MUSEUM OF NATURE

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31304, 25 February 1967, Page 16

MUSEUM OF NATURE

gHOULD some catastrophe cut off New

Zealand from its supply of cane sugar from Fiji we would undoubtedly regret our progressive destruction of our chief native source, the lower trunk and tap-root of the cabbag&-tree, the ti kouka of the Maori.

For generations Maori parties travelled inland from their permanent coastal settlements every September to range the Canterbury plains and foothills to process cabbage-tree sugar, which they called kauru, during the months of October, November and December.

They operated as sub-tribes or hapu, each jealously working its palm groves, but in January each hapu had collected such a harvest of kauru that the whole community combined in a working-bee to bring in the packed flax baskets of each working party, the porterage requiring an average of three or four days for each. Although young palms were selected it was a laborious operation to dig out the large tap-root, with its immense number of long fibrous roots that, as Brunner said, with reference to a working party of four, "the natives consider they have done a glorious day’s work, if they manage to obtain five ti roots in the day. It requires an immense oven, and to remain twelve hours’ baking.”

This was Thomas Brunner, entering his diary in the Buller district on January 19, 1847. He was a month away from Nelson on a journey of 550 days in which, with two Maori guides and their wives, he journeyed from Motueka to Paringa in South Westland and back.

On the following day: “This morning opened our oven, which smelled like a sugarboiling establishment. Found the ti excellent, but rather too sweet for a diet.” Summer Camp

The “sugar boiling” which Brunner witnessed was doubtless more improvised than the regular seasonal operations on the Canterbury side of the main divide. Here the working parties assembled in force, operating from a summer camp of hastily built huts, the women plaiting the large store of baskets needed. In addition to the diggingsticks to clear round the roots, it was necessary for the man to use stone adzes to sever the upper trunk and to chip off the scaly bark and outer “wood.”

This is the probable explanation for the class of bluntedged adzes, bruised into shape from elongated river pebbles of greywacke, which are found by farmers in the most remote parts of the Canterbury plains (see illustration).

According to the Ngai Tahu learned man, H. T. Tikao, of Rapaki, who was born at Akaroa in 1850, the process was as follows: When the adzing had exposed the sugar-rich pith of

the palm, the roots were stacked upright to dry for several days, and cut into short lengths to pack into baskets for baking in the earth ovens. Where, as often, the ti groves were far from permanent firewood and water, the party might require a week to transport them. The ovens or steaming-pits were dug six feet deep, and might be as long as two chains. The firewood being laid, with the oven stones over it, the fire was set at dawn.

By mid-day the stones could be quenched with water, covered with fem and ti leaves and the baskets stacked in layers. They were left to steam all afternoon and night, to be opened next morning with the results Brunner has recorded. In this state the kauru dried out into a woody substance, which was stacked on storage racks in the home settlements. It could be eaten soaked with water, or the sugary fecula could be separated from the fibres and mixed with water in a wooden bowl to the consistency of jam or molasses.

This large-scale industry has left no archaeological trace except the greywacke adzes which the farmer’s plough uncovers.

Somewhere in Canterbury there should be traces of the giant ovens described by Tikao. The museum’s archaeologist, Mr M. M. Trotter, would be happy to follow up any report of these umu-ti.— R.S.D.