KOROTANGI: TE MANU TAPU

na Ngatipikiao

Kahore te aroha ki taku potiki
Tuhana tonu koe, i te ahiahi,
Ka tomo ki te whare, taka atu kau ai:
Tirohia iho, e hine, mau ki te parera e tare atu na
Ehara tena he manu maori,
Me titiro ki te huruhuru whakairoiro mai no tawhiti,
Kei whea korotau, ka ngaro nei?
Tena ka riro, kei te kato kai,
Ki te rau powhata, nga Whakangaeore
Tunui me to po, ka oho au;
E waiho ana koe hei tiaki hanga,
Hei korero taua, ki tena taumata,
He oti te huri atu, ko Kawatepurangi.

Great is my love for this sweet thing
That glows within, like the evening.
But it has gone, I am alone
In this empty house. Look, my dear one,
At the birds floating there. They are nothing
They are common birds. The carved wings,
The stone feathers of the Korotau have flown
Over many more miles of ocean—
None know where he has been,
Nor where he is gone. Was he seen
Eating the leaves of the powhata?
Black as night, the Whakangaeore mountains
Block the sight. I leave you, guardians
Of our substance. Men of the hills
Have heard, They speak of him still;
But I am gone,
⁽¹⁾ (1) Kawatepurangi lives on.

The origins of the Korotangi, a stone bird carved of dark green serpentine, are shrouded by controversy and ignorance. Some descendants of Tainui claim that the Korotangi came from Hawaiki on their canoe (J.P.S. Vol. 26, 1917). This belief has been taken further by certain over-enthusiastic exponents of the Aryo-Semitic origin of the Maori race, who suggested that it was brought by the Maoris from their original home in Asia (Trans. of N.Z. Inst., Vol. 4, p. 40).

The Korotangi is certainly Eastern in the style of its carving. According to W. J. Phillipps, similar stone birds have been found in Malaya, Japan and in the excavations at Ur on the Chaldees. Possibly the Korotangi came from the wreck of a Tamil (Southern Indian) vessel, which may have come ashore between Kawhia and Raglan on the West Coast. In 1877, shifting sands revealed the ribs of a vessel, supposedly Asiatic in origin, but this was on a journalist's rather than a scientist's

observation. Until the remains are again revealed and then, if possible, radio-carbon tested, we will have to rely on other evidence for the origin of the Korotangi.

It seems possible that an Indian ship's bell, the Tamil Bell, acquired by Colenso in 1837, came from the same stretch of coastline near Te Kakawa as the Korotangi. Unless the Tamil bell was brought as a curiosity by some very early whaler, it implies the wreck of an Indian ship on these shores. Colenso, unfortunately not a very reliable authority, stated that the bell “had been in the hands of the Maoris for several generations” (New Zealand Exhibition Jurors' Reports and Awards, p. 254), which tends to discount the whaler theory.

There are many indications of the ancient origin of the stone bird, Korotangi. The veneration in which it was held indicates antiquity; Tawhiao, the second Waikato king, and Rewi Maniapoto, came and tangi'd over the stone bird lost and found again. Another indication that it has long been in the possession of the Maori are the several songs from the western and central portions of the island that mention the Korotau—or Korotangi. Sir George Grey, nineteen years before the bird was found, recorded a tangi for the Korotau from Rotorua (Nga Moteatea, p. 235). Te Ngakau, secretary to the Maori king, suggests, on the evidence of another very similar tangi (Transactions of the N.Z. Institute 1889, p. 505) that the Korotangi was taken by the people of Rotorua and then retaken by some of the Tainui tribes and concealed for safekeeping. The hiding of the bird must have been a long time ago, for it was found amongst the roots of a full-grown manuka blown over in the gales of 1878. The manuka had taken root in a disused storage-pit (rua) somewhere between Kawhia and Raglan. The hiding-place had apparently been forgotten.

No sooner was it rediscovered than the Korotangi again became the source of strife. Many of the old Maoris of the Waikato wanted it hidden away again, but it was sold by its finder to Albert Walker, a European, who resold it to Major Drummond Hay, who, in turn, sold it for £50 to Mrs Wilson, a Maori lady, wife of Major Wilson of Cambridge. Rewi Maniapoto, the old rebel chief, threatened to makutu (put a curse on) her, if she did not give up the bird. Te Ngakau urged her to throw it into the Waikato, but she would not. She died shortly afterwards. The Korotangi was deposited in a bank vault for safekeeping. It is now on display in the Dominion Museum, Wellington.

While the Korotangi was in the possession of Major Hay, an old woman who came to tangi over the lost bird, sang this song from the past, recorded then by Te Ngakau: