Lost World of the Maori

Tu Tangata, Issue 35, 1 April 1987, Page 31

Lost World of the Maori

na Alan Taylor

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Classic Maori society was the ideal human society. It was an achievement of a thousand years of social and cultural development, ultimately destroyed by European Contact. So believe many Maori, but few Europeans. Naturally, Maori opinion is correct: for Maori. Neolithic Maori society was an ideal society before the fatal impact of European discovery. And there is much evidence to support the claim. There is, for example, the primary, objective observations of Captain Cook and the Endeavour scientist Joseph Banks. Both their

journals record a lost Maori world of remarkable social and cultural balance, with the natural environment. People are society, culture. And it was people (Maori) that Cook and Banks concentrated on for an understanding of the unique Maori life and achievement-in a country that deeply impressed both observers. Cook found the Maori a strong, well-made active people. He admired the stature of the men, their health and hardiness. He also admired their vigour, skill, industry and friendliness - although at first meeting very warlike. Cook was also impressed by the modesty, decency of the women and was much taken by the artistic carving and fine construction of tribal canoes and fine craftsmanship in cloaks. The only negative observation made by Cook was on the body use of ochre and oil; kai tangata was simply a matter to objectively speculate uponalong with the religious beliefs of the people. Cook was impressed by the natural dignity, intelligence and curiosity of Maori. He also found the people cheerful, kindly and affectionate toward each other. In summing up Maori character however, he made the following ominous observation: “So far as I have been able to judge of the genius of these people, it does not appear to me at all difficult for strangers to form a settlement in this

country. They seem to be too much divided amongst themselves to unite in opposition.” Joseph Banks was a trained, scientific observer who, at the same time, was a sensitive man greatly impressed by Maori. He viewed the people as warlike but predictable; the men being well built and active, the women lively, good natured, volatile spiritsthe disposition of both sexes being mild, gentle and affectionate towards each other, but implacable towards their enemies, whom they regarded as ‘angry friends: hoariri’. Maori were intelligent, provocative in confrontation but trustful. Theft was rare among them. So too immorality; both sexes were modest and decent in conversation and never exposed to view ‘those parts that ought to be concealed’. Like Cook, Banks commented on the sound health of Maori. He observed no illness among them either shipboard or in the villages he visited. He observed neither sores nor scars on their bodies. However, he objected to Maori use of ochre and oil. Kai tangata was something of a mystery; he did not moralise over it. For Banks, Maori art was a revelation. So too Maori horticulture and various manufactures: cloaks, deep sea nets, weapons. He was also impressed by Maori dance and song: peruperu and waiata. He never at any time feared the people once contact had

been made. And like Cook grieved over Maori deaths, arising out of mutual misunderstanding on initial contact. Both Cook and Banks were impressed by Maori life and society; a society and natural world that must have seemed like a lost Eden, compared with 18th century England, a virtual hell on earth. In the 1760’s England was technologically making extra-ordinary progress. But social conditions for the mass of people were barbarous: widespread unemployment, poverty, debtors prisons, public executions, murder, vice and misery. It was also a country of press gangs, public riots, flogging and slave trading. It was a nation entertained by bearbaiting, pugilism to the death in an environment of endemic disease and insanity. Wealth was concentrated in the hands of a privileged minority. On the threshold of the industrial revolution, England was beginning its search for raw materials and future markets in an imperialism that would ultimately encompass the Pacificrediscovered, for the most part, by Captain Cook who would provide the necessary information on the possibilities of Pacific exploitation and colonisation. Trade and missionary enterprise followed Captain Cook, and the Maori Eden he had rediscovered was lost forever.