1859 - Thomson, A. S. The Story of New Zealand [Vol.I] - Part I. The Country and its Native Inhabitants - CHAPTER VIII. FOOD AND HUSBANDRY.

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CHAP. VIII.

FOOD AND HUSBANDRY.

FROM a glance at the undermentioned substances used by the New Zealanders as food before the advent of Captain Cook, it must be apparent they could never, unless from indolence or wastefulness, have suffered from starvation, such as occasionally occurs in all countries where every family depends for support on its own patch of cultivation: --

Fish. Whales. Mosses.
Fern root. Reptiles. Fungi.
Birds. Worms. Sweet potatoes.
Rats. Insects. Taro.
Dogs. Chrysalises. Gourds.
Bats. Vegetable caterpillars. Hinau berries.
Seals. Sea weeds.
And various roots, fruits, flowers, shoots, and piths.

Fish, fern root, sweet potatoes, birds, dogs, rats, taro, karaka, and hinau berries were the staple articles of life; the other substances were used as adjuncts.

Every fish found in the surrounding sea is eaten by the natives, except the shark, from which teeth are obtained for ornament; portions of the stingaree; and one or two red-coloured fish, which are said to be poisonous.

Fresh-water eels, frequently of great size, and small

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fish suitable for food, are numerous in the rivers and lakes.

Fish are eaten after being stewed, roasted, or dried. Crayfish and several small fish are eaten alive; a custom settlers have pointed out as a remnant of cannibalism, all the time forgetting that swallowing an uncooked oyster is an analogous act.

Eels, dogfish, snapper, mackarel, and several other fish, are preserved in various ways for winter food. In effecting this the entrails are sometimes extracted, and the fish are dipped frequently in sea-water and dried in the sun. At other times the fish are half-cooked, then dried in the sun, or exposed to a slow smoky fire for several days. In this last process the fat does not escape, and the flavour of the fish is not lost. Preserved fish keep good for several months.

Shell-fish also furnished much food. The pipi and cockle were the most esteemed, and at certain seasons places where shell-fish abounded were tapued. Shellfish were preserved for winter food in the same way as other fish, and kept on strings.

The intimate knowledge the New Zealanders possess of the habits of fish, and their success in fishing, are indirect proofs that much of the ancient food of the people was derived from this source. The largest villages are on the sea coast, and all the settlements in the interior are within easy access of some productive lake, eel weir, or arm of the sea. Like the Saxons, the New Zealanders reckoned eels the finest of all fish.

Fern root was one of their principal articles of food. It was the bread-fruit of the country. All over the North Island fern abounds, but the productive edible variety is the Pteris esculenta. This food is celebrated

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in song, and the young women, in laying before travellers baskets of cooked fern root, chant:--"What shall be our food? Shell-fish and fern root. That is the root of the earth; that is the food to satisfy a man; the tongues grow rough by reason of the licking, as if it were the tongue of a dog."

Edible fern comes to perfection only in good soils, and here the plant is ten feet high. Three-year-old plants furnish the best fern root, and such is an inch in circumference. The deeper the root is found in the ground, the richer it is. In the month of November fern root is dug up, cut in pieces nine inches long, and is then placed in stacks carefully protected from rain, but through which a free current of air blows. Fresh fern root is not good; that which has been about a year above ground is most esteemed.

Fern root is only eaten after it is roasted; and before it is cooked it is steeped in water and dried in the sun. The whole root is chewed and the woody fibre is spit out. The flour is loosened from the woody fibre by beating it on a stone; and seventy per cent of flour has been obtained from good fern root. The present generation of natives only use fern root as a relish, although they have still fern root feasts. In taste it resembles ship biscuits. The pioneers of civilisation found a Hindoo domesticated among the New Zealanders who preferred fern root to rice; and the native stolen away from the Bay of Islands by De Surville wept on his death-bed for the want of fern root.

With the exception of one or two birds supposed to contain the spirits of deified ancestors, every sea and land bird is eaten by the natives. Old shags and albatross are not much esteemed, and the bittern is

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described as tooth-breaking and bitter. Tuis and mutton birds are preserved in their own oil for winter food, and kept in bags made of sea-weed. All other birds are cooked and eaten fresh.

Forty years ago New Zealand swarmed with rats, and these animals, highly relished as food, were caught in traps and pits. The introduced Norway rat, which assisted in extirpating the native rat, is not eaten.

The flesh of native dogs was highly relished. These animals were domesticated, and shared their masters' meals. Some of the males were castrated, to increase their size and improve the flavour of their flesh. Killing a dog in a village was an important event, and portions of the flesh were sent round as presents. European dogs are rarely eaten.

