SPECIAL ARTICLE

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18365, 24 April 1925, Page 17

SPECIAL ARTICLE

£HE TYRANNY OF PAGINATION. I—THE TAPU. ' (sPECIALtr WRITTEN FOR "THT PRESS."} (Br J- Macmilla-v Brown, LL.D.) Imagination at Once a Beneficent and a Sinister Faculty. We are accustomed to think of imagination as the faculty that makes art 'ereat and acts as the torch-bearer of , j e ience, wholly to the benefit of manvjjjj; Without it poetry might exist; w it would be the vapid medium of music and nothing more; prose would * sever rise above the commonplace recorder of facts or echo of thought. Without it the arts would never have advanced beyond childish and prosaic (implicit}". No age has risen above the common level unless it has been at its tilth and inspired its growth. It is the creator, the illuminator, the liberator of {bought and life. It has enabled the * 'lnman mind to span infinities and define jnd people the countless universes. And in these modern times science would lave been the slave of accumulated facts and observations had. imagination Hot lit the torch of hypotheses ahead of ,jt. Stumbling in the darkness of the jonknown and unknowable man would Jbave remained true cousin of the ape "rlmt for its ever-developing guidance.! "(The mention of its name summons up fcefore us the limitless services it has ,done him. How blindly he would have "groped towards the light, through biljjions of years had this faculty been left * So surely and long has it been the ' benefactor and nurse of hnman life that Jt seems blasphemy to speak of it as a curse. Yet we have only to turn to the Jife of primitive peoples which has been in thejast century or so illuminated by to see how cruelly it clamps 'lhe fetters on human thought and life k J low deeply its illusions cut into. the ' lWimitive heart, what horrors and torj lures it conjures up to harass and scare the childhood of the world. How snail- ,, 'plow has been our pace in getting rid of ,the shadows it has cast and continues to / over the soul, in breaking the chains it has welded round our faculties • heart! ' In anyone wishes to see its sinister 'power over primitive man, let him look into the 10th Bulletin of .the Dominion which gives a full and _/de'tailod account of Maori Eeligion and Mythology by that finest of Maori 'scholars, Mr Elsdon Best, or, still better, the two' comprehensive volumes by *}iim on the Maori, published recently 'by, the Board of Maori Ethnological Research. He has the most intimate , ( 'nnd often personal knowledge of the s Jifo and customs of this most int'erest- , - ing of Pacific Ocean peoples. As one '' reads on through the thousand pages i "of this book he feels the fullest con'fldence in his guidance into the recesses * t pf the Native soul, and would not , .'have it shortened. His long study of Utlie Natives of the north-east of the v JNortk Island at first hand, and his full /Acquaintance with all the literature of Maori give us a chart of their culitjturo that nothing can easily supersede. |" Bo Capable a People as the Polynesians I had the Soul Crushed in its Snake-like 1 "'..;... C0i15.;.., ;. And as one travels through the biazes of their • illusions and supeTptitions it strikes the heart to stone to see how this race of such bright intelligence and high ideals of chivalry nnd courage should have so inextricably entangled and fettered its thought and life-energy. There nre sporadic signs of a desire to liberate itself from its trammels, and even of attempts to grope towards the light; but they are o strangled almost at their birth by the i power and astuteness of priestcraft. the same struggle towards freedom o-of the soul was going on amongst their I Sjtin scattered over,the Pacific with the Ijißanie infinitesimal result. It would JSJnave taken them thousands, if not tens ijfrSof thousands, of years, isolated as they fswere from the developments of the rest ! k of mankind, to get their heads far fgjenough above the surge of superstition 3|£to draw in a breath of reality and ig/truth. fpevised and Strengthened by Every %■ Immigration Into Hawaiki, Tapu :|P Became the Foundation of their s|'. Power. ■ ✓

