Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Maori and Polynesian: their origin, history and culture

A Great Contrast between the Textiles and the — Instruments for producing them

page 167

A Great Contrast between the Textiles and the
Instruments for producing them

(10) But there is in all this the same warp of primitiveness and woof of advanced culture. This race, so high in the scale for the beauty of its textile products, is far down in the matter of implements to produce them. They have no loom like that of the Malays, which spreads through the whole of Indonesiaan affair of balanced frame, intricate mechanical contrivance, and the use of treadles, not unlike the old European hand-loom. Had the Malays had anything to do with the culture of the Polynesians, as is implied in the constantly used name Malayo-Polynesian, this would have been the instrument for weaving in the South Sea Islands. But still lower are they in the scale of culture than this indicates. They have not only no spinning-wheel; but they have not a distaff or spindle, which even the most savage tribes have at least the germ of. They roll and twist their threads, whether for ropes or mats, or, as in New Zealand, for woven capes or girdles, on the thigh, the method adopted by the British Columbians. Thus in the textile industryan industry most affected by women in its earlier stagesthey reveal a primitiveness that is astonishing, when we consider the advance of the races that surround them, and of the races and regions from which the last immigrants came.