The handing over of Rakau Tamatea Reke was done with some formality. Mr Hira Paenga (right), on behalf of the Whangara Tribal Committee, handed the relic over to Mr Rongo Halbert (centre), chairman of the Maori Museum Committee. Left is Mr Leo Fowler, secretary of the museum committee and author of this articlie. Mr Fowler is manager of 2XG radio station. born about the year 1745. That was the year when the Young Pretender failed in his attempt to win back the crown of England. And while the infant Hinematioro was cooing in her kit of flax-fibres, and Bonny Prince Charlie's defeated followers were being butchered by the red-coats or hung-drawn and quartered on Tower Hill, a young lad named James Cook was changing his occupation from apprentice in a haberdasher's shop to apprentice on a coastal collier in Yorkshire. Meanwhile it became necessary to have a food store whereby the gifts of food which continued to pour in in honour of Hinematioro could be suitably stored and displayed. And so our tree, which had been tapu'd and set aside for just such a purpose, was selected to become the storehouse of Hinematioro. The tohungas came and performed their karakia to take the tapu off the tree that it might be cut. The leader of the working party, himself a chief of high rank, would approach the tree and make the first chip in its bark with his toki-pou-tangata, the greenstone adze, set in a richly carved haft, which was carried only by chiefs of high rank. The resultant chip would be offered to Tane, god of forests and birds. Then the men would move in and the felling of the tree would begin. They would chip away with their heavy stone adzes until they had gouged out a double ring around the tree, and the wood between those rings would be laboriously removed with a long handled, very heavy stone adze called a ‘poki’, hafted horizontal to the handle, like a chisel, instead of at right angles like an adze. In due course the long arduous felling would be completed and our tree, with its smaller branches removed entirely, and the larger branches trimmed back near to the trunk would be dragged away, with many incantations and chants, to its resting place close to where the town of Tolaga Bay now stands. It must have taken a hole at least six feet deep and at least two feet in diameter to have accommodated the ponderous butt of that mighty puriri log. Digging this hole with the stone and wooden implements then in use was no joke, but slaves were plenty and time mattered little, so finally the hole would be dug, and the last hand