Chapter XI.
Moko: The Tattooing art.

The ancient and world-wide practice of facial and bodily adornment by means of tattooing attained its highest pitch of perfection in New Zealand. The Japanese probably are the greatest artists in the indelible decoration of the torso, back and limbs, but the Maori was pre-eminently the face-carver of mankind. The Samoans to-day retain the leg and hip tattooing which is so closely done that it has been mistaken for a garment.

The Marquesans were wonderful tattooers, with a remarkable cross-bar device which gave the warrior the appearance of looking out through a prison window; but the art is almost extinct there. Long vanished, too, is the practice of tattooing the male Maori; it is the women, always more conservative than the men, whose pride in the olden ngutu and kauwae patterns—lips and chin—preserves the knowledge of an art peculiarly characteristic of the Maori race.

Carving and tattooing were closely allied arts and many of the patterns in tattooing were reproduced in the chiselling and painting of the wooden carvings of ancestral heroes. The double spiral was a favourite design. A well-tattooed old Maori was quite an art gallery of admirably symmetrical devices, and the finely-cut designs of scroll work and of curves within curves on cheek and nose and forehead and chin gave an added force and barbaric dignity to the brown man's face.

The tattooing expert before beginning his work carefully studied the “sitter's” features and the lines of his face and decided what part required page 137

The tattooing artist at work: A scene on the King Country frontier. [From a painting by G. Lindauer.

page 138 accentuating with moko. If the man had a weak mouth or a weak chin, the tattooer took pains to give him an aspect of strength and manly fierceness. The subject, or patient, lay down full length on a whariki or flax floor-mat, and the operator squatted behind him, with his knees supporting the subject's head. The intended pattern was lightly traced with charcoal or other material, and the artist then sea to work with his uhi or chisel—there were several of these uhi used, of various sizes. The principal chisel was a blade about two inches long, and less than half an inch of cutting edge, fastened to a small handle. This was tapped smartly with a light mallet or striker. The blood which flowed from each incision was carefully wiped away with soft flax tow, and a tiny stick was dipped in the pigment (ngarahu) and drawn along the lines. This colouring substance was soot (awe-kapara) collected in burning certain woods, sometimes from the burne resin of the kauri pine. This kauri pigment gave the tattoo a very dark colour, very much desired by the Maori warrior, who desired to look as grim and ferocious as possible. Songs were chanted, and often karakia or charms were recited during the operation. The parts operated on swelled painfull, but in a few days the bandages could be removed, and then the subject could proudly contemplate in a glass, or a pool of water, the visage adorned with the blue-black tracery, of its moko. In the old days it was more than a mere tracery; the warrior's face and limbs were literally cut into miniature trenches. It was a truly heroic adornment.

The painting by Lindauer reproduced as an illustration to this chapter represents the operation of tattooing a young chief's face. The subject, or patient, is lying on a whariki or floor-mat of flax, in the front of a raupo reed wharé. His left cheek page 139 has been operated upon, and his right is now being done. The tohunga, in a squatting position, holds in his left hand his small chisel, its blade dipped in the blue pigment with which the deep-cut lines are to be coloured; in his right hand is his little tapper or mallet, a flax-bound fern-stick, and between the thumb and the forefinger of the same hand is a piece of blue ngarahu or pigment. Round the little finger of the left hand is wrapped some soft flax tow; this is for the purpose of wiping away the blood. The operator, himself a well-moko'd man, is chanting his tattooing-song, bidding the patient be strong and endure the pain with a stout heart—kia kaha, kia kaha, kia manawa-nui, and so on. Of tattooing-songs there are many; the favourite one is that in which the exclamation “Hiki, hiki, Tangaroa!” occurs at regular intervals; this would seem to recognise Tangaroa, the Maori Neptune or Poseidon, as the god of the tattooing art.

Sitting facing the man being operated upon is an old chief with a partly tattooed face; he too is chanting the tattooing song. The original of this figure was a veteran warrior of the Upper Waikato, by name Tupotahi, first cousin to the fighting-chief Rewi Manga Maniapoto. Tupotahi fought heroically with his tribe in the famous pa at Orakau in 1864, and was wounded there. His home was on the banks of the Puniu river—the olden aukati line, or border—not far from the township of Kihikihi, where Lindauer sketched out this picture from life.

