Polynesian Mythology · The Curse of Manaia (1/2)

The Curse of Manaia

Ko Manaia, Ko Kuiwai

When the Tainui and the Arawa sailed away from Hawaiki with Ngātoroirangi on board, he left behind him his younger sister, Kuiwai, who was married to a powerful chief named Manaia. Some time after the canoes had left, a great meeting of all the people of his tribe was held by Manaia, to remove a tapu; and when the religious part of the ceremony was ended, the women cooked food for the strangers.

When their ovens were opened, the food in the oven of Kuiwai, the wife of Manaia, and sister of Ngātoroirangi, was found to be much underdone, and Manaia was very angry with his wife, and gave her a severe beating, and cursed, saying, “Accursed be your head! Are the logs of firewood as sacred as the bones of your brother, that you were so sparing of them as not to put into the fire in which the stones were heated enough to make them red hot? Will you dare to do the like again? If you do, I’ll serve the flesh of your brother in the same way; it shall frizzle on the red-hot stones of Waikororā.”

And his poor wife was quite overcome with shame, and burst out crying, and went on sobbing and weeping all the time she was taking the underdone food out of the oven; and when she had put it in baskets, and carried them up to her husband, and laid them before him, she ate nothing herself, but went on one side, and cried bitterly, and then retired and hid herself in the house.

And just before night closed in on them she cast her garments on one side, and girded herself with a new sash made from the young shoots of the toetoe, and stood on the threshold, and spread out her gods, Kāhukura, Itupawa, and Rongomai; and she and her daughter, and her sister Haungaroa, stood before them; and the appearance of the gods was most propitious. And when her incantations were ended, she said to her daughter, “My child, your journey will be a most fortunate one.” The gods were then by her bound up in cloths, and she hung them up again, and returned into the house.

She then said to her daughter, “Now depart, and when you reach your uncle Ngātoro, and your other relations, tell them that they have been cursed by Manaia, because the food in my oven was not cooked upon the occasion of a great assembly for taking off a tapu, and that he then said, ‘Are the logs in the forest as sacred as the bones of your brother, that you are afraid to use them in cooking? or are the stones of the desert the kidneys of Ngātoroirangi, that you don’t heat them? By and by I’ll frizzle the flesh of your brother on red-hot stones taken from Waikororā.’ Now, my child, depart to your uncle and relations. Be quick! This is the season of the wind of Pungawere, which will soon waft them here.”

The women then took by stealth the gods of the people, that is to say, Maru, and Te Iho-o-te-rangi, and Rongomai, and Itupawa, and Haungaroa; and they had no canoe for their journey, but these gods served them as a canoe to cross the sea. For the first canoes which had left Hawaiki for New Zealand carried no gods for human beings with them; they only carried the gods of the sweet potatoes and of fish; they left behind them the gods for mortals, but they brought away with them prayers, incantations, and a knowledge of enchantments, for these things were kept secret in their minds, being learnt by heart, one from another.

Then the girl and her companions took with them Kāhukura, and Itupawa, and Rongomai, and Maru, and the other gods, and started on their journey. Altogether there were five women, and they journeyed and journeyed towards New Zealand, and, borne up by the gods, they traversed the vast ocean, till at last they landed on the burning island of Whakaari, and when daylight appeared they floated again on the waters, and finally landed on the northern island of New Zealand, at Tāwhiuwhiu, and went by an inland route, and stopped to eat food at a place whence they had a good view over the plains, and after the rest of the party were done eating, Haungaroa still went on, and two of her companions teased her, saying, “Halloa, Haungaroa, what a long time you continue eating;” and those plains have ever since been called Kaingaroa, or Kaingaroa-o-Haungaroa (the long meal of Haungaroa). Haungaroa, who was much provoked with the two women who thus teased her, smote them on the face, whereupon those women ran away, and Haungaroa followed them for a long distance, but she pursued in vain; they would not come back to her, they fled from her, and Haungaroa, by her enchantments, changed them into tī trees, which stand on the plains whilst travellers approach them, but which move from place to place when they attempt to get close (and the natives believe that the trees are there at the present day).

Then the other three women continued their journey, and they at length reached the summit of a hill, and sat down there to rest themselves, and whilst they were resting Haungaroa thought of her mother, and love for her overcame her, and she wept aloud⁠—and that place has ever since been called Te Tangihanga, or the place of weeping.

