MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 May 1939, Page 9

MAORI MEMORIES

BELIEF IN MURU. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Without a thought or a care for its eventual effect upon other tribes, or the comparatively few pioneer pakehas, small traders supplied the local tribe with guns and “socks” of powder, that being then the standard measure. When the demand was satisfied, the next requirement was any kind of metal which with infinite patience could be rubbed with a stone to produce a Kokoti (cutter), by which they hoped in time to become the equal or the superior of the newcomers, both in war and industry. Now they realised for the first time that they could apply and enforce their two great laws upon the white men, as they had done with their own people for centuries untold —Tapu- (sacred or forbidden) and Muru (confiscation or robbery).

The Maori had such implicit faith in Tapu, which by a touch and a word could be applied by an Ariki or Tohunga, that if it was disregarded even unintentionally, the offender’s spirit was so broken that he died without any other apparent cause. Muru was like our laws of damages or compensation; but more easily applied and more, effective because it was in those early days so implicitly believed in.

Its measure of application seemed strange to us. If an accident happened to a child, the father would be deprived of much property. In the very rare case of an unfaithful wife her male intruder would be plundered by his own people; not by hers. To resist the law of Muru was looked upon as mean and disgraceful, and would actually deprive the person doing so from this privilege of robbing his neighbour for any future offence. To undergo the “honour” of thus being robbed is the last thing a Pakeha can understand or endure.