52 



CHAPTER VIII. 



TWO PERIODS OF MAORI LIFE. 



THERE will be found in the following chapters some account of the 

 bygone inhabitants of Tutira their fortunes, their folk - lore, and 

 their feuds. These relics of the past have been gathered from the 

 mouths of three friends well stricken in years, Anaru Kune, now " gone 

 west," Aparahama for short Tara or Tera, and last but not least, Te 

 Hata-Kani, that wonderful old man tauwhena a word meaning some- 

 times dwarfish, of small stature, but also used to denote a person whc 

 never grows old, but retains his youthful vigour to the end. To these 

 three men and to the indefatigable Rev. P. A. Bennet I owe the history 

 of the Ngai-Tatara. To be in sympathy with this hapu or sub- tribe and 

 its old-world ways, readers would be well advised to shed the Decalogue, 

 to accept for the nonce the ethics of the Stone Age, to imagine them- 

 selves bare-limbed, bare-headed, brown, the pake of everyday wear thrown 

 over their shoulders, on high days and holidays clad in soft mats of 

 woven flax, plumes in their hair and taiahas in their hands. 1 



1 The generally accepted theory as to the colonisation of New Zealand by the Maoris, too 

 definite to contain the whole truth, is that some five centuries ago a great migration from 

 Hawaiki reached the Dominion. Mr Sidney H. Ray, to whom I applied for information on 

 this matter, and who has kindly allowed me to use his reply, writes thus : 



" I think that whenever the introduction of an element from the west into Polynesia took 

 place, it must have been a great deal earlier than the fourteenth century. There is internal 

 evidence that the known Maori language is formed by the imposition of an Indonesian 

 linguistic element l upon the speech of an earlier population. The words were adopted in their 

 Indonesian derived form with no apprehension of their exact meaning. Thus a word might be 

 pahiwi or hiwi, z pahore or hore? karipi or ripif karakape or kapef with no sense as to differ- 

 ences of meaning. That the prefixes are not meaningless is certain, but the Maori borrowers 

 were just as ignorant of their meanings as they may be to-day of the suffix ana in tarianaf 

 quoted by you, or of the meta in Hakarameta, 7 the hana in Kamupeneheihana, 8 or the mana in 

 pirihimana? Another fact is indicated by this borrowing of ready-made words. Other 

 Polynesians do not know them in these forms, hence they did not give them to, nor did they 



1 By Indonesian is meant the original speech of the islanders of the Indian Archipelago. 



2 To jerk. 3 Peel. * Cut, gash. 5 To move with stick. 

 English -ion in stallion. 7 English -ment in sacrament. s English -tion in compensation. 



9 English -man in policeman. 



