1840 - Polack, J. S. Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders [Vol. I.] [Capper reprint, 1976] - Chapter II

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CHAPTER II.

THE origin of the aborigines is variously accounted for even by themselves, and their accounts are so much clothed with absurd superstitions us render such stories wholly useless to the antiquary. At best, such researches, though interesting and curious, are certainly not practically useful. In all such traditions the circumstance of their being descended from two distinct races of ancestors, appears to have been forgotten, as it is never alluded to. The Malay or Mulatto tribes invariably assert their physical power over the darker or Papua race, and the latter, intuitively, by their habits and manners, verify the fact. Both races agree in part.

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as to the origin of their mutual country. Mawe, the king of the starry world, it appears, similar in taste to his worshippers as much enamoured of the piscatory art, and one pleasant day he left his terrestrial abode at the Three Kings' Islands (Manawa Tawi ) to pursue his cherished amusement. His efforts for a length of time were unattended with success; he was about to quit the sport in utter despair, when a bite, "very like a whale," changed the intention of the disappointed deity. After much exertion of manual strength, he succeeded, by his powers divine, in raising above the surface of the water a portion of New Zealand; by the aid of some flax-plants that grew indigenous on the seaborn isle, he formed some ropes which he attached to various stars, and by aid of this purchase, he succeeded in raising up the various mountains and lands that now form the country: in so doing, various portions crumbled away that are now traced by the deep indents (bays and rivers) in the land, which from that time has ever been termed AI NO MAWE, the begotten of Mawe. The wonderful fishhook that accomplished this valuable feat (as it is about to prove as an appanage to Great Britain) was placed in a central situation for the admiration of future beholders. This may yet be seen, an islet off Ouridi, in Hawkes' bay, near Cape Kidnapper, lat: 39 degrees 40' S., long: 17 degrees 48' E., called to this day Mattou no Mawe (Fish-hook of Mawe). The native antiquaries are at variance as to the substance

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made use of as bait; some tribes insisting that the divinity accommodated himself with a portion of his own ear, which has induced many of his followers to suppose this auricular feature to have been of inordinate length. Others again assert, that portions of his children answered for this miraculous pursuit, and that the fish-hooks were formed from their jaw-bones. Delighted with the effects of his patience and sport, which far outsped Mawe's most sanguine expectations, for he is invariably described by his historiographers, as a god of infinite phlegm and moderate pretensions, he hastened back to heaven, anxious to calm any agitation in his serail that might have arisen in the fair bosoms of his numerous ladies at his protracted absence. This effected, he hastily returned with his principal dame en chef , Innanui-te-po, who, it would appear, was apprehensive of the substance the wonderful fish-hook might again present to its master. The adventures of Mawe and his ambitious family on earth, bear a great resemblance to the adventures of Jupiter and Juno, Neptune and Proserpine, Mars and Pallas, Pluto and Eolus; the origin of such fables is lost in the gross traditions of the people, but probably they relate to the earliest of the colonial ancestry of the present descendants, who gifted with a portion of the knowledge of the civilized tribes from whom they emanated in Asia, communicated to their children a limited account of those arts and inventions, but, obliged by the

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scarcity of animal and vegetable food in the new country, to devote the principal portion of their time, and that of their children, towards producing sustenance; and deprived of those monuments of art they had been accustomed to view in their own country; and unable to give in idea similar knowledge to their children, which had been familiar to them in substance, the latter gradually sank into the barbarism they have displayed for some centuries past: their superstitions accumulating as each generation was further removed from the earliest inhabitants, whose superior civilization, which they had imperfectly disseminatcd, inspired these unpolished children with a spirit of divine admiration. Probably aware that religious ceremonials would alone act as a check on a nation without the means of improving their uncivilized state, the dying patriarchs claimed in consequence divine honours, which they were enabled to effect by improving upon the unqualified devotion displayed by their admiring descendants. To this feeling, engendered by a crafty race to their followers, may be ascribed the heterogeneous and absurd fictions termed the Mythology of the Greeks, who borrowed the fables from the Egyptians, who originally were under obligation to the Phenicians and earlier nations, and finally adopted by the Romans, each nation felicitously accommodating the inconsistent mummery to heroes of their own creation. Mawe is the Jupiter ronans, the Hercules and Vulcan of

