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Maori and Polynesian: their origin, history and culture

There is Nothing that a Race conserves so long or — so Tenaciously as Eurial Customs

There is Nothing that a Race conserves so long or
so Tenaciously as Eurial Customs

(9) But affinities of peoples are to be sought most successfully in their disposal of the dead. And where there is much diversity in this we may be sure that there is much intermixture of blood. In their burial customs the Polynesians, and especially the Maoris, display much hesitancy between one system and another. The commonest form was to bury the bodies or place them on a platform or in the fork of a tree for a time, and then take up the bones and hide them in their final, and always sacred, resting-place. The slaves, of course, were huddled into the earth anyhow and anywhere, as having no souls. This method was natural to a people page 70accustomed to land-migrations. A second system much less common, but more suited to a maritime people, was to set the dead adrift in a canoe or in a coffinlike boat; this was noticed by some of the old European voyagers in the islands and in Cook Straits. A third system was cremation; though this was especially adopted in war in an enemy's country so as to prevent the flesh of their dead being eaten and their bones being used in an ignominious manner for the making of implements, it was not confined to war times; it was by no means uncommon in peace, especially among the dwellers on the plains. In the Marlborough Sounds, and in parts of the southern parts of the North Island, cremation-mounds are found rich with the ashes of the dead and the oil or fat of the porpoise; whilst burial in the active or extinct craters of volcanoes is not unknown. A modification of this was burning the body and preserving the head so that it could be kept in the dwelling and wept over and honoured by the bereaved. As a sharp contrast and pendant to this was the custom of cutting off the heads of dead enemies, drying them, and setting them up as an object of mockery and cursing and vituperation, perhaps a relic of the passage of at least one Polynesian migration through the head-hunting regions of Indonesia. A fourth but rare method was embalming. This could be done in only a partial way, because of the lack of proper preservatives; after the extraction of the softer parts, oil or salt was rubbed into the flesh, and the body was dried in the sun or over a fire; then the mummy was wrapped in cloth and hidden away. In the islands this method was adopted with adults; but it preserved the body only for a short period. In several parts of New Zealand the bodies of children have been found thus preserved and wrapped in cloth. In several Polynesian groups the body is doubled up and then swathed; and in some parts of New Zealand the skeletons of mummified bodies are found in this crouching or page 71sitting posture. The Maoris assert ignorance of the people thus buried, and the lack of respect for the burial-places seems to confirm this assertion. It is doubtless a method of the megalithic people that have been traced into Polynesia and New Zealand. And the great dolmen-like slabs of wood often set up over the graves of chiefs were probably derived by the Maoris from the same source, wood being substituted for stone in so well-forested a country.

(10) Whatever the system adopted, its object was to prevent the bodies of the dead falling into the hands of enemies and being desecrated or absorbed by them. The megalithic chamber was the first effective sign of this fear, and was evidently adopted by the neolithic Caucasians when they came to wander over the face of the earth. They made the houses of the dead such fortifications as would resist all the attempts of an enemy to enter them. Cremation was the next method; for the ashes could be carried by the emigrants whithersoever they went, and were ultimately deposited in barrows or graves. In less migratory communities mummification or embalming was next adopted, so that the bodies might be kept often within or near the houses of the living. The preservation of the hones after burial for a time was a modification where embalming was impossible; and head-preservation was a second. Burial at sea was the measure naturally adopted by a maritime people to baulk their enemies and send their dead on the way to their primeval home. The adoption of all or most of these methods in Polynesia, and especially in New Zealand, is one of the most striking proofs of mixture of races and stages of civilisation in a region that has usually been supposed to be especially the home of a pure race.