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T. Lindsay Buick, C.M.G., F.R.Hist.S.
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The purpose behind the writing of this book has been to place between two covers the leading facts connected with that section of our ancient population who to-day are known as “The Moa-hunters of New Zealand.” That man hunted and ate the Moa is a fact that has been long established, but the ascertained details of that period in our country's history have been obscured because they have been scattered through many publications, often in themselves obscure. It has, therefore, been possible to obtain a comprehensive view of the subject only by the expenditure of much time and great labour. Stripped of extraneous matter, I venture to hope that the story as here presented will prove to be at once interesting and instructive. It is to be regretted that during my researches nothing has emerged that will enable me to assign to the events described an authentic date, nor is it possible to say with certitude who the Moa-hunters were, but I have done my best with a heap of stones and a heap of bones, which are almost the only index that we now have to aid us in solving these two problems. There is no use blinking the fact that the information
This book forms the third of a Moa trilogy, and in all probability it will be the last that I will write upon the subject—not that the subject of the Moa is by any means exhausted. The recent operations of the Trustees of the Alexander Museum, at Whanganui, is proof of this. In the Upokongaro Valley, only nine miles from their city, they have what promises to be one of the most productive
Although the theme of this volume is the Moa-hunters, my sympathies throughout have been with the Moa rather than with the men who hunted him. A bird of great antiquity among the larger forms of life, it suffered the handicaps of its primitive birth. Being but ill equipped mentally and physically to compete against the subleties of man, it fought from the first a losing battle, but let us hope it
I sing the hymn of the conquered, who fell in the battle of life. The hymn of the wounded, the beaten who died overwhelmed in the strife. The hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the broken in heart, Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part.
TheAuthor.
As in the case of all my previous books, I am under many obligations to friends for assistance cheerfully given and services gladly rendered. The inspiration to write this book came out of an invitation to visit the town of Waimate, in South Canterbury, and to Messrs.
Dr.
What visionary Pasts revive,What process of the Years we see! — Burton.
I Propose to discuss within the compass of these pages a subject that I have chosen to call “The Moa-hunters of New Zealand.” In the comparatively brief course of this Dominion's historical and scientific development there has been no phase of its natural history so fruitful of discussion and difference of opinion as the life-story of our extinct giant bird—the Moa. That this should be so is little wonder, for no animate thing that New Zealand has produced has been so shrouded in mystery, so hedged about with romance, as has this wingless creature, once king of our avian world and monarch of all he surveyed. Whence he came, how he lived, whither he went, once were problems engaging spirited attention; and in spite of the reams that have been written about them these speculations are problems still, because they are as far as ever removed from a convincing solution. To the acute attention devoted to the study of the Moa, not alone
Notwithstanding its antiquity and its sacred character, human inquiry and human knowledge had at last succeeded in breaking through the crust of the Mosaic tradition that the world had been created in six days; and of the many fields of investigation opened up by the freedom of thought flowing from this achievement no field profited so greatly as did the study of zoology, geology, and the other major sciences. The mental activity thus stimulated first became evident on the Continent; but it soon spread to Britain, where the great ecclesiastical currents of the Disruption in Scotland and the Oxford Movement in England had left the nation for a time weary of theology. For relief the inquiring minds turned to the natural sciences, in which the teachings of such men as Laplace, Lamarck, Cuvier, St. Hilaire, Sedgwick, Buckland, Owen, Huxley, and Tyndall,
In 1650–54 he published the work which was long accounted his most important production, the Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti, in which he propounded a now disproved scheme of Biblical chronology, whose dates were inserted by some unknown authority in the margin of reference editions of the Authorized Version.—Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. 27, p. 21, “Usher.”
All things in Nature are engaged in writing their own history. The planet and the pebble are attended by their shadows, the rolling stone leaves its furrow
on the mountain-side, the river its channel in the soil, the animal its bones in the stratum, the fern and the leaf inscribe their modest epitaphs on the coal, the falling drop sculptures its story on the sand or on the stone, not a footstep on the snow or on the ground but traces in characters more or less enduring the record of its progress.
It does not follow that all the deductions made during this period of scientific productivity were sound, or that all the theories then formed were correct. Nor does it matter: in the final analysis the value of the scientist lies not so much in the mere contributions made by him to our material knowledge, as in the inspiration given to others to go forward and do better. The inspiration—each in his own sphere—of such men as Sir Roderick Murchison, Sir
“The sixties of the nineteenth century,” writes Professor Sir G. Elliot Smith, In 1859 The Diffusion of Culture, by Professor Sir G. Elliot Smith, pp. 120–122.Origin of Species was published. In the same year was issued Kirchoff and Bunsen's Spectrum Analysis, which, with the earlier work of Dalton on the atom and of Faraday on the nature of electricity, provided a new conception of the constitution of matter and the nature of energy. The vast antiquity of Man was also in this year established by the finding at Abbeville and St. Achuel, in France, by Boucher de Perthes, of genuine flint implements. In 1863 confirmation was given to the conclusions of the French scientist by the publication of Sir Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man. George Meredith's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel and George Eliot's Adam Bede were symtomatic of another aspect of the spirit of unrest. In 1860 there occurred the famous discussion between Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford, and Professor Huxley on the question of man's descent from the apes, and in the same year six clergymen and a layman created a much more profound sensation by issuing their volume of Essays and Reviews, which led to an action in the ecclesiastical courts in which the Lord Chancellor delivered the verdict that it was not heretical for a clergyman to deny the doctrine of eternal punishment. In 1862 Bishop Colenso published his book, The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined, intended to demonstrate that much of the Old Testament was unhistorical. In 1865 came Sir John Seeley's Ecce Homo; this year of emotional storm also saw the publication of Researches into the Early History of Mankind.
In this latter medium of mental inspiration, one of the most startling publications was the book written by the Edinburgh scholar, Robert Chambers,
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, brought out anonymously in 1844. This book has been described by one of its opponents as “not very strong in logic, nor exact in individual branches of science,” yet it was piquant enough to call from the devout Footprints of the Creator, which served not so much as an answer to Chambers as a confirmation of his revolutionary doctrines and an increase in the already widespread influence of his provocative book.
This progressive influence in the study of the sciences was most happily reflectected in New Zealand when the time came to fill her empty spaces with British colonists. It is no new thing to comment upon the splendid type of men and women who were the pioneers of our provincial settlements. It may not be remembered, however, how many of these men had imbibed a love for the sciences then being so vigorously expounded by the leaders of modern thought in the Homeland from which our colonists had but recently migrated. The stories of the initial
It was the fact that so many of our early colonists had been nurtured in the atmosphere of the new geology that inspired their interest in the varied discussions which, upon its discovery, quickly gathered round about the Moa; and fortunate it was for us that by their education and cultural inclinations these pioneers were so well equipped to initiate and to maintain the debates which searched the very heart and marrow of the subject.
The saga of the Moa-hunters as told in these pages necessarily presupposes the existence in New Zealand of the Moa, and therefore I need not devote time to discussing whence came the bird, nor to the elucidation of the riddle as to how it arrived, except to say that there are two possible answers to these questions. The bird might have migrated from the north over land-bridges which have disappeared, or
As to when, or how, New Zealand was first populated by human beings, we are, in truth, no better informed than we are regarding the advent of the Moa; but we are, I believe, on reasonably safe ground when we say that the first-comers were men and women of the Polynesian race. There may have been, and doubtless were, many migrations; there may have been variations in shades of colour and character between the first-comers and the representatives of the Polynesian people living in New Zealand to-day; but I am not aware that the evidence of tradition, or the examples of their culture which have come into our possession, entitles us to say that New Zealand has not been continuously
It is equally reasonable to assume that amongst the foremost occupations, or recreations, of these people so soon as they had acquired a sense of their own security would be to hunt the Moa. With no natural enemies There was in New Zealand at this time a large bird of flight, Harpagornis moorei, “with talons as strong as those of a lion,” which may have preyed upon the chicks of the Moa, but its depredations are not considered to have been extensive.
One of the earliest and most prolonged of the controversies that divided our colonial scientists into
Among the first to begin the analysis of the problem as to whether the Maori knew the Moa was the Mission printer at Paihia, Mr. It was the Reverend William Williams who forwarded to England the first consignment of Moa bones, which confirmed Professor Owen in the stroke of “audacious induction” by which he had already diagnosed the existence of the Moa from the small piece of bone submitted to him by Dr. John Rule.—See the author's The Discovery of Dinornis (1936).
The story, unsatisfactory though it was, stimulated Mr. Colenso's interest in the creature, and after vain inquiries and many disappointments he was able to acquire a few bones but not a great deal of information regarding this denizen of the mountain-side. What most impressed Colenso in these investigations was the apparent absence among the Maori people of any settled traditions concerning the bird. To him it seemed incomprehensible that a bird so remarkable in size and character should have escaped the notice or failed to excite the wonder of a people meticulously shrewd in their habits of observation and traditional record. To Mr. Colenso the logic of such a situation was that if the Maori had not preserved the Moa in tradition, that could be only because the Maori had never been in contact with the bird and knew nothing of it.
In an article written for The Tasmanian Journal of Science in 1842, but by an unfortunate mischance
From Native tradition we gain nothing to aid us in our inquiries after the probable age in which this animal lived; for although the New Zealander abounds in traditionary lore, both natural and supernatural, he appears to be totally ignorant of anything concerning the Moa save the fabulous stories already referred to. If such an animal ever existed within the time of the present race of New Zealanders, surely to a people possessing no quadrupeds, and but very scantily supplied with both animal and vegetable food, the chase and capture of such a creature would not only be a grand achievement, but one also, from its importance, not likely ever to be forgotten, seeing, too, that many things of minor importance are by them handed down from father to son in continued succession from the very night of history. Even fishes, birds, and plants anciently sought after with avidity as articles of food, although having never been seen by either the passing or rising generation of aborigines, are, notwithstanding, both in habit and uses, well known to them from the descriptive accounts repeatedly recited in their hearing by the old men of the village.
Taking, then, the paucity of tradition as he supposed it, together with such other facts as he found them, Mr. Colenso came to the conclusion that:
The period of time, then, in which I venture to conceive it most probable the Moa ceased to exist was certainly either antecendent or coetaneous to the peopling of these islands by the present race of New Zealanders.
Remembering that up to this time Mr. Colenso had lived in a part of the country where the Moa had never flourished greatly, and that he had come into contact with only a small section of the Native race, his knowledge of their traditions must have been far too limited to warrant such a sweeping statement as that quoted above. It has to be admitted, however, that his opinion long carried great weight, and all through the argument it has been freely adopted in support of the view that the extinction of the Moa was a fact accomplished prior to—perhaps long prior to—the arrival of man on these shores.
That the gentleman who was for so long known to and esteemed by us as Sir Julius von Haast was greatly influenced by Mr. Colenso's opinion, he admits; and he, too, became the doughty champion of the theory of the ancient extinction of the Moa, and at one time used the supposed absence of Native tradition as the sheet-anchor of his case. Sir Julius did not come to New Zealand in a scientific capacity; he came, in 1858, as the agent of a German shipping company anxious to promote emigration from Germany. He had, however, received a sound scientific training in his homeland; and what more natural than that in a young country, unexplored, and rich in geological wonders, he should respond
Sir Julius, being in 1861 entrusted with the geological survey of the Province of Canterbury, was placed in an unrivalled position to wander through the pages of Nature's book; and especially was he favoured in his new opportunity to study Moa problems. Steeped in Old-World geology, he drew his analogies from that sphere of learning; and in his first public pronouncement on the subject of the Moa's extinction, made in his presidential address to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury in 1871,Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. IV, p. 67.
The first jarring note to the comfortable acceptance of this positive opinion was the recalling of the discovery by Mr. Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. V, p. 98.
Notwithstanding the persistent interference of the local Natives, who deprived him of many of his best specimens, Mr. Mantell was able to make a more deliberate examination of this site than had been the fortune of Mr. Taylor; and after describing to us the circular fire-places of the old inhabitants, with their beds of ashes, calcined bones (both avian and human), fragments of obsidian and various kinds of flint used by the ancient Maori as knives, he tells us that the Native tradition pointed to this spot as being the first settled dwelling-place of their ancestors on their arrival from Hawaiki. This fact, coupled with the tradition which he heard from the local Natives about the use of the Moa as food, of the utilization of its bones for the making of fishhooks and other implements, and of the employment of its feathers for ornaments, established, he says, “a tolerably clear conviction in my mind that these birds, whose relics I had found there, had been killed, cooked, and eaten by their [the Maori] ancestors.”
This summation of the situation was confirmed by a later discovery which Mr. Mantell made at the other end of the Dominion, on the margin of a sunny, sandy beach a few miles south of Oamaru. When, in 1852, he first saw the vestiges of this ancient camp, Mr. Mantell was travelling as a Native Lands
Mr. Mantell has given us a detailed account of what he found in these ovens, and he has written his story in an entertaining strain. See The Mystery of the Moa, pp. 116–121.matamuamatamua—head of a family.tamariki,tamariki—children.
Thus Mr. Mantell found in these ovens by the sea undoubted evidence that the Moa had been there cooked and eaten by some branch of the human
See Appendix II.
On this point, however, it is only fair to state that Mr. Mantell was exceedingly timid about offering definite conclusions. At first he appeared to have no doubt that the people among whose kitchen middens he had been digging were a branch of the Maori race; but later he hesitated in this and preferred to describe them not as Maoris, but as “prehistoric”Wellington Independent, 3rd July, 1871.
Mr. Mantell was not enamoured of the Native name of the spot where he found these latter ovens—Te Awa-kokomuka—and he changed it to the simpler and more euphonious Awa-moa—the “River of the Moa”—and so it is known to this day. What he found there, however, proved beyond all doubt that man and the Moa had co-existed and had been in direct contact. The logical deduction, therefore, was that the Moa had not been extinct before the arrival of man.
The presence of human bones in the Waingongoro ovens induced Mr. Mantell to think that the Moa-hunters of Taranaki were cannibals; but the presence of Moa bones in the ovens at both Waingongoro and Awa-moa did not induce Sir Julius von Haast to abandon his preconceived views. He still preferred to view the problem through what Disraeli has called “the coloured prism of his own atmosphere.” He changed his ground—he did not surrender it. He now evolved the theory that if the Moa had been in contact with man, that man was not the Maori, but a race of autochthones, a race of people indigenous to the soil, who had come and gone long before the arrival of the Maori. He says:
I venture to assert that more careful and systematic researches than Mr. Mantell, owing to the troublesome interference of the Natives, was enabled
to make would prove that the Moa kitchen middens are quite distinct, and that where Maori ovens with indications of cannibalism occur they have been formed over, or within, those of the older race.
Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. IV, p. 78.
Sir Julius based his theory upon the belief that the Moa-hunters, whose existence he did not now deny, had been a people living in an extremely rude stage of culture, illustrated by the rough flints they had left behind them, a feature that stood in striking contrast to the remarkable artistry of the Maori as exemplified in his polished tools, his carved weapons, and his carefully-finished ornaments.
This opinion was largely founded upon what Sir Julius saw when he investigated a Moa-hunters' camp at the mouth of the Little Rakaia River, The following species of Moa were identified by Sir Julius von Haast as being among those consumed at Little Rakaia camp: Dinornis robustus, Emeus crassus, Emeus casuarinus, Anomalopteryx didiformis, Euryapteryx elephantopus.Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. IV, p. 81.
Such was the general character of the stone implements found by Sir Julius at Little Rakaia camp, “the really worked or chipped flints” being so very rare that he obtained only a few of them. This evidence satisfied Sir Julius that he was dealing with a race of people much more primitive in their culture than the present-day Maori. So obsessed did he become with this view, that when polished tools were found at Little Rakaia he refused to believe that they were in any way connected with the people who made the rude flints. Like the fires discovered in Taranaki by Mr. Mantell, he accounted for them by assuming that at a later date the true Maori had followed up his autochthones, and that these finished tools were a legacy from them, and not from their predecessors, the Moa-hunters.
In this way he justified his idea that New Zealand had been peopled by two races of men—one, the Moa-hunters of the Palæolithic period, crude in their mode of living and uncultured in their arts; the other, men of the Neolithic period, who displayed a great advance in domestic economy and in the mechanical arts, but who knew nothing of the Moa, which had disappeared long before their arrival.
This pronouncement was made in 1871. In 1865, however, Mr.
Apparently he had said little of his discovery at the time, but when, in March, 1871, Sir Julius advanced his theory that the Moa-hunters were of a race quite anterior of the Maori Mr. Murison came out of his concealment and, in September of the same year, in a paper read before the Otago Institute,Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. IV, p. 120.
Mr. Murison explains that when in 1861 he took up some grazing country at the foot of the Rough Ridge (3,400 feet), where the Puke-toetoe Creek enters the Maniototo Plain, he was struck with the frequency with which Moa bones occurred, and with their excellent state of preservation. Scarcely a hole could be dug anywhere in the ground without exposing some of these remains, and when the land came to be cultivated bones and fragments of eggshells in great numbers were laid bare by the plough. It was not, however, until 1865 that any cooking-places were seen. These cooking-places were first observed by Mr. Murison when, as he rode along the banks of the creek, he noticed a chain of hollows which he conjectured to be Maori ovens filled up with more recent deposits. Further and closer examination showed that they had been used for cooking the Moa, great quantities of bones being discovered in each of the ovens. These ovens lay from ten to fifteen yards from the stream, and they were covered with about six inches of more recent soil. Mixed with the embers were pieces of half-charred bones and innumerable fragments of egg-shells. In some of the cooking-places these latter were found in layers, showing that a vast number of eggs had been consumed as food; and scattered through the ovens were found rude chert
In striking similarity to those found at Little Rakaia, most of these were fashioned like knives, and, no doubt, had been employed in cutting up the bodies of the birds. Some heavier implements also were found, one of these shaped like a cleaver, which probably had been used to break the larger bones. In one oven the jaw of a young dog was discovered, mixed up with the bones and knives; and from the same place were taken several fragments of polished stone implements. Mr. Murison remarks:
A great deal of importance is to be attached to the discovery of the latter under such conditions, as, if it is conceded that the polished implements and chert flakes were used by the same people, Dr. Haast's theory of a Palæolithic period and a Neolithic period in New Zealand will have to be abandoned.
Mr. Murison was definitely of the opinion that the Moa-hunters had used both polished and rudely-fashioned stone implements, the latter possessing the great virtues of being both more easily made and more serviceable in cutting up the flesh of the Moas than any polished implement possibly could be. Chert knives, some of which with blunted edges bore signs of having been used, were found scattered
I contend that, so far as the interior of this Province is concerned, an analysis of the Puke-toetoe cooking-places has proved that the Moa has lived in comparatively recent times, and that the Moa-hunters were, in all probability, the progenitors of the [Maori] race now inhabiting the Island.
Mr. Murison even crystallized his convictions down to the point of saying that from the evidence furnished by Central Otago there was every reason to suppose that the Dinornis had been alive within the previous 100 years, an estimate which he felt sure future discoveries would justify.
