The Patupaiarehe: The Mist People of the New Zealand Mountains
When the mist comes down on Mount Pirongia — and it comes often, sliding over the forested ridges of the old volcano until the whole mountain wears a hood — the people of the Waikato had a name for what was happening. The mountain was not clouding over. It was closing its doors . For inside that mist, on Pirongia and on a dozen other high places of Aotearoa New Zealand — Moehau at the tip of the Coromandel, the deep ranges of Te Urewera, the hills above the lakes — lived the patupaiarehe: the mist people, the fairy tribes of the mountains, who were in the land, some traditions say, before anyone else was. They are tall in some accounts and slight in others, but on the essentials the old authorities agree: their skin is pale — pale as moonlight, never marked with tattoo, for the tattooist's art belongs to the children of the sun and the patupaiarehe are not that; their hair is urukehu — reddish, golden, the color that flickers even now down Māori family lines and was explained by ...