The fully tattooed Maori whose face was completely covered with lines of blue-black moko is no longer with us. In our young days in such districts as the Waikato, the Rohepotae, the Bay of Plenty and the Rotorua-Taupo country, an elderly man whose face was not more or less decorated with the chiselled engravings wrought by the tohunga-ta- page 140 moko was almost a curiosity. Now the tattooed male Maori has all but vanished from the face of these islands. For two or three years, during which I had travelled a good deal through native districts as far north as the Ngapuhi country, I had not observed one tattooed man; all my old acquaintances with deeply-moko'd faces had passed to the Reinga-land. However, on a visit in 1921 to most of the settlements of the Urewera or Tuhoe people, I found that there were still in the land of the living several aged men—all old Hauhau warriors—whose features were well scrolled with dark lines of tattooing. Of two of these men I made careful sketches, taking pains to record any peculiarities of pattern, for purposes of comparison with designs among

A fully tattooed Maori of the Sixties: Tomika te Mutu, Chief of Ngai-te-Rangi, Tauranga.
[From a drawing by General G. Robley

page 141

Pokai Riwhitete, of the Ngapuhi tribe, North Auckland. He was one of Hone Heke's leading warriors, in the war of 1845.
[From a drawing by S. Stuart, at Kaikohe, 1875

page 142 other tribes. It was with intense pleasure that I once more set eyes upon relics of the old, old art that had almost disappeared from Maori ken.

The best tattooed Maori seen and sketched was Netana Whakaari, of Waimana, a chief of the Ngai-Tama and Tuhoe tribe. Netana (Nathan) was a tall, lean soldierly man, with the erect bearing of the old-time toa. His deep-set keen eyes glittered with something of the ancient fire and restlessness from under thickly tattooed brows. Like all the old men of his tribes, he was on the war-path for several years in the period 1864–71. His age was about eighty-five; an estimate based upon his statement that he was a boy so high—indicating the height of a child four or five years of age—at the time of the Treaty of Waitangi. His well-shaped rather small features were closely engraved with dark-blue lines of moko on forehead, eyebrows, nose, cheeks, lower lip and chin. The moko pattern on the chin was not easily traceable owing to the short beard. The most remarkable feature of Netana's face-engraving was the break in the two middle rows of tiwhana or bow on the forehead. This interruption in the pattern is not often seen in Maori tattooing; I can recall many instances of incomplete marking in that the curving lines are carried only a short distance up from the starting-place between the eyebrows, but it was most unusual to find them continued again after a break of an inch or two and then carried on in a symmetrical zigzag to the side of the head. I think this variation in the tiwhana lines is peculiar to the Arawa and Tuhoe and some of the Bay of Plenty people. It is to be observed in the tattooing of carved figures in the Arawa country; an example is the elaborately moko'd Hou-taiki effigy at the foot of Ngati-Whakaue's flagstaff on the marae at Ohinemutu.

Te Menehi, of Kawhia, a King Country tattooing expert, photographed about 1880.

Netana told me that he was tattooed before the beginning of the first Taranaki war (1860). The operation was performed at Tauarau, the principal village of Ruatoki; the artist, a tohunga-ta-moko, was a hunchback Maori. Both the uhi-toroa (albatross-bone chisels) and the rino (iron chisels) were used at that time. The operation was a tapu ceremony, and it was done preferably in the Takurua, the winter season. The artist was always well-paid; the choicest foods, such as preserved birds, were brought to his quarters. In Netana's case the work occupied about two weeks. The tattooer did not repeat any karakia as he worked, but he chanted songs during the process of engraving to distract the patient's attention from the pain and made him look pleasant (kia parekareka te tangata). The first part incised and pigmented was the rerepehi, the curving lines from nostril to chin; each cheek took a day. Next the tiwhana, the “rainbow-like” curves on the forehead over the eyebrows, were drawn; this section took two days. Then the nose was tattooed—the straight lines from bridge to tip of nose, the ngu or spiral lines on the sides near the eyes, and the poniania or spirals following the curve of the nostril. The lips and chin followed. Netana found the most painful sections of the operation were the work on the tip of the nose and the lower lip.