11 < The system of tapu had its uses; it If was the substitute for law, and enabled sort of social organisation to without fear of descent into - 'anarchy. But it prohibited all freedom tflf energy or development. It had its "'network of roots matted around all the i i vital organs of man. It must have q come into the Pacific with the first ; immigrants, the basis of all their bej lief and spiritual life, and though there for thousands of t years, every new band of immigrant used it and modified it to " S establish their power, and forged out Vof it new chains to fetter the human ';60ul; as it existed when Europeans first 4'. pushed their way into the great ocean, & it bears the marks of deliberate stratifies eation. But those marks are much the ft same through all the wide area of Polyffnesia; and this identity indicates that Itall these revisions and additions to the itapu system must have taken place in lone centre before the original social ||umty was broken up and its successive H waves of emigration had begun to make lyor the four points of the compass in 2%he search for new lands to settle ori\ irtthiß must have been the fatherland, Stalled by most of the branches of the Prace Hawaiki, doubtless a large island *: 3 *r archipelago in the central Pacific, the migrations could ray out necessity urged, and as their fuglef&uen or scouts indicated new islands 4*«ady for settlement. Most. probably 4 in their new lands they would find or *„ be joined by other migrants, who modi I fied the spiritual svstem they brought the central home. But there is V.too little modification of tauu in the 5' various groups to demand much of this , alien influence or to allow of Hawaiki '"''/ being placed far from the. -central f/Pacific. r-*" 5 Ike System Oppressed Woman: She ft ' Was Pollution. ""1 One of the most striking phases of hiSu Bystem is the depressing influence "?it had on the position of woman in j>,«>fl*y Polynesian group. She is everyijjjflere the polluting influence that deBacrednesa, especially the sacredISjfcess of man and masculine employments vaadd possessions. Even the turuma or plafrine approaches nearer to sacredness s!*haa she; it enters into some of the ffoinwt sacrosanct rites of men and especially, of warriors. Woman enters into llptes: ehiefly as a tapu-breaker; she is |@f|ieh a fountain of pollution that the |||koipa,who are enforcing the tapu clear her approach. Whenever men, Ijlpfy; for" example, warriors returning fflP tl pB the strife, are so infected with that they dare not touch maPI, person or thing without spreading and would die of starvathere were no fork for them to to their mouths, it is destroys the infection; when a

new house has been built, it is so sacred that no one dare enter it till a woman has entered and destroyed its sanctity W scaring off the gods by her pollution ; when a new canoe is building she must not approach, else the gods will abandon the builders. At the crises in. her life she is steeped in desecration, tor blood which is essentially tapu flows; everything that approaches her during menstruation is polluted beyond cleansing, and from the menstrual cloth cacodaemous originate; and a special hut is erected for her when a child is to be born, and after the event it is burned to the ground. In Hawaiki it must have been the rule that no woman dare sit down with the men of her household, even her youthful son, to take food. Some modification of this t;ipu was achieved amongst- the Maoris and the Easter Islanders. But to this day" in Pitcairn Tsland, the women have to wait for meals till the men have done; though both have British and Tahitian blood in their veins, it is the Tahitian tapu that prevails. _ With One or More of the Later Masculine Immigrations Must have come Women. The difference of the two sexes in relation to the gods is explained by a myth which is generally the effort of the imagination to conceal an insoluble mystery. Tane, the god of procreation, toc/k a portion of the body of the Earth-mother and, moulding it into a female like himself, breathed into it the breach of life. Woman is thus of the earth, earthy, whilst man camo from thevgods. But in reconciling contradictions and explaining a mystery, a myth generally lands in more mystery and contradictions. This acknowledges that the vital organs and the soul of the woman came from Io the Supreme, and that man is born of the earthformed woman. If one looks at the violent differentiation of the two sexes from the point of view of history and anthropology, the only natural explanation that can be given is that the woman belonged to a conquered race; man was the immigrant conqueror. There is every indication that the household in Polynesia belongs to the aboriginal element; all its arts belong to the old stone age, absence of pottery, of spindle and distaff and loom, and the persistence of the most ancient and most difficult method of making fire, the flreplough. This takes it back ten or twelve thousand years, and that leaves plenty of time for the palaeolithic stepping-stones to have sunk in an ocean so mobile-bottomed as the Pacific and for numerous migrations of warriors and seamen to push into-the isolated and unknown regions of the great ocean. '

