HAUMU, HILL OF SPIRITS

Te Ao Hou, June 1961, Page 40

HAUMU, HILL OF SPIRITS On my second trip to Te Reinga, I followed the way of the spirits, the original road taken by the Rev. W. G. Puckey and his guide Te Paerata, in the early December of 1834. I knew Puckey's journal well, thanks to the kindness of his descendants, the Puckeys of Kaitaia. He came up the Ninety-Mile Beach, as I did, and climbed the hill called Haumu at the head of the beach, where the spirits from the two coasts and the centre of the island are said to mingle. Here Puckey records—and explains— the first simple phenomenon. There we saw many dry waka au, which, as a native whom we took as a guide from our last place said, were the tokens of the spirits who have rested at this place. I asked him if it were not possible for strangers who passed this way to do as my natives were then doing, which was everyone twisting green branches and depositing them there as a sign that they had stopped at that notable place. This is a general custom with the natives whenever they pass any remarkable place I was looking for these braided leaves. Only a few days before, Louis Hobson, the young Maori secretary of the Tai Tokerau Trust Board had been telling me of a pohutukawa, where the dried emblems lay, some made of leaves not usually found near the coast, but I saw no sign of them. Possibly I did not look in the right place.