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Chapter III. Mental Characteristics and Propensities.

Only a very general idea can be given here of the mental character of the Maori, because the subject naturally diverges into accounts of habits and customs which require special chapters for their elucidation. Premising that digressions will be frequent, we will here attempt to point out the salient points of the native intellect and morals. We will take the good first and the evil afterwards.

They were an exceedingly good tempered and sociable people, liking to be in company and arranging their homes in communities. The solitary settler living willingly as an outpost of civilization or the “hatter” miner working alone in some desert locality would not be understood by the Maori. Of course the prevalence of war had something to do with this matter; it was only in his fortified pa and surrounded by his fellows that he felt safe. Nevertheless, without such motive, to dwell isolated and alone was to be opposed to the genius of the race. They were a very industrious people, and much of their work page 29 demanded common labour. During the day the men went to their cultivations, to sea-fishing, to building houses, felling trees, digging fern-root, making weapons, paddles, axes, ropes, fence posts, figure heads of canoes, etc. The women prepared food, brought firewood, wove mats and baskets, and worked in cultivations. The chiefs worked side by side with the slaves, the highly born woman with her attendants, but the higher in rank they were, the more they were expected to excel through having had better instruction.

Maoris were in their own way exceedingly courteous and polite. Chiefs and women of rank were spoken to in a respectful and ceremonious manner, and it was considered a mark of inferior breeding to be rude in either speech or bearing. Guests were received with the sound of trumpets and music of songs, and if unexpected were never asked the reason of their coming; they were supposed to impart the information when they thought proper. A visitor would never be contradicted, but his statements were acquiesced in even when known to be wrong. The chiefs of the village would take inferior places before a guest and sit down humbly to show them respect, while the comfort of the visitors received every attention, and they would be loaded with presents of food on their departure. A guest entering a village would not stare about him or greet acquaintances, he would look straight before him as if unconscious of bystanders until he had been asked to sit down in the “guest house.” After page 30 food had been brought and eaten, the chiefs of the place would come and salute the stranger. Even among men of their own tribe idle questions were seldom asked, and generally when such a question appeared to have no bearing on the subject, it was because the process of thought going on in the enquirer's mind was not understood. An evasive or non-committal answer would probably be given. It was considered boorish to pass in front of another person without saying “Allow me” and it was exceedingly rude to step over the legs of a person lying down, or to jump over him. They said “grace before meat.” In fact there were a hundred points of minute etiquette (to be further alluded to) which had to be observed by any man or woman wishing themselves to be considered as well-bred.

They helped one another very generously; in fact the communal system, which has many disadvantages from the point of view of an imperfect civilization, has the evident value of making mutual assistance so general as to be almost incredible to a European. Cheerful, willing, unselfish, and unstinted service was yielded as a necessity common as air. This was apparent in the hospitality above mentioned shown to guests, but this hospitality was sometimes of so noble a character as to rise from a mere household service into the dignity of a great virtue. We may instance the case of the chief who, finding that his guests were the murderers of his own children, yet desired that his visitors might remain to consume the food that had been page 31 already prepared for them,¹ or the poor widow who, when serving up the whole of the supply of food that she had hoped would last her through the winter, used artifice to assure a large party of unexpected guests that she had plentiful supplies, lest they should be diffident in consuming the repast. This is not mere hospitality, but courtesy carried to exaltation.

The Maoris loved children and thoroughly spoilt them, allowing them a latitude and freedom not permitted to European children. This also was a part of the communal system; any woman's child was every woman's child, and if she did not nurse her own exclusively she was nursing the child of one who was paying her the same compliment. The men were just as fond of children as the women, and an old man (if not a chief) might be seen toiling all day at his work with his little grandchild strapped on his back. If the youths or young girls were interfered with by what they considered too strained an attempt at parental authority they would be apt to betake themselves to relatives at a distance and perhaps be absent for years, but any attempt to curb the independence of the young would be thought likely to break the proud spirit or spoil its courage. The first duty of a parent was to inculcate fearless energy of thought and action. Therefore a father would seldom chastise a boy lest he himself should be punished by other men, for children were tribal property, and it was important that the future warriors and warriors' page 32 wives should grow up as bold and headstrong as they pleased. Hence arose a very unfilial bent of mind and love of parents was extremely attenuated.

The natives were splendid actors, perfectly able to simulate anger, sorrow, indifference, etc., in an admirable manner. The young especially were perfect mimics, and could by a gesture or tone of voice convey the idea of the person they imitated so as to convulse their audience with laughter. Every effort was taken in relating a tale to bring its verisimilitude to the ears of the listener, the dog wagging its tail, the bird moving its wings, the vanquished running away, all would be rendered by an effective movement of the body and limbs that made the recital wonderfully individual and realistic. With the Maori, strength and courage were the prime virtues of a man, and volumes might be written to show examples of their possessing these virtues in high degree, and of the enthusiasm they inspired. Almost the whole of this volume relates to beliefs that only fearless souls would dare to hold, to actions that only dauntless physical courage would attempt, and to feats of skill and strength that only trained warriors could accomplish. They were very faithful partisans although with little sense of abstract justice, and they would often stand by their code of family or tribal bondship, when it meant not only loss of their possessions, but their lives. They had a great notion of a code of honour as applicable to chiefs, that is to all free-born gentlemen, but their page 33 leaders had to observe in a tenfold degree the motto of “Noblesse oblige.” A High Chief's conduct had to be “straight” (tika) and justified by their ideas as to the behaviour of a great noble; if the reverse was the case bloodshed would almost certainly follow. Not the shedding of the blood of the offender perhaps, but a blood-sacrifice from somebody. Public opinion had to be recognised on such matters, and there were certain occasions when the resentment of a tribe against ill-conduct on the part of a person of eminence could make itself felt in a very painful degree. Women had a high place among them, and certainly justified the confidence and protection they received.