It is possible that one or other of these masculine expeditions brought a few women with them; for there are a few exceptions to the absolute depression of Polynesian woman in regard to men and gods. Some women of the ariki or aristocratic class were tapu, as for example the puhi and the tnpairu. The first-born daughter of a high-born chief was selected: to be puhi or virgin of a community, and held in the highest respect by all. She had a special house set apart for her and her retinue. As the noblest of the noble and the fairest of the fair she was the tapairu or treasure of the tribe. She was exempted from all the heavy labour that women had \usually to dd. Over her after her selection the aristocratic rite of baptism or tohi was performed. The elders watched over her to allow no lapse from virtue, and looked all round amongst the numerous suitors to find the best of husbands for her. And when a woman had to take part in a, ceremony, especially for the removal of tapu from a new house or new canoe or a returning band of warriors, it was she was selected for the duty. She was tapu, and the place where she slept was tapu, and like any tapu high-born man she ate in, solitary dignity. . ■'■":',■.,'.'..

Human Sacrittce. : '\ ■ And at certain great occasions in her life, such - as the tattooing of her lips and chin or the piercing of her ears for pendants, there occurred great ceremonies with the usual feasts. These were some of the rare occasions when a human sacrifice was made; the Maoris and Samoans were two of the Polynesian peoples that had been through the ages reducing the number of occasions f human sacrifice. One has only to look into the religion of the Marquesas to see how much this meant. There occur scores of times in the year in that group ceremonies which were not com? plete without several human victims. Of course they were most needed in the ceremonial before war; but they were also needed to break a drought or make the land fertile; to consecrate a new canoe or house or a coffin for a chief, chief ess, or priest, or a new tomb or for a feast; they •were needed when a chief was ill or a chief or priest had died, and even on more trivial occasions, as when a chief set out on a journey! or had his head shaved, or put an end to a tapu or bathed, or when his son was tattooed or his daughter had her ears bored. When the victims were brought to the altar they were thrown down before the priest and two fishhooks were fastened to their lips and drawn tight, and in baskets hung on their arms was bait to entice their relatives, who lay in their houses prostrate, their heads covered, quivering with terror lest they too should be haled to the altar. But even in this of everlasting slaughter there was a sign of shrinking from the holocaust 7 a turtle occasionally took the place of the human victim. But the priest stood in the way; for he, as the mouthpiece of his god, had the nomination of the victims, and doubtless he would take care to name his enemies and critics. What an omnipotent instrument was this for establishing a limitless tyranny!

A Few Highcaste JWomen Would Emphasise the Depression of their Aboriginal Sisters.

But even in this Polynesian slaughterhouse a woman of high rank, a chief ess, was the comrade and instigator of the priestly butcher. In every part of Polynesia there were indications of some emancipation of highborn women from the tyranny of tapu. There are a few relics of the matrilineal system apparent amidst the dominance of primogeniture in Polynesia; but these occur amongst the aristocrats, and are not likely to be the remains of motherdescent amongst the subdued. They probaibly indicate that on© or more of the later masculine conquering immigrations had a few women on their canoes when they arrived at the Polynesian fatherland. Otherwise primogeniture and the tapu system, the sure marks of a masterful aristocracy, quarantined from all alien influence, would have shown no tendency to concession of a higher position to woman. Such a feminine infiltration amongst the conquerors is almost a prerequisite for esDlaining the long continuance of the abasemlnt of Polynesian woman; eke some of the half-caste daughters of the subiect women would have managed to eainsuch power over their husbands and brothers and sons as would, enable them to raise the status of their sex.

The Negroid Features in Soma Polynesians Must have come in with the Later Conqjierors. It by no means assisted them in any effort they made to change their posi- £ that some of the. conquering, imSants brought negroid Wood in the.r S having crossed with Papuasian* or Melanesians. We may be quite sure that sporadic flat nose and thick hps amongst the Polynesians did not come f£m the conquered aboriginals. No Mode would, ever try to mould the feaK of then- babies bto the shape of SS' of their subjects; the ideal of baautv that a race develops takes .ite cut f?om the aristocrate and warnore,

and not from the subdued or abject. And it is a universal custom in Polynesia to massage down the nostrils of the Gaiby as soon as it is born into the fashionable negroid flatness, so incongruous in adult lite with the straight or Koman bridge of the Caucasoid feature. I remember well a Samoan carpenter remarking to a knot of European men and women who were watching him work: "You Europeans would be handsome people if it wera not for your canoe noses.''

