Pounamu: Notes on New Zealand Greenstone/Chapter 1

by Horatio Gordon Robley

Chapter I.

CONCERNING POUNAMU.

THE ordinary words used by the Maori to express the colour green are kakariki and pounamu. Kakariki is the native name of the small green paroquet as well as of the green lizard, and it is considered by some students that this word is thence applied to their colour. But it appears more probable that kakariki is an ancient word for "green," and that it was given to the two creatures by the ancestors of the Maori who, centuries ago, invaded the islands which now we call New Zealand, and found the green bird and the green reptile there.

The history of the word pounamu would seem to be somewhat less involved. Its last two syllables, namu, are a pure Tahitian word meaning "green," and they with the affix pou, make up the Maori word applied both to the colour and the precious greenstone or jade.

Jade, as is pointed out by Mr. G. F. Smith in his Gem Stones, is a general term that includes properly two distinct mineral species, nephrite or New Zealand greenstone, which is the commoner of the two, and jadeite. They are very similar in appearance, both being tough and fibrous silicates of ferrous oxide and calcium more or less greenish in colour, the variations of colour from grey to deep green depending on the relative amount of iron in the composition, while the brown markings which are sometimes seen in the stone are due to oxide of iron. Nephrite is about as hard as glass, and is found principally in New Zealand, Turkestan, China and Siberia. With the rarer jadeite, the choicest gem of the Chinese, our notes are not concerned; it must suffice to say that it is harder than nephrite; its green is more brilliant in hue; and that the finest specimens are found in Burma.

The word "jade" has a curious etymology. The Spaniards early discovered that eastern peoples held this stone in high regard on account of its hardness and beautiful colour no less than for its supposed magical and medicinal qualities. The Indians, the Chinese and the Japanese alike believed that worn as amulets or fashioned into drinking cups it was a bringer of good fortune, a prolonger of life, a guardian against the bite of venomous reptiles, a specific for internal illnesses; while by the Mexicans it was considered to be a protection against disease of the kidneys. It was on account of this superstition that the name piedra de ijada, of which our word "jade" is a corruption, or more correctly a contraction, was given by the early Spanish discoverers to this beautiful and remarkable mineral.

The word pounamu represented to the Maori everything that is precious. The figurative expression tatau pounamu meaning literally "greenstone door," was used, as Mr. Elsdon Best remarks in his Notes on the Art of War, as a picturesque synonym for the making of peace, a happy and precious closing of the door on war and strife. An ambassador conducting peace negotiations would use some such formula as Karanga! karanga! tenei te haere nei, "Welcome us! welcome us! here we come," and naming some well known hill would add te tatau pounamu ko mea maunga, "Our greenstone door (that is, our place of peace) is such a hill."

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 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 pursuing him, he continued his voyage till he reached the mouth of the Arahura river, where he settled and found the greenstone.

Ngahue was so convinced of its value that he ventured to return to Hawaiki with a cargo of the stone, confident that the service which he was doing his fellow countrymen by bringing so useful a material to their knowledge would ensure their favour and protection. It is said that it was with tools made of Ngahue’s greenstone that the canoes were shaped which carried the first immigrants to New Zealand.

“Every tribe of Maoridom,” says Canon Stack, “valued this jade above everything else, and strove to acquire it. The locality in which it was found was known by report to all, and the popular imagination pictured unknown wealth to the explorer of that region. But the difficulties which beset the journey to this Maori Eldorado were practically unsurmountable, and frustrated the efforts of those who attempted to reach it. The stormy straits of Raukawa (Cook’s) had first to be crossed, and then a land journey of great length and difficulty undertaken over rugged and lofty mountain ranges, so steep in places that the travellers were obliged to use ladders formed of supplejack, or other tough woodbines, to enable them to get past. Pathless and seemingly interminable forests had to be traversed, whose dark shades were made still more gloomy by the incessant rainfall which kept the thick undergrowth of moss and ferns always dripping wet. Deep and rapid rivers had to be crossed either on rafts of dry flax stalks or on foot, the waders being only able to avoid being swept away by the swift current by a number of them entering the water together, and holding on tightly to a pole which they bore across the river in their hands. The scarcity of food throughout the region to be traversed by the searchers after greenstone added to the dangers of the task, for beyond the small quantity they were able to carry with them, travellers were entirely dependent for their food upon the wekas and eels, which they were able to catch as they went along. Besides all these difficulties they were in constant danger of encountering hostile bands of men bound on the same errand as themselves. But when even the journey was so far successful that the treasure sought after was found, its great weight made it impossible for the discoverers to carry back more than a few fragments, and these were obtained by breaking them off with stone hammers. In spite of the longing desire of the northern Maori to enrich themselves with the treasures of greenstone which existed on the west coast of the South Island, the serious obstacles which beset the approach to that region deterred them from making the attempt to get there, and they had to content themselves with what they were able to acquire from their fellow countrymen in the south, in exchange for mats and canoes and such other manufactures as their southern neighbours were willing to accept. The constant and bloody wars in the history of the South Island were caused by many pretexts, but behind all was the covetous desire to possess the land of wai pounamu, the valuable greenstone.”

