Maori Customs and Superstitions [Lectures from 1861]

John White

First published by H. Brett in 1885

Digitised and made available online by the University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services.

Epub © 2013 Early New Zealand Books Collection

ISBN 978-1-927289-27-3

[TITLE PAGE]

MAORI CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS.

BEING THE SUBJECT OF TWO LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE MECHANICS' INSTITUTE, IN AUCKLAND, DURING THE YEAR 1861,

BY JOHN WHITE , ESQ.,
AUTHOR OF THE MAORI HISTORY, NOW BEING COMPILED UNDER DIRECTION OF THE NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT.
By Permission.

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MAORI SUPERSTITIONS.

MAORI SUPERSTITIONS.

THE origin of the New Zealanders is variously accounted for by themselves. There is one tradition of their arriving from a place called Hawaiki, having performed the journey in about ten principal canoes, but of a different structure to those we now see, and which were called Amatiatia, being similar to those used in many islands of the South Seas, with an outrigger to prevent them upsetting. The present canoe is called "Waka," the model of which is said to have been taken from the dry seed-pod of the Rewarewa (New Zealand honeysuckle). Those who may desire to see how minutely the model has been followed, will, on comparing them, observe that even the figurehead and the projecting piece over the stern have been copied.

Our present design is to notice the religious faith (if religious faith it may be called) and its foundation, which is referred to in the title of our lecture, viz. – " Maori Superstitions and Traditions, " as superstitions and traditions will be seen to be the basis of the entire fabric of the Maori faith. Should we fail, through want of time, to show the partial connection of these with the Christian faith, the minds of this audience will readily supply the necessary contrasts and analogies.

The first tradition we notice is that which relates to the creation of the world. They simply say, – The world was, but it lay in darkness. It consisted of two parts, called Rangi and Papa, these two parts being joined together in the form of a globe, hidden in the centre whereof lay certain beings styled gods, the principal of which were named Rongomatane, Tangaroa, Haumia, Tumatauenga, Tanemahuta, and Tawhirimatea. These gods conspired against the world, which they called their parent. They held a council together, when Tumatauenga proposed to destroy it; but Tanemahuta would not consent,

adding that he should think it better to separate the two parts: – to put one above and one below, with the upper part of which they were to have no connection; but the lower part to be their mother. The first five agreed to this, but Tawhirimatea would not consent; the rest stated to him that they proposed this separation so that there might be light, and then man could be created; for as yet man had no existence. The five who agreed to this each tried in turns to separate these two parts; but the first four having failed, Tanemahuta accomplished it by standing on his head, and by a sudden stretch of his legs upwards, he separated the heaven from the earth – that is Rangi (heaven), and Papa (earth): at the same time one of the inferior gods, called Taupotiki, propped the heaven up with the clouds.

Tawhirimatea having witnessed the division of the world, to his great disapprobation, bethought himself to punish his brothers, and went up to heaven, where he found some of the minor gods; these Heaven consented should form a war party to accompany Tawhirimatea to attack the other five. However, whilst Tawhirimatea was consulting with Heaven, four of the other five had assumed different natures, and become part of the Earth. Tanemahuta had transformed himself into a tree, and became the father or propagator of trees and birds; Tangaroa had become a fish, and the god and propagator of fish; Rongomatane a kumara (the sweet potato); and Haumia a fern-root. But Tumatauenga still retained his divine nature. These were the five. Four having thus been transformed, they were seen only as trees, grass, shrubs, and fish. Tawhirimatea, however, was determined to punish them, and accordingly sent his four sons out to the four quarters of the world. They were named Marangai (East), Auru (West), Tonga (South), and Raki (North); and from them are derived the names of the four winds and of the four cardinal points. He also sent others of his children to other parts of the earth, as Tomairangi (dew), Haupapa (ice), Hauhunga (cold). With these forces he attacked his brothers. Te Apuhau, one of his children, and god of gales, attacked Tane, the tree, who was killed – that is, he was split to pieces, and in

these pieces of wood were found other children of Tane; these were Huhu (a grub), and Pepe (a butterfly); hence the origin of this tribe of insects.

Tangaroa, the fish, was next attacked; he fled to the water, being the god of fish; but on the attack being made, his two sons, Tutewanawana, the elder, and Ikatere, the younger, consulted as to whether they should stay on land or go to the water. In their consultation they quarrelled, when the elder predicted that the younger should become fish; and that if he went to the water to escape from danger he should be brought back to earth and be hung on a stick to be dried by the wind. Hence the native practice of drying their fish.

The younger retaliated by saying, "You remain on shore, and become a lizard, to be eaten with fern-root." Hence the origin of fish and the larger species of lizards. 1

At this time the fish were of one shape and colour. That which gave rise to the many varieties now known, is believed by the Maori to have been occasioned by a man who, on account of continued provocations, left his wife and child. The wife went to Tangaroa, the god of fish, and desired him to punish her husband. Tangaroa collected his forces and made an attack on the settlement in which the deserting husband resided. The fish gained a victory over the men of the settlement, and, as a recompense for their valour, Tangaroa granted the request which any of the fish might make. The gurnet wished to be red, and to be able to groan like a dying man; hence the colour of this fish, and the groan which it makes when caught. The skate saw a boy's kite, and became, by request, like it. The guardfish saw a spear, and asked for a spear to his nose. Each fish, having been transformed by its own request, became the propagator of the many varieties now known.

To return. Tawhirimatea next sought for Rongo and Haumia, two others of the rebels, but these had been hidden by

the earth, Rongo having been turned into the kumara, and Haumia into fern-root, which occasioned Tawhiri to seek for them in vain.

He then made an attack on Tumatauenga, who retained his deity, from which circumstance he was enabled to elude him. After this war was ended, Tumatauenga was continually annoyed by the search for him; his brothers having, as we related, transformed themselves into trees, shrubs, birds, and fish, in order to elude their pursuers. Tumatauenga thereupon determined to be revenged on them. He therefore caught fish and birds, dug up fern-root and kumaras (finding the latter by the tops of the plant, which were supposed to be the hair from the god's head). These he ate as he found or caught them, uttering at the same time a different incantation over each one. Hence the origin of the incantations and ceremonies repeated and performed on all such occasions by the Maori. As he had thus eaten his brothers, the natives have from this derived their practice of cannibalism. He also composed a form of invocation to heaven, asking for rain, sunshine, and wind; and another for himself, which was entirely designed to depreciate his brothers and exalt himself. This is the origin of the Maketu or witchcraft and the ceremonies of war.

Having shown the origin of the Maori faith relative to a portion of the creation, to place it in order, we pause to notice a tradition relative to the flood, which took place before the creation of man, during the reign of these rival gods, which is as follows: –

Some time after the god Tumatauenga had eaten his brothers, Tawhiri (the one who would not consent to divide the earth and heaven) and Rangi called their sons together, named Uanui, Uawhatu, Uanganga, which we call rain, sleet, and hail, to make a final onslaught on the earth. These gods – Hail, Rain, and Sleet – descended and drowned the world, save one spot. Tumatauenga, who occupied this spot, fought vigorously against, but could not fully overcome them, from which circumstance the natives account for the continuance of rain, squalls,

gales, and hurricanes. But Tumatauenga gave himself the names of Tukariri, Tu the fighter, Tukanguha, Tu the bruiser, Tukaitaua, Tu the war eater, Tuwhakaheke tangata, Tu the man-consumer, Tumatawhaiti, Tu of the small face. Having five brothers, he gave himself these five additional names, in opposition to theirs, as a proof that he concentrated in himself a power even superior to their combined force. Hence the frequent use of these names in war songs.

To resume. Their tradition of the creation of man forms a striking analogy to that contained in the Bible. Soon after the flood, Tiki, a son of Tu, made man, by kneading clay with his own blood; and forming it after his own image, he danced before it, then breathed on it, and it became a living being, whose name was Kauika. After this men began to multiply; but the children of Kauika performed nothing worthy of note in their different generations until the time of the four Maui, his descendants. In their time the days were short. The sun which ruled the day was the firstborn of heaven, and was ordered to go round the world for the purpose of noticing the actions of the rebellious five gods; and the stars, the minor sons of heaven, were to watch during the night.

Mauipotiki, the youngest of the Mauis, being desirous that the days should be longer, suggested to a number of his associates that they should go with him and try to stop the sun, so that there might be more daylight. They proceeded in the night and journeyed eastward, and after many nights and days they came to a spot which was the brink of the world, where the sun had to pass. Here they built a mound of earth, and hung a noose over the brink of the world. " Now, " said Maui, to the men posted behind the mound, " when the sun gets into the noose, I will tell you. Do not startle him. " They caught the sun, and Maui beat him severely with the jawbone of his grandfather, Murirangiwhenua. The sun inquired, " Why do you beat me? I am the firstborn of Heaven; my name is Tama-nui-teRa, the great source of light and heat. " However, he was so belaboured that he went away quite a cripple, and

effectually prevented from ever travelling as fast as he had been wont to do, for which reason the day became longer.

We now come to the tradition in which New Zealand is spoken of as having been fished up out of the ocean. Soon after the sun had been so severely beaten, Maui's brothers complained that he, Maui Potiki, was very idle, that he would not go to fish, the women and the old men joining in the complaint. This caused Maui to make his grandfather's jawbone into a fishhook, which he kept concealed in his garment. On going out with his brothers to fish, they laughed at him, asking why he went with them, as he had no fishing tackle, He answered by requesting them to go out further to sea, and still further, until they lost sight of land; his brothers murmured louder than before against him for this daring act; they sailed on, however, and Maui let down his line and hook, which was ornamented with pearl and carving; the hook caught the house of Tonganui, the son of Tangaroa, the god of fish.

This house was built at the bottom of the ocean; Maui pulled, however, and the house, with all the earth around it, coming up together, caused a great bubbling in the sea.

His brothers called out in great fear, "Maui, Maui, cease your pulling," but Maui pulled on and uttered this incantation: –

"What dost thou intend, Tonganui,
That thou art sullenly biting below there?
The power of Rangiwhenua's jawbone is seen on thee;
Thou art coming; thou art conquered;
Thou art coming; appear, appear,
Shake thyself, grandson of Tangaroa the little."

At last up it came, and when visible it was found to be part of the earth, which had not been reclaimed at the time of the abatement of the flood; and their canoe was left high and dry upon it. The land thus reclaimed is New Zealand.

Maui left his brothers, commanding them not to eat or cook food until he returned. He went to a distance to propitiate Tangaroa, the god of fish, for catching one of his children, in order that that god might grant success to fishers in future.

The brothers not heeding the injunctions of Maui, immediately on his departure began to cut the fish, that is, to dig the ground; this enraged Tangaroa so much, as his son was thus cut up before pardon had been obtained, that in revenge he caused it to be convulsed, and by his writhings the mountains and valleys were formed.

Other traditions say that the mountainous feature of the land is derived from Mataao, and is spoken of as the turning of Mataao, who was one of a race of giants living in the land. During his life, Rua, a native from Hawaiki, came here in search of his wife, who had been taken from him. Rua, having gone to one of the inland districts, felt very cold, and called on his god for fire to be brought to him from Hawaiki. His prayer was granted, in the form of burning mountains, the remains of which are seen in Mount Eden and the surrounding extinct volcanoes. Mataao, seeing this, was much exasperated, and, being a giant, exhibited his rage by jumping all over the land, and thus were valleys and mountains formed.

Soon after this Maui Potiki wished to discover-where his father and mother resided, for as yet he had never seen them. Accordingly, on a certain night he went, by the direction of Rangi, to a particular place, where a feast was to be given. After the feast there was a native dance, on the conclusion of which the hostess counted her sons, and, finding Maui Potiki amongst them, she asked him where he came' from. He replied, "I was found on the sea shore by one of the gods. After my birth, my mother wrapped me up in sea-weed and her head-dress, and sent me afloat on the water. I was thus disowned, and the god Rangi, who has nourished me up to "this time, sent me here, telling me that the four men now before me are my brothers." She acknowledged him to be her son, saying, " You are my last born, and now I recognise you, and call you from this time, 'Maui Tikitiki o Taranga,'" meaning Maui the head-dress of Taranga – Taranga being the name of his mother.

On thus recovering her lost son she naturally made much of him, thus exciting the envy of the brothers, who called him a

slave, and wished to kill him. The eldest said, "If we kill him we shall gain nothing by it; we shall only do as the gods have done who conspired against their parents, Heaven and Earth, from which all evil has followed. Pray do not let us quarrel, as we are brothers."

We would here observe that Maori history is a tangled mass, and to unravel it and introduce anything like order and arrangement would be only to destroy its distinguishing feature. The story of Maui Potiki forms a most striking illustration of this, for we thus have, in one of their traditions, a reference to the narratives of Moses and Joseph, as contained in the Bible.

Maui was still ignorant as to where his parents resided, although he had seen his mother, the place where the feast was given being the residence of his brothers; he therefore continued in search of them; and having the power of transmutation, he turned himself into a pigeon, and taking a long flight, in the course of which he met with many adventures, he at last found his parents. He remained with them some time. His father's name was Makatutara, who, not having seen Maui before, baptised him. His father, in baptising him, forgot a certain portion of the ceremony. His forgetfulness was caused by the gods, and was an indirect curse on Maui, as his immortality was thus incomplete, and subsequently enabled Hinenuitepo to take away his life.

His mother informed him that his grandmother lived near the heavens, her name being Hinenuitepo, and he must visit her.

The servants of his parents were in the habit of going to Hinenuitepo every morning to procure fire, but at length refused to go any more. Maui went in their stead, and seeing the old woman take fire from the ends of her fingers to supply him, he brought it a little distance, and, having extinguished it, returned for more.

Maui, being a funny fellow, wished to amuse himself at her expense; but the old woman, finding he was ridiculing her, threw the fire after him, and as it kindled behind him he turned

himself into a pigeon, and flew on to a number of trees, called pate, kaikomako, mahoe, totara, and pukatea, where the fire followed him; hence these trees, on being briskly rubbed by the Maori, produce fire. He resumed his human form, and, calling on the gods, Rain, Hail, and Sleet, to his aid, they came and assisted him in putting out the fire.

Another tradition states that a man called Mahuika was possessed of sacred fire, and, lest it should be lost, injected it into these trees, so that by friction it could be reproduced.

Maui had been told by his father that he had had a frightful dream, in which he, Maui, was killed, and in his sleep his father's left arm jerked outwards (a very evil omen in native opinion), and therefore Maui must not annoy his grandmother. Maui, not heeding this admonition, and wishing to amuse himself still further at the old lady's expense, proposed to some birds (the New Zealand robin, called toutouwai) to go and see her. They accordingly went, and found her asleep, with her mouth open. "Now," said Maui, "if you will not laugh, I will take a somersault down her throat." They promised, and he jumped. His heels kicked so, however, as he was going down, that the birds burst out into a laugh, and thus awoke the old lady. She naturally shut her mouth with a snap, and cut poor Maui in two. This was the first death by disobedience – hence death came on all men.

The natives have also an account which stands in connection with the subject of immortality.

A man called Patito having died, left a son, who was a very brave man; and a report of his bravery having been carried to the world of spirits by some of the departed, it roused the martial ardour of the father, who, in his time, was considered to be a most expert spearsman, and he therefore visited the earth with the determination of testing the ability of his son by a contest with him. During the engagement the son was unable to ward off his father's thrusts, who, being satisfied in having thus overcome his son, returned to the other world.

The natives believe that, had the son proved the better spearsman, the father would have continued to dwell upon earth, and that thus man would not have been subject to death.

There is another story concerning this old warrior, Patito, to the following effect: – He had a granddaughter, who followed him to the point whence the spirits take their exit from this world, and, seeing the old man descend, called upon him to return to earth. He looked round, and by this look turned her into stone. – A reference unmistakably to Lot's wife.

We will now notice two or three out of the many traditions concerning their migrating here.

It is reported by the natives generally that there were many migrations to this land, the individuals composing which arrived at different times, and at various places.

The canoe Mamari is spoken of by the Ngapuhi natives as that in which their ancestors came from a distant country, the name of which is not given by them. The canoe came, it is stated, in search of a previous migration. A man called Tuputupuwhenua had arrived at New Zealand, and a chief called Nukutawhiti came in the canoe Mamari in search of him.

After Nukutawhiti had reached the land, near the North Cape of New Zealand, he fell in with Kupe. Kupe is spoken of as the most energetic and enterprising of all the chiefs of the different migrations from Hawaiki. He circumnavigated the whole of the Northern Island, giving names to many places as he sailed along its shores. There is an old song respecting him, of which the following is a translation: –

I will sing, I will sing,
I will sing of Kupe,
The man who navigated the seas,
And divided the land
At a distance each stand; Kapiti
And Mana; 2 together with
Arapaoa; separate thrown, – these are the places
Which remind me of my ancestor
Kupe; who caused Titapua to sink in the sea,
The land I now take as my inheritance.

This Kupe then told Nukutawhiti that he, Tuputupuwhenua, 3 was on the West Coast. Having found him, Kupe had returned from that part of the land, therefore he had called the river Hokianga. The word "Hokianga" means a returning, a going back, Kupe having returned from that part of the coast where the Heads of Hokianga are situated, – hence its name.

Nukutawhiti, with his brother-in-law Ruanui, who had come with him, proceeded to Hokianga, and there remained. From them the Ngapuhi people take their origin. This we may observe is the account of, and is fully believed in, by the Northern tribes; and to support this they purport to show the canoe itself, and many of the articles pertaining to the canoe, which have become petrified in and near the Hokianga; for instance, at the residence of the late Mr. G. F. Russell, they show a large stone, which they assert is the baler of the canoe; this is in the shape of a dust shovel: and at Onoke, on the east side of the Whirinaki river, opposite the residence of Mr. Manning, there is a stone somewhat in the shape of a dog. This, they say, is the dog of Nukutawhiti. And on the West Coast, to the north of Hokianga Heads, there are a number of stones peaking up above the surrounding mass of rocks, which are said to be men of the canoe Mamari, belonging to Nukutawhiti, drawing a fishing net. Further to the north than these, at Wharo, are shown in the rocks on the beach the footprints of Nukutawhiti and those of his dog. Also, near these are shown rocks in the shape of a small basket, called "paro," in which food is given at a feast. These are said to have been such, and used at a feast given by Nukutawhiti, and in that part of the river Hokianga called by the Europeans "the Narrows," is shown a rock, said to be the buoy of the anchor belonging to the canoe Mamari. A long stone, said to be the canoe itself, is in the entrance of Waima river, one of the tributaries of the

Hokianga, presenting the appearance of a canoe turned keel upwards. And further, to prove that they did not take their origin from any other source, they show a stone, at the head of the Hokianga, near Tarawaua, which was brought there by their ancestor Nukutawhiti, from one of his travels, as an evidence of his great strength.

We may mention that no native, even to this day, ever passes without paying reverence to it by breaking a raurekau branch, which he carefully lays thereon, uttering these words, which is called "Whakau:" –

"Ascend o'er the mountains,
Tangaengae,
To the breath of the gods –
The breath of life.
Embrace the parent Papa,
The giver of life to all."

They also esteem this stone so sacred as to prevent them from either sitting or standing on it, or even stepping over it. Also, on the road from Kerikeri to Kaitaia, at a place called Taratarotorua, there are a number of perpendicular stones called Nga-whakarara, or Te Hakari, like the Druidical remains of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. These, they say, were the posts round which their ancestor built his pyramids of food at a feast given by him at that place. As a proof of their being a distinct migration, we may mention that it is a custom with the New Zealanders in general to invest the receptacles for the dead with something peculiarly sacred; in fact, to intrude or pass near one of them was visited on a person so doing with death; yet there are in Hokianga places where there are bones deposited for which the natives evince no veneration, nor do they even pay these remains of fellow mortals that common respect which man in every state feels for the dead. We have seen these bones laid out in lines, and a mock exhuming and weeping and burial ceremonies repeated and sung over them, thus proving that they are not the remains of their own ancestors.

There is also at Whangape (a small river to the north of Hokianga, near which Her Majesty's sloop of war, the Osprey,

was wrecked) an old repository of bones, which it is said are the remains of the Ngatiawa, a tribe who came from the South to conquer the Ngapuhi people, and, after holding possession of the district for some time, returned to the South by the West Coast.

Again, we may state that those who came in the canoe Mamari were all of one family, consisting of father, mother, and children, including a son-in-law and their dependants. After the grandchildren born in this land had attained maturity, they quarrelled with their uncles as to seniority in chieftainship.

It is allowed in the customs of New Zealanders that grandchildren are the rightful heirs to the property of the grandfather to the exclusion of their uncles. To prevent his grandsons causing a family war, Nukutawhiti took his family to Ohaeawai, near to the place where the pa was built in the attack of which in the Heke rebellion Lieutenant Philpot fell, and there Nukutawhiti commanded his offspring to dig a trench east and west. When it was accomplished, he called them together and said, "My will is, that all the land to the north of this trench be as a possession for my grandchildren, and to the south of it for my sons." – This trench is said to be seen to this day.

In opposition to this tradition of the Ngapuhi natives, the Rotorua and Maketu tribes ascribe to themselves the origin of the present inhabitants of this land. More particularly, the Ngapuhi are said by them to have derived their name "Puhi" from the head of the canoe "Arawa," that part of a war canoe being called Puhi. But the Ngapuhi tribes trace their genealogy back to a chief of the name of Puhi-moana-ariki, whose name, abbreviated, the Northern tribes are now known by.

They assert the canoe Arawa came from Hawaiki, bringing Houmaitawhiti, Tamatekapua, Toi, Maka, Hei, Ihenga, Tauninihi, Rongokako, and others; and these are the men from whom the New Zealanders descended.

They state the cause of the Arawa coming from Hawaiki is as follows: – A priest in Hawaiki called Uenuku had some food cooked called "popoa," which food had been, according to

custom, dressed as part of a ceremony over the dead; this, like the shewbread in the temple of Jerusalem, was for the priests alone to eat. The food having been stolen caused Uenuku to be exceedingly angry. The old priest Uenuku had been afflicted, like Job of old, with boils, and like Job, too, had scraped himself with shells. A dog belonging to Tamatekapua, called Potakatawhiti, had made away with the contents of some of these shells, for which unpardonable offence Uenuku had the dog cooked and eaten. Whakaturia (Tamatekapua's younger brother) having for some time sought in vain for this dog, at last went to the pa of Toitehuatahi, where the dog had been eaten; and having called, the dog is supposed to have answered to its master's call from the stomach of Toi. To punish Uenuku, as he was the cause of the dog being killed, Tama and Whakaturia went in the night and ate of the fruit of a poporo tree which was growing at the end of Uenuku's house; and he being a priest, this tree was of course sacred. It being dangerous to go openly to the poporo, Tama invented stilts for the occasion. Uenuku finding his poporo decreasing in fruit, and not observing any men's footprints in the vicinity (the prints of the stilts of course did not attract attention as they were unknown up to this time), the priest ordered a watch, and Whakaturia having on one occasion joined with his brother Tama to eat of this poporo, the watch caught him, but Tama made his escape. Toi's people sewed the younger brother up in a mat, and hung him up in one of their assembly houses so that he might die of starvation. The news of his brother still being alive having reached him, Tama went, and in the dark made a hole in the roof of the house, through which he inquired of his brother how the people amused themselves every night. Having heard they sung songs, danced, and kanikanied – (a singular and favourite amusement with the the New Zealanders; it consists in making the most hideous grimaces and contortions the human body is capable of, accompanying this with a noise which is a compound of groans and sneezes. The performers sit side by side, and he who can make the most inhuman grimaces is the most admired and considered

the best performer) – Tama told him to say, if they would let him down he would teach them a new way to kanikani, and when they had done this he was to run from one end of the house and out at the door, when he (Tama) would be there and would bolt the door as soon as he was outside. This was done, and he effected his escape.

On this Toi and Uenuku, the priest, attacked the pa of Houmoitawhiti, the father of these young men, and not being able to take it they returned to their own settlement. Hou (the father) soon after this died, and on this account Tama and Whakaturia determined to leave Hawaiki, as, their father being dead, they would not be able to withstand the attack of Uenuku if besieged again.

This then was the cause of the people who came in the canoe Arawa migrating to New Zealand. They did not, however, start in uncertainty as to whether they should find any land, as there had been a former migration to this country, the people of which had returned to Hawaiki.

This migration is said to have taken place as follows: – Hinetuaohanga being jealous of a man called Ngahue, whose god was a sea monster called Poutini (other traditions say its ful name was Mata), Hine caused Ngahue to be driven from Hawaiki riding on his god, and thus he discovered an island called Tuhua. Hine followed him there in a canoe and drove him from this land also. He again started, and discovered the island of Aotearoa; but, fearing he should be followed there also and expelled, he left in search of some more distant country, and arrived in New Zealand, taking up his abode at Arahura, or, as another tradition states, at Arapawanui. During his residence here he found a block of the green stone so much prized by the Maoris, which he took back to Hawaiki. Out of this stone the axes were made which were used in constructing the canoes in which Tama and others shortly afterwards came to this land.

Our time being limited, we therefore can but briefly mention a few of the other migrations.

The natives who in ancient times held the Auckland district, and occupied Mount Eden as their principal fortification, say they came in a canoe called Tainui, by which name the tribe is called to this day, and the remnant of them reside at Whaingaroa.

The Tainui is said to have come in company with the canoe Arawa. The people of the Arawa first discovered land. Tainui then parted company for some time; they, however, met again at Whangaparoa, and having there quarrelled about a whale, the Arawa went along the East Coast and Tainui went into the Tamaki river, where they observed sea-birds coming from the west. Suspecting that there must be a sea-coast near, they went in search of it, and discovered the Manukau river. They therefore dragged their canoe Tainui across the portage, passing by the spot on which the residence of Mr. Edwin Fairburn is now situated, and coming out into the Manukau waters by the last bridge which is crossed in going to Otahuhu from Auckland, they proceeded out of the Manukau harbour and coasted along to Kawhia. Here they landed, and part having settled there, the other portion of the tribe returned to Mount Eden and took possession of this district.

The Mokau, and two or three of the Waitara tribes, say their ancestors came in a canoe called Aotea, commanded by Turi. It is stated that this migration left Hawaiki on account of a murder. Turi made land on the West Coast, near a river, into which he went, and called it after his canoe. Hence the name of the Aotea river.

