tawhiti, or trap. It was a sapling of some tough and elastic timber, matipo for choice. When a suitable one, about ten feet long or so, was found growing in a likely position outside a pa or alongside a bush-track by which the enemy were expected, it would be stripped of its branches, and bent down and back without breaking it, until it was lying in as near as possible a horizontal position, so that it would sweep the road. The end was fastened with flax in such a way that any unsuspecting person marching along the track or approaching the village and touching the trap, would cause the flax to slip, and release the tawhiti. The tree in its rebound could inflict a terrible blow.
In 1866 Bent saw ten or twelve of these tawhiti set on the tracks just outside Te Popoia, a small pa near Keteonetea. The place was attacked by the Government forces in the night, and in the darkness several of the Kupapas, or Government Maoris, who formed the advance guard, were injured by the unexpected release and rebound of these savage traps.[1]
- ↑ Compare this with the ingenious form of "spring-gun" which an English exploring expedition found in use in 1910 amongst the Negrito pigmies on the slopes of the Snow Mountains, in New Guinea. This spring-gun is made by setting a flattened bamboo spear against a bent sapling, fastened to a trigger in such a way that it is released by the passer-by stumbling against an invisible string stretched across a game-track. These hardened bamboo spears inflict serious wounds, as they are launched with considerable force.
