Page:Pounamu, notes on New Zealand greenstone (IA pounamunotesonne00robl).djvu/78

74 a kinsman of his enemy. Whereupon Pukekohatu, in fear for his relative's life, asked the aid of the priest Purewa, who lent him his tiki, saying "Here is a tiki that will make peace. Put it round the neck of your wife's slave girl and offer both as payment; and your wish that your kinsman may be restored will be granted." And so it fell out. But some time afterwards one of Rauparaha’s relations became ill, and the priest was accused of having bewitched the man. Purewa maintained that the patient was ill because he had broken tapu in wearing the sacred tiki, and would surely die if it were not returned to its rightful owner; which being done the sick man was restored to health. Afterwards the tiki had many owners till at length it passed into the possession of Europeans and eventually found a resting place in the Auckland Museum.

Henare Tawha, a Maori chief whose remarks on the working of pounamu are quoted in Chapter II., once told Canon Stack that very few people know how to make hei-tiki, the natives of the North Island being more skilful in their manufacture than those of the South. It did not require, he said, very great skill to make weapons and tools and the simpler ornaments, but only very clever workers could make tiki.

Hakopa-te-atu-o-tu, a noted chief of the Ngai Tahu, who won great fame for his defence of Kaiapoi against Rauparaha’s besieging army, wrote, in July 1882 when he was upwards of eighty years of age, a letter to Canon Stack, which is so striking a confirmation of much that has been said above that we are glad to have the opportunity of reproducing it here.

“Friend, greeting. I never saw the making of a hei-tiki in my childhood. The North Island natives were the people who made hei-tiki. The tools used to perforate the greenstone when