Maero

Also Known As: also māero; māeroero in the South Island, and mohoao as a parallel name in the older records
Region/Culture: Oceania
Mythos: Maori Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: A class of wild beings held to live in the depths of the forest and the high ranges, feared for ambushing anyone who goes in far enough.
Role in Mythos: They are the older tenants of the bush, said to have withdrawn into the deep forest when people arrived from Hawaiki, and hostile ever since.
Relation to Humans: In the North Island the māero were especially feared, and in the South Island rainforests the māeroero were said to pounce on travellers who were not watching. The records name only the fear and almost never the outcome of a meeting.

A curl of smoke on the Tararua tops was enough. Nobody had to see anything, and nobody claimed to. Richard Taylor, writing in the 1850s, recorded that when smoke was noticed rising off those cold ranges it was commonly put down to the maero, and that was where the conversation ended.

The word is careful about where they belong. In Te Aka, the standard dictionary of the language, maero and its longer form māeroero are glossed as beings supposed to inhabit the depths of the forest. Not the margins. Not the clearings a bird-snaring party crosses in an afternoon. The depths. In the North Island the name was māero and the fear attached to it was particular and local; in the rainforests of the South Island the word lengthens to māeroero, and those ones were said to pounce on travellers who were not paying attention. The whole southern spine carries them: Ngā Puke-māeroero, the hills of the māeroero, is the Māori name for the range that maps now call the Southern Alps. An entire mountain chain is named after something nobody could describe properly.

Because describing them is where the record thins out fast. The fullest account belongs to Edward Tregear, who in 1904 set down the mohoao, a name used alongside māero and māeroero, as a very tall, horrible looking man with long yellow hair and teeth like down-bent tusks at the corners of the mouth. Those tusks are the only piece of anatomy anyone commits to. Past them the sources go quiet, and what fills the space is not description but avoidance: routes not taken, ridges not camped on, smoke explained away.

Picture the ordinary version of the encounter, which is a walk. A man on a river-cut track under heavy canopy, wet supplejack catching at his ankles, the light already going green and low at three in the afternoon. West coast bush is loud with water and quiet with everything else, and that is a poor combination for anyone hoping for warning. The track stops feeling like his. Then it stops being his.

One of them has a name, which is rarer than it sounds. A single sentence preserved in the dictionary carries the whole of an encounter: a man was coming home from a journey when his path was cut off by a māeroero called Tamaiwaho. That is all of it. The story stops there. Whatever happened next was either never told or never written down, and the one named individual in the whole class is left standing across a track in perpetuity.

Why they are up in the cold has an answer inside the tradition itself. In the North Island they were said to have pulled back into the forests of Taranaki and Whanganui when people came from Hawaiki, which places them among the older tenants rather than the arrivals, and gives their hostility a shape and a cause. They are not weather. They are aggrieved.

That grievance is also where nineteenth-century European writers got excited, and their names belong on the page rather than behind it. Taylor filed the maero inside a chapter arguing that two races had peopled Polynesia, and read them as the surviving memory of an aboriginal people who had held their independence up in the ranges. He was careful enough to add that the smoke was evidence of their past rather than their present existence. Alongside them he set an account from Ngāti Ruanui: bird-spearers working higher than usual on the forested flank of Taranaki found signs of people at the foot of a large tree, looked up, saw a platform among the branches, climbed to it, and found a house with men, women and children inside, who were promptly killed and cooked. Taylor then reached across the Indian Ocean for the Sumatran orang gugu as a comparison, which tells you a great deal about Taylor and very little about the bush. Tregear raised the same pre-Māori-people notion half a century later and did not stay with it, being more interested in why people believe in such demons at all.

Their powers are the country’s powers, borrowed and pointed at a stranger. They know ground that punishes anyone who does not: blind gullies, greasy roots under moss, scree that moves, mist that arrives inside ten minutes and takes the ridgeline with it. They are tall and strong enough that the accounts assume the result of a meeting instead of narrating it, which is its own kind of description. They wait, and the forest does most of the work for them.

Their limits are that same fact turned over. A māeroero holds the depths and nothing beyond; the moment the bush thins the stories thin with it, and there is no telling in which one of them comes down onto open ground and takes anything. They have been retreating for as long as anyone has been talking about them, first from the low forest into the ranges, then out of the ranges and into the past tense. By the time Taylor was writing it down, a plume of smoke on the Tararuas was already being reported as the trace of something that used to be there.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a maero in Māori tradition?

A maero is one of a class of wild beings said to live in the depths of New Zealand’s forests and high ranges. The Māori dictionary Te Aka glosses māero and māeroero simply as beings supposed to inhabit the depths of the forest. They were feared as ambushers of anyone who travelled far enough into the bush.

What is the difference between māero and māeroero?

They are regional names for the same kind of being. Māero is the North Island name, where these beings were especially feared, while māeroero is used in the South Island rainforests, where they were said to pounce on unwary travellers. A third name, mohoao, appears alongside both in the nineteenth and early twentieth century records.

What does a maero look like?

The older record gives almost no physical detail. The one substantial description, written by Edward Tregear in 1904 and given for the mohoao, is a very tall, horrible looking man with long yellow hair and teeth like down-bent tusks at the corners of the mouth. Beyond that the sources describe the fear of them rather than their bodies.

Why are the maero hostile to people?

In North Island tradition the maero were said to have withdrawn into the forests of Taranaki and Whanganui when people arrived from Hawaiki. That makes them the earlier occupants of the country, pushed back into the deep bush and the ranges, and it is the reason the accounts give for their hostility toward anyone who follows them in.

Are the Southern Alps named after the maero?

Yes. The Māori name Ngā Puke-māeroero, meaning the hills of the māeroero, refers to the range known in English as the Southern Alps. It is a direct trace of the belief in the language of the landscape itself.