We have entered at some length into an explanation of the system of Tapu, or Taboo, in our remarks on the religion of the Polynesians. It prevails, as we have already stated, in New Zealand; and though its disadvantages are many, and it is capable of great abuse, it serves nevertheless as a substitute for law, and to a large extent protects both life and property. For, supported and enforced as it is by the superstitious feelings of the people, it erects an insuperable barrier between possession and acquisition; it plays the part of a social police; it maintains the moral standard; it shields the feeble from the oppression of the strong. A man quits his dwelling for his day’s work: he places the tapu mark on his door, and thenceforward his dwelling is inviolate. Or he selects a tree which will fashion into a good canoe; he distinguishes it with the tapu mark, and it becomes his own. Civilisation has designed no more effectual protection.
But like all restrictive and prohibitive systems, it is easily pushed to an inconvenient excess, and made an instrument of extortion or oppression in the hands of the chief or priest. It is much in favour, says Mr. Williams, among the chiefs, who adjust it so that it sits easily on themselves, while they use it to gain influence over those who are nearly their equals; by means of it they supply their most important wants, and command at will all who are beneath them. If any object touch a chief’s garment it becomes tapu; so, too, if a drop of his blood fall upon it; and, more particularly, it consecrates his head. To mention or refer to a chief’s head is an insult. Mr. Angas says that a friend of his, in conversing with a Maori chief about his crops, inadvertently said: “Oh, I have some apples in my garden as large as that little boy’s head!” pointing at the same time to the chief’s son. This reference was felt and resented as a deadly insult, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that the incautious speaker obtained forgiveness. So very much tapu is a chiefs head that, should he touch it with his own fingers, he must touch nothing else until he has applied the hand to his nostrils and smelt it, and thus restored to the head the virtue that departed from it when first touched. The hair is likewise sacred; it is cut by one of his wives, who receives every particle in a cloth, and buries it in the ground. The operation renders her tapu, for a week, during which time she is not allowed to make use of her hands.
The carved image of a chief’s head is not less sacred than the head itself. Dr. Dieffenbach says: “In one of the houses of Te Puai, the head chief of all the Waikato, I saw a bust, made by himself, with all the serpentine lines of the aroko, or tattooing. I asked him to give it to me, but it was only after much pressing that he parted with it. I had to go to his house to fetch it myself, as none of his tribe could legally touch it, and he licked it all over before he gave it to me; whether to take the tapu off, or whether to make it more strictly sacred, I do not know. He particularly engaged me not to put it into the provision-bag, nor to let the natives see it at Rotu-rua, whither I was going, or he would certainly die in consequence.”
Cannibalism is now extinct in New Zealand, having been crushed out by the strong arm of British authority, and the ever-increasing influence of British civilisation. But it was hard to die, and lingered down to a very recent date. As practised by the Maories, it lost few of its repulsive features. We must admit, however, that they did not indulge in it from a craving after human flesh, nor in time of peace, but after battles, from a belief that he who ate the flesh or blood, or even the left eye, of a slain warrior assimilated in his system all his martial and manly qualities. When the fight was at an end, the dead bodies were collected, and with much rejoicing carried into the villages, where they were roasted in the cook-houses, and duly eaten. But, first, the tohunga cut off a portion of the flesh, and with certain incantations and mystic gestures, suspended it upon a tree or pole, as an offering to the gods.
Mr. Angas describes one of the cooking-houses set apart for this horrid orgy. It was erected by a Maori chief in the Waitahanui Pah; and when visited by Mr. Angas, had happily ceased for some time to be used. The Pah stands on a low swampy peninsula, which is washed on one side by the river Waikato and on the other by the Taupo Lake. “The long façade of the Pah presents an imposing appearance when viewed from the lake; a line of fortifications, composed of upright poles and stakes, extending for at least half a mile in a direction parallel to the water. On the top of many of the posts are carved figures, much larger than life, of men in the act of defiance, and in the most savage postures, having enormous protruding tongues; and, like all the Maori carvings, these images, or waikapokos, are coloured with kokowai, or red ochre.
“The entire pah is now (1863) in ruins, and has been made tapu by Te Heuhen since its destruction. Here, then, all was forbidden ground; but I eluded the suspicions of our natives, and rambled about all day amongst the decaying memorials of the past, making drawings of the most striking and peculiar objects within the pah. The cook-houses, where the father of Te Heuhen had his original establishment, remained in a perfect state; the only entrances to these buildings were a series of circular apertures, in and out of which the slaves engaged in preparing the food were obliged to crawl.
“Near to the cook-houses stood a carved patuka, which was the receptacle of the sacred food of the chief; and nothing could exceed the richness of the elaborate carving that adorned this storehouse.... Ruined houses—many of them once beautifully ornamented and richly carved—numerous waki-tapu, and other heathen remains with images and carved posts, occur in various portions of this extensive pah; but in other places the hand of Time has so effectually destroyed the buildings as to leave them but an unintelligible mass of ruins. The situation of this pah is admirably adapted for the security of the inmates: it commands the lake on the one side, and the other fronts the extensive marshes of Tukanu, where a strong palisade and a deep moat afford protection against any sudden attack. Water is conveyed into the pah through a sluice or canal for the supply of the besieged in times of war.
“There was an air of solitude and gloomy desolation about the whole pah, that was heightened by the screams of the plover and the tern, as they uttered their mournful cry through the deserted coasts. I rambled over the scenes of many savage deeds.”