The Maori women are more conservative than the men in respect of this facial adornment. Many hundreds, probably several thousands of women, still bear the lip and chin engraving of the tattooer's uhi. Kauwae is the term for this design, which varies slightly in various districts of the Island. The custom, is however, falling into desuetude, and the tattooing as practised nowadays is as a rule not so thorough and perdurable as that which was page 145 universal twenty or thirty years ago. The kauwae of to-day is usually engraved with a row of needles instead of the steel or bone chisel, and the effect produced resembles a blue stain rather than the indelibly-incised pattern seen on the chins of the elderly women. The art is practised chiefly in the Bay of Plenty settlements, the Rotorua-Taupo country, the Waikato, and the West Coast. A skilled wood-carver is also sometimes a tohunga-takauwae, but a young woman who wishes to have her features thus permanently beautified is frequently obliged to travel a long distance to the artist's home. There is a half-caste at Te Teko who is a skilful tattooing operator, and there is another on the East Coast. Hikapuhi, an elderly woman of the Ngati-Whakaue tribe, Rotorua, was a skilful tattooer of

Carved and tattooed figure at the foot of Hou-taiki flag-staff, Ohinemutu, Rotorua.

The Kauwae tattoo and pakeha hairdressing: A Waikato lady of the Seventies.

page 146 the kauwae; she used needles set closely together. The operation of to-day is usually a mere pricking-in of blue pigment in the manner of the sailor's and the Japanese artist's tattooing. Nevertheless the ancient patterns are closely followed and the delicacy of the lyre-like design gives artistic finish to the chin of brown womanhood.

There are still tattooing artists who practise the olden method of making incisions with the cutting instruments. Two years ago a tohunga-ta-kauwae tattooed many women at Waitotara and elsewhere on the West Coast with an uhi made from the wing-bone of the albatross (toroa). The tool, tapped with a stick, cut in from 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch deep, and as the blood flowed out of the wound the black pigment was forced into it. The women who underwent this painful ordeal had compensation in the knowlede that their chin adornment would be the genuine thing, the deeply-chiselled tohu of their foremothers. This tohunga tattooed thirty or forty young women at Waitotara; his fee was from £2 to £3 each, according to the artistic work required.

Girls who wish to be tattooed usually have the operation of ta-kauwae performed soon after they are married. The tattoo is the adornment of the young matron. Three or four years ago an expert from the Wairarapa district visited the West Coast villages between Wanganui and Taranaki, and a number of young married women had their chins and lips tattooed. A Maori who lived near New Plymouth when asked why he had not been in the town for some little time, explained that the tohunga-ta-kauwae had been visiting his wife, and that it was his duty as the husband to sit on her feet during the process, to keep her from flinching and moving.

Te Waru, a tattooing expert (tohunga-ta-moko), of Ngati-Whaoa tribe, Paeroa, Rotorua, date 1900.

The native-born pakeha New Zealander reared in the neighbourhood of Maori communities has grown up accustomed to the sight of the moko, and there are, no doubt, many like the writer who greatly regret the passing of the grand old warrior tattoo, and who regard the lingering fondness of the conservative women for the kauwae as a national trait which should be encouraged. Scientific sympathy with the perpetuation of ancient artistic craftsmanship should certainly extend to this, the most characteristic race-emblem of old Maoridom.

A Ngati-Ruanui woman, Taranaki, with mako shark's-tooth ear-pendants.

There was another item of personal decoration, but it was rarely used; this was the mata-huna or face mask. The late Mere Ngamai, a venerable lady of Te Atiawa, who was born on Kapiti Island, told me of the mata-huna worn by her grandfather, the Puketapu (Taranaki) chief Rawiri te Motutere. Rawiri, a warrior of the early part of the nineteenth century, who died about 1860, had a very page 149 light skin for a Maori—he was an urukehu or “fair-hair”—and his face was beautifully tattooed. He was very proud of his complexion and of his perfect moko, and he wore on special festive occasions, and also when travelling, to shield his face from the sun, a mask made of the thin but strong rind of the hué-gourd. This mask was tattooed exactly like the moko on his face, and it was decorated at the sides and top with black and white feathers. It was fastened at the back of his head with cords of flax. Great was the admiration at public gatherings when bold Rawiri, tall, straight, martial, paraded up and down with taiaha in hand, addressing the assemblage through the mouth-opening in his grim black-tattooed mata-huna mask waving with feathers, the wonder and delight of his fellows.

[By courtesy of Auckland Museum.
The largest Maori war-canoe in existence. The “Toki-a-Tapiri” (82 feet long, 6 feet beam), made in 1835. (See page 151.)