Without flocks and herds or domestic fowls, theirs was the constant toil of the cultivator. Their taro and their k.u.mara fields had to be dug, and dug thoroughly with wooden spades. Long-handled and pointed at the end, these implements resembled stilts with a cross-bar about eighteen inches from the ground on which the digger's foot rested. Two men worked them together. The women did not dig the fields, but theirs was the labour almost as severe of carrying on their backs the heavy baskets of gravel to scatter over the soil of the plantations.

Almost the only staple article of Maori vegetable food which grew wild and profusely was the fern or bracken _(pteris aquilina_ var.

_esculenta_), which indeed was found on every hill and moor and in every glade, at any rate in the North Island. But the preparation of the fibrous root was tedious, calling as it did for various processes of drying and pounding.

Fishing involved not only the catching of fish, but the manufacture of seine nets, sometimes half a mile long, of eel-weirs, lines made of the fibre of the native flax, and of fish-hooks of bone or tough crooked wood barbed with human bone. The human skeleton was also laid under contribution for the material of skewers, needles and flutes.

The infinite patience and delicacy requisite in their bird-snaring and spearing are almost beyond the conception of the civilized townsmen untrained in wood-craft. To begin with, they had to make the slender bird spears, thirty feet long, out of the light wood of the _tawa_ tree. A single tree could provide no more than two spears, and the making of them--with stone tools of course--took many months. Think of the dexterity, coolness and stealth required to manage such a weapon in a jungle so dense and tangled that white sportsmen often find a difficulty in handling their guns there! The silent adroitness needed to approach and spear the wild parrot or wood-pigeon without stirring the branch of a tree would alone require a long apprenticeship to wood-craft.

Maori house-building showed a knowledge of architecture decidedly above that of the builders of Kaffir kraals, to say nothing of the lairs of the Australian blacks. The poorest huts were definitely planned and securely built. The shape was oblong, the walls low, the roof high pitched and disproportionately large, though not so much so as in some of the South Sea Islands. The framework was of the durable totara-wood, the lining of reeds, the outside of dried rushes. At the end turned to the sunshine was a kind of verandah, on to which opened the solitary door and window, both low and small. The floor was usually sunk below ground, and Maori builders knew of no such thing as a chimney. Though neither cooking nor eating was done in their dwelling-houses, and offal of all kinds was carefully kept at a decent distance, the atmosphere in their dim, stifling interiors was as a rule unendurable by White noses and lungs. Even their largest tribal or meeting halls had but the one door and window; the Maori mind seemed as incapable of adding thereto, as of constructing more than one room under a single roof. On the other hand, the dyed patterns on the reed wainscoting, and the carvings on the posts, lintel and boards, showed real beauty and a true sense of line and curve.

Still less reason is there to find fault with their canoes, the larger of which were not only strangely picturesque, but, urged by as many as a hundred paddles, flew through the water at a fine speed, or under sail made long coasting voyages in seas that are pacific only in name.

To the carving on these crafts the savage artists added decoration by red ochre, strips of dyed flax, gay feathers and mother-o'-pearl. Both the building of the canoes and their adornment entailed long months of labour. So did the dressing of the fibre of the flax and palm-lily, and the weaving therefrom of "mats" or mantles, and of kirtles. Yet the making of such ordinary clothing was simple indeed compared to the manufacture of a chief's full dress mat of _kiwi_ feathers. The soft, hairy-looking plumage of the _kiwi_ (apteryx) is so fine, each feather so minute, that one mantle would occupy a first-rate artist for two years. Many of these mantles, whether of flax, feathers or dog-skin, were quaintly beautiful as well as warm and waterproof.

