Remarks by Early Voyagers, Travellers, etc.

In his account of his first sojourn in New Zealand Captain Cook makes the following remarks concerning the natives: "Of the religion of these people it cannot be supposed that we could learn much; they acknowledge the influence of superior beings, one of whom is supreme, and the rest subordinate; and gave nearly the same account of the origin of the world, and the production of mankind, as our friends in Otaheite [Tahiti]; Tupia [Tupaea,] however, seemed to have a much more deep and extensive knowledge of these subjects than any of the people here… What homage they pay to the deities they acknowledge we could not learn; but we saw no place of public worship, like the morais [marae] of the South Sea Islands."

It is quite certain that Cook and his companions learned nothing concerning Maori belief in a Supreme Being, for that was the very last thing they would have told him. He may have heard, through Tupaea, of some mythological beings.

In Sir Joseph Bank's Journal we find the following remarks: "We saw few or no signs of religion among these people; they had no public place of worship, as the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, and only one private one came under my notice, which was in the neighbourhood of a plantation of their sweet potatoes. It was a small square bordered round with stones; in the middle was a spade, and on it hung a basket of fern-roots, an offering (I suppose) to the gods for the success of the crops—so, at least, one of the natives explained it. They, however, acknowledged the influence of superior beings."

page 42

In Becket's account of Cook's first voyage are some remarks on the religion of the natives of Tahiti, which show how little can be learned on this subject when the interrogator has but the most superficial knowledge of the native tongue. A few of the remarks are here quoted: "They believe in the existence of one supreme God, whom they call Maw-we, but acknowledge an infinite number of inferior deities generated from him, and who preside over particular parts of the creation… They have, however, no religious establishment, or mode of divine worship; neither the dictates of nature or of reason having suggested to them the expediency or propriety of paying external adoration to the deity: on the contrary, they think him far too elevated among his creatures to be affected by their actions… They have some notion of a future life in another island, but it does not seem as if they considered it as a state of retribution for the actions of this life, since they believe that each individual will there enjoy the same condition in which he has lived here."

The "Maw-we" alluded to is for Maui, who was not even an inferior god, but merely a hero of native myth. This writer shows the usual disappointment because there existed no native belief in the hell of his own faith.

In the account of his third voyage, Cook makes the following remarks concerning the Maori: "According to their system of belief, the soul of the man whose flesh is devoured by the enemy is doomed to a perpetual fire, while the soul of the man whose body has been rescued from those who killed him, as well as the souls of all who die a natural death, ascend to the habitations of the gods." Here Cook was totally wrong, for the Maori held no such belief. His subsequent remarks are much nearer the truth: "They have no such thing as morais [marae], or other places of public worship; nor do they ever assemble together with this view. But they have priests, who alone address the gods in prayers for the prosperity of their temporal affairs; such as an enterprise against a hostile tribe, a fishing-party, or the like. Whatever the principles of their religion may be, its instructions are very strongly inculcated into them from their very infancy. Of this I saw a remarkable instance in the youth who was first destined to accompany Taweiharoa. He refrained from eating the greatest part of the day, on account of his hair being cut; though every method was tried to induce him to break his resolution … he said, if he eat anything that day, the atua would kill him." This latter was, of course, a case of tapu, an institution closely connected with the native religion.

In the journal kept by Captain Du Clesmeur, of the "Marquis de Castries," Marion du Fresne's vessel, in 1772, we find a brief note page 43on Maori religion: "We are not certain whether they recognise a divinity or not. It would seem, however, that they worship an evil spirit. Their idols, or what we have considered as being such, have the head of a monster, the body of a dog, claws, and the tail of a fish." The carved figures seen in native houses and elsewhere were not idols, nor did they represent gods. Many early travellers in these isles have made the mistake of thinking them so. Those referred to above were probably the weird figures known as manaia and marakihau.

