1859 - Thomson, A. S. The Story of New Zealand [Vol.I] - Part I. The Country and its Native Inhabitants - CHAPTER VI. MYTHOLOGY AND SUPERSTITIONS.

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CHAP. VI.

MYTHOLOGY AND SUPERSTITIONS.

THE New Zealanders worshipped no Supreme Being. According to them heaven and earth have individual existences, and their tradition about the creation of the world shows a degree of thought far above the present ideas of the people. It is as follows: --

"In the beginning was 'the Night,' The 'Night' begot the 'Light,'
The 'Light' begot the 'Light standing long,'
The 'Light long standing' begot 'Nothingness,'
The 'Nothingness' begot 'Nothingness the possessed,'
The 'Nothingness the possessed' begot 'Nothingness the made excellent,'
The 'Nothingness the made excellent' begot 'Nothingness the fast bound,'
The 'Nothingness the fast bound' begot 'Nothingness the first,'
The 'Nothingness the first' begot' Moisture,'
'Moisture' married 'the Strait, the vast, the clear,'
And their progeny were Rangi, the heaven, and Papa, the earth." 1

Rangi and Papa begot six children. These were Tumatauenga, the god and father of men and war: Haumiatikitiki, the god and father of the food of men

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which springs without cultivation; Tangaroa, the god and father of fish and reptiles; Tawhiri-ma-tea, the god of winds and storms; Rongomatane, the god and father of the cultivated food of men; and Tane Mahuta, the god of forests and birds.

All these children, save the god of winds and storms, conspired against their parents and tore them asunder. Rangi, or heaven, was pushed upwards, and Papa, or the earth, downwards. Then the god of winds and storms declared war against his unnatural brothers for this act, and sent rain, hurricanes, and whirlwinds upon the earth. Tangaroa, the god of fish, fled to the sea; the gods of food buried themselves in the earth; the god of forests was torn up; and the god of men stood alone unconquered on the earth. Enraged at his brothers for deserting him in the day of battle, the god of men waged war against them, and after conquering them eat them. The only enemy the god of men had now left was the god of winds and storms, and that god still continues to wage war on the descendants of men, both on sea and land, down to the present day.

Heaven and Earth thus for ever separated by their undutiful children, still continue their mutual love for each other. The Earth sends up his love to Heaven in the mists which rise from the mountains and valleys; Heaven mourns through the long night her separation from her beloved Earth, and from her bosom trickle frequent tears, which men call dew-drops. 2

These unnatural brethren are the gods of the New Zealanders. Atua is the Maori word for these deities, a term which resembles the Sanscrit word Dewa and the

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Hindostanee term Ullah. To these gods they addressed prayers. From Tane Mahuta they asked for abundance of forest birds, insects, and all things fashioned from wood; from Tangaroa they prayed for fish; from Rongomatane for fertile crops of sweet potatoes and all cultivated food; from Haumeatikitiki for fern root and all sorts of wild food: from Tumatauenga for success in war, and to him they offered the body of the first person slain in battle. To Tawhirimatea they prayed for favourable winds; to their mother Heaven, for fine weather, and to their father Earth for abundance. When the whale spouts, and fish leap out of the sea, they are said to be doing these feats in honour of their god Tangaroa. When men clear primeval forests for cultivation, they sing, "The children of Tane Mahuta are laid low."

But these gods were never worshipped in the shape of images, for the New Zealanders were not idolaters, although several Christian missionaries have asserted they were. The fact of there being no proper word for idol in the Maori language, and the adoption by the missionaries, in translating the Scriptures, of a word signifying a log of wood to express an idol, sufficiently refute the accusation.

The descendants of Tumatauenga, the god and father of men and war, multiplied on the earth until the birth of Maui. In this family were five sons, of whom the youngest, or Mauitikitiki o Taranga, was the hero, and to him is due the honour of fishing up with the aid of his brothers, the island of Hawaiki. His hook on this occasion was the jaw-bone of one of his ancestors, and he expended three months in accomplishing this great work. It is assertsd that a pigeon

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into which Maui put his spirit, flew to heaven with a line in its beak and assisted in elevating the land above the water, and that Maui tied the sun to the earth with ropes, which have since become the sun's rays. Before achieving this great feat he travelled into the third division of the world. As Maui could not prevent the sun going down, he tied it to the moon, and from this cause it results that when the sun sets the moon is pulled up at the other side of the earth.

It is frequently stated from this legend that the land fished up from the sea by Maui was New Zealand, but the tradition refers to a period centuries before the New Zealanders migrated to the country.

