THE MANUAUTE, OR MAORI KITE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 1514, 9 November 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE MANUAUTE, OR MAORI KITE.

No. I. BT AEOHDBAOOS" TTiISKt Climb up, climb up To the highest surface of lieatrcn, To all the aides of heaven. Climb then to thy ancestor, The sacred bird in th« ikj> To thy ancestor, E«hua, In the heavens. • (New Zealand Kite Somg.) - Previous to their contact with European civilisation the. Maoris were a strenuous people. They were strenuous in war« strenuous in industry, strenuous in their sports. Their splendid physique, their perfect health, and the hardy condition in which they were kept by their arduous open-air life—-joined to their buoyant and happy temperament—fitted them for every kind of undertaking that required strength, activity, and endurance.

Games and exercises of one sort, or another would be going on among them, all the year round whenever opportunity offered. There would bo the poi and the dancing contests, the practice of the haka and the tutu-ngarahu, as well as wrestling matches and spear-throwing, varied with I the spinning of tops,, the flying of kites, and many other sports too numerous to mention- Some of these were designed to wile away the long evenings in.the whare tehore, or house of amusement } some as trials of strength and .skill in the open air. But it was in the late summer or early autumn that the "great games," or tribal or inter-tribal tournaments usually took place; for it was at this season, when the days were long and, the weather generally fine, when the > kumaira plantation had been cleaned up, and required no further attention until the harvest time. It was then that the Maori was wont to give himself up to enjoymont, provided always that he was not engaged on the warpath. At this time the inhabitants of villages, or groups of villages, would turn* out in parties— women and children go on their hunting or fishing expeditions, or perhaps on a visit to "some neighbouring hapu or friendly tribe and whenever a number of people were assembled a great part of their time would be spent in whatever game happened to be the craze at the moment.

moment. It was generally characteristic of Maori games thai they engaged the strength of the whole number of " available contestants. They had not yet reached: that stage of civilisation at which the game , is, played by a few trained athletes, while : the .wbol<> crowd sit round as spectators, as in a Spanish bull-fight or a colonial football match. Even if the games were such' that only a few could play at a time, the. rest were ready to take , their turn : and very often, in the larger competitions, a haka. or posture dance, would form part Of the programme, if it did not, as was' often thei case, form a sort of chorUs to the game.' " Of all the games .in vogue amongst -the Maoris that of kite-flying was one of the most ancient as well as one of the -most . popular. There is pretty frequent; mention of the practice in several' of the older writers : on New Zealand, but the notices are fragmentary and incomplete. It seemed to me therefore that it ' would be a good thing to put themalong with such information as I have been able to. obtain > from other sources—into a connected form, • and the result is this paper. . : ' It may seem strange that neither ; inrtte&writings * of,; Captain, Cook, nor- in... those of any of his companions; do we • find any ' mention of the kite, but when wo consider the character of the : Maoris, as well as ; the circumstances of the navigator's, visit, we realise that there is nothing remarkable in the omission- The head of the primi-1 tive Maori could only contain one thing at a time : what he felt he felt most- acutely, to the exclusion of everything else, and we can easily conceive that > they would be so taken up with the kaipuke (ship), -with the strange race of beings that it brought to their shores, with the wonders of the firearms, and the (to them) priceless value of the taonga, or goods, that for the moment such an everyday thing as the mere flying of a kite would have quite lost its interest. The same absence of mention of the kite is noticeable in Crozet, the historian of the ill-fated Marion expedition, which took place in 1772. .? Crozqt -was a very accurate observer, and hie account of the primitive Maoris and their customs is one of the most exact" and' graphic that we possess. _ If he had seen the kite he 4 would certainly have described it. But it ; must be remembered that his visit was confined to a very small part of the country, a hilly, covered, and sparsely populated region on the coast of the Bay of Islands, where kite-flying would scarcely have been practised. * * /: : 1 According to the universal Polynesian tradition, Maui, the hero-god, and the common ancestor of all the brown races of . , the Pacific, 1 was himself a kite-flyer; and wherever his adventurous descendants have settled, they have brought the practice with them; while in most places : they;.have, introduced the material, "-'which.'4tradition states his kite was originally' made, viz., the aute, or paper mulberry, -which gives to the New Zealand kite its generic name, the term manuaute , meaning the bird (made of) the auto. 1 . . . . ; ; This plant, a small tree with rough Irilobed leaves. ki\own to botanists as the Brousettia papynfera, is common to most of the Pacific islands, where to this day its bark is used for the manufacture. of tapa, or native cloth. Together with' the kumara or sweet potato, the hue or calabash, the ti pore or Cordyline terminalis, and probably the karaka* or native laurel, it was introduced into NeW' Zealand by the Maoris in some of their earlier migrations. Though > specimens of the tree, as well as of the cloth which was; made,from it, were seen by Cook and others of the early navigators, it never seems to have been very abundant! Being a tropical plant it would no doubt need a' good deal, of care in the cultivation, find* as soon as the Maoris were able ; to obtain , a supply of cotton and linen cloth it was neglected, and became the prey of wandering cattle, and gradually died out. Parkinson, en a visit to the Bay of Islands in 1844,; heard of some plants still existing in Hokianga, and managed to get a few cuttings from the chief, Patuone, which, however, he failed to projwgate, and .Colenso, writing in 1880, was of opinion that at that time not a single vestige of the ante tree was remaining in New Zealand. It is probable that the first kites made in New Zealand were : constructed on the Polynesian model, in which-the aute was used in the form of tapa, ct paper cloth, stretched on a frame, but the difficulty of obtaining a sufficient quantity of the bark, and perhaps the unsuitabilitv of the climate for the manufacture of tapa, necessitated the adoption of another material, especially for the larger kites, and a substitute was found _ in the leaves of the raupo, a kind of giant sedge (Typha latifolia), a coarse tussock grass named upoko tangata, or in the flower stems of the kakaho (Arundo oonspicua). Even after the plant had become, scarce, the connection with the aute was kept up, toe heads of the kites being sometimes made of that material, while the body and wings were commoner stuff. . ■ " i All the larger kites consisted of a light iranie of twigs or reeds, to which were sewn tho raupo, upoko tangata,. or what-; ever other material might be used to hold the wind.. Even, when the aute was ..used, it was employed—at least in later times— in the form of strips of the inner bark; at least there is no record of its use in the form of tapa for this purpose irf New Zealand. V--v.'. ' The Maori kite was known blinder sev- ' eral names,, and probably each name described some special variety, differing from the others in size, ehape, or the material of which it was made. Thus there » the manu, or bird, the kaahu, or hawk, the ; paakau, or wing, and the manuwhftra,-or kite of the canoe sail Still the term manuaute seems to have been retained as' a 'm. i eral name, and mjgfctj .be qped losgd* for : jiax valutas ■ - . .-y. // , ; • /V "'.. W.f *