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the New Zealanders. Like Saturn, he is said to have devoured his own children, save the visionary organs of the eldest, which were placed in the skies, the right eye forming the polar star, the left, the evening orbit. On arriving at his newly-raised territory, a thousand wonders attracted the attention of the divine pair; Mawe was perfectly enraptured with the ladies, and his better half of the gentlemen, who now crossed her vision for the first time. Mawe's acquisition appears at best to have been as unpropitious as the present of Jupiter proved to Pandora, for unconscious of the effects of fire, he raised some in his hands, but the agonizing pain induced him to fling it from him into the sea with such force as to cause the volcanic island of Wakari (lat: 37 degrees 30' 46 ' S., long: 177 degrees 14' 45" W.) to arise from the ocean, whose internal fires have never ceased since that period; the burning ashes, from which he had abstracted the cause of his pain, it is said, he dispersed with his feet, and in the places where they fell inland, have arisen the several volcanoes and hot springs that are found in the country. Nor did Mawe's misfortunes end here, for he was soon after discovered by the gentle In-nanui-te-po in a situation that would have been amply satisfactory to a jury in any action brought in the Consistory Court; in Mawe's case judgment went by default, and the obscene divinity was despatched by his wife, for his unlucky mistake in taking another lady for herself. His apotheosis took

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place immediately. Anxious to retain in sight the scene of his pleasures and pains, his right eye became the sun, 1 and the same organ of his brother Toaki, became answerable as the moon. Mawe was buried on the mountain of Ikorangi (lat. 37 degrees 55' S., long. 175 degrees 55' E.) near to the East Cape, and as a monument, is worthy of the father of the gods. Mawe is supposed to look upon his people with peculiar affection, the elements are under his direction, whose fury he invariably assuages when possible. Among the most pugnacious, rank the deities who preside over the winds, one of whom directs each point of the compass. Ounui is named as the president of the South-West, accounted the most irritable and passionate of the conclave, and when that portion of the elements is still, the priests declare that over-ruffled, he is choked with his own infuriate bile, and though, under the superior influence of Mawe, who could wholly silence the god, but deprived of one eye, he can only attend to one half of those elements, which is made to account for the fact on his silencing the winds on one por-

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tion of the compass, the opposite side taking advantage of his infirmity, commences its operations. Mawe is said to have principally feasted upon human flesh, fish having been his provender before the raising of New Zealand. His descendants claim his authority for revelling in the same horrible propensity. The traditions respecting the origin of the people are variously accounted for among themselves. Some tribes state that a large bird, whose enormous wings cast a fearful shadow of some miles' length on the ocean, suddenly while flying, allowed an egg to escape from her, on which the bird ascended with great velocity as if gladly released of a burden, and was soon out of sight. The egg lay for many days on the becalmed ocean, when it gradually burst its shell, and an old man and woman appeared exerting themselves to float an old canoe from the oviparous dwelling; they succeeded after some exertion, and entered the conveyance, followed by a boy and a girl, each holding a dog and a pig. On landing on New Zealand, which was wholly uninhabited, they hastened to build a house, but the young man, dissatisfied with the solitary life in view, intended to take to the canoe and again try their fate in hopes of meeting with a country inhabited by those friends from whom they were severed, but the shallow conveyance was pushed adrift by the young woman, and their progeny soon covered the face of the country.

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In the Bay of Plenty, the origin is thus accounted for. At a very remote period a large canoe arrived from a far-distant country, in which were comfortably seated a number of divinities of both sexes, but with the sharp-set appetites of human beings. The only article of food brought with them was the Kumera (batata convolvulus ) which they immediately planted after the fashion of their people; the relators of this tradition profess to be descended from them.

The natives residing at the East Cape assign a different version of the origin of their ancestors, and the inhabitants further south, have another tale wholly differing from their neighbours.

