Maori mining on West Coast

Press, 19 May 1984, Page 18

Maori mining on West Coast

Greenstone Trails: The Maori Search for Pounamu. By Barry Brailsford. Reed, 1984. 192 pp. $19.95. (Reviewed by Eric Beardsley) The exploitation of Poutini, the West coast, began centuries before Captain Tom Dixon (or was it Ihaia Tainui?) picked up flakes of gold in the Grey Valley, or Thomas Brunner warmed himself with the bright coal thrusting up on the spot that bears his name. Clad in dogskin cloaks and flax sandals against the bite of snow and rock, New

Zealand’s first explorers scrambled over the passes of the Main divide to the headwaters of the Taramakau and Arahura and toiled back with flax packs heavily laden with treasure. It was scarce, that treasure, and hard won. It was tougher than iron, an important quality for a Stone Age people; it was beautiful and, if cut thinly, translucent; it stimulated trade, brought wealth and gave mana. It was greenstone, a treasure of great material and spiritual value: pounamu to the Maoris, nephrite to the geologist, jade to the jeweller. Maori mythology insisted that it was a fish — not such a fanciful notion if one looked at the marine fossils in the adjacent rocks. And the more imaginative might have noted too how dead and drab the native greenstone appears among dry river gravel and how, as with a fish, water gives it life. No wonder the South Island was Te Wai Pounamu, the place of greenstone. It was found only in six fields, and chiefly in the Arahura, after olivine and serpentine rocks had been transformed into nephrite under the heat and pressure of movement along the Alpine fault. Earthquakes, glaciers and rain subsequently exposed it and the Maoris, with incredible fortitude, blazed their mountain trails to mine and transport it. Before long it had spread to almost every corner of the country.

“Greenstone Trails” is a slightly unfortunate title for Barry Brailsford’s book is superior in every way to the

generally rather lightweight “trails” series of recent years. It is strong on geology, anthropology, archaeology, and history, and all are deftly woven into the fabric in a thorough, workmanlike, and very readable way. There are numerous maps, diagrams and photographs (slightly marred by one confusing caption) to illustrate Mr Brailsford’s central theme that the Maori trails became the arteries for the life blood of a people who depended on finely worked stone for their survival. In some respects the book is a tribute to Maori and early pakeha endeavour, though one can only imagine the tortures endured by the Maori explorers. Their successors, infinitely better equipped, left diaries and written memoirs about the tribulations of the trail, the hunger, the raging rivers, the rain, sandflies, mosquitoes, and the impenetrable bush. Brunner, for instance, took seven desperate weeks to get from what is now Inangahua to Murchison, about an hour’s car journey today, and 14 weeks to get from Murchison to the sea. There is no corresponding account of Maori difficulties though one chief, Terapuhi, recalled in 1863 how 20 of his men died in the snow when trying to cross thee Rurumataikau, or Whitcombe, Pass. Modern equipment and methods — explosives, helicopters and diamond drills and saws — have reduced the romance of greenstone and its commercial exploitation proceeds apace, though there are welcome signs of greater artistic interest in its possibilities. The book is a reminder that there is much more to greenstone than tikis and trinkets. To the Maori it was a gift from the gods, made even more precious by the difficulties and challenges of mining, transporting and shaping it. The pakeha gets his greenstone much more easily and

values it less. This book will be a big step in helping us to appreciate it — and other Maori values — better.