These picturesque passages well describe at once the difficulties of the acquisition of greenstone and the constant efforts that were made to obtain the coveted mineral. But they do not exhaust the means, fair and foul, by which the Maori obtained possession of it. Ornaments and weapons, as well as rough unworked blocks of the stone were given as presents. They were paid as utu, that is, compensation for injury inflicted or wrong committed; they were taken as booty after a victorious war, and, as sometimes occurred, were handed over to cement a peace.

“We are told,” wrote Captain Cook in his Voyages, “a hundred fabulous stories about this stone, not one of which carried with it the least probability of truth, though some of their most sensible men would have us believe them.“

“According to an ancient legend,” says Canon Stack, “the reason why greenstone is found in such an inaccessible region is that the locality was chosen by the three wives of Tamatea, the circumnavigator, when they deserted him, as the hiding place most likely to escape discovery. Tamatea’s search along the east coast was unsuccessful; and after passing Foveaux Straits he continued to skirt the shore, listening at the entrance of every inlet for any sound that might indicate the whereabouts of the runaways. But it was not till he arrived off the mouth of the Arahura river that he heard voices. There he landed, but failed to find his wives, being unable to recognize them in the enchanted blocks of greenstone over which the water murmured incessantly. He did not know that the canoe in which his wives escaped from him had been capsized at Arahura, and that its occupants had been changed into stone, and so he passed them by and continued his fruitless search.”

Mr. J. Cowan in his book, Maoris of New Zealand, relates the legend as he heard it from the South Island people. They added the detail that Tamatea went as far down as Milford Sound where he found one of his missing wives transformed into greenstone. As he wept over her, Tama’s tears flowed so copiously that they penetrated the rock, and that is why the clear kind of bowenite found on the slopes and beaches of Milford Peak in that great sound, is called tangiwai, or tear water.

Another tradition tells how Tamatea pokai-whenua (fair son), accompanied by a slave went inland to Mount Kaniere, and on the way stopped to cook some birds that he had killed. The slave accidentally burnt his finger while preparing the meal and thoughtlessly touched it with the tip of his tongue. For this impious act he was punished by being transformed into a mountain, ever since known by his name Tumu-aki. Another consequence of his breach of the tapu was that Tamatea never found his wives, and, so the story goes, the best parts of the enchanted greenstone into which they were changed is often found to be spoilt by flaws known as tutae koka, the dung of the bird which the slave was cooking when he licked his burnt finger.

From Haimona Tuakau, a very intelligent native of the North Island who spent many years at Arahura, Hohonu and other places on the west coast of the South Island, and knew a great deal about greenstone, Canon Stack ascertained the following particulars respecting the native names of various kinds of pounamu and their respective colours. Kahotea is stone of a dark vivid green and is distinguished by the spots of black and brown which diversify its colour. Kawakawa is stone of a pure rich green colour, and is not spotted or veined with dark or light markings. Auhunga is slightly paler than kawakawa. Inanga has a colour paler still, so that in parts it approaches grey or creamy white. Aotea, as its name implies, is of a cloudy white.

All of these are semi-opaque. Of a different quality, but most valuable of all kinds of poumamu, is kahurangi, a translucent stone of pale green. Of this there are two kinds, one entirely devoid of markings, the other known by the whiteish streaks of the colour of inanga which run through it. Kokotangiwai is a transparent greenstone, soft and brittle, with characteristic markings having the appearance of drops of water enclosed within it.^[2] These are the principal varieties; but the natives, with a keen eye for subtleties of colour and quality, have invented names, such as tongarewa, totoeka, korito, kutukutu, tuapaka and many others for the different shades that are met with. Kohuwai, the name of a moss-like water plant, is a term that is applied to nephrite in which similar markings appear.

1. 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.
2. See page 15 for the legend connected with this variety.