Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Maori and Polynesian: their origin, history and culture

The Textile Art, as belonging to Woman, shows — little Stratification

The Textile Art, as belonging to Woman, shows
little Stratification

(2) It is different with the textile art. Amongst all primitive civilisations it belongs to the women's department. In Polynesia it is the women that pound out and macerate the tapa or bark-cloth, the most important material for clothing in all the tropical islands. It is so easy to produce that woven cloth had no chance against it; and thus it is that in these page 162warm climates, for which the open-pored textiles are more suited, these were thrust into the background. Weaving as a natural development of the universal arts of savagerymat-making and basket-makingexisted as an art in those islands; but it took a subordinate place in the life. Bark-cloth belongs properly to the tropics, for there the bast, or inner bark of many trees, has its fibres inextricably interwoven; whilst the bast of the clothing plants of the temperate zone, not only of hemp and flax, but also of trees like cedar and elm, has its fibres in parallel layers or lines, so that it can be shredded into filaments that can be twisted or spun. Bark-cloth is universal in the tropical parts of Africa and South America; but the art of making it is less advanced than in Polynesia; they pound and macerate it, but they do not weld the strips together to make large sheets, as the women of the Pacific do.

(3) That in Polynesia it is a purely woman's art with no sacredness, or priestly rights connected with it, shows that it was not brought by the last immigrants and conquerors from South Asia. If, as most evidences seem to indicate, these latter came primarily from an Aryan race or from one in close contact with an Aryan race, we can quite understand why they did not bring any ideas with regard to the art. For the Aryans, we know from the words for clothing common to all the Indo-European languages, did not use bark-cloth; the bark garments mentioned by Pomponius Mela as being used by the Germans were probably, like those amongst the Ainos and the British Columbians, woven of bark fibres. The last immigrants doubtless saw bark-cloth being used or made in some of the islands of Indonesia, but it was by the conquered aboriginals or as a primitive and almost abandoned habit. The textiles that had been introduced by the Mongoloid conquerors had displaced it. Most probable it was that they brought with them to their new realms a page 163tendency to the textile art and to skin clothing. The Arctic zone is the natural home of skin raiment, the temperate zone of textile raiment, and the tropics of bark raiment. But the Baltic region, the now generally accepted birthland of the Aryan languages, touches on the sub-Arctic zone, especially during the periodic depressions of temperature; and hence, probably, the Aryan-speaking tribes that came to Asia brought with them both the textile habit and the skin habit.

(4) When the Polynesians came to New Zealand they brought with them all three forms of clothing. But during their long residence in the tropics with the art of cloth-making in the hands of the women they had taken into their households, bark-cloth had thrown the others into the shade, and it was principally as tapa-makers they came to their new country; they brought not merely rolls of tapa, but the aute or paper-mulberry to acclimatise as the main source of the bast. And, though it has now died out of New Zealand, it was seen by Colenso towards the middle of the nineteenth century under cultivation; its bast was used for fillets for the hair of chiefsa sign that, as coming with the conquerors, it had become sacred; for the chiefs head was sacred. And amongst the Ngatiawa two men are mentioned as having been expert beaters of tapaa fact that alone would show in the sex of the workers that it was the last immigrants and conquerors that brought the art into New Zealand. They brought with them likewise the habit of skin clothing. For the dogskin mat and cloak were the special perquisite of the chief; no one else was allowed to use them. And tradition says that they introduced with them from Polynesia the edible dog, from which the garments were made. Only men were allowed to prepare the skins and sew them together, just as only men were allowed to eat canine flesh.

(5) But there is evidence in their customs, too, that they also brought one department at least of the textile art. For page 164though the women did the weaving, they had to learn it when young from priests with solemn rites and incantations and in a special weaving-house. They had, as mere women and unsacred beings, to be made holy before entering in; nor were they allowed to touch cooked food or eat during the initiation. They were isolated till it was all over, and then they were made common again, and could return to the ordinary duties of the household. They were afterwards as mere common beings, needing no ceremonial either to consecrate or deconsecrate them. But if they were weaving the garments of warriors or sacred persons they must weave them under cover and not in the open air, a condition showing how much the new-comers were devoted to house-building and house-dwelling.

(6) This proves only that the Polynesians did not learn the textile art wholly from the conquered in New Zealand. They must have brought some knowledge of it with them, when they thus consecrated the work of their new aboriginal wives, and took it under the wing of the priesthood. Rua, the deity of the weaving-house, is, according to tradition, an ancestor of the Maoris, though the meaning of the name, "double," seems to point to the double woof-thread of the Maori cloth, and thus to indicate that the legend is etymological. The legend tells that Rua learned the art of mat-weaving, along with that of wood-carving, from the Hakuturi, who, as wood fairies, probably represent forest-haunting aborigines. Two other stories of the origin of the art attribute it to other deities. The truth seems to be that the art was both pre-Polynesian and Polynesian. The North Pacific immigrants coming from the natural zone of textiles were sure to have brought it with them in a more or less primitive stage; and the discovery of such a source of fibre as New Zealand flax must have greatly aided in developing it long before the South Asiatics arrived in the country. It is not improbable, and the page 165ceremony of initiation seems to indicate, that the actual upright framework or loom used by the women was introduced by the new-comers, although we know that the Ainos used a similar frame, differing only in being used horizontally instead of vertically, for weaving their bast threads into cloth.

(7) But there were other items in the making of the ultimate textiles that were also brought from Polynesia. One was the ornamental border of mats, which was done by the men. The secret of dyeing with red doubtless also came; for the water with which the tanekaha bark was boiled had to be heated by stones that had not touched a cooking fire or any fire on which common men or women had looked the neglect of such precautions would obliterate all knowledge of the secret from the mind; whereas the preparation of the black dye from hinau bark and a certain swamp mud needs no such religious exactitude, and must have been an aboriginal art. The Patupaiarehe's hatred of kokowai gives the same indications. Nor is it unlikely that some of the minuter details in the preparation of flax came also from the islands; it was, in fact, not unlike the preparation of the aute or the breadfruit bark for tapa; both were scraped of their green stuff with a sharp shell, steeped and macerated and then bleached in the sun, and afterwards pounded and worked up. That it was cultivated and used for a far longer period in New Zealand than the five centuries since the Polynesian six canoes came is shown by the large number of varieties (more than fifty), each with a name and a special use. The specialisation of so many kinds meant thousands of years of experiments in primitive times.