The Ngatiawa tribe (the old occupants of the Taranaki district) say the canoe known by the name of Tokomaru, and commanded by Manaia, was that in which their ancestors came. This migration left Hawaiki on account of Manaia having killed a number of men who were working for him. Manaia made land near the Bay of Islands, and, coasting along the West Coast, doubled the North Cape, and stretched along the indent on the West Coast, and eventually took up his abode on the Waitara. 4

The old inhabitants of the Middle Island say their ancestors came in a canoe called Takitumu, commanded by Tata. This migration left Hawaiki on account of a quarrel about a plantation. This is the only migration of which it is said they cast lots and ate each other when their provisions failed. The survivors landed at Tauranga; part of the migration remained there, the other portion proceeded on and crossed Cook's Straits, and there settled somewhere about Nelson.

Each one of these migrations claims the honour of being the parent family from which the whole of the New Zealand tribes have descended; enumerating, each against the other, the genealogy of their own ancestors, naming the man from whom the different tribes took their name and origin. In fact, some few tribes in the Waikato district, rather than admit they are the younger branch of any one of the migrations, assert that their ancestress came over on the back of an albatross, quoting an old song in proof thereof. Other tribes on the East Coast, for the same reason, state they are the offspring of a man who came under water from Hawaiki, quoting, as a proof, a proverb to that effect.

I narrate these stories to show that there exist so many contradictory statements, even amongst the natives themselves, as to their origin, that it really becomes a matter of no little difficulty to unravel them all so as to arrive at the real truth; thus proving that to come to any certainty, or even prevent their various traditions from contradicting each other, the collector of such must not confine himself to any one portion of New Zealand, but must gather them from every tribe, and then out of the whole set forth that which is received as the belief of the New Zealanders as a collective people, and not as divided into tribes.

We may also be allowed to remark that those who have had time and inclination for this, and who have confined themselves to the traditions, superstitions, and ceremonies of one district, will no doubt find many things in this lecture which

they have not only never heard of before, but they may also hear that which they consider their research will warrant them in contradicting; and we may conclude these observations by saying that if anyone will take the trouble to investigate the different accounts given by the natives generally, and not as tribes, he will then be satisfied that what we have asserted and shall assert are really the superstitions and traditions of this people.

Before we commence the religious ceremonies, it would be better perhaps to give the names of the principal deities, so that when they occur in connection with those ceremonies, their relationship to them may be better understood.

It will be remembered that five out of the six gods conspired to separate the heaven and the earth. Tumatauenga (he who retained his divine form) is god of all men, and god of war, being the father of Tiki, who created man. It is said by one tradition that the first man was called Kauika, meaning heap, and by another that his name was Onekura, meaning red earth; which of these names mean the same as that of Adam is obvious.

I have never heard it said how or when woman was created, although Kauika, otherwise Onekura, had both sons and daughters.

The following gods are under the control of Tumatauenga: – Mokotiti, a god who lives on the lungs, and is therefore the god of consumption; Rehua, the god to whom they pray for the sick; Purakau, the god of bewitching; Tote, god of sudden death; Whiro, god of theft 5 ; Ngeuku, the god invoked by an attacking party to ensure success.

The gods under the control of Tawhirimatea, god of wind, are – Aheahea, who is the rainbow and a sign of war; Awhiowhio, god of the whirlwind; Marangai, god of the east; Auru, god of the west; Tonga, of the south; Raki, of the north. These, it will be recollected, were sent out to collect forces when the earth was invaded, by their father and ruler Tawhirimatea; there are

also his other sons, who in obedience to the call, drowned the world, as Uanui, Uanganga, and Uawhatu, hail, rain, and sleet. The gods under the control of Tane, god of trees, are – Wawa, father of the bird weka; Kereru, father of the pigeon 6 ; Pahiko, father of the cockatoo; Parauri (meaning black), father of the tui; Owa, father of the dog.

To digress again. It is said that the god Owa was once a man, and was such a noisily-disposed fellow that the slightest occasion was sufficient to awake his tongue. One day a priestess who had given birth to a child was so offended with his rudeness in making so much noise that she turned him into a dog, hence dogs bark at anything, everything, and nothing. Another tradition of the origin of the dog is as follows: – A man named Rawaru had a son who was such a disobedient little fellow, and never at home, that his father to punish him broke his back across the root of a tree; cursing him at the same time by saying that henceforth he should walk on four feet instead of two, that he should also sleep by himself in the dust, and eat of what men threw away, that he should not come near to man unless he was called, and that call should be "Moi, moi," hence the call used by the natives for their dogs to this day. To return again to the sons of Tane. There were also Irawaru, father of rats; Mokoikuwaru of the lizard; Otunairanga of the Nikau, the New Zealand palm, and of the korari, flax. The next chief is Rongo, the god of all the species of kumara: his sons subject to him were Rakiora, to whom incantations are repeated to ensure a good crop; Pani, to whom the first fruits of the crop are given. These are some of the principal deities held in estimation by the natives.

There existed at the south at the Whanganui district, a species of idolatry not practised in the north. The principal god was Maru, to whom a temple was erected in which they offered worship; this temple was called Wharekura, the high priest was

designated Paraoa, the second priest was called Ariki, who was to be the first-born of the family, the third grade of priesthood was called Horomatua. In this temple was preserved the staff of life (belonging to Rangitawhaki) called Tongitongi, where it was kept sacred till the days of Kauika; he broke it; others attribute this act to Tawhaki. Tawhaki is said to have been a good man, he was grandson of Whatitiri. Whatitiri was blind, and Tawhiki cured her of her blindness by spitting on the ground and rubbing her eyes with the clay; he is reported to have done no evil; he worked miracles, cured the sick, and did good all his days; as he was washing near a stream, a reptile killed him while combing his hair; three days after his decease his sister passing by where he was laid, bewailed his death with loud lamentation, on which he arose and was taken up to heaven alive; thus affording in many particulars a striking resemblance to our Saviour. He sometimes descends by a spider's thread; when he prays it thunders and lightens; the natives do not exactly worship him, but they repeat certain incantations to him and Rehua (the god of the sick) conjointly; as a sacrifice they offer to them ten baskets of food counted to them in a particular manner. The temple at Whanganui (before alluded to) contained the images of gods, and was burnt by a man named Whakatau, who lived in another land, and possessed a sea god. A man named Kea, while out in a canoe, was blown off land, and upset; Whakatau's monster having swallowed him, carried him to his own land and threw him out on the shore; when Kea by the heat of the sun had revived, he saw the monster in the shape of a Kahawai, and feeling desirous of eating fish, he bethought himself to get this Kahawai on shore by repeating the following incantation, by the power of which he hoped that the water would recede.

"Dry up thou water,
Recede thou sacred tide
To Hawaiki."

On reciting this the tide left the fish dry on the shore; he cut it up, and all the people joined in eating it. Whakatau having found his fish was killed by Kea came to the south of New

Zealand; when he saw the people assembled in their temple, he set it on fire, and caused to be consumed therein a thousand worshippers.

The natives relate a story of two men and a woman having been taken up to heaven alive in a spider's web, in consequence of their having pleased their gods with their virtuous actions. The names of the men were Takitaki and Rokuariro, that of the woman Rangiawatea.

The native ideas of the first Paradise are very obscure. They believe there are three heavens: the first is where the gods reside in which is a temple called Nahirangi. Men are created in the second heaven, where they reside until they are of mature age; they then come down to the third heaven just above us, which we denominate the sky, and being near the sun, is warm, and abounds with beautiful lakes in which they amuse themselves with bathing. When there is a windy day in this heaven, the spray of the waves on the lakes breaks over the margin, and descends to earth in the shape of rain; man when he has spent a certain time in this heaven is then born into the world; and at his death goes to the Reinga, or the future world, which is at the north end of New Zealand. The Reinga is a low point jutting out into the sea, with a sandy beach below; on the point stands a Pohutukawa tree, from which grew a root down to the beach; by that the spirits were supposed to descend to an opening below, which is the entrance to the Reinga. The Reinga is like a house partitioned off into apartments; the first one is the entrance, the second one is called Aotea, where man loses or retains the buoyancy of his spirits which he had in this world. If his body has been hung up in a tree, and no pressure of earth has been on it, his spirit will be lively; if, on the contrary, his body has been buried, his spirit will be dull and sluggish. Aotea is the west of the entrance. The next division of the Reinga is Te-uranga-o-te-ra to the east of the entrance. Here man becomes possessed of another but degenerate spirit. The next compartment is Hikutoia, north of the entrance, where man is put through another process, which gives him a still more

degenerate spirit. These three are, as it were, the first set of rooms in the Reinga: man then descends to Pouturi, the next lower apartment, where he becomes still weaker, and lastly he descends to the final apartment called Toke (which name means worm), where he becomes a worm that returns to earth, and when a worm dies a man's being is ended.

In making houses or stages on which to keep kumaras, fern-root, or fish, they are built north and south, lest spirits in going to the Reinga should pass over them, which would cause the food to decay. As the kumara and fish are the offspring of the younger brothers of the gods by whom man was created, it is thought that if a spirit, on his way to the Reinga, pass over food thus stored, it would be rendered unfit for use; and as these spirits always pass from south to north, the store-house and food are always ranged parallel to these points, to prevent the possibility of such an accident occurring. Such accidents, however, do sometimes take place; and if this contact with spirits has not caused the food to decay, it is supposed the evidence of their transit will be found by marks of red ochre with which the garments of the spirits are dyed. Nothing thus marked was eaten.

While we are speaking about the Reinga, we may as well relate the supposed origin of the Moon. Two women, who were desirous of looking into the abode of spirits, after preparing themselves with dried kumaras, went to the point, and descended by the root of the Pohutukawa tree. Entering the cave, they journeyed for some distance in the dark; at length they perceived the glimmering of light at a distance, and proceeding onwards, saw in Aotea three old grey-headed spirits, sitting around a fire composed of three pieces of wood. As this was spiritual fire, they desired to obtain a piece of it; so one of them took the dried kumaras, and went up to the old souls, who were so much astonished at the sight of a living female that she had sufficient time to snatch one of the fire-brands and run off with it, in return leaving her kumaras for them to taste once more the good things of earth. Their astonishment was so great that they

could not follow the thief at once, so that she had time to get near the entrance before they pursued her. The other woman had made good her retreat, and the thief was taking her last step out, when one of the old folk caught her by the heel. She, not wishing to lose such a prize as the sacred fire she had obtained, collected all her strength and threw the brand whirling up into the clouds; it went up so high that it stuck in the sky, and has remained there ever since as the moon.

The reason why the moon is not seen every night is this: Maui, when he had made the sun go a little slower by his beating him, being still unsatisfied, followed the sun one evening and caught him, and tied him with a line to the moon, thus making the moon go after the sun, and staying the sun somewhat more in his progress. Soon after this, Maui quarrelled with his kindred, and being desirous of revenge, he puts his hand before the moon at times to keep them in darkness.

They account for the tides in the following manner: There is, in the deepest part of the ocean, a god, son of Tangaroa, called Parata, who is such a monster that he only breathes twice in the twenty-four hours. When he inhales his breath it is ebb tide, and when he exhales his breath it is flood tide.

We will now mention how certain ceremonies were performed.

The New Zealanders had no marriage rite; yet there was a custom amongst some of them called Pa Kuha, which consisted in giving a woman to be the property of her suitor; and was usually done when the people were assembled together, in a set speech, by the relatives of the female (especially her brothers and uncles), the father and mother taking little or no part in the proceeding.

They had also ancient forms of baptism, the ceremonies of which were these: Soon after the birth of a child, the priests made a number of clay balls, setting them in a row on the ground, and raising little mounds of earth near them; these mounds were named after the principal gods, and the clay balls were named

after the ancestors of the child. The priests then took a branch of karamu, ake, or hutu; one of them parted the branch, and while tying one half round the child's waist, the other priest repeated this incantation, called a tuapana (which is not the baptism, but is intended to take the tapu from the mother and the settlement, as well as to give the child strength). If a boy, these words were used: -

There are the mounds risen up;
They are on the water side,
And on the shore;
They stand as from Hawaiki, –
As descended from the priests of Hawaiki.
There stands the mounds
As representatives of the priests,
As the spirit of Tu,
As the spirit of Tamatekapua,
As the spirit of Tawhaki,
Thus, then, thus [pointing to the mounds],
Here is the post standing

[He then, sticking a twig of raurekau into the middle of the brook, on the bank of which these ceremonies took place, also a twig on each side of it, resumed]

At the water side,
And on the shore,
And in the depths,
And on the bank,
And on the coast of Hawaiki.
Thus, then, thus,
Draw the omens from the water –
Immerse ourselves;

[He then sprinkled the mother and child with water with a karamu branch.]

Bring up the tapu of Ruanuku,
Lay the emblems down,
The omens are seen:
Take off the tapu from this son,
Let the tapu be taken into the water,
And cleansed off.
It falls! It is going!
Take the tapu from him!

May Tu and Tane and Tama meet,
May the light come!
May the gods Tawhaki and Tama bring light!
Ball of light, come!
Come on to the Turuturu!

[Meaning the branch stuck in the middle of the brook.]

Dance there, as the messenger of Tama
Has brought thee from above;
Rupe, come, and descend and ascend,
Come into my dwelling,
And lay on my place of birth.
Here is thy weapon,
Here is thy spear,
Here is thy mat.
Come, Rupe, come!
Here is thy path to the highest heaven,
Come, O Rupe! Come to the mat prepared for thee.
We will sleep on it.
The water will swell o'er me.
Descend, O Tutawake and Tama!
And Manumea, Toi, and Rauru.

He then plants the other half of the karamu branch, and if it grows the child is to be a noted warrior. The tree growing from a branch thus planted is called a "kawa."

The tree sprung from the branch used in such a ceremony over Tamati Waka Nene is shown near the Kerikeri, in the Bay of Islands.

This part of the ceremony being concluded, the priests had three native ovens heated and cooked kumaras in them. These ovens were called "takiura," and were kindled some distance from the brook; one was for the priest, and one for the mother, and one for the gods. After the priest had taken a number of pieces of pungapunga (pumice stone), and placed them in a row, he named them each after one of the dead ancestors of the child. The food was then taken out of the oven intended for the gods and presented to the pieces of pumice stone; in offering which the priest repeated this incantation: –

There is your food,
Eat it.
Eat it yourselves.

You are satisfied.
It is sweet to you;
It is the food of Kauika and Rangi.
There is your food,
The essence of it has gone
To the world of spirits,
Where you are.

At the conclusion of this the child was shown to the people; and the tapu being thus removed from the mother and child, they were once more allowed to go amongst the tribe.

The next ceremony was the actual baptism of the child, at which the father and mother and any of the heads of the tribe might be present, but no common person. They went to a stream, and all being naked save a maro (that is an apron made of the leaves of trees round their waists), the priest took the child in his arms, and going into the water, he with a karamu branch sprinkled the child, saying: –

Baptised in the water of Tu,
Be thou strong
By the strength of the heel of Tu,
To catch men
By the strength of Tu,
To climb mountains
By the strength of Tu;
May the power of Tu
Be given to this son.
Be thou strong,
That thou mayest overcome in the fight;
Be thou strong
To enter the breach,
To kill the watchman,
To grapple with the foe.
Be thou strong
By the power of Tu,
Be thou strong
To pass over the lofty mountains,
To ascend the lofty tree;
Be thou strong
To brave the billows of the sea,
To overcome its strength.
Be strong to cultivate food for thyself
To build great houses,
To make war canoes,

To welcome visitors,
To make fishing nets,
To catch fish,
To do all thy work.
There comes the strength from Kiharoa 7
To take me to the sands of Rangaunu, 8
To the place where spirits depart into night,
And what know I further?

These were the ceremonies in removing the tapu and baptism of a boy.

For a girl they were somewhat different. A boy was baptised to the god of war, Tu; girls were baptised to Hine-te-iwaiwa, who is goddess of all the necessaries of life. In taking the tapu from a mother when a girl was born the same ceremonies were used as for a boy, which we have just described. The same things being done at the brook, the priest said: –

Here are the mounds
Now standing on the shore,
On the water,
In the depth,
On the brink,
They stand as from Hawaiki,
As in the stealing from Hawaiki.

We will here digress to explain a little. When one of the canoes came from Hawaiki, called Te Arawa, navigated by Tamatekapua, some time after she had left the people of Hawaiki made an offering to the gods; they erected altars, and cooked food for them, to induce the gods to give a foul wind to send the Arawa back, when they promised to cook the navigators for the gods. While they were preparing the offering two women called Hangaroa and Kuiwai (who were related to the navigator of the Arawa), went to the principal temple called Rangiatea, and stole the principal gods Maru, Iho-o-te-rangi, Rongomai, Itupawa, and Hangaroa, and came off with them to New Zealand; hence the phrase –

As in the stealing from Hawaiki.

[The priest continued his incantation,]

From the priesthood of Hawaiki,
There is the post standing,

[Putting a stick upright in the brook,]

It stands as an emblem
Of the taking off the tapu,
An emblem of making thee common,
An emblem of sprinkling thee.

[Sprinkling the girl at the same time,]

An emblem of Hine-angi-angi,
And Hine-kori-kori,
An emblem of woman.
Take the tapu off;
For there is the rod
Of Hine-te-iwa-iwa;
It stands as from the stealing from Hawaiki;
Attempt to catch the god
And put him into the water;
Take off the tapu from this daughter,
Immerse us then;

[Sprinkling the child with water,]

Take off the tapu from Ruanuku,
Take it into the water
And drown it.

The same ceremonies were used as in the case of the boy, in giving food to the gods and the ancestors of the child; the child was then presented to the people, and taken to be baptised. This rite was the same as the baptism of the boy, excepting the words, which were these: –

Baptised in the water of Tu,
Be thou strong
By the strength of Tu,
To get food for thyself,
To make clothing.
To make Kaitaka mats,
To welcome strangers,
To carry firewood,
To gather shell fish.
May the strength of Tu
Be given to this daughter.

The power of Kiharoa is coming
To take me to the sands of Rangaunu,
Where the spirits descend to the night.
What know I beyond this?

These karakias are given as a specimen of the many which are used on such occasions; in fact, each tribe has a somewhat different form of incantation, but the substance is the same.

When a child sneezes, the mother says "Sneeze, living heart;" if she were not to say so, she would suppose the child would be ill after it.

To make the tooth of a child come, the mother says –

Growing kernel, grow,
Grow, that thou mayest arrive
To see the moon now full.
Come, thou kernel,
Let the tooth of man
Be given to the rat,
And the rat's tooth
To the man.

When a child's hair is long, and it requires to be cut for the first time, the child's grandfather or a priest must cut it; the barber then, grandfather or priest, goes from the settlement the day previous to that on which the child's hair is to be cut, to one of their sacred places, and there sleeps that night. On his leaving the settlement, the people abstain from food until the ceremony is over; in the morning the child goes to him, and when the barber observes him coming, he says –

Come, my child,
And I will cut
Each of thy hairs
To the honour of Tu.

The child's hair is cut with obsidian; when done, the father of the child takes a poporokai-whiria stick to the barber, who makes a fire with it by friction, and burns the hair, repeating this karakia: –

The honour thou didst seek, my son,
Has come and gone.
Thou wast sacred,
And art common;

Thou canst return.
Here I am, my son.
I have risen up,
I have received,
I am satisfied.

The barber then roasts a piece of fern root, and with it touches the boy's head and each shoulder, and eats it. The ceremony being ended, the child may go to his playmates, and the people at the settlement may cook food.

A boy will not let any person step over his legs when he is in a sitting or reclining posture, especially not a woman or a girl, as it is believed it would render him unable to overtake an enemy when running; nor will men let any one step over their legs for the same reason.

When a young chief is thought to be of such age that he can be initiated into the secrets of the Maori priesthood, his grandfather, if alive, is the person who is to divulge those secrets. All young chiefs are not entitled to this privilege, but those only who are the first-born of the head chief of the family in which a knowledge of witchcraft has been handed down from generation to generation. The grandfather proclaims a fast, and the people abstain from food, or even cooking anything, from daylight of the day on which he is to teach his grandson until the lessons have been taught; at the same time he directs a shed to be built some little distance from the settlement. The shed is to be made of nikau (New Zealand palm); it has to be constructed with an equal number of sticks to each side; and also at each end there is not to be an odd stick in the shed, and the makers of it are to be all chiefs. The grandfather sleeps in it the first night, and the young man is sent to him at day-dawn, unclothed. He is thus sent lest any food should be on or have been near his clothing. Cooked food having been on the young man's garments would render him unfit to be near a priest, much more to be taught the sacred ceremonies. Moreover, it would be supposed that if such an accident were to happen to a young chief going to be taught, he and the priest would die.

The young chief is told to sleep as soon as he can, so that his grandfather the priest may consult the omens. If the young man's arm or leg jerk outwards, he could not learn, or if taught he would not remember; but if arm or leg jerk inwards, he will be an efficient priest.

If the omens be good, the priest awakes the young man at once, and repeats this karakia: –

From whence come all things?
From above,
From beneath.
My ancestor Maputahanga,
Bring it from Hawaiki.
Come, Uenuku, sailing in the air,
O'er the boisterous dashing ocean,
And unravel all things.

[This is supposed to ensure the young man a retentive memory.] The priest then teaches him the secrets; and when he has heard them all, he has to chew the lower end of a Toetoe-whatu-manu stalk, in order to prevent him from divulging what he has been taught.

After this account of the manner in which the priestcraft is handed down through successive generations, the question may arise as to how their genealogies are kept, seeing they have no written records. We may answer the question by stating that it is a custom amongst them at a set time for the old men to assemble in a house built for the occasion, then to invite all the young chiefs of their tribe to listen to the recital of their genealogy, which was done by one of the old men commencing as far back as it had been taught; and after he had recited as many names and anecdotes of war, love, and murder, as he thought proper, he allowed another of the old men to continue the account. Thus each one took his part in relating their history.

In this way the young chiefs learnt their origin and the causes of war and murder; also their relationship to other tribes. Some of the tribes of the South had a genealogical stick, on which they cut a mark for every generation. This, however, was not generally practised.

There is no precise period in life when young men are to be tattooed, and it is also optional on their part whether they are tattooed or not. To be tattooed, however, the natives think gives the face a finish, which it is deficient in without the marks given by the Uhi of Mataora. There are also other reasons. It is thought that the tattoo gives a determined look when in conflict, and also the Maori females do not regard as much the marks of respect paid to them by a Mokau as the attentions of a person who is tattooed. The soot with which they are marked is obtained by making a hole somewhat like a lime kiln, in which kauri gum is burnt, or a wood called kapara; on the top of the kiln is placed a Maori basket, made of korari, besmeared with fat, to which the soot adheres. The black thus obtained is sacred, and is kept for generations, father and son being tattooed from the black made at one burning. The soot is mixed with oil or dog's fat. We may here observe that the tattooing now seen is of a comparatively recent discovery: that in use in olden times was called Moko Kuri, and consisted of straight lines up and down the face, somewhat like the tattooing in the Marquesas Islands. This style is said to have been in use amongst the people who discovered this country. The New Zealanders even in the time of Captain Cook's visit here had this tattooing amongst them.

The fashion of the present day, it is said, was first used by a man of the name of Mataora, a member of some one of the East Coast tribes; and the first man on whose face it was marked was called Onetonga. There are three or four patterns; so that when a person is to be tattooed, the tohunga marks one of these on his face with a little common soot mixed with the water squeezed from the pulp of the Poroporo tree, and if, after looking into a pool of water (as this was the Maori looking-glass) the person to be tattooed approves of the pattern, he reclines his head on the tohunga's lap. The instrument used to make the punctures is formed out of a piece of whalebone, according to the design intended to be cut, and is bound to a piece of wood in the shape of a carpenter's square; this the tohunga holds in his left hand, between his forefinger and thumb. In his right

hand, between his third and fourth finger, is held a piece of fern stalk about eight inches long, the outer end of which is bound with a little flax. Between the thumb and forefinger of the same hand is held the black. When the tohunga has made an incision with the uhi by striking it with the piece of fern stalk held in his right hand, he again draws the uhi between the finger and thumb which holds the black, and, in so doing, it carries with it a portion for the next incision.

Men generally have their faces fully tattooed, but this is not done at one time. It is said the only person known to have been fully tattooed at one sitting died as the last lines were finished.

While a man is undergoing the operation, persons who may be near, or the tohunga himself, will sing these words, to amuse and inspire him with courage: –

In a group we sit
And eat together,
And we look at the marks
On the eyes and nose
Of Tutetawha,
Which turn here and there
Like the legs of a lizard.
Tattoo him with the chisel of Mataora.
Do not be so wistful
That the women should see thee,
They are getting the young leaf
From the wharawhara. 9
I am the author
Of your beautiful marks.
The man with the payment,
Tattoo him nicely:
The man with no payment,
Do not mark him well.
Strike the sounds, 10
Tangaroa rise thou,
Lift up Tangaroa.

Females have only their lips, chin, and neck tattooed; they consider the climax of beauty consists in jet black lips. When such an one is undergoing the operation of being made a beauty, to amuse her, and make her forget the pain she suffers for beauty's sake, the tohunga and her friends sing the following song: –

Recline, my daughter, to mark thee,
To tattoo thy chin;
Lest when thou goest to a house of strangers
They say, Where has this ugly woman come from?
Recline, my daughter, to mark thee,
To tattoo thy chin,
That thou mayest be comely;
Lest when thou goest to a feast
They ask where this woman with ugly lips came from?
To make thee beautiful,
Come and be tattooed,
Lest when thou goest into a party of dancers
They ask where this woman with ugly lips came from?
To make thee beautiful,
Come and let thy lips be tattooed,
Lest thou go where slaves are,
And they ask where this red-chinned woman came from?
We mark thee, we tattoo thee,
By the spirit of Hine-te-iwa-iwa;
We tattoo thee, that the spirit of the shore
May be sent by Rangi
To the depths of the sea,
To the foaming wave.
Thy beauty is tied with love,
Thy beauty is as the heavens,
As the stars Tahatiti, Ruatapu, Rongonui, and Kahukura.
The forehead of the man is marked,
And his is dying fame;
The sin of old was by man, 11
That sin from above,
Even in the home of the sun;
And the sin from beneath,
Where he goes to when he departs.
But thou art more beautiful
Than Uetonga and Tamarereti,
Or the sacred shadow of Reretoro.
The spirit of the shore shall be sent by Rangi

To the depths of the sea,
To the foaming wave.
Leave the flatterers and children,
Leave thy farewell with them,
And depart as the passing cloud
O'er Ruakawa mountains,
And let them weep in sorrow.
But as for me,
I am Rongo and Papa,
My work is done.