It cannot be said, however, that this surmise has been verified, for the two elements in the problem that ever elude us are the fixing by irrefutable
The view thus advanced by Mr. Murison was contemporaneously championed by Sir
Nor did Sir James see anything inconsistent in people who in their cultural development had advanced far beyond the Palæolithic period still reverting to the use of stone implements common to that period, when these tools were all-sufficient for their purpose. It was not necessary that they should bring out their electro-plate on every occasion, when the stainless steel of that day would serve as well. The fact that Sir Julius von Haast found but few polished implements at Little Rakaia, Sir James considered, by no means proved that the Moa-hunters of that district were not possessed of them, or that they were incapable of producing them. All that
The general principles which govern the use and manufacture of primitive tools by primitive peoples was excellently stated in a paper “Evidence of Outside Culture Inoculations,” by A. S. Kenyon, D. J. Mahony, and S. F. Mann, Now the Australian and New Zealand Association.Report Aust. Assoc. Adv. Sci., Vol. 17, pp. 464–466; 1926.
In Victoria, along the Portland shores, where flint is freely obtainable on the beaches, every kind of Monsterian and lower forms are found in profusion, with secondary working of the finest class. A few miles along the coast towards Port Fairy the same tribe, under the same conditions, leaves but few worked flints, because flint is scarce, if procurable at all, while crude implements, lower than Mesvinian, made from local basalt, are common. Consequently, we are here, in Australia, as are also investigators in Africa, and both Americas, faced with the fact
that the classifications, so confidently relied upon by European archaeologists, are quite inapplicable, and that the use of terms implying a geological age as well as a stage of culture cannot be sustained. The needs of the Australian, who had not reached the pastoral, and was far removed from the agricultural, age, were met by the implements possible from the material to hand. Any attempt to compare his cultural period with those of the Old World, with races subjected to periodic invasions of different cultures, with races living, in all probability, in contact with higher or lower civilizations, will lead to the errors into which many eminent ethnologists have fallen.
In these graphic words we have exactly described for us the cultural condition of the Maori, who was just as immune from extraneous influences as was the Australian aboriginal. Like him, he was deeply influenced by his environment, and, of his own volition, developed the standard of culture necessary to his well-being. He made his tools of the material convenient to his hand, and of the quality required by his immediate circumstances. Failure fully to recognize this fact led Sir Julius von Haast into an entirely wrong apprizement of the position. But if Sir Julius von Haast doubted the Maori origin and authenticity of the polished implements which he found on the site of the Little Rakaia Moa-hunters' camp, he could not so easily evade the genuineness of those found by Mr. Murison on the Maniototo
This important camp was situated at the mouth of a sluggish river falling into the sea on the north-eastern coast of Otago, and it occupied a wide area, where its inhabitants could revel in the pleasures of unlimited sun and sand. It differed materially from most of the other camps in that, whereas they were but occasional or seasonal camps, Shag River had once been occupied over a long period of time as a place of permanent residence by a large number of people. It was, therefore, what has been called a stratified camp, the evidence of one period of occupation being plainly superimposed upon another. Though the evidence that the people who occupied this settlement were Moa-hunters is incontestable, the fact that they possessed polished tools is made equally definite by the finding there, in 1891, by Sir These adzes are now to be seen in the Otago University Museum. “Material Culture of the Moa-hunters in Murihiki,” Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. XXIV, p. 496.Jour. Poly. Soc., Vol. 41, p. 98.
That the sport, or industry, of hunting the Moa was freely carried on in the South Island is evident from the number of camps already identified; and it is more than a guess to say that not by any means have all these camps yet been found and recognized. If we are to assess this killing of the Moa by man as one of the principal causes of its extinction, then it is evident that the process must have been widely diffused and must have been continued for a long time, for it is safe to say that the destruction of the bird began with the arrival of the first people.
It has not been my good fortune to travel extensively enough to have visited all the known camps, of which in the southern and central parts of the South Island there are, possibly, twenty, including the larger ones at Little Rakaia, Waitaki, Awa-moa,
Taranaki Herald, describes how when, sixty years ago, he was employed on the Hon.
Of the Moa-hunters' camps in that district Mr. Smith writes:
Along the valley of the beautiful Forest Creek, a tributary of the Rangitata, which separated Mount Peel station from Mesopotamia, for some years the home of
Samuel Butler in the early period of the Canterbury settlement, there were several Moa-hunters' encampments. In addition to the masses of incinerated bones and egg-shell of the birds, many well-preserved bones and Maori relics were collected in the vicinity of the encampments and on theextensive slopes of Ben McLeod Range (6,000 feet) on the south side of the stream. The Albury Moa-hunters' encampment was of much later date than the camp at Forest Creek. The prodigious number of bones of many species of Moas of different ages and sizes, together with the masses of egg-shell and triturated bones occurring at various depths in the floors of the painted caves and rock-shelters, impressed me unequivocally of the vast area of rich land for miles around having been for ages a large Moa breeding-ground, or ranch. The painted limestone caves and rock-shelters in the extensive Opihi and Totara Valleys are adorned with symbolic figures of the Moas. On some of the walls of these caves grotesque figures have been painted over each other, proving the long occupation of the aboriginals of these primeval abodes. The Moa-hunter encampment near the gorge of the Te-Nga-Wai River, on the Albury station, with its high, picturesque limestone escarpment and bush-clad range, was well chosen. On two acres on the level land, near the painted caves and rock-shelters, the hunters dug their
umus, or ovens, and cooked the Moas over a long period. The valuable Maori relics collected, including many stone tools, when excavating the cooking-places and the floors of the caves and rock-shelters,are all preserved in the Canterbury Museum. An article referring to these rock-shelters, by Mr.
Augustus Hamilton , will be found inTrans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. XXX, p. 24.
At Onepoto, Little Papanui, and at Sandfly Bay, on the Otago Peninsula, remains of consumed Moas have been found. At Anderson's Bay, at St. Clair, and at the mouth of the Kaikorai Stream, near
All of these camps have been explored and described Now Curator of the Otago University Museum.Jour. Poly. Soc., No. 162, June, 1932.
In spite of the contradictory stories, the greater part of tradition agrees on the Polynesian origin of the earliest inhabitants; and when to this is added the overwhelming evidence of the tools and ornaments
from the ancient village sites, and the total absence of anything of Melanesian origin, there can be no doubt at all that the inhabitants of Murihiki have always been racially and culturally Polynesian.
Moa ovens and kitchen middens also have occurred at Tumbledown Bay, near Little River; at Moa-bone Point Cave and Monck's Cave, on the road to Sumner; among the sand-hills near Avon; and on the flanks of Mount Torlesse, about 3,000 feet above sea-level. This list briefly summarizes the known Moa-hunters' camps in the South Island; but “from all the observations I have made,” Sir Julius von Haast observed in 1871, “I am led to the conclusion that the Moa-hunters have left traces in many localities in both Islands, of which only a very few are at present known to us,”Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. IV, p. 89.
In the North Island these camps, apparently, have not been so numerous; nor have they been so extensively explored as they have in the South Island. There have been found, however, traces of ovens in which Moas have been cooked near Whangarei; and from Gisborne to Castle Point there used to be seen, if they are not there now, middens with their heaps of broken egg-shell, shattered bones, and rude implements of chert and obsidian, telling a tale of
The most conspicuous example of a Moa-hunters' camp in the North Island yet recorded was that already mentioned, near the mouth of the Waingongoro River, in South Taranaki. This camp was situated in the country of the Ngati-Ruanui people, and lay about five miles to the north-westward of the present town of Hawera. For many miles on either side of this point the coast of Taranaki presents to the uninterrupted swell of the western ocean a long line of crumbling cliffs which are being remorselessly eroded by the wash of the waves, and from which, in the picturesque imagery of the Maori, “the sea takes its kai.”Kai—food.
They called it Rangatapu, the meaning of which is not clear to-day, but it is thought to have had its origin in some sacred rites anciently performed there by the tribal priests, possibly a whakawhetai, or thank-offering to the atuas for having given them safe passage to so beautiful a country.
To the north-west of this place, but divided from it by a narrow ridge on which once stood the Rangatapu pa, the fortified stronghold of the Moa-hunters, flows the Waingongoro River, which tumbles with a rumbling noise between its wooded banks and over its boulder-strewn course. One would like to think that the poetic spirit of the Maori had caught in this “rushing of a mountain torrent o'er its stony bed” some resemblance to the audible breathing of a sleeper when they applied to this stream a name which means “the snoring water,” but tradition is inflexible on the point that the name was suggested by a more mundane circumstance— Turi, their great ancestor, unmistakably snored as he slept beside the rumbling river.
To the shelter of a crescent bank at the foot of the eastern cliff, on the height of which formerly stood the This pa Ohawe-tokotoko,pa, now vanished, was occupied by a sub-tribe of Ngati-Ruanui, named Araukuku.
Mr. Taylor had been but recently stationed by the Church Missionary Society as the shepherd of their mission at Whanganui, and he was making his first pastoral visit to the northern section of his flock. Accompanied by two Native guides, he was travelling along the coastal road, when, reaching this singular break in the cliffs, he and his companions rested there in the heat of the day. As he sat upon a billowy dune he saw near him, protruding from the sand, a fractured bone which he thought to be similar in size and character to some he had previously seen at Waiapu, on the East Coast. Taking it in his hand to examine it more closely, he asked his guides what it was. “A Moa bone. What else could it be?” they replied. “Look around and you will see plenty of them.” Starting to his feet, the missionary obeyed their injunction, and was amazed to see the whole surface of the flat covered with similar mounds composed entirely of Moa bones, resembling what he has described as “a regular necropolis of the race.”
When they had sufficiently rested and refreshed themselves with a meal, Mr. Taylor emptied his food-box and filled it with some of the abundant relics from the dunes. This he did to the amazement, perhaps the amusement, of his guides, who marvelled at the foolishness of sacrificing good food for old bones. After reasoning between themselves upon the mystery of such conduct, one of them found the only explanation that seemed possible for such prodigality: “Hei rangoa pea” (“Perhaps he wants them to make medicine”), to which the other assented: “Koia pea” (“Most likely”).
Pressed for time, Mr. Taylor did not on this occasion devote any labour to making a meticulous examination of the site; and when he left it, it is doubtful if he was seized of the full significance of the situation. This was reserved for Mr.
In 1866 the Reverend pa, and, among others, the well-known Whanganui chief
The incident in which the chief became involved is thus described by Lieutenant-Colonel McDonnell,Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. XXI, pp. 438–441.
It seems indeed strange to me that an authority on Maori manners, language, and mythology, of such eminence as Colenso, should never have gleaned
anything about the Moa from the Natives he met. This is so contrary to my own experience that I cannot refrain from narrating an incident that came under my observation during the Native war on the west coast [of the North Island]. It was some time in 1866, during a visit Sir George Grey, at that time Governor, paid to the West Coast, that I, with
Kawana Paipai and other Natives from Whanganui, accompanied Sir George to the mouth of the Waingongoro River, where were the redoubts held by the Imperial troops.Here Sir George met Wiremu Hukanui, a chief of the Ngati-Ruanui, and supposed to be neutral; he was also a relative of Paipai. After the talk was over Wiremu left, when a discussion arose about the Moa, and This position was at this time the most advanced outpost of General Cameron's military force during the Native war on the west coast of the North Island. It has now practically disappeared through the process of erosion by the sea.
Kawana Paipai stated that in his youth he had joined in hunting the Moa on the Waimate Plains, which are close by. On being questioned, he gave a description of how they used to hunt and destroy this grand old bird, which was as follows: “The young men,” he went on to say, “stationed themselves in various parts of the plains, and when a Moa was started it was pursued by one of these parties with wild shouts, and sticks, and stones, until they were tired, when another detachment would take up the running; and so on, until the Moa was exhausted, when a chief would administer thecoup de grâce.” Paipai said that great efforts were made to drive the bird into the high fern, the more easily to tire it out. “I,” continued the old warrior, “was a youngster at the time, and often used to join in the chase.”
I forget now whether it was Sir George or one of the officers who expressed doubts as to the absolute correctness of what Paipai had stated, thinking he was simply relating what he had heard, which doubt raised the old man's ire. He got up, and, casting his eye around as if seeking to aid his memory, said: “What I have told you is true, and we used to bring them here to our fishing village and cook them in large ovens made expressly for them. Let some men bring spades and I will show them where to uncover the ovens.” Some six or seven fatigue men were assembled, and Paipai pointed out where they were to clear away the sand. After shovelling away some 6 feet square of sand, 3 feet in depth, a stone about the size of a 32 lb. shot was turned up, blackened and burned by fire, and then a number of other stones that had evidently been used for cooking, until a Maori oven some 5 feet in diameter was uncovered, containing over and under the blackened stones heaps of broken and partly-charred Moa bones, portions of skulls, and huge thigh-bones, which, later, Paipai said had been broken, so that the oil, or fat, could be sucked out of them. The ring-bones of the throat, or gullet, over an inch in diameter, were in plenty— like curtain-rings. I threaded a number on a flax-stick. More ovens were uncovered, and Sir George obtained some good specimens. I think Dr. Spencer,
now in Napier, got a number, as did many others. The Right Reverend the Bishop of Waiapu informs the Author that
Kawana Paipai 's story was confirmed to him by Dr. Spencer.Paipai described the plumage of the Moa, which he said was of a brown colour, and unlike the Kiwi, the feathers being larger and coarser, and more like those of the Emu. He said the Moa fought fiercely
when brought to bay, and that it struck out with its feet, but was easily killed with clubs. Kawana Paipai died some four or five years ago. He must have been over ninety, at least, and by what he said he was about sixteen years old when these birds were killed and eaten, so that would bring the time to near the beginning of this [nineteenth] century.
Lieutenant-Colonel McDonnell concluded his relation of the above incident with this personal observation: “I do not propose to treat the subject from a scientific point of view, but the bones and ovens that I saw at Waingongoro in 1866, and the evidence obtained by the Hon.
In his diary, Perused by the courtesy of kaumatuaKaumatua—an old man; an elder statesman.
We reached Waingongoro, where our tents were already pitched. The Governor had scarcely got settled before he asked me to show him where I found the Moa bones some twenty-four years before. The officers accompanied us, but although they had long been living here, and the ground was covered with Moa bones so as to be quite white with them, still they had not noticed them. We found my inclined bank on the side of which there were several regular lines of ancient ovens. These we dug into and found remains not only of Moas, but of all kinds of birds, parrots, ducks, seals, pawa, limpets, fish, and charred human bones, also fragments of Moa egg-shells, and obsidian, and rude stone knives of chert, which had been chipped so as to form a sharp edge. The ovens had evidently been used for years, as the layers of ashes were thick and several of them in one spot repaired by a layer of sand. The Governor collected several baskets of bones of all sizes, some large, some small, evidently belonging to many species of birds. These chert knives are something like those found in the ovens in the Otago Province, but rather ruder, if possible.
It seems strange if such things were really an evidence of the earliest efforts of man to supply an article of such general need that they should be thus left in such numbers by the sides of their ovens. It appears more probable that they were extemporized articles merely made for the occasion and then
abandoned, or left for another time. It is evident these ovens had been used for years from the great accumulation of ashes and a regular absence of charcoal or charred wood, the small remnants of one fire being totally consumed by that of another.
“On the next day,” Mr. Taylor tells us, “we had another walk to the old ovens, when the Governor was very successful.” Mr. Taylor's requirements were modest, for in a postscript he remarks, “I did not carry away much.”
Here, then, was repeated at Waingongoro, in the north, the story of the south; and in summing up his conclusions on the proceedings of the day the Reverend Te Ika a Maui, p. 417.
At a later stage in his interesting book, Te Ika a Maui (p. 426), Mr. Taylor is even more emphatic in his belief in the comparatively late extinction of the Moa, when he writes: “The bones of these ancient races of birds are still abundant, and the recent state of many of them clearly proves that they have lived within the last half-century, and long survived the Dodo.”
In view of the authentic nature of the incidents above related and the responsible character of the opinions expressed, supplemented by all that is to follow, it appears to the writer that there can be but one answer to the question, “Did the Maori know the Moa?” and that answer must be in the affirmative. “The testimony of Taylor, Mantell, and others, indubitably shows that the various species of Moa found at Waingongoro were contemporary with Maori man, and were used as food by him.”—Geology of Egmont Subdivision of Taranaki (Bulletin of the Geological Survey of New Zealand, No. 29), p. 57.
So far as the writer is aware, no classification of the Moa bones taken from Waingongoro by the Reverend Catalogue of Fossil Birds in the British Museum, arranged by R. Lydekker, in 1891.
Mr. Lydekker also mentions eight tracheal rings which, from the smallness of their size, he believes belong to a bird of the species In his book, Anomalopteryx curta. Several fragments of egg-shell also were secured by Mr. Mantell; and Sir Extinct Birds of New Zealand,Petrifactions and their Teachings, Dr. Gideon Mantell mentions that his son also found bones of two species of seal, of a dog, and of a man in the Waingongoro middens.Dinornis crassus—Emeus crassus of Lydekker.
The inclusion in the debris of the remains of several other species of the extinct birds of New Zealand suggests that these Waingongoro middens
The following are the more important published references to the Waingongoro middens:
They led their wild desires to woods and caves, And thought that all but savages were slaves. — Dryden.
In the year 1872 there was opened a chapter in Moa-hunter research which never has ceased to claim the attention of those engaged in the study of this fascinating subject. Simultaneously the public interest in this valuable contribution was considerably heightened by what might be called the “fortuitous circumstances” under which it first was brought to their notice. On the eastern fringe of the Canterbury Plains, near Sumner, there had long been known to exist a cave situated in a low spur of that large volcanic system, Banks Peninsula. The cave lies opposite the junction of two rivers, where
The Avon and the Heathcote glide Like shining serpents on.
The mouth of the cave faces in a north-westerly direction. Because of the discovery there in 1850
Acheron of a number of Moa bones, it was known to the settlers by the unpoetic name of Moa-bone Point Cave, but beyond that fact it excited little notice. It is true that in the first days of the Canterbury settlement, when primitive conditions prevailed, and necessity, as well as adversity, made strange bedfellows, it was inhabited for brief periods by some of the pioneer settlers, and later it sheltered lime-burners, fishermen, and road-menders, none of whom, in all probability, gave a thought to the dusky beings in whose long-forgotten footsteps they were following.
In the spring of 1872, however, the problems surrounding the advent and disappearance of the Moa were still a source of animated discussion, and the dynamic personality of Sir Julius von Haast was as a pinnacle about whose crown the storms of controversy seemed inevitably to accumulate.
In these circumstances Mr. Edward Jollie, a prominent Canterbury settler and explorer, suggested to Sir Julius that the systematic excavation of the cave at Sumner might yield results leading to definite conclusions and the resolving of many difficulties. Even if it did not achieve all that they hoped, it might throw such light upon the period of the Moa's extinction as to considerably enhance human knowledge upon the subject. The exploration of
Sir Julius, while sharing Mr. Jollie's enthusiasm, felt bound to observe that neither the Canterbury Museum nor he, personally, had funds available for such an enterprise, and without a financial backing it could not be undertaken. Nothing daunted, Mr. Jollie prepared a subscription list, headed it himself, and in due course the sum of £32 10s was collected.
This was sufficient to employ two men These men thought they were passing rich on £2 per week. Ye gods, ye labourers of to-day! Mr. McKay makes the date of commencement the 3rd October, but is in agreement with Sir Julius von Haast that the work occupied seven weeks.
Of the two “labourers” engaged, the leader was Mr. Alexander McKay, who subsequently became one of New Zealand's best-known and most original geologists. A Scotsman, as his name suggests, he was in several respects a somewhat remarkable man. He had been a gold-miner, as
Then the Moa-bone Point scheme of excavation was mooted, and when the necessary funds were available what more natural than that Alexander McKay should there find congenial employment, for by this time Sir Julius had proved him to be “zealous,” had been lending him books, and in other ways assisting him to perfect his knowledge of his chosen science.
