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183: The Pit Dwellers of the Pelorus
Here is a little more on the pit dwelling of Pelorus (in Marlborough) we alluded to in the last post 28th August 2021.
As late as 1860, no place could have had more the appearance of a land without a history. The small abandoned cultivations, overgrown with fern and shrubs, which fringed the water's edge, gave the impression that man had been a recent and transient intruder—the dense evergreen forest which clothed the hills from base to summit being the ancient possessor of the soil. But hidden in the undergrowth; and eventually under ancient trees as ground was cleared were rectangular excavations attracting attention owing to their number, their wide distribution, and their evident artificial origin. For what purpose these pits had been constructed was for some time a mystery. With kumaras being stored in similar excavations throughout the North Island, they received the name of “kumara pits,” the general idea being that they had been used for the concealment of food during time of war.
After Joshua Rutland suggested they were pit houses due to charcoal remains in some corners others received confirmation from Maori that the pits he discovered were the remains of ancient houses. Topia Turoa said however, that they have not been in use for some four or five generations since before or around 1700AD. Now think about this, this is about the time Kati Mamoe invaded the area from the north island and took over before Kai Tahu did the same to them a hundred years later.
What the pits originally were being thus satisfactorily settled, it is only necessary to give a more accurate description than was at first possible, and to direct attention to their archæological importance. The old pit dwellings are invariably rectangular in form; sometimes in groups or villages, sometimes solitary. They are everywhere found on the steep narrow spurs projecting from hillsides, or on small elevated patches of level land. In constructing these houses on hillsides, the sites were carefully levelled, terrace above terrace being thus formed, where a village stood. On level land, the material taken from the pit was built into a low wall, which was sometimes further raised by digging a trench round the outside. On Whatamanga Point, Queen Charlotte Sound, the remains of a house of this description, twenty-one feet by sixteen feet within, as well as several ordinary pits, may still be seen. As no opening or door was left in the walls of the large pit, entrance must have been effected over the top—the habitation being thus practically an ordinary pit dwelling. The majority of pit dwellings contain only one apartment, but in some localities two-roomed houses are not uncommon. These consist of two pits, placed in a line end to end, and separated by a piece of solid ground from two to four feet wide. In 1896, a very large pit dwelling, in the remains of a village at Crail Bay, Pelorus Sound, was found to be partly cut out of rock. Rutland made the accompanying plan.
These remains occupy the upper portion of a steep narrow spur separating two small valleys, the highest pit being about 45 metres (150 feet) above sea level. In outline and internal arrangement pit E, the fifth in descending order, is unlike any other I have discovered. Instead of the ordinary two rooms with a partition between, it consists of two rectangular portions, one fifteen feet by eleven, and six feet six inches deep, the other eighteen feet by eight feet six inches, only four feet six inches deep; without any partition, the two portions forming one L shaped chamber, the floor of the upper inclining slightly towards the lower portion, of which the floor is perfectly horizontal. In the construction of this abode, or whatever it may have been, more than 700 cubic feet of rock were removed, the material being used in raising the walls and levelling the outer margin of the pit, the site having been originally steep. Throughout, the walls of the chamber are perfectly perpendicular, the angles sharply cut, and the floor even, especially the raised portion or dais.
On the artificially made ground at one of the lower corners of the chamber a beech tree (Fagus fusea), measuring ten feet three inches in circumference four feet from the ground, is now standing. One of the main roots runs down the side and across the floor of the pit, showing that it must have grown since the place was abandoned. The accompanying photograph, taken by Mr. R. Palmer when I first discovered that the rock had been excavated, shows the tree and the friends by whom I was so kindly assisted. In addition to the pit described, pits A, B, C, D are cut out of the rock which shows along the back and sides close to the surface. Of the remaining seven pits, I could obtain only the superficial dimensions, owing to the debris that has accumulated in them—a thorough investigation of these interesting remains requiring more time and labour.
Other pits such as on Horohoro-kaka Island, were only four feet by five feet six inches, and therefore could not have been habitations. For whatever purpose these pits were intended, a site where the rock is close to the surface was evidently selected. On higher ground close by, where traces of other pits can be seen, there is a considerable depth of clay. Mr. John Guard, who was born at Te Awaiti, Tory Channel, in 1831, and has resided in Port Underwood over fifty years, remembers this little island being occupied by a strongly fortified pa, where the natives took refuge when attacked by their enemies from the South. Whether the pits belong to the same period as the pa, which was not erected until after whalers began to frequent the port, there is no means of ascertaining. In the remains of a village discovered in April, 1896, at the head of Matai Bay, Tennyson Inlet, I found on the floor of a dwelling ashes and charcoal, the clay beneath being burned to a depth that showed it had been for some time a fireplace. Though elsewhere I discovered traces of fire in these pits, the number examined is too small to justify any conclusion.
