A jade ornament greatly favored by the Maoris of New Zealand bore the name hei-tiki (“a carved image for the neck”). The ornaments of this class are very rude and grotesque representations of the human face or form, and were generally regarded as schematically figuring some departed ancestor. The head sometimes slanted right or left, so that the eyes, which were very large and occasionally inlaid with mother-of-pearl, were on an angle of forty-five degrees. These ornaments were prized not only as memorials, but because, having been worn by successive ancestors, they were supposed to communicate something of the very being of those ancestors to such descendants as were privileged to wear the treasured heirloom in their turn. In many cases, when the family was dying out, the last male member would leave directions that his hei-tiki should be buried with him, so that it might not fall into the hands of strangers.[108]

So rare was this New Zealand jade, known to the Maoris as punamu (green-stone), that the aid of a tohunga, or wizard, was regarded as necessary to learn where it could be found. On setting forth on a search for this material, the jade-seekers would take with them a tohunga, and when the party reached the region where jade was usually found the tohunga would retire to some solitary spot and would fall into a trance. On awaking he would claim that the spirit of some person, dead or living, had appeared to him and had directed to search in a particular place for the jade. He would then conduct the party to this place, where a larger or smaller piece of jade was invariably found. Of course the wizard had previously assured himself of the presence of the stone in the place indicated.

To this jade was given the name of the man whose spirit had revealed its location, and in many cases the grotesque form given to the stone was conceived to represent this man. We can easily understand the reverence accorded to the hei-tikis when we consider that they were not only prized as heirlooms, which had been handed down by the successive heads of the family, but were also believed to have been originally found in such a mysterious way.

When the head of the family died, his hei-tiki was generally buried with his body, but was exhumed after a shorter or longer time by the nearest male relative. As we have noted, if no representative of the family remained, the heirloom was allowed to remain in the grave. The fact that tribal or intertribal feuds sometimes arose in regard to the possession of a hei-tiki serves to prove the peculiar virtues ascribed to them.

While there can be little doubt that the heirloom was supposed to represent, in a very general way, the person whose name it bore, the particular form given it was largely determined by the natural shape of the mass, which was slowly and patiently fashioned into the form it eventually acquired. Though this was mainly due to the imperfect means of which the artist disposed, there was probably a conviction that the form of the natural stone was not the result of accident, but was in itself significant and required only to be rendered more clear and definite. The fabrication of the hei-tikis of the Maoris is said to have ceased in the early part of the last century. The greater number of those that have been collected in New Zealand appear to have been made from one hundred to one hundred and fifty years ago.[109]

Jasper

The jasper had great repute in ancient times as a rain-bringer, and the fourth century author of “Lithica” celebrates this quality in the following lines:[110]

The gods propitious hearken to his prayers,

Whoe’er the polished grass-green jasper wears;

His parched glebe they’ll satiate with rain,