Nuku-mai-tore

What it is

The Nuku-mai-tore are spirits of the forest in Māori mythology. They appear in the story of Tura, a man who sails with the canoe party of Whiro. When the canoe runs into a whirlpool, Tura takes hold of the branches of a tree that hang over the water and escapes, and he comes to live among the Nuku-mai-tore. He stays long enough to change their way of life: he teaches them how to make and use fire, how to cook food, and the natural way of childbirth, along with the rites that go with a birth. The tale presents them as a forest people who lived without these human arts until a newcomer brought them. Writers on myth have set them beside other hidden forest peoples of the Pacific, such as the Patupaiarehe, the Menehune, the Taotao Mona and the Anito.

Where it comes from

The Nuku-mai-tore belong to the mythology of the Māori, the people of New Zealand. Their story is carried by the tale of Tura, and it reached print through nineteenth-century collection. John White published it in The Ancient History of the Maori, a six-volume compilation issued by the Government Printer at Wellington between 1887 and 1891. The subject is also cited in Martha Beckwith's Hawaiian Mythology, published at Honolulu in 1970, which is drawn on for the wider Pacific setting of the story. Within the narrative itself, the forest people are met by chance: a voyaging canoe, a whirlpool, and a man who saves himself in a tree and stays.

Peoples and places

The spirits belong to Māori tradition in New Zealand. Within that tradition they are not the only wild folk of the bush: the Patupaiarehe are another forest people, and the two are told of separately. Writers who compare stories across the Pacific have placed the Nuku-mai-tore in a wider company that includes the Menehune, the Taotao Mona and the Anito, figures named for other islands. The common shape is a secluded people of wild places, encountered by a human visitor who may end up living among them, as Tura does. Their distinguishing mark in the Māori tale is what they receive: fire, cooked food and the rites of birth come to them from outside.

What people believe

The story rests on a world in which the forest holds inhabitants of its own, spirits who live apart from humankind. These dwellers are shown as lacking the markers of human life as the tellers knew it: fire and cooked food, and birth attended by ceremony. Tura's arrival supplies all three, and his teaching draws the line between life in the bush and the ways of the voyaging people. The whirlpool that seizes Whiro's canoe and the tree that saves Tura mark the crossing between the two worlds, the open sea and the hidden forest, where a castaway may settle and give a spirit people the arts of humans.

How scholars and sceptics see it

The Nuku-mai-tore reach readers chiefly through collected publication. John White's The Ancient History of the Maori, six volumes printed at Wellington from 1887 to 1891, preserves the Tura narrative in English. Martha Beckwith's Hawaiian Mythology, issued at Honolulu in 1970, is cited for the subject as well, placing the Māori spirits in a comparative frame with Hawaiian traditions. In such scholarship the Nuku-mai-tore are read as narrative beings of Māori myth, set alongside kindred forest and hidden peoples of the Pacific.

Compare and confuse

In Māori tradition the Patupaiarehe are named alongside them, another hidden people of the bush. Writers list the Nuku-mai-tore beside the Menehune, the Taotao Mona and the Anito, spirit peoples named in other island traditions. The likeness lies in the pattern, a secluded folk of the wild met by a human visitor, rather than in a shared story line.

Questions people ask about Nuku-mai-tore

Good reading and sources

• Nuku-mai-tore on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data