Brighter Britain! (Volume 2 of 2) / or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand

by W. Delisle Hay

The only method of boiling formerly employed was by dropping heated stones into the water contained in a calabash or rind of the hue. Expert as they were in this process, it was still a rather toilsome and ineffective one, and in these days of kettles and pans it is never returned to. Fish and meat were frequently roasted on the clear side of the fire in the ordinary hunters' fashion, but the great national culinary institution was the earth-oven, the kopa or hangi.

A pit was dug in the ground, one foot or more in depth, and suited in size to the quantity of provisions to be cooked. In this hole a fire was built, completely filling it, and in the fire a number of pebble stones were heated. When the fire had reached a proper heat it was entirely raked out of the pit. A layer of the red-hot stones was laid along the bottom, by means of improvised tongs of green wood, and these were carefully and quickly covered with certain green leaves. Then the pork or fish or potatoes, previously washed, cleaned, and wrapped up in green flax, were put into the hangi; a quantity of the red-hot stones were put over and round it; water was poured over the whole; green flax mats were hastily heaped on top and tucked in at the sides; and, lastly, the pit was filled in with earth well stamped and beaten down.

In the course of an hour or more, according to the size of the joint, the hangi was opened, the provisions lifted out, the wrappings unfolded, and their contents placed in baskets of green flax, and thus dinner was served. The steam, generated under pressure in the ovens, was forced into every fibre of the articles cooking, so that these were most thoroughly done. Whole pigs—and whole human bodies in the cannibal times—are cooked in these hangi to perfection. I have eaten meat and vegetables done in them, that could not have been better cooked by a chef de cuisine decorated with the red ribbon of la Légion d'honneur.

It was one of the old customs never to eat in the living-houses. Cooking was always performed in the open air, and usually is so still. A rude shelter protected the fire in rainy weather; and at such times the meal was eaten under the verandah of the wharè.

Burial customs among the old Maori were peculiar and complicated, and differed much among various hapu. In the case of slaves and inferiors, the bodies were thrown aside in some place where they could not be offensive to the living, or they were hastily interred on the beach, or somewhere in the forest.

The death of a chief, or rangatira of note, was an affair of great importance. It was announced by loud wailing and crying—the Maori idea of grief being a noisy and demonstrative one. The corpse was washed and painted, dressed in the finest garments and ornaments possessed by the defunct, and laid in state in the verandah of the wharè, with a great display of weapons and trophies of various kinds around it. All the near relations of the deceased assembled to cry over him, and many—particularly of the ladies of his family—gashed their faces, breasts, and arms, with shells and obsidian knives. It was thought to be the most decorous and decent show of mourning to have the face and breast completely covered with the dried and clotted blood resulting from the numerous self-inflicted gashes.

After a day or two of these ceremonies, the body was taken by the tohunga and his assistants within the sacred grove, or wahi tapu. There, still wrapped in his most cherished robes, with all his ornaments, weapons, and ensigns of dignity around him, with baskets of food to support him on his journey to the other world—and, in olden times, with a strangled wife and slave or two—the corpse was left, either placed in the fork of a tree, on an ornamental platform or stage, or buried in the ground.

Meanwhile, during the progress of these ceremonies, many karakia, or prayers, were uttered; and the multitude of friends, relations, and followers assembled outside the wahi tapu made the air resound with their frantic shouts and yells, with the firing of guns, and every possible kind of noise. When the body had been thus deposited and left, a great feast took place, something after the manner of an Irish wake.

In the course of a couple of years or so after, when the tohunga deemed that decomposition was complete, a second series of ceremonies took place. This was called the hahunga, or scraping of the bones. Amid renewed wailing and weeping from the assembled friends, the bones of the dead were collected by the tohunga. They were scraped clean with a good deal of ceremony and karakia, were painted, garnished with feathers, wrapped up in rich mats, and abundantly wept over. Finally, they were deposited high up in some sacred tree, or in a fissure of the rock, or upon an elevated stage profusely ornamented, and then they were done with.