Best. — Food Products of Tuhoeland. 93 



to feed him or use a pointed stick as a fork to convey the food 

 to his mouth. Such a fork is termed tirou or purou. Failing 

 these, the food would be placed on the ground before him, 

 and he would gnaw it as a dog would — a very lame dog at 

 that. 



We will now proceed to note various customs, rites, say- 

 ings, and superstitions as pertaining to food-supplies : — 



Kai parapara : When Mahia, of Tuhoe, was slain by Te 

 Whakatohea at Te Pa-puni the food products of the place 

 were placed under tapu on account of blue blood having been 

 spilt there. Some of the people disregarded the tapu and ate 

 of those foods. That was a kai parapara. It was disastrous 

 for the sacrilegious persons, who were slain by Tuhoe, who 

 marched from Te Whaiti, where they had been taming the Pu 

 Taewa, and desolated the Land of the Lost Lake. 



The first fruits of birds and fish were offered or fed (wha- 

 ng a ia) to the gods — i.e., to Tu-nui-a-te-ika, to Maru, and others 

 of the numerous gods of the Tuhoean pantheon. The first 

 fruits of potatoes or other cultivated foods are collected, a few 

 from each home, in the spring, and are taken to the principal 

 village of the district, where the pure rite is performed. This 

 lifts the tapu from the young crops ; and the collecting of the 

 first fruits is termed the amoamohanga. The taptcis placed on 

 the crop in midwinter by a rite known among these Hauhaus 

 as the huamata, but which was formerly termed the maara 

 tautane. 



It must ever be borne in mind that cooked food is the very 

 essence of pollution in the eyes of the Maori, and was much 

 more so in the days gone by. Hence meals were eaten in the 

 open or in the row of the houses — i.e., in the deep porch. A 

 chief, or any tapu person, not only could not eat his meals in 

 a cooking-shed, but he could not even enter one, nor yet go 

 near it or the ovens where food was prepared. Hence cooked 

 food is always utilised in order to whakanoa or lift the tapu 

 from persons, things, or places, to make them common. The 

 expression "cooked head" is equivalent to the most degrad- 

 ing and virulent curse, an epithet that has caused much 

 bloodshed in these isles. Another such is hoa o te kai, 

 which, though not so virulent an epithet as the foregoing, is 

 yet very insulting, inasmuch as it implies that the person so 

 addressed is the companion or equal of food. The meaning 

 assigned to this expression in Sir G. Grey's " Maori Pro- 

 verbs," page 85, is not the one generally accepted. 



The word tdmaoa is often heard here. Maoa = cooked ; ta 

 is a causative prefix. But in this sense maoa or tamaoatia 

 means " polluted." In the bird-taking season, should cooked 

 food be taken into the forest, then kua tamaoatia te nga- 

 herehere (the forest is polluted) — i.e., the hau or sacred 



