Manaii and the Spears

Manaii and the Spears

(A Legend from Chatham Islands)

Manii was a chief in Havaiki. His children were born there, and there in that land, he grew old and bent.

Hard trouble rose between the tribes, therefore Manaii ordered the making of spears. He said to his sons: ‘Go into the bush and cut down an akepiri tree. When you have felled it split it into eighty pieces. Make those pieces into spears.’

Therefore the sons of Manaii felled the akepiri tree and split it into eighty pieces, and of them, each one had a piece; and they adzed those pieces into eighty spears.

But the heart-wood of that tree remained; they could not adze the crooked heart-wood, it was twisted in the grain. They returned to their home and said to Manaii, ‘We cannot chip the heart to make it straight; the wood is crooked in the grain.’

‘Go again to chip the heart of your tree to finish it properly.’ But those sons of Manaii could not chip the heart to make it straight.

‘How many spears then have you?’

‘We have eighty.’

Said Manaii, ‘That is enough, that every one of you may have a spear.’ After this, the sons of Manaii threw away the heart-wood of the tree.

Then Niwa the wife of Manaii spoke to the youngest of her sons, her last-born child, to Kahukaka: ‘Go you and adze the heart of the tree of your elder brothers. Go at early dawn lest they should see you.’ Then Niwa showed her youngest son the way to adze that wood, she gave him the pattern secretly, and said, ‘Go you and chip it quickly, come back soon. Then your elder brothers will not know.’

Kahukaka went, he found the timber of his elder brothers lying and he quickly chipped that wood, he followed carefully the teaching of his mother; he chipped the heart into a well-made spear, most smoothly worked. He left it and returned.

Afterwards, those elder brothers came to the place and saw the work. They were amazed, the adzing was so skilled; it was more beautiful than theirs, and they asked one another. ‘Who has chipped this heart-wood which we could not?’

They took the spear to their home and showed it to Manaii, and all the people gazed at it and asked who worked this wood so well. But that was not discovered. For Niwa concealed the sacred knowledge of her youngest son.

Then the people went about asking, ‘Who has done this?’

One night Manaii heard Niwa make a saying about her youngest son. She said this word:

You are my Kahukaka nui,

Got by me in the kakahi wastes.

Hence you have come forth a man,

Hence you have become great.

Thus Niwa spoke about her son Kahukakanui.

Now Kahukakanui was not the child of Manaii but was begun in the kakahi wastes, when Niwa went there secretly with Porotehiti. And he was full of skill and knowledge, this son of Porotehiti. But the sons of Manaii did not know the adzing of heart-wood.

Now when Manaii heard the word of his wife concerning Kahukaka, he knew that Niwa had done a wrong thing, and his thought was, ‘Who has done this wrong thing with Niwa?’ Therefore he collected seven-score men, and he went to fight with Porotehiti.

When Porotehiti heard that Manaii was coming to fight with him he gathered all his people, more in number than Manaii’s. The two made war.

Manaii rushed forward with his eighty spears, and Porotehiti’s people turned and ran. Then Manaii spiked them all in the holes in their bottoms. Great was the slaughter made by Manaii of Porotehiti’s people.

And Porotehiti himself was wounded in the eye by Manaii’s spear. For that reason he made the chant which healed his eye, the whai konehi; it is the chant our people use when anyone is wounded in the eye, by a spear or by a splinter.

In this fighting between Manaii and Porotehiti in Havaiki, many were lost on both sides. Through this was the cause of man-eating.

It was through Manaii also that war grew with the people of Havaiki, and Manaii’s evil clung to them until they sailed away to this land, to Rekohu.

Rekoho (Chatham Islands)

Source

Legends of the South Seas

Antony Alpers

1970

Pages: 342 - 344