Especially Important for Strangers

Te Ao Hou, March 1965, Page 6

Especially Important for Strangers This ceremony was usually performed whenever a person came to one of these shrines, but it was especially important that a stranger should perform it when he approached the place for the first time. If he were to neglect to do so, the spirit would certainly take its revenge. The spell given above is recorded in G. S. Cooper's ‘Journal of an Expedition Overland from Auckland to Taranaki’ (1851), pp. 40–42. When the expedition, led by Governor Grey, reached Te Aroha near the Thames River, Cooper was taken to see the hot spring at the foot of the mountain (Te Korokoro o Hura). As he was a stranger there, he was taught this ceremony. Cooper gives the following explanation of the spell. ‘Matanuku’ (synonymous with Nuku, Papa, and Papatuanuku) signifies the earth. It is used here for the place to which the stranger has come. ‘Matarangi’ signifies the sky; in this unknown place, the traveller is said to have a new sky above him. In the last line, he offers his heart as food for the spirit. It was a terrible curse for one man to refer to another as being food to be eaten, and by describing himself in this way the stranger made the most humble gesture possible, hoping to conciliate the spirit and avoid its anger. Cooper refers to this ceremony as ‘tupuna whenua’; other writers who mention it use the expression ‘uruuru whenua’. In some accounts of the great migration to Aotearoa, we are told that when the leaders of the people first set foot here, they performed the uruuru whenua ceremony in order to appease the hostile spirits of this unknown land in which they were intruders.