Pounamu: Notes on New Zealand Greenstone

Front matter

POUNAMU.

NOTES ON NEW ZEALAND GREENSTONE.

POUNAMU

Chapter 1

Chapter I.

CONCERNING POUNAMU.

THE ordinary words used by the Maori to express the colour green are kakariki and pounamu. Kakariki is the native name of the small green paroquet as well as of the green lizard, and it is considered by some students that this word is thence applied to their colour. But it appears more probable that kakariki is an ancient word for "green," and that it was given to the two creatures by the ancestors of the Maori who, centuries ago, invaded the islands which now we call New Zealand, and found the green bird and the green reptile there.

The history of the word pounamu would seem to be somewhat less involved. Its last two syllables, namu, are a pure Tahitian word meaning "green," and they with the affix pou, make up the Maori word applied both to the colour and the precious greenstone or jade.

Jade, as is pointed out by Mr. G. F. Smith in his Gem Stones, is a general term that includes properly two distinct mineral species, nephrite or New Zealand greenstone, which is the commoner of the two, and jadeite. They are very similar in appearance, both being tough and fibrous silicates of ferrous oxide and calcium more or less greenish in colour, the variations of colour from grey to deep green depending on the relative amount of iron in the composition, while the brown markings which are sometimes seen in the stone are due to oxide of iron. Nephrite is about as hard as glass, and is found principally in New Zealand, Turkestan, China and Siberia. With the rarer jadeite, the choicest gem of the Chinese, our notes are not concerned; it must suffice to say that it is harder than nephrite; its green is more brilliant in hue; and that the finest specimens are found in Burma.

The word "jade" has a curious etymology. The Spaniards early discovered that eastern peoples held this stone in high regard on account of its hardness and beautiful colour no less than for its supposed magical and medicinal qualities. The Indians, the Chinese and the Japanese alike believed that worn as amulets or fashioned into drinking cups it was a bringer of good fortune, a prolonger of life, a guardian against the bite of venomous reptiles, a specific for internal illnesses; while by the Mexicans it was considered to be a protection against disease of the kidneys. It was on account of this superstition that the name piedra de ijada, of which our word "jade" is a corruption, or more correctly a contraction, was given by the early Spanish discoverers to this beautiful and remarkable mineral.

The word pounamu represented to the Maori everything that is precious. The figurative expression tatau pounamu meaning literally "greenstone door," was used, as Mr. Elsdon Best remarks in his Notes on the Art of War, as a picturesque synonym for the making of peace, a happy and precious closing of the door on war and strife. An ambassador conducting peace negotiations would use some such formula as Karanga! karanga! tenei te haere nei, "Welcome us! welcome us! here we come," and naming some well known hill would add te tatau pounamu ko mea maunga, "Our greenstone door (that is, our place of peace) is such a hill."

After the war between the tribes of Tuhoe and Ngati Tuwharetoa the tatau pounamu was "erected," as the saying is, at Opepe.

Again, when peace followed the long feud between Tuhoe and Ngati Awa, Hatua of Awa said to Te Ika Poto of Tuhoe, "See the clump of bush at Ohui that has been so reduced by fire. No fire shall be kindled there in the days to come. It is our 'greenstone door.' It shall be as a sanctuary, that even the women and the children may come there and no harm shall befall them." And the tatau pounamu was erected duly at Ohui where it still stands. "It has not fallen even to this day," say the Maori, meaning thereby that the peace then made has never been broken.

Again, when Tuhoe and the tribes of Waikare-moana and the coast, weary of their bloody and protracted war, resolved to make peace Hipara, chief of the Waikare, said, "I will give my daughter Hine-ki-runga in wife to Tuhoe for the ending of the war." But Nga-rangi-mataeo, to make the pact more sure replied, "Let us raise a tatau pounamu that peace may never be broken." So the hill Kuha-tarewa was named as a wife, and another hill, Tuhi-o-kahu, as a husband, and by the mystic union of the two, tatau pounamu was erected and unbroken peace reigned thenceforward between the war-weary peoples. "Have a care," says the Maori warning, "lest you forget the precepts of your fathers and the support of the door of jade be broken in the after days."