A Blond Element in Polynesia, even Amongst the Conquerors.

And alongside of the negroid features so apparent amongst the Polynesians there is manifest a blond element which absolutely conflicts with negroid ancestry. Wherever I have gone throughout Polynesia not merely are the existence of blonds recognised in the Urukehu, but there is manifest in the dark often wavy locks of others, a brown tinge especially when the sun shines through them. And I have tphotographed babies with golden curls in the more easterly islands of Melanesia, especially in Tanua and .Omba, of the New Hebrides. Even without such salient evidences. we would have signs of a white element in the custom of blanching aristocratic young women by keeping them out of the sun and giving a light tinge to the hair by means of lime; and this indicates that there were blond heads ami light skins in at least one of the war-rior-immigrations into the fatherland. In the same direction points the high valuation set upon a blond child by the Maoris: amongst Angas's illustrations of New Zealand painted by him in the 'forties of last century, there is one of a Maori family near Taupo with a beautiful red-cheeked, white-skinned blond-curled boy; he was not an albino, a fact that is clearly manifest in the portrait; and the district was then far from the intrusion of Europeans. These blond children were treasured as superior to the darker complexioned, a clear evidence that blondism came in with a conquering immigration. A Still Stronger Blond Element Amongst the Subdued. But there is as strong evidence that there was an even more dominant blondism in the a-boriignals who were defeated and subued. In Mangaia, anv blond children that were born were sacrificed to Tangaroa, the god of the sea, who was probably a leader, and afterwards deity of the palseolitihic immigration into the Pacific. But in the much-forested large islands of the more extensive Archipelagoes like Hawaii and New Zealand, where there are natural inland refuges for defeated peoples', there are constant reports of blond fairies, who are seen only at night or in mist, but have distinctive human characteristics, like love of greenstone jewels, fear of ochre, love of singing, night-raiding to the sea coast for fish, skill in wpod-carving or in great-stone work and occasional crossing with the conquering newcomers that mark them out as , human, though transformed by fear and imagination into .supernatural beings. According to the tohungas of the Ngatimaniapoto tribe it is the tradition that these fair-skinned, blond-haired PatuDaiarehe belonged to the primeval homeland Hawaiki. And in the Hawaiian Islands the blond-haired were not retained about court but were set to menial tasks such as making earthovens and cooking food, though the kea or very light-skinned were favourites.

Mataora's Descent into the Underworld after his Blond Wife Indicates Strong Blondism in Palaeolithic Hawaiki.

A still clearer indication of blondism in the aboriginals of the father- k land is the tale of Mataora, who introduced tattooing. He was asleep when a party of : handsome young Turehu maidens from the underworld camo across him and thought him supernatural. He awoke and fell in love with their leader.. Niwareka, the most beautiful of - all,.these, blond young women. They married; but he became jealous and beat her and she fled back to her own folk. Forlorn he followed down, [ down .till he came upon the home of her (father, Uetonga, who was tattooing some one with much loss of blood. The stranger protested, and the artist drew his hand across Mataora's face and (wiped off at one stroke all the paint and its decorations. The victim begged to have it replaced.in the manner of the strange land. And as he lay pained .under the puncturing tool, his blood freely/flowing, he sang a love song of Niwareka to relieve the pain; her younger Bister ran off to tell her how her name was brought into the song of the stranger.' She approached and mutual recognition and reconciliation followed. They tried to persuade him to remain, as the upper world was so full of evil, but he would return and take his wife with him, promising not to repeat what he had done to hW before. This story of an unsophisticated people with white skin and blond hair who lived on uncooked food in a realm that the Polynesians were, unfamiliar with and counted supernatural, if it haa~any historical significance, means that Hawaiki, the homeland and the underworld, was largely peopled with such blond natives, who taught' their conquerors how to render permanent the painted designs on their faces. The masterful immigrants seized their finest women and kept them debased by the tapu and indignities, even though amongst the stranger warriors may haye been women of the same fair skin and hair.