MUSEUM OF NATURE

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32542, 27 February 1971, Page 11

MUSEUM OF NATURE

Great-ancestor Kahu of the Chathams

(Contributed by the Canterbury Museum)

(ID) As with the Maori of New Zealand, the traditional history of the Chatham Islands Moriori moves into the fabulous and legendary when it passes beyond the memory of named canoes and chiefs of later migrations about the thirteenth century. The founding ancestor, Rongomai-Whenua, is put 125 generations back, to the time of creation of earth and sky but we would regard him as arriving by a forgotten canoe voyage. Immediately preceding Rongomai, in the section on the “sons of heaven” we find the three-generation sequence Toi-Rauru-Whatonga, ancestors also known in New Zealand, and believed to have dated from 1150 to 1250 A.D. From Rongomai, a list of 28 earth-born takata henua ancestors brings us to Kahu, the first ancestor to be remembered as coming from over the seas. A culture-hero, in the sense that he is alleged to have introduced a superior variety of bracken fern, Kahu is chiefly remembered because he tried without success to introduce the sweet-potato or kumara.

Although never established in the Chathams this plant was known in Moriori traditions as pakamara, and this name was applied to the “Irish” potato when introduced by the first European whaling ships in the 1820 s. From the analogy of New Zealand we might place Kahu in the century 1250-1350, when Maori tradition claimed the first introduction of the kumara from Hawaiki in the canoes of the last migration, remembered collectively as the heke (migration) and misleadingly interpreted by Europeans as a “fleet.” We might regard Kahu as a minor chief of New Zealand during the interesting period when the Moa-hunter tangata whenua came under the influence of new ideas during the last century of canoe arrivals from Hawaiki, before all contact with the tropical homeland ceased, perhaps because of a deterioration of the climatic cycle. From the references in Kahu’s magic chant it would appear that the existence of the Chatham Islands was then known in New Zealand. In later generations the memory of the Chathams seemed entirely forgotten.

The words of the chant in turn were remembered only by Kahu’s descendants in the Chathams. The chant indicates that he brought the kumara from Arapaoa, then the name for the whole South Island, but now restricted to the small island at the entrance to Tory Channel. Here are the words of the chant: "Oh Kumara, from Ardpaoa, I plant you, Oh, Kumara, grow spreading leaves and root deep; If you grow, my wives will earth the soil up round you; Come, be strong, send up your spreading leaves. Increase!" But in spite of the magical chant, the kumara would not grow. So Kahu refitted his canoe for the hazardous return through rough seas to New Zealand, which the Moriori then called Hawaiki, distinguishing between the North Island as Aotea and the South Island (as already noted) as Aropaoa. Again the Morioris handed down the chant which Kahu sang to the ocean before facing the journey back to New Zealand. The chant is called

“The sea-tides of Kahu” and this is how it goes: “It Is the ebbing tide, The tide that runs out. Keep ebbing, oh tide and carry me to Aotea, Keep running out and take me to Hawaiki." Whether or not Kahu reached New Zealand he followed the immemorial custom of Polynesian sea rovers of leaving some of his wives and children with their tribal relatives. For our knowledge of the rich traditions of the Moriori we are indebted to the resident scholar Alexander Shand " who gained the confidence of the surviving Moriori in the 1860 s and learned their local dialect. Shand in turn relied on Hirawanu Tapu Maitarawai (the subject of the illustration) a bright young man who spoke the Taranaki dialect of his conquerors and who had learned to read and write. He acted as the scribe for older tohunga who had been taught by word of mouth before the Maori invasion. Hirawanu shows the strongly Polynesian features of the native Moriori.—R.S.D