Editing Rongo (section)

==Kūmara==
[[File:Kumara (taputini, ipomoea batatas).jpg|thumb|220px|left|Taputini, a pre-European cultivar kūmara]]
{{see|Sweet potato cultivation in Polynesia}}

He would have had more of an association with the small, yellow-skin, finger-sized variety known as ''hutihuti'', ''rekamaroa'',<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20210411034346/https://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document//Volume_56_1947/Volume_56,_No._4/Original_kumara,_by_Enid_Tapsell,_p_325-332/p1 "Original Kumera"], Enid Tapsell, TJPS</ref> and ''taputini'',<ref>[http://www.openpolytechnic.ac.nz/assets/Marketing/Research/Current-working-papers/MaoriKumara.pdf "A Guide to Growing Pre-European Māori Kumara"], Burtenshaw, M. (2009), The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand</ref> which the Māori had brought with them from eastern [[Polynesia]], rather than larger varieties brought by later sealers, traders, and whalers in the early 19th century.

In the [[Māori language]], ''rongo'' can mean 'peace' (after war).<ref>{{cite web| url=http://maoridictionary.co.nz/word/6887| title=Māori Dictionary search results for 'rongo'| publisher=John C Moorfield| accessdate=3 May 2018}}</ref> 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 [[Vega|Whānui]], from whom he steals the kūmara and returns to Earth with it.<ref>[https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/TPRSNZ1899-32.2.4.1.34#image-tab "Origin of Theft"], Royal Society of New Zealand, 1899</ref>

Small statues representing Rongo were once placed alongside kūmara fields.<ref>[http://teaohou.natlib.govt.nz/journals/teaohou/issue/Mao41TeA/c19.html "Kumaras and Kumara Magic"], Te Ao Hou, 1962</ref>