TAPU. 
61 
Another kind of tapu was that which was acquired by acci¬ 
dental circumstances, thus,—An iron pot, which was used for 
cooking purposes, was lent to a Pakeka; he very innocently 
placed it under the eaves of his house, to catch water in; the 
rain coming from a sacred dwelling, rendered the utensil so like¬ 
wise ; it was afterwards removed by a person to cook with, 
without her knowing what had been done ; when she was told 
it was sacred, it had caught water from the roof, she exclaimed, 
We shall all die before night; they went, however, to the 
tohunga, who made it noa again by uttering the Tupeke over it.* 
Sickness also made the person tapu ; all diseases were sup¬ 
posed to be occasioned by atuas or spirits, ngarara or lizards, 
entering into the body of the afflicted; these, therefore, 
rendered the person sacred. The sick were removed from 
their own houses, and had sheds built for them in the bush, 
at a considerable distance from the pa, where they lived apart; 
if any remained in their houses and died there, they became 
tapu, were painted over with red ochre, and could not again be 
used, which often put a tribe to great inconvenience, as some 
houses were the common abode of perhaps thirty or forty 
different people.-j- The wife of a chief was very ill, I therefore 
took her into my little hospital, where she laid for several 
days; at last, her husband came and carried her away, saying 
he was afraid of her dying there, lest the house should be 
made tapu and thus hinder me from using it again: 
During the war, Maketu, a principal chief of the hostile 
natives, was shot in a house belonging to a settler, which he 
was then plundering; from that time it became tapu, and 
no heathen would enter it for years. 
* The following is the Tupeke : 
a ko te puru, ko te puru, koa, the dancing, the dancing of the legs, 
the striving the striving, that anger 
may be done away, 
the anger cannot reach, 
lest the stomach be pierced 
stand firm like the comorant 
and anger departs. 
•f This, perhaps, may be the excuse of those heathen natives, who expose 
and abandon their sick ; it is also something like the law of the leper. 
a tohe tohe ki aue ue 
kia tu tanga tangai te riri e 
e kore te riri e tae mai 
ki lcai wara kopu 
Kawautia ko ahaaha te riri 
