The Muru falling into disuse. -- Why? -- Examples of the Tapu. --
The personal Tapu. -- Evading the Tapu. -- The undertaker's Tapu.
-- How I got tabooed. -- Frightful difficulties. -- How I got out
of them. -- The war Tapu. -- Maori war customs.
The law of _muru_ is now but little used, and only on a small scale.
The degenerate men of the present day in general content themselves
with asking "payment," and after some cavilling as to the amount, it
is generally given; but if refused, the case is brought before a
native magistrate, and the pleadings on both sides are often such as
would astound our most famous barristers, and the decisions of a
nature to throw those famous ones by Sancho Panza and Walter the
Doubter for ever into the shade.
I think the reason that the _muru_ is so much less practised than
formerly is the fact that the natives are now far better supplied with
the necessaries and comforts of life than they were many years ago,
especially iron tools and utensils, and in consequence the temptation
to plunder is proportionately decreased. Money would still be a
temptation; but it is so easily concealed, and in general they have
so little of it, that other means are adopted for its acquisition.
When I first saw the natives, the chance of getting an axe or a spade
by the shorthand process of _muru_, or--at a still more remote
period--a few wooden implements, or a canoe, was so great that the
lucky possessor was continually watched by many eager and observant
eyes, in hopes to pick a hole in his coat, by which the _muru_ might
be legally brought to bear upon him. I say legally, for the natives
always tried to have a sufficient excuse; and I absolutely declare,
odd as it may seem, that actual, unauthorized, and inexcusable robbery
or theft was less frequent than in any country I ever have been in,
though the temptation to steal was a thousandfold greater. The natives
of the present day are, however, improving in this respect, and,
amongst other arts of civilization, are beginning to have very pretty
notions of housebreaking, and have even tried highway robbery, though
in a bungling way. The fact is they are just now between two tides.
The old institutions which, barbarous and rude as they were, were
respected and in some degree useful, are wearing out, and have lost
all beneficial effect, and at the same time the laws and usages of
civilization have not acquired any sufficient force. This state of
things is very unfavourable to the _morale_ of Young New Zealand; but
it is likely to change for the better, for it is a maxim of mine that
"laws, if not _made_, will _grow_."
I must now take some little notice of the other great institution, the
_tapu_. The limits of these flying sketches of the good old times
will not allow of more than a partial notice of the all-pervading
_tapu_. Earth, air, fire, water, goods and chattels, growing crops,
men, women, and children,--everything absolutely was subject to its
influence, and a more perplexing puzzle to new pakehas who were
continually from ignorance infringing some of its rules, could not be
well imagined. The natives, however, made considerable allowance for
this ignorance, as well they might, seeing that they themselves,
though from infancy to old age enveloped in a cloud of _tapu_, would
sometimes fall into similar scrapes.
The original object of the ordinary _tapu_ seems to have been the
preservation of property. Of this nature in a great degree was the
ordinary personal _tapu_. This form of the _tapu_ was permanent, and
consisted in a certain sacred character which attached to the person
of a chief and never left him. It was his birthright, a part in fact
of himself, of which he could not be divested, and which was well
understood and recognized at all times as a matter of course. The
fighting men and petty chiefs, and every one indeed who could by any
means claim the title of _rangatira_--which in the sense I now use it
means gentleman--were all in some degree more or less possessed of
this mysterious quality. It extended or was communicated to all their
moveable property, especially to their clothes, weapons, ornaments,
and tools, and to everything in fact which they touched. This
prevented their chattels from being stolen or mislaid, or spoiled by
children, or used or handled in any way by others. And as in the old
times, as I have before stated, every kind of property of this kind
was precious in consequence of the great labour and time necessarily,
for want of iron tools, expended in the manufacture, this form of the
_tapu_ was of great real service. An infringement of it subjected the
offender to various dreadful imaginary punishments, of which deadly
sickness was one, as well as to the operation of the law of _muru_
already mentioned. If the transgression was involuntary, the chief, or
a priest, or _tohunga_, could, by a certain mystical ceremony, prevent
or remit the doleful and mysterious part of the punishment if he
chose, but the civil action, or the robbery by law of _muru_, would
most likely have to take its course, though possibly in a mitigated
form, according to the circumstances.
