Maori Religion and Mythology

Chapter ii. contains a tradition as to Maori Cosmogony more particular in some details than I have ever met with elsewhere. My informant had been educated to become a tohunga; but had afterwards become a professing Christian. The narrative took place at night unknown to any of his people, and under promise that I would not read what I wrote to any of his people. When after some years I re-visited New Zealand, I learnt that he had died soon after I left, and that his death was attributed to the anger of the Atua of his family due to his having, as they expressed it, trampled on the tapu by making noa or public things sacred—he having himself confessed what he no doubt believed to be the cause of his illness.