Crozet, who was with Marion du Fresne at the Bay of Islands in 1772, makes some remarks concerning the religion of the natives, or some guesses thereat. He seems to have mistaken the carved human figures seen about a native village for idols. He noted the Maori habit of crooning songs in the dead of night, and imagined that these were prayers. He says: "I understood that they only had a faint idea of a Supreme Being and of some subsidiary invisible creatures, that they were somewhat afraid of these latter and prayed frequently to them; that the object of these prayers was to become the conquerors and butchers of their enemies."

In an account of the sojourn of Marion's vessels in New Zealand waters given in Roux's journal, as published in vol. 2 of McNab's Historical Records of New Zealand, occur the following remarks: "It seemed to me that they have a religion. First, I had noticed that each time these natives slept on board the ship they never failed to rise at a certain hour of the night and commence to pray, muttering various words, amongst which they kept on repeating that of 'mathe' [mate], which signifies 'to kill.' This prayer lasted for about half an hour, after which they lay down again. Secondly, they have in all their houses a large stake fixed in the middle, on which is carved a hideous figure resembling those which are said to represent the devil. Besides this, each chief and some others amongst them wear at their necks a green stone as broad as a hand, upon which is engraved the same figure. All these things make me believe that these people recognize and worship some sort of being." On a later occasion this writer witnessed the performance of a ceremony for the removal of tapu from certain garments, whereupon he remarks, "May it not be inferred from this that these islanders have some religion and that they recognize the existence of a god."

The foregoing remarks concerning the habit of crooning songs at night, the carved house-post, and the neck-pendant termed a tiki, are of course mere surmises. No person unacquainted with the native tongue could have gained any knowledge of their religion.

page 44

In a journal written by P. de l'Horne, of the "Saint Jean Baptiste" (De Surville's vessel), he makes the following remarks anent the northern natives: "These people have some notion of a divinity, for the image some of them carry round their necks is certainly an idol. This figure seems to be squatting on its heels, with very wide thighs, very broad shoulders; the mouth wide open, the tongue hanging out, and a limb pointed like a dog's protruding. The signs they made us, to explain to us it was a god, were to join their hands together and raise their eyes to the sky."

This is another case of a mistake concerning the tiki pendant, which, although it represents a personification, cannot be termed an idol or representation of a god.

The following extract from Dr Savage's Some Account of New Zealand illustrates the wrong conclusions drawn by persons having no knowledge of the language of people whose customs and institutions they endeavour to describe. The above writer paid a short visit to New Zealand in 1805. "But little is known of the religion of these people; the chief objects of their adoration are the sun and moon; with the stars they are well acquainted, and have names for a great many of them; the moon, however, is their favourite deity… The annexed plate represents an ornament formed of the green talc … which they intend for a likeness of this protecting deity. It is worn round the neck of both sexes, particularly during times in which peril is apprehended. 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. The song used upon this occasion is cheerful and not destitute of harmony; while that made use of upon the going-down of the sun is mournful, and accompanied by such actions as evidently denote sorrow for his departure… The song used to the moon is mournful, and their accompanying actions denote a mixture of adoration and apprehension."

With the exception of the remark about natives being acquainted with the stars, all the above statements are utterly wrong and misleading.

J. L. Nicholas, who accompanied the Rev. S. Marsden to New Zealand in 1814, gave us his view of Maori religion: "The New-Zealanders, as far as we could discover from Duaterra, have some confused ideas of a Supreme Being, but their superstitions are in general most absurd and extravagant. Besides a Supreme Power, of which, as I said, they have some notion, they likewise believe in a great number of inferior gods, to each of whom they have given distinct powers and peculiar functions. One of them they have placed page 45over the elements, another over the fowls of the air and the fishes of the sea; and there are an infinite number of others, whose duties are so complicated and multifarious that it would fill a large volume to recount them. In addition to those superstitions which have been suggested to them by their physical necessities, they have many others, which have originated with the affections of the mind; hence they have been led to deify the various passions of the human heart, and anger, grief, joy, &c., are all included in their system of theogony."

