Investigation into the Past of Maoris.

Maori Record : a journal devoted to the advancement of the Maori people, Volume I, Issue 1, 7 November 1904, Page 2

Investigation into the Past of Maoris.

We hope to provide an opportunity for all investigators, European and Maori, to meet in literary discussion on the many matters touching- the origin, emigrations, and ancient days of the Maori Race. To initiate such discussion, in order that definite ends may be arrived at, we have been permitted to publish in serial form an entirely new work, never before printed. The serial rights are entirely confined to this paper, and the copyright is held by Mr. R. S. Thompson, the author. The following is an introductory chapter of The Maori: His Origin and Destiny, It was usual in by-gone days for the author of a poem to head his work, and even his chapters, with an account of the following contents of his writing, and this he called “ The Argument.” A similar operation will be essayed in the present chapter. The Maori is of Caucasic origin, and being of our race is deserving of all that can be done for him, thus guiding the destiny of a brother long alienated from the family, but now recovered. The question of an Indo-African Continent, to replace the Lemuria it has superseded, in the established theories of scientists, will be dealt with in future chapters. It is sufficient to indicate that Professor Keane, one of the most eminent ethnologists of the day, places the cradle of the Caucasic Race, to which we belong, in Northern Africa, in the situation where the Sahara Desert occupies the place of a wonderfully pleasant country of most remote times. From thence, in families and groups, the race was distributed in the old and new stone ages throughout Europe and the greater part of Asia, besides leaving a large residue in Northern Africa. There are three large groups of the Caucasic Race : The Northern European, the great predominant race of the day, light of hair and florid of complexion ; the Southern European, sallow of skin, of dark hair and smaller stature than the first; and the Alpine section, like the first, of large stature, brown wavy hair, and fresh complexion. The first, in the stone ages, settled in the north and south-western parts of Europe ; the second on the shores of the Mediterranean and in Western Asia; and the last in the hill countries of both Europe and Asia. In the neolithic age, at

the time of the Dolmen-builders, a great wave of migration of the Caucasic Race took place and left its imperishable records, in polished stone weapons deposited in the soil, now far beneath the surface. Right across Asia went this wonderful trek, occupying probably many thousands of years, till it reached Japan, where the Hairy Ainu are its representatives of to-day. A feature which distinctly stamps upon physical man his Caucasic origin is the luxuriant beard. Southward from Siberia went the long migration, when the East ceased calling as the farthest had been reached. But no race or nation surmounted the stupendous range of the Himalaya Mountains, all broke and scattered to right or left. India was possibly first peopled by a negroid people, but the first traditions record two dark people struggling for mastery. The one, the Kclarians, entered India by the north-east passes. They w : ere of Mongoloid race, diminutive stature and repulsive appearance. The others were the Dravidians, who entered India by the north-west passes, appear to have met the other tide of invasion in the Central India, when the weaker Kqlarians were driven to the hills. But as they struggled they fought over the forgotten graves of a race who fought with iron weapons and wore gold and copper ornaments. And beneath these again are found, as far the depths of the central provinces, the polished weapons of an older people of the new stone age. In vain is the recording soil of the Malay Peninsula searched for similar weapons, fashioned as are those of Europe. The most that can be discovered denoting the presence of men of the stone age are rudely clipped flints of paleolithic times, supposed to be arrow and axe-heads. Where are the descendants of the men who left their weapons in India as tokens of their presence? In the Nilgheri Hills live the tribe of the Sadas, stalwart and heavily bearded, who carry on still the pursuit of herdsmen, which they followed when ranging the steppes of Central Asia, before they entered the north-west passes and arrived in India. At first glance it might be supposed that the Maori Polynesians are descendants of the neolithic people of India and kin to the Todas, who claim to be autochthonous. That claim cannot be allowed, but it may be excused, bebecause no nation of the old world is found whose traditions reach back to the new stone age with news of the condition of the people. But granting that the Todas are the descendants of the Caucasic people who left the polished weapons denoting their presence, they are not of the same race as the Maoris, not only on account of difference in customs, but also by reason of the fact that, whilst the Maori Polynesian is of the fairhaired fresh complexioned Alpine section, the Todas, and also the Ainus, are of the South European, dark, sallow complexioned group. Any claim made that the Maoris had their origin in India, or indeed made long sojourn there, can only be substantiated by tracing the Polynesian to the Mongol stock from which India was peopled. And the

