Huia - Relationship With Humans - in Culture

In Culture

In Māori culture, the "white heron and the huia were not normally eaten but were rare birds treasured for their precious plumes, worn by people of high rank". The bold and inquisitive nature of the Huia made it particularly easy to capture. Māori attracted the Huia by imitating its call and then captured it with a tari (a carved pole with a noose at the end) or snare, or killed it with clubs or long spears. Often they exploited the strong pair bond by capturing one of a pair, which would then call out, attracting its mate, which could be easily captured. Opinion on the quality of Huia meat as food varied wildly; although not usually hunted for this purpose, the Huia was considered "good eating" in pies or curried stew by some, but a "tough morsel" and "unfit to eat" by others.

Although the Huia's range was restricted to the southern North Island, its tail feathers were valued highly and were exchanged among tribes for other valuable goods such as pounamu and shark teeth, or given as tokens of friendship and respect. Through this trade, the feathers reached the far north and the far south of New Zealand. They were stored in intricately carved boxes called waka huia, which were hung from the ceilings of chiefs' houses. Huia feathers were worn at funerals and used to decorate the heads of the deceased. The marereko, described by Edward Robert Tregear as an "ancient war-plume", consisted of twelve Huia feathers. The highly valued pōhoi was an ornament made from the skin of the Huia: the bird was skinned with the beak, skull and wattles attached and the legs and wings removed, carefully dried, and the resulting ornament worn from the neck or ears. Dried Huia heads were also worn as pendants called ngutu huia. A captured Huia would be kept in a small cage so that its tail feathers could be plucked as they grew to full size.

The bird was also kept by Māori as a pet, and like the Tui, it could be trained to say a few words. There is also a record of a tame Huia kept by European settlers in a small village in the Forty-Mile Bush in the 19th century.

New Zealand has released several postage stamps portraying the Huia, and the New Zealand sixpence circulated from 1933 to 1966 featured a female Huia on the reverse. The degree to which the Huia was known and admired in New Zealand is reflected in the large number of suburban and geographical features which are named after the species. There are several roads and streets named after the Huia in the North Island, with several in Wellington (including Huia Road in Days Bay – not far from where one of the last sightings of this species occurred in the early 1920s in the forests of East Harbour Regional Park) and also in Auckland, where there is even a Huia suburb in Waitakere. A river on the west coast of the South Island and the Huiarau Ranges in the central North Island are also named after the bird. The species was once found living in great abundance in the forests of these mountains: Huiarau means "a hundred Huia". Businesses include the public swimming pool in Lower Hutt, a Marlborough winery, and Huia Publishers, which specialises in Māori writing and perspectives. The name was first given to a child in the late 19th century, to the son of members of a lower North Island iwi concerned about the bird's rapid decline, and although uncommon, it is still used today in New Zealand as a name for girls and more rarely for boys (e.g. Huia Edmonds), of both European and Māori descent.

Tail feathers of the extinct Huia are very rare and they have become a collectors' item. In June 2010 a single Huia tail feather sold at auction in Auckland for NZ$8,000, much higher than the $500 the auctioneers had expected, making it the most expensive feather ever. The previous record price for a single feather was $US2,800 (NZ$4,000) achieved by a Bald Eagle feather at auction in the United States.