Nor did Maori skill confine itself to ornamenting the clothing of man. The human skin supplied a fresh and peculiar field for durable decoration. This branch of art, that of Moko or tattooing, they carried to a grotesque perfection. Among the many legends concerning their demi-G.o.d Maui, a certain story tells how he showed them the way to tattoo by puncturing the muzzle of a dog, whence dogs went with black muzzles as men see them now. For many generations the patterns cut and p.r.i.c.ked on the human face and body were faithful imitations of what were believed to be Maui's designs. They were composed of straight lines, angles, and cross-cuts. Later the hero Mataora taught a more graceful style which dealt in curves, spirals, volutes and scroll-work. Apart from legend it is a matter of reasonable cert.i.tude that the Maoris brought tattooing with them from Polynesia. Their marking instruments were virtually the same as those of their tropical cousins; both, for instance, before the iron age of the nineteenth century, often used the wing-bones of sea-birds to make their tiny chisels. Both observed the law of _tapu_ under which the male patients, while undergoing the process of puncturing, were sacred, immensely to their own inconvenience, for they had to dwell apart, and might not even touch food with their hands. As to the source of the peculiar patterns used by the New Zealanders, they probably have some relation with the admirable wood-carving before mentioned. Either the Moko artists copied the style of the skilful carvers of panels, door-posts, clubs, and the figure-heads on the prows of canoes, or the wood-carvers borrowed and reproduced the lines and curves of the Moko.

The inspiration of the patterns, whether on wood or skin, may be found in the spirals of sea-sh.e.l.ls, the tracery on the skin of lizards and the bark of trees, and even, it may be, in the curious fluting and natural scroll-work on the tall cliffs of the calcareous clay called _papa_.

But, however the Moko artist learned his designs, he was a painstaking and conscientious craftsman in imprinting them on his subject. No black-and-white draughtsman of our time, no wood-cutter, etcher, or line-engraver, worked with slower deliberation. The outlines were first drawn with charcoal or red ochre. Thus was the accuracy of curve and scroll-work ensured. Then, inch by inch, the lines were cut or p.r.i.c.ked out on the quivering, but unflinching, human copper-plate.

The blood was wiped away and the _narahu_ (blue dye) infused. In the course of weeks, months, or years, as leisure, wealth, or endurance permitted, the work was completed. In no other society did the artist have his patron so completely at his mercy. Not only was a Moko expert of true ability a rarity for whose services there was always an "effective demand," but, if not well paid for his labours, the tattooer could make his sitter suffer in more ways than one. He could adroitly increase the acute anguish which had, as a point of honour, to be endured without cry or complaint; or he could coolly bungle the execution of the design, or leave it unfinished, and betake himself to a more generous customer. A well-known tattooing chant deals with the subject entirely from the artist's standpoint, and emphasises the business principles upon which he went to work. It was this song that Alfred Domett (Robert Browning's Waring) must have had in his mind when, in his New Zealand poem, he thus described the Moko on the face of the chief Tangi-Moana:--

"And finer, closer spirals of dark blue Were never seen than in his cheek's tattoo; Fine as if engine turned those cheeks declared No cost to fee the artist had been spared; That many a basket of good maize had made That craftsman careful how he tapped his blade, And many a greenstone trinket had been given To get his chisel-flint so deftly driven."

When, however, the slow and costly agony was over, the owner of an unusually well-executed face became a superior person. He united in himself the virtues and vices of a chieftain of high degree (shown by the elaborateness of his face pattern), of a tribal dandy, of a brave man able to endure pain, of the owner of a unique picture, and of an acknowledged art critic. In the rigid-looking mask, moreover, which had now taken the place of his natural face were certain lines by which any one of his fellow-tribesmen could identify him living or dead. In this way the heads of Maori chiefs have been recognised even in the gla.s.s cases of museums. On some of the earlier deeds and agreements between White and Maori, a chief would sign or make his mark by means of a rough reproduction of his special Moko.

The Maori _pas_ or stockaded and intrenched villages, usually perched on cliffs and jutting points overhanging river or sea, were defended by a double palisade, the outer fence of stout stakes, the inner of high solid trunks. Between them was a shallow ditch. Platforms as much as forty feet high supplied coigns of vantage for the look-out.

Thence, too, darts and stones could be hurled at the besiegers. With the help of a throwing-stick, or rather whip, wooden spears could be thrown in the sieges more than a hundred yards. Ignorant of the bow-and-arrow and the boomerang, the Maoris knew and used the sling.

