The tōtara in the great forest of Tāne has fallen.
Rātū 11 Poutū-te-Rangi 1845
Tuesday 11 March 1845
Location of death: Kororāreka, Bay of Islands, Aotearoa New Zealand
NB: A glossary of te reo Māori terms is included at the end of the chapter, in roughly chronological order. Most Māori terms are indicated by italics throughout the chapter.
Māui had had a distinguished life over his short years. He had subjugated the lazy sun by beating it with his grandmother’s jawbone, lengthening the daylight for humans to work and play. He’d then used the jawbone to fish up a new island for humanity to live on, which now bears his name (Te Ika-a-Māui). He’d gifted humanity fire - albeit accidentally, he admitted. He’d pulled a joke on his other grandmother, the goddess of fire Mahuika, and stolen nine of her flaming finger nails. She’d thrown the last one at him in fury as he transformed into a hawk and flew away, the nail latching into trees, imbuing them with her burning essence. Māui’s cheekiness and ambition got the best of him in his last moments though, as he attempted to enter the goddess of the underworld, Hine-nui-te-pō, in an attempt to reclaim immortality for humanity. As Māui flew into her as a small bird, the goddess awoke, and crushed him inside her.
But Māui did not die. For millennia, his essence remained alive, trapped just barely on the border between the living world and underworld at the edge of Hine-nui-te-pō. It wasn’t a fun or cheeky place, much to his chagrin. The purgatory he was stuck in was dark, foggy and cramped, difficult to navigate or fly through as its shadows shifted. It was too cramped even to return to his human form, so instead Māui chose to remain transformed as a small green and white kererū. The only permanent feature within this purgatory was a smokey, gray path that ran its length. It started at the entrance to the underworld - a large, obsidian cave within Hine-nui-te-pō, and twisted throughout her towards a wall of falling magma.
Māui had tried multiple times to flee out the cave, but everytime he got close, its crystals warped and shot out, closing the entrance. He’d then try to fly towards the magma wall, seeing if it would open and let him pass. But again, everytime he flew closer, the magma seared and glowed hotter, burning his little feathers. Instead, Māui resorted to flying laps between the cave and the wall to pass his boredom. Cave, magma. Cave, magma. Cave, magma.
On one of his recent flights though, Māui had noticed an increase in noise outside the cave. He’d been in purgatory for millennia, so maybe humanity had survived despite their mortality, and were starting to encroach on the entrance to the underworld, Māui thought. He let out frantic bird chirps, warning people not to enter. But his cries were also tinged with a desperate loneliness, a slight welcoming undertone begging someone - anyone - to join him and keep him company, even for a brief moment.
One day, humanity answered his lonely call. The obsidian cave relaxed and retracted its crystals to make way for a middle-aged man to walk through to purgatory. His brown eyes shot around in fear as he walked in, tracing the shining, cracking black crystals before his eyes were engulfed by the darkness of fog. His nose filled with a dull, oaky scent and his tongue tasted metallic as he breathed in the purgatory’s smoke. The brisk cool breeze that followed him through the cave stopped as it closed back up, replaced by a strong heat emanating from the other end of the path he stood on. The man went to clutch something, perhaps a spear or a musket, but his fingers just wrapped around each other.
Māui chirped in curiosity. He fluttered down to the man and circled his head, excited to have something else to lap besides just the path. He scanned him with his little bird eyes. The man’s skin was kissed by the sun, his forehead brown and wrinkled. His cheeks and mouth seemed to have been kissed by the wind and rivers, trails of black ink and koru spiralling around them. The man smelt strongly of soot and death, and another sharp metallic smell that Māui couldn’t place. His korowai cloak dripped in blood.
Māui landed on the man’s head, and they frowned at each other. “Who are you? Māui asked in te reo Māori.
The man scowled. “I could ask the same of you,” he responded in the same tongue.
