a permanent visible sign of their new place in society. This was why slaves could have no moko, unless, of course, they had been captured as prisoners of war. The moko was a mark of a man's or woman's position in society; but a slave, by definition, had no place in society. Men who were not slaves, but who were of undistinguished ancestry, wore the moko from their waist to knees, but did not have it on their faces. Probably, this was because the head, being tapu, was especially important as a mark of distinction. The only important men who did not wear a moko were the tohunga, or priests. The writer does not know of any tradition telling why this was so, but it seems likely that it was a consequence of the prohibition against shedding the blood of a tohunga. Not even another tohunga could do this safely; if you found a tohunga from an enemy tribe, and wanted to kill him, you had to strangle him, or use some other method which avoided shedding his blood. This dried head is in the Dominion Museum in Wellington. There are very few of these heads in New Zealand now, though there are quite a few overseas. Maoris preserved the heads both of relatives and of conquered enemies. Enemies' heads were exposed to view and jeered at, but the heads of relatives were carefully guarded. Their method of preserving them was so good that even today hardly any heads show signs of decay. We have said that boys and girls were not tattooed until adolescence, and that their moko served as a sign that they were now adults. However, only a small amount of tattooing was done at one time; it was so very painful that it would have been quite impossible to do it all at once. This was particularly the case with men, who had so much more tattoo on their faces than women. The artist who did the tattooing was very highly skilled, and was well paid for his work. People eagerly sought out the best artists, as they were very anxious to get as good a moko for themselves as they could; if the artist was a bungler, he could easily ruin their looks for life. A good artist was rewarded with such gifts as canoes, clothes, even slaves; in fact, one of the songs he sang, while he was working away at the tattoo, was a reminder to his client that he was expected to be generous with his payment. People who were not in a position to pay for a good carver often submitted themselves to someone learning the art, feeling that even a clumsy moko was preferable to none at all. One often finds among Maoris today the mysterious belief that art is ‘commercialised’ and debased if it is associated with money. In the old days there was certainly no such attitude; then, the artist—whether carver or tattooer—was paid handsomely for his skill and labour, using the goods which were then the equivalent of money.

Faces Were ‘Carved’ These days tattooing is done by making lines of very small punctures in the skin with an instrument like a sharp needle, rubbing in the colouring matter as this is done. This is comparatively painless, even if a local anaesthetic is not used. But instead of puncturing the skin in this way, the old Maori tattooer carved it, using a small fine chisel made, usually, of bone. The chisel was hafted to a handle and was tapped with a light mallet, so that it cut a furrow in the patient's skin. This was of course a much more painful method than the modern way, and in those days there were no anaesthetics. The patient managed to endure it, though, because he knew that this was a test of his courage, and it would have been ignominious to cry out. And while the lines were being chiselled the tattooer, or the patient's relatives, would sing magic songs to make him brave.