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The Maori Race
Notions of Scientific Facts
Notions of Scientific Facts.
In conversation and in legend, the Maori mind blends knowledge arising from perception with strange superstitions and poetical fancies. This only to say that he shares in our common humanity, for Europeans, even among their cultured classes, cling to many a belief that will not bear the light of reason. The Maoris have, however, now and then made utterance of expressions which would cause a hearer to surmise either that they had insight into some deep truths of science, or that their forefathers had bequeathed them memories of a state of far higher culture than most people think it possible they had ever attained, or than even our own ancestors of a few centuries ago reckoned among their intellectual treasures.
We may instance the expression, “the world floating in space” as describing the earth. The knowledge that the earth does float in the universal ether and was not the solid floor of the whole Cosmos was revealed to us by Copernicus only a comparatively short time ago, although the philosophers of the ancient world certainly seem to have dimly discerned the scheme of the Solar System.* Again, the condition of the earth in early geologic ages appears to be alluded to in legend. Tane, as the creator, was warned page 428 that he would have to exercise his great power before the world could become habitable. The Hosts of Heaven called to Tane and said, “O Tane, fashion the outer part of the world; it is bubbling up.” The legend of “Fire and Water” (related in the next chapter) also seems to hint at a knowledge of the forces which strove together in geologic periods almost incalculably distant. It is a suggestion only that I advance and takes the shape, that the same reasoning power which causes our scientific men to consider that the whole earth was once in a molten condition, viz, the evidence of the plutonic or unstratified rocks also caused the invention of the legend that the Creator was warned that the outside of his new world was bubbling up. Similarly, the Deluge traditions themselves (wherever they originated) probably arose from men noticing the stratification of rocks and the evidence of marine remains on the tops of mountains or on elevated plains. The stories about these and other islands being hauled up out of the deep possibly had the like origin, viz, myth born from observation.
The Maoris had belief in the existence of huge monsters (taniwha) generally of saurian character and mostly water-dwellers. The geologic remains in New Zealand of the animals called by scientific men Maui-saurus and Taniwha-saurus, would make one believe that the Maori had seen such creatures, but it appears cosmically impossible. The tales are more probably reminiscences of the crocodile in other lands.
page 429There is in tradition one of these pseudo-scientific allusions that can hardly be explained by observation. I allude to the legend that Maui lengthened the days by catching the sun and making him go slower. It is a fact that the days are getting longer and longer. When the moon was thrown off (our teachers tell us) the earth's day was only three hours long, and in some far off future the length of the day and the year will coincide. How the Maoris learnt that at one time, as they say, the sun performed his journey so quickly that after he rose there was no time to get any work done before he set, it is impossible to say; but evidently they did know it. If the legend had its origin in natural observation on an even appreciably shorter day than ours, it must have travelled down the stream of time through periods from which the historian shrinks aghast.
Mingled with these glimpses of truth (if they are glimpses and not accident) there were the dense ignorances and wild guesses at the laws of nature which always accompany the vision of life as seen by primitive peoples. We find the childlike notion of the vault of the sky being sustained by props; that the moon wasted with sickness every month and had to bathe in the waters of life to renew herself; that earthquakes were caused by the god Ru-ai-moko turning over during his sleep in the Under World. The natives held that some trees were male and others female (perhaps a memory of the palm), that only female trees bore fruit, while others, such as kahikatea page 430 and toromiro were barren. The totara, matai and maire trees were in some cases male and in others female.
Mountains are spoken of which had shifted position, such as “Stony Mountain” (Maunga Pohatu) moved from Cape Kidnappers to its present locality. Of course there are stories as to the reasons of the exodus of such hills, and it is gravely related that a quarrel between the active volcano Tongariro and the now extinct volcano Mount Egmont caused the latter to move away from Taupo to Taranaki. Hills were sometimes ceremonially united in marriage, and such a ceremony (tatau pounamu, “The Greenstone Door,” also used at conclusion of a lasting peace) ensured perpetual alliance between the tribes dwelling on, or owning the wedded mountains.
Many of the legends and much of the ancestral teaching had origin in poetry. “The Rainbow” (Uenuku) married “The Mist” (Tairi-a-kohu), but he was unkind to her and she returned to the sky. “Rainbow” set out to find her, but died far away. In the double “Rainbow” (Kahukura) the fainter underneath bow is his wife (Tu-awhiorangi) and their child was “Whirlwind.” “Light Rain” (Hine-wai) was the sister of “Mist.” “The Sun” (Ra) married “Summer” (Hine Raumati) for six months and then married “Winter” (Hine Takurua for six months. Such teachings are scientific on one side, and poetic on the other.
A great monster named Parata, lying in mid-ocean, was to the Maori the cause of the page 431 tides. Inhaling and exhaling the waters of the mighty deep, he dwelt in a far-off home beyond our line of sea and sky. If a vessel went near it was liable to be drawn into the swirling vortex of the down-rushing currents, and hence arose the adage, applied to one in trouble, that he had fallen into “The throat of Te Parata.”. One of the spells used in witchcraft to bring evil upon a person ran thus, “Dreadful by beetling precipices, deep down in Ocean's depths, listen! obey! be quick, and be scattered off to the one side and the other side, that the mighty Parata may go to work. Parata! hear! blow thy irresistible, overwhelming tides strongly to the shore!”3 Parata is often alluded to in ancient legends. When Hina, the sister of Maui, had lost her husband through her brother's cruelty she appealed to the Parata and the Monsters of the ocean.4 The “Arawa” canoe on its famous voyage to New Zealand was nearly lost through the wickedness of one of the passengers provoking another to utter an invocation that carried the vessel into “The mouth of Parata.” Sometimes, however, the expression was used concerning any broken and stormy sea. The idea would seem to be pure myth were it not that in the Samoan and other voyages made by the great navigator Tangiia there is mention of a monstrous whirlpool in the sea, the Fa-fa (Maori, waha?) in which the voyagers were nearly engulphed. The notion may have had its origin in observation of the vast submarine volcanic disturbances which now and then heave up islands near the coast of the Tongan isles.
* Other Polynesians also possessed this point of knowledge. In Hawaii the ancient hymn to Lono (Rongo), which was last sung when they offered adoration to Captain Cook as that deity, ends, “and establish the day of light on the floating earth. Amen.”