When a man or woman has been tattooed, the tohunga is tapu, as is also the settlement, from the fact of blood having been on the hands of the tohunga, and of his washing them in the settlement. To take the tapu off each, there are three Maori ovens (hangi) lighted, which are called "umu parapara." One of these is for the tohunga, and one for the person tattooed and the people generally, and one for the gods. To take the tapu off the settlement and himself, the tohunga, after washing his hands, takes a hot stone out of the oven intended for the gods, and after throwing it to and fro from one hand to the other, he puts the stone again into the oven. The tapu is thus transferred to the stone, and it being used to cook the food for the gods, the food receives that tapu, and is thus given to the gods. When the food in the oven for the gods is cooked it is put into a new basket and hung up on a tree in a sacred place.

The superstitions connected with tattooing are these: – The person being tattooed must not eat fish or shell fish without first holding some of it up to each and every part of his face. In doing this they reverence Tangaroa, by letting him see the tattooing first; whalebone being used as the principal agent in marking the face, for the use of which, and also to be allowed to eat fish of all kinds, they thus appease him. If they neglect this, Tangaroa, the god of fish, will make the tattooing all out of proportion. Another superstition is, that if children tattoo a hue (calabash) it must not be eaten, as the hue is then as the head of a man, and to eat it would be a curse on man.

The time allowed being past, I must conclude; yet it ought to be stated that what you have heard this evening is but the

preface to what might have been said. In fact, to relate the superstitions which held the New Zealanders in servile bondage would require the time allowed for three or four lectures. Could we also have described the superstitions which relate to their wars, sacrificial offerings, witchcraft, burying the dead and exhuming them, building houses, making war canoes and fishing nets, we should have been able to have shown the numerous trials and difficulties our missionaries had to contend with, and the lasting obligations we owe to them, under Divine Providence, for suppressing them. But we have heard sufficient this evening to prove that there is even in the Maori traditions a striking similarity to the Jewish and Christian records, while their abominations ought to inspire a heartfelt gratitude in the breast of all that we have been born in a land where the pure and unmutilated word of God is possessed.

1 This reference to eating the lizard tribe would lead any one who is not acquainted with the Maori habits to infer that the lizard is commonly eaten by them; such is not the case, except on extreme occasions, as in proclaiming war. There is, however, a tribe in the Taranaki district who eat a lizard called a kaweau, which is similar to the New Holland guano.

2 Entry Island and the islands adjacent in Cook's Straits.

3 Tuputupuwhenua afterwards became an insect, called "Kui," which burrows in the ground. Having thus been transformed, he burrowed under ground from the West Coast, and came out in a cave near the waterfall in the Kerikeri river.

4 Tradition states Manaia found the Waitara district occupied by a people of whom he had not previously heard. They were not a warlike race, and were easily overcome by Manaia and his followers. Manaia killed many of them, others escaped, and a portion became members of the Ngatiawa tribe.

5 Whiro was originally only a man, but such a notorious thief that for his adroitness he was deified.

6 Keruru, it is said, came from heaven in search of his sister Rupe; on. finding her he remained on earth, and having fed on the fruit of a tree called Tawa he became hoarse, and only able to say ku ku; this is (the natives say) the cause why the pigeon cannot make any other noise.

7 Death is here represented under the name of kiharoa; kiharoa signifying the last breathing of dying mortals.

8 The sands of Rangaunu, at the entrance of the Reinga.

9 Wharawhara leaves, with the silken part of which the Maori females decorate their faces.

10 Pakuru – A piece of wood (kaiwhiria) about twelve inches in length; one end of which is put into the mouth and the other end beaten with a stick, each blow being accompanied by words emitted by the opening and compressing of the lips. These words were a set form, belonging to the ceremony, and were also called pakuru.

11 Alluding to Maui having beaten the sun.

PART II. PRIESTHOOD, WITCHCRAFT AND WAR.

PART II.

In the first part of this paper, on the superstitions of the Maori race, we gave the principal details of their belief in the creation and the flood; then slightly noticed the different migrations to this country; and concluded by noticing certain of their ancient ceremonies, to one of which we would particularly recall attention, namely, the initiatory rites of priesthood, as being immediately connected with the subject which is to engage our attention this evening, viz., "Maori Priesthood, Witchcraft, and War." Much that we shall relate of their ceremonies is unavoidably absurd, and especially the incantations, the language of which to a cultivated mind is extremely nonsensical. Yet even these absurdities will no doubt cause a Christian heart to feel regret that a people endowed with such minds as the New Zealanders should have been held for so many generations in a labyrinth of superstitions so servile in practice and so degrading in their tendency. It may be said that the New Zealander of the present day – he who walks our streets with the produce of his own industry on his back, complying as far as possible with the

usages and language of the Europeans – does not resemble in manner or appearance the people whose superstitions and customs we shall give this evening. The savage who will pass in review before us would not on any account go near our cook shops, nor would he come near a baker's the air passing such would bear pollution with it, and such a feeling of horror as in many cases to cause death. That the New Zealanders were bound by a superstitious dread to observe omens we shall have ample proof. It was not the chiefs and priests alone who were superstitious: the whole Maori race, from the child of seven years of age to the hoary head, were guided in all their actions by omens; nor was it the chiefs and priests alone who had a knowledge of the incantations: the people in general were well acquainted with some of them, which they used for certain purposes, repeating them without the assistance of the priest. Of these we shall proceed at once to give a few examples. For instance, if, while men are on a voyage from settlement to settlement, one of the party, in changing the paddle from side to side, accidentally lets the outer end of it come into the canoe, it is an omen of an abundance of food to be given to them on their arriving at their destination. Again, in travelling, if the feet get filled between the toes with fern this is also an omen of food in abundance; but on their arrival, to ensure this omen's fulfilment, this incantation is repeated: "Omen of sweet food, hold: go thou to the hangi (oven), that I may arrive ere it be opened." But there are counter-omens to this. If anyone feels hungry when food is cooking it is an omen that strangers are on the road. Hence the proverbial warning repeated by such, that the people of the settlement may partake at once of the food by themselves: "Though partly raw, it is wholly our own; if fully cooked, we shall get but a part." Again, if a person's chin itches, this implies that they are shortly to partake of something oily, such as fat, eels, dog, rat, or whales' blubber. Also, if a party travelling should hear the bird called "tiraueke" cry to their right hand, this tells something of feasting; or if to the left, of war or murder. Let it not be supposed that the

neglected, decrepit old female slaves were deficient of omens in their unsophisticated art of cooking; for if one of them wishes to know to a minute when the hangi (oven) is done, at the same time she covers it up she will tie a "taro" to a piece of flax and bury the "taro" on the top of the oven; she then sticks a twig in the ground, and bending it towards the bit of flax, she fastens it to the bent stick. When the food is cooked, the stick will pull the "taro" up.

These may suffice as specimens of the general and ordinary belief of the common people in omens. If any more remarkable event took place, it was the business of the priest to expound its import. He was the guide of the people in almost all their concerns; in his hands was the direction of the policy of the tribe; nothing, in fact, save the ordinary actions, could be done without him. His office was five-fold: he was seer, physician, and general, also sorcerer, as well as priest. As priests, they had to conduct all ceremonies; as seers, by dreams and divinations they foretold the issue of events, and held conversation with the spiritual world, in songs taught them by spirits, shadowing forth the future. Songs thus taught were called "mata kite" (second sight). As wizards, by their incantations they bewitched those who might have given them or others offence; as physicians, they cured the sick by incantations; as generals, they led and determined the movements of war. The priests as such are sacred, and everything they use or touch – in fact, the merest trifles in all their movements – are sacred. Also the priest drinks out of the palm of his hand, and the water is poured into it from a calabash, for the calabash is not allowed to come near his lips, lest it may have been in a cook-house, or near cooked food, to touch which would be an insult to his gods, who would therefore cause his death. The place where he thus drinks is sacred because a portion of the water falls necessarily on the ground; but this must be prevented as much as possible, often to the great personal inconvenience of the priest, for on the amount of water spilled depends the duration of the sacredness on the ground. A slave may thus often revenge himself

upon a tyrannical or cruel master, for the latter cannot speak to bid his slave desist from pouring out the water, but make signs to him by elevating his eyebrows; as soon, therefore, as the slave expects the sign he is all at once attracted to look another way, while his priestly master, for fear of allowing too much water to run from his sacred hand upon the ground, is forced to continue drinking until his slave shall condescend to attend to his signal, and cease from pouring out from the calabash. The place where he sits is sacred, so also is his house and his fire. He will not eat food cooked in a large oven, nor will he light his own fire from a large one, as anything large is supposed to be common; nor will he take anything from the hand of another person, for fear of his hand coming in contact with a hand which has taken food out of an oven, which would enrage the gods, and cause his death. Anything given must be laid before him. In travelling, the spot and shed where a priest stops is holy, yet travellers passing that way may use the sticks which compose the shed for fuel, if they first take one of them from the top and burn it in a fire, which must be made from the firebrands left there by the priest. This fire, being sacred, will take the tapu from the wood composing the shed, and the power it might have to bewitch is thus removed. A priest must not carry cooked food when on a journey, except in a certain way; he must only eat in a certain attitude. When travelling on a war party, he will carry cooked food for himself in a basket in his hand; but when he eats he must unloose his belt, lest if his "mere" be in the belt or in his breast, as he lifts up the food to his mouth, and it go over his belt or "mere," it would be called an "aitua" (an evil omen), and cause the person and weapon to be powerless when in conflict. Again, a priest will not allow another person (layman or priest) to eat of what he has carried. This is the origin of the proverb, "Haere ana Rangipo, haere ana Raeroa" (Rangipo went, and also Raeroa). These were priests of Waikato who were on a journey together. Rangipo took food, and Raeroa did not, but asked his more thoughtful companion to give him to eat, which being refused,

Raeroa died. The cooked food carried by a chief will not, in like manner, be given to a priest. And the women observe the same rule; for a chieftainess and a priestess were journeying from Hokianga to Takahue (now called Victoria Valley), having been betrothed respectively to two young chiefs of that district. The chieftainess had taken cooked food, of which the priestess desired to partake, for it was a two-days' journey; yet she was not allowed to eat of it, for fear, as her companion said, that she might repeat her incantations over it, and she (the chieftainess) thereby lose the affection of her intended husband. The secret incantations of the priest were endued with deadly efficacy; therefore priests were not allowed, as priest to priest, to curse or even insult each other. They are supposed to be protected by the gods, and at the same time they have gods at their command, who execute their will; yet, if the priests insult each other, these very gods are said to visit them with punishment. We will relate two anecdotes to illustrate these assertions. There lived in the Tamaki district two priests whose names were Koroti (which means to chirrup), and Nuku (distance), who were on a journey from Tamaki to Waikato, accompanied by a dog, on a road by which they had not before travelled. They did not know the distance to Waikato, and while going through the forest in the Wairoa, on a place called Te Hunua, Distance asked Chirrup how far it might be yet, both being equally ignorant of the road. The folly of this question made Chirrup pun on the name of his companion by saying, "It is such a distance, it will be night ere we get there." But so to use the name of any man was a curse of the kind called "tapatapa." This roused his indignation, and they went on in silence, till Chirrup, feeling fatigued, and having forgotten his joke, as thoughtlessly asked Distance when they should get to their destination. Distance pleased with an opportunity of retaliation, answered, "When the birds chirrup in the morning, then we shall arrive." Chirrup was so enraged that they openly cursed each other. Being priests, they ought to have had recourse to their gods for revenge, and not to have taken the law into their own hands; but

their intemperate anger caused the gods to transform them into trees, the one into a "rimu," and the other into a "matai;" and their dog, having lain down where the quarrel took place, was turned into a large mound of earth, which to this day keeps the appearance of a dog lying down. There is one peculiarity about this mound: I found a peculiar species of fern growing on it, which I have not seen in any other part of New Zealand. To show the extent of the insult implied in thus using the name of a person as a word in any sentence in conversation, I would remark, that it is a custom with the Maoris, if a chief take for his name any word, or name of animal, weapon, or other object, his tribe at once must substitute some other word or name for that so taken by their chief; hence the origin of many of the provincialisms we meet with among the different tribes. For instance, a chief called himself "Tai" (the tide); at once the tide was called "ngaehe" (ripple). Another called himself "Mangumangu" (black); at once they called black "parauri" (dark). Again, another called himself "Poaka" (pig); a pig was thenceforward called "kuhukuhu" (grunter). Another called himself "Ahi" (fire); fire was then called "ngiha" (burning or blaze). One more example may suffice. Throughout New Zealand generally the Maori may fish for "hapuku" (cod fish), but not so at Hawke's Bay; there he must call his fish a "kauwaeroa" (long jaw), or else incur the penalties of "tapatapa," for profaning the name of the great chief who bears the former appellation. Should any one apply to the original object a name which has been thus taken by a chief, in his presence, it is considered an insult to him, and, as such, payment is demanded. This absurdity is carried so far, that if a rat gnaws unseen a fishing net or a garment, the person whose property is thus eaten will not say. "My net or mat has been eaten by a 'kiore,'" for fear the rat should hear his name used, and thereby be provoked to commit further depredations; but he would say, "My net has been eaten by the 'keroke'" (the fellow), a word used in this instance with no signification of reproach. Maori legends will furnish us here with an example of the danger that lay in

even the hasty and inconsiderate insult of a priest. In ancient times there lived in the district of Whangarei a priest of the name of Manaia, whose wife, Maungakiekie, was also of priestly rank. Their family consisted of two daughters, with a slave, called Paeko. The whole account of them is voluminous; therefore, passing over the major part of the doings and sayings of this family, I would only notice their final fate. It should be said, by the way, that the elder daughter, having a taste for architecture, occupied a considerable portion of her time in constructing a wharf from which she could fish with a rod and line; but after she had laboured at it all the day, in the night the gods of her father replaced the stones in their original position, till, finding her work thwarted in this way every night, she gave it up in despair. Afterwards the whole family took a journey from Whangarei to the Bay of Islands, namely, Manaia, his wife, their two daughters, and the slave Paeko, who was carrying a calabash in each hand, and was accompanied by their dog. Before they started on this journey, Manaia and his wife had disagreed on some little matter of domestic life, and were in a very bad temper. They had crossed the river of Whangarei, and ascended a rugged mountain on the north side, where they all sat down fatigued with the ascent. Here the dispute between Manaia and his wife was renewed, till, very unlike a chief, he kicked her. The slave interceded for her; Manaia kicked him also down the hill, calabashes in hand. The dog shared the same treatment, till the gods, who had amused themselves by destroying the young woman's wharf, and by witnessing this scene, to end all family discord, and to be certain of punishing the offender, turned them all (the dog included) into huge blocks of stone. In sailing down the coast, four projecting rocks are to be seen to this day near the North Head of the Whangarei river, on the summit of a hill. These are Manaia, his wife, and his two daughters. On the southern declivity of this mountain is also seen a rock lying up and down the slope of the hill, near which there are two round boulders, and another of an oblong shape. These are the slave Paeko, the two calabashes, and his clog. A legend which

will carry a moral for all heads of families who are litigiously inclined.

The eldest son is heir to the knowledge of priesthood and sorcery, yet there are exceptions to this custom. Priests in general will not teach those of another tribe their own incantations; yet this knowledge is sometimes imparted, provided the family whose eldest son is taught (and he alone) enter into a contract that in all succeeding generations the descendants of the disciple shall pay a yearly tribute to those of the preceptor; this tribute consists of all sacred food, which, when thus set apart, is called "kai popoa." So also at baptisms, at funerals, and at exhuming, at the cutting of the hair, at the planting of the kumara, and at others of the more solemn ceremonies, a portion is set apart for the gods, as the supreme rulers; this is also "kai popoa" (the food of propitiation), and when rendered to a chief, is given as an acknowledgment of such supremacy, and is by him received as the representative of the indwelling gods. A further tribute also of all first fruits is exacted, the first of the kumara crop, the first fish caught in a new net, the first birds speared, the first rats caught, and the first of all sharks caught in the season, – in fact, the first and the choice of all the produce of the district where a family so adopted into the priesthood reside. Such districts have, not unfrequently, in time been claimed as the joint property of two tribes and the novice, from which arise many of the conflicting claims between the native tribes at the present day. Another may be adopted into the knowledge of the priestly office, so the eldest son may sometimes be excluded, although he has the prior right to its inheritance. I will relate two or three anecdotes to illustrate on what trifling ground he may be excluded from this portion of his birthright. A priest, on leaving his own for another settlement, showed to his wife two bundles of fern root, which he hung separately up in a certain part of the enclosure of the village, requesting that she would give one to his brothers (who were expected to arrive in his absence), and the other to their dog. On his return he learnt that his wife, by forgetting, had

given to the dog the bundle intended for his brothers; and for this trifling mistake he left his wife, who shortly afterwards had a son, whom his mother called "Uenuku," but, having no one to teach him the mysteries, he was the son of a priest without the knowledge to which he was by birth entitled. To this clay, any chief who is deficient in the knowledge of the priesthood is called "Uenuku kuware" (Uenuku the untaught). When a priest teaches the ceremonies and incantations, he fasts all the day, and at night he teaches, repeating each "karakia" once only. The same person is not taught a second time, as it is asserted by the priests that if he forgets any of the incantations taught him, he has only to request the gods, and they will reveal them in a vision. The gods will not divulge anything but to those who have been a disciple of a priest; but should the priest himself forget a word in the incantations which he is teaching, it is a fatal omen, and tells of his own death: this is called the "pepa." The ceremonies observed before and after these lessons are in my former lecture, and therefore need not be repeated here; but I may observe that the priests, while teaching, stand in great awe lest the revealing of the sacred mysteries should cause their gods or their ancestors to kill them. One of the principal tutors was so terrified at the idea of having divulged so much to me (though the man was professedly a Christian), that he dreamt the spirits of his ancestors met him, each with an adze in his hand, and, passing him, each struck his adze into the ground; at each stroke, rats issued forth from the holes. This he interpreted, that for his divulging Maori secrets he was to be eaten alive by rats. After this dream, I could not get the old priest, for any consideration, to proceed with his teaching. Governor Sir George Grey, after much persuasion, got from Te Taniwha, one of the few natives in this province who recollected having seen Captain Cook, and was commonly known by the name of "Hooknose," two or three of his incantations. Shortly after, Government House was burnt. "Hooknose" firmly believed that the fire was caused by his gods, in vengeance for Sir George Grey having made him divulge his incantations.

We proceed now to speak of the prophetic office of the priests. As seers, future events are within their knowledge; for it is supposed that one of the principal gods resides within a seer, and that there are many others who attend him in all his movements. Any insect that may light upon the garments of a seer is supposed to be one of his gods; and once myself, in company with a priest, I noticed a spider crawling up his arm on to his head, and when I called his attention to it, the man replied that it was one of his gods. The chief Kiwi, whose tribe occupied Mount Eden, was slain in a pitched battle at the Whau by the Ngatiwhatua, and on his own head being cut off, it is reported that a small lizard was found on the back of his neck, which was said to have been the god "Rehua," who resided there as the protector of the tribe Tainui, of which Kiwi was chief. Other priests and seers have a god in their breasts in the form of a pebble (called "whatu"), which at their death is taken by the next of kin, and is so handed down through generations. They have not any set rules by which to interpret dreams; but according to the expedition on which they are engaged, the object of it will give a clue to divine the meaning. An evil dream is called a "kotiri;" to dream of death or wounds, of weeping, or eating disagreeable food, means death. For example, a short time before the Heke war broke out, Tamati Waka dreamt that he was walking near the seaside, when a lobster leapt out on to his hand; he bit off one of its claws, and let it go. This was ominous of war. Again, a Ngapuhi seer named Hemi Mete (James Smith), immediately before the same war, dreamt that he was fishing on a hill called Te Ahuahu, near to the pa which was afterwards attacked by the troops: he fished not in the water, but on shore, and the fish he caught was a European female. This he spoke of as an omen of strife between the Natives and Europeans. The seers not only foretell coming events, but have visions of incidents transpiring in distant places at the time of the vision. One anecdote will suffice for this. An old man (seer), of the name of Nakahi, residing in Hokianga, dreamt that he saw on the West Coast two canoes and the god Te-ata-o-te-rangi,

and that he saw the wreck of them. In one was Mohi Tawhai, the well-known chief of Waima, in Hokianga, in imminent danger of drowning; and but for the intervention of Nahaki and of his god, Tawhai himself would have shared the fate of the others on board, and would have perished. It appeared afterwards in reality, that on the night of this dream a gentleman in company with Mohi Tawhai was coming from Auckland to the Bay of Islands, and was caught in a heavy gale, which that gentleman said he did not expect the vessel would have been able to outlive. About dawn the gale subsided, and they arrived in the Bay. Is it any wonder that the natives are so superstitious when an old man accidentally dreams of things so strikingly corresponding to what is then actually taking place; and not only of the circumstances, but also the name of the person so positively stated? A subject closely allied to the foregoing is that of the "Matakite" (a second sight), analogous in some respects to the Scotch Highlanders', but differing in this important point, that the Maori priest voluntarily courts the prophetic trance. We will give but two instances. A priest named Kaiteke was leading a war party in their canoes from the Bay of Islands to attack the Kaipara natives, unaware that the natives of that district were awaiting him with the intention of fighting at Mangawhai. Encamping for the night on shore, he invoked the gods to reveal to him his success by "matakite," using the same ceremonies to himself which were described in our former Lecture as being observed when the priest watches over the sleep of his disciple to see if he will become adept in the mysteries he is about to learn. In the trance Kaiteke saw a company of spirits dancing before him and singing –

The gods of night are saying
At Mangawhai I shall be slain:
No!
On the mountain's side shall I?
No!
When I view the wave of the western sea,
And gaze on the river's rippling tide,
My grasp shall hold, my power release,
And woman's laugh shall say,

'Tis Tu, 'tis Tu o'ercome! o'ercome!
The land breeze blows another way,
Trees are seen in the blood-red clouds
Of the western sky, 'tis Tu! 'tis Tu!
Wander, ye desolate, roam o'er earth,
And act ye like gods, for the small
Summer birds are assembled in flocks,
All numberless, numberless.

This he explained to his men on rising from his trance. The line, "Trees are seen in the blood-red clouds," were the enemy waiting for the battle; the "small summer birds" were the enemy in their flight after the defeat. The two parties met as thusforetold, a battle was fought at Mangawhai, where many of bothsides fell; the Kaipara tribes were forced to fly into the Waikato district, the invaders being conquerors. Our second specimen is the one which prophesied the capture of the famous Waikato pa, Matakitaki, by the Ngapuhi under the great Hongi Hika: –

Stay thou, O Muri, guard thy fishing bank at Ahuriri,
And make thee a resting-place;
But let that part on which thou dost rest be soft.
Rest not sitting; listen to the distant noise
Made by those erecting sleeping-places on the cave of Koroki.
Bring ye the food now sought by the dogs.
The boom of the ocean's swell is heard dashing in Reinga's cave.

In the last two lines the local allusion to the cave of Reinga marks at once the interpretation of the otherwise ambiguous oracle, and prophesies the victory of the Ngapuhi (the Northern tribe).

The gods even inspire animals with the power of knowing future events. Before the battle at Rotoiti, between the tribes of Heke and Waka, a chief called Te Kahakaha was sitting with Heke in a hut, when a dog came and barked at him. This was thought to be a warning of his death: he fell the next day, and it was said the god Te Nganahau (the god of death and evil) inspired the dog, thus telling Te Kahakaha of his doom. When going into battle, if men feel a creeping of the flesh in any part of the body, they are to be wounded in those parts; if they feel a warm air pass over them, which causes them to perspire, they are to die. Such omens to men are called "aitua," and to ani-

mals "pawera." Lest animals intended to be hunted should feel the "pawera," the natives in olden times never determined to hunt before the day on which they started for the chase. Three young chiefs, whose mother was a priestess, in defiance of this rule, determined in the night to go to a certain place to hunt. The old lady overheard them agreeing to start the next day, and told them that as they had determined beforehand, the pigs would certainly be "pawera," and so go from the place. They, however, went, and failed to catch one. A few days afterwards the priestess told them to go to the same place and they would catch a pig. They went, and did so. Now in this case the mother was so feeble by age, that she could not have gone to the place where the pigs were; therefore it was believed her gods had enabled her to give such positive information. A European, who was in the camp at the time the troops were mustering to march against Heke's pa at Okaihau, states that when the native allies saw the litters brought, and that too to accompany a body of living men to battle, that one and all said "great would be the mischief which would follow on such an evil 'aitua.'" That evening he (the European) again passed through the camp where the dying and wounded were. The natives observed what a number of men were wounded, but added, "These men have brought this upon themselves; they consigned their bodies to death while they were alive by taking those litters with them."

All that a seer has is sacred, and partakes of the influence of his gods, and any violation of his property is therefore visited with their vengeance. For example, there lived in Waikato a seer, whose wife also was a prophetess; these, after having been married for many years, at last quarrelled, and the wife took her dog with her, and left Waikato, and went down near Kawhia, and along the West Coast, passing through Taranaki, till she arrived at a settlement of the Ngatiruanui, and there she became the wife of a chief, whose name was Porou. For some reason (now forgotten) the Ngatiruanui killed and ate her dog; but for this sin (for it was a prophetess' dog) the gods laid upon the

tongues of all the people this curse: "That, whenever they spoke they should bark like the dog they had killed." To this day this branch of the Ngatiruanui retain the curious provincialism of commencing every address, every question, and every answer, with the syllable "ou, ou," and they are hence, in allusion to the legend, distinguished by the name of "Ngatikuri," "Sons of the dog."