The only locality known to the ancient Maori where greenstone was to be found was on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It could therefore be obtained by the tribes of the North only by barter or as booty after a successful war.

Canon Stack, in his South Island Maoris, tells how a woman named Raureka, wandering from her home, went up the bed of the Hokitika river, and in the neighbourhood of Horowhenua came upon some men engaged in shaping a canoe. She remarked on the bluntness of their tools, and being asked if she knew of any better she took from her bosom a little package which, when carefully unwrapped, disclosed a sharp fragment of greenstone. This was the first specimen that the natives of those parts had ever seen; and they were so delighted with the discovery that without delay they sent a party over to the ranges to fetch more of the precious mineral. From that time greenstone gradually came into general use for edged tools and weapons, those made of inferior materials being discarded. If, as is believed, she was a contemporary of Moki, Raureka must have arrived at Hokitika about the year 1700. But this does not necessarily imply that greenstone and its value and uses were unknown to the Maori living at that period in other parts of New Zealand.

The natives of Hawaiki undoubtedly knew of its existence in the South Island long before they came to live in the country, having heard of it from the celebrated navigator Ngahue, who, about the year 1400 of our era, discovered New Zealand. Driven from his own land, so the story goes, by the enmity of a powerful and vindictive woman named Hine Tuao Hoanga whose ill will he had incurred, he escaped on the back of a poutini or sea-god. He first sighted Tuhua, now called Mayor Island, in the Bay of Plenty, and then Aotearoa, the mainland of the North Island; but, knowing that his enemy was still pursuing him, he continued his voyage till he reached the mouth of the Arahura river, where he settled and found the greenstone.

Ngahue was so convinced of its value that he ventured to return to Hawaiki with a cargo of the stone, confident that the service which he was doing his fellow countrymen by bringing so useful a material to their knowledge would ensure their favour and protection. It is said that it was with tools made of Ngahue’s greenstone that the canoes were shaped which carried the first immigrants to New Zealand.

“Every tribe of Maoridom,” says Canon Stack, “valued this jade above everything else, and strove to acquire it. The locality in which it was found was known by report to all, and the popular imagination pictured unknown wealth to the explorer of that region. But the difficulties which beset the journey to this Maori Eldorado were practically unsurmountable, and frustrated the efforts of those who attempted to reach it. The stormy straits of Raukawa (Cook’s) had first to be crossed, and then a land journey of great length and difficulty undertaken over rugged and lofty mountain ranges, so steep in places that the travellers were obliged to use ladders formed of supplejack, or other tough woodbines, to enable them to get past. Pathless and seemingly interminable forests had to be traversed, whose dark shades were made still more gloomy by the incessant rainfall which kept the thick undergrowth of moss and ferns always dripping wet. Deep and rapid rivers had to be crossed either on rafts of dry flax stalks or on foot, the waders being only able to avoid being swept away by the swift current by a number of them entering the water together, and holding on tightly to a pole which they bore across the river in their hands. The scarcity of food throughout the region to be traversed by the searchers after greenstone added to the dangers of the task, for beyond the small quantity they were able to carry with them, travellers were entirely dependent for their food upon the wekas and eels, which they were able to catch as they went along. Besides all these difficulties they were in constant danger of encountering hostile bands of men bound on the same errand as themselves. But when even the journey was so far successful that the treasure sought after was found, its great weight made it impossible for the discoverers to carry back more than a few fragments, and these were obtained by breaking them off with stone hammers. In spite of the longing desire of the northern Maori to enrich themselves with the treasures of greenstone which existed on the west coast of the South Island, the serious obstacles which beset the approach to that region deterred them from making the attempt to get there, and they had to content themselves with what they were able to acquire from their fellow countrymen in the south, in exchange for mats and canoes and such other manufactures as their southern neighbours were willing to accept. The constant and bloody wars in the history of the South Island were caused by many pretexts, but behind all was the covetous desire to possess the land of wai pounamu, the valuable greenstone.”