A preliminary survey of the cave showed that it consisted of three chambers, each following the other in an almost straight line, and varying in size as they pierced into the heart of the rock. Of these three chambers the outer one was by far the largest, measuring 100 feet in length by 74 feet at its greatest width, varying in height from 12 feet to 25 feet. Its walls were almost vertical; but the
At the entrance to the outer chamber there stood a huge rock, a fragment dislodged from the hill above, which considerably impeded, but at the same time sheltered, its only doorway. Towards the back of this chamber there lay another large stone, flat on the top, which in the gloom of its surroundings resembled somewhat the tomb of one of the “glorious dead” in the crypt of a cathedral.
The story of the cave as read in its geological environment begins at a time when the land-level was considerably lower than it is to-day. The sea was then washing over what is now dry land, and the action of the waves either eroded from between two compact seams of lava rock a large quantity of tuff which had been partially covered by one of
The former view was favoured by Mr. McKay, the latter by Sir Julius von Haast, who has stated his case in these words:
In this instance there is no doubt that the Moa-bone Point Cave is a pre-existing hollow in a dolertic lava-stream, which has been enlarged by the enormous power of the dashing waves of the ocean beating here at one time furiously against the northern foot of the peninsula.
Thus, in post-Pliocene times, when the peninsula stood as an island in the sea, the cave was being sculptured by the restless waters of the Pacific scouring every vestige of soft material from its vertical walls, its rocky floor, and its spray-beaten roof. Then changes in the land-levels began to take place. Uncertain at first, they eventually settled down at an elevation of some 20 feet of vertical height above their former line. This brought about a time of greater quiet for the cave, which during the process was furnished with a floor of fine sand several feet deep. During this period of growing quiescence the raging river torrents coming down
Here again we are faced with the eternal problem of who were the first people to reach, and how they reached, this genial spot. All that we can say is that someone of undoubted Polynesian origin found it, and seeing the estuary of two meandering rivers, a sandy area of many acres, and a rocky cave near by, decided that here was a combination of amenities that warranted a better acquaintance. Accordingly the little community of Polynesian pilgrims decided to settle down, making the sand-dunes their home in fair weather and the cave their place of refuge in foul.
The first point of examination by Sir Julius and his staff was the large outer chamber of the cave, in which they subsequently found a depth of 12 feet of sand on top of the rocky floor, with a pronounced slope towards the entrance of the cave. It was
The upper stratum disclosed first the remains of European occupation; then came evidence of Maori occupation, a feature of which was the presence of
This, however, Sir Julius did not consider afforded conclusive evidence of occupation by the people who could be described as Moa-hunters. Mr. Records of Canterbury Museum, Vol. II, p. 102, suggests that, as Moa bones were collected by the Maori up to quite recent times for the purpose of securing material from which to manufacture fish-hooks and other artifacts, these bones probably were brought into the camp by its subsequent occupants for industrial purposes.
After having passed through this bed, which was 6 inches in thickness, the workmen came upon an ash-bed at least 3 inches thick, in which there lay a number of Moa bones, some of them calcined, others, apparently unaffected by time or environment, belonging to the species These names are recorded according to Sir Julius von Haast's classification. For further information on this point see Appendix I.Euryapteryx rheides and Meionornis didiformis,
Proceeding with the utmost care, some large stones were reached, covered with several inches of sand, some of them blackened and split by the action of fire, and placed in such a position as to show that evidently an oven had here been excavated in the sand, these stones, like the remains of the meal taken here, having probably been trampled repeatedly over, and before the ash and dirt beds had been deposited above them. In digging round this spot I obtained the upper mandible of
Aptornis defossorin a fine state of preservation, and a quantity of Moa bones, also two wooden sticks made of pukatea(Athero-sperma novae-zealandiae)for producing fire. This simple apparatus, the only one found in the cave, has the peculiarity that fire, instead of being obtained by friction lengthwise, was procured by giving the Now
Laurelia novae-zealandiae.upper stick a turning motion. However, I may add that this was not the only mode by which the Moa-hunting population obtained fire, as in the same lower beds fire-sticks of the other kind were also found, resembling in this respect those belonging to the upper or mollusc-eating population, which are used at the present time by the Maori, and are called Sir Julius von Haast probably obtained this information from Hone Taahu and Tamati Ngakahu, two East Coast Natives who at the time were engaged in carving a Maori house at the Canterbury Museum. Professor Hutton considers the description to be incorrect, and Mr.
H. D. Skinner remarks, “If this description were accurate we would have to admit that in at least one important cultural feature the Moa-hunters differed from the Maori.”kauwahiby them. About 4 feet from this oven we came across some large pieces of egg-shell, of which many had still the lining membrane attached, proving by their form of curvature that they were portions of aDinonisegg of very large size.
All this served indubitably to convince Sir Julius that a race of Moa-hunters had at some time occupied this cave; and the farther he went the more convinced of this he became. Advancing into the cave, towards the middle chamber, he proceeded to explore roundabout the large piece of rock lying there—a fragment that had fallen from the roof—measuring 12 feet in length, 6 feet in breadth, and rising 10 feet in height, forming what Sir Julius regarded as “a remarkable feature in the cave.”
Here the searchers found a particularly rich spot, for “the artificial deposits soon became more
Meionornis didiformis, some of these bones indicating that the slaughtered birds had not yet reached maturity. These were mixed with unconsidered trifles, such as the bones of the native dog, shags, and penguins, all of which had been used to strengthen the hunters' larder. Sir Julius remarks:
A considerable amount of drift timber was lying here, without doubt brought so far back by human agency, a great deal of it being charred, or partly burnt; and all the evidence before me went to show that this spot, hidden as it was from the entrance by the huge rock in front of it, had been a favourite camping and eating ground, both of the Moa-hunters and afterwards of the shell-fish-eating population.
In this section of the cave bones of In a letter to the Dinornis robustus, Palapteryx crassus, Euryapteryx gravis, and of Aptornis otidiformis were recovered, but only the smallest fragments of the skulls, which leads Sir Julius to remark that the absence of all but shattered skulls in the kitchen middens shows that the brain of the Moa was considered a great delicacy.Wanganui Herald, the date of which I do not have, Mr. Dinornis
robustus, together with the egg-shell of large curvature, in the middens also has its interest, for it is suggestive, if not proof, that this large species was not already extinct
The bones of Dinornis ingens and of Dinornis novaezealandiae are also recorded as being found at Pataua, in the North Island.
A feature of the cave economy which also struck the investigators was that, though the bones of the Moa were so plentiful in the stratum assigned to the Moa-hunters, the ovens in which the bones were cooked were so few, numbering only three. This circumstance led them to conclude—and, in all probability, rightly so—that the greater part of their cooking had been done among the sand-dunes outside, and that only on rare occasions—occasions of stress—were the culinary operations performed under the shadow of the rock or the shelter of the cave.
The excavation of the third oven found by the workmen, 10 feet from the entrance of the cave, and measuring several feet in diameter, was to provide a surprise for Sir Julius, who up to this time had stoutly maintained that the Moa-hunters were a race so uncultured that they did not possess,
Sir Julius was not present when this oven was opened, and when he arrived he was not a little astonished to be presented with a polished chisel of a dark chert material, 4.8 inches long by 1.51 inches broad, which in its general form resembled those of undoubted Polynesian manufacture, “having the plane surfaces and defined edges typical of Polynesian implements of this class.” Mr. Mr. Records of the Canterbury Museum, Vol. II, No. 3, p. 96), thinks it would be more correctly described as “a basalt adze.”
Nothing doubting the story of his two workmen, whose account that the “chisel” had been found at the bottom of the oven “agreed in every particular,” Sir Julius was more satisfied when, on the 31st October, in his presence, his men picked up a portion of a polished adze which fell out of the face of the agglomerate bed just broken into. To convince himself that no mistake had been made, he scrambled down into the trench and carefully examined the face of the bed, when he saw the unmistakable impression of the tool in the compressed soil, “so that,” he writes, “there was no doubt that it had been embedded in the agglomerate.”
Convinced now that his views of former years on this phase of Moa-hunter culture had been mistaken, he made the following generous, but somewhat belated, declaration: It did not appear in print for some two years after the chisel and adze had been found.
As these fragments were found amongst the undisturbed kitchen middens of the Moa-hunters, there is not the least doubt that the same were possessed of polished stone implements, as well as of chipped flint tools, probably employing the former in the building of their dwellings or the manufacture of their canoes and wooden implements, whilst the latter were probably used for the chase or for cutting
up their huge game for the oven and their meals. And as I shall show further on in the description of the numerous Moa ovens outside the cave, that similar polished stone implements were obtained in contact with Moa bones in undisturbed positions, I have to modify my former views in assuming that the Moa-hunters did not possess polished stone implements. Thus the excavations in and near Moa-bone Point Cave fully confirm the observations concerning this point made and published by Messrs. Mantell and Murison some years ago.
Next to the discovery of this irrefutable evidence that the Moa-hunter had reached a respectable degree of civilization for his day and generation, the most startling find in the cave was the sepulchre of a man who had been buried in a sitting position, as had been the corpse found at Kaikoura in 1860. His limbs had been bound into position by bands of flax, and owing, it is claimed, to the antiseptic properties of the sand, there still were some ligaments and skin upon the bones and some hair upon the scalp. This clearly was not a Moa-hunters' burial, since to dig the grave the soil had been disturbed from a higher level than theirs. Yet the Maori, in spite of their rigid The skeleton was articulated by Mr. tapu of such places, had continued to use the cave for long after the deposition of the body under its floor, which suggests that in later years the cave was a place of such
Examining the two smaller caves, some Moa bones and bones of other birds were found in the sandy floors, mixed up with ashes and other signs of human occupation; but nothing was discovered that would throw a useful light upon the major problem as to who the occupants were.
The explorers then passed to the area of the sand-dunes outside the cave, where over a space of many acres they found the ovens and middens much more numerous and more closely crowded together. Sometimes built up and sometimes destroyed by the shifting winds and beating rain, the natural features of the field were necessarily changing and confusing the spheres of occupation by, first, the Moa-hunters, and then their successors, the shell-fish eaters. However, a little care in observation sufficed to provide a clear line of demarcation over a large portion of the area. Sir Julius remarks:
After examining a bed on the surface, which contained the same species of shells as we obtained from the upper deposits of the cave, I had the sands
below them excavated for about two feet, when we came upon the remains of a cooking-oven, big boulders, charcoal, and near and above it a distinct layer of kitchen middens, which consisted of Moa bones, the larger ones all broken, and some of them calcined; there were also some of smaller birds, of which those of the spotted shag ( Graculus punctatus) were the most numerous; the crested penguin, the large kiwi, and the grey duck being also represented. Besides them, bones of the dog, which appears to have been also a favourite dish of the Moa-hunters, a tympanic bone of the ziphoid whale, and some seal bones, were obtained.
It is one of the ingenious arguments used by those who believe in the very early extinction of the Moa that no Moa bones ever have been found bearing evidence that they had been gnawed by dogs, the purpose of the argument being to prove that the Moa was extinct before the dog arrived in the country. Sir Julius von Haast here develops this idea when, in connection with the account of his excavations at the Moa-bone Point Cave, he says:
The curious fact, first observed at the Rakaia encampment, that none of the bones of the kitchen middens were gnawed by dogs, was also recognized in and near the cave, the smallest bones, without exception, being quite intact, except where cut or broken by human hands.
Unable to deny the existence of the dog in the Moa-hunters' camps, Sir Julius evolved the idea that
Those who make the absence of tradition relating to the bird the cardinal point of their case that the Moa was not extinguished by the present-day Maori rely upon the belief that the dog came with the migration of A.D. 1350, and, therefore, if there was no evidence that the Moa bones have been gnawed by dogs, that could be only because the Moa was extinct before the arrival of the migration.
These vindicators of tradition, however, overlook the awkward fact that the bones of the dog have been found in the middens of the Moa-hunters, with whom Sir Julius von Haast admits the dog “appears to have been a favourite dish.” Henry H. Howorth, Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. VII, p. 76.The Mammoth and the Flood, p. 406.
Having regard to the extent of the area covered by the sand-dune ovens, and the limited amount of money available, it was not possible for Sir Julius and his assistants to open up all the umu visible to the eye. The investigation had, however, proceeded far enough to enable Sir Julius to say with certitude that the real camping-ground of the Moa-hunters was not the cave, but outside the cave, and that the shelter of the rock had been sought only at rare intervals. Out in the open he found among the kitchen refuse that the bones of the smaller species of Moa, Meionornis didiformis and Euryapteryx rheides, were in greatest abundance, while Euryapteryx gravis also was well represented. At Rakaia the remains of Meionornis casuarinus were ever present; but here they were conspicuous by their absence, suggesting that either the bird had become scarce, or, what is more probable, that it preferred a more southern habitat. Seal bones and portions of Moa egg-shell also were found, strangely enough the largest section of the latter being discovered on the surface close to the Sumner road.
Numerous stone implements were uncovered, of which three polished adzes of strictly Polynesian type were in excellent condition, whilst fragments of eleven others, all polished, were found in conjunction with several pieces of grinding-stones used for sharpening or polishing such finished tools. “Of the former,” says Sir Julius, “one of the specimens was found immediately above the stones forming one of the ovens, the others being scattered amongst the kitchen middens, and, as this occurrence is a confirmation of the observations made in the cave, there is no doubt that the Moa-hunters used both polished and unpolished stone implements.”
As a part of the more rudely-formed implements, knives, and scrapers, there were found pieces of obsidian shaped to resemble spear-heads, which showed, as will be pointed out elsewhere, that even at that early date of the country's occupation an exchange of products was taking place between the North Island and the South Island inhabitants. Partly-finished fish-hooks, two ornaments of bone not unlike the heitiki of the Maori—designed for suspension round the neck, it may be, of a dusky damsel—and the frequent occurrence of the tympanic bones of the whale, each in their own way lead to the conclusion that some embryonic form of manufacture was not unknown among a people hitherto
How far Sir Julius von Haast had modified his estimate of the cultural status of these people since the days when he thought them “autochthones” may oborigines be judged from the following passage in his report, written as he sees both man and Moa vanish from the place that for ever will know them no more:
But now, as it were at once, the Moa-hunters disappear from the scene, but not without affording an insight into their daily life by leaving us some of their polished and unpolished stone implements, a few of their smaller tools made of bone, a few personal ornaments, as well as fragments of canoes,
whares, and of wooden spears, fire-sticks, and other objects too numerous to mention, but by which the fact is established that they had reached already a certain state of civilization which in many respects seems not to have been inferior to that possessed by the Maoris when New Zealand was first visited by Europeans.
In due course the work of excavating the cave and the camp was completed. The material collected was handed over to Sir Julius, together with some “notes” which the zealous Alexander McKay had made upon the relative position of the articles recovered. That was in November, 1872; but no immediate use was made of this information by
He tells us that he had always intended to prepare a scientific paper upon the results of his labours in the Sumner cave, but had never been clear in his mind how he would succeed in placing it before a scientific body. Here and now was his opportunity. He had been elected a member of the Wellington Philosophical Society, and, presumably, encouraged by his chief, Sir
The writer opened his paper with a declaration that the whole purpose behind the excavation of the cave was “to procure further information relative to the association of Moa bones with the remains of the former human inhabitants of the cave,” and, further, to determine “whether the Moa-hunters were possessed of tools other than those of the rudest description, and whether this constituted a distinction between them and the Maori inhabitants of later times.”
In the course of his analysis of the revealed evidence Mr. McKay necessarily traversed some of the ground dealt with in his report to his employer, but his conclusions drawn from that evidence were additional and original. To the average reader the process of Mr. McKay's reasoning might appear to have become somewhat involved in the effort to set the “pros” fairly against the “cons,” but out of his sifting of a mass of assembled facts which he described as “contradictory” in their nature the following conclusions seem to emerge:
That it was impossible to say who the Moa-hunters were, or how long ago they lived. A mystery this had been, and a mystery it remained. But whoever the Moa-hunters were, they enjoyed a cultural standard very much akin to that of the present-day Maori. McKay says:
I cannot entertain a doubt but that the Moa-hunters were, as well as the more modern Maori, possessed of instruments of high polish, both in wood and stone. The Moa-hunters also hunted the seal, as their bones were freely mixed with those of the Moa, and fragments of nets would seem to show that the fisherman's art was not unknown to them.
In the direction of their cultural advancement Mr. McKay went even beyond this, for, in referring to the Moa-hunters' camp at Little Rakaia, he
He further thought that a considerable time must have elapsed between the desertion of the cave by the Moa-hunters and the arrival of their successors, the shell-fish eaters. This, however, did not necessarily mean that the Moa was totally extinct when the last bird was eaten at the cave: it may have signified nothing more than the departure of the hunters to pursue the Moa farther afield—to its “farthest fastnesses”—when their depredations had rendered it scarce on the surrounding plain. That the Moa was alive during the early period of the shell-fish eaters, and “reached a time posterior to the accumulation of some of the shell-mounds,” he did not doubt; but how long individual birds may have lingered on after the general extinction, he did not pretend to say.
Nor did he consider that the arrival of the shell-fish eaters in succession to the Moa-hunters proved the advent of a new race of people. This economic revolution may have meant no more than that the same people were, by the force of circumstances, compelled to change an important item in their diet and substitute one class of food for another. What did seem to be proved was that when the shell-heaps at Sumner were accumulated
Up to this point the views of Mr. McKay were in direct conflict to the hitherto expressed opinions of Sir Julius von Haast, but when he applied to the problem another test his ideas seemed to approximate more closely to those of his late chief. When he asked himself the question whether the Moa-hunters were Maoris, or whether the Maoris were Moa-hunters, he could find no answer to the first part of his question, and to the second part of his proposition the answer was more or less in the negative. The controlling influence that directed his mind in this direction was what he wrongly thought to be the absence of tradition among the present-day Maori concerning the bird. This he considered a condition impossible if the Maori of the traditional migration had actually seen and hunted the Moa:
If, as commonly stated, the present inhabitants immigrated hither, say, 350
years ago, and if after their arrival here the Moa was exterminated by them, The accepted tradition is that the migration of “the fleet” referred to by Mr. McKay took place about
A.D.1350, notA.D.1524 as Mr. McKay assumes. Mr. McKay gravely underestimated the traditional lore of the Moa.I cannot but think that reliable accounts would have reached present time. And if individual specimens of the Moa lived till times as recent as fifty, or even a hundred years ago, surely a people who could preserve exact tradition of matters to them much more trivial hardly could have failed to have given them a prominent place in their tradition.
If, however, the Maori did hunt the Moa, it could not have been within the limited period of 350 years fixed by the tradition. Mr. McKay did not consider it physically possible for a reputedly small band of people to do what obviously had been done in the way of building terraced hill-forts, etc., in that time. “I cannot see,” observes Mr. McKay, “that, considering the circumstances, the 350 years will be nearly sufficient for the natural increase of the few original inhabitants in sufficient numbers for the execution of even a portion of such works, if their antiquity be as stated.”
His final verdict, therefore, was that either the Moa was exterminated by the people of a migration prior to that of “the fleet,” or that this traditional migration must be considered to have taken place not 350 years but 1,350 years ago.
A résumé of this paper was published in the Wellington newspapers, and afterwards was copied into The Press at Christchurch. In this way
Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. VII, p. 54.Ibid., p. 528.