How these old pit dwellings were roofed cannot be positively ascertained, that portion of the structure having everywhere entirely disappeared. Only indirectly therefore is it possible to arrive at what it was like. The heavy rainfall of the Pelorus District precluding the possibility of a flat roof, we are forced to conclude that a sloping roof of some description was used. Inferring from the absence of post-holes round the pits, and from the margins being so carefully levelled, that the roof rested directly on the ground, the V-hut naturally suggested itself. Having arrived at this conclusion, it occurred to me that the V-huts of the Chatham Island natives mentioned by Mr. Shand were erected over pits; accordingly I wrote for information to Mr. Tregear, one of the Secretaries of the Polynesian Society, who, with his usual courtesy, immediately replied: “I feel positively sure that the Moriori had sunken dwellings. They told me themselves that one of the reasons their Maori conquerors looked on them with disdain was because they ‘burrowed.’” New Zealand had hobbits long before LOTR it seems...!
Above is a sketch of a kumara pit. It is Maorir because they all had support posts and an end entrance. The ones in the Marlborough have neither. Also Maori villages might have had 2-3 of these kumara pits. All the site in Marlborough were all pits with no level ground available to produce kumara enough to fill a small percentage of them. No, the Marlborough pits are dwelling places for a non-Maori people.
The ordinary stone or flint implements, found through the destruction of the forest in the Pelorus District, are not as well finished as tools of the same material from the Waikato Valley; the Pelorus tools resembling exactly implements found in the Chatham Islands. When, in addition to this, it is discovered that these long-buried relics were fashioned by a people who constructed for themselves underground habitations, and that the natives of the Chathams had similar dwelling-places, Rutland thought there could be little doubt that in the now nearly extinct Moriori we have a remnant of the people by whom New Zealand was first colonized. To the arts and customs of the Chatham Islanders we may then safely look for explanations of any traces of the ancient inhabitants which we may have discovered.
From the mouth of the Pelorus River to the shores of Cook Strait there is no portion of the sound where the remains of solitary habitations or villages cannot be found. In the Pelorus Valley I am not aware of a single pit being discovered, though numerous traces of man's presence, dating back to the period of the pit dwellings, have been observed and recorded. From this, it seems reasonable to conclude that, like the Moriori, the ancient inhabitants of the Pelorus resided close to the sea, occasionally visiting other portions of the country. The pit dwellings, especially those cut out of rock, bespeak a settled population. A settled population generally implies some means of subsistence and neither these people or the Moriori were much in the way of agriculturists. So it can be concluded that some or all the Noriori came from this region.
According to the traditions of the Pelorus Maoris, their ancestors, on entering the district, found it tenanted by a small dark-complexioned Maori-speaking people, who cultivated the ground, resided on the hills (the pits being the remains of their dwellings), and had only very small canoes, which, when not in use, they drew up on the hills by means of ropes. The ancient inhabitants were in addition unwarlike, but skilful in various arts, notably the working of greenstone, which their conquerors acquired from them. So much of this account has been proved correct, that the remainder might be accepted unquestioned; but tradition is always more satisfactory when substantiated by tangible evidence. The only portion of the old tradition unsubstantiated is the description of the canoes, but the picture is not without a counterpart. A missionary from Normanby Island (Papua), said the people there seem to live much as those of Moresby Island did in former days, scattered in the mountains, with small houses on the ridges. A few natives came off in wretchedly small canoes only capable of holding one. They would not approach near the vessel, and the slightest movement on board sent them flying to a safe distance.” If the Moriori resemble the Melanesian rather than the peoples of Eastern Polynesia, it is in the Western Pacific we must seek the origin of whatever was peculiar in their arts, habits, and customs, when compared with the modern Maori... and here we have some accounts that match perfectly.
Moa bones have been found in nearly every portion of the sound. They are never scattered on top but found underground always. Bones discovered were scattered over the ground at that level, the birds having evidently died or been killed where their remains lay. As this precludes the original idea that the birds were brought dead from the open country for food, their remains being confined to that portion of the forest country where the pit dwellers resided has still to be explained. The Moriori of the Chatham Islands kept sea-gulls, tern, and parakeets tamed, and that they protected the wingless birds of the island, only allowing them to be taken for food at certain seasons. Is it not then probable that the New Zealand branch of the race was imbued with the same provident spirit, and that the inhabitants of the sound may have had moas tamed or partially domesticated? Throughout New Guinea tame cassowaries are common in the native villages. In the Solomon and other Melanesian groups the Megapoda has been introduced, and is so carefully protected that it may be considered a domestic animal. It would be quite in keeping with the genius of a Melanesian people if, on landing in New Zealand, they found the country tenanted by wingless birds, to preserve them as a means of subsistence.
