John Rutherford, the White Chief Part 10

Cruise tells us that Tetoro, on the voyage from Port Jackson, cut the hair of one of his companions, and continued to repeat prayers over him during the whole operation.

Nicholas, having one day found another chief busy in cutting his wife's hair with a piece of sharp stone, was going to take up the implement after it had been used, but was immediately charged by the chief not to touch it, as the deity of New Zealand would wreak his vengeance on him if he presumed to commit so daring a piece of impiety.

"Laughing at his superst.i.tion," continues Nicholas, "I began to exclaim against its absurdity, but like Tooi, on a former occasion, he retorted by ridiculing our preaching, yet at the same time asking me to sermonize over his wife, as if his object was to have her exorcised; and upon my refusing, he began himself, but could not proceed from involuntary bursts of laughter."

On this occasion, the chief, when he had cut off the hair, collected it all together, and, carrying it to the outskirts of the town, threw it away. Cook remarks that he used to see quant.i.ties of hair tied to the branches of the trees near the villages. It is stated, in a letter from one of the missionaries, that the hair, when cut, is carefully collected, and buried in a secret place.

Certain superst.i.tions have been connected with the cutting of the hair, from the most ancient times. Many allusions are found in the Greek and Roman writers to the practice of cutting off the hair of the dead, and presenting it as an offering to the infernal G.o.ds, in order to secure a free pa.s.sage to Elysium for the person to whom it belonged. The pa.s.sage in the fourth book of the "aeneid," where Iris appears by the command of Juno to liberate the soul of the expiring Queen of Carthage, by thus severing from her head the fatal lock, will occur to many of our readers.

Whatever may have been the origin of this superst.i.tion, it is probable that most of the other notions and customs which have prevailed in regard to the cutting of the hair are connected with it. The act in this way naturally became significant of the separation from the living world of the person on whom it was performed. Of the antiquity of this practice, we have a proof in a command given by Moses to the Jews:--"Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead." These were superst.i.tious customs of the nations by whom they were surrounded.

The Gentiles used excessive lamentations, amounting to frenzy, at their funeral rites. According to Bruce, the Abyssinian woman, upon the death of a near relation, cuts the skin of both her temples with the nail of her little finger, which she leaves long on purpose; and thus every fair face throughout the country is disfigured with scars. The same notion of abstraction from the present life and its concerns is expressed by the clerical tonsure, so long known in the Christian church, and still retained among the Roman Catholics. It is still common, also, among ourselves, for widows, in the earlier period of their mourning, to cut off their hair, or to remove it back from the brow. Among all rude nations, besides, the hair has been held in peculiar estimation from its ornamental nature, and its capability of being formed into any shape, according to the fancy of its possessor, or the fashion of the country.

Amongst nations, especially, where the ordinary clothing of the people, from the materials of which it was formed, did not admit of being made very decorative, this consideration would be much regarded, and still more where no clothing was worn at all. In such cases, the hair, either of the head or of the beard, has usually been cherished with very affectionate care, and the mode of dressing it has been made matter of anxious regulation. Many of the barbarous nations of antiquity had each a method of cutting the hair peculiar to itself; and it was sometimes accounted the deepest mark of servitude which a conqueror could impose when he compelled the violation of this sacred rule of national manners.

We have a remnant of these old feelings in the reverence with which his beard is regarded by a Turk of the present day. It is recorded, too, that no reform which Peter the Great of Russia essayed to introduce among his semi-barbaric subjects was so pertinaciously resisted as his attempt to abbreviate their beards.

Marsden, on asking a New Zealander what he conceived the atua to be, was answered--"An immortal shadow." Although possessed, however, of the attributes of immortality, omni-presence, invisibility, and supreme power, he is universally believed to be in disposition merely a vindictive and malignant demon.

When one of the missionaries had one day been telling a number of them of the infinite goodness of G.o.d, they asked him if he was not joking with them. They believe that whenever any person is sick, his illness is occasioned by the atua, in the shape of a lizard, preying upon his entrails; and, accordingly, in such cases, they often address the most horrid imprecations and curses to the invisible cannibal, in the hope of thereby frightening him away. They imagine that at other times he amuses himself in entangling their nets and oversetting their canoes. Of late years they have suspected that he has been very angry with them for having allowed the white men to obtain a footing in their country, a proof of which they think they see in the greater mortality that has recently prevailed among them. This, however, they at other times attribute to the G.o.d of the Christians, whom they also denounce, accordingly, as a cruel being, at least to the New Zealander. Sometimes they more rationally a.s.sign as its cause the diseases that have been introduced among them by the whites. Until the whites came to their country, they say, young people did not die, but all lived to be so old as to be obliged to creep on their hands and knees.

