BOYS' LUCKY FIND

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 40, 17 February 1939, Page 11

BOYS' LUCKY FIND

A GENUINE HEITIKI

FOUND AT TITAHI BAY,

A Maori heitiki, which is believed to have a high value, was accidentally found by a boy, Joseph Skinner, aged 12 years, while playing with some other boys at the southern extremity of Titahi Bay recently. The boys were playing a game of hide and seek, and while waiting for his companions to find him Joseph dug idly about the ground where he was sitting, on a

water-worn slope, and found the heitiki. At first he took it to be an old piece of black wood. Jt was about two feet from what had been the original surface of the slope and was lying among some bones and what appeared to. be ashes. A closer examination of the object revealed its form. Taking it home to his mother, Mrs. H. Skinner, who is attached to the staff of the Porirua Mental Hospital, the boy had his find cleaned, and it.was seen that it was a greenstone heitiki, which was not badly worn. To have the ornament properly identified Mrs. Skinner placed it in the hands of the authorities of the Dominion Museum, who stated that it was a genuine Maori article.

When questioned about the heitiki yesterday Dr. W. R. B. Oliver, director of the Museum, said that it was definitely of a pre-European age. Greenstone, which the Maoris valued highly and made the subject of excursions to the South Island to obtain, had a high resistance to time and weather. It could only be affected by fire, when it lost its dark green colour and turned whitish. Although the Maori heitiki had been commercialised, since the settlement of the European in New Zealand, and had been manufactured with modern tools, this specimen bore the signs of re£l Maori workmanship. It had one singular feature of being narrow: towards the head but in most respects it did not differ greatly from those in the Museum.

The heitiki is about five inches long and about three inches broad at its widest breadth. The hole at the upper end was bored from both the back and the front following the Maori fashion and the holes have not met fairly. This is one of the facts that establish it as being genuine, as both holes are of large diameter, a result of the use of crude Native boring instruments.

The heitiki was originally, many centuries ago, worn by women only, but men gradually came to wear it. It was worn as a breast ornament and was treated by women.as a symbol of fertility. In many cases when worn by a person of a high rank, such as a tohunga or high chief, it was tapu, and was consequently buried with him*