Maori lacks the oblique eye, and the extra fold in the lid, which in the Mongol almost makes an extra lid. The hair of the Mongol is straight, black, and of round transverse section, which qualities reach their highest development in the Japanese. In the purest Maori Polynesian type the section of the hair approaches the oval shape of the pure Caucasic stock, whilst the hair of the negro is almost fiat in section. Later we shall find the Maori Polynesian mixing with the Oceanic negro, the Papuan fuzzy-wuzzy, and alliance with those has, in some sections, frizzled his hair and darkened his skin. As regards colour —the subcutaneous matter which colours the negro skin black is found in fair nations also, only it is more highly developed in the negro. Intense heat in a moist climate will promote the colouring, and a people of one nation living on a plain will be darker than their neighbours of the same nation living in higher altitudes. It has been said, and quite lately, to account for the neolithic Maori coming from India, that the latter country is of low metallic production. But the fact is that almost all the metals are found in India—iron is plentiful in many provinces, and the remaints of ancient smelting furnaces are thought to be the oldest in the world. In respect of the Dravidians, it has never been claimed that these dark, bearded people are akin to the Maori, although it is thought they took the boomerang, their national weapon, to Australia. One of their most ancient singers of the derring-do of his ancestors, who describes their struggles with the lordly Aryans, speaks of the former as fierce and swift, and in complexion “ like a dark blue cloud.” As for the Aryans, they speak an inflectional language of far higher development than the modified agglutinative language the Maori now speaks, which had its origin in Central Asia. The term Aryan is philological and not ethnological. The Dravidians also speak an agglutinative language of a type quite unique. How then did the Maori Polynesian reach the sea in neolithic times ? —for we cannot allow that the Maoris’ ancestors ever fought with iron weapons. The warrior people who would send from the Eastern Pacific a member of the tribe back to Hawaiiki, to fetch a little wooden god, or an incantation, would surely traverse those thousands of miles of ocean to fetch iron for weapons had they ever used such a metal. Shortly, it is believed that the Maori Polynesians came from the north-west, but that they never crossed the Hindu Kush or the Sulieman Range into India, although straggling tribes may have crossed the Indus at the mouth, for Patala is a very suggestive name. Judging from the names of places west of the Indus, with “Pa” for the first name-syl-lable, if this denotes that they were ancient fortified places of the inhabitants, which would be the case if they were the ancestors of the Polynesians, the nation must have been very numerous, or at least widespread. The matter requires further investigation, but the evidence may be shortly stated.

When Alexander the Great descended the Indus, and started on his march of conquest west, he first came in contact with the Oritoee, whose country was named Ora (Maori for livelihood), and whose port was Mana. Their chief towns were on the Purali (Purari) River. He met another section of the nation on the Pakanahi {? Pakanae) River, and the people were named after the river. At the present day the ruling people of Baluchistan are not the Baluchs, but the Brahuis, who speak an agglutinative language, are fine bearded people, and not unlike the Polynesian. Attempts have been made to trace them from the Pakanahi, by showing that both names mean hillmen. But the attempts are not convincing. The question needs investigation. The whole of Southern Beluchistan is inhabited by remnants of many tribes, wanderers from Central Asia, who have been checked from further progress by the sea. It is a rich field for the ethnologist. More information will be given later, and further light sought from philologists and ethnologists of eminence. Marching with the frontiers of Ora was the country of the Icthyophagii, the fisheaters. Further west in the Persian Gulf are the Bahreyn Islands, which were claimed by the Phcenecians as the cradle of their race. This Semitic people probably shaped many Maop noses, taught the Polynesian people the use of the canoes and navigation, and largely influenced their manners and customs. Of the inhabitants of Ora, a colonising section probably emigrated to Sumatra, leaving their port of Mana in ancient Irania, and landing in another port of Mana in the first Hawaiiki. In Sumatra there is existing an inscribed stone of the seventh century, A.D., which says that the island was the first Java, but the Polynesians must have left Sumatra long before the stone was inscribed. Nearchus, the admiral of Alexander, landed in Sumatra about 325 B.C. His pilot and many seamen were Phoenecians. His men were armed with the latest iron lethal weapons. Maori tradition, quot-1 ed by Mr. S. Percy Smith in that grand little book “Hawaiiki,” places the migration of the Maori Polynesian from Hawaiiki in about the year 450 B.C. There were probably Hindu immigrants in Sumatra before that time, but they were of the missionary order. The chief of the Maori Polynesians, about 450 8.C., was Tu-te-rangi-Marama, and he had a sacred enclosure and an enormous house of many rooms and lofty height, presumably of stone. The lately explored Passuma lands in Sumatra are strewn with monoliths and carved slabs, with images cut in a crouching posture, and the present inhabitants say they were the work of a wandering people, who turned their enemies to stone. If these were images of bound captives they may have been made to commemorate a triumph over the autochthenes who were Papuans. But it is stated by Maori people that it was their custom to bury their dead in a crouching attitude, so that they may be statues of dead chiefs. The Papuan inhabitants were killed or driven to