These picturesque passages well describe at once the difficulties of the acquisition of greenstone and the constant efforts that were made to obtain the coveted mineral. But they do not exhaust the means, fair and foul, by which the Maori obtained possession of it. Ornaments and weapons, as well as rough unworked blocks of the stone were given as presents. They were paid as utu, that is, compensation for injury inflicted or wrong committed; they were taken as booty after a victorious war, and, as sometimes occurred, were handed over to cement a peace.

“We are told,” wrote Captain Cook in his Voyages, “a hundred fabulous stories about this stone, not one of which carried with it the least probability of truth, though some of their most sensible men would have us believe them.“

“According to an ancient legend,” says Canon Stack, “the reason why greenstone is found in such an inaccessible region is that the locality was chosen by the three wives of Tamatea, the circumnavigator, when they deserted him, as the hiding place most likely to escape discovery. Tamatea’s search along the east coast was unsuccessful; and after passing Foveaux Straits he continued to skirt the shore, listening at the entrance of every inlet for any sound that might indicate the whereabouts of the runaways. But it was not till he arrived off the mouth of the Arahura river that he heard voices. There he landed, but failed to find his wives, being unable to recognize them in the enchanted blocks of greenstone over which the water murmured incessantly. He did not know that the canoe in which his wives escaped from him had been capsized at Arahura, and that its occupants had been changed into stone, and so he passed them by and continued his fruitless search.”

Mr. J. Cowan in his book, Maoris of New Zealand, relates the legend as he heard it from the South Island people. They added the detail that Tamatea went as far down as Milford Sound where he found one of his missing wives transformed into greenstone. As he wept over her, Tama’s tears flowed so copiously that they penetrated the rock, and that is why the clear kind of bowenite found on the slopes and beaches of Milford Peak in that great sound, is called tangiwai, or tear water.

Another tradition tells how Tamatea pokai-whenua (fair son), accompanied by a slave went inland to Mount Kaniere, and on the way stopped to cook some birds that he had killed. The slave accidentally burnt his finger while preparing the meal and thoughtlessly touched it with the tip of his tongue. For this impious act he was punished by being transformed into a mountain, ever since known by his name Tumu-aki. Another consequence of his breach of the tapu was that Tamatea never found his wives, and, so the story goes, the best parts of the enchanted greenstone into which they were changed is often found to be spoilt by flaws known as tutae koka, the dung of the bird which the slave was cooking when he licked his burnt finger.

From Haimona Tuakau, a very intelligent native of the North Island who spent many years at Arahura, Hohonu and other places on the west coast of the South Island, and knew a great deal about greenstone, Canon Stack ascertained the following particulars respecting the native names of various kinds of pounamu and their respective colours. Kahotea is stone of a dark vivid green and is distinguished by the spots of black and brown which diversify its colour. Kawakawa is stone of a pure rich green colour, and is not spotted or veined with dark or light markings. Auhunga is slightly paler than kawakawa. Inanga has a colour paler still, so that in parts it approaches grey or creamy white. Aotea, as its name implies, is of a cloudy white.

All of these are semi-opaque. Of a different quality, but most valuable of all kinds of poumamu, is kahurangi, a translucent stone of pale green. Of this there are two kinds, one entirely devoid of markings, the other known by the whiteish streaks of the colour of inanga which run through it. Kokotangiwai is a transparent greenstone, soft and brittle, with characteristic markings having the appearance of drops of water enclosed within it. These are the principal varieties; but the natives, with a keen eye for subtleties of colour and quality, have invented names, such as tongarewa, totoeka, korito, kutukutu, tuapaka and many others for the different shades that are met with. Kohuwai, the name of a moss-like water plant, is a term that is applied to nephrite in which similar markings appear.

Chapter 2

Chapter II.

WORKING POUNAMU.

