CHAPTER XXII.
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CHAPTER XXII
INSTANCES OF IMPIETY IN MAN AND BEAST.----IMPIOUS ACTION OF MARCELLUS.----ATONEMENTS NECESSARY.----SUPERSTITION OF THE AURORA AUSTEALIS.----DISCOVERY OF A HEAD.----FORM OF THE GODS.----TENEMENTS INHABITED BY THEM.----THE REINGA.----PUGNACITY OF THE ATUAS.----SOLEMN APPEALS.----DEATH MET WITH RECKLESSNESS.----THE TANIWOA ATTRIBUTES ASCRIBED TO THEM.----LIZARDS.----THE NATIVE OGRES.----THE WINDS.----SUPPOSITIONS ATTACHED TO THEM.----PLEIADES, AND CELESTIAL PLANETS.----SUPERSTITIONS ON RAYS OF LIGHT.----NATIVE INTERPOLATIONS AND OPINIONS ON DIVINE REVELATION.----INVESTITURE OF THEIR DEITIES WITH MORTAL PASSIONS.----CONFUSION IN THEIR ATTRIBUTES.----SUPPOSITIONS ON THE CREATOR.
To eat in or near any spot where the dead has been buried, is accounted the height of impiety, or to take a meal in a canoe while passing opposite to such a place. For a European to do so is supposed to be bad enough, but for a native to be thus guilty, nothing less than drowning is expected to result. 1
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A mere trifle constitutes impiety in the opinion of the New Zealanders. The crime is not confined to man only, but even beasts, as the wandering of a ruminating pig over a sacred place, is only to be appeased by his death, and the making use for firewood or any other purpose, of a rotten piece of wood; the remains of the residence of a chief, subjects the aggressor to a like infliction. In many cases it has been atoned for by blood or loss of property. But much depends on the disposition of the European who may trespass on the farms and superstitions of the natives, if he be irascible, they will not fail to take advantage of it, if fearful, they will cunningly work their will, but if (apparently) jocular and careless of consequences, he may be assured of escaping from those advantages that would be perpetrated, if he exhibited nervousness or undue irritability.
At one period holding a scull that lay on the ground by the sea-shore, an attendant pretended great alarm; but after some conversation, we per-
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suaded him to lay hold of it; after many efforts to wrestle with his fears, he did so, while his comrades stood aghast at his hardihood.
In this instance we had acted wrong, for had any illness occurred during the journey, the cause would have been laid to our handling of the remnant of mortality. On the circumstance being repeated to a priest some time after, he observed that the act was one of infinite impiety, and that the actors might congratulate themselves on having a European in company, who he verily believed possessed about them some secret, or effectual charm, which they were unwilling to impart to the natives. On the same evening, we perceived several brilliant flashes of light in the heavens towards the south, at seeing which, the natives inquired with some trepidation, if that could portend anything connected with handling the head, which having been seen far distant from a wai tapu , it was taken for granted that it had found its way to the shore for some particular purpose; the probable fact was, that it had been placed in a coffin on the branch of a tree near the shore, and had rotted and fallen from its elevated position, and had search been made among the bushes, the residue of the bones would doubtless have been discovered.
The favourite form of the Gods is supposed to be that of a lizard or a bird; and should the former frigid reptile lose its tail when handled by a European, which from the slight joints easily oc-
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curs, the divinity is regarded as curtailed in the honours due to it: many a simple white man has given a payment for causing the mishap, and has been derided by the natives for the success of their attempts on his fears.
