Art. LXVI.—Notes on some Bone Combs for dressing the Head of a Maori Chief, found in Otago.

Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 25, 1892, Page 483

Art. LXVI.—Notes on some Bone Combs for dressing the Head of a Maori Chief, found in Otago. By A. Hamilton. [Read before the Otago Institute, 12th July, 1892.] Plate LII. (in Part). The natives of the East Coast about Poverty Bay and the Mahia have an ancestor of whom great deeds are recorded, and who figures in several of the curious and interesting traditions which from generation to generation have been passed on, not in a haphazard way, but guarded by all the precautions possible to insure literal correctness. This ancestor was the great and powerful chief Uenuku. According to the genealogies given by several branches of his descendants, he must have lived about the time of the Norman conquest, earning for himself, by his success in intertribal fights and disputes, a name of renown as a chief and authority as a great tohunga. Two of his sons, Ruatapu and Paikea, are the heroes of a very interesting tragic poem which was published by Mr. Colenso some years ago, and of which two similar versions from other sources appear in Mr. John White's “History of the Maori.” The whole of the trouble arose indirectly over the right of a chief and of the sons of a chief to wear an ornamental comb in the knot of hair drawn up on the top of the head. The hair of a warrior in the piping times of peace was allowed to grow long, and was carefully dressed, and tied up in a neat knot; behind or into this the comb was fastened, and sometimes adorned with feathers, or shreds of the aute or tappa. The people of Uenuku's tribe were all busy and excited, for it was a great occasion in the Bay. After much hard work, and after many risks and dangers, a great war-canoe had been brought down to the beach; it had been fitted with the carved work, and ornamented with feathers and red paint; everything was ready for the launch and trial-trip. “Then it was that Uenuku ordered his sons and the sons of other chiefs to assemble, in order that the hair of their heads might be combed and anointed, and neatly tied up in a knot on the crown, and ornamented with a high dress-comb stuck in behind, so as to be regular and look beautiful, that they might go all together and paddle the new canoe out to sea.” Uenuku himself performed this work of preparing and dressing and tying the hair. This ceremony was always performed by a chief of rank or a tohunga (Uenuku was both).

This was because the head was pre-eminently sacred, and never to be touched save by a tapu person. The young men were seventy in number, all told, and Uenuku finished with Kahutiaterangi. When all was done Ruatapu, another son, called out to his father, “O honoured sir! see! tie up and dress my hair also.” His father says, “Where ever shall a dress-comb be found for thy hair?” and tells him that, as his mother was only a slave of inferior birth, he could not on this occasion treat him as the others, This covered Ruatapu with shame, and his whole heart was filled with grief and pain, and, loudly lamenting, he went away to the place where the canoe was, and plotted how to destroy Paikea his brother and those young chiefs who had witnessed his discomfiture. This he did by upsetting the canoe when out at sea; but the plot somewhat miscarried, as Ruatapu was himself drowned, with the whole of the crew excepting Paikea, who by the power of his spells saved himself after floating about for a day and a night. I quote this story simply for the purpose of showing by what I take to be a typical example that the comb for the head of a warrior was a very ancient and important ornament. Coming down from the mists of antiquity to the earliest voyagers, we find in Cook's Voyages and Parkinson's Journal several examples of head-combs, drawn by a careful and competent observer, showing that in the districts visited by Cook the dress-comb was still in use, and that a general type form prevailed. In Forster's account of Cook's voyage he mentions that when they arrived in Queen Charlotte Sound, in June, 1773, several Maoris came on board. Their hair was dressed in the fashion of the country, tied on the crown, greased, and stuck with white feathers, and several of them had large combs of some cetaceous animal's bone, stuck upright just behind the bunch of hair on the head.* Vol. i., p. 126. In Parkinson's book we find a drawing of a fully-dressed New Zealand warrior,† Pl. xv. with a comb of the same pattern as the large one figured on Plate LII., and on plate xvi. of the Journal another. The description on page 90 says, “Most of them had their hair tied up upon the crown of their head in a knot, and by the knot stuck a comb of wood or bone.” Other examples of this kind of comb are shown on plates xix. and xxiii. of the Journal. Mr. Colenso, in his essay on the Maori race,‡ Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. i., p. 355. says, “Their combs for their hair were also both neatly made and carved: these, however, were not used as combs commonly are by us,