I have stated that the worst part of the punishment of an offence
against this form of the _tapu_ was imaginary, but in truth, though
imaginary it was not the less a severe punishment. "Conscience makes
cowards of us all," and there was scarcely a man in a thousand, _if_
one, who had sufficient resolution to dare the shadowy terrors of the
_tapu_. I actually have seen an instance where the offender, though an
involuntary one, was killed stone dead in six hours, by what I
considered the effects of his own terrified imagination, but what all
the natives at the time believed to be the work of the terrible
avenger of the _tapu_. The case I may as well describe, as it was a
strong one, and shows how, when falsehoods are once believed, they
will meet with apparent proof from accidental circumstances. A chief
of very high rank, standing, and _mana_ was on a war expedition; with
him were about five hundred men. His own personal _tapu_ was increased
twofold, as was that of all the warriors who were with him, by the
_war tapu_. The _taua_ being on a very dangerous expedition, they were
over and above the ordinary personal _tapu_ made sacred in the highest
degree, and were obliged to observe strictly several mysterious and
sacred customs, some of which I may have to explain by-and-by. They
were, in fact, as irreverent pakehas used to say, "tabooed an inch
thick," and as for the head chief, he was perfectly unapproachable.
The expedition halted to dine. The portion of food set apart for the
chief, in a neat _paro_ or shallow basket of green flax leaves, was,
of course, enough for two or three men, and consequently the greater
part remained unconsumed. The party having dined, moved on, and soon
after a party of slaves and others, who had been some mile or two in
the rear, came up carrying ammunition and baggage. One of the slaves,
a stout, hungry fellow, seeing the chief's unfinished dinner, eat it
up before asking any questions, and had hardly finished when he was
informed by a horror-stricken individual--another slave who had
remained behind when the _taua_ had moved on--of the fatal act he had
committed. I knew the unfortunate delinquent well. He was remarkable
for courage, and had signalized himself in the wars of the tribe. (The
able-bodied slaves are always expected to fight in the quarrels of
their masters, to do which they are nothing loth.) No sooner did he
hear the fatal news than he was seized by the most extraordinary
convulsions and cramps in the stomach, which never ceased till he
died, about sundown the same day. He was a strong man, in the prime of
life, and if any pakeha free-thinker should have said he was not
killed by the _tapu_ of the chief, which had been communicated to the
food by contact, he would have been listened to with feelings of
contempt for his ignorance and inability to understand plain and
direct evidence.
It will be seen at once that this form of the _tapu_ was a great
preserver of property. The most valuable articles might, in ordinary
circumstances, be left to its protection, in the absence of the
owners, for any length of time. It also prevented borrowing and
lending in a very great degree; and though much laughed at and
grumbled at by unthinking pakehas, who would be always trying to get
the natives to give it up, without offering them anything equally
effective in its place, or, indeed, knowing its real object or uses,
it held its ground in full force for many years, and, in a certain but
not so very observable a form, exists still. This form of the _tapu_,
though latent in young folks of _rangatira_ rank, was not supposed to
develope itself fully till they had arrived at mature age, and set up
house on their own account. The lads and boys "knocked about" amongst
the slaves and lower orders, carried fuel or provisions on their
backs, and did all those duties which this personal _tapu_ prevented
the elders from doing, and which restraint was sometimes very
troublesome and inconvenient. A man of any standing could not carry
provisions of any kind on his back, or if he did they were rendered
_tapu_, and, in consequence, useless to any one but himself. If he
went into the shed used as a kitchen (a thing, however, he would never
