Another kind of tapu was that which was acquired by accidental circumstances, thus: An iron pot which was used for cooking purposes was lent to a Pakeka; he very innocently placed it under the eaves of his house to catch water in; the rain coming from a sacred dwelling rendered the utensil so likewise. It was afterwards removed by a person to cook with, without her knowing what had been done. When she was told it was sacred, as it had caught the water from the roof, she exclaimed, “We shall die before night.” They went, however, to the tohunga, who made it noa again by uttering the tupeke over it.
Sickness also made the persons tapu. All diseases were supposed to be occasioned by atuas, or spirits, ngarara or lizards entering into the body of the afflicted; these therefore rendered the person sacred. The sick were removed from their own houses, and had sheds built for them in the bush at a considerable distance from the pa, where they lived apart. If any remained in their houses and died there, the dwelling became tapu, was painted over with red ochre, and could not again be used, which often put a tribe to great inconvenience, as some houses were the abode of perhaps thirty or forty different people.
The wife of a chief falling ill, the missionaries took her into their hospital, where she laid for several days. At last her husband came and carried her away, saying, he was afraid of her dying there, lest the house should be made tapu, and thus hinder the missionaries from using it again.
During the war, Maketu, a principal chief of the hostile natives, was shot in the house belonging to a settler, which he was then plundering; from that time it became tapu, and no heathen would enter it for years.
The resting-places of great chiefs on a journey became tapu; if they were in the forest, the spots were cleared and surrounded with a fence of basket work, and names were given to them. This custom particularly applied to remarkable rocks or trees, to which karakia was made, and a little bundle of rushes was thrown as an offering to the spirit who was supposed to reside there, and the sacred object was smeared over with red ochre. A similar custom prevailed when corpses were carried to their final places of interment. The friends of the dead either carved an image, which they frequently clothed with their best garments, or tied some of the clothes of the dead to a neighbouring tree or to a pole; or else they painted some adjacent rock or stone with red ochre, to which they gave the name of the dead, and whenever they passed by addressed it as though their friend were alive and present, using the most endearing expressions, and casting some fresh garments on the figure as a token of their love. These were a kind of memorial similar to the painted windows in churches.
An inferior kind of tapu exists, which any one may use. A person who finds a piece of drift timber secures it for himself by tying something round it or giving it a chop with his axe. In a similar way he can appropriate to his own use whatever is naturally common to all. A person may thus stop up a road through his ground, and often leaves his property in exposed places with merely this simple sign to show it is private and generally it is allowed to remain untouched, however many may pass that way; so with a simple bit of flax, the door of a man’s house, containing all his valuables, is left, or his food store; they are thus rendered inviolable, and no one will meddle with them. The owner of a wood abounding with kie-kie, a much prized fruit, is accustomed to set up a pole to preserve it until the fruit be fully ripe; when it is thought to be sufficiently so, he sends a young man to see if the report be favourable. The rahue is then pulled down; this removes the tapu, and the entire population go to trample the wood. All have liberty to gather the fruit, but it is customary to present some of the finest to the chief owner.
“When,” says a missionary, “Te Hewhew and nearly sixty of his tribe were overwhelmed by a landslip, in the village of Te Rapa, where they resided, the spot was for a long time kept strictly tapu, and no one was allowed to set foot on it. I was determined to make the effort, and as several who were Christians had lost their lives in the general destruction, I told the natives I should go and read the burial service over them. Viewing me as a tohunga (or priest), they did not dare to offer any opposition. I went on the sacred spot, under which the entire population of a village lay entombed, and there I read the burial service, the neighbouring natives standing on the verge of the ruins and on the surrounding heights.”
It is evident therefore that the tapu arises from the will of the chief; that by it he laid a ban upon whatever he felt disposed. It was a great power which could at all times be exercised for his own advantage, and the maintenance of his power, frequently making some trifling circumstance the reason for putting the whole community to great inconvenience, rendering a road to the pa, perhaps the most direct and frequented, or a grove, or a fountain, or anything else tapu by his arbitrary will. Without the tapu he was only a common man, and this is what long deterred many high chiefs from embracing Christianity, lest they should lose this main support of their power. Few but ariki, or great tohungas, claimed the power of the tapu; inferior ones indeed occasionally used it, but the observance of it was chiefly confined to his own retainers, and was often violated with impunity, or by giving a small payment. But he who presumed to violate the tapu of an ariki, did it at the risk of his life and property.
The tapu in many instances was beneficial, considering the state of society, the absence of law, and the fierce character of the people; it formed no bad substitute for a dictatorial form of government, and made the nearest approach to an organised state of society, or rather it may be regarded as the last remaining trace of a more civilised polity possessed by their remote ancestors. In it we discern somewhat of the ancient dignity and power of the high chief, or ariki, and a remnant of the sovereign authority they once possessed, with the remarkable union of the kingly and sacerdotal character in their persons. It rendered them a distinct race, more nearly allied to gods than men, their persons, garments, houses, and everything belonging to them being so sacred, that to touch or meddle with them was alone sufficient to occasion death.
Their gods being no more than deceased chiefs, they were regarded as living ones, and thus were not to be killed by inferior men, but only by those who had more powerful atuas in them. The victorious chief who had slain numbers, and had swallowed their eyes and drank their blood, was supposed, to have added the spirits of his victims to his own, and thus increased the power of his spirit. To keep up this idea and hinder the lower orders from trying whether it were possible to kill such corporeal and living gods, was the grand work of the tapu, and it did succeed in doing so. During bygone ages it has had a wide-spread sway, and exercised a fearful power over benighted races of men; until the “stone cut without hands” smote this mighty image of cruelty on its feet, caused it to fall, and, like the chaff of the summer’s thrashing floor, the wind of God’s word has swept it away.