Toki (Adze)

Before they became ornamental they were an everyday tool used in cutting and digging. Toki were also lashed to expertly carved wooden shafts and wielded by powerful Māori chiefs during religious ceremonies. These toki were known as toki poutangata.

Our national museum finds that toki poutangata were used on ceremonial occasions, such as the felling of a great tree for a significant waka (canoe) or for the ridgepole of a whare nui or meeting house.

The first chips cut from the tree were taken by the tohunga to a special place where a karakia of thanks was recited to the god of the forest, Tanemahuta, in acknowledgment of the sacrifice of his offspring.

Long greenstone drop pendants are also similar to the toki blade. According to a Maori myth, they represent the tears of crying albatross birds.

In the Ngāti Porou story of how the kumara (sweet potato) came to New Zealand, the ancestor Pourangahua left his wife on the East Coast of New Zealand when he returned to Hawaiki to obtain the tubers. There, his tohunga (priest) Ruakapanga not only gave him baskets containing the kumara tubers but also two sacred birds, to help him return to New Zealand. He instructed Pourangahua that he must give prayers of thanks on his safe arrival back in New Zealand, as well as prayers for the safe return of the sacred birds back to Hawaiki and for a bountiful kumara harvest. However, in his joy at being reunited with his beautiful wife, Pouranahua forgot his instructions. Later, he found the albatross birds weeping, their tears falling onto their breasts. One had been crying so long that its tears were dripping.

These long slender drops are carved in greenstone and known as 'roimata'.