Sidestep: How the dead lie
Burial for part-Maori these days is the same as most everyone else, cremation or burial in a coffin in a cemetery (Urupa). However, the various Maori tribes (pre-European), had various methods of dealing with the bodies of the dead. This varied either by location or era.
Trussing was a common method where the knees were drawn up under the chin and chest before the body became too rigid (identical to the Peruvians). The crouched body was wrapped in whāriki (mats), cloaks and other finery. This is quite common on the coast where sand dunes existed. There is one such site known not far from Dunedin.
Banks also tells us that, on Cook's first voyage, remarks on the absence of graves, or rather states that he and his companions saw none. This was owing to the fact that, in pre-European days, the Maori always practised secret burial, lest enemies desecrate the graves. It was considered quite justifiable to take the bones of the dead of an enemy folk and fashion therefrom such implements as fishhooks, spear-points, and flutes. Such acts have been the cause of much inter-tribal fighting.
Traditionally the tūpāpaku were buried in shallow graves, or placed in secret places including caves or trees. In some cases the tūpāpaku would be weighted down with something and buried in the sea or in a deep pool of water. After a time the tohunga would return and collect the bones for the hahunga (exhumation ceremony). The bones were washed, scraped and painted with red ochre, and returned to the marae and mourned over again, in a similar ceremony to the tangihanga. The final committal of these bones was done in secret so that enemies of the hapū could not uncover the dead and desecrate their remains.
Sometimes the body of a dead person to a drying process, one that was also known at Tahiti, as described by Captain Cook. True mummification, the embalming of a corpse, was unknown, the process being one of drying. The drying of the head only was a common Maori custom. Mr. Beattie tells us that the custom of drying and preserving bodies was followed to some extent in the South Island, where it was called whakataumiro. Oil was used in the process. A dried body seen by Angas in the North Island had apparently been trussed as for burial; the knees were drawn up and the head rested on them. A few others have been found in caves. Not only was oil rubbed on the drying body, but also gum of the tarata tree, a Pittosporum, was used to close the pores, as a kind of varnish. Another account speaks of a steam oven being made below the body, which was elevated. This would be a steaming process.
There is also an account of the trussing of a body that had been dried. It was done while the body was still warm from the drying process. The legs were bent so that the knees came up against the breast, and the feet against the buttocks. The trussing was done by attaching cords to the knees and ankles, and considerable exertion was required in order to effect it. If the process was delayed too long then it became necessary to fracture the bones of the limbs.
Yet another old custom now claims our attention, and that is the process of drying and preserving human heads, known as pakipaki mahunga, the dried article being termed mokamokai. Unlike the drying of the whole body, this was a fairly common usage, and it included the heads of both friends and enemies. The Maori was not a head hunter, but he sometimes so preserved the heads of prominent enemies, not only because it would cause grief to his enemies, but also to enable him to revile an enemy after death. Such heads of enemies would be occasionally exposed, impaled on a stake, sometimes on the defensive stockade of the village, when they would be addressed in bitter terms. In the case of friends, heads of men of standing were sometimes preserved and brought out occasionally to be greeted and wept over by their relatives. When the northern raiders lost a large number of men at Wellington by an epidemic in 1820, they burned the bodies of the dead so that the local natives might not obtain their bones. The heads of some of the more important men were dried and carried back by relatives to their northern homes. Dried heads of friends were exhibited at meetings of the people. The process to which the heads were subjected was one of steaming. A steaming pit was made as it is for the cooking of food, but a small orifice was left for stream to escape by, and over this the head was placed. All interior matter softened by the hot steam was disposed of by a shaking and probing process. The skin was taken off below the line of decapitation to allow for contraction. The eyes were extracted and the eyelids sewn down. The loose flap of skin was tied underneath. The final process was one of smoke drying. Oil was rubbed on the head several times. The hair was retained, and was dressed and decorated when the head was exposed to the public. Numbers of these dried Maori heads are in museums in Europe and elsewhere. The last case of head drying known to the writer occurred in 1865.
Burial grounds are termed Urupa. A cave or chasm where bodies or bones of the dead were placed is styled a toma, whara, and rua koiwi.
If the dead were buried, or otherwise disposed of outside the limits of the fortified village, then secret disposal was generally necessary. What is generally termed canoe burial was not a safe usage outside the village, placing the corpse inside a form of coffin made by fastening together two sections of a canoe gunwale to gunwale; they might be six feet long. This coffin was erected in an upright position, and the body was placed inside in a sitting position on a kind of grating. Early voyagers saw canoe coffins containing bones of the dead, and remains of bodies lying on elevated platforms in native villages.