Inasmuch as Nicholas was ignorant of the Maori tongue and forced to rely upon Ruatara's broken English, he was unwise to attempt any definition of Maori religion. Thus he is led to speak of the deification of the emotions, and applies the title of Supreme Being to Maui, the hero. His estimate of the other Maui brothers as gods is also wrong, as also is that of Tawhaki. His Teepockho [?Tipoko] "the God of Anger and Death," is unknown to us. He also gives Heckotoro as "the God of Tears and of Sorrow," another name that we know nothing of.

Nicholas, however, makes some amends by stating that, in order to obtain a full account of Maori mythology, an intimate acquaintance with the native language and long residence in the country are necessary. He adds, "So that the missionaries, I conceive, will be best qualified for such a task." But that was another of Nicholas's mistakes.

Kendall, the early missionary, made this curious statement: "I am now, after a long, anxious, and painful study, arriving at the very foundation and groundwork of the cannibalism and superstitions of these islanders. All their notions are metaphysical, and I have been so poisoned with the apparent sublimity of their ideas that I have been almost completely turned from a Christian to a heathen."

Captain R. A. Cruise, who sojourned in New Zealand for ten months in 1820, provides the following notes: "It would be difficult to define what their religion is. They have innumerable superstitions, but no idolatry. They believe that the chiefs when they die go to a very happy place, but that the cookee (i.e., cook, a term denoting slaves and persons of inferior status) has no further existence beyond this world. They address prayers to the sun, to the moon, to the stars, and even to the winds when their canoes are becalmed or in a storm; but their prayers emanate from casual circumstances, not from any regular form or time of adoration, They believe in a Supreme Being, designated the Atua, or something incomprehensible; the author of good and evil; the divinity who protects them in danger, or destroys them by disease."

page 46

The above statements about the "very happy place" and the plebeian may be struck out. Also, it is certain that Cruise has fallen into the same error that Savage did with regard to prayers to the heavenly bodies. No European of that time had any insight into the Maori system of personification, and Cruise certainly could have gained no evidence as to any direct appeal to sun and moon. He makes the usual error about atua and the Supreme Being.

Earle wrote of the Maori: "No order of priesthood exists among the natives. I have never discovered any symptoms of religion in these people, except it consists in a great variety of absurd and superstitious ceremonies." On the next page, however, we find the following remark: "Several of their chiefs assured me they believed in the existence of a great and invisible spirit, called Atua, who keeps a constant charge and watch over them; and that they are constantly looking out for tokens of his approbation or displeasure. There is not a wind that blows but they imagine it bears some message from him." Here it is clear that Earle, in his ignorance of the native tongue, concluded that the word atua denoted the Supreme Being, or at least a high god. Again, he says: "Like all rude and ignorant people, the New-Zealanders seem more to fear the wrath of their God than to love his attributes; and constant sacrifices (too often human ones) are offered up to appease his anger. They imagine that the just and glorious Deity is ever ready to destroy, and that His hand is always stretched forth to execute vengeance." It is in such nonsense as the above that we see how absurd it is for a person ignorant of the language of an uncultured folk to attempt to understand their religious ideas. The identifying of tribal atua or demons with "the just and glorious Deity" is an absurdity, and Earle, as an educated man, should have known better.

J. C. Crawford (Recollections of Travels in New Zealand and Australia) is brief in his remarks: "The old religion of the Maoris seems to have been of a meagre description. It was founded on the semi-deification of ancestors…. The most practical institution of the old religion of New Zealand was that of tapu." As in most other cases with early writers, Crawford had no insight into Maori religion. The deification of ancestors was not the basis of that religion, but a secondary matter.

In his Past and Present of New Zealand Taylor recognizes the fact that the Maori had a religion, and conformed to its requirements, but follows Earle in having his mind fixed on the Supreme Being, instead of recognizing the different concepts of barbaric man.

page 47

In commenting upon native myths the Rev. Mr. Yate, an early missionary, remarks: "They pay no kind of respect or worship to Maui or his brother, and have no other gods whom they regard. When, therefore, they have a desire to believe the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, there is only the natural hardness of the human heart to oppose its progress; they have no long-cherished idols to remove, no domestic or public images to destroy, no household gods to cast away."

