Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/39

Rh in Hawaiki, which, as will be pointed out, includes Tahiti and the adjacent groups. The Ngai-Tahu tribe of South New Zealand have some long stories about these people, and I ascertained from Tare Wetere te Kahu, a very well informed man of that tribe, that Tu-te-Koropanga was the ancestor of the Waitaha people of the South Island, a tribe that has long been extinct, and whose ancestors were said by my informant to have come to New Zealand in the Matiti canoe, before the fleet. This information was confirmed by Paora Taki, an old and learned man, formerly of Kaiapohia, but now dead. On first seeing these names in Fornander eleven years ago, their probable identity with the Maori ancestors had struck me, but it was not until after five or six years of worrying my correspondents, all over New Zealand and the Pacific, that I finally obtained from the two old men named, the connection of these people with known lines of descent to the present day. Miss Henry has also furnished the probable connection with Tahitian lines, which is shown on the previous page.

With respect to the above table, 'Olopana and his wife Lu'ukia, lived either twenty-four or twenty-six generations ago, according to which of the Hawaiian lines is taken. That these people are identical with Tu-te-Koropanga and his wife Rukutia of Maori history must be taken as almost certain, for it is extremely improbable that two men of the same name should marry wives of the same name—and their period is the same. Moreover, both from Hawaiian and Maori story, Rukutia appears to have been a woman of advanced ideas. With the former people she is accredited with having invented the female dress called pau, which the Hawaiians "make to this day, for no other reason than because the pau of Lu'ukia was of five thicknesses." In Maori history her name occurs in an ancient karakia