MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 September 1938, Page 7

MAORI MEMORIES

—■» IN LIFE AND DEATH. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Maori diseases were few, consumption being the only one noted in our early records. The fact that sickness was a disgrace rather than a misfortune, and evoked but little if any sympathy, caused it to be hidden. To those who suffered it, to the God who gave oranga (health), it was a libel never to be mentioned. Swimming and fishing were their principal summer sports, and though they were truly amphibian in habit, drowning was a common cause of accidental death. Even so it was a reproach, for it implied a want of skill and care. Those who were rescued from the water in an unconscious condition were occasionally restored by being suspended head downward over dense smoke.

The scarcity of food and the labour of procuring it were blessings in disguise. Their main sources of supply were birds, fish, Maori dogs and rats, kumara, rauriki, kiekie, berries, and the soft pith of the young cabbage tree and nikau. One most objectionable feature was their indulgence in the flesh off the mako (shark) made “high” by exposure to sun and air. It is possible that this was a source of disease, though if they had suspected it they would have shunned it as a moral disgrace.

The dead were placed in the fork of a tree to be consumed by birds. The skeleton was purified by rain, wind, and sun. The bones, being regarded as the only immortal part of the body, were then carefully cleansed and buried with due ceremony. They regarded our method of burial to be barbarous and disgraceful, a process which they would not apply to a bird, a dog, or a rat.