It seems most singular that any person could reside for some time among the natives and yet remain ignorant of their life and beliefs to the last. Maui was never looked upon as a god, though he might have been termed an atua, using the term in its sense of "mischievous," &c. Any inquiry into the institutions of tapu and magic, into native industries and customs, by a person able to converse with them would have exposed to view many of the Maori gods.

Polack, in his remarks on the religious feeling of Maori folk, says: "It would be difficult positively to assert the nature of the national religion of the people, when each person is satisfied in following the dictates of his own passions undeterred by a future retributive reward. They have no particular deity to address on any supplication they may make, but equally attempt to propitiate birds, trees, rivers, rocks, their own shadows, animals, or substances animate or inanimate, and the works of the Creator generally… The only national deity is Mawe [Maui]."

Herein Polack utterly fails to grasp or illustrate Maori mentality and religious thought. The belief in gods was a very strong deterrent, though punishment in the spirit-world was not thought of. Nor did the Maori propitiate birds, trees, rocks, &c.; in themselves they possessed no virtue or power. Again, Maui was no deity, but merely one of the old myth heroes, possibly also a personification.

Polack proceeds to explain that each district had its own gods and idols. Idols were unknown, and the only gods that were not universally known were tribal and family gods. Departmental gods were known to all tribes, and some of them are known in many isles of Polynesia.

Elsewhere Polack remarks: "The religious tenets of the New-Zealanders are inculcated into their minds at a very early age; yet they worship no representation of the Great Spirit, who is believed to be implacable, and the origin of every evil." Here again we encounter the confusion of malevolent demons, or tribal deities, of a low grade, with a Great Spirit. Polack also lays stress on deified ancestors, but omits any reference to nature gods.

page 48

Quoth the Rev. J. Buller, in his Forty Years in New Zealand: "Religion, according to both the true and popular meaning of the word, they had none. They knew nothing of the doctrine of future rewards and punishments." Yet this man was a native linguist, and one of those on whom we depend for our ethnographical data!

Dieffenbach wrote as follows: "If we take religion in its common meaning as a definable system of certain dogmas and prescriptions, the New-Zealanders have no religion. Their belief in the supernatural is confined to the action and influence of spirits on the destiny of men, mixed up with fables and traditions." He also remarks that Maui and Pani "are the principal persons in the mythology of the people."

The following amazing remarks were made by one W. Tyrone Power in his work on peregrinations in New Zealand and other lands: "The Maories have no history, no songs or ballads, and scarcely even the semblance of a tradition to roughly shadow out the past. No Homer or Ossian has handed down in popular strains the name of warrior, sage, or poet. No Druids or priests have kept alive oral traditions; and there is barely an individual in New Zealand whose antiquarian lore ascends beyond his own times. Their solitary tradition is that they are descended from Maui, who, with a canoe-load of companions, came from 'somewhere' and settled here… From these uncertain data there is a sad hiatus in Maori chronology, the next fact rewarding one's researches being the arrival of Captain Cook in the island."

The foregoing is the most startling statement respecting Maori traditions and mental powers that I have ever seen. Power resided for some years in New Zealand, yet his ignorance of the natives seems to have been colossal. A mere portion of native traditions has been recorded, yet it covers thousands of pages of print. As to native songs, a considerable number have been collected and printed, probably a thousand. An old native of the Tuhoe Tribe dictated to me four hundred and six songs from memory in 1896; these are still in manuscript form. As to names not being handed down by the Maori, where is the people that have so carefully preserved their genealogies? When, in the "nineties" of last century, Tamarau Waiari, of Ruatoki, was called upon to recite the lines of descent of the clan or subtribe known as Ngati-Koura, the task occupied nearly three days, including time spent in explanations. The completed table showed the descent of all family groups, and all living persons of the clan, from a single ancestor who flourished about eight hundred years ago. This necessitated the recital, in correct order, of over fourteen hundred names; and the Court contained page 49keen-eared experts ever ready to detect and denounce any error in name or position. When we come to describe the tapu institution known as the whare wananga, we shall see how extremely careful the Maori was to conserve his oral traditions, and pass them on correctly to succeeding generations.

