THE "UMU-TI."

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 39, 15 February 1934, Page 6

THE "UMU-TI."

POLYNESIAN FIRE-WALKING. (By J.C.) The unhappy experience of the doctor who essayed the fire-walking act at Tahiti, with painful results, has been related, and Miss Marguerite Crookes, in her article on the Indian rite at Suva, discussed the mysterious character of the ancient ceremony. In Polynesia, the island of .Raiatea, from which many of our Maori ancestors came, has for untold ages been the headquarters of the walkers on the "umu-ti," which, as the name indicates, is an oven for the steam-cooking of the roots and pith of the tree closely related to our cabbage-tree. Some Maori tohungas of the past generation knew of the rite, and it is probable that it was anciently practised in New Zealand.

Colonel W. E. Gudgeon, who was then the |New Zealand Government Resident in the Cook Group, passed unscathed barefooted jacross the "umu-ti" at Rarotonga, under the (direction of a native wise man from Raiatea Island, some thirty years ago. With him were three other Europeans of the island. Writing to New Zealand, Colonel Gudgeon said of the feat: "I can only say that we stepped across boldly. Only one of the party was badly burned. He, it is said, like Lot's wife, looked .behind him—a thing against all rules. I knew quite well that I was walking on red-hot stones, and oould feel the heat, yet I was not burned. I felt something resembling slight electric shocks, both at the time and afterwards, but that was all. I do not know that I should recommend everyone to try it. A man must have niana to do it; if he has not it will be too late when he is on the hot stones of Tama-ahi-roa. To show you the •heat of the stones, quite half an hour afterwards someone remarked to the priest that the stones would not be hot enough to cook the ti roots. His only answer was to throw his green branch on the oven, and in a quarter of a minute it was blazing. As I have eaten a fair share of the ti cooked in the oven, I am in a position to say that it was hot enough to cook it well."

Colonel Gudgeon was a learned man in Polynesian matters, and iie had something of the Maori tohunga's regard for "niana tapu" and the psychic influence over material things. But lie had also a keen scientific sense, and he looked into the fire-walking puzzle from all angles and confessed that a solution of the mystc.ry of the rite was beyond him.

I The Fijian fire-walking ceremony has been 'seen in New Zealand. In> December, ISKMS, a large party of Fiji natives was taken to the New Zealand Exhibition .at Christchureh. About a score of flic fire-walkers from famous Bonga Island were among them; the hereditary performers of the "vilavila-i-revo," as it is termed in Fiji. These people gave four exhibitions of walking 011 h<> stones at Christchurch and one - in Wellington. The stones they used at Christchureh were brought up from Fiji, but as some people said there must be some special quality in the stones of Benga, those on which they walked at the Wellington ceremony were procured from a quarry near the city. The performance showed that the virtue lay in the walkers, not the stones; and the Wellington rocks, however, were not so suitable as the hard, black, volcanic stones from Fiji, for they had a tendency to break up under great lieat and so present rough edges. The fire oven was about twenty feet in diameter. The stones were carefully raked and levelled for a long time, with poles, until they formed a fairly level surface, across which the natives walked unhurried, circling the oven, while the leader rc/'ted his chant of incantation.

In Christchurch a committee of men of science-, university professors, from Wellington, Christchureh and Duneclin, closely watched the ceremonies. They failed to discover the reason for the walkers' immunity firom harm. But none of the professors was sufficiently enthusiastic in the cause of scientific research to take off hie boots and walk with the men of Benga.