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.[1] 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
- ↑ Ngahue's sea god must have been simply a proa or canoe. Sea-going vessels were always regarded with great reverence by the Maori; they even deified the first European ships that visited the country, calling them atuas or gods. Greenstone was regarded with such reverence by the Maoris that it, too, was deified as a poutini, a son of Tangaroa, no doubt from the fact that it had been discovered by the sea shore. Under this aspect it was often called whatu-o-poutini, and represented symbolically by a star. So high a value attached to it that in old days, when the greenstone was very hard to get, an artist would not hesitate to spend much time and labour on a piece of indifferent quality.