but by the chiefs to keep up their hair, much as English ladies use their high back-combs. The men wore their hair long, and dressed it up with a knot on the top of their heads; the women wore it cut short.” The condition of the Maori nation at the time of the visits of the early voyagers must have been somewhat similar to that of the English people in feudal times, when the life of every gentleman was devoted to fighting, and might was practically right, modified by custom; and in both instances the influence of the priest or tohunga was paramount, through the superstition of the masses. We might also say that natural selection on the same lines produced the flower of chivalry of England and the noble savage of many a valiant fight embalmed in the traditions of the Maori race. Barbarities can doubtless be adduced on both sides, but it seems clear that as long as man met man with fairly-equal weapons, hand to hand and foot to foot, the true spirit of chivalry was not wanting; but as soon as that deadly invention, gunpowder, came into use, both knight and chief rapidly lost their mana or reputation for doughty deeds, and consequently were unable either to enforce the discipline or control they once had over their followers, or to protect them from petty aggressions. To the breaking-down of the position and the mana of the chiefs must be attributed much of the trouble which has come upon the Maori nation, and the disorganization of the polity of the nation, leading with a startling rapidity to the abandonment of many old customs and practices, and the hasty substitution of others of questionable superiority. Amongst the ornaments and insignia of a chief disused for many years we must place the ornamented head-comb. Very few specimens of the real old form are to be found in any of the museums. It is therefore with great pleasure that I have written this short note on the specimens exhibited, which are part of the magnificent collection of Mr. John White, of Dunedin. These specimens have been dug out of the remains of old Maori settlements a little to the north of the Otago Heads. They are made from the thin portion of the lower jaw of various species of whale, which were frequently stranded on the beaches in the olden time, before the advent of the whalers. The specimens bear unmistakable marks of having been made with the ordinary sharp stone cutters (obsidian and quartzite), and rubbed down with grinding- and polishing - stones of different qualities. The size and number of the teeth vary very much (from three to twenty-five), according to the taste or skill of the maker. Those with the coarser teeth are usually the best preserved. The persistence of the type form is very interesting, especially as it practically coincides with those drawn by Parkinson from the North.

In the North Island I have collected fragments of smaller bone combs, having only three teeth, with the top part variously ornamented; and Mr. T. W. Kirk has described a large bone comb with three teeth, found by him near Wellington. The great size of this must have rendered it somewhat an uncomfortable ornament, unless there was a great profusion of hair. Besides the dress-comb of bone there is another form, more frequently to be seen in collections. It is made very neatly and ingeniously from small slips of hard pine-wood (rimu), pointed, and laced together with delicately-worked lashings of fine flax in various patterns; the two outside pieces of wood being generally carved or ornamented. The shape of this varies: in some cases the head is the wider part, in others the points. These resemble in construction and form combs from many of the Pacific islands. It would be an interesting study to collate the various forms of combs used in the different groups, noting where the use is limited to chiefs, &c. The usual term for the head-comb is heru or karau, the latter being also used for the dredge or rake used for obtaining fresh-water unios or pipis from the bottom of a lake. It is unnecessary, perhaps, to state that, besides being ornamental, the combs were useful for practical purposes. A figure of a wooden comb, which was found in one of the Sumner caves, is given in plate ii. of volume xxii. of the Transactions of the N.Z. Institute. Description of Plate LII. (in Part). Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Bone combs dug up at Murdering Beach, near Dunedin, now in the collection of Mr. John White, Anderson's Bay. 6. Head of a bone comb found at Cape Kidnappers. A. Hamilton. 7. Bone comb in collection of Mr. S. Drew, of Wanganui. Several small holes are bored in the teeth of this specimen. They do not appear to have any use or significance.