Soon after Maui completed his work one of the gods set fire to Hawaiki, but Heaven poured down torrents of rain which extinguished the flame, and, the sparks taking refuge in certain trees, fire has ever since been obtained from their wood by friction.

Maui was squeezed to death in attempting to crawl through Hine Nui-te-po, the goddess of death. Had he accomplished this feat the human race would never have died. Maui left five sons, but all his descendants live at Hawaiki.

The New Zealanders believed that several high chiefs after death became deified, and that from them all punishments in this world for evil doings were sent. Each nation possessed its own deified men, and to them offerings were made and prayers addressed. These deified men were supposed to be intimately acquainted with every event passing among the people on the earth. But the deified ancestors of one nation never interfered in the affairs of other nations. Maui, Uenuku, and Tawhaki are, indeed, the only deified ancestors of

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the New Zealanders whose names and attributes are familiar to the natives throughout the whole land. Maui is the most celebrated, and every tradition about him has a fairy-like character.

Uenuku sprang from one of the ancestors of the New Zealanders at Hawaiki. The thunder is his voice, and the rainbow his residence, and he is consulted in many important affairs. Should a rainbow appear in front or towards the left of a war party, this is a sign of Uenuku's displeasure, and the warriors return home; if, on the contrary, the rainbow spans the heavens on the right side of the army, then they hasten to give battle, as Uenuku has signified his approval of the expedition and success is sure to follow.

Tawhaki was famous when on earth for his courage and manly beauty. According to tradition, a maiden from heaven came down and lived with him, and on the birth of a child the woman fled with the infant back to heaven. Tawhaki ascended to heaven on a spider's web, in pursuit of his wife and child, where he still lives, and men worship him. During his ascent the following spell was chanted: --

"Ascend Tawhaki to the first heaven, let the fair sky consent.
Ascend " to the second heaven, "
Ascend " " third " "
Ascend " " fourth " "
Ascend " " fifth " "
Ascend " " sixth " "
Ascend " " seventh " "
Ascend " " eighth " "
Ascend " " . ninth " "
Ascend " " tenth " "
Cling, cling, like the lizard to the ceiling, stick, stick close to the side of heaven." 3

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In hours of depression and in days of battle the deified ancestors of the nation are believed to hover over the people, rousing the spirits of the faint and nerving the arms of the weak.

The religions belief of the New Zealanders was that which belongs to the infancy of a race. It was a religion dictated by wants and fears. To their gods they prayed for food, to their deified ancestors for the removal or the prevention of evils. They believed in a future state of existence, and that there was a spirit within their bodies which never died. There were two distinct abodes for departed spirits: one was in the sky, and called Rangi; the other, denominated the Reinga, was in the midst of the sea, and its entrance was through a cavern in a precipitous rock near Cape Maria Van Diemen. This celebrated spot was as sacred among the New Zealanders as Mecca is with Mahomedans or Jerusalem is among Jews; but pilgrimages were never made to its entrance.

They believed that their spirits after death fled to join their ancestors in one or other of these two abodes. In the future world under the sea there was only one division, but in the sky there were ten separate dwellings. The lowest was separated from the earth by a clear substance, and here the god of winds and storms resided; in the next divisions the spirits of men lived; and in the highest all the other gods.

At the death of chiefs several ceremonies were performed to conciliate Tawhaki, who was supposed to bear their spirits from the earth. In the next world all spirits do not live on an equality. Slaves on earth are slaves in the future state. In the Rangi and in the Reinga spirits occupied themselves as men do on earth.

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For this reason, on the death of chiefs, slaves were slain to do them menial service in the next world. Neither of the abodes of the departed was a place of punishment. There is no trace among the people of any idea of the resurrection of the body. Although they attempted to lift the veil which concealed the past, they had no great curiosity for the more awful future. Their evil deeds were punished in this world, not in the next. Sickness and personal injuries were the punishments inflicted on evil-doers, consequently death was a relief from misery. Unlike Christians, they had no dread of a prolonged existence of future agony. It was believed that during sleep the mind left the body, and that dreams are the objects seen during its wanderings.

The gods and deified ancestors of the New Zealanders had a priesthood on earth for communicating their wishes to men; and a land Lucifer called Whiro, sorcerers, and a sea monster called Taniwha, for punishing evil-doers.

Among chiefs virtue consisted in bravery, liberality, command of temper, upholding the tapu and the priestly office, revenging injuries and hereditary feuds, suffering torture without complaint, and in not insulting persons without cause; virtue in slaves consisted in obedience to their masters and respect for the tapu. Among married women fidelity was virtue. No prizes were given to those who did good; virtue was in fact its own reward.

