MAORI MEMORIES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 April 1938, Page 10

MAORI MEMORIES.

KAKAHU—DRESS. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Concealment had but little objective in the dress of the Maori. Men, by their dress, differed from women only in the manner of fastening the shoulder mat. Women’s mats were fastened on the left shoulder, men’s on the right, giving freedom in the use of his weapons. In all civilised countries men’s buttons are on the right and women on the left. Is this an inheritance from savage conditions? From the similarity of their dress, strangers could not readily tell men from women. With us this might on occasion be embarrassing; but, with the Maori, whose very name means “Natural,” everything of interest in life was shared equally. Their dress was not suited for labour, so by undoing a single knot or a wooden pin, they could readily conform to the Irish waiter’s idea that ladies of fashion “strip for dinner.” To work or fight, all alike threw their only garment aside. Flax, dressed to fine fibre by a pipi shell, feathers of land and sea birds, and dog skins were their only materials. Mats laced with Kiwi feathers were reserved for the Ariki (high priest), those adorned with the rainbow plumes of the Kereru (wood pigeon) were the sole right of women of rank. A dozen kinds of mats were hand woven from finely dressed flax. The Kaitaka was the softest and most highly prized. To weave it occupied one person for nearly a year. The Korowai was six feet square, smooth inside, with strings stained black with hinau bark dangling on the outside. The mat named Taupo has dyed flex leaves an inch wide and seven inches long on the outside to shed the rain. The Kotikoti has twister spirals of flax hardened by heat, which rattle when walking. Mat making was women’s work, and a few pegs her only machinery.