MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 September 1938, Page 3

MAORI MEMORIES

ORANGA (Health). (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Physically the Maori was a lesson in fitness, an analysis of which by practical men should have been an invaluable lesson to the whole world. Symptoms of illness were rare indeed, and health of the body, while it no doubt was the cause of a healthy mind, was regarded as the greater virtue. To be unwell was a greater disgrace than any criminal act. The indulgence in our too familiar custom of “organ recitals” as a means of conversation was of course strictly Tapu (forbidden). Their universal health was not really the result of any virtue, but to the actual scarcity of food, and the physical effort needed to procure it. Healthy abstinence was thus a compulsory condition. Clothing, or rather lack of it, was another factor. Both men and women wore but one garment in summer, a Kaitaka or a kilt of suspended cords, witli a shoulder mat in winter. After rain had 'washed the outer side and, the sun or wind had dried it, the mat was reversed. This was also done after work, play, or exercise had produced perspiration. Their washing and mangling were the work of the weather. Exercise was universal. Hunting birds, fishing, clijnbing for berries, digging fernroot, gathering firewood, hewing trees with stone axes to build canoes. When these were not available, they indulged in strenuous games and even in conversation, or public address, or even in walking the hips were twisted at every step. Their teeth were sound and white til! death. Among a thousand skulls not a tooth was missing. In as many Pakehas none was sound.