With it red-hot stones would be hurled over the palisades, among the rush-thatched huts of an a.s.saulted village, a stratagem all the more difficult to cope with as Maori _pas_ seldom contained wells or springs of water. The courage and cunning developed in the almost incessant tribal feuds were extraordinary. Competent observers thought the Maoris of two generations ago the most warlike and ferocious race on earth. Though not seldom guilty of wild cruelty to enemies, they did not make a business of cold-blooded torture after the devilish fashion of the North American Indians. Chivalrous on occasion, they would sometimes send warning to the foe, naming the day of an intended attack, and abide thereby. They would supply a starving garrison with provisions in order that an impending conflict might be a fair trial of strength. War was to them something more dignified than a mere lawless struggle. It was a solemn game to be played according to rules as rigidly laid down and often as honourably adhered to as in the international cricket and football matches of Englishmen and Australians.

As is so often the case with fighting races capable of cruelty, they were strictly courteous in their intercourse with strangers. Indeed, their code of manners to visitors was so exact and elaborate as to leave an impression of artificiality. No party of wayfarers would approach a _pa_ without giving formal notice. When the strangers were received, they had the best of everything, and the hosts, who saw that they were abundantly supplied, had too much delicacy to watch them eat. Maori breeding went so far as to avoid in converse words or topics likely to be disagreeable to their hearers.

Their feeling for beauty was shown not merely in their art, but in selecting the sites of dwelling-places, and in a fondness for shady shrubs and trees about their huts and for the forest-flowers. The natural images and similes so common in their wild, abrupt, unrhymed chants and songs showed how closely they watched and sympathised with nature. The h.o.a.r-frost, which vanishes with the sunrise, stood with them for ephemeral fame. Rank without power was "a fountain without water." The rushing stream reminded the Maori singer, as it did the Mantuan, of the remorseless current of life and human fate.

"But who can check life's stream?

Or turn its waters back?

'Tis past,"

cried a father mourning for his dead son. In another lament a grieving mother is compared to the drooping fronds of the tree-fern. The maiden keeping tryst bids the light fleecy cloudlets, which in New Zealand so often scud across the sky before the sea-wind, to be messengers to her laggard gallant.

"The sun grows dim and hastes away As a woman from the scene of battle,"

says the lament for a dead chief.[1] The very names given to hills, lakes, and rivers will be witnesses in future days of the poetic instinct of the Maori--perhaps the last destined to remain in his land. Such names are the expressive Wai-orongo-mai (Hear me, ye waters!); Puke-aruhe (ferny hill); Wai-rarapa (glittering water); Maunga-tapu (sacred mount); Ao-rere (flying cloud). Last, but not least, there is the lordly Ao-rangi (Cloud in the heavens), over which we have plastered the plain and practical "Mount Cook."

[Footnote 1: The Maori is deeply imbued with the poetry of the woods.

His commonest phraseology shows it. 'The month when the pohutu-kawa flowers'; 'the season when the kowhai is in bloom'; so he punctuates time. And the years that are gone he softly names' dead leaves!'--HAY, _Brighter Britain_.]

Many of the Maori chiefs were, and some even now are, masterly rhetoricians. The bent of the race was always strongly to controversy and discussion. Their ignorance of any description of writing made them cultivate debate. Their complacent indifference to time made deliberative a.s.sembly a prolonged, never-wearying joy. The chiefs met in council like Homer's heroes--the commons sitting round and muttering guttural applause or dissent. The speeches abounded in short sententious utterances, in proverbs, poetic allusions and metaphors borrowed from legends. The Maori orator dealt in quotations as freely as the author of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, and his hearers caught them with as much relish as that of a House of Commons of Georgian days enjoying an apt pa.s.sage from the cla.s.sics. Draped in kilt and mantle, with spear or carved staff of office in the right hand, the speakers were manly and dignified figures. The fire and force of their rhetoric were not only aided by graceful gesture but were set out in a language worthy of the eloquent. If we cannot say of the Maori tongue as Gibbon said of Greek, that it "can give a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the abstractions of philosophy," we can at any rate claim for it that it is a musical and vigorous speech. Full of vowel-sounds, entirely without sibilants, but rich in guttural and chest notes, it may be made at will to sound liquid or virile, soft or ringing.

The seamy side of Maori life, as of all savage life, was patent to the most unimaginative observer. The traveller found it not easy to dwell on the dignity, poetry and bravery of a race which contemned washing, and lived, for the most part, in noisome hovels. A chief might be an orator and skilled captain, but, squatting on the ground, smeared with oil, daubed with red ochre and grimly tattooed, he probably impressed the white visitor chiefly as an example of dirt and covetousness. The traveller might be hospitably entertained in a _pa_ the gate of which was decorated with the smoke-dried heads of slain enemies by a host whose dress might include a necklace of human teeth,[1] the owner of which he had helped to eat. Though a cannibal feast was a rare orgie, putrid food was a common dainty. Without the cringing manner of the Oriental, the Maori had his full share of deceitfulness. Elaborate treachery is constantly met with in the accounts of their wars. If adultery was rare, chast.i.ty among the single women was rarer still.

