Page:Pounamu, notes on New Zealand greenstone (IA pounamunotesonne00robl).djvu/77

Rh to Sir George Grey in 1848 by Hone Heke, had the title Ko wakatere kohu kohu. Another noted hei-tiki is mentioned by Canon Stack, who describes how he made the acquaintance at Grahamstown, near Auckland, of a native clergyman named Hohepa Paraone. This man showed the Canon a highly prized tiki called Mihi rawhiti, that is, 'object of lament and greeting in the East,' which was an heirloom in the two branches of the family into which Maru Tuahu’s descendants had split, being held alternately by the one which lived at the Thames and by the other which had settled at Taranaki. The ornament was always buried with the person who happened to be wearing it at the time of his death. When his bones were taken up in due time to be placed in the tribal sepulchre, the ceremony of the second burial was performed by members of the other branch of the family, who returning to their own home took back with them the family heirloom. They then kept it until it passed once more into the hands of the other branch who in their turn performed the funeral rites of the last wearer of it.

There is a tradition that this venerable and crudely formed ornament was worn by Maru Tuahu when he arrived in New Zealand; and Canon Stack, who had an opportunity of examining it, was confirmed in his belief that finely wrought specimens were not produced till the art of working greenstone had been practised for many generations after the coming of the first canoes.

One of the three tiki deposited in the Auckland Museum by Mr. Arthur Eady, has the name of Maungarongo, that is, the peacemaker, It belonged at one time to Rangi Purewa, a priest of the Wairau Valley, who allowed Te Rauparaha to see and handle the precious trinket. It chanced that that chief had a feud with a man named Pukekohatu, and seized and imprisoned