The white man's G.o.d they believe to be altogether a different being from their own atua. Marsden, in one of his letters, relates a conversation he had upon this subject with some of the chiefs' sons who resided with him in New South Wales. When he told them that there was but one G.o.d, and that our G.o.d was also theirs, they asked him if our G.o.d had given us any sweet potatoes, and could with difficulty be made to see how one G.o.d should give these to the New Zealander and not equally to the white man; or, on the other hand, how he should have acted so partially as to give to the white man only such possessions as cattle, sheep, and horses, which the New Zealander as much required. The argument, however, upon which they seem most to have rested, was:--"But we are of a different colour from you; and if one G.o.d made us both, he would not have committed such a mistake as to make us of different colours." Even one of the chiefs, who had been a great deal with Marsden, and was disposed to acknowledge the absurdity both of the "taboo" and of many of his other native superst.i.tions, could not be brought to admit that the same G.o.d who made the white men had also made the New Zealanders.

Among themselves, the New Zealanders appear to have a great variety of other G.o.ds, besides the one whom they call emphatically the atua. Crozet speaks of some feeble ideas which they have of subordinate divinities, to whom, he says, they are wont to pray for victory over their enemies.

But Savage gives us a most particular account of their daily adoration of the sun, moon, and stars. Of the heavenly host, the moon, he says, is their favourite; though why he should think so, it is not easy to understand, seeing that, when addressing this luminary, they employ, he tells us, a mournful song, and seem as full of apprehension as of devotion; whereas "when paying their adoration to the rising sun, the arms are spread and the head bowed, with the appearance of much joy in their countenances, accompanied with a degree of elegant and reverential solemnity, and the song used upon the occasion is cheerful." It is strange that none of their other visitors have remarked the existence of this species of idolatry among these savages.

Yet two New Zealanders, who are now in this country, were in the habit of commencing the exhibition of their national customs with the ceremonies practised in their morning devotion to the sun.

The vocal part of the rite, according to the account we have received, consisted in a low monotonous chant; the manual, in keeping a ball about the size of an orange constantly whirling in a vertical circle. The whole was performed in a kneeling posture. Like most other rude nations, the New Zealanders have certain fancies with regard to several of the more remarkable constellations; and are not without some conception that the issues of human affairs are occasionally influenced, or at least indicated, by the movements of the stars. The Pleiades, for instance, they believe to be seven of their departed countrymen, fixed in the firmament; one eye of each of them appearing in the shape of a star, being the only part that is visible. But it is a common superst.i.tion among them, as we have already noticed, that the left eyes of their chiefs, after death, become stars.

This notion is far from being dest.i.tute of poetical beauty; and perhaps, indeed, exhibits the common mythological doctrine of the glittering host of heaven being merely an a.s.semblage of the departed heroes of earth, in as ingenious a version as it ever has received. It would be easy to collect many proofs of the extensive diffusion of this ancient faith, traces of which are to be found in the primitive astronomy of every people. The cla.s.sical reader will at once recollect, among many others of a similar kind, the stories of Castor and Pollux, and of Berenice's tresses, the latter of which has been so elegantly imitated by Pope, in telling us of the fate of the vanished lock of Belinda:--

"But trust the muse--she saw it upward rise, Though marked by none but quick poetic eyes; (So Home's great founder to the heavens withdrew, To Proculus alone confessed to view); A sudden star it shot through liquid air, And drew behind a radiant trail of hair."

The New Zealanders conceive, also, that what we call a shooting star is ominous of the approaching dissolution of any one of their great chiefs who may be unwell when it is seen. Like the vulgar among ourselves, too, they have their man in the moon; who, they say, is one of their countrymen named Rona, who was taken up long ago, one night when he went to the well to fetch water.

Nicholas has given us, on the authority of his friend Duaterra, the most particular account that has appeared of the inferior deities of New Zealand. Their number, according to him, is very great, and each of them has his distinct powers and functions; one being placed over the elements, another over the fowls and fishes, and so of the rest.

Deifications of the different pa.s.sions and affections, also, it seems, find a place in this extended mythology.