The affection of parents for young children was requited by no kindness on the part of youth for old age. Carving never rose higher than grotesque decoration. The attempts at portraying the human face or form resulted only in the monstrous and the obscene.

[Footnote 1: At any rate among the Ngatiporou tribe.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MAORI MAIDEN

Photo by ILES, Thames]

The Maori men are as a rule tall and bulky, long-bodied and short-legged, and with fairly large pyramidal skulls, showing well-developed perceptive faculties. Their colour varies from maize to dusky olive, and their features from cla.s.sic to negroid; but usually the nose, though not flat, is wide, and the mouth, though not blubber-lipped, is heavy and sensual. Shorter and more coa.r.s.ely built than the males, the women, even when young, are less attractive to the European eye, despite their bright glances and black, abundant hair.

It might well be thought that this muscular, bulky race, with ample room to spread about a fertile and exceptionally healthy country, would have increased and multiplied till it had filled both islands.

It did not, however. It is doubtful whether it ever numbered more than a hundred and fifty thousand. Except on the sh.o.r.es of Cook's Straits, it only planted a few scattered outposts in the South Island. Yet that is the larger island of the two. It is also the colder, and therein lies at least one secret of the check to the Maori increase. They were a tropical race transplanted into a temperate climate. They showed much the same tendency to cling to the North Island as the negroes in North America to herd in the Gulf States. Their dress, their food and their ways were those of dwellers on sh.o.r.es out of reach of frost and snow. Though of stout and robust figure, they are almost always weak in the chest and throat. Should the Maoris die out, the medical verdict might be summed up in the one word tuberculosis.

The first European observers noted that they suffered from "galloping"

consumption. Skin disorders, rheumatism and a severe kind of influenza were other ailments.

In the absence equally of morality and medical knowledge among their unmarried women, it did not take many years after the appearance of the Whites to taint the race throughout with certain diseases. A cold-blooded pa.s.sage in Crozet's journal tells of the beginning of this curse. Though not altogether unskilful surgeons, the Maoris knew virtually nothing of medicine. Nor do they show much nervous power when attacked by disease. Cheerful and sociable when in health, they droop quickly when ill, and seem sometimes to die from sheer lack of the will to live. Bright and imaginative almost as the Kelts of Europe, their spirits are easily affected by superst.i.tious dread.

Authentic cases are known of a healthy Maori giving up the ghost through believing himself to be doomed by a wizard.

There are, however, other evil influences under which this attractive and interesting people are fading away. Though no longer savages, they have never become thoroughly civilized. Partial civilization has been a blight to their national life. It has ruined the efficacy of their tribal system without replacing it with any equal moral force and industrial stimulus. It has deprived them of the main excitement of their lives--their tribal wars--and given them no spur to exertion by way of a subst.i.tute. It has fatally wounded their pride and self-respect, and has not given them objects of ambition or preserved their ancient habits of labour and self-restraint. A hundred years ago the tribes were organized and disciplined communities. No family or able-bodied unit need starve or lack shelter; the humblest could count on the most open-handed hospitality from his fellows. The tribal territory was the property of all. The tilling, the fishing, the fowling were work which could not be neglected. The chief was not a despot, but the president of a council, and in war would not be given the command unless he was the most capable captain. Every man was a soldier, and, under the perpetual stress of possible war, had to be a trained, self-denying athlete. The _pas_ were, for defensive reasons, built on the highest and therefore the healthiest positions. The ditches, the palisades, the terraces of these forts were constructed with great labour as well as no small skill. The fighting was hand to hand. The wielding of their weapons--the wooden spear, the club, the quaint _mere_[1] and the stone tomahawk--required strength and endurance as well as a skill only to be obtained by hard practice. The very sports and dances of the Maori were such as only the active and vigorous could excel in. Slaves were there, but not enough to relieve the freemen from the necessity for hard work. Strange sacred customs, such as _tapu_ (vulgarly Anglicized as taboo) and _muru_, laughable as they seem to us, tended to preserve public health, to ensure respect for authority, and to prevent any undue acc.u.mulation of goods and chattels in the hands of one man. Under the law of _muru_ a man smitten by sudden calamity was politely plundered of all his possessions. It was the principle under which the wounded shark is torn to pieces by its fellows, and under which the merchant wrecked on the Cornish coast in bye-gone days was stripped of anything the waves had spared. Among the Maoris, however, it was at once a social duty and a personal compliment. If a man's hut caught fire his dearest friends cl.u.s.tered round like bees, rescued all they could from the flames, and--kept it. It is on record that a party about to pay a friendly visit to a neighbour village were upset in their canoe as they were paddling in through the surf. The canoe was at once claimed by the village chief--their host. Moreover they would have been insulted if he had not claimed it. Of course, he who lost by _muru_ one week might be able to repay himself the next.