Seals, now only found in the southern parts of the Middle Island, were highly relished as food. Whales are invariably eaten, and a stranded animal is a harvest. None of the true lizards were eaten, but a guana eighteen inches long was. Land worms two feet long were eaten cooked. Several insects were swallowed alive. The chrysalis of a large butterfly tastes like marrow. Vegetable caterpillars were roasted, and they tasted like fern root. Several mosses, fungi, lichens, and sea-weeds are edible. One of the latter, with the juice of tutuberries, is converted into a jelly.

The small finger-shaped sweet potato, brought by the New Zealanders from Hawaiki, furnished much food. The edible part is several inches long. Sweet potatoes are planted in November and are ripe in March. Light sandy soils suit them best, and the warmer the climate the better. In the Middle Island they grow with difficulty. After being dug up they are carefully preserved

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in houses built for their reception, and are eaten either cooked or raw, or after being steeped in the sea and dried in the sun.

The culture of sweet potatoes has been much neglected since the introduction of a large species from America. But an idea of the high estimation in which they were formerly held, may be drawn from the care bestowed upon them. The men engaged in preparing the ground ornamented their hair and spades with feathers. The seed was planted in hillocks perfectly straight, and each potato was placed in the ground with the seed end towards the rising sun. The labourers so occupied moved along in rows chanting songs to propitiate the god of cultivated food. Some of them were tapu; and no sick persons, or women recently confined, were permitted to plant sweet potatoes. The labourers, on giving up working for the day, washed their hands and held them over a tapued fire before eating. A small wooden image daubed with red ochre was stuck in each field to show it was tapu. The plantations were carefully weeded, and it was the duty of every one to plant a certain quantity of sweet potatoes every year. If the soil was not good, artificial soil was placed under the seed.

Next in importance to the original sweet potato was the taro (Caladium esculentum). The edible part is the bulbous root, which weighs from ten to sixteen ounces. This plant grows best in damp soils, but its cultivation is now much neglected. Gourds (Lagenaria vulgaris) were brought from Hawaiki. The inner part is eaten, and the rind forms calabashes. The pith of the stem of the fern-tree (Cyathea medullaris), the fruit of the hinau, and karaka are eaten. The hinau berries are generally steeped for several days in a running

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stream; by this means the stone is separated from the farinaceous part, which is then baked into cakes and roasted. Hinau cakes are much esteemed. "When you awake," says a proverb, "be it to eat the berries of the hinau."

The karaka fruit is about the size of an acorn. The pulp is eaten raw; the kernel is cooked in the oven for ten days, and then steeped for several weeks in a running stream before it is fit for use. Karaka berries for winter use are dried in the sun. The kernel is poisonous uncooked. The seed of the karaka was brought from Hawaiki. In the flower of the flax plant a large quantity of sweet water collects, which is used as a refreshing beverage by travellers. The tap-roots of the ti or whanake (Cordyline australis) are eaten for the sugar they contain. In spring the sweet inner leaves of the flower of the tawhero are eaten, and in winter the luscious ripe fruit. The tender shoots and pith of the palm-tree, and also the roots of the raupo, are eaten cooked and raw. Cape gooseberries are found all over New Zealand. There is a clay called kotou, with an alkaline taste and an unctuous feel, which was eaten by the New Zealanders when pressed by hunger.

The articles of food introduced by Captain Cook and his successors were --

Pigs. Potatoes. Water melons.
Sheep. Maize. Onions.
Goats. Wheat. Turnips.
Cows. Large sweet potatoes. Honey.
Fowls. Cabbage. &c. &c.

Captain Cook's endeavours to introduce pigs into New Zealand proved successful. The whole country is now overrun with them; and in the deep recesses of the

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forests they have lost the appearance of domestic pigs, and have acquired the habits and the colour of wild animals. The flesh of pigs fed on fern root is preferred by the natives to all other food. The sheep left by Cook all died, but in 1815 the Church Missionaries introduced this animal at the Bay of Islands. Goats were left by Cook, and cows were introduced by some of the early navigators. Rutherford mentions that, in 1817, there were a few cattle in the forests. Cats have run wild, and their flesh is occasionally eaten. Fowls, introduced by Cook, are now found both wild and domestic; and geese, turkeys, and guinea-fowl are common. Honey-bees were introduced in 1840 at the Bay of Islands, and numerous wild hives are now scattered over the country north of the Waikato river.

