Museum Notes MYSTERY OF THE MORIORI

Southland Times, Issue 24114, 1 May 1940, Page 4

Museum Notes MYSTERY OF THE MORIORI

Clothing And Mats

USE OF SEALSKINS AND FLAX

The early explorers do not give much information about the clothing of the Morioris. Broughton says: “Their dress was either a seal or bear-skin tied with sinnet, inside outwards, round their necks, which fell below their hips, or mats neatly made, tied in the same manner, which covered their backs and shoulders. Some were naked, excepting a well-woven mat of fine texture, which, being fastened at each end by a string round their waists, made a sort of decent garment.” . Johnston’s account is even briefer than Broughton’s: “Most of them were covered with mats of seal-skins hung loosely over the shoulders, which reached down to about the hip.” Johnston adds that they had no covering but a mat, “neatly wrought, like the Marro cf the Sandwich Islands.” John Biscoe, R.N., commander of the sealing brig Tula which visited the islands in 1831, says of the three Morioris who came aboard: “They were quite naked, with the exception of a short mat over the shoulders, which seemed to be used as a roof to them to turn the water off, and a strap of the same material passed under the crutch. This description seems to indicate a cape but Broughton elsewhere describes it as a coat, suggesting the type of garment figured by Tasman at Golden Bay, New Zealand.

More information is supplied by later investigators. Hunt mentions seal-skin cloaks, and proceeds: “The only garment worn by them in early times was made from the leaves of the flax, split into three or four strips, and interwoven into each other like a kind of stuff between netting and cloth, with all the ends, which were eight or nine inches long, hanging down on the outer side. It was suspended from their shoulders like a cloak, tied around the neck, and extended a little below the knee. In addition the females girded their loins with a band of plaited flax.” Shand’s account is much fuller than any of the others: “As a rule they went half naked, and when engaged fishing on the rocks or elsewhere—not at sea —were quite so. Originally they used mats for clothing, the general name of which was weruweru. These were made of scraped flax (muka) and were fine in texture, and warm. Later this kind of clothing was abandoned and seal-skin was universally adopted, so that the making of mats became a lost art. The skins were used fur inwards. After the arrival of the English sealers in the early years of this (the nineteenth) century, a ruthless destruction of the seals—young and old—took place, by which they were all killed or driven away, thus depriving the Morioris of their clothing supply. It is believed that the loss of their warm seal-skin clothing, together with the rough treatment they received from their Maori conquerors, had not a little to do with the rapid decrease of the people which had set in prior to 1835 ....’’ REVIVAL OF MAT-MAKING When, through the depredations of the sealers, the Morioris were deprived of seal-skins for clothing, “they attempted to recover the art of mat-mak-ing, but at this juncture the Maoris arrived, and taught them their own art.” Shand continues: “A kind of belt called a tahei, made of muka, was worn, together with the marowhara or war girdle, which was put on before going to a fight (so-called), when certain karakia (incantations) were repeated. The marowhara was made of scraped flax—not scutched like muka—and was about five yards in length, worn crisscrossed over the shoulders and around the waist, with the ends ultimately brought together through the tahei or girdle, to allow of one end hanging in front and the other at the back, and coming down nearly to the knees. These were supposed to be worn by people of rank. They also made use of a fine kind of net called kupenga as a substitute- (for seal-skin) manufactured from muka; and also plaited a rough kind of mat called tukou, from broad strips of flax leaves, which on shrinking formed a very indifferent protection from the cold.”

The general name for flax mats was weruweru. From the statements quoted it may be concluded that the seal-skin cloak, reaching below the hips and fastened round the neck by strings of flax fibre, was the principal Moriori garment. Kupenga was the name given to a mat —apparently similar in shape to the seal-skin cloak—which was made of closely netted twine, and this twine was made of scutched flax fibre. It seems probable that this type of cloak was a hasty and useless improvization to replace the seal-skins, and to be without parallel among Maori mats. It may possibly, however, have been allied to the feather cloak of Hawaii, the basis of which is network. When the fibre of the flax (Phormium tenax) had been scutched it was called muka, a name used also by the Maoris. The Morioris had no loom, and their mat-making must therefore have been the plait method used by Maoris, Hawaiians and Indians of the Northwest Coast. Dr Skinner was told by many settlers that one of the steps in preparing flax fibre was to beat it, as the Maoris did, with a stone beater on a smooth stone. Travers describes the Moriori methods of dyeing the prepared flax in three colours, red, brown and black, but as the methods are identical with those employed by the Maoris it is unsafe to accept this account as being accurate for pre-Maori times.