Mr. McKay's justification was that the material discovered in the cave had been scrupulously handed over to Sir Julius von Haast, together with a report upon it; therefore, the things that were Caesar's had been faithfully rendered unto Caesar. His opinions about that material, and all that the material implied, he claimed, were his own. He, therefore, had merely added his conclusions to the report
This explanation, conciliatory though it was, by no means placated the aggrieved Sir Julius, who sought to have the paper excluded from publication in the He was President of the Royal Society from 1873 until 1878, and was knighted in 1877.Transactions of the New Zealand Institute. This embargo was not conceded, and, after many heated discussions, and much correspondence involving the New Zealand Institute and several of its affiliated Societies, the Council of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury resolved to state a case for an opinion upon the ethics of the situation by Dr.
Has a paid workman a right to publish his employer's discoveries, or the theories arising there-from, without his employer's consent or knowledge, and prior to his publication?
Upon this proposition Dr. Hooker formulated his views on the 15th December, 1875, and when they reached Christchurch early in the succeeding year it was found that he had distinguished between two classes of workmen:
(
a) Mere labourers paid to excavate and collect materials which may be discoveries, or tend to discoveries, of whom nothing further is claimed than the specimens and all such information as to their locality, superposition, aggregation, and condition as the employer may be able to extract from the workman; and(
b) Skilled assistants paid not only to excavate and collect materials, but to make scientific observations, obtain results and suggest theories to the employer, all of which are the property of the employer.
On the question of excluding Mr. McKay's paper from the Transactions Dr. Hooker came to the conclusion that:
A scientific society is bound to bring before its meetings papers worthy of that honour, and contributed for the purpose, except where there is some suspicion that these were surreptitiously acquired, forgeries, or plagiarisms.
As the language of Sir Julius in the postscript to his paper had placed McKay well within the first of Dr. Hooker's classifications of “workmen,” the decision was interpreted to mean that McKay was not bound by the limitations that would have restrained him had he been regarded as a skilled assistant, and that therefore he was within his rights in preparing the paper.
The second decision was interpreted as a complete vindication of the Council of the New Zealand Institute in publishing McKay's paper in the Mr. H. F. von Haast has supplied the writer with the following note on this decision: “Hooker's distinction is no doubt sound as to the information that the employer is entitled to obtain from his employees, but that distinction does not necessarily give the employee who might have taken an unskilled job for the very purpose of associating himself with a distinguished excavator the right to publish the facts of the discoveries and his own views thereon in anticipation of his employer's publications, and possibly containing matter that he has derived directly or indirectly from remarks or hints of the employer who, as in Haast's case, gave the fullest information to his employees on the nature and meaning of the material discovered, and who may have delayed his own publication in order to make a careful study of the materials and the inferences to be drawn from them. Surely it is the right of the employer and not the employee, skilled or unskilled, to be the first to give the facts of the discoveries to the world. If Hooker is right, every excavator ought to insist on a contract with every employee prohibiting him from the publication of any matter relating to the excavations without the employer's consent, before the latter has issued his final publication on the subject.”Transactions of the New Zealand Institute.
The jubilant McKay demonstrated his appreciation of the verdict by giving rein to his poetic muse. He wrote in pamphlet form, much of it in the metre of Cowper's famous poem, a satirical rhyme describing the capture in Canterbury of a live Moa and an adventurous ride upon its back through the streets of Christchurch. The rider was a personage
The Canterbury Gilpin, or the Capture and Flight of the Moa. A poem by Dinornis Sumnerensis. Parts I and II. James Hughes, Lambton Quay, Wellington. 1880.
Horror of horrors yet await, The great illustrious— Fate, or his own mismanagement, Had bound him doubly fast.
With the delivery of Dr. Hooker's opinion and the publication of McKay's poetic squib the storm was allowed to subside; At a meeting of the Council of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury held on the 6th April, 1876, a letter from Dr. Hooker on the subject of the Sumner Cave exploration was read by the President (Dr. Llewellyn Powell), and it was resolved that the reply of Dr. Hooker be accepted as final, that the President reply to the letter, and that the contents of Dr. Hooker's letter be not communicated to the Institute.
Seeing that these remains are assigned to the remotest period of Maori occupation by the Natives themselves, the great division existing between the lower, or Moa-hunter, and the upper, or shell beds, with such a distinct line of demarcation, goes far to prove that an enormous space of time must have elapsed since the
Dinornisbecame extinct.
Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. VII, p. 78.
There is very strong presumptive evidence in support of his [Haast's] view that the Maoris were not the Moa-hunters. But that the
Dinorniswas hunted and became extinct ages before the advent of the Maori, is a conclusion hardly deducible from the facts upon which the theory is based.
Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. IV, p. 107.
The following are the conclusions arrived at by Mr. Records of the Canterbury Museum, Vol. II, No. 3, pp. 102–103.
The relative depths of the deposits indicate that the period which has elapsed since the extermination of the Moa is at least seven times as long as the Moa-hunter period.
There is no evidence that the culture of the Moa-hunters differed from that of the later occupants of the cave, nor that the cave was ever occupied by representatives of Whatahoro's “Maruiwi”; nor that the culture of Ngati-Mamoe, to whom the greater part of the deposits must be due, differed in any important feature from that of the tribes who preceded or followed them.
Moa bones of kinds providing suitable material for the manufacture of hooks and similar implements were collected for use by the Maoris even in the early European period, and this sufficiently explains the bones mentioned by McKay as occurring in Maori beds.
Further evidence is required before the contemporaneity of man and the Dinornithidae can be regarded as proved.
Under date the 5th August, 1937, Mr.
H. D. Skinner writes to the author: “When I wrote that further evidence was required before the various species of the genusDinorniscould be regarded as proved to be contemporary with man in New Zealand, I had failed to note Hutton's confirmation of Haast (Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. XXIV (1892), p. 113).” Further confirmation comes from the identification by Dr.W. R. B. Oliver ofD. maximus, D. ingens, andD. novaezealandiaefrom the bones found by Mr. Teviotdale at Papa-towai.
The following is the detailed list of the various species of Moa bones recovered from inside the cave as recorded by Sir Julius von Haast:
Moa bones collected in the kitchen middens of the Moa-hunters amongst the sand-dunes outside the cave:
Objects of human workmanship found inside the cave, illustrating a phase of the cultural standard of the Moa-hunters:
Objects of human workmanship found in the kitchen middens amongst the sand-dunes outside he cave:
The total objects collected in and about Moa-bone Point Cave numbered 2,797.
One of the most interesting of the Moa-hunter sites in the South Island is that situated at the mouth of the Shag River. Known to the old-time Maori as the Waihemo, probably denoting dead or sluggish water.
Shortly after the close of the incident which arose as the result of the publication in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute of Mr. McKay's paper on the Moa-bone Point Cave researches another bright little battle was fought, the casus belli being the Shag River camp, the protagonists on this occasion being Sir Julius von Haast and Professor Hutton, Curator of the Otago University Museum, a scientist of acknowledged erudition and eminence.
In April, 1872, when Sir Julius was on the point of completing a geological survey of the Shag Point coal-field, he was invited by Mr. F. D. Rich, of Bushy Park, to examine some middens in that vicinity, since several competent observers had expressed to him the opinion that undoubtedly they had a scientific value. From what Mr. Rich told him of the middens, Sir Julius agreed that they might yield some data that would shed a useful light upon “the manner and period of the extinction of our former gigantic avifauna.” He therefore arranged to have some preliminary specimens collected for him, but it was not until 1874 that he was able to devote the time necessary to make a personal examination of the field.
Arriving on the scene in November, Sir Julius found the camp situated at the mouth of a sluggish river, the old-time Waihemo River, falling into the sea on the north-eastern corner of Otago. The camp occupied a wide area in a warm valley where its inhabitants could revel in the pleasures of unlimited sun and sand. It differed materially from most of the other camps in that, whereas they were but occasional or seasonal camps, Shag River had once been occupied over a long period of time as a place of permanent residence by a large number of people.
For its last four or five miles the valley runs in an almost due east-and-west direction, with an average width of half a mile, and is bounded by steep banks on its northern and southern sides. On its eastern side the currents of the sea travelling from the south to the north have built up and are maintaining a huge sandspit, some 200 feet broad and 60 feet high at its southern end, where it reposes against the rocks which form the southern bank of the river. This spit reaches right across the mouth of the valley, diminishing in height and width as it extends northward towards the outflow of the river, which here impinges against the northern bank. Inside this spit a small estuary is formed, stretching for several miles along the course of the river.
On the southern side of the valley the country consists of low rolling downs covered with rich soil and a thick carpet of grass that must have afforded a fine feeding-ground for the Moas in former times and an equally favourable hunting-field for the occupants of the camp. From this green pasture Sir Julius visualized the hunters driving the birds towards the apex of the deltoid space formed by the sea-coast and the southern bank of the river, and there, spurred by the dictates of appetite, they would “slaughter the huge birds wholesale.” Then would follow their wild feasts, at which he conceived so abundant a supply of game that the prodigal banqueters would “use only the main portions of each carcass for their meals.”
The stay of Sir Julius upon the ground was not a lengthy one, but long enough to satisfy him that the conditions were not in any material particular different from those he had met at Little Rakaia or at the Sumner cave. He found that here, as there, the fires of the Moa-hunters and the beds of the shell-fish eaters were in places “mixed together in a remarkable manner,” but in other directions he saw a definite line of demarcation, clear evidence to him of two periods of occupation by different people, separated by a long interval of time. In matters of minor import, such as the food eaten,
Apart, however, from any judgments which Sir Julius may have formed, or confirmed, he considered the result of his visit to the Shag River most gratifying, for he tells us that not only did he obtain a most illuminating insight into the daily life of the Moa-hunters, but he acquired for the Canterbury Museum some exceedingly valuable portions of Moa skeletons. Amongst these were some complete skulls with upper and lower mandibles and tympanic bones, a few of which at the time still had the atlas, epistropheus, and some of the uppermost cervical vertebrae in their proper position.
The remains of Moas dug from the middens disclosed that the following species were amongst those that most readily fell to the snare or the
Emeus crassus and Emeus casuarinus; and in a minor degree Euryapteryx gravis, Euryapteryx elephantopus, and Anomalopteryx didiformis. Some large bones which Sir Julius assigned to Dinornis robustus were of more than ordinary importance, for the consistency with which this huge bird is represented amongst the remains in the camp-fires at Little Rakaia, Sumner, Waitaki, and Shag River is the best proof that the Dinornithidae were not wholly extinct before the arrival of man in New Zealand.
Contrary to expectations, and to his experience at other camps and of other investigators in this camp, Sir Julius found that only a few of the leg-bones had been broken for the extraction of the marrow, the tibia alone suffering in this way. In like manner a variation was noted in the treatment of the birds' skulls:
“I had,” Sir Julius remarks, “been so accustomed to find in other localities the Moa skulls either in fragments, or at least broken in the occipital region, for obtaining the brains, that I was not a little astonished to excavate all the skulls in perfect state, and, as the position of the vertebrae and of the tracheal rings lying along them proved, the whole portion of the upper neck had been thrown away, as not of sufficient value. It thus is evident that in most cases only the body served for food, and as
some shallow broad cuts or scratches in one fragmentary pelvis and in some femora demonstrated, the same had been operated upon with rough stone knives; some of the intercostals had also been cut or sawn through in the same manner. This intactness of the Moa skulls might also suggest to us that the Moa-hunters were in the habit of killing their prey either by snaring them, by catching them in pits, or by wounding them with spears in the body. Had they used wooden clubs, they would certainly have broken the skulls as the easiest means of securing their prey, just as we find nearly every seal skull broken for a similar reason.”
As in other Moa-hunters' camps, the ovens contained the usual flotsam and jetsam of the sea, the air, and the earth. There were seals' bones, birds' bones of various descriptions, and bones of the dog, but nowhere were any human bones found to suggest that the awful rite of cannibalism existed among the Moa-hunters of the South Island, as Messrs. Mantell and Hutchinson have suggested it existed among those of the North Island.
In closing his series of considered conclusions upon this latest examination of the witnesses of the past, Sir Julius felt in no way called upon to modify any of his previously-expressed opinions, or to in any way change his already-established attitude. He still saw nothing inconsistent between these
I have, of course, no means of judging the age of the kitchen middens of the shell-fish eaters, but it is evident that they are not of recent origin, if we take their position and contents into account. In fact, I believe them to be the equivalents of similar beds near the Sumner cave, and which the Natives themselves assign to the Waitaha, the remotest Maori occupation. On geological evidence alone the kitchen middens of the Moa-hunting population at Shag Point must therefore be pronounced to be of considerable antiquity.
Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. VII, pp. 91–98.
This allusion to “geological evidence” doubtless refers to an important feature which Sir Julius declares he observed at Shag River, but which had better be told in his own words. After describing the mixture of what he regarded as the relics of the older and the more recent occupations, he says:
Generally, however, they are very distinct and show clearly that a considerable period of time must have passed away before the Maoris, after the disappearance of the Moa-hunters, took again possession of that locality. This is made still more striking by the discovery of the curious fact that the Maori or shell-beds are never found at a lower level than about 2 feet above high-water mark, while the Moa-hunter beds, as far as I could ascertain,
actually occur in some of the backwaters of the estuary 2 feet below high-water mark, thus showing conclusively that since the Moa-hunters had ceased their work of destruction, and before the shell-fish eaters had reoccupied the ground, the country had been sinking considerably. And if we admit that the former [Moa-hunters] would not have dug their ovens in wet ground, and thus would have kept the bottom of their ovens at least a foot or so above high-water mark, we cannot escape admitting the inference that the country between the occupation of both populations had been sinking about 3 feet.
This lowering of the land-level Sir Julius attributed to “physical changes” which had taken place in that part of the country after the Moa had become extinct, a proposition which subsequently received an emphatic contradiction from Professor Hutton, who says, “A careful examination of the country has failed to corroborate his observations.” Sir Julius returned to the charge in the following year, when he maintained his ground, contending that Professor Hutton “could never have examined the flat in question, or he would, without doubt, have corroborated my observations.” —Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. IX, p. 671.
Whether Mr. Rich was or was not satisfied with the findings of Sir Julius, or whether he was acting in the purely sporting spirit of a fair field and no favour, is unknown to the writer, but in the following year he extended to Professor Hutton a like invitation to visit the site. This the Professor did in the
Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. VII, pp. 123–138.
Confining himself to a wider review of the situation, Professor Hutton relegated the details to Mr. Boooth, who was perfectly competent to deal with them. Reporting in his minor sphere, Mr. Booth found, contrary to the experience of their eminent predecessor, that of the leg-bones of the Moa nearly all the tibiae were broken for the extraction of the marrow. In three months he found only three of these bones intact. The other important leg-bones were destroyed for the same purpose in only a slightly less proportion. All but one of the pelves were broken; and the spinal column appeared generally to have been severed at the junction of
Emeus crassus, Emeus casuarinus, Euryapteryx elephantopus, and Euryapteryx gravis.
From all that he saw during his three months' work on the field, Mr. Booth was of the opinion that the “game” was not nearly so abundant at the hunters' feasts as Sir Julius von Haast had supposed, since almost all the bones, except the skulls, were broken. He also thought that the Moa feasts were but occasional celebrations, a small flock of six or seven birds being captured at a time. The charred state of some of the necks and other portions of the birds suggested that betimes the spare bones were used as fuel, for firewood would be far distant in that grassy district.
Here, then, was an instance in which all the investigators had the same material upon which to work and the same opportunity to work it. In these circumstances it is interesting to observe that Professor Hutton and Mr. Booth came to conclusions exactly opposite to those formulated by Sir Julius von Haast. Professor Hutton was not on the ground so consistently as was Mr. Booth, but he was there at frequent intervals, and from what he saw of the relative position of the beds he tells us that “Moa bones were never found unassociated with beds of shells, and although shell-beds did occur without Moa bones, these just as often underlaid beds with Moa bones as overlaid them.”
Thus there was, in his view, no clear line of demarcation between an older and a later system of settlement—the Moa-hunters and the shell-fish eaters were contemporaneous—and the long interval of time intervening between the departure of the one and the arrival of the other, insisted upon by Sir Julius von Haast, did not exist.
Admitting the difficulty—apparently insuperable—of setting a date to the coming and the going of the Moa-hunters, Professor Hutton did hazard the opinion that the occupation of the camp had occurred before the arrival of Europeans in the country with their iron tools, “but,” he says, “I know of nothing
A result conflicting as is this one must be regarded as eminently unsatisfactory to those in search of enlightenment: one set of conclusions must be wrong—but which? This condition of negation may be capable of explanation in the way that Mr. J.
As is your sort of mind, So is your sort of search: you'll find What you desire.
“The observation,” Mr. Webb remarks, “that we see most readily what we expect to see, and are apt to overlook that which we are not beforehand prepared to find, is too old an aphorism not to have long ago secured their assent to it, and none probably would be more glad than themselves if someone who knew nothing of either view could be got to repeat their investigation independently and decide between them.”
Perhaps this desideratum was reached when some years later Mr. Jour. Poly. Soc., Vol. 41, p. 98.
No attempt is here being made to give a detailed account of what is known in Moa history as Monck's
Some visitors who had with them a small dog were walking in the vicinity, the dog meanwhile doing as dogs will do, scouring along the hillside, when suddenly he disappeared through a hole and fell into the cave below. Being missed, his muffled cries were heard from the depths, and in the efforts to rescue him the existence of the cave was disclosed. This was in August, 1889.
The evidences of human occupation were at once seen, but the subsequent attempts to “explore” the cave appear to have been done in a manner most perfunctory, with the result that no safe conclusions can be deduced from the material recovered. Slight evidence of stratification was found, and there is some reason to suppose that the “explorer” believed
Records of the Canterbury Museum, Vol. II, No. 4, p. 152. A detailed description of the articles recovered from the cave will also be found in this paper.
Monck's Cave, although it is frequently mentioned as a site of a Moa-hunters' camp, must, therefore, rank as a negligible quantity in so far as it contributes to our knowledge of the Moa-hunters and their ways of living.
In November, 1875, the important discovery of a Moa-hunters' encampment was made on the coast of the Auckland Province but a few miles to the north of Whangarei Harbour. Travelling southward from Ngungururu to Whangarei in February of that year, Mr.
The years had passed, and no authentic record of the presence of the Moa in this region had been made, with the result that it came to be accepted that a line drawn from the Bay of Plenty on the east to Kawhia on the west constituted a limit north of which the Moa had never existed.
Mr. Thorne's find, then, seemed to come into sharp conflict with this theory of a northern limit to the Moa, and to test where lay the truth, accompanied by Mr. F. T. Cheeseman, F.L.S., he, in November, returned to the district for two weeks, there exhaustively to investigate what he calls “this charmful subject.”
After a few miles' walk from Whangarei Heads over the fern-clad hills, they reached the extensive mangrove swamps that lie between the Taiharuru
pa tauaPa—fort; taua—a fighting party.
Standing on the sand-hills to the south-west, you see the river winding down its bed, fully half a mile in width from hill to hill. On either side are mangrove flats and pipi banks, leaving a silver thread of water fifty yards broad at low tide. Some beautiful pohutukawa trees line the north bank of the river; and amongst them are some grand old specimens—one whose trunk measures twenty-one feet in circumference has seen some hundreds of summers, as the erosion of the shore from the spot where the tree first commenced to grow would witness, and pipi-shells form a perpendicular little cliff there fifteen feet high.