This sketch of the bright side of the Maori character would be incomplete without some reference to the adaptability of his mind and power of his perceptive faculties. He was without doubt a highly educated person, although he had never seen a book. The civilized man may have equal or superior mental powers to those once possessed by the Maori, but these powers have been specialised by the division of labour till the “all round” man has disappeared. We are dependent one upon the other for food, clothes, dwellings, necessities, luxuries, but the individual man able to do everything for himself and do it admirably is rare indeed. Almost any of us, set down in an island covered with forest, naked, alone, told to make his tools from blocks of stone at his feet, and then with such tools to fell trees, build houses, make boats, page 34 weapons, carvings, ornaments, etc., or die, would think such a task almost impossible. If to these be added the arts of weaving, dyeing, cultivating the soil, catching fish, birds, getting firewood, he would humbly acknowledge his shortcomings and yield to despair. But to the Maori of old these things were only part of his training. He studied astronomy that he might get steering-points at night for his canoe, and time-points for his cultivations. He observed the blossoming of plants, the mating of birds, the spawning and migration of fishes. His mind was stored with religious laws, with ancient hymns and spells, with histories of his ancestors in the remote past, and knowledge of his tribe in the active present to the remotest cousin on whom he could call in time of war. He knew by heart every boundary of his land, by name every headland of the coast and bend of a river, he was poet, orator, warrior, seaman, fisherman, cultivator, sculptor, ropemaker, weapon-maker, house-builder, and these things were done with excellence; no flimsy slip-shod work was to be found; patience, industry, skill, and artistic effort were lavished unstintingly. Surely such a man was “educated,” not in our sense, perhaps, but then in his eyes our “education” would be looked upon as eminently unsatisfactory, as training only one side of character, and perhaps no side at all of usefulness.

This then is what can be said in favour of the Maori, viz, that he was brave, strong of will, true to friends, hospitable, industrious, courteous, kind to women and children, helpful page 35 to his mates, skilled in observation, and with the sense to turn his perceptive faculties to useful purposes.

Now for the reverse side of the picture. The Maoris were exceedingly revengeful and would carry on a vendetta for generations, as fierce at the last as at the first. They were cruel in the extreme, as we consider cruelty, especially in regard to the vanquished in battle, although perhaps the annals of cities stormed in European wars would almost equal the records of the deeds of the natives in atrocity. Still cannibalism always makes Maori conquest appear peculiarly brutal to us. The torture of war-prisoners was however a thing that was almost unknown among them before the baser sort of Europeans (convicts, deserters, etc.) were adopted among the tribes, and then the practice grew almost fiendish. Formerly the prisoner was knocked on the head or speared for the oven, and there an end, unless kept as a slave. The Maoris were cruel too to their old people, and the sick; these often died of neglect and want of food, a strange anomaly among a race so lavish of hospitality. It was a strange proof also of how the lust of war and the heartlessness thereby engendered could warp the character when the child-loving, baby-nursing Maori could enjoy a cannibal feast on the dismembered limbs of infants. That it was the child of an enemy was sufficient to break down the barriers of all tenderness, and flood the soul with bestial enjoyment. Lying and falsehood were not counted things to be page 36 ashamed of, and even in fun they would deceive each other cruelly. The great chiefs were too proud generally to speak anything but the truth, yet even they for political or warlike purposes were led to prevaricate and use treachery. Clever lying was appreciated by the masses as characteristic of their heroes, just as it was among the demigods of Homer, and “Maui the Crafty” was admired by the Maori as fully as was “Ulysses the Cunning” by the Hellenes. Of course opinions differed even as to the merits of good lying, and tribes were celebrated sometimes as being perjured or truth-tellers. Thus it was equivalent to saying “You are a liar” if one said “You belong to the Arawa canoe,” while on the other hand the motto of the tribe of Ngati-Awa was “Rauru-ki-tahi,” “One-worded Rauru,” signifying single speech or good faith.

What we should consider great indecency of speech was common, but it was practised openly and offended no one; they spoke freely of natural actions and necessities which we have agreed to ignore, but it did not destroy real modesty in their women as many an anecdote and story can be cited to prove. Boys and girls were brought up in company, sleeping and bathing together with the utmost freedom of conduct, yet there was little immorality induced by this practice; what unchastity existed among the unmarried was rather the result of social license centuries old, and public opinion on the subject, than on account of propinquity in domestic arrangements. They abhorred incest and other page 37 crimes well known to the vicious in large centres, but which had not even a name among these children of nature. If a Maori girl when unmarried was lavish of her favours, she afterwards set aside loose behaviour as a childish folly, and adultery, often punished with death, was at least as uncommon as among ourselves. Maori unchastity like Maori cruelty increased with the acquirement of low vices from those who should have taught them better things.

Wounded vanity was the cause of much trouble. Ridicule was sometimes keenly felt, and a rebuke given by husband or father has ended in the suicide of the person reproached. They were often on the look-out for an insult and, so countless were the opportunities offered by the breaking of ceremonial laws or ancient customs, by innocent speeches that could be twisted into allusions about some past tribal defeat or some chief's conduct, that offence was almost sure to be taken and bloodshed to follow. It was difficult to walk unharmed among the pitfalls presented by the malign side of the Maori character or to escape when a crafty, lying, cruel and bloodthirsty warrior allowed his evil passions to obliterate for awhile his many social virtues and usual sunny good temper.