MUSEUM OF NATURE

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31588, 27 January 1968, Page 17

MUSEUM OF NATURE

Necessity Made Maori Skilful Fisherman

(Contributed by the Canterbury Museum)

Because very little meat was available, the Maori became highly skilled in the arts of fishing, and thoroughly exploited the products of the sea, lakes and rivers. The methods used were: net, line, trap, weir, spear and shellfish dredge and each in its own way produced an abundant harvest by intelli-gently-applied skills.

Some nets used would no doubt amaze the modern fisherman as Captain Gilbert Mair reported seeing one which was more than a mile in length, but it is likely that such a net would be made and used by a clan group for the purpose of winning a massive catch which would be treated and stored against the needs of the long winter months when fishing expeditions would be more difficult to undertake. To withstand a reasonable amount of use the nets were made of green flax, but cordage which had to spend longer periods immersed in water were made of the more durable fibre of the cabbage tree (Cordyline australis). Large catches were made and one reads of fishermen having to swim down to the bottom of the net to lift it so that hundreds of fish could escape, and so allow the net to be drawn in. Considerable ingenuity was shown by the use of pumice floats to keep the upper part of the net buoyant, and by the use of stone sinkers to keep the lower part down. The fishing line was made of dressed flax fibre and varied in thickness according to the type of fish to be caught. Lure hooks were often trawled behind a swiftlypaddled canoe and did not require the attachment of a bait, but as in the case of the kahawai lure, paua shell was set into the upper part of the hook and the sunlight reflecting on the colours attracted the fish in large numbers. By this means, fish could be pulled into the canoe as swiftly as the line could

be thrown out, a situation which would no doubt delight the hearts of fishermen of today.

Making Hooks The manufacture of hooks reached a high degree of functional and artistic expression but was discarded as soon as the Maori had access to metals, the best of the bone hooks being inferior to the worst of the steel. One-piece bone hooks were made by taking a tab of suitable bone and drilling the centre out with a stone-tipped drill, after which it was finished off with stone files. I- some cases human bone was used but this had special implications. The Maoris had a great fear of the bones of their relatives being used by enemies for the manufacture of hooks because in doing so the fisherman would make it quite clear tc all and sundry that it was his old enemy who was working for him and feeding him, and this was one reason why Maori burials were placed in secret and hidden places. Larger baithooks comprised a curved shank of tough wood with the barbed point of bone or wood separately attached. Various Traps Various types of traps were used to take fish, eel, crayfish and crabs and often a weir was built in conjunction to hold the fish or to direct them into the traps, much of this activity taking ' place during the autumn months when fish were moving downstream. All of this effort was hedged around various forms of tapu, and this needs to be understood to realise its true implications

To the lay mind the subject of tapu appears to be just so much hocus pocus but it had a very important role in the regulating of society. There is no society known to anthropology which is not regulated in some way or another and tapu, or taboo always appears in some form as an essential regulating force in society. We have traffic lights in our society and the Maori had tapu, but both, in their own manner, fulfil the function of regulating society and causing it to function according to a predictable pattern. Shark, lamprey, shell-fish and whitebait were all taken according to need, but the effects of tapu saw to it that greed did not cause grounds to be over-fished and cause poverty. The portion of the catch which did not go into the oven immediately was preserved by being gutted and sun-dried over a wooden framework. What of the fly pest? It must be remembered that there were flies in Maori times but the arrival of the pakeha with his stock animals has greatly increased the population, and it would not have been so much of a problem as it would be today. Children played a greater part in the economy than they do today, and it can be safely assumed that many Maori children spent many tedious hours before the drying racks, brushing away what flies there were. The methods described in

this article are displayed in the Pacific Hall or the Hall of Maori Pre-history in the Canterbury Museum, and readers are invited to view them at their leisure.—A.M.E. The illustration shows a small one-piece and a large two-piece Maori baithook.