think of doing except on some great emergency), all the pots, ovens,
food, &c. would be at once rendered useless--none of the cooks or
inferior people could make use of them, or partake of anything which
had been cooked in them. He might certainly light a little fire in his
own house, not for cooking, as that never by any chance could be done
in his house, but for warmth; but that, or any other fire, if he
should have blown upon it with his breath in lighting it, became at
once _tapu_, and could be used for no common or culinary purpose. Even
to light a pipe at it would subject any inferior person, or in many
instances an equal, to a terrible attack of the _tapu morbus_, besides
being a slight or affront to the dignity of the person himself. I have
seen two or three young men fairly wearing themselves out on a wet day
and with bad apparatus trying to make fire to cook with, by rubbing
two sticks together, when on a journey, and at the same time there was
a roaring fire close at hand at which several _rangatira_ and myself
were warming ourselves, but it was _tapu_, sacred fire--one of the
_rangatira_ had made it from his own tinder-box, and blown upon it in
lighting it, and as there was not another tinder-box amongst us, fast
we must, though hungry as sharks, till common culinary fire could be
obtained. A native whose personal _tapu_ was perhaps of the
strongest, might, when at the house of a pakeha, ask for a drink of
water; the pakeha, being green, would hand him some water in a glass,
or in those days, more probably in a tea-cup; the native would drink
the water, and then gravely and quietly break the cup to pieces, or
otherwise he would appropriate it by causing it to vanish under his
mat. The new pakeha would immediately fly into a passion, to the great
astonishment of the native, who considered, as a matter of course,
that the cup or glass was, in the estimation of the pakeha, a very
worthless article, or he would not have given it into his hand and
allowed him to put it to his head, the part most strongly infected by
the _tapu_. Both parties would be surprised and displeased; the native
wondering what could have put the pakeha into such a taking, and the
pakeha "wondering at the rascal's impudence, and what he meant by it?"
The proper line of conduct for the pakeha in the above case made and
provided, supposing him to be of a hospitable and obliging
disposition, would be to lay hold of some vessel containing about two
gallons of water (to allow for waste), hold it up before the native's
face, the native would then stoop down and put his hand, bent into the
shape of a funnel or conductor for the water, to his mouth; then, from
the height of a foot or so, the pakeha would send a cataract of water
into the said funnel, and continue the shower till the native gave a
slight upward nod of the head, which meant "enough," by which time,
from the awkwardness of the pakeha, the two gallons of water would be
about expended, half, at least, on the top of the native's head, who
would not, however, appear to notice the circumstance, and would
appreciate the civility of his pakeha friend. I have often drank in
this way in the old times; asking for a drink of water at a native
village, a native would gravely approach with a calabash, and hold it
up before me ready to pour forth its contents; I, of course, cocked my
hand and lip in the most knowing manner. If I had laid hold of the
calabash and drank in the ordinary way as practised by pakehas, I
would have at once fallen in the estimation of all bystanders, and
been set down as a _tutua_--a nobody, who had no _tapu_ or _mana_
about him; a mere scrub of a pakeha, whom any one might eat or drink
after without the slightest danger of being poisoned. These things are
all changed now, and though I have often in the good old times been
tabooed in the most diabolical and dignified manner, there are only a
few old men left now who, by little unmistakable signs, I perceive
consider it would be very uncivil to act in any way which would
suppose my _tapu_ to have disappeared before the influx of new-fangled
pakeha notions. Indeed I feel myself sometimes as if I was somehow
insensibly partially civilized. What it will all end in, I don't know.
