- MD
222 : Origins of the Rei Puta
Most Rei Puta were found in Northland. They say the Rei Puta was an early design and developed in Polynesia. But where in Polynesia? I can’t find a single example in any old journals, or even in any artifact auctions. Where are the examples to support this hypothesis? Can anyone say? Can anyone point to a Pacific Island where Rei Puta have been found? Anyone? Anyone at all...?
An interesting yet revealing silence ensues....
However, there ARE examples in Melanesia (yes, here we go about Melanesia for the 700th time!). The Rei Puta was made in the Melanesian design based on what the early Polynesians saw already being worn when they got here to Aotearoa. Maybe they did embellish the design a bit, but one thing is almost certain - the design was not brought with them from Polynesia. If you think it is, please prove that to us, if you can we will accept it,
The picture below represents an interesting variant of the rei puta which Hamilton records as from near Lake Ellesmere. The rei-puta details are elaborated more than in any other known example, and there is in addition the form of a bird with outstretched wings. It is made of Sperm-whale tooth and resides now at the Otago University Museum.
The note attached to this item refers to the figure as a bird with outstretched wings, but it’s nothing like that. What bird has four wings! This is a ground crawling creature with feet and a head and teeth. Teeth like a crocodile! Crocodiles are found in Melanesia. But it doesn't have a tail you say. True, but a bird doesn't have four wings either.
Important whale tooth rei puta, considered to be one of the rarest forms of Maori adornment, were a chiefly signifier worn by the ancestors of the Moa-hunters of Aotearoa. The rei puta style can be traced back to the first wave of ancient adventurers who landed in Aotearoa around the time of the turn of the last millennium (because of course if we said otherwise no one would accept it). In fact rei puta were still quite common around the time of Cook; a bit of a style revival.
Te KuuKuu Bay of Islands. First, although the art of the Rei Puta was supposed to have died out centuries before in favour of the tiki, this was seen and recorded in 1769 in the bay of islands. Secondly, please note that Te KuukUu’s moko is not like other Maori recorded at the time and is an old form - called Puhoro. Was his style as throwback tradition kept alive by one tribe? He also had human teeth in his ear, a tradition of ancestors teeth being worn had died out millennia before yet here he is wearing them. 3 things unusual to Maori at the time. In the far north, necklaces of human teeth were common in the early days. Cook however found those in Pelorus Sound wore human teeth in their ears and on necklaces.
This type of Maori ornament has always been considered very rare. One specimen in Maori possession, a splendid one which Te Manihera, or Maunsell, an aged man of the Kaipara North Heads, delighted to wear. Apparently it was “his sole remaining joy,” for I do not think that he possessed any other memento of former days. George Graham had the opportunity in 1921 of examining another of these interesting relics of pre-European times, it being therefore only the second one he had come across among the Natives in a period of over forty years. This rei-puta comes from the Bay of Plenty District and is reputed to have been originally the property of Tuhiku of the Arawa tribe, from whom it passed to relatives at Matata among other heirlooms as Roimata (tears), on the occasion of a ceremonial connected with the dead. The present holder recently received it back from her Matata relatives who had held it for six generations as the appended family tree shows, the reason being likewise as a mark of condolence for Roimata on the death of her father. It is thus an interesting survival of an ancient custom, the interchange of tribal heirlooms as mourning mementos between related families.
Like most of the rei-puta figured in the illustrations of the earliest books on New Zealand, this specimen is engraved or carved at its end with a semi-human or fish-like face. What it is intended to represent is quite unknown to the Natives now-a-days, in fact the meaning of the ornament itself is now forgotten. Maori ornaments were not merely ornamental, they had each some talismanic or emblematic significance, as for example the tiki, the mania, the pekapeka, each in some way connected with some branch of Maori mythology and its correlated rites and ceremonial.
Tukumana Te Taniwha (In the 1920's probably one of the most reliable persons in respect of these matters), states that these ornaments were never common so far as he could recollect in the Hauraki district. He has a vague idea that the ornament represents a tuoro or eel god, and was in some way connected with the fishing ceremonials of former days, a kind of talisman to bring luck and avert evil.
Some say they are like the ei niho palaoa of Hawaii, but they are nothing like them. Apart from a vastly different shape and form the Hawaiians often connected them half way down. Maori connected them at the top, usually with 3 holes.
There is also an example in stone from the sand-hills at Mangawai, on the east coast between Auckland and Whangarei. It is 12.9 cm. long and 3.87 cm. wide and is in the Auckland Museum. The hole for the suspension cord is characteristically cone-shaped at each end, but does not splay so much at the surface as one would have expected in such hard stone. The material is dark, almost black, andesite.
