T. H. Smith. — On Maori IvqilcnLoits and Weapons. 451 



To revert briefly to the poitnamiL : It was not only as a 

 material for a weapon that this stone was used and highly 

 prized by the Maori. His most effective tools were fashioned 

 out of it. The axes with which he felled large trees, and the 

 adzes with which he shaped his canoe, dubbed down and 

 dressed the rauaiva and the timbers and slabs used in the 

 construction of his house, food-store, palisades, &c., of his 

 fortified pa, were of pounamu, ground, polished, and lashed to 

 wooden handles. They were called toki, and were of various 

 shapes and sizes, adapted to the work on which they were used. 



The toki-titaha, used for felling large trees, was fixed by 

 lashing to the end of a stout pole or shaft, with which it was 

 thrust or driven against the tree to be felled. By successive 

 blows two deeply incised rings, a foot or more apart, w^ere 

 carried round the trunk, the scarf between these being wedged 

 out with smaller axes or adzes. The ringing and wedging 

 process w^as repeated until the centre of the bole was reached 

 and the tree fell. Sometimes a staging was erected around 

 the tree, standing upon which a number of men could work 

 together in this way ; the axe-strokes being given simulta- 

 neously, to time marked with shout and song, in the same 

 way as in paddling a canoe. Fire was also used as an auxiliary 

 to the work of the axes and adzes. There were tohi-tarai, 

 toki-hangai, used for shaping and hollowing the trunk which 

 formed the body of the canoe ; toki in endless variety in shape 

 and name. The adzes were lashed to handles, shaped so as 

 to hold the cutting-stone at the proper angle. There were 

 toki-paneke, or panehe, for finer adzing-work, and these di- 

 minishing in size down to the purupuru, or ivliao, a small 

 chisel using in wood-carving. Kapu was a general name for 

 an adze — a handle for wliich was often formed from a human 

 leg- or arm-bone. The pounamu was also made into ornaments 

 of various kinds, worn on the person, as the heitiki, a gro- 

 tesquely-carved representation of the human figure, which 

 was w'orn suspended from the neck ; also ear-ornaments, the 

 kuru, tau, poria, and many others. These were regarded as 

 jewels, and many of them were named and famed in tradition, 

 as were also the axes and other pounamu tools : e.g., the 

 toki Tutauru, and Hauhau-te-rangi, which were made from 

 Ngahue's ika, or fragment of greenstone, taken by him to 

 Hawaiki from New Zealand, are said to have been used in 

 the making of the seven canoes named in the legend as those 

 which brought the first emigrants to these Islands. The ear- 

 ornament Kaukaumatua, also made from a portion of the 

 same block, is referred to in the song or lament of Te Iwikau 

 for his brother Te Heuheu, the great Taupo chief, in whose 

 possession that famous jewel was when he met his death, in 

 the manner previously mentioned. 



