Page:Pounamu, notes on New Zealand greenstone (IA pounamunotesonne00robl).djvu/15

Rh 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