sea, though a large amalgamation took place with the invading Polynesians. The latter were the inhabitants of Sumatra for thousands of years, and the island is the cradle of the Polynesian race. Off the western coast are the islands of Mentawei, in which to this day the Natives speak a Polynesian dialect, are tatooed like the Maoris, and use the outrigger canoe of the Polynesian people. North of these isles are the Nias Islands, inhabited by a Malayan people, who have a large percentage of albinos among them. Maori tradition tells of a race of albino people who gave them the fishing net. That might have been a particular kind of net, for the Polynesians surely knew of nets before from intercourse with Phcenecians and Icthyophagii. In the legend of Tamatea it is mentioned that one of the tribes of Hawaiiki was Ngati-uru-mana. The full name of the Passumahland is Passumah-uhu-mana (? Pa-uma-uru-mana). In the small island of Sana, near the Timor Group, is a sacred place called Uma-uru-mana. From Asia to New Zealand, through all the isles of the sea, the Polynesian “ mana ” appears. The present writer does not think that the ancient Hawaiiki, the home of the Maori, was Java. All history points to the conclusion that Java was not peopled by immigrants till late, probably 450 B.C.—approximately. Again, whilst the autochthenes of Sumatra were Papuans, those of Java were of the very lowest type of negroid people. No one can deny that the Maori carries a large strain of Papuan blood, but very few will claim for them alliance with the Javan autochthonous people, who were more like monkeys than men. The last pure specimen, who was photographed, died in the latter half of last century. But the mingling of the Papuan strain was not the only intermixture of races which took place in Sumatra. All late evidence points to the conclusion that the Malayan people were a race of sea-rovers, who came from the south. At some remote time the Polynesian and Malay were near neighbours, and the Nias Islands are probably but one example of the ancient occupation of near islands by Malayan people. But the expression Malayo-Polynesian is properly linguistic and not ethnological. The MalayoPolynesian language is the Lingua-Franca of the Pacific. The Malays have carried it to the remotest confines of the Pacific, and left it as a heritage of the Madagasii people, who are half-castes of Bantu and Malay parentage. The Maori Polynesians have carried it to the most distant ises of the sea, left it at the Easter Islands, and in little and big isles where the Maoris now are not found. The Malays are a Mongoloid people, and the cradle of the Mongol race is Thibet, whilst the root of the Malayan language is in Central Asia, as is also that of the Polynesian. But the mixture of blood between Malay and Polynesian has not been a factor in the production of the stalwart Polynesian. The second large intermixture which took place in Sumatra was one with another branch of the great Caucasic people.

When the great neolithic migration was checked by the Himalayan barrier a large section of the Alpine group approached the sea through Upper Burmah and the Shan States. Some went eastwards as far as Formosa, and in Chinese territory Mrs. Bishop lately met a tribe of people with the blue eyes and sunny hair of the European belle. In neolithic times many found their way to Oceanica by way of the Peninsula of Annam, but the Orang-Sant and Orang-Benua of the Philippines group are neither Malayan nor Caucasic, but of the lowest type of Mongol people, of whom not a good word can be said. The lower type of aboriginal in the Malay Peninsula are of the same stock, and, as a proof that the recent Malay invasion came from the souths it is pointed out that the degraded aboriginals were driven north by the victors. The pure Caucasic stock, which entered Oceanica in the east, made in the course of many centuries their home-seeking way westward, till Sumatra was reached, and a fusion with the migration from Ora took place in that island. Whilst the amalgamated stock inhabited Sumatra, a colony was sent to Borneo, and the Dyaks are their living descendants, largely vitiated by intermixture with the dreadful canibalistic head-hunting MonAnnam stock. When the Polynesian people inhabited Sumatra, or Hawaiiki, the celebrated school of Whare-Kura was established. In it was taught all the lore of the east and of the west. The navigation of the Phoenecians, the astronomy of Chaldea and China, which systems are of one origin, were taught, and the Central Asiatic home of the Maori Polynesian lay athwart the comunication between these oldest of civilised people in Asia. The Caucasic people who came from the east to Sumatra brought with them the art of tattooing. which included the sprial drawing, and the cult of the greenstone from the Altai Mountains, from whence that mineral was brought to China. And thus is accounted for the strange intermixture of Eastern and Western manners and customs in the Maori and Polynesian race, and the Semitic usages, so prominent in Maori tradition of the customs of their ancestors that Te Whiti, of Parihaka, claimed the Old Testament as the record of his ancient people, and the name of Iharaira (Israel) as the possession of the Maori people. Some centuries before Christ another people appeared in Sumatra from the east called the Battak. They were originally of Caucasic origin, but with a subsequent intermixture of Mongoloid blood. There is reason to believe they lived for some generations with the Maori Polynesians and mixed with them. In any case they have now sufficient Caucasic blood in them to be classed to-day by ethnologists as of the Caucasic stock. About 450 B.C. trouble arose in the island with these people, and the Polynesians were driven from their home. The migration, however, was orderly, and in a more or less solid body an eastern route was taken. Of course they covered a wide

