No notion of chastity seems to have belonged to Maori women. They were children of nature, and by no means prudish. Whilst young and free, unengaged to any gentleman, a Maori girl was permitted to have as many followers as she liked, and she was not exactly what we should term virtuous. If pretty she was a general pet in the kainga, and a merry time she had of it. One of the ordinary rules of hospitality as practised in a Maori village, still not entirely obsolete in some places, proves the engaging openness of manners and unrestricted freedom which prevailed socially. The number of half-breed children occasionally seen about a kainga, show the easy way in which certain Pakeha have fallen in with Maori customs.
But tapu provided a marriage law of singular stringency. So soon as a girl was married, nay, merely betrothed, no more license for her. She was tapu to her husband, and if the terrors of the unseen world should not be enough to keep her in the straight path, death was the penalty for the slightest deviation therefrom. She was the slave as well as the wife of her lord, and this continued until, and sometimes even after, his death, unless he should permit a sort of formal divorce.
The person of an ariki was highly tapu. The sublime essence rested, if anywhere, most particularly in his head. His hair might not be cut or dressed without the observance of most formal etiquette. It was a fearful breach of tapu to pass anything over or above his head. Any man was tapu, or unclean, if he were wounded, sick, or undergoing the moku. He might not enter a house, or eat food with his hands. But an ariki in this condition was, of course, tapu in much higher degree. One such dignitary, entering the canoe of another person, accidentally scratched his toe with a splinter. Blood flowing from the wound made the boat tapu, and it thereby became the property of the chief. The owner surrendered at once, not even dreaming of complaint.
Burial places were naturally tapu. A Maori of the olden time would rather die than break their sanctity; and his descendants of the present day have hardly got over the feeling. They were called wahi tapu, and no one dared to enter them. The tohunga and his assistants passed within them to bury the dead, but only with much karakia and ceremony. Spirits of some kind were supposed to keep watch and ward over them, and to wreak terrible vengeance upon trespassers. Water flowing from a wahi tapu was sacred, and whatever it touched became tinctured with the same dread property. Rather a nuisance, sometimes, one would think, such as when a storm of rain should send a new watercourse from some wahi tapu on a hill-side down into the river, or through the kainga. Either would thus be rendered tapu, and have to be deserted at once.
Certain lands, at the present day, cannot be bought from their Maori owners because of wahi tapu upon them. It will be remembered that our show-place is in this category. There is a wahi tapu, a cavern in this instance, near the Bay of Islands, that will yield treasure-trove to curio-hunters some day. With the bodies of the dead were placed their arms, valuables, and personals generally. There is said to be a great store of such riches in this place. Of course, no Maori will go very near it, and the few Pakeha of the district who know its whereabouts would not break the tapu, having too much to lose, and not caring to risk Maori wrath.
In the earliest days of intercourse with Europeans, the tapu was sometimes made useful in business; useful, that is, to the Maori, but certainly not to the trader. For instance, a Sydney vessel sails into Hokianga, or some other river, and is boarded by the ariki of the neighbourhood. This gentleman is perfectly satisfied with the trader's goods, but cannot agree as to the price to be paid for them in pigs, lumber, and flax. The Pakeha wants so much; the Maori offers so little. Long chaffering results in no better understanding. At length the chief departs indignantly, previously putting the tapu upon the ship and her cargo. No other natives will now approach or do business; even other tribes will not infringe the tapu. If the skipper wished to sail off to some other part, he could not do so, except by risking a battle, or spoiling his chances of future trade. Generally, he would come to terms with the chief, after an exasperating delay.
The mana (power) of an ariki was very great; and, in a lesser degree the next ranks, the tana and rangatira, possessed it also. As there was little or nothing externally to distinguish the greatest of chiefs from the meanest of his subjects, "the dignity that doth hedge a king" was conferred and kept up by the mysterious agencies of the tapu. Possibly this was a good reason for its universal supremacy.
The tapu descended into the commonest details of daily life, and it reached to the most solemn and obscurest depths of the Maori mythology. It was a law—a code of laws, based on superstition, elaborated with diplomatic skill, enforced by human justice, universally and entirely accepted, and in its most important aspects was invested with the grimmest terrors of the unseen world.