| A New Zealand family. |
"Perhaps," says Cook, "it appears strange that there were frequent wars in a country where so few advantages follow victory." But besides the need of procuring meat, which led to the frequency of these wars, another cause for them, unknown to Cook, existed in the fact that the population consisted of two distinct races, naturally enemies of each other.
Ancient tradition has it that the Maories came in the first instance, some thirteen hundred years ago, from the Sandwich Islands. There is reason for believing this to be correct, when one reflects that the beautiful Polynesian race peopled all the archipelago sprinkled throughout the Pacific Ocean.
Leaving Haouaikai, which must be identical with Hawai, of the Sandwich Islands, or Sanaï of the Navigator Archipelago, the Maories had repelled or possibly driven back the aboriginal population. In truth, the earliest colonists noticed two distinctly separate types in the New Zealanders. The one, and most important, unmistakably recalled the natives of Hawaii, the Marquisas, and Tonga Islands, whilst the other offered many resemblances to the Melanesian races.
These particulars, collected by Freycinet, and recently confirmed by Hochsetten, are in perfect accord with the singular fact, recorded by Cook, that Tupia, a native of Tahiti, made himself readily understood by the New Zealanders.
The migrations of the Polynesian tribes are thoroughly understood in these days, thanks to the wider knowledge of languages and anthropology, but they were scarcely suspected in the time of Cook, who, indeed, was one of the first to collect legends on the subject.
"Every one of these tribes," he says, "traditionally believes that his forefathers came years ago from another country, and they all assert from the same tradition, that the country was called Heawise." The country at this time produced only one quadruped, the dog, and that was an alien. Thus the New Zealanders had no means of subsistence, but vegetables and a few fowls unknown to the English. Fortunately the inhabitants were saved from death by starvation by the abundance of fish. Accustomed to war, and looking upon all strangers as enemies, possibly seeing in them merely an edible commodity, the natives naturally attacked the English.
Once convinced, however, of the utter inadequacy of their weapons, and of the powers of their adversaries, once convinced that the new comers avoided using those instruments which produced such terrific effects, they treated the navigators as friends, and conducted themselves towards them with surprising loyalty.
If the natives usually met with by the navigators had little idea of decency or modesty, the same was not true of the New Zealanders, and Cook gives a curious example of this fact. Although not so clean as the natives of Tahiti, whose climate is much warmer, and although they bathed less often, they took a pride in their persons, and showed a certain coquetry. For instance, they greased their hair with an oil or fat obtained from fishes or birds, which becoming rank after awhile, made them as disagreeable to a refined sense of smell as the Hottentots.
They were in the habit of tatooing themselves, and some of their tatoo designs demonstrated wonderful skill, and taste certainly not to be expected among this primitive race.