Goldie. — Maori Medical Lore. 35 



Riki Tatahunga, better known as " King Dick," died recently 

 at Tauranga. Riki had been ailing for some time, and his illness 

 was ascribed to witchcraft, brought on because he appeared as 

 advocate against his own tribe in a Land Court case. As soon 

 as the tohunga had diagnosed the case as being caused by mahutu 

 or sorcery no hopes were held out for his recovery, and death 

 soon ensued. 



By means of mahutu a person could be made to offend against 

 some law of tapu without his being aware of it, and in such case 

 illness or death was sent by atua who had been insulted. And 

 it has often happened that an innocent person has been sacrificed 

 to the rage of the relatives of a sick man, under the belief that he 

 had caused the disease by unlawful means. For instance, a 

 few months ago a Maori named Hirawa Moananui became ill, 

 and a relative named Tera te Teira accused Haora Tareranui 

 of bewitching him so as to cause his death. It is alleged that he 

 threatened that if Moananui died he would shoot Haora. Had 

 Tareranui not been protected by the police he very likely would 

 have lost his life. 



This mahutu business was the dangerous part of a tohunga 's 

 profession, for it was by no means an uncommon thing for a man 

 who believed himself bewitched to load his gun and anticipate 

 matters by shooting the wizard. ' I have known one or two 

 cases of this kind," says Gudgeon, " and one in which an old 

 man, having threatened to bewitch his daughter-in-law because 

 she refused to allow him to take charge of his grandson, was 

 deliberately, and with the consent of the tribe, doomed to death 

 and shot by his own son. Mahutu is a two-edged sword." In 

 the year 1844 a slave and his wife were killed at Hokianga for 

 the supposed crime of witchcraft. " Even in these days," 

 writes a colonist in 1861, " the lives of nearest relatives are some- 

 times sacrificed to the still strong belief in these Satanic rites, 

 and for the supposed crime of witchcraft murder is still perpe- 

 trated." In modern days the gun is the favourite means of 

 protection against sorcery. In olden times if a Maori was guilty 

 of the crime of killing, or attempting to kill, by means of mahutu, 

 without just cause, he was usually punished through the agency 

 •of his hau — that is to say, his hau was taken and his body doomed 

 to death in the usual manner by mahutu or sympathetic magic. 



The Maori magician is generally an aged man, but he does 

 not cover himself with charms and amulets, bones of animals, 

 beads and bells, and such ornaments and grotesque personal 

 decorations so dear to the medicine-man of the Zulus and other 

 primitive races. He whirls no terrifying bull-roarer, carries no 

 Dag of disease-dealing or disease-destroying charms or bundles of 

 magic herbs. Nor can he travel underground, or fly enormous 