Māui fluttered off the man, letting out little putters of wind onto his face as he hovered in front of him. “Ko Māui ahau." He tilted his head curiously. "Are you dead?”
The man’s eyes initially shot wide with fear, but then he steeled himself. “If I am dead, then you better make room for the men who are following me. I’m sure I felled more pākehā tonight than you ever did in your life.”
Māui tilted his little head again. He was fluent in te reo, but hadn’t heard that word before - pākehā. “What is a pākehā?”
The man chuckled. “How long have you been dead, boy?”
“A few thousand years - give or take. I haven’t seen another person in a while.”
The man laughed again. “Aue. Consider it a blessing you didn’t have to meet the pākehā then.” He took a seat, and Māui landed in his open hands. “It’s the pale men. With brown hair. And ugly red coats. And bigger, uglier boats.” The man looked up into the darkness. “And guns. Lots of guns.”
Māui had no idea what the man meant by “pale men”. He wondered if he just meant sick people from another iwi. “When did they come? Where did they come from?”
The man exhaled. “The white men first saw us about two hundred years ago. Then they visited again about seventy years ago, and stayed longer. They brought more of their families over from a land on the other side of the world, and small conflicts erupted across the motu. Five years ago we signed a treaty with them, to live together in peace and harmony. But they betrayed it - used it as an excuse to steal our whenua and taonga. We are at war with them now, to fight for our rangatiratanga and mana motuhake.” The man’s hands tensed beneath Māui’s claws. His voice shook. “But they are winning. They are raining fire and metal down on us from the sky and sea. Everyone is dying. Most of our mokopuna and kuia and koro are collapsing from new fevers and chills. It’s a bloodbath, e hoa.”
Māui’s little heart sank into his stomach. His mind flashed back to a time where his land was basically empty. It took him years to find even his own family again after his mother had cast khim into the ocean as a sickly infant. The untouched land had an overwhelming beauty about it, his people cooking hāngi at their wharekai, red pōhutukawa trees blowing their leaves in the breath of Tāwhirimātea, the native birdsong, the sun rising in Te Tai Rāwhiti on the fish island he caught, the cliffs and rivers changing as Rūaumoko rolled in his mother’s stomach in the ground. Despite the man’s description, Māui found it difficult to picture his land now soaked in blood and filled with strange white men from the other side of the world.
“Enough about my world though, Māui." The man stood. "Where are we now?”
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Māui fluttered up. “This is the entrance to the underworld, e hoa.” He turned to face the wall of lava. “You need to walk down this path and approach the wall. I think the underworld is that way.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “You think? But you don’t know...," he said sternly.
Māui shrugged his little wings. “It doesn’t let me through. But it’s got to go somewhere, right?”
The man exhaled, and stared into the distance. The wall of lava dribbled out of the darkness, falling into the path below, its heat palpable even from the cave.
They looked at each other. “Well,” Māui tweeted, “What do you want to do?”
The man stood in silence. His mind raced full of his mokopuna, his friends and whānau that had just fallen in battle with him at Kororāreka, and his parents and tūpuna. His ears perked up to the sound of a faint karanga. “Do you hear that Māui?”
Māui looked around. “Hear what?”
The man shot his eyes to the lava wall. “They’re calling me. My whānau.”
Māui looked to the lava wall too. “Well, you should go to them!”
A tear dropped from the man’s face. The karanga grew stronger. The voices grew more defined as he and Māui approached the lava - he made out the chant of his kuia, his mother, and his wife, beckoning him to the underworld. He started to respond to the karanga himself with a haka.
The lava wall started to bubble and burst aggressively, splattering all around. The man continued to boom out a haka. The lava’s strengthening glow shone off the leaves of a branch above them - Māui had never noticed the branch before. He flew up and plucked off a small leafy side branch, and dropped it to the man to offer to the lava as a peace offering. The man placed it gently on the ground. As he did, the lava’s bubbles grew gentler, and it started to recede, dripping slower and slower as it dried. It revealed another long, twisting cave. A warm mix of aromas filled Māui’s beak, from sweet florals to the salty, roasted smell of a fresh hangi. Three women came around a turn in the cave, smiling at the man as they saw him.