To the north-west of this scene, for 13¼ miles along the sea-coast, there stretches a fine sandy
It was on the seaward sand-dunes that the greatest number of Moa-hunter relics were found, carrying the searchers back in fancy into the days when the occupants of this ancient camp were “men hunting and fighting, their women loving, and their merry children gathering roots, fruits, and berries, or joining cheerfully in the exciting and dangerous chase of the gigantic Moa.” Lying here were heaps of oven stones, charcoal, and ashes in the cooking-places; while close by there were the remains of many kinds of fish, many kinds of shells, but, most important of all, the following interesting remains of the Moa, which were collected with the greatest care: 60 toe-bones and claws, 27 metatarsi, 14 tibiae, 27 femora, 70 vertebrae, and 5 pelves.
A number of ribs also were found, portion of a skull of a small species, and the lower beak of another species. Many more small fragments might also
The ovens were particularly numerous, especially at eight or ten spots where the wind had swept the sand well in-shore. At these places the surface was
found to consist of a floor of fine hard brown sand, and this ridge evidently had furnished a favourite feeding-ground in the brave days of old. On this ancient table-top there were exposed not only large quantities of broken Moa bones, but heaps of sharp oven stones and charcoal, which marked the site of the former kitchen middens. Near at hand were
On the old bed of fine hard brown sand there were lying numerous flakes of obsidian, the knives and cutters of the diners. These chips were now blunted and broken by hard use, but others still retaining their keen edge were recovered at spots suggesting the sites of ancient workshops where this class of domestic cutlery was manufactured. Seven adzes, or substantial portions of them, also were found at various points in the camp, thus demonstrating beyond all cavil that the Moa-hunter of the North Island possessed and used polished tools as did his contemporaries in the South Island.
Fragments of Moa egg-shell, too, were to be gathered upon the surface of this sandy ridge, indicative that here, as elsewhere, the egg of the bird was readily appropriated as food fit for a hunter. These fragments, evidently from different eggs, were for the most part so small that nothing could be done with them. One piece, however, about 3 inches long, was of sufficient size to enable a measurement
Further evidence of the existence of the Moa in the far north was found in other localities, but not in such circumstances as to suggest that they had fallen by the hand of the Moa-hunter. Of those found at Pataua, however, Mr. Thorne had no doubt that “these huge wingless birds had lived, were hunted, and eaten there.”
Hesitating rashly to enter upon a series of “conclusions” based on what he saw at Pataua, Mr. Thorne nevertheless felt convinced that the physical character of the locality unmistakably supported the above summation of the facts. Anyone viewing the situation could, he thought, have no difficulty in mentally picturing how the Moa-hunters would skilfully drive the sluggish, stupid birds down the mud-flats and bed of the Pataua River on to the narrow sand-dunes between the impassable swamp and the sea, as they would drive them into the most cleverly contrived trap. Here the real struggle would take place, and the result would determine whether one or more birds would break through the fast-closing cordon of enemies, or whether all would fall by the spear-thrusts of the expert hunters.
Mr. Thorne remarks that it is interesting also to find this bird in these wooded parts, for although there were a few acres of fern land to the east of Parua Bay, yet the Moa could not have lived there without entering the timbered country and feeding on roots, for which he would dig with his powerful feet, or berries, which he would reach with his elevated beak. However, the extensive flats and pipi-banks, dry at low water, would furnish an abundant supply of food for the Moa if he had a relish for molluscs or small fish, which he thought very probable.
That the Moa frequented the estuaries of rivers and the shores of the sea is unquestionable. The fossil footprints of a bird and its chick at the mouth of the Taruheru River, near Gisborne, the footprints of individual birds found in the bed of the Manawatu River, and the frequency with which the remains of these birds have been found in proximity to the seashore is proof of this. One of the earliest traditions which Dr. John Rule had from his nephew,
Darwin, too, noted the same disposition on the part of the rhea, or what he calls the “South American ostriches.” Of these birds he says:
Although they live on vegetable matter, such as roots and grass, they are repeatedly seen at Bahia Blanca, on the south coast of Buenos Aires, coming down at low water to the extensive mud-banks, which are then dry, for the sake of eating or, as the Gauchos say, of feeding on small fish.
After speculating upon the chances of the Moas crossing rivers and frequenting the Whangarei Harbour to feed along the large flats which there are dry at low tide, Mr. Thorne gives us in these pregnant words his final “conclusion” upon what he saw and found in this northern district:
These huge, wingless birds of the past have disappeared, and given place to other and perhaps more beautiful forms of life. It is no use guessing how long ago these creatures flourished on the earth. We certainly know that they lived in New Zealand down to very recent times, and we rightly judge that their disappearance in New Zealand was hastened and completed by the hand of hunters, who, to my mind, were, without doubt, the ancestors of the Maori.
Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. VIII, pp. 83–94.
In a paper read before the Hawke's Bay Philosophical Institute in September, 1897,Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. XXX, p. 533.
Some of these cooking-places are of quite recent date, but there are also refuse-heaps telling of a vastly older period—telling of times when the Moa ranged through the light bush and on the margins of swamps, when on the hills the tuatara lizard was plentiful, when the little native rat—the kiore maori—abounded in the bush and was regarded as a toothsome addition to the Maori dinner.
The greater number of these old middens lie buried under the low sand-hills; and here and there
The Moa bones were confined to the three lower terraces; they were much worn by the drifting sand,
The flint and obsidian knives found were all more or less worn and blunted by use and by the action of the wind-blown sand, but, in the absence of metal, in the practised hand of a Maori carver they must have proved to be most efficient tools for the work they had to do. Lying amongst the debris was a small flint “core” from which some of these knives had been roughly chipped and then discarded.
From all that Mr. Hutchinson saw at Wainui, he was prepared to concede to the middens the merit of considerable antiquity; but from his description of them there is nothing in their general characteristics, the formation of the ovens, the condition of the bones, or the type of stone implements used, to suggest that they were the work of a people racially different from the Moa-hunters in the far north or from the Moa-hunters in the far south—people of undoubted Polynesian origin.
The woods appear with crimson blotches deeply dashed and crossed. — Bayard Taylor.
This was before he was knighted. In his political activities he was in those days known as “Clutha” Mackenzie, to distinguish him from John McKenzie and Scobie Mackenzie, who also were members of the House of Representatives.Public attention seems first to have been drawn to the existence of a Moa-hunters' camp at Papa-towai by Sir
The style of beauty here is quite different from the wild grandeur of the West Coast and Lakes district, with their waterfalls 2,000 feet in height, mountains nearly 13,000 feet high, lakes, and glaciers. Here it is all tranquillity. Catlins river and lake are very lovely; the lake is wooded to the water's edge, while the river is navigable for many miles inland. One can hardly imagine anything more pleasant than to row lazily up this river on some lovely summer day, with the tall birch trees meeting overhead, mixed with fringing rimus. The sunbeams pierce the leafy canopy every here and there; the banks of the river are one mass of tree- and other ferns, the trunks of the larger trees being festooned with the more delicate varieties; pigeons and tuis rustle about in the sunshine, or an occasional flock of ducks fly outward, disturbed by the approach of a stranger—and this all within a day's ride of Dunedin, and yet almost unknown.
The Tahakopa river, lake, and valley are remarkable for natural beauty—Tennyson's veritable Valley of Avilion:
Where falls not hail or rain or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea. Nature here is very lovely. Away in the distance the view is bounded by well-shaped hills, wooded to their summits; long, undulating ridges lead gently down to the water's edge, covered with trees of every shade of green. The lake and outlet are clothed with some of the loveliest trees. The brilliant rata
in all its crimson glory; feathery-tufted pale-green kowhai; veronicas in full flower, from deep purple to pure white; and pink and white convolvulus. Hundreds of wood-pigeons were hanging about the kowhai, the sun glinting on their glossy plumage, whilst kakas and tuis in flocks kept the rata tree-tops literally alive. The immediate margin of the lake is yellow sandstone; and the beach is covered with bright-yellow sand, refreshed to the rock by every tide; wild-fowl are numerous on the lake, and out in the open sea porpoises disport in schools.
Otago Daily Times, 31st January, 1889.
The music of the birds, Sir Thomas declares, was so voluble and rang so clear that after daylight sleep was out of the question. What a change to-day! The railway has intruded upon this sylvan silence, the sawmill has left its scars, the settler has filled its vacant spaces, and the fire-stick has played its devastating part. It must, however, have been much as the explorer saw it when the Maori first decided to make his camp upon the sandy spit which lies between a bend of the Tahakopa River and the sea. Upon this spit there then grew a luxuriant grove of the towai tree ( Weinmannia racemosa)
Weinmannia racemosa is endemic to New Zealand. It attains its northern limit at Thames, and near Hamilton in the Waikato, whence it extends southwards to Stewart Island and is especially abundant on the west coast of the South Island. It attains to a height of from 60 to 80 feet and is classed as one of New Zealand's large trees. It is more commonly known as kamahi, and is of little commercial value.
In those days the McLennan River flowed into the ocean a few miles farther north, but, some change taking place in the land-levels, it has now joined its waters to those of the Tahakopa, both rivers entering the sea at Papa-towai in a large and increasing flood, resulting in the old camp site being steadily scoured away. This erosion in all probability led to the discovery of the middens once occupied by a busy community, but so long abandoned that a new forest has grown up upon the spot, tall, slow-growing totaras Sir
The camp is best approached from the main road, near the traffic bridge, by a broad track which has been cut through the bush and runs down the northern side of the river to its mouth. Happily, it has been left too rough for motor traffic, and when I was there in January last it provided a pedestrian's paradise—one of the most beautiful walks it has been my fortune to see this many a year. Fringed on both sides by tall forest trees intermingled with great splashes of the brilliant red rata bloom, there was rank upon rank of tree-ferns rising one above the other, and garlands of flowering mistletoe festooning the dark-green tree-tops. Through this glade of warm lights and deep shadows there still flitted many tuis; the note of the bell-bird was heard at frequent intervals and in many places; but there was a marked absence of the smaller birds, such as the pert little fantail and the dainty tom-tit. None of the former and only one of the latter did we see—a scarcity, I am told, due to the ravages among our native birds of the destructive German owl.
A brief walk—all too brief—brought us to the sandy flat, which lies between a bend of the river and the sea, whereon the camp site is situated. Now covered by dense bush, the gnarled roots of the larger trees spreading across the surface of the ground, it would be almost impossible for the
Standing upon the sandy margin of the tidal estuary several hundred yards in width and two miles in length, there is observable, 8 to 10 feet above, a clear line of white shells—pipi-shells—6 inches to a foot below the surface, with here and there large patches of black soil indicative of where former fires had burned. This bank, the left bank, is obviously subject to heavy erosion during river floods; much already has gone, and much is in the process of disappearing. To-day the trunks of great totara trees undermined by the rushing waters are lying in the stream; others, partially uprooted, lie with their heads and spreading branches immersed in the water, their roots still clinging to mother earth. Another flood and they, too, will sink to their death. Burned oven stones and debris, fallen from the middens above, litter the strand, betraying the secret of the hidden camp.
When I inspected the site in company with Mr. Teviotdale, we did no digging; but my guide showed me the features of the camp and the spots where he and his confrères had previously dug. Mr. Teviotdale explained that his attention had first been directed to the place in 1933, when he had visited
Later, Mr. Leslie Lockerbie, of McLennan township, exploring along the river-bank, came upon some Moa relics and Moa-hunter curios which had been exposed by river erosion. These he, with particular care, collected and sent to the Otago University Museum, together with a statement of the known facts regarding them. This information decided the Museum authorities to excavate the site thoroughly and systematically.
The work was commenced on the 8th January, 1936, and was continued until the end of the month. In the enterprise Mr. Teviotdale had associated with him Mr.
To begin with, we dug over a large extent of the debris washed out of the bank, finding a number of quartzite and chert flakes, a sinker, a small greenstone chisel, a flake of a greenstone adze. Maori midden deposit showed in various places along the edge of the bank, nowhere more than 2 feet in depth and usually less. The surface of the site was densely covered with scrub and young totara trees, whose thick mat of roots made the work hard and tedious. With the object of preventing erosion by the high winds, we left a narrow strip of bush or scrub along the edge of the bank and commenced to excavate where Mr. Hornsey and I had worked in 1933. The deposit consisted of a layer of cockle and pipi shells about 2 feet in depth, then a layer of black greasy soil containing oven stones and ashes overlying clean sea-sand.
On the northern end of our trench the sandy bottom dipped sharply and the black deposit got deeper. The trench was about 3 feet deep on the southern side, while at the northern side it reached a depth of 7 feet. The layer of shells kept at an even depth of fully 2 feet, while the deeper part of the black layer also contained occasional patches of shells.
Moa bones were found all through the deposit, but they were more plentiful in the bottom layer. The pelves and other large bones were usually found in the bottom layer, although they often appeared in the shell deposit. Vertebra-joints, ribs, toe-joints, and tracheal rings were found all through the deposit; but most of the artifacts and fragments of bone for manufacturing purposes were found in the shell layer. In the black lower deposit were flakes of chert, quartzite, and a fine-grained basalt. These flakes had probably been used as knives to cut up the bodies of the Moas. Just below the shells, on the surface of the black layer, Mr. George found a very fine polished scraper made of the above-mentioned fine-grained basalt. Among the shells were many fragments of Moa bone; and, although the majority were roughly broken pieces, a large number of them represented all stages of fish-hook manufacture, and many had been broken in the process of drilling. We found one complete simple, or one-piece, hook, and several fragments of other one-piece hooks, and many files, cutters, and polishers of schist and sandstone. Well down in the black layer Mr. Lockerbie found a heap of Moa bones consisting of two pelves and ten tarsus bones, and near by I found the leg-bones of several Moas heaped together. From a space of 12 feet in width and 17 feet in length we unearthed eighteen Moa pelves of two different sizes. These were very fragile, and we did not succeed in excavating any of them in an unbroken condition. Leg-bones were numerous, but many of these were broken—especially the tibiae, which in some cases had little left except the ends. The unbroken leg-bones found in this area comprised eight femora,
three tibiae, and eighteen tarsi of Moas. Seal bones, some of them very large, were often found lying with the Moa pelves, while here and there were little groups of small bones, usually the wing-bones of some medium-sized bird. The long, stout, wing-bones, so common on Maori camp sites near Dunedin, were absent. Two kakapo beaks completed the list of our findings here. As we extended our trench towards the road, the sandy bottom rose until the black layer was only a few inches in thickness, and, as it contained nothing but a few oven stones and an occasional Moa bone, we did not lift this black layer, but only dug through it here and there. At one spot, close to the road, where an area of this black layer was tramped hard and firm, we found several Moa-bone points of composite hooks of various types, a long needle-shaped pendant, some small adzes (more or less damaged), and three pointed pickers or threaders of bird bone (one of these contained a small but very well made bone needle), a number of flattened or drilled tabs of Moa bone, some sandstone cutters and polishers, and many rough, broken fragments of Moa bone. On the northern side of this area Mr. George found a large Moa-bone point of a composite hook, while on the southern edge Mr. Lockerbie unearthed a much larger point of similar shape. The deposit, which was about 18 inches deep over this firm area, consisted of cockle, mussel, pipi, and paua shells, fish bones and scales, as well as some snapper jaw-bones and a few bird and seal bones. In the shell deposit were Moa pelves and ribs, toe and vertebra joints, and several ends of leg-bones, the shafts of which had been broken for manufacturing purposes. Many of
the artifacts were lying on the firm floor, but the majority were found among the shells. On the northern side of our excavation a sand-hill rose abruptly, and here a thin layer of sand lay between the shells and the black deposit. The bottom dipped until the black deposit was nearly 3 feet deep, but it contained nothing but a few oven stones, and the shell deposit gave out completely on this side. The shell layer continued under the road, and we worked in as far as we could without damaging the roadway.
Here Mr. George found a medium-sized greenstone adze in good order.
On the southern side of our trench the two layers gave out against clean sand. Near the outer edge of the shell deposit we found an unfinished one-piece hook and fragments of several others—all made of Moa bone. Mr. George found an unfinished one-piece hook made of whale's bone, which had been manufactured, not by drilling, as were the Moa-bone hooks, but by pecking or gouging. Two very large quartzite flakes lying beside the lower jaw-bone of an elephant seal were found on the sand below the midden deposit. In the deposit itself were two Moa pelves, many vertebra and toe joints, and the ends of several leg-bones, the shafts of which had been broken up for manufacturing purposes. In the bottom layer two unbroken Moa femora and some quartzite flakes were found.
As the road prevented farther progress, we returned to the river-bank, where we commenced another trench about 30 feet to the southward of our first excavation. On the northern side of this trench there was a shallow deposit of shells connecting with
our first trench. As the layer was almost barren of curios and we were anxious not to destroy more of the vegetation than was necessary, we did not connect with No. 1 trench, but carried on parallel with it towards the road. On the southern side the bottom dipped and then rose again, forming a small hollow. Here the deposit consisted of a layer of shells above a black loamy deposit, the depth of the two being nearly 5 feet. Moa and seal bones were found all through it, but were more numerous in the black deposit. We found, unbroken, seven Moa femora, seven Moa tarsi, and one tibia; also three Moa pelves and three crania—all of ordinary size. One of the femur and two of the tarsus bones were much larger than any others found, and appear to be bones of
Dinornis maximus, the largest species of Moa. Underneath one pelvis was a small quantity of Moa egg-shell. Mr. George obtained a one-piece fish-hook, a quartzite drill-point, and a very fine tab of Moa bone, the centre of which had been drilled out. Mr. Lockerbie unearthed a black stone adze in good order, while I got a long curved pendant made of a rib, a schist file or rubber, and two hammer-stones. These stones are pebbles of the same variety as those commonly used as hammers at the Foveaux Straits camp sites. I also found a thin circular piece of sandstone slightly polished on each side, and a piece of whale's bone worked to the shape of a small cork. I cannot suggest a use for either of these pieces.The deposit here very much resembled that in No. 1 trench. It lay on a deep slope, the lower part containing most of the large Moa and seal bones, while the majority of the artifacts were in the upper
layer of shells. Gradually the deposit became shallower and barren of curios. In the centre of this midden was a dead broadleaf tree whose fallen trunk, which was fully 2 feet in diameter, was in an advanced stage of decay. In the ring formed by the decaying roots of the tree a totara tree was growing. The advanced stage of decay of the broadleaf tree and the size of the totara, which was about 4 inches in diameter and over 12 feet in height, would indicate that the midden was of considerable antiquity.
When we had exhausted this spot I searched round about for some time and found a midden about 80 yards south-west of the two trenches. It lay along the foot of a sandy slope, and in places it was fully 3 feet in depth, consisting wholly of shells—mostly cockle and pipi. There were many paua shells, usually in groups and often placed one within the other. Some of these paua shells were very large. Mixed with the shells were a few seal, dog, bird, and fish bones and scales, and a kakapo beak. There were also many fragments of broken Moa bones suitable for manufacturing purposes, tabs in various stages of manufacture (a few showing the marks of drilling), several drill-points of Moa bone, a few fish-hook points, polishing-stones or files, and several adzes of common stone; all the adzes were more or less damaged. All through this midden there was no indication of the Moa having been used for food, although the bones had been freely used for manufacture.