We will conclude this portion of our subject with a few anecdotes from the history of the Northern war. While our troops and those of our allies were lying before the pa of Ohaeawai, an old seer within the pa, who could not speak one word of English, announced that he was attended by the European gods, so that he could foretell the fate of the English forces, as well as of his own people. His prophecy was, of course, delivered in a kind of gibberish, which was interpreted by Pene Taui, the chief of Ohaeawai, who understood English, as follows: "The gods spoke by the seer, and said, 'No one must smoke a pipe while standing, and two shillings and sixpence will be killed.'" Now it did so happen that, on the same day when this prophecy was delivered, a cannon shot entered the pa, killed a woman and her child, and, continuing its course, took off the leg of a man, who died in the course of the day. These two adults and child were the two shillings and sixpence in the oracle. How far either the priest or his interpreter (Pene Taui) believed themselves is very questionable, but they required the people to believe implicitly; and if they reposed any faith in their own prophecy, it is only one of many instances where the extent to which a man practised in deceiving others may end in imposing upon himself. Again, on the morning when the troops were preparing for the attack upon Ohaeawai, this same Pene Taui took a leaf of an English Bible, and loading his gun with it, fired it up to heaven at the moment of the assault; "For," said he, "the God in heaven was the author of the Bible, and was the defender of the Europeans," and the best way to obtain His protection for themselves instead was to send a leaf of His own book to implore His aid. One morning at daybreak Mohi Tawhai (one of the bravest of our allies) went out of the camp, and in-

advertently got within fifty yards of an ambush party of ten men sent out of the pa to reconnoitre. Mohi was next in rank and command to Tomati Waka, and his death would have given no small credit to the man who might kill him; but not one of the ten could pull the trigger of his gun at him; they all lay on the ground, looking at one another, wondering what spell restrained them, and Mohi returned unmolested to the camp. The men themselves told me this afterwards, and accounted for it on the ground that as Mohi was a firm believer in the Christian God, and every Sabbath taught his people out of the Word of God, the God in whom he so believed had held their hands from pulling the triggers at him, His worshipper.

Residing within the pa at this time was a priest from Hawaii, who assumed to himself the power of charming the life of any person from cannon shot and musket balls by chewing a piece of stick and rubbing it over the man. Absurd as this may appear to a European, many of the natives in the pa believed in him, and through faith in his charms exposed themselves fearlessly to the firing of our troops; nor was it until they had fallen that the rest awoke to the murderous imposition practised on them. Another impostor, named Papahurihia, promised by the aid of his gods and the power of his incantations to protect from the power of cannon shot a house built by his command in the pa of Ohaeawai, as a council chamber for the chiefs. The house was built, and eight chiefs were sitting in it when a cannon ball passed directly through it, shattering the muskets which were piled within. The seer said that some one had smoked a pipe inside, and his gods were angry. Another house was built with the same promise of protection; this was struck by a shell, and unroofed, and Papahurihia now attributed his failure to cooked food having been taken in the house, not perhaps in the hand but in the mouth, which would have the same effect in polluting the place. This second failure, however, was a death-blow to his pretensions, and the council house was not re-built.

We will now speak of the sorcerer and his witchcraft. The power possessed by the sorcerer of inflicting death upon such as

had either insulted him or others, no doubt gave him great influence with the people, and few or no insults were offered to him; still it must be admitted that his life was only held on a precarious tenure; for it has frequently occurred that his nearest relation, even his own son or grandson (to say nothing of members of another tribe), would murder a man accused of bewitching one of their relations. We will give one or two anecdotes on this head, and then give one incantation from one of each of the different modes of divination; for the ceremonies differ according to the circumstances of the case.

In November last, while engaged in the Kaipara district, we came to a native settlement where, three days previous to our arrival, a young chief had died of consumption, of which disease his brother and sister were also dying. The natives of this district had for more than fifteen years observed all the outward forms of Christianity, yet on retiring to our tent we overheard them relating to the chiefs who accompanied us the cause of the young man's death, which of course was the result of witchcraft; the proof of this was, that about three months previous to his death the young man and an elderly chief were jointly cultivating a piece of ground, when they had some trifling dispute respecting it. The younger asserted that the crop of wheat would not grow for want of drainage, and that it would be washed away; to which the elder replied, "You will never see it." Shortly afterwards the young man, on an excursion with his brother and sister, got very wet with rain, and being of consumptive tendency, all three took colds, the cause of death to him, and most likely to prove fatal to the other two. When the young chief died, the words uttered by the old man were remembered, and were considered an indisputable proof that he had bewitched the whole family on account of the words the one had uttered to him in conversation in the plantation. Formerly the sorcerer might not have escaped so well; for in the year 1844 a slave and his wife were killed in Hokianga for the supposed crime of witchcraft. These two poor beings had been taken from the Rotorua tribes, in the wars of the noted cannibal Hongi Hika,

and as the Rotorua people are noted for their knowledge of sorcery, these two slaves of course must share such knowledge. Most of the principal chiefs of the Hokianga district having died in the space of five years, these slaves were charged with having bewitched them, and on the mere supposition they were put to death. Even in these days of comparative civilization of the Maori, the lives of the nearest relatives are sometimes sacrificed to the still strong belief in these Satanic rites, and for the supposed crime of witchcraft murder is still perpetrated. Since November last there have been no less than four such murders, one of which took place within a few days' journey from this city. In that month a man named Hakaraha was killed at Rotorua by a person of the name of Hura, who supposed the other had bewitched his wife Roka. It appears that Hakaraha and Roka had not been on friendly terms, and that he had said, "May earth be laid on Roka;" shortly after which the woman died. Hakaraha's wish was sufficient evidence to warrant his seizure and execution, which took place accordingly. At Whaingaroa, in September last, an old man and his wife were strangled for the imputed death of a chief's son, one of the executioners having been baptized, as also the victims. The old man and his wife had been taken slaves by the Ngatihourua tribes from the Ngatikahungunu in Hawke's Bay; and chiefs having died in the tribe of their masters, these two were accused of sorcery, and sold to the Ngatimahanga for a gun. Whilst among them, a son of the chief William Naylor having quarrelled with his own wife, had thoughtlessly kicked her arm, which the two slaves bathed with warm water: while doing so it is supposed they uttered the incantations of witchcraft against the husband. Shortly afterwards he died, when the slaves were summoned to appear before a superstitious semi-cannibal assembly of men, women, and children, who constituted themselves judges, jury, and witnesses – judges without the knowledge of the rights of man, jury reckless and utterly incapable of estimating the value of human life, and witnesses devoid of any evidence but the mere presumptions of superstition. The prejudged vic-

tims, being by these questioned as to their knowledge of witchcraft, repeated the incantations for a curse. This was sufficient. They were ordered to forget such knowledge, which they could not promise. They were then told "they were given up to the evil world, the dark world, and to wickedness." This was understood by the young men; and accordingly, a few days afterwards, while the poor old man and his wife were cooking their evening meal, unconscious of their fate, two men, named Wapu and Hakopa, entered the hut and strangled them. Shortly after this, and even nearer to Auckland, an old man named Ruharuha was murdered at Waiuku by his own grandson, Pita Te Whareraukura. Pita's wife had died, and a short time previous to her death he (Pita) had quarrelled with the old man about the land, and therefore he threw the blame of her death upon his grandfather's incantations, and on this supposition he shot him.

All these cases were spoken of by the majority of the Maori people as just, and as such the murderers were not thought the less of by their own tribes. I will make but little comment upon these facts. They speak for themselves, and call upon us, by those feelings of pity and national benevolence for which England's sons in every land have been so noted, to assist in enlightening the ignorance and alleviating the consequent misery of so many of our fellow-mortals. Surely, being sons of such ancestors as ours were, we love to worship that God whom they served, and to reverence His name. Can we not devise some plan to assist the ministers, and help them on in the work of our Lord, so that these Satanic customs and superstitions may cease for ever, and such acts may not again be perpetrated in the very precincts of our city, endangering the whole community? Even if we take the lowest ground (the eternal danger of the actors in such scenes being left out), many men, who look upon the present moral condition of the Maori race, and see how strong a hold their heathenish and barbarous customs yet retain upon them, are tempted to conclude that the efforts of our missionaries for forty years have been of little avail in christianizing the people.

But the Maori is an observant race, and they will compare practice with precept. When the European inhabitants of New Zealand were only scattered individuals, then missionary teaching, supported by example, had its full effect. The sin or the profanity of an individual produced but little impression on the Maori mind, for they knew that amongst themselves also there were evil men as well as good; but it is to the wickedness of our community that we must attribute the revival of heathenism. They have been taught to keep the Sabbath day holy, and they come into our streets and see it constantly profaned by drunkenness and other evils, and they turn and say to us, "England sent first her missionaries; they showed us the wickedness of our old evil ways; we believed them, and we put away the evil from us. But now England sends her people, and we see more sin amongst them than was ever in the midst of us. We had no marriage rite, yet were more faithful and moral than you who are bound with a vow in God's presence. It is your example, as a nation, that has taught us to revert to our old customs." Christian nations have amongst themselves a standard by which they are judged and weighed; a Christian people in the presence of a heathen race are watched more closely still, and their example is of still greater influence. It is by our example as a people that we can the most surely help forward the work of the Almighty; and certainly He will not fail to visit us accordingly; for "righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is the destruction of many people."

We will now give the ceremonies and incantations of witchcraft. As we have before stated, there are many degrees of a Maori curse, and this being mostly the cause of a person being bewitched, a few specimens of them will not be out of place. There are three principal degrees; viz., the "kanga," the superlative curse, as "Upoko kohua (skull to cook in) or "Upoko taona" (cooked head); the "apiti," as "To upoko ko taku ipu wai" (your head is the calabash from which I drink); "Ko taku tirou kai o wheua" (my fork is your bones). The distinction between these two degrees may not be at first glance visible to

many present. The "kanga" is an actual wish that the devoted man may be eaten; the "apiti" (or literal comparison) is only likening of the bones to a fork, and the skull to a calabash. There is also the lower degree, "tapatapa," which is by calling the name of any animal or thing after a person; for instance, prompted by feelings of loyalty, we call our ships after our beloved Queen, which is to a Maori a "tapatapa," which blood alone could atone for; and what to him is still worse is that the very sixpence which we give for a loaf of bread bears on it the likeness of our Queen. This is utterly unintelligible to his superstitious mind, that we who are so wise should sell the likeness of our Queen for cooked food, a curse upon her sufficient to require the lives of a nation to atone. The curse of tapatapa is very frequently taken advantage of by a covetous chief to seize on anything belonging to a slave, such as a canoe, a spear, or mat, a fine dog, or a fat pig. All that was required to deprive the slave of his property was, any chief should call it after himself or any of his limbs, when the owner must surrender it.

We have said before that it was not sufficient to avenge the insult of a curse; its effects also must be expiated. The ceremonies used for this purpose by the natives differed according to the several degrees we have defined above, of kanga, apiti, and tapatapa. If the malediction were by kanga, then the priest would go with the man who had been thus cursed (each unclad) to a running stream, and making mounds of earth beside it, the priest sticks a twig of tangeo into the bank; then they immerse themselves in the water, the priest repeating this incantation, while the gods are supposed to come and rest upon the mounds, and dance upon the twig thus set up: –

Now are the mounds made,
On the side of the dark stream,
By the place of thy wanderings, and of thy curse.
It is made this evening
By the darkness of this hill,
By the shade of these gods.
Now stands the twig by the mound,
By the place of theft, by the wanderings,
By the incantations from Hawaiki.

It is the twig of revenge,
To hurry onward my power,
The impetuous power of these sons,
Emblem of the gods and their power.
Now is the power of this incantation,
Of these sons and of these emblems;
The water is flowing to this place of sorcery,
It flows on to this sacred spot.
To the head of strength, to the root,
On the surface and to the gods of theft,
Thou son of evil words and this curse,
Thou who didst defy the priests with a curse,
By these gods and sons, also these emblems
Which are now seen with impetuosity
Sowing death, seeking revenge for these sons,
By these emblems, fall thou, die thou,
On these mounds, beneath these twigs,
With suddenness be thy death:
Die quickly for thy curse and evil word.

This done in the water, they return now to the settlement, and some little distance from it they sweep a place clear of grass or weeds, as an arena upon which the gods and spirits may alight. While sweeping, this incantation, which is called the "Tahinga," is used: –

Sweep, sweep, an open space,
On this sacred morning of Tu,
For the gods of power sweep this place
On which to sow death, to revenge these sons.
Tu the powerful, and Rongo,
Itupaoa, and Ihungaru, come,
Even to this sacred spot come,
Sow death for this word and curse,
Darkness come from the world below,
From the gods below,
From the worm below, and smite these sons.

Within the open space the priest digs a hole about two feet long, which is intended for a grave for the spirits of those who cursed, and while digging it this incantation is repeated: –

Now is the pit dug down to the depth of Nuku,
To the limits of the earth, to the depths of Papa, –
To the calm of darkness below, to the long night,
To the utmost darkness, to the power of these priests,
To the darkness of the gods of these sons and emblems.

This done, and the grave finished, they put a twig of karamu on each side, and seat themselves on its brink, and take a shell of a freshwater mussel with which to scrape into the pit the spirits of those who uttered the curse, which have been already brought to the pit's edge. While doing this, again the priest begins: –

Now is the mussel shut to Rehua above,
And to the stars;
Atutahi, Matariki and Tawera:
To the sun and moon above,
To all things and the darkness above,
To the root of all things and the priests,
That they may hearken to this incantation,
Look at these emblems and strong desires,
Which call for revenge and death.
Let the revenge of Tu consume these sons,
Their priests, their gods, their power and incantations.
May the power of their priests be confounded,
Let their wizard god be made dumb!

A narrow mound is then made all along the side of the pit, upon which the priest places stones named after those who used the curse, one for each, and says: –

To sweep in, to cover up, kill and bury them;
For thy power in war, thy strength and anger,
And for thy prowess and also thy words:
By thy thrill of fear in the battle front,
Thou art struck down to the depths of Nuku,
Even to the root of the world thou art sent,
As food for the hosts there; thy powerless incantation also,
Thy ancestors and their power is gone with thee:
They are now weak and cannot kill.
We sweep them and thee into this pit,
And hide you altogether with this shell, –
The shell of these sons and emblems..

This is repeated over every stone, and each time he comes to the name "Nuku" he strikes into the pit each stone to which it is addressed. The twigs are now thrown likewise into the grave; then he covers it in, and pats down the hillock with his hands. The next day they come there again, and weaving a basket which is of very small size, which is called "Paro taniwha" (god's basket), the priest again repeats: –

Weave my basket for my sons to sleep in:
My basket is for my dead sons and enemies to sleep in.

To whom does the basket belong?
To the gods and priests and ancestors,
To the sacred powers and female ancestors,
To the gods of theft. Fill up, fill up, my basket!
It is to put you, your priests, gods and ancients in,
Your power and incantations.
To whom does the basket belong?
To the female ancestors and you all,
Even the stay of all power and the gods of theft.

The bodies of their enemies were buried in the twigs; the stones represented their hearts, cold and dead as they. Now their spirits are imprisoned in the basket, and being hung up on a stick above the grave, and squeezed by the hands of the priest, are thus offered to the gods, and chiefly to the goddess Raukataura, who is especially addressed to enlist the spirits of the female line of priesthood on their own side while weaving; also one of the party waves a mussel shell above her work to effect the same. On the third day, at a little distance from this pit, they build a hut, and make a mat, and lay it on the pit. They then make an effigy of Raupo, putting within it a stone to represent the heart, and laying it on the mat. This is called Whiro, They then address the figure: –

Sleep, oh son, sleep!
Sleep thou on the pit of these sons of evil.
They are gone to the long night,
The night of manifold darkness;
They are gone to the end,
To the thousands below.

The mat and the effigy are lastly taken up and deposited in the hut, and the priest, standing at a little distance, asks, "Are you asleep, Whiro? Awake! awake! Are you awake, Whiro? The priest, answering for Whiro, says, "Oh yes, I am awake." He again asks, "Are you in your own house?" Again answering, he says, "Yes." "No, you are not. O Whiro, you are in the world. It is not your place of abode. Arise! arise! go thou to the gods in the depth of Nuku, to the worm, to the depths, to the dark world, to the evil, to the gods of power, to the end of evil." This concluding ceremony is called "Whakaoho," and the curse is finally removed from them, and transferred to him

or them who uttered it. Yet all this is not enough if the original imprecation have derived additional power from having been uttered by a priest. In such a case the ceremonies above related are followed till the "marae," or consecrated area, has been swept; but then the priest makes a little mat, and while working it he says: –

Weave, weave, my mat,
A mat for the gods to sleep on:
Weave, weave my mat for this evil,
For this darkness, for this curse!
Weave to the boisterous sea,
To the dark sea,
To the sacred sea of Tu,
Of Te Nganahau, and Te Whiro,
And to the heavens above,
And the many above, and to death.

This, resembling in all but size a common sleeping mat, is laid upon the ground, and upon it is placed a piece of stick with leaves tied round it for head, arms, and clothing. This stick stands for the representative of Raukataura. Then again he says: –

Here is thy apron of war,
Even the apron of Tu.

Then he builds over it, as it thus lies, a small house, and adds: –

Sleep, Ruakataura, sleep, –
Sleepest thou?

The priest answers for the goddess, as though she were speaking: –

No!
Go then to the depths below,
To the thousands below.

Here he listens, as though expecting an answer. There being no answer, he says: –

Will you not go? No.
Do you wish for companions? Yes.
Will you take them with you? Yes.
Then take with you these persons.

He then mentions the name of each one whom he intends should die by his witchcraft. Then taking in his hands a stick,

he sets another against the end of the house to represent the door, and touching it with the one he holds in his hand, he proceeds: –

Shut in, shut in!
Art thou shut in? (Answer) No.

Then striking it a second time, he says: –

Shut to the door!
Shut it to.
Go ye to the gods below,
And to the thousands below.
And if they ask thee –

Again addressing the goddess Raukataura –

Who are in the world above?
Tell them these.

And here he repeats by name the principal relations of those whom he is bewitching: –

And if they ask thee
Who are thy companions?
Tell them these.

Repeating here the names of the men themselves against whom his sorceries are directed. This done, he turns the little effigy on its face, and says: –

Sleep on, my son, sleep on,
Look to the world below,
To the darkness below,
To thy power below.
Look not to the first heaven,
Nor to the second heaven,
Nor to the tenth heaven.
Tawhaki (the thunder god) is above,
And the world of light also,
The thundering world – the splitting world,
The shining world of power.

All this is done to transfer the curse not only to the priest who uttered it, but also to his tribe; then all is left as it lies until there is a rumour of approaching war, and in the meantime, for the space of a whole year, the tribe will not cultivate the ground, but are supplied by their kindred tribes.

The curse of the second degree, or "apiti," does not necessarily require the death of the offender for its extirpation; a less punishment may often satisfy the offended party. In any case the person aggrieved goes to the priest and repeats the curse; the priest then takes as many sticks as there are words contained in it, and makes an effigy of raupo; into this he puts these sticks, and for the heart he puts into it a sacred stone, called "okaka" (parrot food). This stone is said to be found by the "kaka" in the heavens, and when possessed by a flock of them, is carried by one bird for the rest to whet their beaks. This effigy is placed on one side of a running stream, and beside it the priest takes up his station; on the other side stands the sufferer, with a branch of koromiko stuck in the ground beside him. When all is ready, the priest bids the man spit into the stream, and catch the spittle in his right hand; he strikes it upon his own right cheek; upon this the spirit of the enemy is seen standing at the priest's left hand. He then bids the man assume a certain posture, varying according to circumstances. If cursed by a relative, and if death is exacted as the penalty, he reclines on his right side, and draws up both legs; if he will be satisfied with the infliction of pain, the right leg only is thus drawn up. If his enemy be no relation, yet one whom he does not wish to kill, he lies outstretched upon his back, and folds his hands across his breast; but for the doom of death he assumes the posture of a corpse, with his arms laid straight beside him. Then the priest repeats this incantation (while the spirit leaves his side, and takes its station on a stick pitched in the middle of the stream): –

Blow on us, thou gentle breeze,
Perchance it is I whom they are cursing,
As recompense for evil.
Perchance the treacherous one
In his canoe of leaves will not hearken.
Come, assemble in the house.
The birds nestle, the soul shrinks,
My parent is slain by me,
But thou stranger will be given to death
For thy evil deeds, fall thou into the water.

The priest now strikes the spirit down the stick with his hand into the water, and continues: –

Let the stone of deceit be given,
Quiet be thy feet.
I will lay down in this house;
Stretch out thine arm as a leg;
And thy leg as an arm:
Thus by the fish of the earth,
Looking upwards to heaven, panting for breath, "0 woe is me!"

Then the man leaves the stream, and roasting a fern root in a fire kindled by the priest, he touches the priest on the head and shoulders, and then gives it to him to eat. The tapu is thus broken, and both are polluted and unfit for further rites of sorcery. This is done lest any others should be bewitched by their encounter, and lest the secrets of the craft should be divulged. Another karakia accompanies the resumption of their garments; for had they touched cooked food without this precaution, the incantations of the priest would return upon his own head. So ends the ceremony, which must be concluded before day dawns or closes upon it. For three days afterwards they must both eat only the pohue (the root of the wild convolvulus) to ensure its complete success. Nor is this success in the least doubtful if they be left to their uninterrupted operations; yet if the offended man relent, and would avert the death thus menaced, it is still in the power of the priest to undo his work, and to effect a cure on the bewitched man by this karakia repeated over him: –

As the sounds of music from the Koanau,
Such shall be thy returning soul
To this world of health –
To this world of light.

So saying, he spits on the sick man's forehead, and laying his hand upon him, says: –

Evil man, great sinner,
Thou art of Maui.

These words complete the cure. To understand them we must refer to the legend mentioned in a former lecture of the sin of

Maui in catching and beating the sun, and in his insult offered to Hinenuitepo, which occasioned his own death. If a curse were uttered against a priest, he would not speak at the time, but silently repeat the following incantation: –

Tu baptize the night
Tu baptize the day,
Go thou beneath, I go above,
Send thy power below
To the night below, to the worm below,
To the evil one below, go to death,
And thy spirit for ever to darkness.

Then returning home, he fasts three days, in order to ensure that the offender shall have eaten food, which will enhance the effect of his incantation. When he is certain of this, he has food cooked for himself, and taking part of it, he wraps it in a nikau leaf (New Zealand palm), with some hairs from his own forehead, and taking it to a running stream, he throws it in, saying: –

My fire is burning
To the big sea, to the long sea,
To the boisterous sea.

Then he returns, and while eating, lest he who cursed him should have bewitched his food, he repeats silently: –

Stand erect before the world of spirits
That the soul of food may be eaten,
And the essence of food – the food of the gods.

This completes the charm against the offender. He is now doomed to certain death; and that the cause of it may be known, the spirit of the sorcerer will appear bodily at his funeral. The relatives then seeing and recognising it will go to a running stream, and, sitting on its brink, repeat this incantation: –

Our protector will destroy his power
He will protect from death,
Go thou evil one, to the heaven above,
Go thou to the earth beneath.

This charm precludes any future sorcery being exercised against the remainder of the family. Occasionally, however, instead of

all these ceremonies, the priest, when cursed, will lay his left hand on the right side of his breast, and with the right hand catch the curse, saying aloud, "Aue taku upoko!" (Oh, my head!) for on the head dwell the principal gods, and they are thus called to punish the offender with death.

Before we give any specimens of the native doctor's craft we may be allowed to remark that he has more to encounter than falls to the share of any European physician. He not only requires a larger amount of faith in the efficacy of his own incantations, but he has to contend in every instance with that which a European doctor would pronounce not only the cause of sickness, but sure to result in death. A New Zealand patient will not remain in a house in the settlement; he will reside in a shed by himself in the scrub, a shed that cannot shelter him from the evening breeze, much less keep out the dew of night or the rain. He will also (if he eats at all, which is not often the case) have whatever he may wish; in fact, he is led by his appetite alone. If he has a fever, he will go and bathe; if he is consumptive, he will do the same. In many cases the Maori doctor had recourse to certain leaves and the bark of trees to assist his incantations. For a burn he used the inner bark of the rimu bruised into a pulp, or the ashes of the tussac grass sprinkled on the burn; for dysentery the kawakawa root was chewed. About six years ago, when the influenza was very rife in the North, one of the Maori doctors gave out that he had found a cure for the head-splitting disease, as it was called. It was a compound of roots, bark, and leaves of trees, with certain shrubs burnt together, the ashes of which were kneaded into a paste with hogs' lard. This he sold to his countrymen in balls the size of a common marble, charging £1 10s. for each. They were bought with avidity by timid persons, who, when they felt the least pain, in whatever part of the body it might be, made an incision in that part, and rubbed a portion of the compound into it. It was astonishing to see how many cures were effected by it amongst those in whose imagination alone the disease had existed. After a Maori doctor has made himself acquainted with the complaint of his patient,

he decides as to the remedy. If he is suffering from the effects of witchcraft, he takes him to a stream, and sprinkles his naked body with water, repeating the following incantation over him: –

Rise all ye powers of this earth,
And let me see the gods,
Now I am roaming o'er the earth,
May the gods be prevented
From cutting and maiming this man;
O thou god of the wizard,
When thou descendest to the world below,
To thy many, to thy thousands,
And they ask who required thee there,
Say Whiro the thief; come back then,
And we shall find thee – we shall see thee
When thou goest inland.
Or to the ocean, or above;
And the thousands there ask thee
Tell them the same.
Go thou even at day dawn
When the night's last darkness is
Hide thyself in it, and go,
Go thou, but the skull of the wizard shall be mine
To cut and to tear it,
To destroy its power and its sacredness
Cut off the head of the god!

They then return to the settlement. The patient, now being more sacred than ever, is not to eat for three days, at the expiration of which he is supposed to be cured.

The following is to give sight to the blind. The priestly physician ties around his own waist the twigs of the kawakawa and karamu as an apron, and standing in front of his patient, who is sitting up, he waves a branch of one or other of the same shrubs before the man's face, saying: –

Thou sun now coming
Red in thy coming – give light here,
Thou moon, now coming
In thy flight look on his man,
Now dimly seeing the gods are moving
Welcome come ye forth,
From thy eye-balls the red waters come,
Give light, give strength;
Give life – life now come.

The following is to cure any casual disease. If the priest has satisfied himself, after looking at the patient, that his sickness is not attributable to the influence of Makutu, he merely repeats this incantation, with certain contortions of his body, clawing the air with his hands over the patient, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting; but no certain rules can be given, for the ceremonies in this case are quite arbitrary on the part of the priest. Some of them never come near the patient, merely repeating the incantation while they are standing on the top of their own house, which is as follows: –

Breathe thou, breathe thy breath, O Rangi,
And thou Tu, give thy living spirit,
To create life that the body and soul may live in this world,
Beat with life thou heart;
The tree falleth, the tree of Atutahi,
Here the blow was given, the wind blew there,
There is the tree of enchantment.

