HUMAN HEAD TRADE STILL FLOURISHES

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 15, 31 July 1944, Page 17

HUMAN HEAD TRADE STILL FLOURISHES

The grisly trade in preserved human heads is, in spite of the efforts of the missionaries, still flourishing in New Zealand. The present market value is about £2O for a good specimen, with the exchange made in either cold cash or muskets and powder. A few years ago ironware, mostly axes and agricultural implements, provided the basis ,of the bargaining, but these days the Maori has learned enough to know that firearms can reduce his enemies quicker than anything else and at the same time provide the means of more trade to reduce more enemies. Before the trade was put on a commercial basis, honour to the dead was the reason for the preservation of human heads. On their death friends are still honoured in this way, but care is always taken to prevent such heads front falling into the hands of the white traders. The heads used for trade are those of enemies. The heads not sold are generally exhibited either on poles in front of the chief’s living-quarters in a village or in the sterns of the war canoes. They are frequently dressed with oil and treated always with the greatest respect. Unfortunate cases have been known where women taken as prisoners of war by an enemy tribe have had to pass on their way to the fields the gruesome sight of their husbands’ preserved heads grimacing at them from the top of poles. “ The picking-up of real good heads ” by the traders has increased so much that lately slaves have been tattooed alive, later to be killed. And one scoundrel slave had the conscience to bolt before he was

I fit to kill; he ran away with his own head after all the trouble and expense had been incurred of tattooing it to make it more valuable. '