It is well, in order to understand the life and adventures of Koche, “King of Pitt,” to relate the history of the country and people from which he sprang, before going into the details of his career.
Ware-kauri, one of the South Sea islands, called by the English, Chatham, lies several hundred miles to the eastward of New Zealand. Its history up to the year 1791 rests upon tradition, as prior to that date its inhabitants had not acquired, among their many accomplishments, the art of letters. Koche himself, from whose mouth this narrative has been taken, says that his people were from the earliest period inclined to peaceful pursuits, and subsisted chiefly upon fish and seal; that they enjoyed a democracy, and conducted their simple affairs by a council of notable men. He did not hesitate, however, to acknowledge that when at long intervals, covering a generation, a high and prolonged west wind drove a canoe-load of New Zealanders upon their shores, they forthwith and without ceremony slew them. But he justified this departure from their ordinary habits on the ground of public policy; as, had they received them in charity, and pursued the peaceful tenor of their way, their involuntary visitors would have ended by slaying and, moreover, devouring them; the first party of this sort who landed on the island having made it distinctly understood that men and women were their favorite articles of diet. But among themselves, the taking of life, he said, was unknown; and why should it not be, since they were not fond of men, as some people were, and never suffered for want of food; and on the sea-shore they found plenty of seal and birds, and, in the marshes and lakes of the interior, fish and fowl in abundance? No! the race of the Tuïti, his forefathers, were no man-eaters; they had become “missionaries,” or Christian, in the days of his father, and remained so ever since, such of them as had not been devoured or driven to death by the hated Zealander—at whose name his black eye flashed fire—who had made a slave-pen and shambles of his once happy island.
Their tradition goes back to a first pair, man and woman, who appeared on the Isle of Rangi-haute, a score of miles to the southeast, called by the English, Pitt. It is a solitary volcanic mountain, lifting its truncated summit above the waters of the South Sea, whose waves have beaten in vain for untold centuries upon its rock-bound base. How the first pair came is unknown; whether brought by the Spirit from above, or created on the mountain, none could tell; the time was remote, and tradition was confused in going back to the origin of the human race, to the beginning of the world; the memory of man did not run beyond the apparition on Rangi-haute.
But the history of the couple and of their children is handed down in the following legend: They lived upon the top of the mountain, from whence they caught and worshipped the first ray of the morning sun, and bowed in adoration to that luminary as he sank beneath the western wave. The ground was held sacred; and their descendants in after-days consecrated like spots, devoted alone to prayer and propitiation, on which no article of dress even could be placed, and from the desecration of one of which arose the destruction of the race.
Trees clothed the slopes of the mountain, and everywhere among them, planted by the beneficent hand of the Creator, rose the karaka (bread-fruit) laden with golden fruit—the sole food of man, and source of perpetual youth and health. In after-days, it turned acrid, and fatal to life, until the pitying Creator taught his children, by immersion in boiling water and a running stream, to restore it in a measure to its pristine state.
One day, a youth wandered down to the sea-shore among the birds that lined the rocks, and, seating himself near where an eagle was perched pluming his wing, they fell into conversation. The eagle complained that they could no longer soar into the high air, by reason of a spell cast over his tribe he believed by the Tuïti; his progenitors, he said, had sailed over the mountain at will, and preyed upon the living mako-mako, or honey-eater and the tuïs, or mocking-bird; while he could fly only in the heavy air along the beach, and was compelled to consort with sea-fowl, who held him in contempt; and to feed on garbage. The youth answered that the blood of the honey-eater and the mocking-bird had cried to the Creator, and brought down upon the eagle his banishment. The Tuïti warred neither with the Maker nor his children; they fed on fruit, and shed no blood: the eagle had banished himself. The king of birds, avoiding the issue, replied that in the great island to the northwest, which his friend had doubtless seen from the mountain, the woods were filled with beautiful birds, and fruit of every color, hanging over the dark, transparent waters of many lakes, while here—what a poor place! One solitary mountain, no lakes, and no fruit, save the karaka, which, sweet as it was, was bitter compared with the fruit which grew in the west. There was no man upon it to rule the great island. It called aloud for a master—a son of Tuïti—to go over. The youth listened to the tempter, and ambition elated his soul; he arose from the rock, and asked to be shown the path that led over the water. The eagle, looking at him askance, promised him wings to fly over, provided he would first render an easy service by taking him to the top of the mountain. On hearing this, the youth cast himself upon his face on the sand, trembling; where he lay for hours torn by the conflict between the good spirit of obedience, and the evil one of ambition, as they warred within him for the mastery. As the sun sank, his guardian angel fled discomfited, and he rose to his feet with a shudder, and, taking the eagle on his wrist, ascended the mountain, and in the dark cast him loose in the forbidden field. All night long the flutter and death-cry of birds smote upon his ear, and, when morning dawned, the song of the mako was mute, and the tuïs had ceased to mock.
The people assembled in alarm. A child to whom its mother had given fruit fell dead; they gathered about its body in terror. The eagle hovered over them, and uttered his war-cry. The conscience-striken youth confessed. The day was passed in penitence and sorrow about the body of the child in the lap of its wailing mother. Hunger assailed them; they burned the remains on a funeral-pyre built of the fragrant kalamu, and, descending the mountain, fed upon the root of the fern, and drank from the living spring.
The youth wandered by the shore, alone, stung with remorse, and, meeting the eagle, was taught by him to construct the korari, the model of all canoes, made in the likeness of a sledge, with a wicker-work of tough creepers, having a false bottom filled with buoyant kelp. He put to sea with his family, and landed on Ware-kauri, which he found, as the eagle had said, uninhabited by man, a continent in size compared to Rangi-haute; with undulating, fertile plains to the south, and lofty mountains in the north, sparkling with lakes of dark transparent water, and vocal with the song and bright with the plumage of birds. Filled with new joy, he sent back tidings to his kinsmen, and was followed by successive emigrations, until Rangi-haute was deserted save by a timid few who feared the sea. Thus came about the settlement of Ware-kauri: and to this extent is the tradition of the people.
From this time on they had lived in single families, or in companies of two or three, moving from place to place as food became less plentiful, or as fancy or a love of change dictated; being careful, in pitching their new and fragile habitations, not to crowd upon established groups. In the sealing season, the families of the interior came down to the coast, and laid in from the rocks and reefs a supply of meat and skins; and when fishing on the shore became dull, or the birds wild with much hunting, the people of the sea bundled up their effects, and moved to the interior lakes, chiefly to the great Tewanga, filled with fish, and covered with wild fowl.