John Rutherford, the White Chief: A Story of Adventure in New Zealand

by George L. Craik

Cruise says that the heads are only exposed to a current of dry air; but it appears, from Rutherford's account, that they are hung in the smoke of a wood fire, and are thus, in fact, preserved from decaying principally by being impregnated with the pyroligneous acid. That the New Zealanders are well acquainted with the antiseptic powers of this extract is proved also by what was formerly stated as to their method of curing mussels. A French writer considers that this art of preserving heads is a proof of some original connection between the New Zealanders and the ancient world; as the process is as effective as that by which the Egyptians prepared their mummies.

In savage countries the spirit of war is very much a spirit of personal hostility; and both because of this, and from the state of society not admitting of the erection of expensive public memorials which elsewhere, or in another age, are employed to preserve the renown of military exploits, the barbarian victor generally celebrates his triumph on the body of his slain enemy, in disfiguring which he first exercises his ingenuity, and afterwards in converting it into a permanent trophy of his prowess.

The ancient Scythian warrior, Herodotus tells us, was wont to carry away the heads of all those whom he slew in battle, to present to his king; and the ancient Gauls, it is said, used to hang these bloody spoils around the necks of their horses. The Gauls are asserted also to have been in the practice of embalming the heads which they brought home from their wars, of which they had large collections, which they kept in chests. These they used to show with much exultation to the strangers who visited their country; boasting that neither they nor their ancestors had ever been known to dispose of such honourable heirlooms for any price that could be offered.

Among some races it has been the custom to preserve only the scalp; as, for instance, among the Indians of America. The taking of scalps, however, is also a practice of great antiquity. The Scythians used to hang the scalps of their enemies to the harness of their horses; and he was deemed the most distinguished warrior whose equipage was most plentifully decorated with these ornaments. Some were accustomed to sew numbers of scalps together, so as to form a cloak, in which they arrayed themselves. It was also usual for the warriors of this nation to tear off the skin from the right hands of their slain enemies, and to preserve it with the nails attached; and sometimes they flayed the whole body, and, after drying the skin, made use of it as a covering for their horses.

Some of the savage tribes of America are said to have been accustomed to practice the same barbarity, and to convert the skins of the hands into pouches for holding their tobacco.

The history of Scotland affords an instance, even in comparatively recent times, of a victorious party, in the bitterness of their contempt and hatred, employing the skin of a slain enemy in a somewhat similar manner. Hugh Cressingham, appointed by Edward I. Lord Chief Justice of Scotland, having been slain at Stirling Bridge in an attack by Wallace, the Scots flayed him, and made saddles and girths of his skin.

To recur to the practices of a higher state of civilization, our own custom, which existed as late as the last century, of exposing the heads of traitors, although meant as a warning, in the same way as hanging in chains, was perhaps a relic of those ferocious ages when it was not considered mean and brutal to carry revenge beyond the grave. The executions in London, after the rebellion of 1745, were followed by such a revolting display, useless for any object of salutary terror, and calculated only to excite a vulgar curiosity. Horace Walpole, in a very few words, describes the feelings with which the public crowded to this sight:—"I have been this morning at the Tower, and passed under the new heads of Temple Bar, where people make a trade of letting spying glasses at a halfpenny a look."

The New Zealanders have, therefore, in some degree, a justification for this custom in the somewhat similar acts of civilized communities. At any rate, in preserving, as they do, the heads of their enemies, they only follow a practice which has been common to many other barbarous tribes.

Although Pomaree, it would appear, made a merchandise of these heads when he had the opportunity, his countrymen, in general, are far from treating them with so much disrespect. It was with great reluctance that some of them were prevailed upon to sell one to Mr. Banks, when he was with Cook in Queen Charlotte Sound, in 1770; and nothing could induce them to part with a second. They are, in fact, preserved as spoils or trophies during the continuance of the war; and their restoration to the party from whom they have been taken is so indispensable a preliminary to the conclusion of a peace, that it is said no chief would dispose of them, unless it were his determination never to come to terms with his opponents; so that we may suppose this was what Pomaree had resolved upon.

The brain is eaten, like the rest of the body; and the eyes are also frequently devoured by the conqueror, especially the left eye, which, it is believed, ascends to heaven and becomes a star. Shungie is stated, upon one occasion, to have eaten the left eye of a great chief whom he had killed in battle, under the idea of thus increasing the glory and brightness of his own left eye, when it should be transferred to the firmament; for it is understood that when any one eats of the person he has killed, the dead man becomes a part of himself.