MAORIS REDISCOVERED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 198, 23 July 1931, Page 5

MAORIS REDISCOVERED

ISLAND IN POLYNESIA. SURVIVAL OF 13TH CENTURY EXODUS. Tucked away in the great Tuamotu Archipelago, which lies to the north of Tahiti, and is the largest and least known in Polynesia, are two small islands on which are living to-day people who to all intents and purposes are Maoris. They might have been transported from Rotorua. Their religion is the same, and but for differences due to position and climate, they speak the same tongue. This survival of the great exodus from Tahiti in the 13th century lias been discovered bv the expedition led by Mr K. P. Emory, an ethnologist attached to the Bishop Museum, Honolulu, which has just • completed two and a half years in the archipelago, and arrived in Auckland the other day. His party had their own little yacht, which thev built for the purpose. and in thirty months they covered 5000 miles. To use his expression, they “just pottered about.” One of the islands on which these “Maoris” were living was called Vahitahi, he said, and is 500 miles east of Tahiti. The one on which he did most of his work was four miles long by one and a-half miles wide, and had onlv 100 people. Incidentally, Valiitahi was the only island where the people welcomed the party with a haka. MAORIS MYTHOLOGY DUPLICATED. All the gods known in Maori mythology were known there, Maui, Kae, Rata, Tane; but whereas in New Zealand, the acknowledged home of the Maori, those legends existed only in fragments, there the whole ritual of the ceremonies sung to these deities was intact, in the form of chants. The language was easily recognisable as Maori, though, he explained, the vocabulary was modified to suit other conditions. The names of trees and plants and the like were naturally different; but in structure the language was precisely the same.

It was treasure trove to Mr Emory, for there, unspoiled and untouched by extraneous influences, whether of the white man or of other native races, was his chance to 6tudy the tradition, the customs and the thought of the Maoris, just as thev were. When first the party got to the island they were given a feast which lasted five days and five nights. Chants were sung to appropriate deities, and all were those known to the Maoris in New Zealand. The first prayer of an important series ended with the word “to Kio,” and the linguist in the party was immediately interested, for that was almost identical with a New Zealand prayer ending which contained the proper name “Io.” At first ho could gain no information about those last two words. The people professed ignorance, even the toliungas. They said they had sung the words for years, and they had been given to them by their ancestors. But Mr Emory was not satisfied. If he could identify the chant with that of New Zealand it was fairly conclusive proof of the close connection of the two. Mere similarity of language or custom was not scientifically sufficient. At length, when they had got to the end of their tether, so to speak, a very old woman approached them, and, saying little, squatted on the ground before them, and sang the chant through for them. An old toliunga was sitting near, and at first, when the old woman started, he preserved the stony aloofness of disapproval, but as the volume of nong grew full, and then fell away to a whisper, he could no longer restrain himself. He remembered the glory of the associations, and he also began to sing softly. And so two old representatives, of a neople whose culture and whose memory must soon pass away, lived again for the day when the chant was not mere words. THE GREATEST OF THE GODS. When the last note had died and the old woman had revealed the secret of her race and the secret of the island, she burst into tears in front of them ail for grief of the departed glory of her race. Gone, she told them, were the days when the chant meant something, and their numbers were now growing few. Subsequently the expedition learned that the word “kio” was, as they had thought, the same as the New Zealand “lo,” which is the greatest of the gods, being supreme and self-creat-ed. The people were metaphysically rich, Mr Emory said, as their tradition and their imagery showed. Some of the chants, explaining the different legends, took more than a day to finish. They never finished the story of Rata, while that of Tawhaki took a day and a half. When once the party had broken down the reserve of the natives, all those chants were recited to them in their entirety. From the point of view of ethnology, that information was invaluable; but anyone interested in the Maori legends could delve deep there, and learn what the race once had been. They found a man who could write, and he collected all the information he could, and it took him 16 months. When typed the manuscript was 1000 insgle-spaced pages. ART OF NAVIGATION PRESERVED The Maoris of Tuamotu, Mr Emory said, had preserved, among other culture, the ait; of .navigation which their brethren had had who came to New Zealand in the 13th century. While the expedition was on the island a party of 30 set out in a great canoe, which was the same in essence as the New Zealand craft, for another island 40 miles to the south. “That is not bad, you know,” Mr Emory remarked, “when it is not Eossible to see. an island until within ve miles of it, and considerably less than that if there are no coconuts. They navigate by the stars, by the sun, by the set of the waves, by the birds. In fact, it is an instinct with them. An 80-mile journey in those waters is no mean feat.” Owing to the fact that living conditions had not been easy, the inhabitants were a hardy type. They were strong, particularly the women. Sometimes the natives held tug-o’-wars between a team of men and one of women. If the women gained the _ advantage at first they won. For a little while they were stronger than the men, but their endurance was less. The word “tangi” was known in the language, but it meant a chant of a sort. Nevertheless the tangi ceremony was common there, in practically the samo form as in New Zealand. Much valuable data had been collected, but it had not yet been finally classified. Mr Emory wants to go back to the archipelago, and also to Easter Island.