ROCKS have been discovered in various localities in New Zealand whose surfaces are scored with deep grooves. There the men of old were wont to perform the grinding and rubbing processes whereby greenstone implements were smoothed and made symmetrical. It is astonishing how well formed and true in outline are these stone implements of the Maori. The labour involved in their manufacture was enormous. Weapons, tools and ornaments formed from rough pieces of greenstone by appliances of the most primitive character, were brought to a very high degree of finish by grinding them by hand with pieces of rough sandstone, the work being expedited by the use of sand-grit and water. The stone was sawn by rubbing the edge of one slab with another, water being allowed to drip continuously but slowly from a calabash hung above the stone, a constant supply of the finest quartz sand being meanwhile dropped into the groove by the workman.

The only mechanical appliance of which we have any knowledge, that can safely be described as the invention of these workers of stone, is the tuwiri, an implement used for boring holes. Of this ingenious drill, with which the Maori were very expert, a specimen may be seen in the museum at Auckland. It consists, as our illustration shews, of four parts. The first is a rod of wood called the pou, about two feet in length and three-quarters of an inch in thickness, shewn upright in the accompanying illustration. To the lower end of the pou is fastened the boring point of mata (obsidian), kiripapa (flint), or some other hard stone, chipped to a rough point. The pou passes through a hole in the middle of the porotiti, a disk of heavy wood (maire is that most often used) which is firmly fastened to the pou at about one-third of its height, and serves the purpose of increasing by its weight the momentum of the implement. The kurupae, that is, the cross-piece shewn in Figure 2, is a shaped piece of wood, twenty inches long and two inches wide in the middle, where there is a hole through which the pou passes, fitting loosely. The aho is a cord of plaited fibre fastened to the top of the pou and having its two ends tied to either extremity of the kurupae, which thus is held at right angles to the pou.

The method of operating the drill is as follows:—the boring point at the lower end of the rod being placed upon the spot where a hole is to be made, the cross-piece is twirled round until the cord, now twisted about the upper part of the upright rod, raises the cross-piece up the rod, up which it slides easily. A downward pressure of the operator’s hand upon the cross-piece now causes it to slide back down the rod, unwinding the cord as it descends. The rotation thus given, which is both increased and controlled by the heavy disk, causes the cord to wind round the rod in the opposite direction and again to raise the horizontal cross-piece. The operator's hand constantly resting upon the cross-piece, exercises pressure only in a downward direction. Sand and water are employed to increase the cutting power of the boring point, which needs frequent renewal or rechipping, and the boring is done from alternate sides of the stone operated upon until a hole is pierced.

In light work, such for instance as grooving an eardrop, only one hand would be placed upon the kurupae, but in the heavier work required for boring a patu or stone club, pressure is exercised by both hands in order to give additional force to the boring point.

Another and more primitive drill consisted of a wooden rod pointed with a small piece of basalt or obsidian and weighted with two heavy stones lashed to opposite sides of it. A string attached to the other end of the rod caused it to revolve, and a piece of perforated wood placed upon the object kept the point of the instrument continually in the same spot.

Canon Stack, in 1879, obtained from Henare Tawha, a Ngaitahu chief who lived at Wairewa, some interesting particulars about the working of greenstone, and the other tools used by the native craftsmen. The father of the chief was Te Pi, a skilful maker of weapons, tools and ornaments of pounamu, who lived at Taumutu, where a great many people were employed in this manufacture. The stone was brought on men's backs from the west coast over the ranges by way of the Kaniere pass. The tools employed by these workers were as follows:—

Kuru was a hammer of greenstone, rather larger than a man's head, with which great blocks of pounamu were broken up, grooves being first made in the blocks by friction with kiripaka or mica schist in order to control the direction of the fractures. Hoanga was the stone used for cutting and polishing. Parihi kohatu was a sharp fragment of kara which seems to be a generic term for trap or any other hard stone. Pirori was the name given by Mr. Stack's informant to the drill.

Many of the Maori weapons were made by old men who were past the age for serving as warriors. The war-adze, however, which, as will be seen later, was a special emblem of chieftainship, was made by no one but chiefs, who, being themselves tapu conferred a certain sacredness on this particular weapon.

Chapter 3

Chapter III.