While repeating this he sticks a twig of karamu in the ground before the sick man, which he had previously held in his hand, and continues: –

It is welcome, it is good,
The land, the sea, the day, the night,
All are good.
Be propitious, O ye gods!

The following is to cure a burn or scald. When the priest is putting on the pulp made as before mentioned he says: –

Return, O ye gods of the land,
And ye gods of the sea,
Come and save, that this man
May work for us, O Tiki!
For you and me.
Heal him, oh, heal!
If it had been fire kindled by me on Hawaiki,
It might have been extinguished.
O thou skin, be not diseased by this evil,
Cease thou heat, be cured thou burn,
Be thou extinguished, thou fire
Of the god of Hawaiki;
Ye lakes in the heavens give coolness to his skin,
Thou rain, thou hail, come to this skin:
Ye shells and cool stones, come to this skin,

Ye springs of Hawaiki, Rarotonga, and Aotea,
Come to this skin and cause it to be damp;
Be healed thou skin, be healed.

When a limb is broken, as in war, the priestly doctor makes splints, and, while binding them on the broken limb, he says: –

O thou Tiki, give me thy girdle,
As a bandage for this limb!
Come thou, bind it up,
Tie around it thy cords and make it right.
O thou flesh, be thou straight;
And ye sinews, be ye right,
And ye bones join ye, join ye.

Maori doctors do not exactly profess to be able to raise the dead, but they do profess to restore to life those who may be in the last agony; but then many concurrent omens and propitious circumstances must occur all at the same time ere such a miracle can be wrought. It must take place near dawn; the dying man must have a shivering fit; also, Matariki (the Pleiades) must be high in the heavens, a power from which stars is supposed to cause the fit; also, the Toutouwai (the New Zealand robin) must sing for the first time, at one and the same time that Tawera (the Morning Star) is seen; then the priestly doctor will engage to revive him who is in his last moments by saying: –

Spread thy breath, O Rangi!
Stay, thou breath, oh stay,
Be full of breath, be full;
Ere this my son fall silently away;
Dive to the depths of ocean darkness,
And dive in the ocean light and rest in the heavens,
Let life be given to thee,
Eat thou of life in the heavens,
Let life revive thee,
On thy sacred garments is thy sin,
Thy food was mixed and eaten,
The food which is in thee;
Light of the heavens rise
That Wiro may at a distance stand,
That death may flee and life be given to thee.

I will not weary you by detailing the incantations used by the priests for the cure of headache, stomach-ache, for the relief

of choking, and a hundred other evils, for the detection of a thief, and for the blinding of a pursuer after battle; for there were forms appropriate to every accident of life, and the power of the Tohunga was based upon his ready and extensive knowledge of them. I will conclude this portion of my subject with two anecdotes of the self-desecration and voluntary surrender of their powers by two Maori priests. A Maori priest (yet living) had made up his mind to abandon his heathen ceremonies, and to embrace the religion of the Europeans. He summoned therefore three others to his settlement, and having had a quantity of kumaras cooked, and put into three baskets, he bade them place these upon the most hallowed part of his person – the shoulders and the head – while the three ate from them. My readers will remember that the hair of the head beyond all things is the chosen seat of the gods of a Maori priest, and that cooked food is the abominable thing that defiles and pollutes beyond all others. This, to the Maori, was the utmost and most daring profanation. This, therefore, he did, not only to defy the gods, and drive them from him, but to testify to all others that he had done so, and that they had no power to avenge upon him the insult he had offered. Soon afterwards he was baptized by the Christian name of Zaccheus. We doubt not that many here present have often heard of the great Ngapuhi Chief Mohi Tawhai, the friend and ally of our forces in the North, and whom we have already more than once mentioned. A similar act of self-desecration may be recorded of him. Doubting the power of his gods, he resolved to test it; and knowing that it was not lawful for cooked food to be near his head, and that he must not sit within a cooking-house, or even enter into it, he notwithstanding bade one of his slaves take a pot and cook food in it, and eat from it; then filling the pot with water he washed his head with it, and sitting down he waited the result. He has said since that he actually perspired with deadly fear, watching the sun go down, for if the sun set upon him, and he living, that was the appointed sign, viz,, that the gods of the Maori were but false ones, and that their power over him was gone, while

the God of the Christian was the true God, and thenceforward he would be His disciple.

To a certain extent we may even consider the priest as holding the position and discharging the duties of a General. The Maori Tohunga not only predicted the events of battle, but he directed the movements of the tribe and often led them to the attack; and this leads us to the third main division of our lecture – the ceremonies and incantations used in war, and the omens and superstitions therewith connected. But before we proceed further, we must request you to bear in mind one great difference between Maori wars and those of civilized nations. To commence, therefore, with such omens as portend the likelihood of war. It is customary with the New Zealanders to fulfil to the utmost extent any request made by a dying chief. Such a request is called "Poroaki," and its meaning is confined solely to this custom. Any offence given or murder committed, for which satisfaction has not been obtained, the dying chief will remind his relatives of the fact, and nominate some particular person of a future generation, the whole aim of whose life shall be to take vengeance. Although it is not necessary that the family of the party who committed the injury should be the victims to propitiate the wrong committed, for vengeance may be obtained from any other tribe, yet the family or tribe of the injuring party are looked upon by the family of the murdered man as their "uto," or object of vengeance. No tribe, therefore, in New Zealand, however apparently at peace with all its neighbours, could at any moment tell whether the storm of war was not just ready to burst upon it. I know of two such cases or Poroakis, in one of which the nominated person is the grandson, in the other the great-grandson of the dying chief. Happily, however, Christianity will prevent these and other Satanic injunctions of a similar kind from ever being carried into effect.

Birds, of course, as they have done in every country, afford a fertile source of omens. If the cry of the Pie is heard from the landward of a traveller, it is counted a sign of a war party

coming from the same direction; if a settlement is to be attacked, a god comes in the night time in the likeness of a bird, and warns them with the cry of "Ka toto, ka toto" (there will be blood, there will be blood); there is also a night bird called Hokio, which on the eve of war is heard continually to repeat "Kakao, kakao," which cry is caused by the choking of the bird with the hair of the heads of those warriors who are doomed to fall in the battle.

There are signs also in the sky which the priest can read. Those fragments of the rainbow known as weather-galls, and the broad summer lightning unaccompanied with thunder, both these speak to him of war, and hostile tribes hovering in the same quarter as that where they appear. A solitary star seen near the moon is also a sign that the conflict is at hand, but on the night before the enemy arrive, the chill and piercing Tokihi Kiwi, the starting of the cold wind of battle, is felt throughout the menaced settlement. Other signs are: – the noise of a species of rat called Hamua; the singing of the ear, the tossing of the arms, and the gurgling in the throat in sleep. The cry of the Hamua is "Kato, kato," and this must be distinguished from the rat which is eaten by the natives, the Kiore, whose cry is "Tititi." When the ear of a person sings it asks, "Is it war? is it murder? is it good news? is it evil tidings?" and such like questions; and the ceasing of noise is held as an answer to the last question asked. When both arms are thrown by the sleeper across his breast, or when he makes a gurgling sound in his throat, this is a certain sign, not so much of war as of private murder.

Amongst the Maories, dreams have held invariably a prominent position. We may adduce one or two facts to illustrate this position in addition to what we have already related. A night or two before the news was received of the murder of the Europeans at Wairau near Cook's Straits, Tamati Waka Nene dreamed that a fowl came to the door of a hut where he was lying, and sung to him a war song; this, Waka said, when he awoke, was a sign that there had been some Europeans mur-

dered. Again, just before the breaking out of the Northern war, the same chief dreamed that the bed on which he was sleeping changed into a canoe, and the floor of the hut into the sea, and that he was fishing there for sharks, the ends also of the firewood turned into sharks, and he caught many of them. This he spoke of in the morning as an omen of a coming war. Again, a short distance from where I lived in Hokianga, there resided a chief with his wife Ramari, and a family of five children; one night Ramari in her sleep made the gurgling noise in her throat to which we have before alluded; this was so loud as to wake up the whole family, and being accounted a certain sign of murder, they all left the hut in terror, and each hid himself separately in the scrub, and so passed the remainder of the night. Next day about 300 yards from their hut, a man and his child were found to have been murdered. Old Ramari certainly believed that had they not taken timely warning, and obeyed the omen given to them, they would all have been murdered also. Such are the scenes that foretell the breaking out of war; the principal causes that produce it are quarrels about land, women, murders committed, and curses uttered by men of one tribe against those belonging to another. A woman may often cause a war by abandoning her own tribe to follow that of her beloved; for her friends will not unfrequently consider themselves bound in honour to reclaim her by force of arms, if no other way remains. On the subject of cursing we have already spoken at some length; but although the ceremonies we have related are all that are requisite for the expiation of the curse, still satisfaction has yet to be exacted from the offenders if of a different tribe. In the case of a murder, the perpetrator of which is unknown, the tribe will declare war, and send out a party to avenge it upon the first they meet. They go no further than will allow of their return before the sunset of the same day, and slay the first who may fall in their way, without regard to tribe, age, or sex. If these should be too strong for them, or they should in any way escape, they return at once; or if they meet no one in that day's march, they will not go out again for

this object; but while returning to their village they catch a few of the small swamp birds, called matata, and tearing them to pieces, each ties a limb upon the two fern stalks which he holds in his hands, and when they come in sight of the settlement they seat themselves in a line, and holding up their sticks they sing in chorus: –

Maru, heal, oh heal the wound
Of him who was broken and bruised.
I invoke thy power to strike
The back of the head of him
Who caused life's streams to flow;
And thou Tu strike, oh strike as he flies!

In other instances, where a priest has accompanied the party, he runs along a line, exclaiming, "Hiki, Hiki, Hikitia, Tangaroa ha, hapainga ha, kia iri ha." Each time that he utters the syllable "ha," they all lift up their fern sticks at once: should any one fail to be exactly even with the rest, as the priest glances along the rank, that man will certainly fall in the first war in which he is engaged. Having returned thus unsuccessfully, they do not eat until midnight. This ceremony is called "Pihe hiku toto" (the avenger of blood), a dirge for the dead.

Supposing the tribe to have now resolved on war, a day is set apart for the cutting of the hair of the warriors. As the cutting is a religious rite, it is of course performed by the priests, who go with the assembled warriors to a little distance from the pa; here the latter seat themselves in a line, the priest senior in rank casting the lots by the ceremony Niu, which in this case bears the distinctive name of "Tuaumu," there being a stick for each hapu or family of their own tribe, and one for each hapu of the tribe to be attacked. This done, the officiating priests each chew a stalk of grass, called "Toetoe whatu manu," and then cut the hair of the warriors, which is accomplished with the tuhua (obsidian). They then repeat over each man these words: –

Here is the power, the power now given;
It rests on these, my sons,
It rests on these omens.

The senior priest, while repeating these words, rests on each man's head a twig of karamu, which he had previously slung at his girdle; then he proceeds: –

This is the power, the power from above,
The power of heaven and all the gods –

Repeating here the names of all the gods of the elements, of their ancestry, reciting their genealogies from the earliest names recollected in Hawaiki, each tribe following their own line of ancestry. Food is then cooked in two ovens, one small, from which the priests alone eat, one large, intended for all the people. When all the people have finished eating, the priest lays his hand on the head of each man, saying: –

Here is the girdle,
The girdle of the priests,
And of these my sons, and of these omens,
And of the gods above –

Adding here again a list of names of places in Hawaiki, and once more repeating the genealogy of their own migration, following the eldest son of the direct line, the ceremony is ended, and they return to the settlement, all this occupying a considerable time, commencing early in the morning, and if the tribe be strong, lasting the whole day.

When war has been at last for any cause resolved, the business of the priest is to divine of its success. His first plan is by his motions in his sleep; if he tosses his right arm towards his breast, it is a favourable omen, but unfortunate if the arm be thrown from him. Next he tries the niu (divination) by the fern stalks; this is to determine who shall fall and who survive. Of this ceremony, already mentioned, we shall give a full description. Before dawn – the usual time for all the most solemn rites – the priest issues a strict order that no food be cooked throughout the pa until he gives his permission; then spreading a mat on the ground before him, he takes fern stalks, one for each chief who is to go upon the war party, and one for each who is known upon the opposite side; he then holds each piece, one by one, giving it some chief's name; as he does so, tying around it

in a particular knot a strip of flax. Thus named and tied, the fern stalks are called "kaupapa." He then prepares a second set, named like the first, but without the tie, and lays each couple that bears the same name together on the mat before him; then taking in his hand the piece around which the flax is wound, he sticks the others upright in the mat, and makes first a feigned throw with the one he holds, but before the second or real cast he holds it up in the air, exclaiming –

It is the heaven, but like the earth.

Then saying –

Go thou, O such an one, to the battle,

He flings it at the upright stick, first naming the hostile chieftains, and then those of his own tribe. If it drop upon the left of the upright stick, he whose name it bears will fall; if upon the right, he will survive; if the knot turn downwards, it is a presage of defeat. The lot being thus cast for each of the chiefs who are to be engaged, the priest takes once more the fern stalks, and calling the standing ones now by the names of the women and children who are to remain at home, he flings at them the other sticks, as enemies who may attack the settlement in the absence of its warriors. This second divination is called "Tuaumu wahine." Then raising each stick, he says, as if addressing the assailant in it, "This omen is for thee, O thou unknown. Look to thine home, and to those behind thee, and ask of the speaking omens." Then adding, "What art thou, O woman? what canst thou do in the evil day?" he flings the fern stalks as before; if it fall upon the right, the party named is doomed to die; but if to the left, she will escape; the rule observed in the former instance being in this reversed. This divination being now complete, the priest draws a line upon the ground between himself and the mat, then spits upon the mat, and so removes the tapu from the settlement. By this time the day has broken, and the people may venture to cook their food. After they have eaten they gather round the priest, who now explains openly to them the omens we have described; for all

the previous divination has been in secret. An additional omen is drawn from the cooking of the breakfast on this day; for if the food in any one of the hangis or ovens be imperfectly baked, this is also a sign of defeat, called "mangungu" (broken or bruised).

We must digress a little here. Some of the canoes in which the Maories came from Hawaiki brought with them one or more gods; the famous ones were five, brought by Kuiwai and Hangaroa, two of which, called Ihungaru and Itupaoa, remained to very modern times. The Ihungaru, formed of a lock of human hair twisted with a rope of "aute" (paper mulberry bark), was kept in a house made of wood from Hawaiki, and thatched with mangemange. This fell into the hands of Hongi and the Ngapuhi tribes at the storming of the Mokoia pa in Rotorua, in the year 1823, where it was preserved, and being carried from the little islet where the fortress stood to the mainland, was brought to an eminence overlooking the lake, and there cut to pieces with the tomahawks of the victors. Of the Itupaoa we have no description; it was kept with the former, but was secreted by the priests, and hidden in the fastnesses of the Horohore range, where its place of concealment is now forgotten. To revert: when news of war reaches a settlement, if it were still in possession of one of these gods, the priest went to its house, and taking out the god, he laid it on a mat upon the ground, asking: –

What are the omens?
What is the work of the world below?
Of the thousands below?
Does thy right side quiver?
Does thy left side quiver?
What are thy omens?

The god then would move a certain space: if it were about two inches, it was a good omen; if four, it told of a great victory; but if six, on reaching that distance it would immediately contract – a sign of a defeat and of a devastated settlement. Ihungura was the god thus consulted on the occasion of Hongi's invasion, as above referred to, which gave this evil omen. In settlements which could not thus boast the possession of a god,

the incantations alone were repeated. When war is at last declared, and the enemy known to be on the march, the priests again consult the gods Whiro and Rakataura, by going with a stick to the place where the ceremonies and incantations were performed, which we gave in the former part of this lecture, in the witchcraft for a kanga, or curse and then again, making a little effigy, and a house to contain it, they shut the door as formerly, and one of them strikes upon the door with a stick, and says, "Rakataura, come out;" then answering himself, "No, but you come in." Then follows a considerable altercation, which ends at last in Rakataura agreeing to come out. The priest then seats himself towards the west, and with clasped hands, and pressed upon the ground, and eyes bent down, he says: –

O Rakataura, are you looking to all things? Yes.
Are you looking at the hosts below? Yes.

He then, representing the god, turns his head first on one side, and then on the other, as though listening, still repeating the incantation: –

There is evil coming, O Whiro!
Arise, and let thy sacred power be given to this son,
Tu, where art thou? come thou to this son.

Then rising with a bound, and facing eastward, with extended arms, he says: –

Give me my war girdle,
To tie around me;
Give me my shield of cloth –
A token of war and power –
'Tis a garment of revenge,
The maro of Tu,
Tu of the battle front,
Tu of the hard face,
Lord of the ocean powers.
My maro is the maro of Tu.

He now takes the stick with which he had struck the door, and sometimes the effigy also in his left hand, and his spear in his right, and leads his tribe to battle.

Mention has been made of Rakataura. She is in New Zealand a goddess of "the powers of the air," and to her all sudden

and unintelligible noises are attributed. She is also the goddess of music, and used formerly as her flute the tough leathery cocoon of a kind of caterpillar, which may not unfrequently be found upon the manuka and other trees; but subsequently she took up her abode in this cocoon, and having thus lost her flute, she confines herself to these aerial noises.

We may now suppose the warriors ready to start upon this expedition; but before they march each recites a "reo" over his weapon. One of these, as a specimen, may suffice. The warrior holds his weapon in his right hand, and standing in an attitude of defence, he addresses an imaginary enemy: –

Descend, O descend!
Stretch forth thine arm, stretch forth!
This is the mantle of night now coming,
This is the garb of day now coming,
With its god-like yet withering soul.
Thy strength is failing,
Oh! angry Heaven, by the strength of Tu,
Mete out the stars, mete out the moon.
Thou shalt be smitten.

The allusion to the single star seen close beside the moon we have already explained as a presage of certain victory. For young men entering battle for the first time, a slightly different reo is used. When all are ready they go to a running stream, and, while they sit in a line side by side, the priest takes a branch of Karamu. and dipping it in the water, sprinkles their naked bodies, repeating over each "Their mocking is at a distance, but the ominous wind of Uenuku is blowing. Thou art baptised, my son, to conflict and to war; thou, my son, then wield the weapon of Tu in the tide of war; fight in the tide of Tu, ward off the blow in the tide of Tu, my son." Should a part of the branch break off over any man, it is a presage of his death. This ceremony is called "Tohi Tauwa" (the baptism of war), and is held particularly sacred; no woman or boy is therefore allowed to be present at it.

We now pass on to the ceremonies of asking and concluding an alliance. They who ask for the assistance of another

tribe make no formal statement of the cause of the quarrel, or even the names of their enemies, but send a messenger with a token, which is called a "Ngakau" (heart), varying according to the object in view. If it is a secret expedition of murder that is meant, this token is the kumara, either raw or rotten, or, if cooked, cold and uneatable. If it is to be open war the messenger wears a mat with holes burnt in it. He gives no explanation of his mission, save that he sings some old songs suitable for the occasion. They ask no questions, but accept the token and invitation together, or else, first dismissing the envoy, return his present by one of their own men upon the same day. In either case, the cause and nature of the quarrel are never asked. But the tribe assailed will also have their allies, and, if they know of the invasion, they light up their beacon fires upon certain well-known mountains, as a summons to their friends to hasten to the rescue. In the wars of the noted Hongi, the mountains of Waikato were lighted up this way night after night to mark to the natives inland the route of their dreaded foe. Should the allies not answer the summons, and there be yet time left, the chief will go himself to try and enlist their sympathies. On his arrival, he sits some time in silence, then asks for water. A chief always drinks from the palm of his joined hands, into which the water is poured from the calabash by a slave. On this occasion, the calabash used is a very large one, held sacred, and reserved in time of war for this special purpose, being covered with the dried skin of a tattooed chief killed in some former war. This calabash he must drain to the bottom, for upon this his success may depend. Next, he says he is hungry. A young chief now rises, and takes a basket of taro (a small round yam) – no other fruit would suit, for the kumara is sacred to the gods of peace – and washing part of the earth from them, he lights a native oven, which must never have been used before, and the stones of which must also be new; the whole basket, half baked, is then set before the guest, and if he proves his prowess by devouring all thus offered to him, those whose help he asks will join him in the war. When

he has done, all required of him is to present a lizard, brought with him for the purpose, to the chief whose aid he seeks. The lizard is held in great dread by the Maoris; but now, to show that they will aid each other in spite of any previously dreaded thing, he who receives the lizard eats it raw. The resolution for war, or the approach of an enemy, is communicated to the people at large by a trumpet called a putara, or by a kind of gong formed out of a piece of matai wood, hung by one end and struck with a stone at the other. When the resolution for war proceeds from the chief alone, he will make an effigy, and calling over it, in the sight of all the people, the name of him whom he intends to attack, he cleaves the head with his axe. Thus, before the Northern war, Heke gave a great feast at his village, Kaikohe; poles were as usual set up round which the food was piled in pyramids; but on the top of one of them was made the figure of a man, and as the pole was lifted up into its place by the people Heke split the head of it with an adze, saying, "I split thy head, O Governor": thus both his own people and his visitors knew that he had resolved to fight the Europeans, and that they were invited to join him in the war. The incidents of the march afford fresh omens. A blow-fly crossing the road is a sign of defeat; if the party arrive unobserved within a short distance of the pa, the priest makes a kite of toetoe whatu manu, and flies it into the air; if the kite proves one-sided it is an evil omen, but if it should fly right, the priest holds the line in his right hand (for if he should by accident hold it in the left it would be a fatal omen), and letting it out he says: –

Beautiful art thou, my bird,
Thou hoverest well, seest thou the stream
Of Atutahi and Rehua?
Doth it flow with a gurgle?
Thou dost behold,
Thou dost enchant with dread.
Thou art as the albatross in the rain,
Fluttering over the ocean,
Thou art son of the severer,
Whose power cannot be stopped,
Thy parent is a god.

The head of the heavens
Thou'lt pierce with the death of Rangi
By a blast of chilling wind.

Still holding the kite he sends up a messenger upon the string: when it is half-way up he let goes the line, taking care to have such advantage of the wind as that the kite will fly across the pa; if the kite catch on the palisade, it is thought that the incantation (repeated by the priest while flying the kite) will produce such an overwhelming dread in the inhabitants that they will be easily conquered. This ceremony, like that of Niu, described before, must be commenced before daybreak, and before any food is allowed to be cooked or eaten. A cloudy misty day is favourable to an assault, for the mist is the brains of the slaughtered enemies. Such was the day on which the troops attacked Heke's pa at Mawhe, a circumstance which highly encouraged Tamati Waka's natives, as giving them a presage of victory. Before they attack a pa, and while yet on the march, the priestly leader performs another rite called "Tuahu" (the hill-making). He makes a number of long narrow mounds, one for each of the tribes engaged, and at the end of each he plants a stick and names it by the name of its tribe; this stick is called "mauri" (the life or seat of life), and upon each hillock is laid another stick which is called "tahuhu" (ridge-pole), bearing also the name of its own tribe; he then repeats this incantation, turning his back to the mounds and his face to the east: –

Shake thou, rend thou, beating breast,
That thou, weak heart, may be held in the world,
The world of light.
The darkness has heard, and the light
Has been told by Peketua and Pekearo,
Heave now, O breast of Pe, and come forth.

While the priest is repeating this incantation the gods come and scratch the mounds to pieces, and move the stick that lies upon the mound up to the Mauri. The omens thus yielded do not, as in the Niu, tell of the fate of the battle and point out the conquerors and the vanquished, but they decide the tribe which is

to win the prize of valour. The actual assault must be deferred until the inhabitants of the pa discover their assailants, who on their side use divination. For example, a chief at Hokianga, whose pa was thus beset, took his son (an only child) killed him and burnt his heart in a fire kindled outside the pa; if the smoke came across the pa it would be captured, if not it would resist the assault.

The cannibal rites of a Maori battle-field I will pass unnoticed, as any description of them would disgust you. I would, however, notice the name given to the first man killed in battle, "Te Ika a Tiki" (the fish of Tiki), which is the corpse of warriors slain in battle; and Mataika or Matangohi, the first of such trophies, is the name applied to the body of a man carried off by some noted champion who rushes in and slays and bears away his man before the ranks join in fight. The accomplishment of this feat is considered highly honourable, but it is an essential condition to its success that the warrior who performs it should effect his retreat without receiving a wound from any other hand but that of the antagonist whom he slays. If a chief is slain in the melee of the battle, his slayer claims at once his prize by pulling out a lock of hair wherewith to identify the body after victory; should the honour, however, be afterwards disputed, it is referred to the judgment of the priest, who decides it by an ordeal called Whangai hau. The "hau" is any part of a corpse which may be taken by the priest over which to repeat incantations; it is therefore an offering to the gods who reside in the wind ("Hau" meaning wind). The want of time precludes us from giving more than the conclusion of this ceremony. When several incantations have been repeated over the disputants as they sit beside a stream with whose water they have been sprinkled, they return to the army, and there the priest pitches in the ground a forked stick three paces from the disputants, who stand side by side and hold each two fern stalks, to which are tied locks of the dead man's hair. The priest then, pointing with his forefinger to their foreheads, says: –

There is the plume now stuck in thy head,
The plume of the gods above and below.

That thy sacred power Tu may be known,
Hearken ye powers above and below,
Hearken ye sides of heaven, breath of heaven blow,
Ha! ha! give thy power to the just.

