Old New Zealand: Being Incidents of Native Customs and Character in the Old Times

by Frederick Edward Maning

The old buck himself had, indeed, performed several exploits of this nature; the last of which occurred just at the time I came into the country, but before I had the advantage of his acquaintance. His tribe were at war with some people at the distance of about a day's journey. One of their villages was on the border of a dense forest. My rangatira, then a very old man, started off alone, and without saying a word to any one, took his way through the forest, which extended the whole way between his village and the enemy, crept like a lizard into the enemy's village, and then, shouting his war cry, dashed amongst a number of people he saw sitting together on the ground, and who little expected such a salute. In a minute he had run three men and one woman through the body, received five dangerous spear-wounds himself, and escaped to the forest; and finally he got safe home to his own country and people. Truly my old rangatira was a man of a thousand,—a model rangatira. This exploit, if possible, added to his reputation, and every one said his mana would never decline. The enemy had been panic stricken, thinking a whole tribe were upon them, and fled like a flock of sheep: except the three men who were killed. They all attacked my old chief at once, and were all disposed of in less than a minute, after, as I have said, giving him five desperate wounds. The woman was just "stuck," as a matter of course, as she came in his way.

The natives are unanimous in affirming that they were much more numerous in former times than they are now, and I am convinced that such was the case, for the following reasons. The old hill forts are many of them so large that an amount of labour must have been expended in trenching, terracing, and fencing them—and all without iron tools, which increased the difficulty a hundred-fold—that must have required a vastly greater population to accomplish than can be now found in the surrounding districts. These forts were also of such an extent that, taking into consideration the system of attack and defence used necessarily in those times, they would have been utterly untenable unless held by at least ten times the number of men the whole surrounding districts, for two or three days' journey, can produce. And yet, when we remember that in those times of constant war—being the two centuries preceding the arrival of the Europeans—the natives always, as a rule, slept in these hill forts with closed gates, bridges over trenches removed, and ladders of terraces drawn up, we must come to the conclusion that the inhabitants of the fort, though so numerous, were merely the population of the country in the close vicinity.

Now from the top of one of these pointed, trenched, and terraced hills, I have counted twenty others, all of equally large dimensions, and all within a distance, in every direction, of fifteen to twenty miles; and native tradition affirms that each of these hills was the stronghold of a separate hapu or clan, bearing its distinctive name. There is also the most unmistakable evidence that vast tracts of country, which have lain wild time out of mind, were once fully cultivated. The ditches for draining the land are still traceable, and large pits are to be seen in hundreds, on the tops of the dry hills, all over the northern part of the North Island, in which the kumera were once stored; and these pits are, in the greatest number, found in the centre of great open tracts of uncultivated country, where a rat in the present day would hardly find subsistence. The old drains, and the peculiar growth of the timber, mark clearly the extent of these ancient cultivations. It is also very observable that large tracts of very inferior land have been in cultivation; which would lead to the inference that either the population was pretty nearly proportioned to the extent of available land, or that the tracts of inferior land were cultivated merely because they were not too far removed from the fort: for the shape of the hill, and its capability of defence and facility of fortification, was of more consequence than the fertility of the surrounding country.

These kumera pits, being dug generally in the stiff clay on the hill tops, have, in most cases, retained their shape perfectly; and many seem as fresh and new as if they had been dug but a few years. They are oblong in shape, with the sides regularly sloped. Many collections of these provision stores have outlived Maori tradition, and the natives can only conjecture to whom they belonged. Out of the centre of one of them which I have seen, there is now growing a kauri tree one hundred and twenty feet high, and out of another a large totara. The outline of these pits is as perfect as the day they were dug, and the sides have not fallen in in the slightest degree; from which perhaps they have been preserved by the absence of frost, as well as by a beautiful coating of moss, by which they are everywhere covered. The pit in which the kauri grew, had been partially filled up by the scaling off of the bark of the tree; which, falling off in patches, as it is constantly doing, had raised a mound of decaying bark round the root of the tree.

Another evidence of a very large number of people having once inhabited these hill forts is the number of houses they contained. Every native house, it appears, in former times, as in the present, had a fire-place composed of four flat stones or flags sunk on their edges into the ground, so as to form an oblong case or trunk, in which at night a fire to heat the house was made. Now, in two of the largest hill forts I have examined (though for ages no vestige of a house had been seen) there remained the fire-places—the four stones projecting like an oblong box slightly over the ground; and their position and number denoted clearly that, large as the circumference of the huge volcanic hill was which formed the fortress, the number of families inhabiting it necessitated the strictest economy of room. The houses had been arranged in streets, or double rows, with a path between them; except in places where there had been only room on a terrace for a single row. The distances between the fire-places proved that the houses in the rows must have been as close together as it was possible to build them; and every spot, from the foot to the hill-top, not required and specially planned for defensive purposes, had been built on in this regular manner. Even the small flat top, sixty yards long by forty wide,—the citadel,—on which the greatest care and labour had been bestowed to render it difficult of access, had been as full of houses as it could hold; leaving only a small space all round the precipitous bank for the defenders to stand on.

These little fire-places, and the scarped and terraced conical hills, are the only mark the Maori of ancient times have left of their existence. And I have reasons for believing that this country has been inhabited from a more remote period by far than is generally supposed. These reasons I found upon the dialect of the Maori language spoken by the Maori of New Zealand, as well as on many other circumstances.

We may easily imagine that a hill of this kind, covered from bottom to top with houses thatched and built of reeds, rushes, and raupo, would be a mere mass of combustible matter; and such indeed was the case. When an enemy attacked one of these places, a common practice was to shower into the place, from slings, red-hot stones, which, sinking into the dry thatch of the houses, would cause a general conflagration. Should this once occur the place was sure to be taken. This mode of attack was consequently much feared; all hands not engaged at the outer defences, and all women and non-combatants, being employed guarding against this danger, by pouring water out of calabashes on every smoke that appeared. The natives also practised both mining and escalade in attacking a hill fort.

The natives attribute their decrease in numbers, before the arrival of the Europeans, to war and sickness; disease possibly arising from the destruction of food and the forced neglect of cultivation caused by the constant and furious wars which devastated the country for a long period before the arrival of the Europeans: and to such an extent that the natives at last believed a constant state of warfare to be the natural condition of life, and their sentiments, feelings, and maxims became gradually formed on this belief. Nothing was so valuable or respectable as strength and courage, and to acquire property by war and plunder was more honourable and also more desirable than by labour. Cannibalism was glorious. In a word, the island was a pandemonium.

A rugged wight, the worst of brutes, was man;.

On his own wretched kind he ruthless prey'd..