These several relations have much affinity to the traditions of the numerous nations that have spread themselves over an immense tract of ocean extending eighty leagues north and south, from New Zealand to the Sandwich Islands, and full seventy degrees east and west from Tonga to Easter Island, where some colossal monuments in sculptured stone, yet exist, 2 attesting the former residence of a once

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powerful and civilized people, of whose existence the present inhabitants are wholly unable to afford the slightest clue. This same people inhabit the Sandwich Islands and Marquesas, full twenty degrees from each other, and the latter isles are full thirty-five degrees from Tahiti.

The traditions of the New Zealanders forcibly point out the fact that they are indebted for their locality, to their ancestors having, from various causes, arising from accident or design, quitted their natal land; in the former case, through stress of weather, in the latter from motives connected with the government, to which they were in all probability inimical.

That such extraordinary voyages are of common occurrence, is known to almost every person who has visited the South Sea Islands and made inquiry into the history of the people among whom they have sojourned. In those interesting works, Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses , tom. 15, Voyages aux terres Australes, Thetenot, Hackluyt, Harris's collection, Purchas and similar compilations, innumerable adventures of Islanders renouncing a cruel thraldom, for love of liberty, may be found oft multiplied. A circumstance of this kind has often occurred in New Zealand, where tribes have vacated their native districts and removed themselves to a distance of some hundreds of miles, to enjoy their liberty unrestrained. In 1835, full five hundred of the native inhabitants of Port

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Nicholson (Wanga nui atera ) in Cook's Straits, employed a shipmaster sailing out of Port Jackson; to remove them from that place, which had been made obnoxious to them in consequence of the savage barbarity of Rauparaha, the sanguinary chief of Entry Island (Kapiti ) situated at the entrance to the Straits, to the islands of the Chatham Group, (lat: 45 degrees 54' S., long: 176 degrees 13' E. ) They promised to fill the brig with flax, as a remuneration for his services. He conveyed them in two trips, and as soon as they arrived at the islands, the emigrants took the simple islanders for slaves, murdering and devouring numbers of them. The heartless fellow that conveyed the tribes was disappointed in his expectations, as no payment was given to him in return.

The extension of colonies of the aborigines in New Zealand has occurred from the same causes as peopled the great islands of Australia, Borneo, Sumatra, and New Guinea. Where numerous tribes reside in the same country, warfare and unceasing contention are sure to reign paramount, during which the belligerents are bought and sold, enslaved or murdered, without mercy. This anarchy is preceded by what may be termed the most primitive state of mankind, when a few families associate together at some favourite fishing ground, and form their village in the most sheltered spot in its nearest vicinity. As they improve in skill, and are enabled to preserve quantities of food for winter

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provision, they invite their nearest neighbours to join them for mutual defence; such has been the commencement of some of the greatest nations that have now passed away; the Greeks, Carthaginians, Latins and Mexicans. The village thus enlarged requires a code of laws to protect the weak against the encroachment of his stronger brother.

Pope's Essay on Man.

An increasing population would naturally cause an extension of the nation, as the means of the earliest residents of the village would be incompetent to furnish them support; the lands in the vicinity becoming exhausted, and the fish, daily decreasing in quantity, would necessarily occasion an influential member to form another settlement, having unploughed similar advantages that were originally obtained at the earlier village. In a country like New Zealand, whose surface is covered with intricate forests, far-spread lagoons and marshes, a barrier at once would be presented to the native emigrant from pursuing a route inland; beside, the scarcity of indigenous sustenance would

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occasion them to direct attention to the many streams and rivers that irrigate these noble islands, and abound with fish.

Thus have these people spread themselves over the country, from the Three Kings' Islands, 3 (lat: 34 degrees 12' 8" S., long: 172 degrees 22' 48" W.) to Foveaux Straits, 4 (lat: 46 degrees S.) At an early period of their history, wars must have been less known, as they have decreased greatly since Europeans have become acquainted with them. In treating of warfare we shall give the present decrescent state of the native population, and the field now open for British colonization, and aptitude of the New Zealanders to amalgamate with their more enlightened brethren and now owners of the same soil.