He then casts the fern stalks toward the fork of the upright stake, and the gods will cause the sticks of him whose claim is purest to hang upon the fork as he thus flings it. The warrior who thus fell into the enemy's hands was of course eaten, nor was the priest exempt from this doom; the god who resided in him departed with his breath, as the proverb on such occasion means "The god is gone, and Hapopo (the body so called in time of war) may be eaten." If the captive be a chief he must not in honour ask his life, but smile at him who gives him the death-blow. If a chief fall or die in any way on the victorious side, the body is burnt and the head preserved, those in whose charge it remains being for such time tapu. If the avenging of a murder be the origin of the war, and the murderer or any of his descendants be among the prisoners, the fate reserved for them was attended with circumstances of peculiar horror. Every portion of the body was devoted to some particular use. For the skull was reserved the greatest indignity, to carry water for the native ovens; from the arm bones were made pins to eat periwinkles; from the small bones of the legs the heads of bird spears and the barbs of fish hooks; tame parrots were fed from the collar bone; from the thigh bones were cut rings for the decoy birds, and the remainder were fashioned into flutes. It is said that the rank of the deceased could always be known by the colour of the bones; for those of a chief were red; those of one of inferior rank were of a light colour; sometimes even the character of the men could be guessed from signs afforded by the use of these. If the bird, for instance, when struck with a spear, did not die at once, but fluttered and screamed in falling, the man whose bone it was must have been a nonsensical, talkative fellow. The teeth were made into a necklace and given to the relatives of the murdered; so also were the eyes, which were always eaten; the other bones were made into needles, and the dog-skin mat was sewed with them, which was

always greatly prized on that account. The idea that the eyes were eaten to prevent them from becoming stars is, however, I believe, a mere European fancy: I have never heard it so stated by a Maori, This fate was inflicted by the noted Hongi upon the whole of Paraoarahi's family and their relations, in vengeance for the murder of Koperu, the murder for which he commenced his war on the Waikato, Thames, and East coast tribes. Sometimes the head was preserved entire, that the young men might set it before them, and make their first attempt at eloquence in recounting the cause of the chief's death, and by whom he fell; or the old woman would set it before her upon the "Turuturu," or corner stick, used for holding the web while making a mat, and taunt and revile it.

The women are invariably left behind when blood vengeance is the object of the "taua;" they are not thought sufficiently sacred to cook food in such cases. They have also their signs, for which they watch anxiously, to guess the fate of the warriors. If the clouds are red at sunset, a battle has been fought that day; if an owl cry in the daytime, and especially seven times, if a tame tui talk at night, these are evil omens. The men must, in this case, cook for themselves; but cooked food, being considered polluted, must not come near the weapon. It must not pass before a warrior, it must not be eaten standing, it must not be carried in the right hand or on the back, but either slung on the left side or carried in the left hand.

We will now suppose the victorious war party on the return to their own home, bearing with them the preserved heads of the great chiefs whom they have killed. Just on the border of their own territory they dig a small hole for each; then all the people turn round towards the country from which they come, and the priests, taking each a head, repeat a song, to which all the warriors dance, and every time they leap from the ground the priests lift up the heads. This ceremony is called "Whakatahurihuri" (a turning round, a causing to look backwards), and is, as it were, a farewell from the heads to their own land, and a

challenge to the defeated tribe to follow them. The words of the song are these: –

Turn thou, look back, look back!
And with a farewell glance
Look on the road thou wast brought
From all that once was thine.
Turn thou, look back, look back!

These holes are also to perpetuate the memory of the battle, and. of those who fell in it; and the ceremony is repeated at every subsequent halting-place.

On the south side of the Manukau Heads is a spot called Te Kauri, which forms a prominent point as seen in going up the harbour to the Waiuku. Here the first "Whakatahurihuri" was performed with the heads of the Waikato chiefs who fell in Hongi's invasion. To this day the Waikato tribes never use the spot as a resting-place when they travel from Waikato to Auckland; for were they to stay there to sleep or cook, the spirits of their slaughtered friends would be sure to visit their impiety with death.

When the war party arrives at home, the priestesses go forth to meet them, headed by the eldest, and make the most hideous contortions and grimaces that they can, which are called "whakatama." Then with a loud voice they ask them: –

"Whence have ye come, great travellers of Tu?"

The warriors halt and answer with one voice: –

"We have come from the land,
We have come from the sea,
An assembly of the god Tu,
We have dealt out our vengeance,
We have found satisfaction,
An assembly of Tu."

The priestesses ask again: –

"Is Tu appeased? Has Tu been great?
Has Tu received? Is Tu enriched?"

The warriors answer: –

"Tu is great as heaven above;
He is appeased, he rests in joy."

The priestesses rejoin: –

"May ye rest in peace
When quiet is gained,
Ye assembly of Tu."

The whole of the people of the settlement then make their appearance, and wave their garments in the air, while each tries to let his voice be heard above all the others, some calling one thing, some another, women and children all joining in the clamour. The general import of the noise is, "Welcome! return, return!" The warriors are sacred; they therefore go first to the stream of water, with all they have brought with them, and sit in lines facing the water. One of the priests, taking a round pebble, goes to the other side of the stream, and flinging off all his clothing, offers the stone with a piece of fern root and of human flesh (all of which he holds in his right hand) in sacrifice to Tika, the creator of mankind, who must yet be appeased for the slaughter of those whom he has formed. To Tika the kumara is sacred; so also is the right foot, and especially the great toe of it, because with this foot only the Maori digs in setting the kumara. To this therefore, as the god, the stone, the fern root, and the human flesh are now offered, and the following incantation is repeated: –

Thou canst now eat and consume,
Thou canst now eat in a house,
Thou canst now eat with the priests,
Thou canst now eat with the gods.
Now the thundering of the heaven
And of the earth is over.

The fact of shedding blood renders the Maori tapu, and until the tapu is removed by this ceremony the warriors cannot mix with the others. Before, however, they enter the village, one of the elder chiefs takes up the war-song, all the men repeating it and dancing, weapon in hand, with a slow and measured step, till they have sung about half of it; then a kind of fantastic excitement seems to come over them, and they dance furiously, and with almost demoniac attitudes and gestures, still keeping

perfect time with each other. The words of the song are these: –

Yes, yes, it must be,
It is Tiki-Rau-kura,
Whose left eye we know
It is now glaring at all of us;
Yes, yes! at all of us.
How red he has turned,
By the heat of the sun!
Yes, yes, the sun
Of the hot summer day.

We come lastly to the reception of the warriors at home. The dance concluded, they march in silence to the village, where those who remained behind are gathered to receive them, the old warriors standing, the rest sitting, and the younger people only having their heads covered. Some must have fallen; therefore the reception is with a "tangi," or general chorus of wailing, while the elder women at the same time are clawing the air as a welcome to the gods who reside in it; the warriors from battle in the meantime stand leaning upon their spears, and all join the tangi for the space of about an hour; then all rising up, they rub noses, and the slaves begin to cook; yet not a word has been spoken of the success of the expedition, and above all, not a question has been asked; for such inquisitiveness would be punished with certain death by the war god Tu. After the meal is ended, the best orator who has been in the party rises, unasked, and gives an account of the whole proceedings in the war; and as the cause and manner of the death of each of their own friends or relatives is told, the women recommence the low mournful wailing of the tangi, cutting their hair short off, and cutting and gashing themselves with pieces of obsidian. The recital over, each chief who has been in the war takes a piece of human flesh, and gives it to his firstborn son, as an offering to Tu; this is to ensure success in after expeditions. The rewards of honour are now given to those whose bravery has been noticed in the fight. The fattest dogs in the village are killed and cooked with fern-root cakes and taro; for the kumara being sacred to Tiki and the gods of peace alone, these are distributed in small

baskets, and presented separately to each one of those whose actions have entitled them to such honour, the warrior's name being pronounced over the basket as it is given. To touch this uninvited is the grossest of insults, as it is a mark of the highest favour for him who receives it to ask another to partake of it with him.

Thus we have opened another page from the yet unexhausted volume of Maori superstitions; but as our time is more than gone, we must thus abruptly conclude.

LECTURE II. MAORI LAND TENURE. PART I.

LECTURE II. – PART I.

MAORI LAND TENURE.

THERE is no point on which a New Zealander's indignation can be more effectually roused than by disputing his title to land. This love for his land is not, as many would suppose, the love of a child for his toys; the title of a New Zealander to his land is connected with many and powerful associations in his mind. He is not, of course, what we call a civilised man; but in dealing with him we deal with a man of powerful intellect, whose mind can think and reason as logically on any subject with which he is acquainted as his more favoured European brethren, and whose love for the homes of his fathers is associated with the deeds of their bravery, with the feats of his boyhood, and the long race of his ancestors for generations. The New Zealander is not accustomed to law and parchment, or to wills and bequests, in gaining knowledge of or receiving a title to the land of his fathers; nor would he quietly allow any stranger to teach him what lands are his, or what lands were not, what were the names of the boundaries, the creeks, mountains, and rivers in his own district. The thousand names within the limits of his hereditary lands were his daily lesson from childhood. The son of a chief invariably attended his father or grandfather in all his fishing, trapping, or spearing excursions, and it was by these that he learnt by ocular demonstration the

exact boundaries of his lands, and repeatedly heard their various names. It was the custom of the Maoris in ancient times to eat the rat, – a rat indigenous to this country, and caught in traps set on the top of the mountain ranges. This was a source of part of their daily food, and it was, therefore, with them a point of great importance to occupy every available portion of their lands with these traps, and as most of the tribal boundaries are along the range of the highest hills or mountains, and as these are the common resort of the rat, every New Zealand chief soon naturally became acquainted with the exact boundary of his land claims. He did not, however, limit these claims to the dry land, they extended to the shellfish, and even out to sea where he could fish for cod and shark, or throw his net for mackerel; nor did he go inadvertently to these places, and trust to chance for finding his fishing grounds – he had landmarks, and each fishing ground or landmark had its own peculiar name; these to him were more than household words; his fathers had fished there, and he himself and his tribe alone knew those names and landmarks. Where a creek was the dividing boundary of his lands, this was occupied by eel dams. These dams were not of wicker-work that might be carried away by a flood; labour and art were bestowed on their construction, so that generations might pass, all of whom in turn might put their eel basket down by the carved and red-ochred Totara post which their great grandfathers had placed there. Where the dividing boundaries between two tribes ran along a valley, landmarks were put up. These consisted generally of a pile of stones or a hole dug in the ground, to which a name was given significant of the cause which gave rise to such boundary being agreed to; such, for instance, as Te Taupaki, the name given to the dividing boundary on the West Coast between the Ngatiwhatua and Tainui tribes, which means the year of peace or the peaceful way in which a dispute is adjusted. This boundary had its origin from a chief of the Ngatiwhatua, called Poutapuaka, going from Kaipara to take possession of land with his paraoa or bone spear; his intention was to go along the coast as far as the quantity of

food which he carried would enable him to travel, and return from the point at which his food was expended. He had succeeded in taking possession of the whole of the sandy line of coast called Rangatira, and on arriving at the top of the hill now known as Te Taupiki, he met the Tainui chief Haowhenua. They both halted, sticking their spears in the ground, and inquiring of each other the object of their being there. They found that they were both on the same errand, and at once agreed that this meeting point should be the boundary dividing the lands of the tribes whereof each was the representative. The Ngatiwhatua chief at once dug a hole with his bone spear, and the boundary so established has remained to this day.

I may state, without fear of contradiction, that there is not one inch of land in the New Zealand Islands which is not claimed by the Maoris; and I may also state that there is not a hill, or valley, stream, river, or forest, which has not a name, the index of some point of the Maori history. As has been stated above, the New Zealander knows with as much certainty the exact boundary of his own land as we could do from the distances and bearings given by a surveyor. But these boundaries are liable to be altered at times; for instance, when lands are taken by a conquering tribe, or are given by a chief for assistance rendered to him by another tribe in time of war, or when land given to the female branch of a family again becomes, after a certain time, the property of the male branch of the family. In certain cases, also, lands are ceded to a tribe for a specific purpose, with certain restrictions, and a tenure conditional on certain terms being complied with. In order to be better understood before I speak of the laws relating to these claims, I will give a hasty glance at the manner in which the first Maori emigrants took possession of and portioned out the newly-discovered country.

It is generally admitted among the Natives that the chief Kupe, who came in the canoe Matahourua, was the first who took possession of New Zealand. This he did by naming all the rivers and mountains from Whanganui to Patea. Turi is the

chief mentioned as having next arrived in the canoe Aotea, and he gave names to all the rivers and mountains from Patea to Aotea. Next in point of time were the canoes Te Arawa and Tainui. The former was commanded by Tamate Kapua and other chiefs, and first touched land at Whangaparoa, a headland near the East Cape; it then coasted along, touching at various points where the chiefs gave names to the prominent landmarks, their principal object in doing so being to take possession of the land, which they did as far as Cape Colville, where Tama Te Kapua died and was buried; his people then placed themselves under the guidance of Ngatoroirangi and returned to Maketu. In the meantime the chiefs Ruauru and Toroa, in the canoe Matatua, had landed at Whakatane, and therefore part of Te Arawa district was taken by them from Te Awa-o-te-Atua to Whangaparoa. Shortly after which, the father-in-law of Ngatoroirangi discovered the Rotorua lakes; and to his surprise he found people there whose right he disputed, after a great deal of argument he succeeded in taking possession of the lakes and the surrounding country. The Tainui, commanded by Hoturoa, came along from Whangaparoa to Cape Colville, and came up the Tamaki river, taking possession of the district from Cape Colville to Mangawai on the east, and on the west from Manukau to Whaingaroa. The next canoes of the migration were the Ngapuhi canoes Mamari, Riukakara, and Mahuhu. The former of these went into the Hokianga river, and the people in it took possession of the land as far south of that river as Maunganui, and to the north as far as Ahipara; the Riukakara migration went into Whangaroa, and took possession of the land as far north as Mangonui, and as far south as the Bay of Islands; Mahuhu, the Ngatiwhatua canoe, touched at the North Cape and took possession of the land not taken by the two former migrations, viz., from Mangonui along the east coast to the North Cape, and on the west coast to Ahipara; this migration left a number of their party at the North Cape, and the remainder came on to Kaipara and took possession of the land from Kaipara to Maunganui, on the north,

and on the south to Te Taupaki. There was also, as before stated, another migration of natives who landed at Te Waka Tuwhenua (Cape Rodney), a little to the south of Whangarei, and took possession of the land between Whangaparoa and the Bay of Islands. The canoe contained a person who had the leprosy, from whom the major part of the migration caught the disease. Leprosy is called by the Maoris tuwhenua, hence the name of the canoe "Waka Tuwhenua" (the canoe of the leper), and also the point at which the party landed. Being thus afflicted, they fell into disorganisation, and those who were not cut off by the leprosy became amalgamated with the adjoining tribes or migrations, and part of their land was taken by the Tainui people as far as Whangarei; the Mamari (Ngapuhi people), took the residue from the Bay of Islands to Whangarei. The chief Manaia in the canoe Tokomaru, took possession of the Taranaki district, which had been claimed by Turi, as I have before mentioned. The ancestor of the Ngatiawa tribe, the most unsettled of all the migrations (as I shall presently show) arrived in New Zealand in the Tokomaru. The canoe Kurahaupo, commanded by Ruatea, landed near the East Cape, taking possession of the land from the point already taken by the Arawa, round to Port Nicholson. The canoe Takitumu (or as it is sometimes called for its fast sailing "Horouta,") commanded by Tata, first landed at Turanga, but proceeding southward it crossed Cook's Straits, and the crew took possession of the whole of the Middle Island. There are many other canoes with each of which are connected distinct migrations to New Zealand, but as these migrations will have to be mentioned when I speak of the customs or laws relative to the ownership of land, I would only here remark that those which I have already named show that all the land in the North and Middle Islands was taken possession of immediately on the arrival of the canoes. It was not in these Islands that the Maori became aware of the value of land, or that he first became an owner of landed property, as the tradition of the occurrences which caused the migrations shows. The Takitumu people, for instance, left

Hawaike on account of a quarrel about land. The boundaries of the districts claimed by right of discovery, as mentioned in the hasty sketch above given, did not long remain in that condition. Some time after the Arawa and Tainui migrations had settled in their own districts, a chief named Raumati, of the Tainui people, went overland to the Bay of Plenty and burnt the canoe Te Arawa. This was the cause of the first Maori war in New Zealand, which war resulted in the Arawa people gaining part of the Tainui lands.

I will now proceed to give the customs or laws by which a New Zealander held his land by right of birth. A Maori invariably grounded his claim on the right of his grandfather or grandmother, and not of his father, mother, brother, or any other immediate kindred. Although he had no written records to guide him in his knowledge of his ancestors and their claims, he was, nevertheless, carefully taught by his father or grandfather the history of his progenitors, and, as I have before stated, was often taken to the boundaries of his hereditary claims; so that, with a memory singularly retentive, he can not only recount the traditions of his ancestors for ten or twelve generations, but even of each branch of every family or offshoot. It is mainly on his knowledge of these that a Maori depends for proving his title, so that in an assembly of chiefs discussing a disputed question about land, the wars that may have occurred in the tribes, their origin, and the names of the chief men who took part in them for hundreds of years, are narrated in support of either side of the argument.

As a rule, a Maori chief does not make a will, yet there have been instances in which a chief on his death-bed has portioned out his land to each of his children. The sons' claims in all instances are derived from their grandfather: the eldest son of the senior branch in the male line is chief of the tribe, and exercises sole authority over the land as guardian for his people against the encroachments of other tribes; yet all the descendants from the male branch of the family have an equal right in the lands of their progenitors, no matter how distant the relation-

ship. They all, so long as they can trace their origin up to the same progenitor (provided a family war has not intervened, and thereby divided the tribe) claim equal right to the lands owned by that progenitor. This custom is a law amongst the natives; but the title in the female line does not expand to such an extent. The granddaughter of a chief has an equal claim in the lands of her grandfather, with that of her male cousins, and the claim continues good to her grandchild; but on the death of that grandchild the land reverts to the male line of the second generation, from the male ancestor from whom they claim. This custom holds good for the following reason, which is assigned as its origin; namely, that, were it not upheld, the intermarriage of daughters of chiefs with members of other tribes would soon so complicate and curtail the tribal claims, that a degrading influence on the honour of the tribe would ensue, and thus an invitation would be held out to adjoining tribes (members of which are related by marriage) to attempt by conquest to despoil them of their territory. If a family war should occur, in which a tribe becomes divided (which has frequently occurred), a division of the tribal lands takes place; but before I show how this division is adjusted, I will allude to the mode in which a tribe asserts and maintains its rights over a large district. It was a custom to go at certain times to the utmost limit of the land claimed, and partially clear and cultivate a portion here and there. This was called "uru uru whenua," and the duty devolved on the chiefs, a certain number only of whom went each time the ceremony recurred, so that when a tribal division took place, that portion of the tribe which joined the chiefs who had last been engaged in the ceremony of "uru uru whenua" claimed the particular land where the ceremony had taken place, and the division line was made to come as near as possible to that part, situate in the centre of the whole tribal claim on which the fathers or grandfathers of each portion of the now divided tribe had last caught rats, as before alluded to. The lands of a tribe were portioned out according to the number of families of which it consisted, and were claimed by each family as its own; nor

did any one meddle with or occupy the land of another family, unless by express permission of the family claiming. Still these portions were not the exclusive property of each family so claiming them. But this only applied to the lands originally settled by the first migrations, not to lands which have been acquired by conquest, gift, or "utu," for curses or other injuries. Land is claimed by families, and the object of the chiefs in portioning them out was to prevent tribal disputes, and to allow each part of the tribe to have a portion of land over which it could exercise the exclusive right of cultivation, fishing, snaring birds, catching rats, or obtaining fern root, which is one of the staple articles of food, and required a certain amount of care, though growing spontaneously, to bring it to the state required for food. Moreover, this portioning out of the tribal lands caused emulation in the different families, as to the produce gained by each for the use of the tribe. The individual claim to land, therefore, did not exist amongst the New Zealanders according to our acceptation of that term.

The customs or laws relative to land taken in war are more complicated. A tribe in going to war had three objects in view: 1st, to take revenge for some real or supposed injury; 2nd, to obtain as many slaves as possible; 3rd, to extend its territory. A tribe seldom became extinct in consequence of war; but when this resulted, the conquering tribe took all their lands; and from the slaves taken in war the conquerors learnt the boundaries of the land thus taken. But if a portion of the tribe escaped, their claim held good to as great an extent of land as they had the courage to occupy. If, however, they could manage to keep within their own tribal boundary, and elude their enemy, their right to the whole of the land held good; hence the meaning of a sentence so often used by old chiefs in their land disputes – "I ka tonu taku ahi i runga i taku whenua" (My fire has been kept burning on my land); meaning that other tribes in war had never been able to drive them entirely off their ancestral claims. The right to lands taken by conquest rests solely on the conquering party actually occupying the taken district, to the utter

exclusion of its original owners or other tribes. Thus, in a war of the celebrated Hongi, he drove all the tribes out of the Auckland district into Waikato, and even as far as Taranaki; but though the whole district thereby became his, yet, as he did not occupy it, the conquered tribes, on his return to the North, came back to their own lands, and we found them in occupation when Auckland was established as an English settlement. Again, in the case of a tribe which had been conquered, and had become extinct, with the exception of those who had been made slaves by the conquering party, these slaves could by purchase recover the ownership of their tribal rights to land, or they could be liberated and return to their own lands on a promise of allegiance to the conquerors; rendering them any assistance if required in times of war, and supplying them for the first few years after their return with a certain amount of rats, fish, and fern root; and eventually, on presenting the conquerors with a green-stone battleaxe (the mere pounamu), they were again allowed to be called a tribe, and claim the lands of their fathers, as though they had never been conquered.

The claims in connection with lands given to a tribe for assistance rendered in war are more complicated than any other. Although the land was given to the leader of the tribe rendering such assistance, it did not thereby become vested in that individual leader, inasmuch as the assisting tribe were seldom alone, but had brought their allies; and if these allies had lost any of their chiefs in battle, each relative of the deceased chiefs had a claim in the land thus given, and each relative of any chief who had been killed of the tribe to whose leader the land was given had also a claim. But the complication of land claims does not end even here. It was necessary that the land given should be occupied, so that possession of it be retained; and as the assisted and assisting tribes became related by intermarriage, the tribal lands of the assisted tribe were claimed by the issue of these marriages, according to the laws of which I have already spoken, so that after a few generations their respective claims not unfrequently became the cause of another war. An instance

of this happened about four generations ago. One of the Northern tribes rendered assistance in time of war to a Southern tribe, now residing not far from Auckland, and a portion of land was given to the northern tribe. Shortly afterwards the daughter of the southern chief was taken in marriage by one of the chiefs of the northern tribe; the two sisters of this woman were married to chiefs of the southern tribe, and thereupon their children's claims held good; but when the time came for the offspring of the sister who had married the northern chief to give up their land, the colonization of New Zealand had commenced, and land becoming a marketable commodity, they retained their claims against all right and argument, and to this day there is a rankling feeling between the tribes concerned; and if in this disputed land incautious dealing by Europeans took place, it would probably result in a Maori war. The war in the Bay of Plenty, which has been continued to the present day between certain chiefs, also originated in a like cause: the contending parties are all of one tribe, and spring from one ancestor, but by intermarriage some have a more direct claim than others. The descendants who by intermarriage are related to other tribes have made an equal claim to the land over which they have but a partial claim, and resistance to this has been the cause of the war. Disputes of this kind are not easily unravelled. I believe that were it possible to teach the Maoris the English language, and then bring them into some court, allowing each contending party to plead his cause in such a dispute as I have mentioned, not according to English law, but according to Maori custom, both sides would, according to native genealogy and laws, make out their respective cases so clearly, that it would take a judge and jury possessed of more than human attainments to decide the ownership of the land.

While speaking about lands claimed by conquest, I will give a few instances of land claimed by the offspring of those male or female chiefs who have been made slaves in war. It would not generally be supposed that lands disposed of at the southern end of this island would affect any native at the northern end of it;

yet such is the case. A chieftainess, who was taken slave from the South by the Ngapuhi and other Northern tribes, became the wife of a Ngapuhi chief. Her claim stood in the way of completing a sale of the land, and it was not until the consent of her son by the Ngapuhi chief was gained that the land could be disposed of by the natives residing on it; and to him, in due course of time, a portion of the payment was transmitted. Again, a chief who was taken slave from the Bay of Plenty by the Northern tribes, having taken a Northern woman to wife, and having a family, his relatives from the Bay of Plenty made presents to the chiefs by whom he was taken, and procured his return home; but he was obliged, according to Maori laws of title to land, to leave his wife and daughters with the Ngapuhi people; for if he had taken them with him, they would have lost their claim to land at Ngapuhi, and would not be allowed any claim to land in the Bay of Plenty; while his son, whom he took back with him, now claims, by right of his grandfather, an equal right to the lands of the Bay of Plenty tribe. Again, one of the northern chiefs having taken to wife a woman whom he had made slave from Taranaki, and having a son by her, this son returned to the tribe of his mother, and claimed as his right, derived from his grandfather, a share in their land, which was not disputed, because, as I have before stated, the great-grandchild in the female line has a claim to land. I remember another instance of this. A certain block of land was sold by a tribe near Auckland; and when the purchase-money was portioned out amongst the claimants, a northern chief rose up and rehearsed his genealogy, by which he proved that he was the great-grandchild (in the female line) of one of the claimants of the block sold. He thereupon, as a matter of course, received a part of the purchase-money. He was a northern chief, and had only been known to the sellers by name.