Tree burial was common in some wooded districts, as in that of the Tuhoe tribe. The most common form there was to place the exhumed bones of the dead in a hollow tree. Many such trees are known in that district. The writer discovered two close to one of his camps long years ago. The trees are often large, hollow pukatea (Laurelia). One such, near Opotiki, contained the bones of some hundreds of persons. Another form was stage burial, the bodies being placed on a platform constructed among the branches of a tree. We hear of these platforms having, in some cases, a form of roof put over them. Occasionally the body was concealed among the masses of epiphyte Astelia growing high up on huge rata (Metrosideros) trees. The Ngai-Tama clan of Tuhoe have followed the custom of tree burial since the days of their eponymic ancestor, who flourished thirteen generations ago. That ancestor considered it a wrong act to bury the dead in the earth, because the earth produced food for mankind. Tama was scarcely a consistent person, for the food supplies of his folk were obtained largely from trees.
Swamp burial was occasionally practiced, the method being to tread the body down into a swamp.
Sandhill burial was common in some parts where loose formations of sand were found on the coast. This was an easy task, the covering of the body in the face of a sand drift. Shifting sand dunes have exposed many human remains, and implements and ornaments of stone and bone that had been buried with the dead. A famed sand dune burial place for centuries was that known as Opihi, at Whakatane, known in full as “Opihi whanaunga kore” (Opihi the relationless), presumably because it had no regard for any person, none were spared, all came to it in the end. In these cases of swamp and sand burial the bones were not recovered.
Graves were but shallow excavations, for the bones were usually exhumed, and a deep pit would retard decomposition. In sitting or crouched burial (tapuke whakanoho) the trussed body was but a little way from the surface.
The singular coffins found in caves north of Auckland seem to have been peculiar to that district. The carved designs on them are often dissimilar to those employed in other parts and in later times. These receptacles were made to contain exhumed bones, not bodies, and are fine examples of old stone tool work.
In a few cases trussed bodies of the dead, occasionally a dried body, were conveyed to a cave and placed in a sitting position on a block of stone therein. Such bodies would be enveloped in a cloak of Phormium fibre. In at least some cases a formula was recited by the officiating tohunga that had the effect of placing the tapu cave under the care of an atua. He was, as the Maori puts it, “located at the entrance.” This was to prevent trespass and desecration by unauthorized persons. When placing remains of the dead in caves or elsewhere, prized articles were sometimes placed with them, such as implements, weapons, or ornaments such as pendants, etc. Highly valued articles, such as greenstone weapons and pendants, are sometimes found in burial places.
Sea burial was apparently but little practiced by the Maori. Banks mentions it as noted at Queen Charlotte Sound during Cook's first voyage.
Cremation was never a common or universal custom with the Maori. It was practiced in some areas where no suitable.
Caves in which the bones of the dead were deposited were often situated in rough forest-clad country, on high ranges, or on rugged cliffs. Often such places were concealed by brush or tree growth. In some cases men gained access to them from the head of a cliff by the aid of a rope. Such a cave at Rua-tahuna was gained only by ascending a tree and laying poles from its branches to the mouth of the cave. Many such caves of the dead have been found by bush-fellers and others. In tree burial a large hollow tree, showing no external opening in its lower part, but an aperture high up, was preferred, through which the bones could be thrust, to fall down the hollow interior of the trunk. The bearers carried the remains wrapped up in separate parcels. A tohunga preceded them, and he recited certain formula at different stages of progress of the task, one such as they approached the tapu cave. The bundles of bones were deposited in the cave, often with the skull placed on top of the other bones, and the bearers then returned home, where the Whakanoa rite to remove tapu would be performed over them. Some of these whara or rua koiwi are not true caves, but what may be termed rock shelters. The writer has seen such places where many of such bundles of bones were arranged under overhanging rocks.
Of course customs change over time (the current practice part of the wider kiwi culture), but there is a big difference between tree burials, trussing and scraping the bones to be laid in caves to full stretched out burials or laying full bodies to decompose on shelves or cut shelves in a cave.
The first of the four photos above show a traditional Maori burial, one trussed, one with knees drawn up. The 3rd is typical of exhumed scraped bones laid in a cave. The last two are from the Waiau bar, bot trussed, but laid out as they died and facing the same direction. Either Maori changed methods suddenly (there was no gradual progression), or there were other races here similar to Maori before they arrived whose existence is still denied.
What is in the cave will make it clear for the reports indicated they were laid on on pre-cut shelves in the soft claystone above the karst limestone layers. If this is the case, they will not be any of the 700 year old Polynesian immigrants many say were first, they will likely be much older. But that still needs to be verified.