When Captain Cook visited Queen Charlotte Sound in 1770 the pit dwellings had gone out of use, and the inhabitants—few in number—subsisted entirely on fish and fern-root, wandering from place to place. On D'Urville Island, where he remained some days refitting his vessel after circumnavigating the archipelago, no natives were seen, though the remains of houses showed they had been there some time previously. Evidently a great social change had taken place, the settled population had disappeared, its place being filled by a few miserable savages, living in constant dread of destruction. In the North Island, Cook found everywhere the modern Maori, with whose arts, institutions, and character the missionaries and others have made us familiar. To account for the wide difference between the two portions of the country, we can only accept the historical tradition of a foreign invasion. In the North, the original inhabitants had been superseded, or subjugated, and compelled to adopt the ways of their conquerors; in the South only a destructive revolution had been effected.
As these remains, whether solitary or in groups, are invariably close to the sea or at some waterway, it can be seen that the Moriori were not the only pit dwellers who inhabited the shores of the Pacific. In Northern Japan and the Kuriles, where extremes of cold and heat alternate, and where timber is scarce, there are reasons for the adoption of underground habitations. If we accept the theory that like conditions beget similar results, the New Zealand coast, with its equable climate and abundance of building material, is not a place where pit dwellings might be looked for. Knowing how useless habits are persisted in by rude people, we might conclude that it was an introduced art; but from where could it have been derived? The Moriori were undoubtedly an offshoot of some Polynesian nation. In no portion of the great island belt including the Malay Archipelago, New Guinea, and Polynesia have underground dwellings or their remains been observed. This, however, cannot be taken as evidence of their non-existence, as we know how long they remained unnoticed in New Zealand, though thought to have been used in the Chatham Islands within such a very recent period. Owing to their indestructible nature, the old pit dwellings should be valuable archæological monuments.
And more recently, from a NIWA Journal in 2015 - 3.2 Land-use change Māori and European historians recount early occupation of the Marlborough Sounds, including the presence of a race of people that lived in pits high above the beaches, possibly the work of Moriori (Ponder, 1986). Early tribes settling in the Nelson Marlborough region included Rapuwai, Waitaha, Ngāti Wairangi, Hāwea, Ngā Puhi, and Ngāti Māmoe (Ponder, 1986; Walrond, 2012). Accounts by James Cook from 1770 noted that the land was sparsely occupied and “they [Māori] cultivate no parts of the land”. Although not reported by Cook, there is evidence that Ngati Mamoe cultivated the shoreline flats (Lauder, 1987). When the first settlers, the Harvey family, sailed and rowed into Clova Bay, Manaroa in 1849, the bush was intact, being dominated by majestic podocarps including kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides), totara (Podocarpus totara), matai (Prumnopitys taxifolia) and rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) (Ponder, 1986) with beech (Nothofagus sp.) on the steeper land (Lauder, 1987). At altitudes above about 550 m, rimu were rare or absent and the forests comprise mainly mixed beech and kāmahi (Weinmania racemosa) with some southern rata (Metrosideros umbellata) (Laffan and Daly, 1985). The human history of the area told by Ponder (1986) recounts the inner Pelorus having been largely abandoned by early Māori inhabitants during conquest raids of north island iwi led by Te Rauparaha from Kāwhia in the north in 1828. The early accounts of the Harvey family support that there were few inhabitants in the area at the outset of European colonisation, and that the land and bush was intact apart from the presence of goats and pigs that had been previously introduced by Cook. The early European settlers first cleared the flattest land available to build dwellings and to start farming cattle for milk and sheep for meat.
Then there are the egg stones.... absolute proof of Melanesian influence.
“Mr. Waterhouse held a short service in English in Harry's house. In the afternoon we left Namusi, and ascended the secluded and lovely valley in which it lies. On reaching the sacred place, whence the Rewa god Wairua was said to have drifted, we stopped to examine it more closely, and asked the guides to point out the exact spot. They indicated a hole in a small tree by the side of a stream a few yards from the path. Manoah put his hand into the hole and brought out an oval stone of very regular form, about the size of a swan's egg; the guides said that was the god. Manoah again put in his hand and brought out some small stones of a similar shape, which they said were the god's children. We then began to question them about the god, on which they looked very grave, and pressed us to move on. Manoah wanted to throw the stones away, but as the act would only have irritated the natives without doing any good, we desired him to restore them as he had found them. In addition to these oval stones a number of equally symmetrical but much larger, nearly spherical stones, have been found in the Sounds and in the Pelorus Valley; one of these, 26 inches in circumference which I possess, was discovered in very dense bush on a hill at Four-Fathom Bay, Pelorus Sound. I have heard of another that was found in a hollow tree, and of one concealed in a fork of a large tawa tree. Six of these stones which I examined were very much alike in shape and size, and several others described to me must have been very similar. These stones have the appearance of waterworn boulders, but how such a number of boulders so nearly alike were obtained it is difficult to conceive. I have repeatedly questioned both Maoris and Europeans, but have not been able to obtain any satisfactory explanation of these curious relics. Traces of stone-worship in the Malay Archipelago have been noticed by various writers.
We have a post on these unusual relics already.
No European or Maori can explain the presence of these stones. They are 100% Melanesian in design and origin in form but with local rock. A few are in private collections.