stretch of ocean, and landed in many isles. Their next home of long sojourn appears to have been in Celebes, Ceram, and neighbouring isles, and the chief settlement was Savii, in Northern Ceram. Here they changed their principal article of diet, and took to bread-fruit as their chief food. Before this they had lived on millet, indigenous to Sumatra, known there as jomari, whilst in Baluchistan it is called jawaro. From this millet eating came probably the Polynesian names for two of their ancient homes — Hawaiiki-te-varinga and Hawaiiki-te-vari-nga-nui. It is Sumatra probably, which is variously called in the tradition Hawaiikiroa and Hawaiiki-pa-mamao, whilst the Ceram Group may have been Hawaiiki-Kai, for reasons to be now stated. There are four Hawaiikis known to Maori tradition, and an effort should be made to identify each of them decidedly. The bread-fruit in its wild state bears a fruit, the edible part part of which is the kernel. It is something like a chestnut, is nice, but not such a comestible as a people would be likely to adopt as a staple food, to replace grain. But by cultivation the seed is absorbed, the outer flesh of the fruit becomes greatly enlarged, and a most delicious food is the result. This discovery of the improvement of the fruit by cultivation was made, in probably Amboyna or Ceram, by the Maori Polynesians. There are evidences that the discovery was accidental, and made by a Native finding a branch which had rooted and borne fruit, near the sea beach. But the Native, whose name is given in the tradition, was quick to take advantage of the beneficial result, and the cultivated bread-fruit soon became common in the group. But Wallace says ; “ The fact that it must be propagated by cuttings had rendered its spread to a distance slow nad difficult. The fruit I take to be the hua-hara-kakano (ue-ara-kakano) of Maori tradition.” It is not very difficult, once the starting point from the first Hawaiiki is known, to fix the date of the final dispersion from Ceram and neighbouring groups, and Mr. S. Percy Smith has been wonderfully successful in fixing dates along a long line of ninety-five generations. In Standford, it is stated, but on possibly uncertain data, that the island of Bouru, or Buru, or Boroe, was the point from which the final dispersion from the Eastern Archipelago took place. This island is west of Ceram. The island contains a river named Wai-apu, a name familiar to all the East Coast Maoris, and one which gave the name to a New Zealand bishopric. When the Natives were dispersed from the Archipelago, an event which took place in consequence of the invasion of the island by predatory Malayan people, the nation was divided into tribes. This may have been done to provide for the occupation of the innumerable small islands they would meet in the Southern Pacific. For it is a mistake to supose the Natives committed themselves to blind chance in their voyages. The first explorations were long antecedent, and charts of the ocean were in their possession, made

of string- on a wooden frame knotted in a peculiar fashion. Tang-iia, who returned to Hawaiiki for mana, was told of the Rarotong-an Islands he should inhabit in the south, and their position described by the tohung-a he consulted. The route from Bouru was east, with a southerly inclination ; the north and east of New Guinea were passed, and probably settlements left. But, in the whole Malay and Eastern Archipelag-o, not a settlement of the original Polynesian remains with the exception of that of Mentawei, and there the race has been preserved in almost startling purity, considering the lapse of time. The story of the migration southward to Fiji and other groups has been told by Mr. S. Percy Smith in “ Hawaiiki.’ ” The history of the Samoan occupation is another and antecedent story which deserves investigation. The absence of Sanskrit words in the purer dialect of Samoa renders it improbable that it was first occupied later than B.C. 1000. The Sanskrit words ill the Maori Polynesian are probably due to the Hindu missionary enterprise spoken of as having taken place in Sumatra. It is pleasant to hear that investigation into the Rapuwai traditions is being undertaken, as the genealogy of the tribe reaches back to 600 B.C. They were chiefly a South Island tribe. A connection between the early Samoan migration and that of the Rapuwai may be established. There are reasons for and against. This introduction has been written entirely from memory hundreds of miles from the author’s manuscript. He asks pardon for any little inaccuracies, and deprecates attack until the work with references to authorities appears. When this is later criticised, he will not feel that he himself is attacked, but that the best ethnological scholars of the day and the most enterprising explorers are being challenged in the Britain of the South.