 table accounting for the ancestors of the various tribes in the 

 Bay of Plenty, with fabulous accounts of their doings. 



The Whakatane natives still point out a spot on the 

 summit of the hill as the original pa found by Toe. If trenches 

 were opened on this site some implements or skulls might be 

 found which would throw light on the original population of 

 New Zealand. 



The tradition expressly states that the aborigines remained 

 in their own pa, while Taukata took up his dwelling on the 

 beach. After Toe's arrival they seem to have been absorbed 

 into Toe's tribe, Eahiri of Ngapuhi, and eventually left Whaka- 

 tane for the Bay of Islands. 