After the preceding remarks of Power, the following note of his need not create surprise: "The Maoris do not appear to have had any settled form of religion; their faith seems to have been confined to the acknowledgment of an Atua or good principle, and of an evil one called Taipo." Atua as = "good principle" is startling, and Taipo has not yet been discovered by the Maori himself.

The following remarks are taken from the Rev. R. Taylor's work The Past and Present of New Zealand: "It is a common practice of travellers and voyagers to speak disparagingly of the religion of savage nations; to make it appear that they have the slightest possible connection with humanity; it is often affirmed that many tribes have either no religion at all or next to none. Perhaps there is nothing that travellers are in reality less able to speak of than this. Natives seldom permit strangers to witness their sacred rites; and even if they did, without a perfect acquaintance with their language, manners, customs, &c., they could not form a just opinion on the subject."

Herein our missionary makes a very true statement, and he continues in this wise: "So likewise the Maories have been spoken of as being atheists and infidels; they have been very much wronged by such suppositions. Bad as the religion of the heathen Maories undoubtedly was, still they had one and believed in it, and conformed to its requirements." These remarks are of an unusual nature to come from a missionary, and are therefore the more welcome. Elsewhere the same writer remarks: "The Maori race were very particular in observing all their rites; they entered into everything they did; they undertook no work without first performing a religious service; whether they went to war, to fish, or hunt, they first approached their gods, that the undertaking might be prosperous. When they planted their kumara the priest first invoked their gods; the same also when the ingathering of the crop took place; the first fruits, whether they were those of the hunt, or fishing, or fighting, were all sacred. In fact, they had far greater fear of the tapu, as that spiritual law was called, than they had of their enemies."

After this it is somewhat disappointing to come across a statement by Taylor, in his Te Ika a Maui, to the effect that "the Maoris are devil-worshippers." He should have had the intelligence to note that what he terms "worship" was merely placation; that when a native casts aside a bird or fish with the remark, "Ki a koe, e Whiro!" page 50("To thee, O Whiro!"), the placatory idea prompted the act, not that of worship.

Dr. Thomson describes Maori religion as follows: "The religious belief of the New-Zealanders was that which belongs to the infancy of a race. It was a religion dictated by wants and fears. To their gods they prayed for food, to their deified ancestors for the removal or the prevention of evils. They believed in a future state of existence, and that there was a spirit within their bodies."

Now note what Hochstetter wrote later: "The religious belief of the New-Zealanders was that which belongs to the infancy of a race. Their religion was a kind of polytheism, a worship of elementary spirits and deified ancestors; yet without idols and temples. They believed in a future state of existence, and that there was a spirit within their bodies which never died."

In his remarks Thomson has not discriminated between the higher and lower beliefs of the race; indeed, he was probably not acquainted with the former. No doubt his second remark contains an element of truth, but many religions are dictated by wants and fears. We shall see in our review of native beliefs and practices that very little of their ritual can be placed under the term "prayer". Nor was the Maori religion one that belongs to the infancy of a race; it had passed through the more primitive stages. Elsewhere this writer remarks, "Their evil deeds were punished in this world, not in the next. Sickness and personal injuries were the punishments inflicted on evil-doers, consequently death was a relief from misery. Unlike Christians, they had no dread of a prolonged existence of future agony." Certainly not, for the Maori, in his religion, never sank to the depths of intolerance reached by more advanced systems.

In his entertaining work Old New Zealand the late Judge Maning wrote: "The Maori has, perhaps, the lowest religious character of any human being; his mental formation seems to have the minimum of religious tendency. The idea of a Supreme Being has never occurred to him, and the word which the missionaries use for God (atua) means, indifferently, a dead body, a sickness, a ghost, or a malevolent spirit."

