164: Unusual burial customs of the MoriOri

The Moriori were supposed to be from the main islands of Aotearoa and fled to Rehoku. It is suggested they are as Polynesian as anyone else. If that is in fact correct, they are from a different time than the so called fleet migration period and learned new customs from those of Polynesia. But why would you have new and different customs? My were their ceremonial weapons unlike Polynesian styles. Why were their craft like Peruvian reed boats, Why are they the only ones to carve dendroglyphs (tree glyphs)? Why were they passive when Polynesians were aggressive warriors? If they are Maori (Polynesians from the fleet) why did they have different customs and if they did arrive from Polynesia and fled to Rehoku, who did they learn these customs from while back on the mainland?

We seem to be back to Melanesian/Asian influence when you read this story of early European observations.

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At Wharekauri, Mr. Chudleigh's estate in the northern part of the island, I saw many bones lying beneath the trees in a dense thicket near the shore, and was informed that the Morioris sometimes tied their dead to trees in erect postures with a stick in hand pointing upwards to represent a pigeon-spear, the bodies being tied with the stems of that curious climbing plant. Mr. Gilbert Mair, in a paper read before the Wellington Philosophical Society in 1870,* also refers to this mode of burial. He says, “In some instances the corpses were placed upright between young trees and then firmly bound round with vines, and in course of time they became embedded in the wood itself. Sometimes they were placed in hollow trees. Several skeletons have lately been discovered by Europeans in trees which they were cutting up for firewood, etc. In other cases the corpses were placed on small rafts constructed of the dry flower-stems of the flax. Water, food, and fishing-lines were then placed by them, and they were set adrift and carried out to sea by the land breeze. An American whaler discovered one of these rafts with a corpse seated in the stern many miles from land. Not knowing that it had been set adrift purposely, the captain had a rope attached to it and towed it into Whangaroa Harbour, much to the annoyance of the natives.” Mr. Mair makes no mention of burial as a mode of disposing of the dead as with the Maori. If this is the case. why it is the case?

For my own part, I am inclined to believe that the human figures on the kopi-trees were connected with their burial customs, for in no other way does it seem possible to explain the peculiar attitude of all and the prominent ribs of some of the figures. “When dead,” says Mr. Travers, “the arms were forced back against the chest and securely bound there with plaited green-flax ropes, the hands were bound together and drawn over the knees, and a stick was then inserted between the arms and knees. This was the orthodox method of trussing a body, and it was sometimes a work of great difficulty, for when the body became rigid the efforts of many men were required to bring it into a proper position. This being done, the dead was enveloped in plaited flax matting and interred as far as the knees, the upper portion of the body being invariably above the soil.”

It seems tolerably certain that another method of disposing of the dead was by placing them in or against trees in the manner described by Mr. Mair. The particular mode of dealing with any dead body was probably determined by the character of the individual to whom it had belonged, and probably great importance was attached to the proper performance of the ceremony. The earlier methods of disposal may very likely have been given up for sanitary reasons on the advent of Europeans, a possibility which had struck me even before I came across the following significant passage from Mr. John Amery's work on the Chatham Islands, quoted by Mr. Travers: “In my rambles through the bush I have frequently observed a time–and weather-bleached skeleton grinning at me from some old tree. Walking one day with an ancient native woman, she suddenly stopped and commenced an affectionate and whining korero with a skull suspended from a branch. I said, ‘What old friend is that?’ ‘Oh,’ said she, ‘it is my first husband; he was atame pai (a good husband). My wife and I used both entreaties and arguments to break them from such indecent and unholy customs. One day, during my absence from home, a person was about to be interred in the usual manner. My wife, however, hastened to the spot and insisted upon having a deep grave dug. She was instantly obeyed, upon which she read an appropriate prayer, and the body was interred with decency. From that time the old custom was never revived.”

If for any reason the Morioris really did abandon their ancient custom of tree-burial, it is not difficult to believe that they might, in place of the actual bodies, carve upon the bark of the trees those remarkable figures which are so clearly intended to represent skeletons. Such carvings would serve as a memorial almost as well as the corpse itself, without the obvious disadvantages of the latter. There are several reasons why the kopi-trees should always have been selected for the carving. It is almost the only tree large enough, and, on account of the smooth nature of the bark, quite the most suitable; while, if there was any right of individual ownership in the trees, it is not unnatural to suppose that the effigy of the departed would be placed on his own property. This view of the case may also in some measure explain the Maori idea that the carvings indicated the doom of the Moriori race, for the abandonment of the ancient burial custom would probably be regarded as a most serious infringement of tapu and as such would be expected to entail disastrous consequences. In this connection it is interesting to note Mr. Shand's statement that “the Morioris began to die very rapidly after the arrival of the Maoris, the cause of which they attribute to the transgression of their own tapu, for the Morioris were an exceedingly tapu race”

The extent of the Moriori population in former years is still attested by the immense quantity of human remains with which the shores of the island were once littered, and by the abundant evidence of native handiwork. At intervals along the low sandhills which fringe the greater part of the shore old burying-places and huge shell-mounds or “kitchen-middens” are met with. It was the custom of the race to bury some, at any rate, of their dead in the sand by the sea-shore, in a sitting posture, facing the west, with the elbows down and the knees up. In many places the remains have been exposed by the wind, and the shore is strewn with skulls and bones in various stages of dismemberment. Owing doubtless to the ease with which graves are scooped out in the loose sand, the Maoris chose (at any rate, at first) similar situations on the island for their cemeteries, so that it is now by no means easy to say whether any particular skull or other bone picked up on the shore belonged to one of the conquered or one of the conquering race. The only safe plan for those who wish to obtain specimens for scientific investigation is to dig out the entire skeleton, when the sitting posture may be regarded as sufficient proof of Moriori origin, for the Maoris appear to have buried their dead in a horizontal position.

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Maori also have a few different types of burial; depending which island they lived upon and what era they lived in, and by Maori we mean those regarded as Maori. Our belief, unproven yet, is that different cultures were here before the main migrations (the ones most regard as the first to arrive), proven by the burial customs of where they came from (Hawaiki - ie Riataia) do not have the variance as in New Zealand. Those here in the sol called 'migration' were not the first. Many Maori (not political Maori) will agree that they were not first. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the media in NZ do not have the balls to present the opinion of some Maori in publications for the fear of backlash by other more powerful and vocal Maori. The media will therefore have to be dealt with another way.