Deep chasms, marine and subterraneous caverns, are reputed as inhabited by the tutelar divinities, and hollow noises occasioned by the high-flowing flood-tides in foul weather, rushing into the former, are said to be the noisy war-councils of the tenants of those dreary mansions, debating to which tribes the palm of victory shall be awarded! These places partake with the mountains, the scores of the legendary superstitions of the people. Much hollow ground is found in various parts of New Zealand, the districts having been in volcanic ignition; to walk over such places requires no little circumspection, as a false step might precipitate the incautious traveller into a deep abyss beneath. At the North Cape, called the Reinga , is the Avernus of the natives, or the country of their dead, where the spirits of the departed warriors find their last home, not resting-place, for the gods are said to be as pugnacious and irascible in the world beyond as they proved to be while men on earth. The chiefs who have had the greatest notoriety as unflinching cannibals, are the divinities of the people, who have been apotheosised after their decease, as we have stated. At those periods previous to a battle or a treaty, they are appealed to
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by their tribes with much solemnity, on the supposition that their affection is equally fixed on their friends as when living in this existence, and that their power to be serviceable to the tribe is equally important. They are fully satisfied that their earnest supplications are attended to, if answered by a bird at the time, and the wily priesthood generally invoke the divinity when some of those songsters are perched in the vicinity, and generally procure an answer by either imitating the bird in secret or practising ventriloquism, in which art we have seen some adepts. We have remarked that the chiefs are regarded by their followers as deities in this existence, which accounts for the recklessness with which they meet death, as they are aware of the apotheosis that is in reserve for them, and that their memories will be treated with similar honours and respect, as they had been accustomed to venerate their predecessors. From this circumstance the theogony of the people is continually on the increase; every renowned chieftain that dies forms an additional deity to the divine catalogue. Despite the respect paid to the memories of those apologies for saints, their acquaintance is palpably disliked, as ill-success of every kind, and the diseases of life, are carried to the credit side of their account. The aquatic deities, or na-taniwoa, as they are named, are said to inhabit every port, river, creek, lake, and stream in the country; and the sharks of the sea are identified as being the said
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diavoli . All the bad passions of life, such as fear, anger, revenge, vindictiveness, malice, remorse, sorrow, are attributed to the gods; but those sensations that render life most desirable, as love, prosperity, health, &c., are supposed to exist without any divine intervention. Lizards are accounted as virulent deities, that enter the orifices of the human body, devouring the inside of the hapless sufferer, until a priest intercedes, and by means foul and fair, drives the intruder from his quarters. Mawi rangi is the Ceres of New Zealand. When the heavens appear chequered with white clouds on a blue surface, the god is said to be planting his potatoes and other divine edibles, as food is accounted as peculiar rewards for the saints above. When a famine ensues on earth, a small pottle of cooked food is placed in a basket and hung on the branch of a tree, as a present to the divinity whose commissariat is suspected to be in what has been termed a healthy state of insolvency, and has consequently abridged the portion of his followers on earth. The winds and every point of the compass have been deified, the westerly wind is accounted the most vehement, and when it ceases to blow with its usual violence, it is said to have choked itself with its own bile. The Pleiades are pointed out as the left eyes of the most valorous of the gods. The traditional inventions relative to the sun (Ra ) and moon (Morama ) are innumerable; Rona is the "man
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in the moon," whose lodgings on earth have been vacated previous to the decease of Mawi . His amorous propensities are much dwelt upon by the priesthood; the dark spots (maculae ) observable in the sun, are said to be the shade cast on the planet by battling warriors, and those luminous spiral rays of the sun (helio-cometes ) are said to be caused by the last glances taken by departed chiefs on the land of their mortal birth, to which they were so endearingly attached.
Of the great and beneficent Creator, adored by the believers of revealed religion, the poor natives have scarcely a conception, as they cannot divest their divinities of being possessed of the baneful passions of this life, as fearfully exhibited by their self-willed ancestors when in being while on earth.
This specimen of the mythology of the New-Zealanders is not the avowed national belief, if we may so term the scattered and disunited tribes, as they have not possessed hitherto any written language, or hieroglyphics answering for the same purpose, consequently, the various attributes of the several deities are often confounded. Interpolations and changes in name, as best suit the locality or the inventive genius of the narrating improvisatore are added or diminished. The supreme Creator to whom the European offers his devotion, is regarded by the natives as too great and incomprehensible to be worshipped by themselves, or ranked among their theogony, and
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the only intercourse they admit of having had has been by the diseases introduced by their visitors. Such as the influenza, measles, and another yet more to be deprecated.
Though a native chief regards himself, and is believed by his people, to be a deity walking on earth; yet they have not the hardihood to affirm (poor worms) that they are equals to Him "who guides the whirlwind and directs the storm."
There are no peculiar forms attributed to the deities on their renewing (spiritually) their intercourse on this earth, as they are supposed to enter the body of birds, fish, animals, reptiles, and even insects, which induces them to repudiate any notion bordering on the atheistical; thus a storm, ground-swell in a river, severe rains, earthquake, or any natural phenomenon, is immediately attributed to the Atua , or the presiding divinity, which in the absence of divine revelation, is the Great Spirit to whom all nations address themselves, differing only in the exterior forms with which they invest the Creator.
To the early deities were appended a posteriori tails of matchless length, and sadly wanting in brevity. These grotesque addendas probably arose in the living representations having habited themselves in the skins of wild animals. The addition of a tail to the otherwise fair proportions of an enemy was a common practice of the Egyptians, who thus delineated the Ethiopians, who clad themselves as described, between which people a bitter animosity existed.