The man burst into tears at the sight of his deceased whānau. He timidly stepped over the border into the underworld, reuniting with his wife, mother and grandmother. Māui let out a small tear, longing to be with his long-lost mother and brothers once again too. But the ātua wouldn’t let him pass the wall. He wondered if his mother was beyond this wall, and had lived a happy life.
The man turned back to Māui as he and his whānau stepped further into the cave. “E hoa, kia tupato. Many more people are coming this way. Our rohe, Aotearoa, is being conquered. Many of our people will die.” One last tear rolled down his face. “Treat them with aroha when they come. Look after them, Māui.” They walked off as the lava started to gush back down onto the smoky pathway.
Māui retreated to the newfound branch above the lava wall. His little mind raced - what was Aotearoa? He'd never heard his land referred to as that before. He looked to the entrance sadly - he didn’t want more people to come to the underworld. His heart hung heavy with guilt and shame. If only he had been successful in his quest for immortality, then he wouldn’t be here, and no one else would need to come this way either. Although his heart buzzed with a little excitement - he was looking forward to having more people to play with an talk to.
The breath of Tāwhirimātea brushed into his ears. “My moko, do not dwell on the past. You are here as a guardian. A shepherd. A kind soul to guide people into their next life. Be good to yourself, and to them.”
Māui looked up at the obsidian cave. Tāwhirimatea was blowing in his ears from te ao mārama. The cave was opening again and someone else was coming through. Māui steeled himself as he prepared to greet the new arrival, and promised Tāwhirimatea that he would be a good, kind, and trusting shepherd for the dead who were still to come.
Te Reo Māori Glossary
- Māui - the Māori god of trickery. A prominent figure in Māori and other Polynesia oral traditions.
- Aotearoa - the indigenous Māori name for New Zealand.
- Te Ika-a-Māui - the Māori name for the North Island of New Zealand (lit. the fish of Māui.)
- Mahuika - the goddess of fire
- Hine-nui-te-pō - the goddess of the underworld and the dark.
- Kererū - a small pigeon, native to New Zealand.
- koru - a spiral pattern, common in traditional Māori tattoos.
- te reo Māori - the indigenous language of New Zealand (lit. the Māori language).
- Ko Māui ahau - lit. “I am Māui.”
- pākehā - New Zealanders of European descent.
- Aue - an expression of awe, surprise, grief.
- Iwi - a Māori tribe.
- Motu/rohe - a country/region, referring to the land that makes it up.
- whenua - land.
- Taonga - treasure(s).
- rangatiratanga - self-determination, leadership, sovereignty.
- mana motuhake - self-determination, autonomy, control.
- mokopuna/moko - grandchildren, or descendents.
- Kuia - grandmother.
- Koro - grandfather.
- E hoa - used to refer to a friend.
- hāngi - a traditional Māori cooking method/meal, using heated stones in the ground.
- Wharekai - a traditional Māori eating place, usually attached to a wider marae or home ground.
- pōhutukawa - a red leafed tree in New Zealand.
- Tāwhirimātea - the god of the wind and weather.
- Te Tai Rāwhiti - the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand (lit. the side where the sun shines).
- Rūaumoko - the god of earthquakes and volcanoes. A fetus that remains in his mother’s womb, his kicks causing earthquakes.
- whānau - family (both immediate, extended and communal).
- Kororāreka - the town of Russell in the Bay of Islands, in Northland, New Zealand.
- Tūpuna - ancestors.
- karanga - a traditional Māori welcoming call, usually used to call people onto marae.
- Haka - a traditional Māori war dance, used to challenge, intimidate, or welcome others.
- kia tupato - lit. “be careful”.
- Aroha - love.
- ātua - god(s).
- te ao mārama - the world of the living.