After they had rested for some time they continued their journey, until they reached the open summit of another high hill, which they named Piopio, and from thence they saw the beautiful lake of Rotorua lying at their feet, and they descended towards it, and came down upon the geyser, which spouts up its jet of boiling water at the foot of the mountain, and they reached the lake itself, and wound round it along its sandy shores. Then, leaving the lake behind them, they struck off towards Maketu, and at last reached that place also, coming out of the forests upon the seacoast, close to the village of Tuhoro, and when they saw the people there they called out to them, “Whereabout is the residence of Ngātoroirangi?”

And the people answered them, “He lives near the large elevated storehouse which you see erected on the hill there.”

And the niece of Ngātoroirangi saw the fence which surrounded this place, and she walked straight on towards the wicket of the fortification. She would not, however, pass in through it like a common person, but climbed the posts, and clambered into the fortress over its wooden defences, and having got inside, went straight on to the house of Ngātoroirangi, entered it, and going right up to the spot which was sacred, from his sitting on it, she seated herself down there.

When Ngātoroirangi’s people saw this, one of them ran off with all speed to tell his master, who was then at work with some of his servants on his farm, and having found him, he said, “There is a stranger just arrived at your residence, who carries a travelling bag as if she had come from a long journey, and she would not come in at the gate of the fortress, but climbed right over the wooden fences, and has quietly laid her travelling bag upon the very roof of your sacred house, and has walked up and seated herself in the very seat that your sacred person generally occupies.”

When the servant had ended his story, Ngātoro at once guessed who this stranger from a distance must be, and said, “It is my niece.”

And he then asked, “Where is Te Kehu?” and they told him,

“He is as work in his plantation of sweet potatoes.” And he bid them fetch him at once, and to be quick about it. And when he arrived they all went together to the place where his niece was, and when he reached her he at once led her before the altar, and she gave them the gods which she had brought with her from Hawaiki.

Then she said to them, “Come now, and let us be cleansed by diving in running water, and let the ceremony of Whāngaihoro be performed over us, for you have been cursed by Manaia and his tribe.”

When they heard this they cried aloud, and tore off their clothes, and ran so a running stream and plunged into it, and dashed water over themselves, and the priests chanted the proper incantations, and performed all the prescribed ceremonies; and when these were finished they left the stream and went towards the village again, and the priests chanted incantations for cleansing the courtyard of the fortress from the defilement of the curse of Manaia; but the incantations for this purpose have not been handed down to the present generation.

The priests next dug a long pit, termed the pit of wrath, into which by their enchantments they might bring the spirits of their enemies, and hang them and destroy them there. And when they had dug the pit, muttering the necessary incantations, they took large shells in their hands to scrape the spirits of their enemies into the pit with, whilst they muttered their enchantments. And when they had done this they scraped the earth into the pit again to cover them up, and beat down the earth with their hands, and crossed the pit with enchanted cloths, and wove baskets of flax leaves to hold the spirits of the foes which they had thus destroyed, and each of these acts they accompanied with proper spells.

The religious ceremonies being all ended, they sat down, and Ngātoroirangi wept over his niece, and then they spread food before the travellers; and when they had finished their meal they all collected in the house of Ngātoroirangi, and the old men began to question the strangers, saying, “What has brought you here?”

Then Kuiwai’s daughter said, “A curse which Manaia uttered against you; for when they had finished making his sacred place for him, and the females were cooking food for the strangers who attended the ceremony, the food in Kuiwai’s oven was not well cooked, and Manaia cursed her and you, saying, ‘Is firewood as sacred as the bones of your brethren that you fear to burn it in an oven? I’ll yet make the flesh of your brothers hiss upon red-hot stones brought from Waikororā, and heated to warm the oven in which they shall be cooked.’ That curse is the curse that brought me here, for my mother told me to hasten to you.”

When Ngātoroirangi heard this, he was very wroth, and he in his turn cursed Manaia, saying, “Thus shall it be done unto you⁠—your flesh shall be cooked with stones brought from Maketu.” Then he told all his relations and people to search early the next morning for a large tōtara tree, from which they might build a canoe, as they had no canoe since Raumati had burnt the Arawa.