The New Zealanders believed that the gods never visited the earth, but that the spirits of their deified ancestors did. The Pythagorean philosophy of the transmigration of souls was consequently one of their doctrines.

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In some instances the spirits of their deified ancestors entered the bodies of lizards, spiders, and birds; in other cases they became invisible human beings called Patupaiarehe. These spirits, which correspond to our fairies, imps, ghosts, and goblins, were supposed to have larger frames and fairer complexions than men, to live in villages situated on the summits of lofty mountains, and amuse themselves by singing and playing on flutes. In the morning and in foggy weather these Patupaiarehe were sometimes visible to mortal eyes, and the terror they inspired made people afraid to leave their huts after nightfall; yet from them men were said to have learned the arts of fishing and weaving nets. It is, however, in the bodies of lizards that the ancestors of the New Zealanders most frequently revisited the earth, and these reptiles were consequently held by all in the greatest dread. Maori warriors shudder when a lizard is mentioned, and flee in terror at the sight of these animals. When the spirits of the dead speak, their voices assumed a sort of whistle.

The priesthood, the ambassadors of the gods on earth, were derived from the noblest families in the land, and in every nation there were several priests. The offices of chief and priest were generally united and hereditary. A sacred halo encircled the priesthood. Priests had their own peculiar prayers which they used in addressing the gods. These prayers were unknown to all but the priestly order, and the laity were carefully kept in total ignorance of their nature. In the dead of night, and in solitary places, they instilled into their children's minds the now unintelligible chants in which they addressed the gods. The very language used on such occasions, like the Sanscrit of the Brah-

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minical priesthood, was unknown among the people. It was their duty to see the laws of the tapu strictly enforced, to heal the sick, to attend the death ceremonies and the birth of infants, to tattoo persons, and to instruct their children in the songs and traditions of the people. In war and in peace, in the day of plenty and of famine, they were invariably looked up to as advisers. They were not required to undergo physical labour, and their property, persons, and whatever they touched was sacred. They interpreted the wishes of the gods from the flight of birds, the falling of meteors, dreams, birds' cries, winds, rainbows, the brightness and position of stars, shadows in water, the direction in which sticks stuck in the ground were blown down, the quantity of earth adhering to pulled-up fern root, and in various other modes. Should priests differ in the interpretation of omens, the successful prophet gained, and the false prophet lost, reputation.

Some of the most amusing poems among the New Zealanders are those termed visions, in which the priest in a trance saw moving around him busy groups of spirits eagerly engaged in pursuits foreshadowing the events which were to happen on earth. As the spirits moved to and fro, immersed in their occupations, they chanted wild prophetic choruses; and these on awaking he taught the tribe, by whom they were sung as prophecies and revelations from the world of spirits.

The New Zealand priests were not rogues; they had a superstitious belief in their own powers, combined with a good deal of cunning, and ventriloquism was practised by them for professional purposes. When asked to foretell whether an expedition would prove success-

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ful, they generally awarded victory to the strongest battalions. As they spent much of their time in intellectual exercise they were consequently the most intelligent body of men in the country, and, like the monks in the dark ages, they engrossed all the learning the people possessed. No dress or mark distinguished the priesthood from the laity; and it is singular that without temples, stated festivals, or sacred days, to strengthen their zeal and increase their learning by society, they could have maintained such a high reputation for wisdom. There is a tradition, however, that a sacred edifice stood in Hawaiki, called Whare Kura, literally "red house;" and it is worthy of remark that red is a colour still closely connected with the tapu and the religious matters of the New Zealanders; the houses of the dead are daubed with red, and the bones of the dead are wrapped in red-stained mats. Red is a sacred colour among the Hindoos also.

On earth, under the power of the gods, there was at least one man in each tribe who was reputed a sorcerer. Like the priesthood, the office was hereditary; fathers bequeathing to their sons certain incantations for calling up spirits, which could be transferred into the bodies of human beings, where they produced sickness and death by feeding on their vitals. Among some nations there were several sorcerers, which circumstance gave the whole a bad reputation. These nations lived in mountainous regions, the nursery of superstition in every quarter of the world. Sorcerers lived on the labour of others, and were dreaded by all.

