influence over those who are nearly their equals; by means of it they supply their
most important wants, and command at will all who are beneath them. If any
object touch a chief’s garment it becomes tapu; so, too, if a drop of his blood fall
upon it; and, more particularly, it consecrates his head. To mention or refer to a
chief’s head is an insult. Mr. Angas says that a friend of his, in conversing with a
Maori chief about his crops, inadvertently said: “Oh, I have some apples in my
garden as large as that little boy’s head!” pointing at the same time to the chief’s
son. This reference was felt and resented as a deadly insult, and it was only with
the greatest difficulty that the incautious speaker obtained forgiveness. So very
much tapu is a chiefs head that, should he touch it with his own fingers, he must
touch nothing else until he has applied the hand to his nostrils and smelt it, and
thus restored to the head the virtue that departed from it when first touched. The
hair is likewise sacred; it is cut by one of his wives, who receives every particle
in a cloth, and buries it in the ground. The operation renders her tapu, for a
week, during which time she is not allowed to make use of her hands.
The carved image of a chief’s head is not less sacred than the head itself. Dr.
Dieffenbach says: “In one of the houses of Te Puai, the head chief of all the
Waikato, I saw a bust, made by himself, with all the serpentine lines of the
aroko, or tattooing. I asked him to give it to me, but it was only after much
pressing that he parted with it. I had to go to his house to fetch it myself, as none
of his tribe could legally touch it, and he licked it all over before he gave it to
me; whether to take the tapu off, or whether to make it more strictly sacred, I do
not know. He particularly engaged me not to put it into the provision-bag, nor to
let the natives see it at Rotu-rua, whither I was going, or he would certainly die
in consequence.”
Cannibalism is now extinct in New Zealand, having been crushed out by the
strong arm of British authority, and the ever-increasing influence of British
civilisation. But it was hard to die, and lingered down to a very recent date. As
practised by the Maories, it lost few of its repulsive features. We must admit,
however, that they did not indulge in it from a craving after human flesh, nor in
time of peace, but after battles, from a belief that he who ate the flesh or blood,
or even the left eye, of a slain warrior assimilated in his system all his martial
and manly qualities. When the fight was at an end, the dead bodies were
collected, and with much rejoicing carried into the villages, where they were