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The Pa Maori

Tahitian Strongholds

Tahitian Strongholds

In describing war customs of the Tahitians, Ellis says:—"Their places of defence were rocky fortresses improved by art, narrow defiles, or valleys sheltered by projecting eminences. … Sometimes they cut down trees and built a kind of stage or platform, called pafata, projecting over an avenue leading to the place of refuge. Upon this they collected piles of stones and fragments of rock, which they hurled down on those by whom they were attacked. page 420In some of the Hervey Islands they planted trees around their places of encampment, and thus rendered them secure against surprise. These enclosures they called pa, the term which is used to designate a fort in the Sandwich Islands.

"If those who had been routed on the field of battle were allowed by their pursuers time to wall up the entrances of their places of refuge, they were seldom exposed to assault."

These were natural fortresses, with sometimes a wall built across a gulch or pass. Purely artificial fortifications do not appear to have been numerous in Eastern Polynesia, and Ellis remarks that the best specimen was probably the one at Maeva, in Huahine, of which he says: "Being a square of about half a mile on each side, it encloses many acres of ground well stocked with breadfruit, containing several springs, etc. … The walls are of solid stone work, in height 12 ft. They are even and regularly paved at the top. On the top of the walls (which in some places were 10 ft. or 12 ft. thick), the warriors kept watch and slept. Their houses were built within. … There were four principal openings in the wall, at regular dis¬tances from each other … [which] during a siege were built up with loose stones."

Miss Henry, in writing of the Tahitians, remarks:—"Their forti¬fications were intricately made of stones and earth heaped over boughs of trees." It is, however, clear that our pa of Maoriland was not a Tahitian institution.