<< Back

Learning Defence
The chief's son would eventually learn how to protect the tribe in many ways. But toddlers learn best from things they can see and touch and play with, so the chief begins with manuka sticks for self-defence and for building pa walls. Kahikātoa were manuka poles, used in hand-to-hand combat, or sharpened and fixed point upwards as a defensive wall against attackers.

Kahika, a hardwood myrtle, called kafika in its Malayan homelands, was one of the useful plants carried by Polynesians all across the Pacific where it has a variety of similar names. I first tasted delicious big mountain apples the Fijian boys with me in the jungle highlands of Viti Levu called "Kavika."

 Kahika would not grow in our cold Aotearoa climate, but the manuka here had similar hard aromatic wood, and the red blood of a victim was the fruit of a manuka-wood weapon, so it was nicknamed kahik-ā-TOA, hardwood-of-warriors, while the tall white pine with its tasty berries was named the kahika-TEA.

Next the chief introduces his son to impenetrable shrubs that can protect the rear approaches to a pa: matagouri, speargrass, stinging nettle and the vines that frustrated Kupe, the bush lawyer and supplejack. The little boy will learn to identify these, and then master the way of very gingerly transplanting their small seedlings.

Tū-mata-kuru "Stop! Points hit!" perfectly describes the words of an attacking enemy party who encounter a hedge of matagouri bushes or taramea speargrass planted as a defence at the rear of a pa. So both of those plants have this nickname.





<< Back

website metrics