There are also other grounds on which claims are made to land. Should a chief of one tribe be killed by another tribe, the tribe of the murdered man claims the land in the vicinity where the murder took place; for instance, a chief who had lost

his canoe by drifting to sea, went along the coast to the settlement of a tribe who had been at variance with his tribe for many years, and found his canoe there, but was murdered by them. His tribe collected a war party, proceeded to the settlement, and brought away the body of the deceased chief, and in the following year went and cultivated the land. The block whereof this cultivation formed part was afterwards sold by the original owners, and the relatives of the murdered chief received payment for the portion they had cultivated. Also, if a chief is drowned, his surviving relatives demand from the owners of that part of the river or coast where his body may be found, that for a certain period no fish or shellfish shall be collected from it. This proceeding is called a "rahui," and continues until the next shark-fishing season. The owners of the shark fisheries then collect all the sharks taken at that season, and dry them, when the tribe of the drowned chief are sent for and entertained at a feast, at which the sharks are all given to them. By this act the rahui is taken off, and the fish or shellfish can thereupon be again taken from any part of the river or coast. Should the rahui be broken by the resident tribes, the relatives of the drowned chief then claim an equal right to the land. In one case a chief was drowned, and the owners of the land were called on to rahui the river; but they neglected to do so; whereupon the drowned man's relatives went and cultivated the land, and have held it ever since. In another a chief was taken in war not far from Auckland, and his bones were made into fishing hooks, and used in fishing for sharks. The relatives went and took the land near the place where the bones of the chief were thus used. A third instance took place not far south of Auckland. In a war of invasion, one of the invaded chiefs was taken with his son, who was then an infant, and the bones of the father, who was killed and eaten, were used by the conquerors to catch sharks. As the son was a slave, when he was old enough he was taken out to fish; and one day, while out fishing, there happened to be a scarcity of shark, and he heard an old chief repeat a fishing ceremony with the addition of a name, and this

being repeated many times, the boy learnt the name. On arriving on shore, he inquired of a fellow-slave if she knew any one of that name, and was told it was the name of his own father. His ire was roused on learning that his father had not only been eaten, but that his bones were thus insulted. Though it is not considered an insult to eat those killed in battle, it is an unpardonable offence to use the bones as I have described. On this account the lad brooded over the discovery he had made, and eventually escaped from his masters, and got back to his home. The tale he told soon collected a force of men, who avenged the insult by coming and taking possession of the district, which their tribe owns and occupies to this day. Again, if a chief, when on a journey in inclement weather, should require a temporary hut to be erected, the fact of his sleeping in the hut made it sacred. It was allowed to drop to pieces; but if the owners of the district on which it was erected made use of any part of it, the chief for whose use it was erected claimed a right in the district. If a chief should have occasion to wash his head or comb his hair while on a journey, he claims a right in the district which this operation has made sacred. But it was not permitted to a chief to do this upon land belonging to other tribes on an insufficient pretence. The sickness or sudden death of a relative while on a journey is allowed to be a sufficient cause, but not the mere whim of a chief to beautify himself by washing or combing while on a friendly visit to another tribe. If a child be born in the course of a journey, the child has a claim to the district. This claim is derived from what is called the "kawa" of the child; that is, at the birth of a child, a branch of certain trees, the "ake," "karamu," or "hatu" is taken, part of which is tied to the child and part set in the ground. This ceremony is called "te arawa;" if the portion planted grows it is said the child will be a warrior. There are also other grounds by which claims to land are allowed. If a chief be killed by a tribe on the lands of another tribe, and if the murderers are not owners of the land on which they killed the chief, the relatives of the killed chief claim the land on which the deed took place. For instance, the

Ngatimaru killed a Ngatiwhatua chief on the lands of the Ngatiteata tribe; the Ngatiwhatua therefore claim a right to the district, and to this day their claim has stood in the way of the district being sold. Again, there are certain things which if done or happening to a chief when on the lands of another tribe will, unless the tribe at once object or disallow the act or occurrence, establish a claim on the land. An instance of this occurred when a chief called Papaka (in Waikato about three generations ago), while on a visit to the Ngatihape tribe, by whom he was entertained as a guest, made a present of his ear ornament to the Ngatihape chief. Now anything worn on the person of a chief is sacred, and the presentation by a chief of an ear or head ornament, is a mark of the greatest respect that can be shown from one Maori to another. Papaka was accustomed to wear attached to his ear the tail of a Maori clog called a "waro," which he gave to the Ngatihape chief, and it was accepted. Soon afterwards Papaka returned and assumed the leadership of the Ngatihape tribe, and consequently a right to all their lands, which claim has continued good to his descendants to the present time.

The Maori is said by many to be the child of impulse. Such an opinion is not just; for it will appear to those who can enter into close conversation with him that he does not ask a question merely to spend his time or to amuse those to whom he is speaking. There is no such thing as an idle question from a Maori. Those who have observed him will agree with me that when he asks a question he does it in such a way as often to render it impossible to imagine the object for which it was asked; also, if he has to answer a question the object whereof is not clearly understood by him, he will give such an answer as will not put him in the power of the interrogator. Similarly a Maori does not give or take a present except for some predetermined reason; thus the Ngatihape tribe in receiving the present from Papaka virtually bound themselves to give whatever he might demand in return. I will instance another mode of allowing a claim to be made for land. While the chief Raukataura, on a visit from Waikato to the Thames, was passing

through the forest, one of his feathers (a kura) was torn from his head by the scrub in the road; he at once sat down, and breaking a number of sticks, made a small enclosure round the feather; and as it is customary among the natives for visitors from a distance to be attended by people of the district visited, and as these owners of the land witnessed the act and did not forthwith object to it, they virtually acquiesced in the claim which Raukataura thereby set up to the land, and to this day his descendants claim part of the district accordingly. Another instance of this custom may be given. One of the Waikato tribe, whose district was famed for the eels it produced, invited a chief of another tribe on an eel-catching expedition. During the sport the invited chief was so pleased with the quantity of eels taken that he took a bunch of albatross feathers, called "pohoi," from his ear and cast it into the stream. As the owners of the fishery did not immediately object to this, his descendants are now allowed a claim not only to the land but to the eels taken there. Another instance of the custom occurred not many miles from Auckland. There stands in the Waitemata river a rock, used as a mark in getting the exact position of a bank where shark is taken more plentifully than in any other parts of the river. A few years previous to the arrival of Governor Hobson an adjoining tribe was allowed to fish for sharks on the bank by the owners of the fishery, and the tribe to whom permission was given were so pleased with the quantity of fish taken that they were induced to attempt to found a claim there, which they did by cutting a mark on the top of the rock. This having transpired, the owners of the district at once proceeded to the rock and obliterated the mark, thereby disallowing their claim, which has not again been made. Another ground on which claims to land are founded is the "kanga," or curse. To "kanga" or "apiti" a Maori chief is an offence of the greatest magnitude, or to compare a man to anything eatable, or to call a dog or a canoe or anything after his name. An offender in this respect is visited by a war party, and if he is of another tribe, and leaves the settlement on the arrival of the war party, it is optional for

such party at once to occupy the land and become the owners of that portion of the district. Not far from Auckland such an offence was given by the Ngatimaru tribe to the Ngatipaoa; the Ngatipaoa visited the offenders on the Waiheke Island, but not having been able to meet the Ngatimaru there, the Ngatipaoa took part of the island and hold the ownership of it to this day.

There are also, as I have before stated, lands which are ceded to a tribe for a specific purpose with certain restrictions, and the tenure of such land depends on the conditions being fulfilled. I mentioned that in certain cases in war, an assisting tribe was in return for their help presented with a block of land which became the property of all those who had relatives killed in the war for which it was given. In some instances, however, the land was not fully given to the assisting tribes; sometimes only the right of fishing or hunting was granted, and in order that the owners of the district might keep the "mana" or right to the land, the tribe who had received permission to fish or hunt had to render the proceeds of their first day's sport to the owners of the land. Nor was the time for this acknowledgment optional with the giver; for on the morning of the day after the first fishing or hunting excursion, certain men of the tribe were obliged to take the fish or game to the owners of the land, and the rest of the tribe were not to fish or hunt again until the present so sent was acknowledged by the return of the messengers. There are lands held on these conditions to this day. Sometimes, also, a permission was given to cultivate in consideration of a few of the best kumaras or taros being sent immediately on the crops being gathered. Lands have been used in this way by father and son for many generations. As a general law it was not allowed to bury the dead of the occupying tribe on land held by such a tenure, indeed only one instance of this law being broken has passed under my notice. In the case I allude to the burial having taken place with the consent or tacit admission of the owners of the land, a claim was in course of time raised upon this pretext, and the claimants even sold portions of the land to Europeans, nor was the unsold portion

regained by the proper owners until after a war in which the offending tribe were driven off by force of arms.

I mentioned the Ngatiawa tribe as being one of the most restless in former days, and tradition speaks of them as the most powerful in respect of numbers. A reference to the names of the different tribes now occupying New Zealand would show that the Ngatiawa are located in the North end of this Island, in the Bay of Plenty, at Taranaki, and on both sides of Cook's Straits. As these places now occupied by them were not taken by right of discovery or by force of arms alone, there remains to be shown another custom relating to claims of land by means of which they became the owners of those districts. The progenitors of this tribe came, as I have stated, in the canoe Tokomaru, and landed near Taranaki; but being of a restless disposition, they shortly afterwards migrated to the Bay of Plenty, and then after a brief stay came down the East Coast to the Thames and ultimately went on as far as the North Cape, In the course of their wanderings they (being the most powerful in respect of numbers) drove the other tribes out of each district where they visited; they overran all the Ngapuhi land in the North, and were the cause of that portion of the Ngatiwhatu who were located at the North Cape coming South and joining the main body at Kaipara. Having by force of numbers taken all on the West coast to the North of Kaipara and all on the East coast to the North of Whangarei, they claimed it as their rightful property, not only by the law of might but because of having buried their dead in the sacred places of the tribes of the land; for they had, according to Native law, proved the power of their own heathen customs relative to the dead to be superior to that of the tribes into whose district they had come. I may mention that the laws relative to the burial of the dead are strict. It is supposed that to bury the dead of an inferior tribe in the same place where superior chiefs are interred, without the consent of the relatives of the superior chiefs, would cause the gods of the superior chiefs to destroy the tribe of the relatives of the inferior chief so buried; hence the circumstance of the

Ngatiawa having buried their dead in utter disregard of such consent proved an undisputed right to the district, not only by the law of force but by that of superior rank. At the time of which I speak, the Northern people did not dispute the title of the Ngatiawa to portions of the land to which I have referred nevertheless. Their restless disposition again led them to migrate South, and in this migration the tribe divided, part going by the West coast and part by the East. The chief of the West coast party took with him a tame lizard (kaweau), and being now lessened in number, this party had to travel more circumspectly, being in the midst of their enemies. The New Zealanders are not more in fear of any known thing in the world than of the lizard, and this tame one effectually became the passport of the West coast party from the Hokianga district to Taranaki. The East coast party went by water, and landed in the Bay of Plenty, where they, by the same means as above described in the case of the Ngapuhi, took possession of a district which they still retain; while of the party which returned to Taranaki, some remained there, and some crossed Cook's Straits and took possession of portions of the South Island. In fact, there is not another tribe in New Zealand which is more separated, and by which more land is claimed. According to the laws of tapu, the Ngatiawa hold to this day undisputed possession of each district in which any portion of their tribe is located. Had any of them remained at Ngapuhi, that portion of the district which they might have thought fit to occupy in accordance with the mode in which the whole tribe originally asserted their right to the entire district, would have remained in their undisputed possession to this day.

I have now given, as far as my time will allow, a sketch of the laws and customs of the Maoris in respect to their claims to land; but it must be borne in mind that I have spoken of the Maoris of the past. The present Maoris have almost become another race in this respect. Had the rules of their ancestors been kept in every instance where claims to land were in question, I can confidently say there would have been

very few disputes, such as have taken place since land has become known as a commodity by which the Maori can obtain money. In ancient times, the boundaries of each tribal claim were so definitely marked out by the traps made to take the rat, that a dispute about a boundary very rarely took place; indeed I may say never except in the portioning out of a conquered district; but since the Maori has not to wander through the forest in search of his daily food, since the old men who were accustomed to take the rat on their own boundary line have passed away, and since land has become an article saleable at the option of the owners, not only a deficient knowledge of the exact boundary but also the desire of each claimant to get the greatest portion of the proceeds of the sale causes disputes. Moreover, the claims of the more distant relatives have come to be entirely disputed, and not only the claims but even their right of relationship to the ancient owners. It will be seen, therefore, that the acquisition of a perfect knowledge of the existing tribal claims is not an easy matter, where there is not the slightest help derivable from documents, where the evidence given is all oral, where the ancient traditions are less and less committed to memory, and where even the memory is frequently misled by the love of gain and more particularly by the feeling of ancestral pride and the desire to be regarded as important proprietors, feelings which predominate to a greater extent than those of a pecuniary nature.

Upon the whole, if tribal jealousies, emanating from a continual fear of ultimate oppression by foreigners, and a desire to retain nationality, are considered, there is no question surrounded with more complications than that of acquiring land from the natives, and none so likely to involve serious difficulties between the two races which inhabit these Islands; while it is not less certain that no question exists in this country more involved in obscurity, none where more patience and prudence are required, and none where a false step involves more distrust than any interference with the laws and usages of the New Zealanders on the subject of title to land,

LECTURE II. PART II. MAORI LAND TENURE.

PART II.

IN a former Lecture on the tenure of Maori land, I intimated that I would continue the subject on the "mana" of a New Zealand chief and tribal rights, this evening.

I must, therefore, revert to the past ages of Maori history, so as to define what is the influence or "mana" of a chief or priest, and from what derived, and to what extent it is exercised over the people.

The history of the Maoris, prior to their migration to New Zealand, speaks of their being associated as one people; and certain men [of the tribe occupied a portion of their time in rehearsing their history in a temple which they called "whare kura."

This temple was filled by their most learned men, of which there were two parties, each being a check on the other in preventing a perverted account of their past history being handed down to their children. And each party had an historical staff on which was kept their genealogy, and as they occupied each a different side of the temple they were called a "kahui," or flock.

The most learned man in each kahui was the leader or chairman, who was umpire of all disputed points of history that might occur. When any set debate was to take place, the people were arranged in order by the leaders of these two kahuis; each in the kahui had his place assigned to him according to the amount of knowledge he possessed; and this place was given to him by the leader of the kahui of which he was a member. This act of the leader was called "ranga" or putting in order. The people, as they came to the temple in a body, were called "tira," or company; and as the leader had to assign or "ranga" a place to each of his "tira," he was called the "rangatira," from which we derive our word in Maori for chief, "rangatira."

In course of time a quarrel in whare kura caused the people to disperse, and each family became independent of the other under the leadership of an "ariki," who in all instances

was the first born of that family, the father of which had enjoyed the privilege of being a priest in whare kura. The knowledge handed down by the father to the son gave that son a certain power over the junior branches of the family; hence he was termed an "ariki," from the fact of his superior knowledge; he could ("a") lead or drive by that knowledge the junior or "riki" branches of the family, he therefore was an "a-riki," a leader of the juniors.

Shortly after the dispersion of the people from whare kura, each family, under their new leadership, erected temples of similar form and structure, in which they rehearsed their own genealogy or such portion of the whole of that recounted in the old whare kura as related to themselves and those who now took part in the rehearsal of this to them formerly sacred lore. They required a teacher or "kai tohu tohu" or "tohunga," and as in the former whare kura the most learned man in these matters took the precedence, so also in this the most learned took the leadership; and as he had to "tohu" (to point out or instruct), he acquired the name of tohunga, which is now applied to a priest or any educated person. The word "tohu" has also another meaning, which is to keep or take care of. The whare kura of these separate families had the images of their gods in them, and these were in charge of the person whose knowledge in ancient lore entitled him to the office. From this it was said that he "tohu" or kept them, and hence the name tohunga. As this was his duty, he was not required to work; and being also the keeper or tohunga of the gods he was sacred and could not be called on to perform any menial duty. Being the keeper of the gods and having a superior knowledge of past history and events, he was better enabled to form a correct judgment in respect of anything that was for the welfare of the families whose tohunga he was; hence also, in the event of war and in all matters relative to agriculture or fishing, the people gave precedence to the opinion of the tohunga. This leads me to the next point, viz., "Mana." As I have shown the origin of the names "rangatira," "ariki," and "tohunga,"

I will now show what is the "mana" relative to the peculiar duties of those persons who assume these names.

The past history of the Maori informs us that they date their origin from their gods, and that their superstitions are all founded on the co-assistance of these gods with their tohunga or priest. Hence the tapu of the priest; and as all matters of importance are directed by the gods through the priest, orders or decisions must be implicitly obeyed, or "whakamana," so that the mana of a priest existed not on account of any natural power of his own, but of the gods. Again, in reference to the ariki, as it was the sole privilege of the first born to be taught by the father or grandfather, all the knowledge and experience they had acquired must as a natural consequence make him wiser than his juniors. His opinion when given accordingly carries a weight with it or mana, – hence therefore the mana of an ariki. Again, as the ariki guides by his superior knowledge, and as the tohunga guides by his intimacy with the gods, so there is a proper province for the rangatira. When any meeting takes place of the people, when a war dance is to be enacted, or any minor point or dispute arises in the tribe, the matter is arranged by the rangatira, so far as to see that order is kept; as, for instance, that the men in the war dance are all "kapa tonu," or in regular lines, and that in a dispute a fair hearing is given to each party.

To show what tribal rights are, we must still have recourse to the past history of the Maori prior to his migrating to these islands. The Maoris who came, although related, were not of one hapu or family, but were even some time previous to leaving Hawaike members of different hapus, quarrels between which were the cause of their migrating. But in Hawaike each tribe or hapu was called kahui, and not, as in the present day, by the name of the chief who was the leader of a family when it separated from the main tribe or iwi.

As each "waka" canoe, or the people who came together, for some time after they landed maintained their unity as a people, they were called an "iwi." The term iwi, therefore,

means the descendants of those men who came over in one canoe, and in many cases the name of the iwi has merged in the name of the canoe in which their ancestors came; as, for instance, the Rotorua tribes are called "Arawa," the Ngapuhi "Mamari," and so on. In my former lecture I stated the boundaries of the lands taken and claimed by each one of the migrations which came to these islands, and I also gave many of their customs relative to their numerous claims to land. It therefore now remains to show the origin of the iwi being sub-divided into hapus. In order to be enabled to point out clearly tribal right and mana of chiefs I must again revert to the land taken by the Maori on his first arriving here, and as an illustration I will take two districts, Arawa and Tainui.

The Arawa district remains, as a whole, in the hands of the offspring of the same men who came in the Arawa canoe. The migration, very shortly after they arrived, dispersed over their large territory and divided into separate hapus (or families, as the word implies), and in course of time each of these hapus have taken the rank of iwi, and act independently of any other, as though it had been of a distinct migration. Each of these is again sub-divided into many hapus, the aggregate body still keeping the whole of the district formerly taken by the Arawa. But not so the Tainui district. As I have spoken of the Arawa as an unbroken district, I will for contrast take the other extreme, that of the Tainui, which district, originally of large extent, is now so curtailed that the only portion left to the iwi of Tainui is a small portion of it at Whaingaroa.

As I shall have to speak of all the migrations, I will at once give a general outline of the different migrations or iwis, in reference to their present tribal rights or mana over that district which their respective migrations took on their arrival here. The Ngapuhi have now more land as an iwi than the district taken by the migration of Mamari. So have the adjoining iwi, the Ngatiwhatua. The Tainui have lost all their territory save a small portion. The migration by the Aotea have but a small portion of their ancient district. The adjoin-

ing migration of Tokomaru have lost a portion of their ancient district. The old occupants of the south island have become a mere name on the land of their fathers. The Takitumu still hold all their land. The Matatua, who took part of the Arawa district, have but part of the land first taken by them. The Ruikakara and Wakatuwhenua have lost their name as a migration in the Ngapuhi iwi, and the Mahuhu have lost their claim to the land at the North Cape.

Intermarriage has caused the loss of land to the original owners more than conquest. As more disputes on this point are caused than any other, I will at once enter on the tribal rights which arise from it. I stated in my former lecture that it was thought a point of material importance that females given in marriage ought, if possible, to induce the husband to join her tribe so as to add to the force of her people; hence portions of land are claimed by certain tribes who reside in and claim part of a migration district, but who do not own any right of mana to be exercised by the offspring of the original migrators in whose district they are thus located. I will instance some of these claims in each migration, and, for the sake of clearness, I will take the migrations consecutively, from the North Cape along the west coast and round by the east coast. There is not an instance of this sort in the Mamari migration, but there are other claims (dissimilar in origin, though in effect the same) which I will presently refer to; and similar claims also exist in the next migration district, that of Mahuhu. In the adjoining migration of Tainui, there are many of the class of which I first spoke. In the Kawerau, for instance, which tribe had their origin from a chief of the Aotea and Ngatiawa migration of the name of Maki marrying a Tainui woman, he became the avenger of the Tainui wrongs, and after some time the head of a hapu which now forms a distinct people, acting without any reference to the chiefs of hapus in the Tainui or Mahuhu migrations by which they are surrounded. The tribal rights of this little hapu, which does not number in all 50 men, women, and children, are not few or of minor importance to them. In

the produce of the land and sea they do not pay tribute to any chief, nor could they be commanded by any adjoining tribe or hapu to assist in any act whatever, nor could a chief go to any of their fishing grounds without their express permission. In the wars of past times they bore the brunt of battle by themselves. In an attack made on them about 45 years since by a Ngapuhi chief named Te Kahakaha, they did not ask the aid of any other tribe, and, although they were beaten, they neither fled from their own land, nor did they ask revenge to be taken for them by the powerful tribes of Waikato. Again, in a war anterior to the one I have just mentioned, they were so determined to hold the land of their fathers, that although few in number and unable to meet their enemy (Ngapuhi) in open fight, they built a pa on long posts in the midst of a deep swamp, and there defied the attacks of their more numerous foes. This was not done so much to baffle their enemy as to keep the mana of their land, as, being few in number, they could have escaped in the forest and mountains of their own district. I will give an instance of the extent to which this little tribe could carry their mana, or tribal right, where they permitted an infringement of the customs relative to the dead. It is a custom amongst the hapus of one iwi to bury their dead in the same burial place, and therefore each has a claim to the "wahi tapu;" so that any one who may visit or pass near the wahi tapu has, by so doing, incurred the displeasure of all the hapus. No one but a priest of the first rank (an ariki) could go into a wahi tapu, and (at a funeral) those who might be deputed by the ariki to accompany him to convey the corpse. But on one occasion, when I was travelling over the land of the Kawerau in company with thirteen chiefs of Waikato and three of Kawerau, we came to a wahi tapu where the bones of the Kawerau ancestors have been deposited for many generations. By permission of the Kawerau chief I went alone into the cave, in the midst of which there was built a small house of the swamp reed ornamented with flax of variegated colours, in which were the bones of arikis of the tribe. At the doorway of the house, which measured altogether not

more than about five by three feet, were the bones of a child, and near them a small canoe. The bones were no doubt those of an ariki child, and the canoe, his plaything, had been taken with him to his long rest. This house contained mats of different degrees of preservation, which I did not touch, and near to a large skull was an ancient Maori shark hook. On my return to our camp I requested to be allowed to take the canoe and fishing hook, which the ariki of the Kawerau permitted; the only condition imposed on me being that in our future progress during the journey I should be the last man in the line of march, and should carry the two curiosities myself. This was insisted on, lest the gods of the Kawerau should kill the Waikato chiefs if they followed after me with these things. Again, in the same journey we caught an uncommonly large eel, measuring six feet nine inches long; and as we were strangers on the Kawerau territory, I waited till the eel was cooked to see if my friends the Waikato chiefs would render the tribute of mana of the land to the Kawerau chief. This in time was done by them. It is an invariable custom amongst the hapus of tribes, when they are on an eel-fishing excursion, to give any eel of uncommon size to the principal owner of the land, and the heads of all the eels eaten while the party is out are laid before the owners of the land on which the eels are caught. This is their mana of the land, and in this instance, when the eel was cooked, the head was first taken off and laid before the Kawerau chief by one of the Waikato chiefs.

The next hapu or minor iwi in the Tainui district is the Ngatiteata, a hapu of recent date, who have usurped the lands of an old Tainui hapu called Ngatikahukoka. Kahukoka, a Tainui chief, the leader of the Ngatikahukoka, and his people, occupied all the land from the south head of Manukau to the Waikato river: they were a numerous people till the time of Tamakae and Tamakou, who were brothers; the younger brother killed the elder, and the men of the elder murdered a Waikato boy for revenge, whereupon a party of Waikato chiefs came and took their pa, killing all in it save their own relations who were of

the Ngatikahukoka tribe. Those saved, as payment for their rescue, gave a large block of land on the east bank of the Waiuku to their deliverers, the progenitors of the Ngatiteata tribe. The receiving party, the Waikato, took possession of the given district, and in course of time the present Ngatiteata have taken by force the adjoining lands of the Kahukoka tribe. Although the Ngatiteata tribe have their origin from the Waikato Ariki Tapaue, yet the Waikato chiefs have no right of mana over the Ngatiteata tribe or land, as in the invasion of Hongi against the Waikato the Ngatiteata joined him in the attack on Matakitaki, the Waikato stronghold; and at the present time the only claim the Waikatos make to the lands taken by the Ngatiteata from the Ngatikahukoka is in a Wahi tapu near the Manukau Heads, where some of the Waikato chiefs are buried; yet out of one of the land sales of the Ngatiteata the Waikato chief received a payment; but this was a tribal right arising from an act of the Ngapuhi in the war by Hongi. The chiefs taken at Waikato were killed, and their heads were brought to a spot called Te Kauri, on the south bank of the Manukau, and there whakatahurihuri (a superstitious Maori rite in war); and on these grounds the Waikato people had a claim of tapu, which was paid to them when the land was sold. Save these two claims, the Waikatos do not claim any tribal right over the Ngatiteata land.

Again, in the Tainui district on the Wairoa river there has been located for a long time a little tribe called Ngatitai, who migrated here from their iwi, the Ngatitai, in the Bay of Plenty. This little hapu is related by marriage to the Ngatipaoa, Te Akitai, and Ngatimaru, which are adjoining hapus and iwi; but still they exercise the sole mana over the land they claim, nor do they pay tribute for their land to any chief, nor in all the land they have disposed of, which they claimed by conquest, have they given any portion to other chiefs. In the war on Mauinaina, by the Ngapuhi, the Ngatitai still remained on their own land, and although many of them were killed there by Hongi, yet, when the Ngatipaoa fled to Waikato, they maintained their position on the Wairoa. One instance of the mana of their land

having been attempted to be infringed was repudiated by them in a manner that nearly led to a Maori quarrel. A canoe of the Ngatimaru having upset in passing in front of the Ngatitai settlement, and one chief being drowned, the Ngatimaru chief called on the Ngatitai to "rahui" the fishery grounds until he saw fit to take the tapu off. As the shark fishing season was then begun, the Ngatitai sent a message "that they would not catch or allow to be caught, or eat or allow to be eaten, any of the fellows with many teeth (shark) for that season;" but they would not abstain from eating all other kind of fish longer than one month. But there was a principle at stake: the Ngatimaru had made a claim to some land over which one of their dead ancestors had been carried (after a battle with the Ngatipaoa), and as this land was shortly to be paid for, the Ngatitai would not admit any claim by the Ngatimaru. If the rahui of all the fish imposed by Ngatimaru had been allowed by the Ngatitai without restricting it as they did, a money payment would have been exacted for the two claims the Ngatimaru had made when the shark rahui was taken off.

