MAORI MEMORIES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 April 1938, Page 3

MAORI MEMORIES.

KAI TANGATA “Tell me what he eats and I'll tell you what he is" is peculiarly applicable to this ancient custom, of which our Sacrament is said to be a variant. Revenge, hatred, superstition or starvation may have first caused men to resort to cannibalism. Outside their incentives, even the Maori regarded it with horror.

Whatever the motive, sensual love of human flesh always influenced the continuation of the custom. The Maori not infrequently found himself isolated on sea or land without food and legendary lore suggests that on such occasions a hero would offer himself as “a sacrifice to the god of hunger.” Prior to the advent of steamships and wireless this has happened among our own people. Through that lying jade, Dame Rumour, the Maoris have attained a disagreeable notoriety as cannibals. The very word is said to be derived from the Caribs in the time of Columbus. Revenge was its origin, and the first instance recited by the Maoris was a Chief, Manaia, who ate the heart of an intruder who came to his wife’s whare moe at midnight. It is recorded that one of Tasman’s sailors was eaten in 1642 for having assaulted the wife of a Chief. In 1774 Captain Cook's boats crew met the same fate for having unconsciously intruded upon a sacred Urupa (burial place).

The early missioners reported that human flesh was absolutely prohibited to women, nor were women even eaten. The laws of Tapu were so inviolable, that even when they were unconsciously broken, sickness or death quickly fell upon the victim. Christianity has driven out the revolting custom, and the last authentic instance of cannibalism occurred in. 1843, after which even the bodies of their British enemies slain in battle were reverently buried.