In the clean sand below the shell deposit, and in some places separated from the shells by a thin band of clean sand, were several patches of Moa bones
mixed with a few pipi shells and some oven stones. I here obtained two Moa pelves, a number of toe and vertebra joints, one Moa skull with upper and lower mandible, another without the beak, and a number of leg-bones. Although many of the leg-bones were broken, I secured four tibiae, one femur, and two tarsi which were intact. In one spot Mr. Lockerbie found a small heap of Moa egg-shell. A few feet from this I found two similar heaps about 12 inches apart. I should imagine that each of these heaps would comprise the greater part of an egg. There were also a number of pieces of what appeared to be Moa droppings, part of a dog's skull, the skull of a large seal, and some seal bones. With the last mentioned were a number of flakes of brown chert; but there were no other implements. Between the heaps of egg-shell and the layer of sea-shells was about 6 inches of clean sand. The whole of the lower deposits in this midden appeared to have no connection with the upper layer, which contained no Moa bones except pieces suitable for manufacture. The thick bush and scrub made it very difficult to trace accurately the position of the smaller features of the landscape. The site of the first trench appeared to be on a small sandy spur with a gully or hollow between it and a much higher sand-hill. This little gully extended in an easterly direction across Sand Road and joined a larger hollow in the bush. It did not connect with the river at its western end, but the larger gully ran in a southerly direction to the river's mouth.
The small hollow had been filled with debris from the operations of the Moa-hunters, who apparently had worked on the top of a small ridge and thrown
the waste material into the hollow. This would account for the depth recorded. Evidently the lowest deposit was offal from the Moas; but later the hunters had cooked enormous quantities of shell-fish as well as the giant birds. As the number of Moas in a confined space such as this estuary would not be large, it is likely that the stores of food would be increased by cooking and preserving shell-fish.
The presence of seal bones in close proximity to those of the Moa in these middens indicates that both creatures were secured at the same time by the Maoris; and it is likely that seal-oil would be used in the preservation process of the meat of both bird and beast. It is possible, too, that the long tibiae of the Moas were broken to facilitate the extraction of the marrow or oil for this purpose.
As there is no fresh water on the north side of the river-mouth, it is not likely that the Natives would have had a permanent camp there. On the other side of the river are several small creeks, one of which has a good steady flow of water and is now a favourite camping-place for picnic parties and tourists. At intervals along this south-west side of the river are midden heaps indicating old camp sites, and although we were told of other shell-heaps in the bush we did not have time to visit them.
On a day when frequent showers of rain prevented us from working in the open Mr. George and I excavated the floor of a small cave. This contained a deposit of pipi and cockle shells, about 18 inches deep, over an area of about 15 feet in length and ranging from 12 feet in width at the entrance to 3 feet at the inner end. As we found no curios, it
is probable that this cave was only an occasional camping-place. On the seaward side of Sand Road Mr. Lockerbie showed us various places in the bush where there were deposits of shells. We worked on one of these deposits which contained seal bones and a quantity of broken leg-bones of the Moas mixed with a smaller deposit of shells. Mr. George found two broken adzes here, while Mr. Lockerbie found a curious implement made from a seal's fibula. It is probably a
maripi, used for detaching paua from the rocks. We prospected one or two other spots in the bush, but unfortunately we had not enough time to do systematic work.There was an almost total absence of the long, slender bird bones (commonly called albatross bones) which are so frequently found on Dunedin camp sites. This is strange, as fishermen at Tautuku, only a few miles away, told me that when fishing they had difficulty in preventing the albatrosses from taking their baited hooks. Bones of smaller birds were fairly plentiful, and occasionally we found the larger bones in little heaps. We obtained several wing-bones pointed to form threaders or pickers, and inside one of these pointed bones was a small, neat, and well-made needle. I have recorded finding similar bones, which have been used as needle-cases, at the Shag River mouth, and at Little Papanui on Otago Peninsula.
A noticeable feature of the fish-hook points found here is that all are unbarbed. Among the curios presented by Mr. Lockerbie to the Otago University Museum are two stone fish-hook shanks. These were found on this site among the debris left by the tide. In our excavations we found several of the carved
bone points that are usually found in company with the stone or bone shanks. As drilling was the usual method of manufacturing one-piece hooks, it was to be expected that stone drill-points would be plentiful. Strangely enough, they were very scarce; we found only one. This contrasts greatly with the Shag River camp, where I obtained upwards of 400 stone drill-points. Drill-points made of Moa bone were found on both sites, but in proportion to the area of the camp were more numerous at Tahakopa than at the Shag River. Two very sharp points of Moa bone which we unearthed are too finely pointed to be drill-points, and probably were used as awls.
We found only two pieces of obsidian, both in the tide-washed area, and three pieces of greenstone, two of which were in the tidal area. Kokowai (red ochre) was scarce also, two pieces only being found in the middens.
In the deepest part of our trench (about 7 feet) the formation from the surface was as follows: A shell layer, a deeper layer of black sandy earth containing oven stones and charcoal, a thin layer of sand, and, finally, a thin layer of shells over the sand bottom. In all these layers were Moa bones. There was a large Moa pelvis among the shells below the surface, and two Moa pelves were on the sandy bottom with a flake or reddish chert beside them. Although this red chert is quite common here, I met no one who had seen it
in situin the district. Quartzite flakes were not as common as this reddish chert; but thin, sharp-edged flakes of a very finely grained basalt were plentiful. These probably were used as knives, and they would be quite as effective as either the chert or the quartzite ones.The unbroken leg-bones of the Moas found by us comprised 21 femora, 8 tibiae, and 29 tarsi, making a total of 58.
The total number of objects found by our party of sufficient importance to be registered was 329, consisting for the most part of hammer-stones, polishers, cutters, tabs of cut and smoothed Moa bone, and parts of tabs which have been broken in the process of drilling. Two pieces of Moa bone appear to be fragments cut from a larger piece by drilling instead of sawing, a feature I have not noticed on other sites. Sandstone polishers, cutters, etc., were very plentiful, and I brought only the better ones away.
The adzes were nearly all broken. It may be that their damaged condition was caused by being used to break the Moa bones into pieces suitable for manufacture.
The unfinished one-piece hook of whale's bone had been made by chipping or pecking, while the Moa-bone examples were drilled. At Pahia, near Orepuki, I obtained similar specimens together, which shows that the two methods were in use at the same time. Two points of composite hooks were also made of whale's bone.
The interesting feature of this piece of exploration is that a bone was unearthed which Dr. Dinornis maximus. This was the largest species of the Moa, standing some 12 feet in height. Up to this point no remains of this bird have been found in Moa-hunters' camps, thus encouraging the belief that the
The fact that a young forest has grown up upon the site of the camp since it was abandoned marks it as a place of some antiquity; but here again we are unable to assign to it more than an approximate date. It is admitted that, though not a hardwood, the totara is a tree of slow growth; and my best information is that a tree such as Sir
This camp site also is involved in another interesting problem. The Moa was not a bush bird: it was too large and clumsy for that, and preferred to roam out in the open spaces. To-day, however, not only is the camp site overgrown with trees and tangled underscrub, but the surrounding country is
For an interesting discussion on plant movement in New Zealand since the last glacial period—and especially in this southern region—the reader is referred to a paper by Lucy M. Cranwell and Lennart von Post, printed in Geografiska Annaler, 1936, pp. 3–4.
The acceptance of the view that the hills and valleys adjacent to Papa-towai have been covered by trees since the days of the Moa-hunters clearly forces the hand of time far back; but, since we know by the evidence of fossil bones that the Moa has been in New Zealand for millions of years, there is little need to wonder at that; the wonder is how
Dr.
O! see where wide the golden sunlight flows— The barren desert blossoms like the rose. — R. W. Gilder.
The Kapua swamp is now known as Lake Arno.In February of last year the writer was invited by a number of gentlemen keenly interested in the story of the Moa to visit the comely little town of Waimate, in South Canterbury, and from there to inspect several places of interest and importance in the life-history of this remarkable bird. With this request I was able to comply in March, and was first taken through the Waimate Gorge to view the Kapua
The summer of 1895 was a particularly dry one, and Mr. T. A. MacDonald, the settler who owned the section adjoining the south-western entrance to the gorge, was prospecting for a better supply of water. Having had experience of dry years in Western Australia, he looked over his ground with a practised eye, and, seeing what looked like a potential spring, he proceeded to dig it out. Before he had gone very far he dislodged first one large bone and then another. “Bits of one of Studholme's bullocks,” MacDonald remarked to Mr. Frederick Sevicke-Jones, a neighbour who was leaning over the fence and watching the proceedings with more than usual interest. “Moa bones, you mean,” said the neighbour, as he crawled through the fence to obtain a closer view. “You never saw a bullock with a bone like that,” he remarked, as he turned over a yellow-looking tibia with his foot. On second thoughts MacDonald believed he never had; and on further investigation he was sure he never had. A few of the bones were taken into Waimate, and
Waimate Times attracted the attention of Professor Hutton, who at once entered into negotiations for the purchase of the “claim”; and, for the sum of £40, the said “claim” passed into his possession.
Mr. Sparkes, the taxidermist of the Canterbury Museum, came down from Christchurch to superintend the removal of the bones, but the accounts differ as to the exact size and depth of the excavations. Mr. Waimate Daily Advertiser of the 28th September, 1935:
With reference to the great find of Moa bones at the west end of the Waimate Gorge in the year 1895 it seems to me that the most common-sense explanation of how the bones all came to be in such a comparatively small hole in the ground is that the birds became bogged in this spring-hole at odd times during the course of many centuries. This seems the more likely, seeing that there were skeletons of cattle and sheep in the bog at the top of the hole, which had, of course, come there during the comparatively few years the country had been stocked. The Moa bones were distributed through a depth of some 10 feet or so from top to bottom, the large number being in the latter position, where quite a number of pieces of egg-shells were also mixed up with the bones. The presence of the egg-shells, and also of the gizzard stones, proves conclusively that the birds went into this hole alive, for no self-respecting Moa would make its nest at the bottom of a mud-hole. If 200 Moas died at the same time they would cover a big area of ground, and the fact of the bones being one on top of another proves that the hole was gradually filled up by birds dying at intervals. This particular hole in which the bones were found was a perfect death-trap for stock, the ground being sound all round it, and then, in one step, you could sink out of sight in the mud. There was another small hole of the same kind about 400 yards away, which also had a few Moa bones and stock bones buried in the mud. The writer also
found the bones of the lesser Moa in a hole on the top of the Gorge Hill, and it is quite certain that a lot more bones could be found in this district.
Whatever the differences of opinion regarding the origin of the deposit, it is authoritatively stated that Professor Hutton took three truck-loads of bones from his “claim,” and that, later, Dr. Moor-house took two more, partly from Professor Hutton's abandoned excavation, and partly from a hole dug about one hundred yards away, across the creek leading into the Waimate Gorge.
Professor's Hutton's subsequent examination and classification of the bones disclosed that at least six different species of the Moa, ranging from the graceful Dinornis maximus, 12 feet in height, to the sturdily built Euryapteryx elephantopus, 5 feet in height, were involved in this mysterious agglomeration of buried bones, but no explanation has yet indisputably revealed the secret of their burial.
It has frequently been suggested that the large deposits of Moa bones found in the beds of former lakes and swamps, such as have been recovered at Te Aute, Glenmark, Enfield, and Hamilton's, and possibly here at Kapua, were the result of Moa-hunters driving great flocks of the birds to their destruction in the hope of securing a few for a meal.
This the writer thinks a somewhat rash assumption. We cannot, of course, always be sure of the methods adopted by the hunters. The chase was almost certain to be the method when circumstances dictated that the birds should be pursued. And yet it is difficult to think that the Maori would be so improvident as to waste hundreds of birds when he knew that he would be able to retrieve only one or two. Widely different opinions prevail as to this side of the Maori character, one school holding that the Maori had no thought of the morrow, and would not regard it as improvident to sacrifice many Moas if it meant a meal for the day. On the other hand there are those who contend that the Maori was meticulously careful of his food supply, as evidenced by the regularity with which he planted, the patience with which he watched his crops, and the jealousy with which he guarded his hunting-grounds.
Into the merits of these discussions I am not disposed to enter, for it has long been my considered opinion that these swamp deposits were never the product of the Moa-hunters' rashness, nor that the Moa, like the elephant, had an inherent desire to find a common grave, and that over a long course of years they wandered to these still waters and lonely spots to die. Rather do the deposits themselves, by their magnitude and arrangement, suggest
en masse into the swamp, only to find death awaiting them in another form.
From Kapua Lake I was motored a distance of seventeen miles to the mouth of the Waitaki River. There I was shown an area of tussock-covered ground lying close to the seashore, which I was told was the site of an ancient Moa-hunters' camp. Dusk was setting in, and little time remained to do more than to make a cursory survey of the situation, but during this period I saw sufficient to convince me that here was something worthy of investigation. This interest was considerably heightened by the information given me, that the camp had never been examined by scientific experts, and that for all practical purposes it was a virgin field. I subsequently discovered that it was by no means an unknown quantity, and that it had been gleaned over many times during the past eleven years. Still, having regard to its extensive area, I felt convinced that even in that period not everything had been stripped off it, and that I might yet be able to find here at first hand the evidence I particularly desired to find—namely, that at some stage in his life in
As I was going south on an entirely different mission of research, I was not able to remain and immediately test this question, but late in April, all preliminary arrangements being made, I was ready to commence the exploration of the field.
In the meantime a most fortunate thing happened. I received a letter from Mr. Hugh S. McCully, of Peel Forest Road, Rangitata, inviting me, should I happen to be in that locality, to call on him, as he thought it might be within his power to put in my way some useful information regarding the Waitaki camp. How Mr. McCully knew that I was interested in the Waitaki camp I did not know, as I had not then met him. Appreciating, however, the friendly tone of his letter, and being anxious to equip myself with knowledge from every angle, naturally, I accepted his invitation, and on Monday, the 20th April, I met him at the Rangitata Railway-station and he drove me to his homestead, some miles distant.
Mr. McCully is not only a farmer in the district but also an enthusiastic collector of Maori curios. He is more particularly interested in stone tools, and these he has been gathering for over thirty years, and doing it in a most intelligent way. His
With his intimate knowledge of South Canterbury and North Otago, Mr. McCully was able to give me much useful information regarding the district in which I was immediately concerned. He was also in a position to point out the relative importance of the vast area of open country which lies around the headwaters of the Waitaki River, and which in the days of the Moa-hunters must have been one of their happy hunting-grounds, whence they obtained their richest supplies. A brief reflection was all that was necessary to convince me of this,
Leaving Rangitata on a beautiful April morning, we drove first through one of the most charming agricultural districts in New Zealand, sprinkled with pleasant townships—reminders of sleepy English villages—and then on to a spot south of Timaru, now called Normanby, which at one time was a Maori fishing-village, but whether ancient or modern no one seemed to know. I was informed that a considerable number of Maori relics had been found there, and that to this day collectors frequent it, in proof of which we saw newly-turned sods, the marks of their recent digging, while on the surface we found many rough flakes of the near-by seashingle which appeared as though they had at one time served as implements with which to dissect the bodies of large fish.
That evening we arrived at Duntroon, and there, next morning, I saw a splendid specimen of a Moa bone—a tibia—hanging up in a butcher's shop, where, it is only fair to state, it was displayed as a curio, and not in the ordinary way of business.
On making inquiry about this bone I learned that some years previously it had been discovered during the process of digging a well at Kurow, and that after a somewhat adventurous career it had fallen into the hands of its present owner. Careful measurements made by me showed that it is 2 feet 10¼ inches in length, 7½ inches across the proximal joint, 7½ inches in circumference at its thinnest part, and 5 inches across the distal joint. From these figures I believe it must have been a tibia of the species Dinornis maximus; and it is in a wonderful state of preservation.
But a short distance beyond Duntroon we early came upon the remarkable physical feature known as the Takiroa rock-shelter, with its collection of curious rock paintings, now diminished in number by the cupidity, it is alleged, of an American professor who succeeded in removing several from their place on the shelter wall, but fortunately not in removing them from the country. The pieces of rock excavated from the wall are now in the Otago University Museum.
These paintings were discovered by the Hon.
The time was when a long section gouged out from the lower edge of this huge mass of rock by the flowing river or the dashing wave gave grateful shelter to the ancient Maori as he rested on his journey, and while he waited for time or tide—who knows?—he drew in colour upon the shelter wall crude figures A reproduction of some of these drawings will be found in Mr. Reginald A. Smith, writing in his manual on Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. 1, p. 18.Flints, p. 53, says in this connection: “Some of these works of art may be simply due to the exuberance of talent, but it is now generally held that the artists drew the animals they wished to capture in the hope and belief that by so doing they would come within the reach of the hunters. This would be a form of magic, and the picture galleries that have been discovered in certain caves, some with the colours fresh on the outline engravings, may therefore have served a double purpose, to please the artist, and to replenish the larder.”
In other parts of the world rock paintings and similar artistic expressions of primitive man have served a useful part in aiding the archaeologist to fix in a definite way the forms of animals and other natural features of prehistoric times, but in New Zealand their meaning is often so obscure as to leave us with no better solution than a guess. This applies in a very special way to the drawings at Duntroon, which nevertheless have their value as illustrating a stage of art to which a primitive people
That there were once Moa-hunters in this district is recorded in a letter sent to the author by Mr.
The collection I have came from a midden situated about half a mile from the Takiroa rock shelter, near Duntroon. The midden was on the edge of a clay bank close beside an oven, and from it I obtained fragments of Moa egg-shell, apparently from four different eggs; also trachea rings of various sizes, and some small bones and flints. From the oven I obtained a leg-bone and a quantity of toe-bones and claws, which were lying among the burned stones in the bottom of the oven. One of the claws and a piece of the egg-shell had quite definitely been burned. There was also a quantity of gizzard-stones in the midden. These could be identified because they were Marewhenua gravel, whereas the other stones in the vicinity were the usual Waitaki shingle. I think
you will agree with me that this oven must have been used at a comparatively recent date. Unfortunately, the ovens near the rock shelter have all been ploughed over, but I could still locate the one I obtained the bones from. The midden has not been interfered with yet, however, and there may still be enough to confirm what I have told you.
Onward and upward through the green valley of the Waitaki we went, and as we approached the hydro-electric works above Kurow we were treated to a wonderful exhibition of colourful atmospheric effects. At the moment of our passing, the spectacle presented was thrillingly beautiful. In great crystal columns the water was gushing through the gates in the breastwork of the dam, while over the top of the wall The sporting instincts of the sea-birds is said to be daily demonstrated at this dam. Numbers of these birds fly inland and collect in the lake above the dam. They allow themselves to be carried down-stream by the swelling flood with all the appearance of indulging in a joy-ride. They approach the edge of the dam with every confidence, and just as it seems inevitable that they must be swept over the brink into the boiling torrent below, they flap their wings, gracefully rise off the surface of the water, and with a cry that resembles a laugh they return up-stream to begin again another “ride.”
As I listened to the roar of thundering waters I could not but recall the prophetic view once taken by Mr. Huruhuru was descended from a Kai-Tahu and Kati-Mamoe marriage and was universally recognized as a mild and amiable man. He was the kind of man whom The Southern Districts of New Zealand, p. 207.
On the day, ninety-three years ago, when Mr. Shortland penned that paragraph he “dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,” and to the truth of his prophecy the agricultural transformation that has been worked in his “now desert country,” together with the giant strength of the Waitaki hydro-electric works, are surely a living testimony.
Beyond the hydro-electric works we crossed the river and visited two sites of old Maori camps—one at Waitangi, and the other at Te Akatarawa. These were former resting-places used by the ancient Maori when on his nine summer days' journey up to the head of the river, or as convenient halting-places by those who used the river as a highway to the sea.
