Canoe-Sheds

Long sheds with open wall spaces, called wharau and tawharau, were erected in order to shelter the superior canoes of thewaka taua type. When a high-class canoe was stowed in its shed for some time the ornamental stem and stern pieces were taken off and stowed away, and manuka brush, or some similar material, would be tied along the walls in order to protect it from the weather. A war-canoe would be so housed when not required. The days when men dwell in peace are described by the term Ruhanui (Ka kiia ko Ruhanui te noho o te tangata).

Polack writes: "Houses are erected for war-canoes. In the gable part above families often reside. The ground floor of these houses have rollers to preserve the canoe from rotting beneath." For "rollers" read "skids." The same writer remarks: "In approaching bad weather canoes are carefully hauled up, care being taken (as with boats) to keep them on an even keel, to prevent straining." When required for use a dismantled waka taua had to be refitted, a process termed aukaha, because all its fittings were lashed on.

Any place where canoes are anchored, secured to posts or stakes, is called a tauranga waka. Each canoe is tied to a separate stake.

Occasionally fighting in canoes took place, but the ordinary single canoe was not suited for this work. When engaged in such fighting a rude grapnel or grapple was sometimes employed. It was termed a rou, and was simply a long pole with a round hoop page 191 of tough aka lashed to one end. This hoop was slipped over the upstanding prow or stern-piece of the enemy's canoe, in order to hold it.

Canoe-racing (hoehoe waka, kaipara hoehoe waka, and whaka-tere waka) was a favourite exercise in former times, and highly exciting contests took place. In 1843 twenty canoes entered for a contest at the then new settlement of Whanga-nui. On the 2nd January, 1852, a regatta was held at Wellington in which three canoes, each manned by thirty-eight men, took part. This spectacle, with the demonstrations among the excitable natives present, impressed new arrivals from England, according to the journals of page 192 that time. In recent years canoe-races have been held on the Waikato River. (See figs. 92, 93, 94, pp. 191, 192.)

Crawford, in his account of an expedition up the Rangi-tikei River and to Taupo in the early "sixties," speaks of encountering a party of Taupo natives at Ma-kohine, who "were making a bark canoe to take them down the river." We have no other evidence that page 193the Maori ever made canoes of bark, and natives questioned on the subject state that none were used. Possibly dry totara bark was used in making some form of raft.

Many interesting discoveries of partially hewn canoes have been made in the forest by bushmen and surveyors. These derelicts have for some reason been abandoned, the hewn hull being left in the bush.

A surveyor from the Whanga-nui River lately informed us that he found two canoes that, many years ago, had been made in the forests of that region and never hauled out. Both were of heart of totara, and so old that the bottom parts had completely rotted away. Another, found in the forest near Hokianga, had several stone adzes lying near it.

Thomas Moser, in his Mahoe Leaves, tells us of the curious use he saw a canoe put to at a native feast: "When the rice was served up … having no dish fit to hold enough, they cleaned out a canoe some thirty feet long, two feet and a half wide, and about the same depth, and emptying, I imagine, about two bags of boiled rice into it, they tilted in a bag of sugar, and mixing up the lot with a spade, they crowded round the steaming mess with oyster and mussel shells in their hands, and set to in earnest."