[Footnote 1: Tasman thought the mere resembled the _parang_, or heavy, broad-bladed knife, of the Malays. Others liken it to a paddle, and matter-of-fact colonists to a tennis-racket or a soda-water bottle flattened.]

Certain colonial writers have exhausted their powers ridicule--no very difficult task--upon what they inaccurately call Maori communism. But the system, in full working order, at least developed the finest race of savages the world has seen, and taught them barbaric virtues which have won from their white supplanters not only respect but liking.

The average colonist regards a Mongolian with repulsion, a Negro with contempt, and looks on an Australian black as very near to a wild beast; but he likes the Maoris, and is sorry that they are dying out.

No doubt the remnants of the Maori tribal system are useless, and perhaps worse than useless. The tribes still own land in common, and much of it. They might be very wealthy landlords if they cared to lease their estates on the best terms they could bargain for. As it is, they receive yearly very large sums in rent. They could be rich farmers if they cared to master the science of farming. They have brains to learn more difficult things. They might be healthy men and women if they would accept the teachings of sanitary science as sincerely as they took in the religious teachings of the early missionaries. If they could be made to realize that foul air, insufficient dress, putrid food, alternations of feast and famine, and long bouts of sedulous idleness are destroying them as a people and need not do so, then their decay might be arrested and the fair hopes of the missionary pioneers yet be justified. So long as they soak maize in the streams until it is rotten and eat it together with dried shark--food the merest whiff of which will make a white man sick; so long as they will wear a suit of clothes one day and a tattered blanket the next, and sit smoking crowded in huts, the reek of which strikes you like a blow in the face; so long as they will cl.u.s.ter round dead bodies during their _tangis_ or wakes; so long as they will ignore drainage--just so long will they remain a blighted and dwindling race, and observers without eyes will talk as though there was something fateful and mysterious in their decline. One ray of hope for them has quite lately been noted. They are caring more for the education of their children. Some three thousand of these now go to school, not always irregularly. Very quaint scholars are the dark-eyed, quick-glancing, brown-skinned little people sitting tied "to that dry drudgery at the desk's dull wood," which, if heredity counts for anything, must be so much harder to them than to the children of the _Pakeha_.[1] Three years ago the Government re-organized the native schools, had the children taught sanitary lessons with the help of magic lanterns, and gave power to committees of native villagers to prosecute the parents of truants. The result has been a prompt, marked and growing improvement in the attendance and the general interest. Better still, the educated Maori youths are awakening to the sad plight of their people. Pathetic as their regrets are, the healthy discontent they show may lead to better things.

[Footnote 1: Foreigner.]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Chapter III

THE MAORI AND THE UNSEEN

"Dreaming caves Full of the groping of bewildered waves."

The Maori mind conceived of the Universe as divided into three regions--the Heavens above, the Earth beneath, and the Darkness under the Earth. To Rangi, the Heaven, the privileged souls of chiefs and priests returned after death, for from Rangi had come down their ancestors the G.o.ds, the fathers of the heroes. For the souls of the common people there was in prospect no such lofty and serene abode.

They could not hope to climb after death to the tenth heaven, where dwelt Rehua, the Lord of Loving-kindness, attended by an innumerable host. Ancient of days was Rehua, with streaming hair. The lightning flashed from his arm-pits, great was his power, and to him the sick, the blind, and the sorrowful might pray.