Here again we have a writer who lived many years among the Maori folk, who had a good command of the native tongue, and yet the foregoing remarks are, except the last one, utterly misleading. His religion controlled every activity of a Maori's life, and he had evolved, or borrowed in the remote past, a remarkably fine conception of the Supreme Being. Maning, with all his knowledge and opportunities, utterly failed to penetrate beyond the shamanism page 51practised by native warlocks. The upper planes of native mentality were to him, apparently, a sealed book.

In his preface to the first edition of Polynesian Mythology, Sir G. Grey remarked: "That their traditions are puerile is true; that the religious faith of the races who trust in them is absurd is a melancholy fact." The Maori faith in their Supreme Being was not absurd; it was pitched upon a much higher plane of thought than that which evolved the Jehovah of the Old Testament, but Grey knew nought of it.

The following remarks are taken from Where the White Man Treads, by "W. B.," who thus writes of Maori superstitions and of Maori conceptions of unseen powers: "In the first place I must accept the theory that they were necessary to him, that they met his wants; and the more I study his case the more I am convinced that a benevolent scheme would not have stood the test of two generations." The above writer holds that the strenuous struggle among uncultured peoples to enable them to survive, the law of the survival of the fittest, effectually prevented the conception of a beneficent deity. "Hence, when he invented a cosmogony, it of necessity was cast in the mould of that striving, killing nature of which he was the highest developed member. Therefore he shared, in common with all primitive races, the want of words to express veneration, benevolence, and worshipful adoration. A loving, patriarchal creator was utterly beyond his comprehension. He could conceive nothing benedictory in the conditions of his surroundings, and therefore the creations of his gods coincided with his appetites… His karakia (incantations) were invocations to his gods to preserve him from the unknown; of placation, of propitiation."

If the Maori had confined his belief to a beneficent god, or gods—such a being as Io, for example—then his whole social system would have collapsed. The cohesive power that held society together, the substitute for civil law, the vivifying power that rendered certain institutions a deterrent force, was represented, not by the God, but by the gods—the jealous gods ever swift to punish man for wrong-doing, and punishing him in this world, not in the spirit-world.

Colenso, an early missionary, had no doubts concerning native religion. He writes: "Religion, according to both the true and popular meaning of the word, they had none. Whatever religion may be defined to be; virtue as founded, upon the reverence of God, and expectation of future rewards and punishments, or any system of divine faith and worship, they knew nothing of the kind. They had neither doctrine nor dogma, neither culture nor system of worship. They knew not of any Being who could properly be called God. page 52They had no idols. They reverenced not the sun, or moon, or glittering heavenly host, or any natural phenomena." Apart from this curious tirade, Colenso tells us that the Maori, in dealing with his gods, "never once thought of getting any aid or good from them." In this we shall see that he was quite wrong; also that he missed noting the universal system of placation employed by the Maori. His remark that the observances of tapu were in place of religion is utterly incorrect, those observances being the effect of his religion, of his belief in gods.

The Rev. Mr. Wohlers, another early missionary, has written as follows: "The heathen religion of the Maori in New Zealand had got into such confusion that no meaning could be found in it… By religion we understand a feeling of dependency in the human mind, in the consciousness of its own weakness, on a higher being or beings; which beings are therefore feared and worshipped. But the Maori religion had lost its hold on the old gods altogether, and had taken hold on their living chiefs and their surrounding tapu, or sacredness." Like most missionaries Wohlers utterly failed to acquire any knowledge of the religion of the Maori, though many natives then living in his district could have enlightened him. Wohler's remarks as to the abandonment of the old gods are quite incorrect, and the confusion he refers to was probably caused by his own ignorance of the different grades of gods believed in by the Maori.

The late Judge Wilson wrote as follows in The Story of Te Waharoa: "They were naturally religious. Their affairs, whether political, civil, or social, were all blended with religion or superstition. It was invoked when they fished, planted, and gathered in their crops, when they sent out a tana (armed force) or attacked a pa. .. In short, the genius of the people was nearly as essentially religious, and their actions as subject to the control of their tohunga (priests) as we are told the Thibetans are influenced in all their civil and social arrangements by the Grand Lama and his Buddhistical priesthood."