GREENSTONE IMPLEMENTS.

THE principal mechanical tools of the Maori of the old days were toki or stone adzes (Figure 3), of which the most highly prized were made of greenstone. It is convenient to describe these tools as adzes inasmuch as they were helved in the same way as our adzes; but with the important

distinction that the Maori never inserted the handle in the stone head, but always lashed the head to the helve. Toki were of various kinds and sizes, each being known by its own particular name. Mr. Elsdon Best enumerates four kinds:—ngao pae, the large heavy tool for roughing out work; ngao tu, an adze of medium size; ngao matariki, a small finishing tool; and toki whakarau the smallest of the set, used for giving the final smoothness to the surface.

With the largest toki trees of great size were felled, but the process was naturally tedious and lengthy. Maning, writing in Old New Zealand, says: "With rude and blunt stones they felled the giant kauri—toughest of pines; and from it, in process of time, at an expense of labour, perseverance, and ingenuity, perfectly astounding to those who knew what it really was—produced, carved, painted, and inlaid, a masterpiece of art, and an object of beauty—the war canoe, capable of carrying a hundred men on a distant expedition, through the boisterous seas surrounding their island."

Spells (karakia) were pronounced over the larger toki which were used for felling and working timber intended for the making of canoes or the timbers of an important house, in order that they might do the work effectually and that no harm might happen to the work, the workers or the material. In a somewhat similar way a workman when beginning to whakarau or smooth the surface of a canoe would cast a small stone into it to save his knowledge of the art of timber-working from being lost.

Many of the toki of the old Maori had special names given to them and are famous in song and legend. In at least one case a noted weapon changed hands to mark the transfer of land. When in 1856 the land hitherto in the possession of the Maori was sold at Waikawa, to European settlers, the chief, Ropoama Te One, addressed the commissioners in these words as he struck into the ground at their feet a greenstone adze:—"Now that we have for ever launched this land into the sea, we hereby make over to you this axe, Pae whenua, always highly prized because we regained it in battle after it had been used to kill two of our most famous chiefs. Money vanishes and is lost, but this greenstone shall endure as a lasting witness of our act that the land itself which now is ours has been on this day transferred to you for ever.”

Mr. James Cowan has preserved a tradition of a famous adze which was regarded as the abiding place of a spirit and possessing a special mana of its own. This implement, named Papataunaki, was the property of one Rua three centuries ago.

Figure 4.

A very curious adze-head (Figure 4) was exhibited in London in 1910. It was formed from a tiki, the head of which had been ground flat and sharpened to a cutting edge. The rest of the ornament had been but little interfered with, and still shewed the form of the body, arms and legs. It was evident that the owner or captor of the tiki had had more need for a cutting tool than for an ornament, while the piercings of the tiki thus altered would conveniently serve to aid the lashing of the tool to its helve. There is strong presumption that toki of the ordinary form were sometimes pierced with a view to facilitate the lashing of them to their helves.

Another kind of greenstone toki, of small size and thin in section, was the war-adze (Figure 5) to which the names toki pou tangata, toki honu pou and toki whawhao pou were given. It is said that this tool was sometimes used for fine wood-carving; but its normal use was ceremonial. It was carried by chiefs as a token of chieftainship either in the belt or in the hand when speech-making; sometimes it was used in battle as a convenient weapon to dispatch a fallen foe. Its handle was less than two feet in length, and was adorned with elaborate carving at both ends, the flax cord lashing of the blade being often ornamented with brightly coloured feathers or dog’s hair. A loop of cord which went through a hole at the butt end of the handle was passed round the wrist of the holder to save him from losing the precious token.

Mr. Polack, writing in 1835, speaks of the war-adze as an uncommon weapon, and tells of the difficulty that he had found in getting a specimen from an aged tohunga, or priest.

