[CHAPTER VIII]
THE HAUHAU COUNCIL-TOWN
Life in Taiporohenui—A great praying-house—The ritual of the Niu—Singular Hauhau chants—"Matua Pai-mariré"—Bent's new owner, and his new wife—The tattooers—Another white renegade
Another summer came, and the crops were gathered in, and the men of Tito's hapu, after nearly a year of comparative peace, wearied for the war-path again. Rimatoto and other small bush-hamlets were deserted, and the tribes gathered in, bearing their food supplies to the Hauhau council-village of Taiporohenui—close to where the town of Hawera now stands. Taiporohenui was a famous name—a word of mana, as the Maori would say—amongst all the tribes from Whanganui to Waikato. The name, say the wise men of Taranaki, goes back far beyond the days of the later Maori migration to New Zealand, in the canoes Aotea, Tokomaru, Tainui, and other Polynesian Viking ships. It was that of a great temple in Tahiti, in the tropic isles of the Hawaiikian seas, countless generations ago. And in this latter-day Taiporohenui the Maoris, mindful of their ancient traditions, built another temple.
This Hauhau praying-house and council-hall, constructed of hewn timber with raupo-reed walls and nikau-thatch roof, is described by Bent as the largest building of native construction that he had seen. It was about one hundred and twenty feet in length, and was of such exceptional size that the ridge-pole was supported by four poutoko-manawa, or pillars, instead of one or two, as in the ordinary Maori meeting-house; there were five fires burning in it at night, in the stone fireplaces down its long central aisle; on either side were the mat-covered resting-places of the people. The timbers of the house were of the durable totara pine. The inside was lined with beautiful tukutuku work, of kakaho reeds and thin wooden lathes artfully fastened with kiekie fibre, arranged in many handsome geometrical patterns. Beneath the first large poutoko-manawa in the house was buried a large piece of greenstone in the rough, the whatu, or "luck-stone," of the sacred house. It was the Maori custom when the centre-pole of a large meeting-house or the first big palisade-post of a fort was set in position, to place a piece of greenstone, often in the form of an ornament, such as an ear-drop or a carved tiki, at its foot. [3]
In front of the great house on the marae, or village square, stood the sacred Niu-pole, a totara pine flagstaff, nearly fifty feet in height, with a yard about fourteen feet long; the staff was stayed like the mast of a ship. The war-flags of the Hauhaus were flown from the Niu, and the people daily marched around its foot in their "Pai-mariré" procession, intoning the chants their prophet had taught them. This Niu was one of the first worship-poles planted in Taranaki by the Hauhau prophet's command, and it was the centre of many a wild fanatic gathering. At its foot there was planted a large piece of unworked greenstone—as was done when the first house-pillar was set up—as the whatu of the sacred pole; this block of pounamu is still there, says Bent.
Round this staff of worship, where the bright war-flags hung, the people marched daily in their strange procession, chanting their wild psalms. Tito te Hanataua was one of the priests of the Niu, and he led his tribe in the services after the Hauhau religion.