This same personal _tapu_ would even hold its own in some cases
against the _muru_, though not in a sufficiently general manner to
seriously affect the operation of that well-enforced law. Its
inconveniences were, on the other hand, many, and the expedients
resorted to to avoid them were sometimes comical enough. I was once
going on an excursion with a number of natives; we had two canoes, and
one of them started a little before the other. I was with the canoe
which had been left behind, and just as we were setting off it was
discovered that amongst twenty stout fellows, my companions, there was
no one who had a back!--as they expressed it--and, consequently, no
one to carry our provisions into the canoe: all the lads, women, and
slaves had gone off in the other canoe--all those who had backs--and
so there we were left, a very disconsolate lot of _rangatira_, who
could not carry their own provisions into the canoe, and who at the
same time could not go without them. The provisions consisted of
several heavy baskets of potatoes, some dried sharks, and a large pig
baked whole. What was to be done? We were all brought to a full stop,
though in a great hurry to go on. We were beginning to think we must
give up the expedition altogether, and were very much disappointed
accordingly, when a clever fellow, who, had he been bred a lawyer,
would have made nothing of driving a mail coach through an act of
parliament, set us all to rights in a moment. "I'll tell you what we
must do," said he, "we will not carry (_pikau_) the provisions, we
will _hiki_ them." (_Hiki_ is the word in Maori which describes the
act of carrying an infant in the arms.) This was a great discovery! A
huge handsome fellow seized on the baked pig and dandled it, or
_hiki'd_ it, in his arms like an infant; another laid hold of a shark,
others took baskets of potatoes, and carrying them in this way
deposited them in the canoe. And so, having thus evaded the law, we
started on our expedition.
I remember another amusing instance in which the inconvenience arising
from the _tapu_ was evaded. I must, however, notice that these
instances were only evasions of the _tapu_ of the ordinary kind, what
I have called the personal _tapu_, not the more dangerous and dreadful
kind connected with the mystic doings of the _tohunga_, or that other
form of _tapu_ connected with the handling of the dead. Indeed, my
companions in the instance I have mentioned, though all _rangatira_,
were young men on whom the personal _tapu_ had not arrived at the
fullest perfection; it seemed, indeed, sometimes to sit very lightly
on them, and I doubt very much if the play upon the words _hiki_ and
_pikau_ would have reconciled any of the elders of the tribe to
carrying a roasted pig in their arms, or if they did do so, I feel
quite certain that no amount of argument would have persuaded the
younger men to eat it; as for slaves or women, to _look_ at it would
almost be dangerous to them.
The other instance of dodging the law was as follows:--I was the first
pakeha who had ever arrived at a certain populous inland village. The
whole of the inhabitants were in a great state of commotion and
curiosity, for many of them had never seen a pakeha before. As I
advanced, the whole juvenile population ran before me at a safe
distance of about a hundred yards, eyeing me, as I perceived, with
great terror and distrust. At last I suddenly made a charge at them,
rolling my eyes and showing my teeth, and to see the small savages
tumbling over one another, and running for their lives, was something
curious, and though my "demonstration" did not continue more than
twenty yards, I am sure some of the little villains ran a mile before
looking behind to see whether the ferocious monster called a pakeha
was gaining on them. They did run! I arrived at the centre of the
village, and was conducted to a large house or shed, which had been
constructed as a place of reception for visitors, and as a general
lounging place for all the inhabitants. It was a _whare noa_, a house
to which, from its general and temporary uses, the _tapu_ was not
supposed to attach, I mean, of course, the ordinary personal _tapu_ or
_tapu rangatira_. Any person, however, _infected_ with any of the more
serious or extraordinary forms of the _tapu_ entering it, would at
once render it uninhabitable. I took my seat. The house was full, and
nearly the whole of the rest of the population were blocking up the
open front of the large shed, all striving to see the pakeha, and
passing to the rear from man to man every word he happened to speak. I
could hear them say to the people behind, "The pakeha has stood up!"
"Now he has sat down again!" "He has said, how do you all do?" "He has
said, this is a nice place of yours!" etc., etc. Now there happened to
be at a distance an old gentleman engaged in clearing the weeds from a
_kumera_ or sweet potato field, and as the kumera in the old times was
the crop on which the natives depended chiefly for support, like all
valuable things it was _tapu_, and the parties who entered the field
to remove the weeds were _tapu_, _pro tem._, also. Now one of the
effects of this temporary extra _tapu_ was that the parties could not
enter any regular dwelling-house, or indeed any house used by others.