John Rutherford, a sailor who had been for nearly ten years

a captive in the hands of the Maori, was sent by the natives, 9th January, 1826, to decoy an English ship to land in order that they might plunder it. “I was then dressed,” he says, “in a feathered cloak, belt and turban, and armed with a battle-axe, the head of which was formed of a stone which resembled green glass, but was so hard as to turn the heaviest blow of the hardest steel. The handle was of dark black wood, handsomely carved and adorned with feathers.” Rutherford failed his hosts in every particular. He not only warned the English sailors of their danger, but being taken off by the ship, a free man but no longer a Maori chief, he made a present of the ceremonial dress

and the war-adze to Captain Johnson, the commander of the ship which took him back to freedom and civilization.

A war-adze, similar, no doubt, to that which was entrusted to Rutherford, is illustrated in Figure 6 from a drawing by the Author.

It was only rarely that the Maori used tools or weapons shaped like our axes, and the reason is obvious. The greenstone never being drilled or cut to receive the tool handle, an axe with its edge parallel with the line of the handle was an impossibility, and an axe-like tool made by lashing the stone head to the side of the handle would be clumsy and ineffective.

Captain Cook remarking that “without the use of any metal tools they make everything,” mentions “the chisel and goudge of green serpent stone or jasper.” These were set in handles of hard wood to which they were attached with flax cord. The illustration (Figure 7) on page 28 shews at A. a chisel (purupuru) now in the British Museum. A greenstone drill with a facetted point, used for making the holes by which the top strakes of war canoes were lashed, is shewn at B. A gouge is represented at C. in the same drawing.

Chisel work and extraordinary skill with it produced those masterpieces of wood carving of the Maori which are to be seen in their houses and gates, their war canoes and their monuments. Sir George Grey gave a remarkable instance of the pride of the native wood-carvers when he told how chiefs who had been late for an appointment with him, though he was the kawana, that is, the governor, excused themselves by explaining that they had been engrossed with their chisels.

Barbs made of greenstone and lashed to curved pieces of wood to serve as fish hooks are not common; two specimens, now in the British Museum, are illustrated in Figure 8. They were hard to make and easy to lose, and the material was too valuable to risk when bone, wood and shell answered as well for the purpose.

Mr. Elsdon Best, speaking in his Forest Lore of bird-spears, says “seldom were greenstone points used, they were very rare.”

Figure 9 shews an implement which is possibly the point of a bird-spear.

There is a tradition of one that belonged to Tamatea-kai-taharua, who flourished about 250 years ago. It is said that one day when hunting he speared a pigeon, and the point becoming detached from his weapon the bird flew away with it sticking in its body. The agile hunter is said to have followed the wounded pigeon for fifty miles before he recovered his tara pounamu; and men still point to Tara Pounamu hill, so named in memory of the event, as proof of the truth of the tale.

Other implements such as wedges, cutting tools, circular knives, rasps with worn edges that have been used in sawing blocks of stone, burnishers and even needles, are to be seen in museums among collections of articles made of this wonderful stone.

Chapter 4

Chapter IV.

CONCERNING WAR-CLUBS.

DEAR to the heart of the Neolithic Maori was the mere, or as it is sometimes called, patu pounamu, the war-club of greenstone which was the principal emblem of chieftainship, and the most valuable of all objects made of the New Zealand nephrite. It took so many years of careful and patient toil to bring a war-club to the desired condition of finish, that it became an heirloom, and it was considered to hold the luck of the tribe. Tales bordering on the supernatural gathered about famous mere. Chiefs were incited to acts of reckless bravery, young warriors were roused to deeds of valour by those memorials of past struggles; and European observers have ever been impressed by the extraordinary influence which appeared to reside in these prized weapons. The Rev. W. Yate, one of the early missionaries to New Zealand, told that “the mere was made of green talc in the shape of a beaver’s tail. This is the only native weapon which has not been laid aside by the chiefs; it was a mark of distinction (carried) under their outer garment or suspended to their girdle. The finest of these beautiful specimens of native workmanship descend from father to son, and for scarcely any consideration are they ever parted with. Pieces of pounamu suitable for a chief’s mere were of a value which can hardly be realized by us in the present time. No weapon of warfare was more affectionately regarded than these legacies of ancestors, and to take one in battle was like capturing a colour with us.”