Sidestep: Te Korotini

We don't normally do articles on ordinary Maori artifacts but this piece is very unusual, deserves a mention...and because it is lost.

The item below is a Maripi. It can be a weapon or a practical tool with a purpose of cutting and slicing, often after the victim has been laid low with other weapons. Or it could be used to cut up whale blubber or other food items. The below item once belonged to the Ngati-Paoa tribe who took it from Ngati-Whanaunga, but it has long since passed into collectors hands around 1920 and it's location is now unknown. It is likely in an overseas collection.

Both Melanesian and Polynesians manufactured these items, but they are mostly made from wood with lashed sharks teeth. However, this item is very rare, for it is made of whalebone. What is also rare are hat the teeth are from the Tuatini (white shark) and even more unusual is that the teeth are cemented in with an unknown gum or cement substance. The holes are filled with this same substance but were probably once used for the traditional harekeke (flax) lashings but at some time the possessor of this item has fixed the teeth with this cement. The Maori once had the knowledge of something made from different tree gums or saps. This mixture was gathered by the old men from special trees only, and at a certain time of the year as to one tree, and another time of the year as to others. When it was ready all the objects to be treated were done quickly, for the gum would not keep long plastic, and a fresh lot must be prepared when more was required. Its name was mira, hence the name “Mira-tuatini,” but this was the name even when only fibre fastening was used. A family might have such a one so fastened with muka fibre, and await until an opportunity came to take it to a cement-making artist. This cement was also used for setting the paua-shell ornamentation into wood, (koiwi) bone and (pounamu) greenstone objects.

18th century damaged Maripi

A mata-tuatini is a tool of the same type. The name means “obsidian toothed.” They were less prized than the real tuatini, for although in many districts mata-tuhua (obsidian) was even rarer, it was more troublesome to keep fixed in position and was very quickly blunted. Mata-kautete was really the correct name for the mata-tuatini.Tatere or tatare was an implement of the same type formed from the teeth of the tatere (dog-fish), but was less prized than the tuatini. Another type of this implement was much longer, but with the teeth similarly set in cement. It was known as haehaeroa (long slasher or slicer). Also tatere-roa or tuatini roa according to the nature of its toothed edge.

Another slightly broken example from the British Museum

The old people of the Ngati-Paoa confirmed that this type of implement was also used in decapitating the enemy slain. When persons died a distance from home, or on a war expedition, their heads would be severed by their friends and the bodies entirely incinerated to prevent the bones being secured by the enemy. Such heads would be brought home to their respective families. These implements would also be used by women folk at mourning ceremonials to demonstrate their grief for the departed by gashing their bodies.

“Te Korotini” was made by Tau-hangi in the times of Te Wharetuoi, about 1725 A.D. The bone came from a whale stranded in the Waitamata on what we now know as Meola Reef. In the days of Te Tiwha, there was much warfare between Ngati-Whanaunga and Ngati-Paoa. “Te Koro-tini” then fell into the hands of Ngati-Paoa when, about 1760, the Ngati-Paoa came to attack the Ngati-Puku in their pa at Tapapakanga (now a regional park of Auckland). Ngati-Puku escaped by night and fled inland. They left several old people in the pa. One of these was one called Te Korotini, who was slain. He was wearing suspended round his neck this historic implement. Hence it got its full name “Te Kaki-haehae-o-Te-Korotini” (The slashed neck of Te Korotini), descriptive of that old man's fate.

When the Tamaki pas were beseiged by the rampaging Ngapuhi (in 1821, A.D.), the Ngapuhi chief, Rewa, being anxious to save the doomed people, came by night to the ramparts of Mauinaina and urged the Ngati-Paoa to escape forthwith, as the pa would be assaulted at dawn. The chief Rauroha and others decided to accept the hint, among the escapees being Te Whaka-pakanga, the father of Te Hinaki who was directing the defence of the pa. But Te Whaka was severely wounded in his flight, and died near Tuakau. He gave “Te Koro-tini,” then in his possession, to a mokai (slave attendant - yes Maori had salves too)) to deliver to his family. This trust was duly carried out, and “Te Korotini” remained in Ngati-Paoas' hands until George Graham, came into possession of it in the 1920's.

Where 'Te Korotini' resides today, no one knows for sure.