Best. — Food Products of Tuhoeland. 57 



•when they are put away in the stores. When it was required 

 that a meal of the tawa should be prepared, the kernels were 

 placed in a wooden trough with water and stone-boiled until 

 soft, when they were pounded or mashed and so eaten. The 

 Arawa people use their boiling springs instead of the steam- 

 oven for the above purpose. Latterly it has been the custom 

 to mix honey with the mashed kernels, and, of course, stone- 

 boiling is a thing of the past. The ovens used for such pur- 

 poses as the above were long ones, and not the small round 

 kind generally used. 



Tutu. 



A peculiar article of food was made from the berries of the 

 tutu or puhou shrub (Coriaria ruscifolia), also known as titpa- 

 kilii. The berries of this shrub grow in clusters, and ripen in 

 the seventh and eighth months of the Maori year (Hakihea 

 and Kohitatea). The clusters are plucked from the branches 

 and squeezed or crushed in a bowl (kumete), and the stalks 

 thrown away. A small bag or basket is made of split strips of 

 ti leaves, and some plmnes of the toetoe (Arundo conspicua) 

 placed inside it as a lining. This bag is termed a pu tutu. 

 The liquid mass of crushed berries is poured into thepu, which 

 is suspended over a bowl, which receives the liquid as it drips 

 from the pu, but the huarua, or seeds, of the tutu berries are 

 retained by the lining of the bag.* The juice is usually kept 

 in gourds, where it soon becomes tetepe — i.e., " set "—and 

 resembles jelly, but is more liquid below than on top. Pre- 

 pared fern-root was sometimes mixed with this jelly. Thus 

 prepared the berries are quite harmless, but if eaten before 

 being strained, and so freed from the poisonous huarua, then 

 the result is disastrous. Many natives died from eating these 

 berries in former times, principally children. Persons so 

 affected were placed bodily into cold water, and, it is said, 

 would sometimes recover when treated so. Since the advent 

 of Europeans salt has been used as an antidote for tutu poi- 

 son ; presumably it was used as an emetic. Te Eauna, of the 

 harassed Poho-kotia Tribe, when so poisoned, took about 

 half a bottle of painkiller as a cure. He survived both poison 

 and cure. 



Fern-root was usually eaten with the tutu in this district. 

 In an account of his sojourn in the Ngati-Porou country, on 

 the East Coast, the Rev. Mr. Colenso says, " In the houses of 

 the natives a quantity of thick succulent fucus was hung up to 

 dry, which they used as an article of food, mixing it with the 

 expressed juice of the tupakihi to give it consistency. This 

 fucus they called rimurapa,." 



Groves of the tutu shrub were often preserved to the right- 



* The bag is squeezed in order to force the juice out. 