In another part of his work, Nicholas remarks, as corroborative of the Malay descent of the New Zealanders, the singular coincidence, in some respects, between their mythology and that of the ancient Malay tribe, the Battas of Sumatra, whose extraordinary cannibal practices we have already detailed; especially in the circ.u.mstance of the three princ.i.p.al divinities of the Battas having precisely the same functions a.s.signed to them with the three that occupy the same rank in the system of the New Zealanders.[BK]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote BJ: Marae. With Maoris and Samoans the word means an open s.p.a.ce in a village; in the Tahitian, Mangaian, and Paumotan languages it means a temple, or a place where rites were performed.]

[Footnote BK: The religion, and superst.i.tions and legends of the Maoris are dealt with in Sir George Grey's "Polynesian Mythology," Mr. S. Percy Smith's "Hawaiki," articles by Mr. Elsdon Best in the "Transactions of the New Zealand Inst.i.tute," articles by that author and by Mr. Percy Smith in the "Journal of the Polynesian Society," Mr. E. Tregear's "The Maori Race," and Mr. J.C. Andersen's "Maori Life in Ao-tea."]

CHAPTER X.

It is very remarkable that the New Zealanders attribute the creation of man to their three princ.i.p.al deities acting together; thus exhibiting in their barbarous theology something like a shadow of the Christian Trinity. What is still more extraordinary is their tradition respecting the formation of the first woman, who, they say, was made of one of the man's ribs; and their general term for bone is hevee, or, as Professor Lee gives it, iwi[BL] a sound bearing a singular resemblance to the Hebrew name of our first mother.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Christchurch Museum._

Carved boxes (_waka-papa_, or _waka_) for holding feathers and trinkets.

The upper box is said to have formed part of Captain Cook's collection.]

Particular individuals and places would also seem to have their own G.o.ds. When the "Active" was in the river Thames, a gale of wind, by which the ship was attacked, was attributed by the natives on board to the anger of the G.o.d of Shoupah,[BM] the Areekee who resided in the neighbourhood. Korro-korro, who was among them said that as soon as he got on sh.o.r.e he would endeavour to prevail upon the Areekee to propitiate the offended deity. When Marsden asked the people of Kiperro[BN] if they

knew anything of their G.o.d, or ever had any communication with him, they replied that they often heard him whistle. The chiefs, too, are often called atuas, or G.o.ds, even while they are alive. The aged chief, Tarra,[BO] maintained to one of the missionaries that the G.o.d of thunder resided in his forehead; and Shungie and Okeda[BP] a.s.serted that they were possessed by G.o.ds of the sea.

The part of the heavens in which the G.o.ds reside is represented as beautiful in the extreme. "When the clouds are beautifully chequered,"

writes Kendal, "the atua above, it is supposed, is planting sweet potatoes. At the season when these are planted in the ground, the planters dress themselves in their best raiment, and say that, as atuas on earth, they are imitating the atua in heaven."

The New Zealanders believe that the souls of the higher orders among them are immortal; but they hold that when the "cookees" die they perish for ever. The spirit, they think, leaves the body the third day after death, till which time it hovers round the corpse, and hears very well whatever is said to it. But they hold also, it would seem, that there is a separate immortality for each of the eyes of the dead person; the left, as before-mentioned, ascending to heaven and becoming a star, and the other, in the shape of a spirit, taking flight for the Reinga.

Reinga signifies, properly, the place of flight; and is said, in some of the accounts, to be a rock or a mountain at the North Cape from which, according to others, the spirits descend into the next world through the sea. The notion which the New Zealanders really entertain as to this matter appears to be that the spirits first leap from the North Cape into the sea, and thence emerge into an Elysium situated in the islands of the Three Kings. The submarine path to the blissful region of the New Zealanders is less intricate than that of the Huron of America:--

"To the country of the Dead, Long and painful is thy way!

O'er rivers wide and deep Lies the road that must be past, By bridges narrow-wall'd, When scarce the soul can force its way, While the loose fabric totters under it."

In the heaven of the New Zealanders, as in that of the ancient Goths, the chief employment of the blessed is war, their old delight while on earth. The idea of any more tranquil happiness has no charms for them.

Speaking of an a.s.sembly of them which he had been endeavouring to instruct in the doctrines of Christianity, one of the Wesleyan missionaries says: "On telling them about the two eternal states, as described in the Scriptures, an old chief began to protest against these things with all the vehemence imaginable, and said that he would not go to heaven, nor would he go to h.e.l.l to have nothing but fire to eat; but he would go to the Reinga or Po, to eat coomeras, (sweet potatoes) with his friends who had gone before."