Now the breach of this rule would not be dangerous in a personal
sense, but the effect would be that the crop of sweet potatoes would
fail. The industrious individual I have alluded to, hearing the cry of
"A pakeha! a pakeha!" from many voices, and having never had an
opportunity to examine that variety of the species, or _genus homo_,
flung down his wooden _kaheru_ or weed exterminator and rushed towards
the town house before mentioned. What could he do? The _tapu_ forbade
his entrance, and the front was so completely blocked up by his
admiring neighbours that he could not get sight of the wonderful
guest. In these desperate circumstances a bright thought struck him;
he would, by a bold and ingenious device, give the _tapu_ the slip. He
ran to the back of the house, made with some difficulty a hole in the
padded _raupo_ wall, and squeezed his head through it. The elastic
wall of _raupo_ closed again around his neck; the _tapu_ was fairly
beaten! No one could say he was _in_ the house. He was certainly more
out than in, and there, seemingly hanging from or stuck against the
wall, remained for hours, with open mouth and wondering eyes, this
brazen head, till at last the shades of night obstructing its vision,
a rustling noise in the wall of flags and reeds announced the
departure of my bodyless admirer.
Some of the forms of the _tapu_ were not to be played with, and were
of a most virulent kind. Of this kind was the _tapu_ of those who
handled the dead, or conveyed the body to its last resting-place. This
_tapu_ was, in fact, the uncleanness of the old Jewish law, and lasted
about the same time, and was removed in almost the same way. It was a
most serious affair. The person who came under this form of the _tapu_
was cut off from all contact, and almost all communication with the
human race. He could not enter any house, or come in contact with any
person or thing, without utterly bedeviling them. He could not even
touch food with his hands, which had become so frightfully _tapu_ or
unclean as to be quite useless. Food would be placed for him on the
ground, and he would then sit or kneel down, and, with his hands
carefully held behind his back, would gnaw it in the best way he
could. In some cases he would be fed by another person, who, with
outstretched arm, would manage to do it without touching the _tapu'd_
individual; but this feeder was subjected to many and severe
restrictions, not much less onerous than those to which the other was
subject. In almost every populous native village there was a person
who, probably for the sake of immunity from labour, or from being good
for nothing else, took up the undertaking business as a regular
profession, and, in consequence, was never for a moment, for years
together, clear of the horrid inconveniences of the _tapu_, as well as
its dangers. One of these people might be easily recognized, after a
little experience, even by a pakeha. Old, withered, haggard, clothed
in the most miserable rags, daubed all over from head to foot with red
paint (the native funereal colour), made of stinking shark oil and
red ochre mixed, keeping always at a distance, silent and solitary,
often half insane, he might be seen sitting motionless all day at a
distance, forty or fifty yards from the common path or thoroughfare of
the village. There, under the "lee" of a bush, or tuft of flax, gazing
silently, and with "lack-lustre eye," on the busy doings of the Maori
world, of which he was hardly to be called a member. Twice a day some
food would be thrown on the ground before him, to gnaw as best he
might, without the use of hands; and at night, tightening his greasy
rags around him, he would crawl into some miserable lair of leaves and
rubbish, there, cold, half-starved, miserable, and dirty, to pass, in
fitful ghost-haunted slumbers, a wretched night, as prelude to another
wretched day. It requires, they say, all sorts of people to make a
world; and I have often thought, in observing one of these miserable
objects, that his or her's was the very lowest ebb to which a human
being's prospects in life could be brought by adverse fate. When I
met, or rather saw, a female practitioner, I fairly ran for it; and
so, believing my readers to be equally tender-hearted, I shall not
venture on any more description, but merely say that the man
undertaker, such as I have described him, would be taken for Apollo if
seen in one of these hag's company.