Then the people all arose very early the next morning, and with them were the chosen band of one hundred and forty warriors, and they went out to search for a large tōtara tree, and Kuiwai’s daughter went with them, and she found a great tōtara tree fallen down, and nearly buried in the earth; so they dug it out, and they framed a large canoe from it, which they named “The tōtara tree, dug from the earth;” and they hauled it down to the shore, and, launching it, embarked and paddled out to sea, and the favourable wind of Pungawere was blowing strong, and it blew so for seven days and nights, and wafted them across the ocean, and at the end of that time they had again reached the shores of Hawaiki.

The name of the place at which they landed in Hawaiki was Taraiwhenua; they landed at nighttime, and drew their canoe up above high water mark, and laid it in the thickets, that none might see that strangers had arrived.

Ngātoroirangi then went at once to a fortified village named Whaitiri-ka-papa, and when he arrived there he walked carelessly up to the house of Kuiwai, and peeping in at the door said that she was wanted outside for a minute; and she, knowing his voice came out to him immediately, and Ngātoroirangi questioned her, saying, “Have you anything to say to me that I ought to know?”

And she replied, “The whole tribe of Manaia are continually occupied in praying to their gods, at the sacred place; they pray to them to bring you and your tribe here, dead; perhaps their incantations may now have brought you here.”

Then Ngātoro asked her, “In what part of the heavens is the sun when they go to the sacred place?” and she answered,

“They go there early in the morning.”

Then Ngātoroirangi asked her again, “Where are they all in the evening?” and she replied,

“In the evening they collect in numbers in their villages for the night; in the morning they disperse about.”

Then, just as Ngātoroirangi was going, he said to her, “At the dawn of morning climb up on the roof of your house that you may have a good view, and watch what takes place.” Having thus spoken, he returned to the main body of his party.

Then Ngātoro related to them all that his sister had told him; and when they had heard this, Tangaroa, one of his chiefs, said, “My counsel is, that we storm their fortress this night;” but then stood up Rangitu, another chief, and said,

“Nay, but rather let us attack it in the morning.”

Now arose Ngātoro, and he spake aloud to them and said, “I agree with neither of you. We must go to the sacred place, and strike our noses until they bleed and we are covered with blood, and then we must lie on the ground like dead bodies, every man with his weapon hid under him, and their priests will imagine that their enchantments have brought us here and slain us; so shall we surprise them.” On hearing these words from their leader they all arose, and following him in a body to the courtyard of the sacred place, they found that the foolish priests had felt so sure of compelling their spirits by enchantments to bring Ngātoro and his tribe there, and to slay them for them, that they had even prepared ovens to cook their bodies in, and these were all lying open ready for the victims; and by the sides of the ovens they had laid in mounds the green leaves, all prepared to place upon the victims before the earth was heaped in to cover them up, and the firewood and the stones were also lying ready to be heated. Then the one hundred and forty men went and laid themselves down in the ovens dug out of the earth, as though they had been dead bodies, and they turned themselves about, and beat themselves upon their noses and faces until they bled, so that their bodies became all covered with blood, like the corpses of men slain in battle; and then they lay still in the ovens; the weapons they had with them were short clubs of various kinds, such as clubs of pounamu and of basalt, and of the bones of whales, and the priests whom they had with them having found out the sacred place of the people of that country, entered it, and hid themselves there.

Thus they continued to lie in the ovens until the sun arose next morning, and until the priests of their enemies, according to their custom each day at dawn, came to spread leaves and other offerings to the gods in the sacred place, and there, to their surprise, these priests found the warriors of Ngātoroirangi all lying heaped up in the ovens. Then the priests raised joyful shouts, crying⁠—“At last our prayers have been answered by the gods; here, here are the bodies of the host of Ngāroto and of Tama’, lying heaped up in the cooking places. This has been done by our god⁠—he carried them off, and brought them here.” The multitude of people in the village hearing these cries, ran out to see the wonder, and when they saw the bodies of the one hundred and forty lying there, with the blood in clots dried on them, they began to cry out⁠—one, “I’ll have this shoulder;” another, “And I’ll have this thigh;” and a third, “That head is mine;” for the blood shed from striking their noses during the previous night was now quite clotted on their bodies; and the priests of those who were lying in the ovens having hidden themselves in the bushes of the shrubbery round the sacred place, could not be seen by the priests of the town of Manaia when they entered the sacred place to perform the fitting rites to the gods.