56 TUTIRA 



maiden, who art weeping because of the cold, 



We own no garments of forest-leaves, child. 



Let us gather together to Tutira 



Where are eel-weirs and fruit-laden trees. 



The lake, my little girl, is not a new lake, 



But an ancient lake possessed by thy ancestral great ones. 



It is only just now that the food has gone : 



Hine-rau-wharariki is preparing the fibre : 



Suppressing the hunger-pangs gnawing within. 



Tutira and the adjoining lands were a sort of connecting link between 

 the seaside villages and the ranges of the interior. The Ngai-Tatara 

 during peace dwelt about the coastal estuaries and the lake. During 

 war they sheltered in the forests and fastnesses of the hinterland. The 

 glory of the hapu was in their continued occupation of so famous a lake, 

 in their possession of so unfailing a food supply of the most highly-prized 

 kind. Their warriors were active, bold, and resolute ; nor, as we shall 

 see, did the womenfolk of the sept fall short of their husbands and sons 

 in the accomplishment of deeds of derring-do. 



The annals of the tribe may be divided into two distinct periods. 

 One is of a time when the Ngai-Tatara when the Maori people 

 everywhere had attained its maximum numbers ; when, on Tutira as 

 elsewhere, every height and fastness was utilised for defence, when every 

 fertile locality was devoted to cultivation. The other period, brief in its 

 duration, is marked by the presence of kaingas or open villages with 

 considerable areas of crop-land adjacent, by whare sites immediately 

 extraneous to the fortified pas, such sites corresponding to the overflow 

 in old-world cities of houses beyond the ancient walls of defence, beyond 

 the city gates ; lastly, by the appearance in the gardens and cultivation- 

 plots of alien plants and of alien fruit-trees. 



The first period represented heathendom, the second Christianity. 

 Evidence of the former is plentiful in folk-lore and tradition. There 

 are records of forays from the direction of Mohaka and from the regions 

 of Waikaremoana and Heretaunga. Doubtless, according to modern 

 reckoning, no action that could be dignified by the name of battle has 

 taken place on Tutira soil ; perhaps indeed the killing of Ti-Waewae and 

 the vengeance of his tribe is the deed that has circulated furthest beyond 

 the marches of the run. Nevertheless although skirmishes on Tutira have 

 been but skirmishes, they illustrate the former way of life of its in- 

 habitants ; as part of the history of the station they must be recorded. 



