MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 December 1939, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

UPOKO MOKO (TATTOOED HEADS.)

(Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”)

Many persons and not a few newspapers have wrongly connected Maui Pomare’s descent with that of a chief who had assumed the name of "Pomare,” King of Otahite, in 1815. The Maori custom of taking the names of, prominent people for themselves may have suggested that little known legal aphorism which is now recognised by law in this country: “Any person may legally acquire a name by reputation.” When this becomes widely known it is hoped that many persons with ugly or awkward names will take upon themselves something less embarrassing to future generations. In his boyhood Sir Maui thus suffered indignities from his pakeha schoolfellows, though never by his Maori associates, who had memorised his illustrious pedigree. Among the discreditable practices of that pretender of 1815 was that of killing members of other tribes, preserving their heads by an art precisely the same as that of the ancient Egyptians whose mummies thousands of years old still amaze the modern world. Attracted by the graceful lines of the moko (tattoo), the pakeha traders from various countries paid this pretender Pomare a high value in arms and implements for these wonderfully preserved features of a now lost “art.” In the days of the Scythians and the Gauls, Heredotus tells us that such ghastly trophies were used to decorate the war chariots.