What will my kind reader say when I tell him that I myself once got
_tapu'd_ with this same horrible, horrible, most horrible style of
_tapu_? I hold it to be a fact that there is not one man in New
Zealand but myself who has a clear understanding of what the word
"excommunication" means, and I did not understand what it meant till I
got _tapu'd_. I was returning with about sixty men from a journey
along the west coast. I was a short distance in advance of the party,
when I came to where the side of a hill had fallen down on to the
beach, and exposed a number of human bones. There was a large skull
rolling about in the water. I took up this skull without
consideration, carried it to the side of the hill, scraped a hole, and
covered it up. Just as I had finished covering it up, up came my
friends, and I saw at once, by the astonishment and dismay depicted on
their countenances, that I had committed some most unfortunate act.
They soon let me know that the hill had been a burying-place of their
tribe, and jumped at once to the conclusion that the skull was the
skull of one of their most famous chiefs, whose name they told me,
informing me also that I was no longer fit company for human beings,
and begging me to fall to the rear and keep my distance. They told me
all this from a very respectful distance, and if I made a step towards
them, they all ran as if I had been infected by the plague. This was
an awkward state of things, but as it could not be helped, I voted
myself _tapu_, and kept clear of my friends till night. At night when
they camped I was obliged to take my solitary abode at a distance,
under shelter of a rock. When the evening meal was cooked, they
brought me a fair allowance, and set it down at a respectful distance
from where I sat, fully expecting, I suppose, that I should bob at it
as Maori _kai tango atua_ or undertakers are wont to do. I had,
however, no idea of any such proceeding; and pulling out my knife
proceeded to operate in the usual manner. I was checked by an
exclamation of horror and surprise from the whole band, "Oh, what are
you about, you are not going to touch food with your _hands_?"
"Indeed, but I am," said I, and stretched out my hand. Here another
scream--"You must not do that, it's the worst of all things; one of us
will feed you; it's wrong, wrong, very wrong!" "Oh, bother," said I,
and fell to at once. I declare positively I had no sooner done so than
I felt sorry. The expression of horror, contempt, and pity observable
in their faces, convinced me that I had not only offended and hurt
their feelings, but that I had lowered myself greatly in their
estimation. Certainly I was a pakeha, and pakehas will do most
unaccountable things, and may be, in ordinary cases, excused; but
this, I saw at once, was an act which, to my friends, seemed the _ne
plus ultra_ of abomination. I now can well understand that I must
have, sitting there eating my potatoes, appeared to them a ghoul, a
vampire--worse than even one of their own dreadful _atua_, who, at the
command of a witch, or to avenge some breach of the _tapu_, enters
into a man's body and slowly eats away his vitals. I can see it now,
and understand what a frightful object I must have appeared. My
friends broke up their camp at once, not feeling sure, after what I
had done, but I might walk in amongst them in the night, when they
were asleep, and bedevil them all. They marched all night, and in the
morning came to my house, where they spread consternation and dismay
amongst my household by telling them in what a condition I was coming
home. The whole of my establishment at this time being natives, they
ran at once; and when I got home next evening, hungry and vexed, there
was not a soul to be seen. The house and kitchen were shut up, fires
out, and, as I fancied, everything looked dreary and uncomfortable. If
only a dog had come and wagged his tail in welcome, it would have been
something; but even my dog was gone. Certainly there was an old tom
cat, but I hate cats, there is no sincerity in them, and so I had
kicked this old tom on principle whenever he came in my way, and now,
when he saw me, he ran for his life into the bush. The instinct of a
hungry man sent me into the kitchen; there was nothing eatable to be
seen but a raw leg of pork, and the fire was out. I now began to
suspect that this attempt of mine to look down the _tapu_ would fail,
and that I should remain excommunicated for some frightfully
indefinite period. I began to think of Robinson Crusoe, and to wonder
if I could hold out as well as he did. Then I looked hard at the leg
of pork. The idea that I must cook for myself brought home to me the
fact more forcibly than anything else how I had "fallen from my high
estate"--cooking being the very last thing a _rangatira_ can turn his
hand to. But why should I have anything more to do with cooking? Was I
not cast off and repudiated by the human race? (A horrible misanthropy
was fast taking hold of me.) Why should I not tear my leg of pork raw,
like a wolf? "I will run a muck!" suddenly said I. "I wonder how many
I can kill before they 'bag' me? I will kill, kill, kill! but--I must
have some supper."
