ROCK DRAWINGS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CVI, Issue 16283, 10 July 1917, Page 3

ROCK DRAWINGS.

RELICS OF PRE-MAORI, RAGE.

UPPER WAITOHI SPEOIiIENS.

.^■^ e l ueer drawings (called By s?ien- ] tine people tt picTlog^apLs ,, ) which, are I found on tlie walls or caves and less I complete rock shelters "in the limestone ! regions of Canterbury, arc supposed on good grounds to have been macie by a race of people who occupied New •Zealand before the present Maori race. As far as can be. made out from their traditions the first immigrant parties of Maoris arrived here about 600 years ago. The country was already well occupied, for some of the immigrants found : a difficulty in making a landing, and had to travel up and down Iclie coast in, their canoes to find a spot where they could land unmolested. "Weak and cramped atter, their Jong voyage they ■■ would not be, in good fighting- trim. It appears to be pretty well established that the Maoris did not exterminate the moa. Their traditions, it is said,' contain no reference to the jrigantic Ynrd». Pome people did kill .and oat nioas. for- frag- • - menfcs of burned bones are founcL among ..oven stones on sites oh ancient encampments. Tlieie was one of these on t-Jiq top of Dashing Rocks, for instance, now almost completely washed away bv 1 the spray of the sea. in storms.'" Moil i bones and bits of moa egg. shells were i found in some of the caves and roekil shelters above mentioned, a fact which suggests that the moa hunters, -were in'-1 all lji'obabilitv the artists who decorated the rock walls. It is held to be good evidence .that the Maoris difl not make these drawings, that the. familiar Maori scroll ~pattern- is- absent, and this pattern''is said to " have been brought by the immigrants, not -developed since their arriva.l here- . Fresh. interest was recently given to these relics of a prehistoric -people by the activities of an American enthusiast in such matters. Mr Elmore,"who, industriously copied, full, size, by tracing them on- transparent- paper, a-num-ber of the rock drawings in this district, for some of th 0 Dominion museums and his own collection.. Further activities on his part— uhe bodily removal of a few of them—led to protests and to a Government officer be-,-ing sent round to inspect tlio draw-1 ' ings in Cantei'oury and report on the propriety of passing legislation to make it unlawful to remove, destroy or de-1 face them. In most cases the owners j of the properties on which drawings j exist are careful oi them, but some i attach no value !co them, perhaps because they do not know how respectable they are, from their age, and the mystery of their origin and. interpretation. Even the manner in which the drawings were made, and the col- i ouring materials used, are subjects of discussion. -

The writer was lately shown by Mr Hugli McCully tseveral rock shelters in t-lie limestone country of Upper Waitohi, the dry walls of which are decorated frith these queer pictogrnphs. These Waitolii shelters are not caves hut merely overhanging rocks, the limestone cliffs having had big groves cut into them horizontally, so that the rock overhangs the floor. One of these shelters, the largest of them contains what Mr Elmore considered the most interesting set of drawings he had seen in New Zealand, because very nearly >the whole of them are attached to a continuous horizontal line. This line is (at a guess from memory) 40 or 50 feet long. The figures attaphed to it include some that are easily.under-r-t.ood, bnf the majority need a : skilled

interpreter. .. • At. one end .are- two figures) vary crudely done, but plainly representing twoprancmg or.dancing men, both brandishing a mere in each hand. From these, strung along the line, are various objects in outline. A fish 'or two are recognisable j and (free of the line) two or three objects-, that may represent small birds in flight. The rest one can only speculate about . Mr McCully, who sfcent liis youth on the farm embracing this shelter, dlevo'ted much (cimo and thought to endeavours' to read, the riddle of these strung-together drawings, and lie came to the conclusion that, being so connected, they pro'oably should be considered a® a whole, and as a represen tor tion of a welcome to visitors. First tliG dauee of greeting, /then the display of food for the fea,st to follow. Acceptin<f this idea,, the fish ajid birds fit 111 with it, ' some triangular outlines may moan sharks' fins, and other objects may stand for kelp bags of preserved food of some kind. 'ills drawings,- onei must' conclude, had some meaning for the maker. They are not merely idle scribbling. When Sir Elmore's drawings have been photographed and published, as is intended, others will have the opportunity of emulating Mr McCully in endeavouring to read a meaning out of, or into, this particular collection. ,

Most of these Upper Waitohi drawings are in black, two or three small ones being in red. At the larger was picked up and given the writer on the spot a piece of limestone eight on ten ounces in weight whioh was blackened all over one rounded side, as if it had been used in grinding the black pigment used by the artist. Besides the drawings there are other relics of occupation of the shelters by a people of a stone-age, these being biggish, blue boulders of groywacke from the Optiha riverbed- a mile awav, witii big flakes split off >cheni, doubtless for making rough knives, such boulders breaking with sharp edges on the flakes. There are also partly finished tools, that may have been * intended for' root-pounders, and parts of broken tools that had been smoothly finished, hut not polished. These are all of the same grey river-bed stone. Mr McCully lias picked up hits of moa bone and of moa egg shell at the larger shelter, and in a crevice, between two 'arge fallen boulders he, many years ago, found a huge moa leg bone. Some one must have placed it there; but whether as hiding food hundreds of years ngo, or as a modern shepherd's enrio find, to be taken home later but, forgotten, it is impossible to say. A curious and not uninteresting fact connected with these pictographs, especially perhaps in regard to the question of the face of the artists, is told Mr McCully. This is that the Maoris of Tenvuka profess to know nothing about them escent that they exist, decline to talk about them, and refuse to go and see tliem. He lias often tried to get a Maori to visit them. He happened 'co be out rabbit shooting with a, young Maori one day, and wandering near one of the shelters lie asked the young fellow to come and look at the figures. But he was not to be persuaded. "No good to me," he said. He would not go near them. Mr McCully concludes that These places have been made "tapu" to tl'.e Maori. It is not unlikely. Early Maori' mothers may have used the homes of the preceding race as the abiding places of existing terrible things, to be invoked as bogies "to scare unruly children, and the children when grown up would not lose the .influence of such discipline, nor themselves when parents neglect to use it. At all events the drawings are very (pieer things, and on account of their great age and the mystery surrounding them they ought to be "tapu" to the present and future generations • against effacement or addition.