At both these sites we saw evidences of former occupation and picked up quite a number of flints which had been left lying round the camp-fires when the sites were abandoned. Here we saw to advantage the milky colour for which the water of the Waitaki River is remarkable, and which the Maori, with his penchant for descriptive passages, called “He ” (“the water of the grinding-stone dirt”), because it reminded him of the colour of the water which ran from the stone on which he polished his high-grade tools, weapons, and ornaments.
Returning to the south bank of the river, we reached Omarama Mr. McCully informs me that most of the tools found at Omarama were made from a yellow-coloured flint of which I have one or two specimens which had found their way to the Waitaki camp.hapu of Ngai-Tahu—or Kai-Tahu, as they prefer to call themselves—had a settlement; but the dogs which they had assembled to help hunt the weka began to show a marked preference for worrying sheep and lambs, and the runholders had to appeal to the law to have their owners evicted. This was done in 1879, whereupon the Natives migrated to a site close to the mouth of the Waitaki River, and established there a kaika,Kaika, the South Island equivalent of the North Island kainga, a village, as distinguished from the fortified pa.kaika, which with its church and sod whares has now disappeared, was in no way connected with
That night it commenced to rain, and next morning when we left for Gray's Hills it was still raining. This caused some anxiety, as between us and our destination there flowed several streams which might be affected, and if they rose in flood our passage would be blocked. This would have been unfortunate, for I regard what we saw at Gray's Hills as affording the most thrilling sensation of the whole journey, and to have come so far and missed the climax would have been regrettable indeed. Happily, the dreaded contingency did not arise, and at about 3 p.m. we arrived at Gray's Hills station. The purpose behind this stage of the journey was to see a quarry from which the Maori in the full flush of the Stone Age hewed out of the bed large blocks of glittering white quartzite, from which his skilled craftsmen chipped the tools and implements necessary in his daily life and for which this material is singularly suitable.
As the crow flies, Gray's Hills homestead is comparatively close to Omarama, but an intervening mountain range compels the traveller to make a circuitous journey which he finishes not far from his starting-point. The station is some forty-four miles from the sea, and is 2,000 feet above sea-level. It is on the fringe of the historic Mackenzie country,
The site of the Gray's Hills quarry is hidden “deep in the green stillness of the country” close to the station homestead. The station-owner, Mr. Grant, was absent in Australia at the moment of our calling, but a shepherd showed us where the quarry was, and told us we might collect as many “splinters” as we liked. Crossing the road and walking over a well-grazed paddock, we saw the bed of quartzite protruding in successive hummocks above the almost level ground. Beside each of these outcrops holes had been dug, suggesting that the experienced quarrymen had discovered that the stone lying beneath the surface was of better quality than the weathered material above. To secure the better stone they had excavated spaces several feet deep.
A modern intrusion is now observable in the shape of lusty willow trees which have taken root in these excavations, throwing their spreading branches over the rock. Beneath their shade lie the little workshops where the old-time craftsmen sat chipping their “cores” and fashioning their knives, their scrapers, and their chisels. These workshops are still plainly
The small clusters of flints have remained practically unaltered since the day the quarry was abandoned, save for a slight scattering by the hoofs of wandering sheep or the careless foot of a hurrying shepherd, and it seemed incredible to me that such could be the case, until I happened upon a reference to an analogous example at Cissbury, Cissbury, a camp on a commanding position of the South Downs, about three miles from Worthing.Early Man in Britain. Here the Professor describes the surface of the ground in and around the circular depressions as covered by innumerable chips and implements in every stage of manufacture from the nodule of flint fresh out of the chalk, spoilt by an unlucky blow, to the article nearly finished and accidentally broken. In other places he observed little heaps of small chips that marked the spots where the finer work was carried on, and in some instances he saw the two halves of the broken implements just as they had been impatiently tossed aside by the workman, ruffled by his misfortune. How these silent witnesses of the ancient Briton's craftmanship had remained undisturbed through all
The Neolithic stage of civilization had been superseded by that of Bronze; that in its turn by the age of Iron; then after an interval, the length of which we know not, came the sequence of events recorded in the history of this country; and yet these little heaps, lying immediately beneath the greensward, had retained their places undisturbed, although the Romans used the camp at Cissbury for military purposes, and have left numerous traces of their occupation. From the time when these chips were made down to to-day [1874] there has been no appreciable change in the surface soil in which they rested.
Save for a lesser lapse of time and a lesser risk of disturbance, much the same element of wonder surrounds the Maori camp at Gray's Hills.
The discovery and use of the quartzite bed which provided the raw material for this mountain workshop, secluded as it is and far from the beaten track, is a tribute to the knowledge the Maori possessed of his country; for it shows how little there was of it unknown to him, and how quick he was to seize upon its natural resources and turn them to good account when and where more suitable material was not available.
My research has not yet proceeded far enough to enable me to say by which branch of the Maori
Whatever the explanation, it is a fact that surfaces exposed by human blows are more lustrous than surfaces due to a natural fracture.
Returning to Rangitata late that night, after a journey of 386 miles, the following day was spent in sorting and packing the specimens of prehistoric tools that I had collected at the various stopping-places. The next few days were occupied in completing arrangements to enable me to carry out the main purpose of my visit south—namely, the exploration of the Moa-hunters' camp at the mouth of the Waitaki River—and this resulted in my taking up my residence at Glenavy, which I decided to make my headquarters. A motor drive of three
On the morning of Tuesday, the 28th April, I made a detailed inspection of the ground, and a more intimate acquaintance with the site convinced me that my original plan of operation—to plot the ground into equal sections and dig over each section in turn—could not, on account of the shingly nature of the ground, be carried out, and therefore I adopted other methods more suitable to the circumstances.
I found the site of the camp was that portion of the former bed of the Waitaki River lying between the main south terrace and the lagoons a mile and a half to the north. The extent of the area actually occupied by the camp is said to be 150 acres; but I am told that in former times it was much larger—quite 300 acres—ploughing operations having considerably diminished it. The camp site is still being reduced in area by the erosion of the sea, which is said to be encroaching upon this section of the coast-line at the rate of one yard per year. The first survey was made in 1864, and the coast-line was then 3½ chains farther out to sea than it is to-day. How much more has been lost in all the years since the camp was established it is impossible to say, but we found one midden, which obviously had been laid down on solid land, now out among the stones of the boulder-bank.
The story of how this delta has been built up is plainly to be read, for the same process is in operation just as vigorously to-day as it has been for many centuries past; the land is the product of the age-long contest which has been waged between the river and the sea. Along this section of the coast the northward sweep of the tide is incessant and irresistible. Even the river's mighty current “An idea may be formed of the immense body of water which flows down this river during floods, from the fact that vessels, three or four miles off the coast, have dipped up water quite fresh while crossing its stream.”—Southern Districts of New Zealand, by ( Discaria toumatou).
There is a local opinion that this area was once covered with much larger and more luxuriant vegetation, but this I doubt. No such vegetation grew on the North Otago plains in 1844, when Mr. pakihi, or arid, and the coating of soil where the camp is situated is too light ever to have carried a heavy crop of flax, toetoe, or tutu. One could have wished it otherwise, for something of the kind is needed to soften the asperities of the place, which to-day in appearance is bleak and altogether inhospitable.
There is little ground life to be seen on the site. Late in April and early in May quite a number of paradise ducks, Paradise duck—so called from its brilliant plumage; When I was there in January of this year I was interested to see early one morning a large flock of seagulls standing in the centre of a half-ploughed paddock. On remarking upon what, to me, seemed a peculiar circumstance, I was told that the birds were waiting for the ploughman to start work, whereupon they would scramble after the plough in search of such worms or grubs as might be dislodged by the shear. A few days previously there had been a holiday, which did not come into the calculations of the birds, and they patiently remained at their posts till dark, hoping against hope that the ploughman would appear and put the plough in motion.putangitangi—so called from its chattering habits.putangitangi of the Maori, rested upon the lagoons and preened themselves upon the intervening islands, but little else was noticed in the way of birds. There are no trees to invite song-birds to seek food or shelter, and sea-birds were seen only occasionally winging their way to the inland farms, there to feast upon upturned grubs at the tail of the plough.
Adopting the old southern terrace of the river as its southern limit, the camp area proceeds in the form of further terraces, each lower in elevation as they proceed northwards. The surface is in places distinctly irregular, being corrugated by shallow depressions which leave little doubt that they were once branch streams and later lagoons similar to those which now constitute the northern boundary of the area. The eastern boundary is an immense boulder-bank, consisting of millions of tons of rough shingle thrown up by the sea, while to the west it fades away into what are now fenced and cultivated paddocks, where the plough has long since obliterated all trace of human occupation.
The easiest approach to the site is from the north, the intervening lagoons being evaded by a short tramp along the margin of the boulder-bank. To the eye of the uninitiated nothing unusual might appear as such an one walks over the irregular surface; and this is not surprising, since the concealment of its real character has been so
Striking in from the coast across the plain, Mr. Mantell reached a point which he calls Te Morokura, where he “heard the distant roar of the Waitaki,” and above which he crossed the river, which, in his manuscript diary, 1848–49, he describes as “a torrent with a freshet channel half a mile in width. We reached safety, after a little excitement on the south side, our mokihi threatening to go to pieces on a bank, all more or less wet—myself, for instance, wet to my neck.” The crossing was made in two stages.
Its ultimate discovery was accidental. In 1926 Mr. This kaikakaika stood some distance away from the Moa-hunters' camp, being a village built mainly of sod whares when the Natives were evicted from the “Maori swamp” at Omarama in 1879. Little evidence of it now remains.rangatira of the kaika. As they proceeded on their way Mr. McCully was amazed
In these circumstances he did the right thing, he communicated his discovery to the authorities of the Otago and Canterbury Museums, the representatives of both institutions subsequently visiting the place.
To-day, as the result of further ploughing and seasonal changes, the camp site has reverted to its former innocent appearance, and one might have to look searchingly beneath its covering of tussocks and rank grass to discover its real import. Small heaps of bleached bones might still be thought no
What, too, mean these brown and broken stones which everywhere meet the eye and jar upon our feet as we push across through tussock-covered ground from one terrace to another, so different in shape and colour from the sleek grey units of the boulder-bank or the polished gravel of the river-bed? To find the origin of these stones you have but to look around you, for here and yonder there are low rounded hillocks dotted about. Some are broken down and in ruins, but many are still erect and grass-covered. A closer examination reveals them to be not hillocks, not inequalities in the ground,
umu into their present position by the hand of man, and of man who lived and cooked his food here, I verily believe, hundreds of years ago.
A moment's reflection will bring these bones, and stones, and flints into their proper relation. They are each performers in a drama which, since the beginning of time, has been staged in all parts of the world—a drama that is known as “the survival of the fittest.”
Wild on the river-bank, or mountain-brow, Yet e'en this cheerless mansion shall provide More heart's repose than all the world beside. — Leonidas.
The feature of importance which recommends to us the study of the Waitaki Moa-hunters' camp is that it definitely establishes to the investigator of to-day that man and the Moa were contemporaneous, and that, whatever additional agencies were at work to the same end, the human attacks upon the bird contributed in no small measure to its ultimate extinction. This camp was, as we have seen, but one of many, but in area and in the magnitude of its operations it is safe to say that in the life of these institutions it stood second to none. What induced the Maori to form a camp at this place must remain an open question. There is, however, little doubt that the magnet was the river. The five largest of the known camps on the east coast of the South Island were at the mouths of rivers, which gives colour to the suggestion that the settlements were in most instances not permanent, but seasonal, and based entirely upon the question of food supply.
So far as I have seen, there are no signs of former extensive buildings or fortifications on the Waitaki site—no palisades, no entrenchments, nor anything to point to the fact that the village whares were of other than the most temporary character. There are several spots under the south terrace which are pointed out as “hut sites,” and judging by the material gathered from their floors they probably were the location of former dwellings. Nothing, however, of the superstructure survives, from which fact we may conclude that these huts were small, and constructed of slender non-endurable material, such as rushes, raupo, or totara bark. There are other spots, roughly paved with flat stones, which are sometimes spoken of as floors of houses. Knowing the Maori mode of constructing his dwellings, I confess that it requires some imagination to follow this suggestion. Rather do I think that these paved spaces have played a different part in the economy of the camp, being platforms on which food was laid out to dry in the sun.
There are at least two other spots of peculiar interest. These are circular areas, some 20 feet across, which have been the bases of large rest houses, known as whare porotaka,A whare porotaka has been built in the model pa at Moeraki, erected to celebrate the centennial of the establishment of the Moeraki settlement in 1836.
They were built by setting slender manuka poles firmly in the ground at equal distances round the circular base, then bending the tapering top of the poles into the centre, where they were attached to a small ring fabricated from a stout vine, which formed an aperture through which the smoke of the central fire escaped. With the side poles fixed in position, they were further secured by a series of vines run around horizontally and lashed to the upright poles, the outside being covered by a neat thatch of grass or rushes. The occupants ranged themselves inside the basic ring, lying with their feet pointing to the fire, resembling nothing so much as the human spokes of a wheel. Here the events of the camp were discussed and the gossip— perhaps the scandal—of the day was passed round for the general information and enjoyment.
This form of house, possibly an adaptation to climatic conditions of their former Polynesian dwellings, is not commonly seen in Maori settlements to-day, but the type persists in the far south among the mutton-birders, in whose island camps during the birding season one or more of such structures are usually still to be seen.
That the camp had been laid out on any architectural principle or engineering system, I was unable to discover. The one governing factor
On the northern and southern margins of the area the ovens are more numerous than in the centre, which rises in height and resembles a former island on the bed of the river. In the centre there is to-day a Native burial-ground. Whether it was so in the days of the Moa-hunters it is impossible to say; but Mr. A portion of this consolidated mass was submitted to the Government Analyst with a result that unfortunately fails to throw any light on its origin, but Dr. Marwick, of the Geological Survey Department, is definitely of the opinion that it is the residuum of an ancient fire.tapu, or sacred ground. There, however, burned at least one fire in this part of the settlement, for some years ago Mr. Chapman, ploughing a furrow for the purpose of laying poison for rabbits, struck a hard object in the ground, and an examination revealed an obstruction 5 feet long and 4 feet wide which he considers was a “ceremonial stone.” This stone, he thinks, was brought there for some ritualistic purpose, and has been referred to in the Press as “the Waitaki mystery stone.” To me, however, it looks more like a mass of consolidated ash
Below the upper terrace, on the second flat before the land was broken up, I observed on my first visit that a hut had been standing here, about 15 feet long and 7 feet broad, with an opening towards the north. The outlines were shown by the floor being raised above the surrounding flat. The plough, in effacing all trace of these contour lines, had exposed the spot where the former cooking-place in this hut had been situated. Here the soil was baked to a hard, cemented mass, containing small pieces of charcoal, bones, either broken or entire, of fishes and small birds, together with a few fragments of polished implements, but not the least sign of Moa bones, flint implements, nor chips amongst them. On the same terrace cemented masses of the same kind proved the former existence of similar cooking-places.
That the consolidated mass found at Waitaki served a similar purpose, I have no doubt; but I am obliged to say that, although the ground near it has never been ploughed, the evidence of a surrounding whare is not so obvious as Sir Julius von Haast found it to be at Little Rakaia.
The idea that the position of the ovens was regulated by any regard for the dead does not appeal to me, for, as I have indicated, the governing factor
That for centuries the Waitaki River outlet has been travelling northward is undoubted; and the Moa-hunters, beginning their camp on the southern margin, abandoned that spot when the southern lagoon dried up, and moved on to the next lagoon, and then to the next; and when they were settled round their last fires some cause—perhaps economic, perhaps military—necessitated the total abandonment of the camp, which was first deserted and then forgotten, for it has no history, and no tradition among the present-day Natives. Its history must be read in its bones and in its stones. It is a modern Nineveh, a city of the dead.
The fact that the site was in use over a long period of time may readily be granted, but that it was continuously occupied over a similar period may be as readily doubted. This conclusion is justified by the entire absence of stratification. Unlike the camp at Shag River or at Sumner, it discloses no
The absence of large numbers of finished tools— tools of bone and of greenstone—also suggests that it was but a temporary abode, such as Shortland saw in 1844 higher up the river, and of which he has said, “They [the Maori] seemed to think nothing of leaving their houses without anyone in charge, although they might not return for, perhaps, a month.”
What, then, was the attraction to this spot, unblessed by shelter or scenic beauty? Clearly, it was a question of food supply; and although the Moa looms largely in this connection, it may not have been the whole charm. Fish as well as flesh, no doubt, played their part. When the Europeans first began to settle in North Otago and South Canterbury they noted the periodical recurrence of
Of the arrival of the whitebait on the west coast of the South Island, Brunner makes the following observation in his “Journal” of 1847: “In October and November commences the fishing season here, the mutta [mata], or whitebait, entering the rivers with the tide in great quantities. They are in such shoals that I have seen the dogs standing on the banks and lapping them from the stream. The Natives take large numbers, which they lay on flax mats and expose to the sun three or four days; they then pack them together tightly and preserve them in their storehouses for winter use.”mata of the South Island Maori—now largely eaten out by the trout, but which in the days of the Waitaha and the Kati-Mamoe would in the early months of spring arrive in their myriads, to be taken in the scoop nets by the dexterous tribal fishermen. Then there came what from its bright appearance was known as the “silvery” (Argentina retropinna), and, from its odour when young, as the “cucumber” smelt. In this stage the Maori knew it as the tikihemi, and when full grown as the paraki.
These fish arrived in the brackish water off the mouth of the river in October, and the smelt fry commenced their run in November, continuing during December. Their power of propulsion is considerable, for, unlike the larval minnows, which hug the bank to escape the rapids, the young “silveries” were wont to push up the main stream, not in their hundreds or their thousands, but in their millions.
For some reason not fully explained, they are not seen in such numbers to-day, but I am informed that long after the Europeans had arrived these fish might have been observed ascending the waters of the Waitaki with all the beauty and the continuity of a silver ribbon.
As a food they were always highly valued by the Maori, and for this reason the hapu within whose fishing territory the Waitaki was would, at the proper season, migrate to the delta and there prepare their nets for the coming harvest. The net used for this purpose was of a fine mesh, 2½ yards long and a foot or more deep, which was manipulated by two men with a sweeping movement. Great quantities of these fish were thus caught with a minimum of labour. They were then dried in the sun, and such as were not used for barter or friendly exchange were eaten during the winter, being in some districts known as tuarenga and in others as ngaiore.
Following upon the advent of the “silveries” came countless sea-birds, wheeling, and screaming with excitement as they dived to gorge themselves upon the finny delicacy. By January the eels were on the move within the river, they, too, preying upon the smaller fish, only themselves to become victims to the cunningly made hinaki tuna, or eel-traps, set at the openings of the weirs built across the upokororo is only a far-off name to most of the elderly Maoris of to-day.
Next in progression came the shoals of red cod— the These conditions do not exist in anything like the same measure to-day, but Mr. hoka of the Maori—chased into the river-mouth by the assaults of the voracious kahawai (Arripis trutta). This latter is a fish seldom seen south of the Waitaki, but here in former days, whatever it may do now, it made war upon the less-militant cod; and so eagerly did it assemble to the slaughter that at one time these fish were not counted, but were measured by the acres of water sabled by their dark-blue backs.