I soon made a fire, and after a little rummaging found the _materiel_
for a good meal. My cooking was not so bad either, I thought; but
certainly hunger is not hard to please in this respect, and I had
eaten nothing since the diabolical meal of the preceding evening, and
had travelled more than twenty miles. I washed my hands six or seven
times, scrubbing away and muttering with an intonation that would have
been a fortune to a tragic actor. "Out, damned spot;" and so, after
having washed and dried my hands, looked at them, returned, and washed
again, again washed, and so on several times, I sat down and
demolished two days' allowance. After which, reclining before the fire
with my pipe and a blanket over my shoulders, a more kindly feeling
towards my fellow men stole gradually upon me. "I wonder," said I to
myself, "how long this devilish _tapu_ will last! I wonder if there is
to be any end at all to it! I won't run a muck for a week, at all
events, till I see what may turn up. Confounded plague though to have
to cook!" Having resolved as above, not to take any one's life for a
week, I felt more patient. Four days passed somehow or another, and on
the morning of the fifth, to my extreme delight, I saw a small canoe,
pulled by one man, landing on the beach before the house. He fastened
his canoe and advanced towards the kitchen, which was detached from
the house, and which, in the late deplorable state of affairs, had
become my regular residence. I sat in the doorway, and soon perceived
that my visitor was a famous _tohunga_, or priest, and who also had
the reputation of being a witch of no ordinary dimensions. He was an
old, grave, stolid-looking savage, with one eye, the other had been
knocked out long ago in a fight before he turned parson. On he came,
with a slow, measured step, slightly gesticulating with one hand, and
holding in the other a very small basket, not more than nine or ten
inches long. He came on, mumbling and grumbling a perfectly
unintelligible _karakia_ or incantation. I guessed at once he was
coming to disenchant me, and prepared my mind to submit to any
conditions or ceremonial he should think fit to impose. My old friend
came gravely up, and putting his hand into the little basket pulled
out a baked _kumera_, saying, "_He kai mau_." I of course accepted the
offered food, took a bite, and as I ate he mumbled his incantation
over me. I remember I felt a curious sensation at the time, like what
I fancied a man must feel who had just sold himself, body and bones,
to the devil. For a moment I asked myself the question whether I was
not actually being then and there handed over to the powers of
darkness. The thought startled me. There was I, an unworthy but
believing member of the Church of England as by Parliament
established, "knuckling down" abjectly to the ministration of a
ferocious old cannibal, wizard, sorcerer, high priest,--as it appeared
very probable,--to Satan himself. "Blacken his remaining eye! knock
him over and run the country!" whispered quite plainly in my ear my
guardian angel, or else a little impulsive sprite who often made
suggestions to me in those days. For a couple of seconds the
sorcerer's eye was in desperate danger; but just in those moments the
ceremony, or at least this most objectionable part of it, came to an
end. He stood back and said, "Have you been in the house?" Fortunately
I had presence of mind enough to _forget_ that I had, and said, "No."
"Throw out all those pots and kettles." I saw it was no use to
resist--so out they went. "Fling out those dishes" was the next
command. "The dishes?--they will break." "I am going to break them
all." Capital fun this--out go the dishes; "and may the ----." I fear
I was about to say something bad. "Fling out those knives, and those
things with sharp points"--(the old villain did not know what to call
the forks!)--"and those shells with handles to them"--(spoons!)--"out
with everything." The last sweeping order is obeyed and the kitchen is
fairly empty. The worst is over now at last, thank goodness, said I to
myself. "Strip off all your clothes." "What? strip naked! you
desperate old thief--mind your eye." Human patience could bear no
more. Out I jumped. I did "strip." Off came my jacket. "How would you
prefer being killed, old ruffian? can you do anything in this way?"