Again, in reference to the tribe which now reside at Orakei, called the Ngatiwhatua (which is a hapu of the great Kaipara tribe, the Roroa), this hapu does not admit any tribal right to be exercised over it by the Waikato, Tainui, or Ngatipaoa tribes. This hapu took possession of their district by force of arms from the Tainui and Ngatipaoa tribes. All the fishing grounds on the Waitemata river belong to them, and none of the surrounding tribes would attempt to fish on them unless permission were granted by the Ngatiwhatua, nor do they pay any tribute of fish or other thing to the original owners of the district. Although connected by marriage to the Waikato chiefs, they still keep a separate and independent control of all their land, and in their numerous sales of land they gave no portion of the payment to the other tribes. This was not merely the case with regard to the original owners of the soil, but they do not even allow the parent tribe at Kaipara to exercise any control over them in reference to the land they claim here. And although, as a por-

tion of the parent tribe, they claim an equal right with the rest of the iwi to the land of the iwi Te Roroa at Kaipara, yet, as the descendants of these men who conquered the Auckland district, they alone claim it, to the exclusion of the rest of the Roroa.

The time allotted for a lecture precludes me from noticing each Waikato tribe separately. Although they now occupy what is called the Tainui district, they are not all of Tainui origin, as some of them date their descent from the original people of New Zealand, who were called by the Maori people Ngatimokotorea. Reserving a further reference to some of them when I shall speak on the mana, I will pass on to the Aotea district (in which the claims of the original owners have been as much curtailed by migratory movements of chiefs from other parts of New Zealand as by conquest), and to the next district of Tokomaru, or the New Plymouth natives, whose family wars have been carried on with bitter hatred, on account of their numerous lines of descent from other migrations. The adjoining migrations of Matahourua, or the Taranaki and Ngatiruanui, have kept more aloof from the rest of the tribes; they are of a more savage disposition than the other people, and may be termed the only New Zealand savages of the present day; they have a slight mixture of the Rangitane people of the South Island, who are more of the Malay than any other, and this may account for their being a savage, yet cowardly, people. Their district has been overrun by many war parties, but (save a portion of the south end) they have kept their original dominion; there are therefore very few hapus among them who act independently of the iwi. But in the next migration of Takitumu there are tribes who act without any reference to the Ngatikahuhunu on the east, as they do of the Ngatiruanui on the west. There is in the Port Nicholson district a portion of a Waikato tribe, now called Ngatiraukawa. A quarrel of two brothers near Maungatautari, in Waikato, was the cause of the tribe coming to open combat, and the beaten portion migrated South, and eventually located in their present home. Having driven off the portion of the Ngatikahuhunu, they exercise the sole right as a tribe over their own

district, nor do they allow any tribal right to be exercised over them by any of the Waikato chiefs to whom they are so nearly related. Again, there is the Ngatitoa in the Port Nicholson district, who were originally the owners of Kawhia, but migrated south, and took all the Ngatiruanui country, and then resigned the greater portion back to the old owners, but demanded a tribute of tribal right or mana of the land to be given to them by the Ngatiruanui, such as kumara and fish, which was invariably done by them to Rauparaha. The Ngatitoa, though of Kawhia, do not allow any right of the iwi at Kawhia to be exercised over them, but are in the Port Nicholson district as independent as it is possible to be; on the other hand, they not only exercised the tribal right over part of Port Nicholson district, but they invaded the South Island, and brought under tribute the then owners of that island up to the time it was sold by them. I shall have again to refer to the Ngatitoa on the mana: I will meanwhile pass on to the Horouta or Hawke's Bay people, who, though one iwi, yet are divided into many hapus acting quite independently of the chiefs of other hapus or iwi. This remark will also apply to the Ngatiporou district or the East Cape natives, and may perhaps also extend to the Bay of Plenty natives; yet there is a shade of difference in some of their hapus, for they are descendants of women who came from the Hawke's Bay and East Cape natives, and on that account repudiate any claim of tribal mana being exercised over them by the iwi in whose district they reside, and of which they claim part. Passing on, we come to the Thames tribes, in speaking of whom I shall have to revert to the past, in order to clear up an apparent contradiction. Previous to the arrival of Te Arawa and Tainui in New Zealand, a chief named Ruaeo followed Te Arawa, when his wife, who had been taken by the Arawa navigator, Ruaeo, landed at Maketu, and having met the Arawa there, after a war between Ruaeo and Te Arawa navigators, Ruaeo and his party crossed inland to Matamata, and came down the Thames, taking all the land as far as Cape Colville. The Ngatiawa migration followed, and drove the Ngatihuarere or the Ruaeo people from the district, and

on the departure of the Ngatiawa northward Paeko and his followers from Ohiwa took the district. This people also were driven off by the descendants of a woman called Upokotioa, from Tauranga, and who divided into the hapus of Te Tuhuke, Ngatihako, Ngatimarama, and Ngatikatarake, the iwi being the Upokatioa. Hotunui of Kawhia was the ancestor of Paoa, who migrated back to the Thames, and founded the Ngatipaoa tribe. Marutuahu, the son of Hotunui, was the founder of the Ngatimaru, of which the Ngatitamatera and Ngatiwhanaunga are subdivisions. The Ngatipaoa exercise the sole tribal right over their own land in the Thames, without reference to the Waikato or any other tribe; so also the subdivisions Ngatitamatera and Ngatiwhanaunga are each as independent in tribal rights of their own land from each other as they are of the Ngatipaoa.

As I have given the tribal rights of each iwi, I will now show the tribal rights of the people in respect of individual claims to land, and as a matter of course enter on those of the head chiefs first, and again take the same line of route in each iwi as I did in the tribal rights of the iwi, and commence therefore with Ngapuhi, going round by the West Coast. The Ngapuhi, or the natives of the north end of this island, are, from their longer intercourse with Europeans, said to be the least like their own countrymen in reference to tribal rights of great or minor chiefs; but the very fact of their having sold more land (so far as the number of claims are concerned, these claims being so isolated and sold by so many different hapus), is the best test we can have of the seignorial rights of first rank chiefs over the whole tribe or even over a section of a tribe or hapu. The natives at the north Cape, or the Rarawa and Aupouri tribes, are a branch of the Mamari or Ngapuhi people, and are guided by the old chief Morenga; yet in all land sales this old chief has not participated in the slightest degree, but a chief of minor importance in the same tribe (Panakareao) sold largely, even when the old chief Te Morenga was in full power. This, however, only applies to the Rarawa at Kataia, as there was another section of this tribe at Whangape, led by Te Pukeroa

and Papahia, the former of whom did not sell an inch of land, and Papahia only participated in two sales out of many which his tribe made. Again, in Hokianga there is another section of this tribe, of which Moetara was the chief; he sold two blocks though not as chief of the tribe, as he was but a claimant of a small portion of each of the pieces sold. These chiefs (although of the same tribe or iwi) did not exercise any right over each other's land, for the land in the district in which each lived was under their own control. On the sale of a certain piece of land at Kataia, in which Papahia of Hokianga was a claimant, he received a small portion of the payment, yet the other chiefs of this tribe at Hokianga did not. Again, in the sales by Moetara, Papahia and the others did not receive any payment, but in one of the sales by Papahia, Moetara as a claimant received a payment. The Hikutu tribe is also a hapu of the Ngapuhi, whose ariki is Moehau. Out of all the sales of land by this hapu, Moehau received part payment for only one, while in some of the sales minor chiefs of the Rarawa were claimants and received part of the payment. Again, the Ngaitupoto (the ariki of which was Whatiia) sold land in which Tawhai, the chief of Te Mahurehure had a claim, and received a portion of the payment, yet the ariki of Te Mahurehure (Moka) did not participate. Again, a number of Mahurehure (of which Tawhai is chief) had claims not only in the district in which they lived but in other districts (to the exclusion of their leader, Tawhai, and many of the other chiefs), who sold these claims and received the whole of the price themselves. But in one of the land sales by the Rarawa (or that portion or hapu of it called Te Patu), when they sold a piece of land at Monganui, the chief Tawhai of Hokianga being a claimant received part of the payment. Again, the Hapu Te Urikapana sold a piece of land in their own district, and a minor chief of the Mahurehure, called Tiro, being a claimant, received part of the price, yet not any of the chiefs or ariki of Te Mahurehure received any payment. Again, the Ngaitupoto sold some land in their own district, and a chief in the Popoto tribe, Tahua, received part of the price as claimant

but not as ariki. Again, in the Waimate district, the Ngatitautahi sold land, and a minor chief of the Ngatikaihoro, a hapu of the Mahurehure, called Netana, received as claimant a portion of the price; and also when the Ngatimatakiri in the Waimate district sold land, the ariki of the Popoto as claimant received a portion of the price, but not any other of the tribe. Again, the Tahawai of Whaingaroa sold a piece of land, and the ariki of the Hikutu at the Bay of Islands, being a claimant, received part of the price. Again, the Ngatiuru of Whaingaroa sold land, and chiefs of the Ngatirehia and Hikutu of the Bay as claimants received part of the price, but not the arikis of those hapus. Again, the Ngaitawake sold land in the Bay, and Wi Hau, of the Ngatiwhiu (at Waimate) as claimant received a part of the payment. Again, the Hikutu at Ngunguru sold land, and chiefs of the Ngatihau in Hokianga as claimants received a portion of the price. Again, the Urikopura hapu live in their own district on the borders of the Patu district, yet five of the minor chiefs of the Urikopura sold a block of land which was situated in the middle of the district of the Mahurehure, and not the slightest part of the payment was given to the ariki of their own tribe, or to the Mahurehure ariki or people. These will suffice as examples out of the Ngapuhi iwi, to show that the head chief or ariki of the Ngapuhi does not possess any manorial right over the land of the iwi. It will be apparent to all, that not only the ariki of the Ngapuhi iwi has no veto on the disposal of land, but even the ariki of any of the hapus do not possess that right; for in the examples I have given there is proof enough to show that the members of a hapu dispose of land without the slightest reference to other members of their hapu, and that members of different hapus join and dispose of land as though they were of the same hapu. And not only so, but it will further be seen that in many instances minor chiefs have received a portion of the payment for land disposed of by members of another hapu when the ariki of the hapu of the receiver has not, and also that the minor chiefs of a distant hapu have the power to dis-

pose of land belonging to them which is situated in the midst of land belonging to another hapu, without any permission on the part of their own ariki or the ariki of the hapu in whose district the land is situate. But I will pass on to the Kaipara district (the Mahuhu migration), in which until of late years there has been very little land disposed of to Europeans. I would here remark, that it is believed by many that Maori intercourse with Europeans has materially altered their manners and customs, and especially so in reference to the power of chiefs and the customs relative to land; but how such an idea should have taken possession of the public mind is a matter of wonder if we look into the history of the people, and their wars, which related so often to only one point, namely, the right to land. The history of their claims, and their daily occupation causing them to roam over their whole territory; their having no written records; their minds being imbued with the feats of their fathers in protecting their lands, made it impossible for any communication with Europeans, before 1840, to cause any alteration in their customs relative to their ancient tenure of land. I have, therefore, selected all my examples from sales by natives before the Government took possession of New Zealand, so that it will be seen the idea to which I have referred cannot be fairly deduced from the cases given. The chief Paikea is the ariki of the Roroa or Uriohau tribe, in the Kaipara district, yet he is a witness (not a principal) in the sale of a piece of land by Ngaukora, a minor chief of the tribe. Again, in the district over which Paikea is ariki, and even within four miles of his principal residence, Parore and other minor chiefs of a distant tribe (the Ngaitawake) sold a piece of land, in the payment for which Paikea and tribe did not participate; and not only so, but Tirarau, the ariki of the Ngaitawake hapu, at Kaipara, was witness to the sale, the sellers being minor chiefs of his tribe. In another instance, the two arikis, Paikea and Tirarau, were the sole sellers of a piece of land. Again, in another instance, Paikea sold a piece of land when Tirarau was witness to the sale.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHIEFS.

I will now pass on to the next subject, viz., Mana. But before I speak on this it will be as well to define the meaning of this word by examples of its use. Mana has many and various meanings; for instance, it means fulfil, as in this sentence: "Ka mana taku kupu i au" (I will fulfil my word); and it means potent, as "He karakia mana" (a potent charm); and it also means effective, as "He kupu mana tana kupu" (his word is effective); it also means granted, as "Ekore to tono e whakamana" (your request will not be granted); it also means support, as "Mawai e mana ai tau kupu" (who will support you that your word may be effective). There is also another form which the word "mana" takes when it is joined by the preposition "ki" (to) forming the word "manaki." I will give the meaning of this word, with examples of its use. For instance, it means acceptable, as "E kore ahau e manaakitia mai e ratou" (I shall not be acceptable to them); and it means like, as "Ekore aia e manaki mai ki au" (he will not like me). Again, the word "mana" takes another form if the preposition "ko" (to) is joined to it as an affix, when it means desire, as "Kahore aku manako atu" (I have no desire); and again, if the word "tunga" (which means of itself a secret gift, the purport of which or for which it was given is only known to the receiver), be made as an affix to the word "mana," we have "manatunga" or keepsake; then again, if the noun of space be added to it as an affix, that is "wa," we have "manawa" or breath; and again, when the adjective "nui" (large) is added it becomes "manawanui" or bravery; and if we add the verb "popore" to the Maori word for breath, we have "manawa-popore," which is greediness, desire, regret, or anxiety. It will be seen, therefore, that mana expresses in its many shades of meaning nothing more or less than the unseen determination of that uncontrolled something – the human mind. I will now refer to the mana of a chief or priest.

The mana of a Maori priest is circumscribed, and only extends to those matters in which the interference of the gods may be recognised, as in the many internal arrangements of the tribe,

in times of war, or in specific acts in agriculture. In war (when the tribe has determined for hostilities) the mana of the priest is seen in every movement of the tribe being guided by him; this does not only include his own tribe or hapu, of which he may be a member, but includes all men of other tribes who may join them; but his mandates are only obeyed while the war lasts. I will give an instance or two. In the wars of Hongi, whenever Hongi wished his army to halt, he signified such wish to the old priest of his expedition, Te Kemara, who thereupon sent a man forward to a certain point where he was to deposit the priest's garment, as the signal to halt, and in no instance was the signal disobeyed. In the wars of Te Waka Nene an old priest, Te Ngau, guided all their movements. In one instance Waka's people were short of food, when it was determined to send out a foraging party to obtain some from the enemy. In such an expedition deeds of valour could be shown in taking the food from the enemy, out of or near their camp. On this account all the people longed to join in the party; but the old priest having retired into the scrub near the pa for a short time to consult the omens by the Niu, he returned and named those who should go. This command was obeyed, and although dissatisfaction appeared in the countenances of those who were prohibited, yet the priest's word was mana, and no murmur was expressed. I have said the priest's word was mana where that to which it referred would allow the influence of the gods to be inferred, but the opposite applied if the express wish of the priest, and not an omen of the gods, was given in his command. An instance will show this. The ariki and priest of Ngatiawa at Taranaki, on the eve of a battle between that tribe and the Taranaki tribe, uttered a contemptuous expression against a hapu of his own people, which was, "Who ever thought that men who fish with a rod could be brave in battle?" (This priest, Te Rakino, uttered it to the hapu of which Korotiwha was chief.) When the battle did take place and was raging, in the height of the battle, Korotiwha held up his spear and called out to his hapu, "My sons, the sign of blood," at which signal they all withdrew from the combat,

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHIEFS.

and the Rakino and his party were routed by the Taranaki, when Korotiwha turned the fortune of the day by attacking again and gaining a victory. This will show that the mana of a priest is only so far as he is the medium of communication between the gods and the tribe. This has reference to his mana in times of war; but as the priest is also ariki by birth, he exercises certain mana as before stated in particular times. In agricultural pursuits, for instance, it is his prerogative to say at what time the tapu shall commence (when the crops are to be put into the ground), and when it shall be taken off; when no canoe is allowed to pass up or down the river, in the vicinity of which the tribe are cultivating, and how long this prohibition shall last; it is also at his intercession that the gods allow the tapu to be taken off any person who may have touched a corpse. His food, raiment, house, and all belonging to him are sacred, or tapu, and his mana is inherent in them; that is, if touched by any common person, that mana or influence of the gods (as expressed in the word mana as applied to them), will cause death to that person. It is therefore the influence of the gods, or the superstitious dread in which they were held by the people, and not human influence, that gave the mana to a priest: which I will further illustrate by following on to the mana of the ariki or chief, in the concerns of everyday life. 1st. Hereditary mana, its extent, and by what curtailed. 2nd. The dictatorship of a tribe, assumed by a minor chief of the tribe or even a member of another tribe; by what means gained, and to what extent allowed by the tribe. The mana of an ariki or chief was not in any instance disputed by his own people or adjoining tribes, when exercised for particular purposes. It was in his power as ariki to say when the prohibition for fishing for shark should be taken off. He was also allowed to decide when the rat-snaring season should commence. He had also power to decide when and where a corpse should be buried, when that corpse should be exhumed and exhibited to the people previous to its final interment, and also where it should have its final resting place. As there is a great deal of

labour connected with the ceremonies over the dead, such as providing food for those tribes invited to the Hahunga, it may be supposed that the ariki is supreme ruler of the people, and his word is law for the ceremonies of the dead. As the gods are in more immediate connection with the dead and the ceremonies over them it is supposed that if the superstitious rites of the Maori are not fully carried out according to ancient custom, the gods will curse the tribe, so that the ariki is not obeyed on account of his own influence. An ariki also may covet any article belonging to another person, and upon his calling it by the name of any part of his own body the owner is forced to make him a present of such thing; still, this is not done in honour of his own rank, but on account of his connection with the gods, as the naming of that article after part of his body (his body being the abode of the gods) prevents the owner from keeping it for fear of them, since no one but the ariki thus naming it could by any possible means use or cause to be used the article without incurring the displeasure of the gods. Not that such an act ends as a gift; if the ariki does not repay to the owner, or his offspring after him, a twofold price, he is looked on with disgust by the people, and thereby loses any personal influence which he may have. This leads me to the next point, namely, to show by what means a chief may lose his personal power. The foregoing will show that covetousness will militate against him, so will neglect to entertain visitors or an over austere manner to his slaves, or a bad memory in respect of past history and mythology; but that which inevitably excludes an ariki from any power over his people is want of intellect. If a chief or ariki should be loquacious or bombastic, he is thought little of by his people hence a studied silence is the rule of a chief. In no instance will a tribe be led or listen to the counsel of an ariki of the ablest mind if he takes that which is not his own; but still his mana on other points holds good against all these obstructions; for instance, in a case where war exists between two tribes with which such an ariki may be related by his intercession with each he can bring about

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHIEFS.

a peace. Still it is not personal mana that does this, his being related to them is the introduction to pave the way for peace, and as an ariki he carries the influence of the gods with him. This, of course, is not the only ingredient in the matter; but as the Maori people do not delight in war (though when once in it they are so proud that they cannot think of wishing or offering terms of peace) an ariki related to each of the contending parties may offer terms of peace to each without insulting their Maori honour; thus, therefore, is the mana of an ariki admitted, but still not on personal power and influence.

It will appear, then, that any influence that may be exercised by an ariki or chief is allowed by the people and not assumed by right of birth. This I will illustrate by a few examples. I must, however, state that in times of peace an ariki does not appear to be anything more in the tribe than the minor chiefs, save that he eats alone and the house in which he sleeps must not be polluted by food being taken into it nor the fire at which he sits be used for cooking, for fear of the gods. He cultivates with his people, if he is so inclined; but as a general rule he is merely the overseer of the work, receiving at the harvest a portion of the crop. This last remark must not lead any to suppose that the crops of a minor tribe or hapu are not common property, for the produce of a hapu is stored altogether, and the food cooked at a settlement is a common meal at which all the hapu partake; then as such, the ariki receives his portion when cooked. But in cases of dispute in the tribe, a minor chief may set at defiance the opinion of an ariki, and act as seems to him good. An instance of this occurred where a minor chief had a dispute with another member of the tribe, belonging to Waka Nene. The minor chief, Ngahu, having taken a horse from his opponent, Waka interfered, and sent a man to bring the horse back; but the messenger was insulted by being asked what Waka had to do in the matter. Waka knew that he could not use force, and therefore as ariki he sent his own horse to Ngahu, saying that if it was really a desire on the part of Ngahu to have a horse and that he had merely taken the opportunity in

that dispute to obtain one, he wished him to send the man's horse back, and take his. This could not be done by Ngahu, as the message implied insult; and Ngahu's pride being hurt, he sent the two horses back. In order to show that the ariki or chief does not possess an imperative power over his tribe, I will illustrate it by an ancient custom. In olden times, in times of war, when an attack was expected by any section of a tribe and the aid of other portions of the tribe was needed, the ariki did not send a command, but conveyed his wish by a token called Ngakau, which token varied according to the danger then impending; also, if a hapu or section of a tribe intended to take vengeance for an old insult, a token was sent to gain the assistance of other sections of the tribe. It was not a command. The token was sent without a message, and it was received without a question being put by the chief to whom it was sent: it was therefore optional on the part of the receiver to attend to the summons thus implied or not. An instance occurred about the year 1838 when a Maori war was raging in the Bay of Islands, in which Kawiti, ariki of Ngatihine, took part. He sent a Ngakau to Mate, a chief of the same tribe then residing at Kaipara, but the request was not complied with. If it had been (as some suppose) that a chief is supreme in his tribe, such a custom as I have given could never have been practised for generations. The custom itself is a sufficient refutation of the assumption that the chief has a manorial right over his tribe. But it may be said that this is an isolated case; I will, therefore, give another, where not only the hapus of a tribe were concerned, but where the whole tribe and all the chiefs of the tribe were concerned in the refusal to accede to the request of the ariki. I have before said that an ariki of a tribe (being priest) is supreme ruler in times of war, when his orders are admitted by the people to carry an appearance of an order from the gods; but in the attack on the stronghold of the Thames tribe (Ngatipaoa), about the year 1822, by the whole of the Ngapuhi Iwi led by Hongi, there arose a dispute as to how the pa was to be attacked, which eventually caused a separation of the Ngapuhi. Four or five of

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHIEFS.

the hapus retired, and would not join in the attack on this place, but joined after the battle, and assisted in all the further attacks made on the Waikato.

I have said that the dictatorship of a tribe may be assumed by a minor chief of a tribe, or even by a member of another tribe. Although the natives allow a great influence, and even pay a great respect to the offspring of their aristocracy, yet if this power is unaccompanied by intellect and bravery, the ariki of a tribe or chief of a hapu may be supplanted by an inferior chief, as in the case of the ariki of the Ngatiraukawa, who was succeeded by Te Rauparaha. Te Rauparaha was not a chief of rank; that is, he was the offspring of a junior branch of the ariki family of Tainui, and by intermarriage of his progenitors with minor chiefs and women of other tribes, he held no influence by birth; but when the principal chief of Ngatiraukawa (Hape ki Tuarangi) was on his death-bed and the whole tribe were assembled, the old chief (who had been a noted warrior in his day) asked if his successor could tread in his steps and lead his people on to victory, and so keep up the honour of the tribe. This question was put to all his sons, but no reply was given; when Te Rauparaha got up from the midst of the minor chiefs and people who were sitting at a distance from the sick chief and the chiefs of high rank, and said, "I am able to tread in your steps, and even do that which you could not do." As he was the only speaker in answer to Hape's question, the whole tribe acknowledged him as their leader. Hence his influence to his dying day. Te Paraha was a man of superior powers of mind as a native, and as a leader of a war party was not even surpassed by the noted Hongi; but let it not be supposed that by gaining a certain influence or mana by his superior powers of mind, he had the power to make anything tapu; his mana only went so far as his protecting power and counsel were required; the Ngatiraukawa ariki and the Ngatitoa ariki still retained the power of making or taking the tapu off anything, as I will again instance in an ariki of an hapu of Ngapuhi, whose name was Manu. He was ariki of the Ngatikaihoro, but being a thief he

lost all influence over his people except that of tapu; his nephew (his sister's son) took the leadership of the hapu, but it so occurred that a certain piece of land was required by the hapu on which to cultivate. A decision was given by the then leader; but he could not go beyond his wish, and it could not be occupied till it had been made noa or the tapu taken off by an ariki. Manu being the ariki objected, but at the combined request of his hapu, he removed the tapu by incantations, and the land was occupied by the people. This example speaks for itself in a twofold way. Not only can the people transfer their allegiance to a person not an ariki by birth, but they can compel by united request, their own ariki to do that to which he is opposed. The word "chief," as understood by Europeans, leads to false conclusions in reference to the application of that name to a New Zealander, or (to put it in another way) Europeans expect more to be done by chiefs of Maori tribes than even these admit themselves to possess. I may confidently say there never was, or is now, a chief in New Zealand who can order any one of his tribe (slaves excepted). The members of a tribe do resist the orders of a chief with impunity. I may say, further, there is not any chief or ariki of a tribe, or even all the chiefs and arikis of any iwi together, who can collectively give a guarantee that they will make iwi, or any hapu in it, act up to any terms they (the chiefs) may agree to. I do not wish to tamper with the rank or influence of a Maori chief, but let facts speak for themselves. When Heke had, for the first time, cut the flagstaff clown at Kororareka, and troops (though a few) were sent from Sydney, and when the Governor had gone to the North to within seven miles of Heke's home, the arikis of the Ngapuhi hapus laid a number of guns at the feet of His Excellency as tokens, and entered into a contract that Heke should not cause any more disturbance. Although these chiefs were the greatest men of Ngapuhi – Waka, Rewa, Tareha, and others, and Heke was only a minor chief, yet he in defiance of them all cut the flagstaff down again, and burnt the town of Kororareka. A Maori chief when he promises anything in the name of his tribe, invariably

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHIEFS.

implies the proviso that he promises for as many only of his tribe as will listen to him. And when he promises anything for his individual self, he has a proviso in his own mind (when he is reminded of his contract) which he makes known in this way, "Oh, my love to my relatives, who condemned me for my act, made me think as they do." And if reprimanded for not conveying the news of his change of mind at a sooner date, his answer is, "I thought it would be the same if you did not know of it."

I said that a member of another tribe may assume the dictatorship of a hapu of an iwi not his own. As my time is limited one example must suffice. In the war of Hongi with the Rotorua he took many slaves, and at a recent time a young man named Pirihongo (of no note even amongst his own people as a chief of birth) paid a visit to some of his relatives who were taken slaves by Hongi. Being of an intelligent mind he eventually became, and is now, the leader of one of the Ngapuhi hapus at the Waimate, to whom many of the arikis and chiefs of Ngapuhi apply when they want the advice and assistance of the hapu of which he is now the leader.

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