CLOAKS—As worn by the Maori

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 264, 6 November 1937, Page 10 (Supplement)

CLOAKS—As worn by the Maori

lI7TTH her limited material, mainly yy harakeke, or flax, and her simple loom, the Maori woman was able to weave a surprising choice of cloaks, Tarying the colouring and ornamentation as she wove, so that the clothing of that day followed several distinct styles. The well-dressed man of old possessed quite an elaborate wardrobe, which included garment* for special occasions. He had a piupiu, the many-stranded flax skirt of black and white he loved to dance in because of its swishing, musical rattle; an old cloak he would have kept to wrap round his waist when he went about his everyday work, which would have soiled and torn his better clothes. At such times he would have felt hampered by & cape about his shoul-

ders, so ho wore only his waist garment. In the serious business of life fighting—h« wore a three-cornered garment called a maro, which left his limbs free for quick movements in the fight, and also showed to advantage the elaborate patterns tattooed on his thighs. The well-tattooed Maori felt that it would have been a pity to hide such becoming and painfully gained decorations under a longer kilt. If he was a man of higrh rank among his greatest treasures would be a fine cape, or a lonjrer cloak, thickly covered with feathers, the fibre to which they were fastened scraped and beaten till as soft- as cotton against his skin. Feather cloaks though, were rare in that far-

off and he might instead have worn a silky, beautifully bordered kaitaka, or a white korowai covered from shoulder to ankle with dangling black a few inches long. A chief, very rich in possessions, probably wore on State occasions a topuni, to us the least beautiful of cloaks, but the most valued, because of its rarity, by the Maori. Looking at one now, covered with its narrow, rather dingy strips of skin from the extinct kuri, or native dog. we can well understand how the early e/plorers thought that these garments were made from the pelts of some large animal. If a man was lucky enough to own several fine cloaks, decorated in different ways, he wore all of them on special occasions, showing a little of each org. These were the cloaks of the people of rank, too beautiful and valuable for evervday wear, as they went about their work in all weathers, so coarsely mar 1 "apes to turn the rain were made for roujrh work. A cloak was about sft long and 4ft wide, and was worn in several ways, tied by the two twisted cords on the upper edge, some distance in from the sides. The shorter capes were usually fastened in front, as we would wear them, but the flowing cloak was usually worn under one arm and fastened on the shoulder in a way which left both arms free. Birt let us look separately at the fading garments, first at the softly draping korowai. the makins of which we saw last week, and then at the kaitaka, which, perhaps, you have never 9een: that lovelv cloak never woven now and seldom worn, but surely the most beautiful, of Maori garments. The fibre for it was specially prepared, so that the fabric, though woven in the same way as other cloaks, was pale gold and the silky folds of it shone. Along the bottom is a deep border of patterned taniko work, closely woven by a slow and difficult twisting method. You will notice in the very old cloaks that the threads in •the taniko are black, dyed with swamp mud, red-brown by being dipped in tanekaha bark and water, and the creamy colour of the scraped flax; the three colours which the Maori generally used before t lie pakeha traders brought coloured wools and dyes. The feather cloak was probably the one on which most work was spent, for each small feather was fastened separately by the weaver, who caught them into the little stitches of the weft tlire«ds as she twined them across, till the outside of the cloaX was thickly covered, i Turn it inside out. though, and you | will see that the inside of the kahu

By OLWYN RUTHERFORD

huruhuru, or feather cloak, is exactly the same ae the kaitaka or the korowai. The most valued of these cloaks was the red one made from the few bright feathers from under the whig of the kaka, the little green parrot. Many birds had to be caught before such a garment could be finished. The beat known to us are the mantles which look almo6t like aoft fur, so thickly are they covered with brown kiwi feather*.

The Maori used the feathers of a number of other birds, and the white and glowing green of the pigeon, the dusky tone* of tui and weka, with later the brighter feathers of introduced birds, may be recognised in plain and patterned cloaks which have been preserved. The working clothes, and those used ill wet weather, were made in the same way as the others, but they were much coarser. The ttax was roughly scraped, and the crossthreads widely spaced. The top was finished with a thick plait of fibre, which would have been very scratchy even to people used to wearing flax next the skin. Captain Cook, writing in his journal, said of these capes: "Their common clothing is very much like square thrumbed mats that are made of rope yarns to lay at the doors or passages into houses to clean one's shoes upou.*

Though far from comfortable, they probably served their purpose very well by turning the rain, for they looked rather like a shin<rled roof, and turned the water in the same ! way. The "shingles" were short I lengths of flax or kiekie, scraped ir# ' the middle, so that they would bend more easily when caufjht into the weft threads of the cape. The two ends hun<r stiffly down, over-lapped bv the row above until, when the weaving was finished, they formed a thick thatch, which turned fl. dinjry ' frrcv with njre. Other rou<rh capes, i very thick and heavy, were covered ' with a sha<r<ry thatch of coarsely- > scraped fibre, which was attached in • the same way a* the taprs and : feathers. The man in the picture is • weflrinjr one of scratchy cloaks. ? and you will probably think that it > | does not look very comfortable as : wet weather wear. You will afree. f though, that the Maori provided very i well for aTI his simple needs, with s clothes that were both serviceable . and beautiful.