The late Mr Pahau Milner of Ruatoria, in a similar version of the story which he told me in 1961, explained that the weaker of the two peoples was a vassal tribe, bound to perform such tasks as catching fish for their masters; hence the other tribe's anger when they refused to do so.
As a consequence of their disobedience many of them were killed, and those who remained decided that their only hope was to sail back to Hawaiki, the homeland of the Maori. So they took their masters' precious seed kumara and secretly made them into kao, a preparation of dried kumara which they could eat on their journey. They concealed what they had done by replacing the kumara in the storehouses with the young shoots of the tutu shrub. In Pahau Milner's story the vassal tribe was named Te Wahineiti; he did not mention any other names. He said that the events in the story took place near Reporua, on the East Coast a few miles from Ruatoria.
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Te Ao Hou, September 1966, Page 20
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171Untitled Te Ao Hou, September 1966, Page 20
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C/- Te Puni Kokiri
PO Box 3943
WELLINGTON
Phone: (04) 922 6000
Email: MB-RPO-MPF@tpk.govt.nz