Missionary R. Taylor, in his Te Ika a Maui, has these remarks: "It is remarkable that, although the natives had innumerable karakia (charms, &c.) and rites, yet they had no stated festivals, or any days more sacred than others; nor had they a system common to all. Their religion, indeed, may be regarded as of an individual rather than of a national character, each one being independent of his neighbour, and at liberty to follow his own ideas, although there were persons called priests who officiated on certain occasions, such as before entering upon a war expedition, planting or reaping page 53the kumara (sweet potato), fishing or hunting. Still this did not interfere with each one's individual right to use whatever karakia he might think fit, and whenever he pleased. In this respect they differed from most nations, which in general are so tenacious of any interference with the rights and privileges of the constituted priesthood."

As a rule it seems to be the priesthood that objects to such interference most strongly. Taylor does not explain that the priests always conducted any ritual connected with what were deemed important matters, far more than he has mentioned; but in minor matters affecting merely the individual each person possessed a budget of charms to be recited by himself when required. Thus, in respect to fishing and fowling, a priest performed all the more important ritual, while each man was acquainted with a charm to recite when fishing, another to repeat over his bird-snares, and and so on. These were equivalent to private prayers in a more advanced culture stage, wherein priests conduct all important ceremonial, but do not object to the private devotions of the individual.

In his paper on "Maori Religion," published in vol. 14 of the Journal of the Polynesian Society, Colonel Gudgeon states that "Among the Maoris there are traces of two religious systems one of which is purely abstract in its conception of the Deity, and of a very exalted type, inasmuch as it attributes the existence of all things to the great god Io. The second is probably a later and most certainly an inferior conception, in which the powers of nature are personified in the persons of certain anthropomorphic gods, and it is this fact that constitutes the difference between the two systems." These remarks are correct, save that there does not seem to be any proof that the conception of Io preceded the animistic phase of Maori Religion. It is more probable that animism was practised long before the idea of a Supreme deity was evolved.

Ere this paper is concluded it will have been made clear that the Maori simply had to keep on good terms with his gods; lacking such goodwill, life was practically impossible. The care-free attitude of the agnostic was unheard of; supernatural powers were ever feared.

It is possible that objection may be made to the mixture of religious and mythological matter in this chronicle, but it has been deemed inadvisable to attempt to separate the higher myths from religion, for not only do the two intermingle in the Maori mind, but any separation would entail much repetition. Thus many of the exploits of Tane would be assigned to mythology, page 54but the cult of the god Tane undoubtedly belongs to religion. This would call for an explanation of Tane, his attributes and functions, under both heads, in order to make matters clear, or an exasperation of the reader by reference to former chapters.

Grant Allen remarks, in his Evolution of the Idea of God, "Religions as we generally get them envisaged for us nowadays, are held to include the mythology, the cosmogony, the ontology, and even the ethics of the race that practises them. These extraneous developments, however, I hold to spring from different roots and to have nothing necessarily in common with religion proper." This may be so, but I still hold that it will simplify matters to tell the story as a native does, and include cosmogonic and theogonic myths in an account of the superior gods. In the development of religions, myths pertaining to gods are evolved and practically become part of the religion. These and cosmogonic myths become incorporated with religion in sacred writings or oral teachings, and, in some higher religions, to cast doubt on such myths brought condemnation or even severe punishment on the hapless atheist or heretic, as the offender was termed.

Allen sums up by saying that "Religion is practice, mythology is story-telling. Every religion has myths that accompany it; but the myths do not give rise to the religion; on the contrary, the religion gives rise to the myths." He also remarks that "These myths may be sometimes philosophic guesses, sometimes primitive folk-tales, but they certainly are not the truths of religion." This writer applies the term "relatively advanced race" to such a people as the Maori, a people that has evolved "higher elemental or departmental deities" who cannot be resolved into dead men or spirits.