To enable a sorcerer to bewitch a person properly, it was requisite for him to obtain a lock of the intended victim's hair, a portion of his nail-parings, a

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shred of his old mat, or a quantity of his saliva. The article was deposited in a hole in the earth, and incantations and prayers were chanted over it in a falsetto tone. The spirit thus conjured up was transferred into the owner of the hair, saliva, or mat, and then the sorcerer called down from heaven some such curse as this on his victim's head: "Thou shalt be held by the power of Runutunu, by the power of Kopare, and by the power of Whiwhiotaraue, and thou shalt be brought forth and hung upon a tree to dry: thou hast now a swelling in thy vitals. Oh! let my heart think of this." Spirits of dead infants were most dreaded, because from their short residence on earth they had acquired no attachment to mankind. Men were cursed for violating the tapu intentionally or unintentionally, disputing about land or women, illiberality, and unjust insults. Sorcerers cursing chiefs or persons of other tribes led to war.

It was superstition which made the sorcerer's art powerful. An evil-doer, or a man who had incurred the displeasure of a sorcerer not belonging to his own tribe, might be taken ill or imagine himself ill. Instantly it flashed through his mind that he was cursed for doing what he ought not to have done, and that a spirit was feeding on his vitals; he refused food, and lay prostrate in a state of apathy. Bereft of hope, the great sustainer of life, and worn down by want of food and a disease of the imagination, he died. Occasionally such persons were cured by having the evil spirit cast out of their bodies by counter-incantation, an act which was performed, with various ceremonies, by the priest belonging to his own tribe.

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It will be observed from this description that in the sorcerer's art in New Zealand there was a modification of the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis, in which two living bodies were supposed to change souls with each other. Some of the most amusing stories the people relate are connected with this subject. Kiki, a celebrated sorcerer, lived on the Waikato river, and such was his power that under his shadow trees not protected from his influence withered, and men paddling in canoes on the river stiffened and died. The Waikato river was in consequence deserted, and thousands wished, but none dared, to kill him. News of Kiki's proceedings reached another powerful sorcerer, called Tamure, at Kawhia, who vowed he would visit and bewitch him unto death. Kiki, aware of Tamure's intended visit, cooked food for him, which, if Tamure tasted, he would instantly die. But Tamure bewitched the threshold and door of Kiki's hut through which he came out to welcome him, and, as Tamure refused to eat the Waikato sorcerer's banquet, he returned home uninjured, whereas Kiki sickened and died soon after Tamure's departure.

There is considerable difference between the witchcraft of the New Zealanders and the art in Europe; but there is sufficient resemblance in the machinery of the magic to show that the superstition is the same, and that it is produced by certain mental and physical phenomena which, when brought into operation, tend to produce similar results on all mankind.

Connected with the mythology of the New Zealanders there was a singular ceremony called Iriiri, or Rohi. Before a child was a month old, often before it was ten days, its head was adorned with feathers, all the family

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greenstones were hung about it, and it was rolled up in a mat and carried to the side of a stream. Here the mother delivered the child into the hands of the priest, who, raising it in his arms and looking steadily in its face, chanted --

Here a long list of names belonging to the child's ancestors was repeated by the priest, and when the child sneezed or cried, the name which was then being uttered was the one selected. Then, if it was a male child, the priest in a falsetto voice sung --

Whilst over a female child he said --

Then the priest sprinkled over the child water shaken out of the branches of trees, or he immersed it in

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the river. Occasionally it was held before a notched stick, and if any event occurred during the time which could be construed into a good or bad omen, it was foretold whether the future man would turn out a warrior or a coward, or whether death would overtake the infant before it reached maturity. Priests received presents for performing this ceremony, and when it was over food was cooked for the gods and for the guests. The rite was celebrated differently among different nations. It was, however, only over the children of chiefs that Iriiri was carefully performed. But all new-born infants were sacred, and could not be banded about until the tapu was removed from them by cooking food.

Some ceremony analogous to Iriiri is found among the whole Polynesian race. Among the ancient Jews, ablutions were supposed to wash away some moral impurity; and among New Zealand chiefs, until infants had gone through the ceremony of Iriiri, mothers and children were tapu.

In the mythology of the New Zealanders classical readers may trace chaos; biblicists many texts in Genesis; and geologists forces which have given to the earth its present formation.

There are many who see in the fishing up of the land from the sea by Maui a type of the flood, detect a resemblance between the names of Noah and Maui, and a similarity between many Scriptural and Maori customs. In the transmigration of souls to certain animals, in the wooden images of the New Zealanders, and in some of the attributes of their gods, a faint indication is given, which becomes more clear when connected with other things, that the New Zealand race have had intercourse with men holding the Hindoo faith.

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It is rather singular that Maui should be the name of the first great man in New Zealand, and that in universal history there should occur the names of Menes, Menu, Minos, Minyas, Mannus, Mens, Man, i. e. the first man.