Potatoes were given by Cook to several tribes. Taniwha, an aged chief who died in 1853, related that Cook gave his tribe two handfuls, that for three years they planted the produce without using any for food, and that on the fourth year a feast was held to celebrate the arrival of this productive plant. Potatoes are now the staple article of consumption, and they have driven out of cultivation several ancient sorts of nutritious food. Potatoes are cooked in the usual manner, or kept in a stream until putrid, in which state they are cooked, and the dish is called mahi.

Maize was introduced by Governor King from Norfolk Island, in 1793, and it is frequently eaten, like potatoes, putrid; in which state the dish smells like excrement, and tastes like Parmesan cheese. This disgusting mode of preparing food is Polynesian. Wheat was introduced by Governor King and the Rev. Mr. Marsden; the latter relates that the New Zea-

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landers grew impatient for the produce, and tore the green stalks up from the ground in the expectation of finding the grain at the roots. Turnips were introduced at an early period, for in 1817 they were dried and used as winter food. The large sweet potato called kai-pakeha, to distinguish it from the kai Maori or finger-shaped sweet potato, was introduced by an American whaler in 1819. Every English plant suitable for food is now cultivated by the natives, but water-melons, cabbages, vegetable marrow, onions, carrots, peaches, apples, cherries, and grapes are the most esteemed.

The science of cookery was in a primitive state among the New Zealanders, for being destitute of vessels capable of resisting fire, the cookery of the whole race, except those living near the boiling springs at Rotorua and Taupo, was limited to steaming and roasting. The former was done in an oven, made by digging a hole in the ground, according to the size of the banquet, into which burning firewood, and stones about the size of an orange, were put, and then covered lightly over. When the stones were red-hot, one half were taken out, food put in, water sprinkled on the hot stones to generate steam, and the whole covered with fresh leaves, hot stones, and earth.

Roasting was effected by placing the articles near fire, but the New Zealanders despised this mode of cooking, and called it a make-shift, a dinner for slaves or men in a hurry.

Natives living in the neighbourhood of boiling springs boiled their food in the water. Here pigs were tossed in alive, and dragged out properly cooked in an incredibly short space of time.

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The New Zealanders, although destitute of vessels in which to boil water, had an ingenious way of heating water to the boiling point, for the purpose of making shell-fish open. This was done by putting red-hot stones into wooden vessels full of water.

Civilisation is rapidly driving the ancient mode of preparing food out of fashion. Cooking-pots, kettles, and frying-pans are seen in every village, and, although the people still insist that steaming food gives meat a better flavour than boiling it, yet the black pot is more frequently seen at work by travellers than the ancient oven.

The New Zealanders, like all men who frequently suffer from hunger, eat ravenously, and the sight of food affects them as it does wild beasts.

Food was served up in small flax baskets made for the purpose, which were only once used, and to every five persons there was one of these plates. The fingers of the right hand conveyed the food to the mouth, and, like the Hindoos, never the left. Each party sat in a circle on the ground round the food. Women did not eat with men, nor slaves with their masters. Eating was performed in silence and with great rapidity; and after every meal, rarely during the meal, a large quantity of pure water was gulped down out of calabashes. There were two meals in twenty-four hours, one at nine or ten, and the other in the afternoon; if, however, food was abundant, they eat oftener, as their capacity was great, and quantity more than quality was the chief desideratum. Sixty pounds of fresh pork have been devoured by one man in twenty-four hours. When food is scarce, New Zealanders live on a diet Stoics might envy; when it is abundant, they indulge in vo-

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racious eating. Like animals of prey, their stomachs are inured to sustain the extremes of hunger and gluttony.

They were in the habit of eating disgusting sorts of food, but they nevertheless possessed children's tastes, and disliked anything salt, sour, bitter, or acrid. From the unfortunate Marion they refused wine and spirits, and pitched salt junk into the sea after the iniquitous massacre of the crew of the ship Boyd. Sugar was the only condiment agreeable to them, and no narcotic or stimulating article was eaten. Within the last few years the people have acquired a taste for salt and spirituous liquors, but untravelled New Zealanders still dislike mustard, sauces, vinegar, and spices. Pure water was their universal beverage, and in summer juice pressed from the clustering tutu berries was used to sweeten it. Drinks were always used cold.

The New Zealanders have been quoted as a race of men living without eating salt. This is an error. It is true the people disliked food in which salt predominated, but they used large quantities of dried fish prepared by frequent steeping in the sea. After living myself for ten days without salt, one of these fish tasted to me quite salt. All the tribes inland possessing property on the sea coast annually resorted to it for the purpose of drying fish; and tribes around Taupo, who had no land on the sea coast, exchanged mats for dried sea fish. Thus it was that they unconsciously used salt, a condiment absolutely necessary for health, although little relished by persons living solely on vegetables.