It was not the upper world of Ao or Light, but an under world of Po or Darkness, to which the spirit of the unprivileged Maori must take its way. Nor was the descent to Te Reinga or Hades a _facilis descensus Averni_. After the death-chant had ceased, and the soul had left the body--left it lying surrounded by weeping blood-relations marshalled in due order--it started on a long journey. Among the Maoris the dead were laid with feet pointing to the north, as it was thither that the soul's road lay. At the extreme north end of New Zealand was a spot _Muri Whenua_--Land's End. Here was the Spirits' Leap. To that the soul travelled, halting once and again on the hill-tops to strip off the green leaves in which the mourners had clad it. Here and there by the wayside some lingering ghost would tie a knot in the ribbon-like leaves of the flax plant--such knots as foreigners hold to be made by the whipping of the wind. As the souls gathered at their goal, nature's sounds were hushed. The roar of the waterfall, the sea's dashing, the sigh of the wind in the trees, all were silenced. At the Spirits' Leap on the verge of a tall cliff grew a lonely tree, with brown, spreading branches, dark leaves and red flowers. The name of the tree was Spray-Sprinkled.[1] One of its roots hung down over the cliff's face to the mouth of a cavern fringed by much sea-weed, floating or dripping on the heaving sea. Pausing for a moment the reluctant shades chanted a farewell to their fellow-men and danced a last war-dance. Amid the wild yells of the invisible dancers could be heard the barking of their dogs. Then, sliding down the roots, the spirits disappeared in the cave. Within its recesses was a river flowing between sandy sh.o.r.es. All were impelled to cross it. The Charon of this Styx was no man, but a ferrywoman called Rohe. Any soul whom she carried over and who ate the food offered to it on the further bank was doomed to abide in Hades. Any spirit who refused returned to its body on earth and awoke. This is the meaning of what White men call a trance.

[Footnote 1: _Pohutu-kawa_.]

As there were successive planes and heights in Heaven, so there were depths below depths in the Underworld. In the lowest and darkest the soul lost consciousness, became a worm, and returning to earth, died there. Eternal life was the lot of only the select few who ascended to Rangi.

Yet once upon a time there was going and coming between earth and the place of darkness, as the legend of the origin of the later style of tattooing shows. Thus the story runs. The hero Mata-ora had to wife the beautiful Niwa Reka. One day for some slight cause he struck her, and, leaving him in anger, she fled to her father, who dwelt in the Underworld. Thither followed the repentant Mata-ora. On his way he asked the fan-tail bird whether it had seen a human being pa.s.s. Yes, a woman had gone by downcast and sobbing. Holding on his way, Mata-ora met his father-in-law, who, looking in his face, complained that he was badly tattooed. Pa.s.sing his hand over Mata-ora's face he wiped out with his divine power the blue lines there, and then had him thrown down on the ground and tattooed in a novel, more artistic and exquisitely agonizing fashion. Mata-ora in his pain chanted a song calling upon his wife's name. Report of this was carried to Niwa Reka, and her heart was touched. She forgave her husband, and nursed him through the fever caused by the tattooing. Happier than Orpheus and Eurydice, the pair returned to earth and taught men to copy the patterns punctured on Mata-ora's face. But, alas! in their joy they forgot to pay to Ku Whata Whata, the mysterious janitor of Hades, Niwa Reka's cloak as fee. So a message was sent up to them that henceforth no man should be permitted to return to earth from the place of darkness. In the age of the heroes not only the realms below but the realms above could be reached by the daring. Hear the tale of Tawhaki, the Maori Endymion! When young he became famous by many feats, among others, by destroying the submarine stronghold of a race of sea-folk who had carried off his mother. Into their abode he let a flood of sunshine, and they, being children of the darkness, withered and died in the light. The fame of Tawhaki rose to the skies, and one of the daughters of heaven stole down to behold him at night, vanishing away at dawn. At last the celestial one became his wife. But he was not pleased with the daughter she bore him and, wounded by his words, she withdrew with her child to the skies. Tawhaki in his grief remembered that she had told him the road thither. He must find a certain tendril of a wild vine which, hanging down from the sky to earth, had become rooted in the ground. Therefore with his brother the hero set out on the quest, and duly found the creeper. But there were two tendrils.