(Here a pugilistic demonstration.) "Strip! he doesn't mean to give me
five dozen, does he?" said I, rather bewildered, and looking sharp to
see if he had anything like an instrument of flagellation in his
possession. "Come on! what are you waiting for?" said I. In those
days, when labouring under what Dickens calls the "description of
temporary insanity which arises from a sense of injury," I always
involuntarily fell back upon my mother tongue, which in this case was
perhaps fortunate, as my necromantic old friend did not understand the
full force of my eloquence. He could not, however, mistake my warlike
and rebellious attitude, and could see clearly I was going into one of
those most unaccountable rages that pakehas were liable to fly into,
without any imaginable cause. "Boy," said he, gravely and quietly, and
without seeming to notice my very noticeable declaration of war and
independence, "don't act foolishly; don't go mad. No one will ever
come near you while you have those clothes. You will be miserable here
by yourself. And what is the use of being angry? what will _anger_ do
for you?" The perfect coolness of my old friend, the complete
disregard he paid to my explosion of wrath, as well as his reasoning,
began to make me feel a little disconcerted. He evidently had come
with the purpose and intention to get me out of a very awkward scrape.
I began also to feel that, looking at the affair from his point of
view, I was just possibly not making a very respectable figure; and
then, if I understood him rightly, there would be no _flogging_.
"Well," said I, at last, "Fate compels; to fate, and not old
Hurlothrumbo there, I yield--so here goes." Let me not dwell upon the
humiliating concession to the powers of _tapu_. Suffice it to say, I
disrobed, and received permission to enter my own house in search of
other garments. When I came out again, my old friend was sitting down
with a stone in his hand, battering the last pot to pieces, and
looking as if he was performing a very meritorious action. He carried
away all the smashed kitchen utensils and my clothes in baskets, and
deposited them in a thicket at a considerable distance from the house.
(I stole the knives, forks, and spoons back again some time after, as
he had not broken them.) He then bid me good-bye, and the same evening
all my household came flocking back; but years passed before any one
but myself would go into the kitchen, and I had to build another. And
for several years also I could observe, by the respectable distance
kept by young natives and servants, and the nervous manner with which
they avoided my pipe in particular, that they considered I had not
been as completely purified from the _tapu tango atua_ as I might have
been. I now am aware, that in consideration of my being a pakeha, and
also perhaps, lest driven to desperation, I should run away entirely,
which would have been looked upon as a great misfortune to the tribe,
I was let off very easy, and might therefore be supposed to retain
some tinge of the dreadful infection.
Besides these descriptions of _tapu_, there were many others. There
was the _war tapu_, which in itself included fifty different "sacred
customs," one of which was this--that often when the fighting men left
the pa or camp, they being themselves made _tapu_, or sacred, as in
this particular case the word means, all those who remained behind,
old men, women, slaves, and all non-combatants were obliged strictly
to fast while the warriors were fighting; and, indeed, from the time
they left the camp till their return, even to smoke a pipe would be a
breach of this rule. These war customs, as well as other forms of the
_tapu_, are evidently derived from a very ancient religion, and did
not take their rise in this country. I shall probably, some of these
days, treat of them at more length, and endeavour to trace them to
their source.
Sacrifices were often made to the war demon, and I know of one
instance in which, when a tribe were surrounded by an overwhelming
force of their enemies, and had nothing but extermination, immediate
and unrelenting, before them, the war chief cut out the heart of his
own son as an offering for victory, and then he and his tribe, with
the fury of despair and the courage of fanatics, rushed upon the foe,
defeated them with terrific slaughter, and the war demon had much
praise, and many men were eaten.
The warriors, when on a dangerous expedition, also observed strictly
the custom to which allusion is made. 1 Samuel, xxi. 4-5.