In Māori mythology, Rongo is a major god, the god of cultivated food, especially the kūmara, a vital food crop. Other food crops cultivated by Māori in traditional times include taro, yams (uwhi), cordyline (tī), and gourds (hue). Because of their tropical origin, most of these crops were difficult to grow except in the far north of New Zealand. Hence the importance of Rongo.
In "Mangaian society", the "ritual system" to become "the principal chief, Te Mangaia," "emphasized the worship of Rongo" (Kirch 29).[3] "The installation of a new Te Mangaia after a war of conquest of the puna lands required a human sacrifice to the god Rongo at his principal temple of Orongo. Rongo was both the god of war and the god of taro irrigation; his regular peacetime offerings were parcels of cooked taro" (Kirch 28).[3]
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Rongo, with his brothers Tū, Tāne, Tāwhirimātea, Tangaroa and Haumia-tiketike, separated the primordial parents Rangi and Papa to allow daylight into the world. Tāwhirimātea, the god of storms, did not consent to this plan and afterwards attacked his brothers with unrelenting fury. Rongo and Haumia, the god of wild food, took refuge in the body of Papa, mother earth, who hid them until the storm passed (Grey 1956:7, Tregear 1891:424,Orbell 1998:121).
In the Māori language, ‘rongo’ means peace. Rongo is generally portrayed as the creator of the kūmara, a plant associated with peace (probably because the intense cultivation it needed was best performed in times of peace). In Ngāti Awa traditions, Rongo is a son of Tāne and father of the kūmara, but a man named Rongo-māui travels to the star Whānui, obtains the kūmara and returns to Earth with it.[1]
Small statues representing Rongo were once placed alongside kumara fields.[2]
3. "Natural Experiments of History", The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010