The history of Maoriˉ horticulture
Maori¯ horticulture centred on the cultivation of kumara¯ and taro, but quickly adapted to the new crops brought in by Europeans.
A fascinating account of traditional practices, materials and ceremonies
there were never more than 800,000 Polynesians and – by the time they arrived in Aotearoa less than 1000 years ago – these amazing navigators were dispersed over a greater area of the globe than any other ethnic group.
They were adept gardeners but those who came here were, suddenly, away from the tropics. The temperate climate tested their horticultural skills to the limit.
Most likely they arrived with bananas, breadfruit and coconut, taro, hue (a gourd), uwhi (a yam) and k¯umara, as well as the kiore and kur (Polynesian rat and dog respectively). But, although their new country was much larger than the rest of Polynesia combined and lushly covered in trees, the variety of flora was limited. And, sadly, they could add very little to it.
If they did bring their high-yield tropical plants, none would have survived here. Only the k¯umara, taro, hue and uwhi could live in these lower temperatures and they were marginal in many parts of the country.
In the absence of native plants rich in carbohydrates, the people who became M¯aori needed the k¯umara to thrive. It was the richest in carbohydrate and did best in the warmer coastal regions, although evidence of cultivation has been found as far south as Kaik¯oura at the archaeological excavation site at Wairau Bar. Supplemented by the bland fern root (aruhe) ground down almost to a powder, the k¯umara became the staple food in the M¯aori diet in the North Island and the top of the South. Because it could not continue to grow in the winter anywhere in Aotearoa, gardeners had to learn not only to nurture it but to store tubers through the cold months to extend its value as food and to have tubers for planting in the following season.
What has interested historians is how Polynesians came to have the k¯umara. Whereas the tropical plants that made gardening easy in the islands came from the west, the k¯umara is native to South America, suggesting these explorers reached right across the Pacific. The pre-European k¯umara were small and white, and although more than one variety may have been brought in by early Polynesians, most of the variously named strains when Europeans arrived were probably regional variations.
Ethnographer Elsdon Best wrote in a major work on M¯aori agriculture in the 1920s: “… the k¯umara stood in a class by itself, above and apart from everything else… As the mainstay of life… it was celebrated in song, and story, and proverb. Its cultivation and treatment called for the utmost care and ingenuity, and were accompanied by the strictest and most elaborate religious observances.”
The timing of planting in spring was conditioned by a conjunction of stars and the moon, and invocations were made to the god Pani for a bountiful crop. The light, sandy soil was broken up by small teams of men rhythmically using the k¯o (a digging stick with an attached foot rest), and then the tubers were planted in mounds of nurtured soil mixed with sand and fine gravel to ensure drainage and retain heat. Harvesting was in late autumn, before the first frost.
While the k¯o was most commonly used in gardening, other wooden implements have been discovered. Some,
In the absence of native plants rich in carbohydrates, the people who became Maori needed the kumara to thrive.
like the paddle-shaped ketu, were also used in gardens but other more shovel-shaped implements were most likely used to create earthworks in p¯a construction.
In places where k¯umara did not grow – the South Island below Banks Peninsula – M¯aori lived as hunters and gatherers.
Soon after Captain Cook arrived on the east coast of the North Island, the Endeavour visited what was almost certainly Anaura Bay where the ship’s surgeon, William Brougham Monkhouse, wrote in his journal: “We had an opportunity to examine their Cultivations more at leasure today and found them very far to surpass any idea we had formed of them. The ground is compleatly cleared of all weeds … with as much care as that of our best gardens. The Sweet potatoes [k¯umara] are set in distinct little molehills which ranged in some in straight lines, in others in quincunx. In one Plott I observed these hillocks, at their base, surrounded with dried grass.
“The Arum [taro] is planted in little circular concaves, exactly in the manner our gardeners plant Melons… The yams are planted in like manner with the sweet potatoes: these cultivations are enclosed with a perfectly close pailing of reeds about twenty inches high… It is agreed that there are a hundred acres of ground cultivated in this Bay...”
Polynesian pigs were common around the Pacific islands but never reached this country. Pigs were introduced by Cook and other early European visitors and many took to the bush, which meant M¯aori gardens needed higher and stronger fences – as Samuel Marsden noted in 1814 when he was guest of Hongi Hika: “… one field which appeared to me to contain forty acres [was] all fenced in with rails and upright stakes tied to them to keep out the pigs.” Before that, the lower reed fences were designed to keep out the p¯ukeko.
