Women as Paddlers

Early voyagers noted that Maori women were adepts in the use of the paddle. Nicholas, in speaking of the canoe of Ruatara, remarks: "His own canoe was a very attractive spectacle, being elegantly decorated with ingenious devices, and containing a group of the most beautiful young women in the island, who seated themselves at the paddle with a peculiar grace and easiness of attitude, while the pliancy of the action displayed their fine forms to the greatest advantage."

Dr. Marshall, who was at Whanga-roa in 1834, makes the following remarks: "In their canoes, which I had now an opportunity of page 244examining at my leisure, I noticed little deserving of particular notice, unless exception be made in favour of the carving at the sterns and prows, which, after all, is only curious as the performance of a barbarous people, possessed of few and inadequate tools. This mode of ornamenting their boats admits of great variety, and, in consequence, hardly two of their boats are ornamented exactly alike. A head is the favourite device, more or less hideous, according to the taste or skill of the workman. The canoe itself is exceedingly simple, being formed of the trunk of the kauri, hollowed out with the stone adze, and tapered off by the same tool towards the ends. A thick, broad plank on each side, in some cases carved exteriorly with a bas-relief of human figures, serves as a gunwale plank, and at the same time deepens the hollow of the canoe, to the top of which, along its entire length, these planks are spliced, somewhat after the fashion of a Masoolah boat, the intermediate seam being caulked with a sort of coir rope. The interior fittings are more simple than the exterior decorations, consisting of a strong grating laid along the bottom of the canoe, and forming a place of storage for their provisions when required to proceed on a voyage; a few cross-sticks, in the better sort carved and smoothed, serve for thwarts. But these are more commonly wanting, the paddle being plied with equal facility when those who handle it are seated at the bottom of the canoe as when they occupy the more elevated seats, and, it may not be amiss to add, with equal dexterity by men and women; one of the latter I once observed at the end of a little boat plying her paddle with indefatigable industry, although a mother and a nurse, her infant being occasionally transferred from the breast to a mat at her feet, and vice versa, as circumstances required."

Again, the same writer, in speaking of canoes seen at the Bay of Islands, says: "The chiefs, with their retainers … came in large and handsome canoes, some of them upwards of forty feet in length, and all gaily decorated with tufts of white feathers at the prow and stern. In one of these there were fourteen thwarts, and a shifting deck or grating, very neatly put together, under which the provisions were stowed as in a hold. Large unoccupied spaces, one in the centre and one at either end, are left for the accommodation of the principal persons of the tribe, who stand there and encourage the paddlers, and thence harangue their foes."