The slaves that are sacrificed upon the death of a chief, by his friends, are generally intended to prevent him from coming again to destroy them; but we find that on the occasion of a child having been drowned, the mother insisted upon a female slave being killed, to be a companion for it on its way to the Reinga.

Though the New Zealanders do not a.s.semble together at stated times to worship their G.o.ds, they are in the habit of praying to them in all their emergencies. Thus, when Korro-korro met his aunt, as before related, his brother Tooi informed Nicholas that the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns the old woman uttered as she approached were prayers to the divinity. When Korro-korro urged Marsden to take his son with him to Port Jackson, and was told by that gentleman that he was afraid to do so lest the boy should die, as so many of his countrymen had done when removed from their native island, the chief replied, that he would pray for his son during his absence, as he had done for his brother Tooi when he was in England, and then he would not die.

Tupee,[BQ] too, another of the Bay of Islands chiefs, Marsden tells us, used to pray frequently. When that gentleman lay sick in his cot, on the voyage home from his first visit to New Zealand, Tupee, who was with him, used to sit by his side, and, laying his hands on different parts of his body, addressed himself all the while with great devotion to his G.o.d, in intercession for his friend's recovery.

The priests, or tohungas, as they are called, are persons of great importance and authority in New Zealand, being esteemed almost the keepers and rulers of the G.o.ds themselves.

Many of the greatest of the chiefs and Areekees are also priests, as was, for example, Tupee, whom we have just mentioned. It is the priest who attends at the bedside of the dying chief, and regulates every part of the treatment of the patient. When the body of a chief who has been killed in battle is to be eaten, it is the priest who first gives the command for its being roasted. The first mouthfuls of the flesh, also, being regarded as the dues of the G.o.ds, are always eaten by the priest.

In the case of any public calamity, it is the priest whose aid is invoked to obtain relief from heaven.

Marsden states that on occasion of the caterpillars one year making great ravages among the crops of sweet potatoes at Rangheehoo,[BR] the people of that place sent to Cowa-Cowa[BS] for a great priest to avert the heavy judgment; and that he came and remained with them for several months, during which he employed himself busily in the performance of prayers and ceremonies. The New Zealanders also

consider all their priests as a species of sorcerers, and believe they have the power to take the lives of whomsoever they choose by incantation. Themorangha,[BT] one of the most enlightened of the chiefs, came one day to Marsden, in great agitation, to inform him that a brother chief had threatened to employ a priest to destroy him in this manner, for not having sold to sufficient advantage an article which he had given him to dispose of. "I endeavoured," says Marsden, "to convince him of the absurdity of such a threat; but to no purpose; he still persisted that he should die, and that the priest possessed that power; and began to draw the lines of incantation on the ship's deck, in order to convince me how the operation was performed. He said that the messenger was waiting alongside, in a canoe, for his answer. Finding it of no use to argue with him, I gave him an axe, which he joyfully received, and delivered to the messenger, with a request that the chief would be satisfied, and not proceed against him."

Themorangha seems to have been particularly selected by these priests as a subject for their roguish practices, perhaps by way of revenge for the freedom with which he occasionally expressed himself in regard to their pretensions, when his fears were not excited. A short time before this, one of them had terrified him not a little by telling him that he had seen his ghost during the night, and had been informed, by the atua, that if he went to a certain place to which he was then about to proceed, he would die in a few days. He soon, however, got so far the better of his fears as, notwithstanding this alarming intimation, to venture to accompany Marsden to the forbidden district; and he expressed his feelings of contempt for the sacred order in no measured terms, when he found that at the expiration of the predicted period he was still alive.

He said that there were too many priests at New Zealand, and that they "tabooed" and prayed the people to death. Others, as well as the priests, however, are supposed sometimes to have the power of witchcraft.

Two of the missionaries, when one day about to land at a place a short distance from the settlement, were alarmed by nearly running the boat's head on three human bodies, which lay close together by the water's edge among some rushes; and upon inquiry they were informed that they were the bodies of three slaves who had been killed that morning for makootooing a chief, _i.e._ betwitching or praying evil prayers against him, which had caused his death.[BU]

A common method which the priests use of bewitching those whom they mean to destroy, is to curse them, which is universally believed to have a fatal effect. The curse seems usually to be uttered in the shape of a yell or song, so that the process is literally a species of incantation.

Bishop Newton, in his commentary on the scriptural account of Balaam being sent for to curse the Israelites, says, "It was a superst.i.tious ceremony in use among the heathens, to devote their enemies to destruction at the beginning of their wars; as if the G.o.ds would enter into their pa.s.sions, and were as unjust and partial as themselves."