New Zealand was lucky to get London Missionary Society men. They were artisans trained as missionaries rather than solely men
of God. Marsden, the London Missionary Society head based in Sydney, believed that assisting M¯aori in using the technology of the time for their material and worldly benefit was a sensible way to introduce them to a Christian, “civilised” way of life.
By the time Charles Darwin visited the Bay of Islands in 1835, about the only praise he could bestow on the country was for its gardens at Waimate. “… fine crops of barley and wheat in full ear, and others of potatoes and of clover, were standing; … there were large gardens with every fruit and vegetable which England produces… I may instance asparagus, kidney beans, cucumbers, rhubarb, apples and pears, figs, peaches, apricots, grapes, olives, gooseberries, currants, hops, gorse for fences and English oaks.”
The reference to asparagus is interesting. It had pretty well disappeared from the New Zealand diet until the 1950s when some entrepreneurial horticulturists fed a suddenly discovered market. It was neglected probably because it takes three years for a plot to develop for full harvesting – a long time for someone investing in larger-scale horticulture and for home gardeners who dominated the domestic supply of vegetables. Also, it is a vegetable that is quickly perishable.
Darwin also noted that it wasn’t the sweat of the missionaries but “native workmanship” that “effected this change” from fern to farm. “The house has been built, the windows framed, the fields ploughed, even the trees grafted by the New Zealander. At the mill a New Zealander may be seen powdered white with flour, like his brother miller in England."
M¯aori immediately took to the prolific potato with its potential of two crops a year, and could see the new fruit and vegetables growing before their eyes. But, according to Marsden, their ignorance of grains led to confusion
when wheat was first planted in the Bay of Islands: “… before it was ripe many of them became impatient for the produce, and as they expected to find the grain at the root of the stems, like their potato crops, and finding, on examination, that there was no wheat under the surface, they all, with the exception of Shunghee [Hongi Hika, who had travelled a great deal] pulled it up and burnt it.”
Green vegetables were represented by a narrow selection of flora for pre-European M¯aori. Some native plants were prevalent in the wild so they needed no cultivation. Among them was p¯uh¯a (rauriki). Young p¯uh¯a plants are best and need to be cooked to remove bitterness. Puh¯a is rich in vitamins A, B and C, and in dietary fibre.
Although M¯aori have continued to cultivate k¯umara, it’s not hard to imagine their enthusiasm for the fruits and vegetables that came with the Europeans, including the big red and yellow k¯umara varieties. By the late 1840s, M¯aori had mastered the cultivation of potatoes, wheat, maize and peaches and, especially in Taranaki and the Waikato, they had developed trade that kept P¯akeh¯a fed in New Zealand and exported food to New South Wales.
In March 1849, Governor George Grey visited the Waikato and Waipa, and reported to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London: “I have never seen a more thriving or contented population in any part of the world.”
He was “both surprised and gratified at the rapid advances in civilization that the natives of that part of New Zealand have made during the last two years … two flour mills had already been built at their sole cost and another was in course of erection. The natives of that district grow wheat extensively; at one place alone the estimated extent of land under wheat is 1000 acres (405 hectares). They have also good orchards … extensive cultivations of Indian corn, potatoes, etc., and they have acquired a considerable number of horses and horned stock.”
Later, journalist and historian James Cowan wrote that the M¯aori Eden continued until the beginning of the 1860s. “Long before the Waikato war, travellers [to Te Awamutu, Rangiaowhia, Kihikihi and Oˉr¯akau] found there to their astonishment many beautiful settlements, with large fields of wheat, potatoes and maize, and dwellings arranged in neat streets, shaded by groves of peach and apple trees. Each large village had its water-driven flour-mill
Some native plants were prevalent in the wild and needed no cultivation. Among them was puha, which are best cooked to remove bitterness.
procured by the community.” He said M¯aori were doing great business selling flour, maize, pigs, fruit and dressed flax in Auckland, with fully laden canoes moving down the main route, the Waiuku River, and across the Manukau Harbour to Onehunga.
The surge of migration from Britain from the 1860s built pressure for land for the newcomers. It was a time when land ownership in the Colony promised status and a chance for prosperity to the many immigrants, especially English farm workers who had been unemployed, and Scots who were victims of the Clearances. The pressure of numbers proved irresistible and the British Government, aided by Grey, gradually dispossessed M¯aori of their most productive land.
Of the new fruits, M¯aori most loved peaches. The trees spread quickly around the North Island. It is a sharp irony that one of the defining battles between M¯aori and the British Army, the Battle of Oˉr¯akau, in 1864, was fought in a peach grove.