Of birds, too, there was an abundance. The inquisitive weka, with the cunning to conceal its eggs and so perpetuate its species, was everywhere; and the luxurious bush at Waimatemate, only some seventeen miles away, was alive with pigeons, kaka,
All these were factors in establishing a seasonal camp at Waitaki mouth, but even these factors were not alone responsible for the choice of the spot.
If we do as Mr. Mantell did at Awa-moa, date this camp back to the Waitaha people, then a glance at the map of the district will be sufficient to convince one that in those times there must have been immense flocks of Moas to be seen throughout the wide expanse of the North Otago and the South Canterbury plains, so that for a people in need of animal food it was there for the hunting. As a bird that preferred a vegetable diet, there could never have been a scarcity of the food it required to maintain its strength; and as until the arrival of man it had no natural enemies to contend against, there were no serious hindrances to it increasing its numbers, which during the long centuries of its quiet and undisturbed life must have risen to a great multitude.
These birds, of varied species, were found not alone upon the plains, but they freely penetrated into that much more extensive pastoral country among and hidden by the hills. There were no physical barriers sufficiently formidable to check their journeyings into this hinterland, and no conditions, save the severe winters, to prevent them
This back-country was in all probability then, as it is now, subject to severe winters, and what the Moas did in the face of biting frosts or blinding snowstorms we do not know. As a mitigating circumstance, it has been suggested that in early times forests abounded over this area, and where these did not occur there would be a thick growth of lower vegetation which would afford cover to the weather-stressed Moas.
That portions of South Canterbury and North Otago now treeless were once forest-covered is testified to by the buried tree-stumps on the flats and the wasting tree-trunks on the mountain-slopes. The destruction of this natural clothing of the countryside would quickly follow upon man's destructive habits with the fire-stick, and a shelter upon which from time immemorial the Moa had
The Moa is a bird not generally credited with a lofty range of intelligence, but we can charitably place it upon an intellectual plane high enough to induce us to believe that it would not remain in the midst of arctic conditions if there was an avenue of escape from them. It was more than probable that the Moa did what the deer does, migrate to the lower levels during midwinter, returning to the hills again in the summer. Here, as occasion required or inclination dictated, they would be sought for by their arch-enemy, the hunter, for then they would be a culinary prize, in excellent condition for the oven.
This raises the question whether the hunting of the Moa was seasonal. It probably was, for it would be quite in the natural order of things that these birds would be in better eating condition at some seasons of the year than they would be at others, and the Maori, with his keen powers of observation, would soon discover the most favourable time to
The site of the Waitaki camp was thus eminently suited to Maori requirements, its primal recommendation being that it had in and around it an abundant supply of food in the way of fish and flesh. As subsidiary recommendations, there was unlimited fresh water near at hand, it was easily accessible by both land and sea, it lay at the terminus of an enormous valley which led right into the interior and tapped a vast area of Moa country, with the added advantage of river transport at least one way. What that meant to the population of the camp we will presently consider.
Against these favourable aspects operating for the success of the camp we must set down its bleak and exposed situation, open to all southerly weather, and its seeming lack of fuel. That fuel was an important item in the economy of the camp goes without saying, for the size and number of its fires
Tarawhata, in proof of what he said of the firewood, also informed Mr. Shortland that all the mokihi that broke adrift in the Waitaki River were cast ashore on some part of the beach north of, and never south of, the river-mouth.wahines—slaves,
Some distance beneath the surface, on the outer edges of one of the ovens on the northern side of the camp, I found a considerable number of small pieces of charcoal which had missed being completely reduced to ashes. Some of the pieces were in quite good condition, the grain of the wood being still clearly discernible. With a view to ascertaining what woods the Maori used to cook the Moa, I submitted these fragments to Mr. Nothofagus fusca) of the most common type, the southern rata (
Of the hunting technique of the ancient Maori we fortunately have had many details transmitted to us. Doubtless their methods would vary in different districts, the variations being dictated by circumstances. In the north of Auckland Province, for instance, Mr.
In other parts the hunters secreted themselves beside the Moa track, and, as the birds passed along, the hidden enemy thrust long darts into its flesh, and when maddened and weakened by this painful handicap the bird's capture and killing was a matter of comparative ease. The Maori description of this mode of attack is simple but picturesque:
Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. VIII, p. 80.
In the southern districts the Moa tracks were utilized as avenues across which to stretch cunningly devised snares constructed of the torotoro vine and specially prepared flax, the noose being tightly drawn ere the unlucky bird could extricate itself from the entangling mesh.
So far as we have heard anything of it from the communicative
The Reverend
Another reported method of overcoming the Moa, which, on the whole, was an inoffensive creature, is one in which advantage was taken of the bird's one supposed line of defence—its kick. The kick of the Moa is said to have been a forward one, and it is narrated that the ruse was to place a hunter in front of a bailed-up bird, his duty being to make feints to attack, and, as soon as the threatened bird lifted its foot to kick in defence, an enemy lurking in the rear would bring a long pole into play and with it strike the bird on its rigid leg, causing it to lose its balance, and before it could regain its feet it was set upon and killed.
As we have seen, at the Shag River the skulls of the birds were seldom missing, a circumstance that may be taken as affirmative evidence that the birds there were not clubbed to death. Against this, Mr.
Other writers—notably Mr. kaika, or kainga, held like sheep in a pen, and, like sheep, killed as they were required.Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. VIII, p. 107.
Thus “craft, with a thousand subtle schemes, led persecution on.”
In whatever manner these hunts were conducted, it is certain that none were ever undertaken without appropriate ceremonies being observed, and suitable karakias (prayers) being offered up to propitiate the gods, for the Maori was nothing if not a religious man. The mists which encircled the most celebrated hills in the district were implored to make the fat of the birds to flow as the globules of dew that run down the leaves of the trees at the dawn of a summer day, and the god of silence was urged to intervene so that the Moas would not be alarmed by an intuitive fear. Such was the burden of the supplication in which the pious Maori sought the undoing of the unsuspecting Moa, which, at the best, was but ill equipped to withstand the attacks of relentless man, much less when these human destroyers were aided by malignant gods.
Having captured and killed his bird, necessarily in many cases far from his kaika, or camp, the hunter's problem was how to transport its body to his oven. The Maori was always ingenious enough to overcome this awkward circumstance, and in most cases the bird would be slung across a pole, secured by lashings of flax, or carried pikauPikau—on the back; pick-a-back.
Even in the early days of the Waitaki camp, when there were numbers of birds to be obtained on the plain, these methods were, no doubt, in vogue.
That there were at one time large numbers of Moas grazing upon the low country is testified to by the hundreds destroyed in the swamp tragedies at Kapau and at Enfield. Bearing this in mind, Mr. Teviotdale favours the view that the great majority of the birds slaughtered at Waitaki “were driven in from the surrounding country near the camping-place.” This restriction, however, imposes the limitation that the supplies must have been obtained exclusively from the Otago side of the Waitaki, since it would have been practically impossible to safely herd such clumsy and perverse stock across so swift-running a river.
It has been ingeniously suggested by Mr. “The mokihimokihi is formed of bundles of rushes bound tightly together in the form of a boat. No kind of boat could be better suited to the river, which is a deep and rapid torrent rushing through a labyrinth of gravel banks and small islands, and in summer much swollen by the melting of the snow on the mountains in the interior. To cross it, it is necessary to start at some point where the main stream touches the banks, and to keep the same channel till it winds its way to the opposite bank, in order to do which it is necessary sometimes to go down the stream several miles. The mokihi are first built twenty or thirty miles from the mouth, and perform this zigzag course till they reach the sea, where they are turned adrift, it being impossible to work them up against the stream.”—Bishop Selwyn, Journal of Visitation Tour, p. 14.
To the writer a striking feature about the Waitaki camp is the absence of large masses of crop-stones. Crop-stones there are in plenty scattered about, but not in such quantities as one would have expected to find considering the number of birds disposed of and the fact that in many cases the weight of these
The system of river transport by mokihi would give an especially speedy service, for while discussing distances and travel in the district the chief Huruhuru told Mr. Shortland that whereas it occupied nine days to walk from the mouth of the Waitaki River to the great lakes at its head, it was possible, under favourable conditions, to navigate a well-built mokihi from the lakes to the river-mouth in a single day. For the Maori this was unusually rapid transit, and, knowing as we do how universally the raupo-built vessel was used as a vehicle to cross the river, its common use as a medium of downstream traffic is equally well assured.
It is therefore a reasonable assumption that in times past it was not an unusual sight to see fleets of mokihi speeding down the river laden with the bodies of dead Moas destined for polite traffic per medium of gifts and counter-gifts to friendly tribes of the North Island. The transference of goods between the different sections of the Maori race was
kaihaukai—that was only another form of exchange, a gift for which something equivalent was expected in return. In olden days it was not an uncommon practice to send as gifts taha, or calabashes, full of preserved birds, and that custom came down into quite modern times. In the journal in which he describes his hazardous journey down the west coast of the South Island in 1847, Brunner is full of praise for the neatness and skill with which some Natives whom he met near the Teremakau River prepared their poha, or bags, of ready-dressed flesh of the weka. He thus describes their method:
There is great taste shown by the Natives in the
pohaor bag of preserved wekas, and I believe it is always made for a present, for which they expect a return. They very neatly tie the leaves of the raupo, or bulrush, round thepoha; it is then placed on a three-legged stool, and mounted with a well and handsomely woven crown made of feathers of the birds enclosed. The one I saw contained one hundred birds, and was given by Tipia to Ewi, being a present inreturn for one of moka, or dog-fish. Tipia and party, on presenting thepoha, were also fed, or rather gorged, each having a kit of potatoes and taro, a large quantity of thekotiro, or preserved potato, and garnished well with different sorts of fish.Brunner remarks upon this incident: “The Natives appear particularly fond of giving and receiving presents, and I think the first donor gets off the best.”
Almost certainly the flesh of the Moa was in this way exchanged in these prehistoric markets for feather cloaks and other northern garments, baskets of kumaras—a tuber highly prized in the far south, since it grew but sparingly there—blocks of obsidian kept by every camp from which to make sharp-edged tools A large block of obsidian was kept in every camp, and each tribesman made his own knife by tapping off flakes until a suitable one was procured. These knives were used until they became blunt, and were then thrown away, not treasured up and sharpened again and again as were the polished adzes. At Waitaki I searched long and earnestly, but was not fortunate enough to find one of the obsidian blocks, beautiful specimens of which may be seen in the Dominion and Invercargill Museums.—The Author.
No account of how the flesh of the Moa was preserved has come down directly to us, but on this phase of our subject we can reason by analogy. When Brunner was on his historic journey down the west
The Natives here preserve the birds they catch during the winter months, when they are in excellent condition, in a
rimuor seaweed bag. They open the birds down the back and take out all the bones; they then lay the flesh of the bird in a shallow platter made of the bark of the totara tree, which is called apatua, when they cook the bird by applying hot stones. They then place the cooked birds in therimubag and pour over them the extracted fat and tie tightly the mouth of the bag.Captain J. Lort Stokes, of H.M. survey-ship
Acheron, gives a very similar account of what he saw on the east coast.
Fish and seal flesh were preserved in the same way, train-oil being used to cover the flesh, a process which is said to have kept the flesh sweet and in good order for a period extending up to two years. Brunner remarks in his Journal: “I have tasted birds kept two years in this manner and found them very good.”
This method of preserving the flesh of birds is closely akin to that followed to-day by the mutton-birders on the southern islands, and their technique can, I think, be taken as being in legitimate succession to the older practice of the Moa-hunters. The people, the principles, and the appliances are,
Of the method of preparing the birds for the ovens we, unfortunately, have less direct information, and again we can rely only on analogy. The ovens employed to cook the Moa, so far as they have been examined, have all proved to be of the recognized Polynesian type, See Appendix II.
As to the mode of serving the meal, that probably had none of the niceties of the modern table; nor can we affirm confidently just what, in the circumstances, the etiquette would be. It is, however, fairly safe to say that, when it was cut, the flesh of the bird would be severed by the stroke of a stone knife, sometimes flaked from the boulders of the river-bed, sometimes from the harder and more highly-valued quartzites from the district behind the hills.
Thousands of these ancient implements, often with a straight cutting edge, often with a serrated edge,
One thing seems obvious at this distance of time—namely, that the Moa-hunters at Waitaki were not satisfied with merely eating the flesh on the bones, but that they went to considerable trouble to partake of an even greater delicacy. With few exceptions, I have found the cooked femur and tibia to have been broken and the shaft to be split in order to extract from the inner channel the succulent marrow. When this could not be done successfully in that way, the shaft of the bone has been trenched, a narrow groove being broken out by sharp blows from a small hammer-stone, and through this groove the desired delicacy has been dragged with the aid of a bone scraper. Professor W. Boyd Dawkins, in his Early Man in Britain (p. 208), shows how universal this practice has been. Writing of the Cavemen of Britain, he says: “The game brought home to the rock shelters, or caverns, was either roasted or cooked by means of hot stones, or ‘pot
Occasionally expression is given to the idea that the broken state of these bones is due to a circumstance altogether different from the love of a toothsome morsel. It is said that the Moriori of the Chatham Islands and the Maori in the southern parts of New Zealand, finding that the mutton-birds plucked more easily when they were warm, were formerly, if not now, in the habit of breaking the legs of the birds in order to prevent them escaping after capture, until they could be finally dealt with. Reasoning by analogy, some writers have assumed the Moas captured in the Mackenzie country, “the lofty storehouse,” were treated in a similar manner, until they could be conveyed to the Waitaki camp down the river, a distance of some 130 miles. “The taking of the birds in snares was probably the method used, the birds being held by a leg. While the bird was still in the snare it was disabled by the hunter breaking a thigh-bone … It was necessary to keep the Moa alive if it was to reach the end of the journey in a condition fit for consumption on arrival.” Such is the reputed method, such the reputed motive. Apart from the
mokihi, presents a problem in navigation that few, if any, Moa-hunters would have been prepared to face.
The practice of breaking the femur and tibia has been so generally followed at Waitaki that it is
No signs of Native industry have, however, as yet been found at Waitaki—no bone implements, such as spear-points or fish-hooks, either finished or in the making—which pointedly suggests that Waitaki was not a manufacturing centre, but, as has been aptly suggested, it occupied in the economy of the Maori rather the useful place of a butcher's shop.
Still, with all their broken condition, the fragments of bone found in and around the ovens are sufficiently intact and of sufficient magnitude to enable us to say that many large birds were captured for these banquets. From a number which I secured, and from others subsequently obtained by Mr. Teviotdale for the Otago University Museum, we have, by
Dinornis maximus, Dinornis robustus, Euryapteryx elephantopus, Euryapteryx ponderosus, Euryapteryx gravipes, Emeus crassus, Emeus casuarinus, and Emeus huttoni as being among the species then living in South Canterbury and North Otago.
Other portions of the cooked birds, such as the pelves and vertebrae, have also been found in the ovens at Waitaki—evidence indicative that the whole or some of the carcass was brought to the feast or to the factory where the food was prepared for trade. This we know because evidently these people had a habit similar to those whose middens Mr. Mantell examined at Awa-moa: when they had picked the bones they threw them back into the fires, together with the blunted knives, where in the ashes many of them lie to-day.
At Shag River a number of complete vertebrae were found with the heads attached, In the Otago University Museum there is a fine example of this disposition to discard the head and neck of the bird. The specimen was found by Mr. Sir in situ.”
The evidence that large fish, seals, and blackfish had once been included in the Maori bill of fare at Waitaki was not pronounced, though there were in plenty rough stone knives such as might have been used to prepare them for the ovens.
Contrary to expectations, I found but few traces of Moa egg-shell in the course of my searchings and excavations, though Mr. Teviotdale claims to have been more fortunate. This evidence that the Maori consumed the eggs of the Moa, and by that consumption contributed largely to the extinction of the bird, has been found in every other Moa-hunters' camp, and there is no reason why it should not be so here. All that I can say at present is that I have not found egg-shell in considerable quantities, and that probably is because my explorations have not been sufficiently extensive. The area is large, and it will take a long time meticulously to examine its every aspect.
In marked contrast to the camp at Sumner, Papa-towai, and other similar camps, there is an
The Dentalium shell were picked up. This pillar-like shell, which is found on many parts of New Zealand's coast,Dentalium shells used by the Maori for ornament were in fossil form, and came from the Tertiary beds along the coast, from which they would be excavated by hand or washed out by the action of the waves. Professor Hutton states that they are plentiful in the vicinity of Waitaki.maukoroa (kokowai), or red ochre, with which canoes and houses were decorated and the warrior men painted their fearsome faces and daubed their rugged bodies. Unconsidered trifles, such as a few oyster-shells, were also found, but these, like the small pieces of obsidian, were foreign introductions, brought in from a distance.
In January last I returned to the site of the camp to further investigate its story, this time in
“This looks like the paepae of a large house,” said Mr. Teviotdale, and the luxuriant growth of the tussocks over a given space running to the southward seemed to justify the suggestion that here the soil had been fed by human refuse. We therefore decided to dig out what appeared to be the outlines of an ancient house of some size and importance. Almost immediately we began to turn up small chips of various coloured materials which had been used and thrown upon the floor and were now sunk some inches below the surface. Ten feet from the front line of stones we came upon an ancient fire-place, but it contained nothing of value. At the back of this fire-place small tools were repeatedly found, but nothing of a sensational nature occurred until we reached what appeared to be the back line of the building. Right in the centre of this line Mr. George, wielding his pick with the skill of an
The larger of the adzes, 9½ inches long, was made of a hard, fine-grained black stone commonly used for this purpose, the source of which has not yet been certainly determined. In shape it was of what is known as the “hog-back” type, and had been brought to a high degree of finish. The smaller one, which was 6 inches long, was of a looser-grained stone, and of a lesser degree of finish. The interesting feature about these tools was that both had their cutting edges bady chipped by use, and their owner had begun the repair of the larger one. So badly
“Doubtless many of the nephrite implements found have been concealed in former times by means of burying, placing in caves, hollow trees, etc. This was a common custom among the Natives when expecting to be attacked. Even now valued implements of nephrite and other stone are sometimes buried for safe keeping. In former times, doubtless, the owners of such buried treasures were often slain and the implement thus lost for ever, unless turned up by the plough of the modern farmer.”— Upon this custom of concealment as it existed on the west coast of the South Island Brunner thus comments: “The Natives attach great value to their greenstone meres, or battle-axes, of former times; so much so that they are buried with their owners. After remaining in the ground for five or six years they are dug up and given to the nearest relation of the deceased. The Natives also have safe hiding-places for them, in order that if surprised and conquered, as in former times, their enemies might not find them among their spoil. I saw one belonging to Te Raipo, which has descended from time unknown, and which they say Enihu made war on their tribe to obtain, but could not find it, the mere being hidden at the bottom of a deep pool of water.”—Brunner's Journal of 1847.
Of flints—the kitchen cutlery—used at their feasts I collected large numbers in and around these ancient fires. In this I consider I have been fortunate, seeing that so many searchers have been there before me. I found nothing of great value—no greenstone adzes or ornaments. I recovered only the portion of one adze of more common material, which was generously handed to me by Mr. D. T. Larnach, of Waimate. This implement, a very short one, seems also to have had a tragic history, for although it had been shaped to an edge on both sides it has been polished on only one side. Either it fell and broke across the shaft and was thrown away as useless, or some other disaster occurred and cut short the labour required for its completion.
As to the character and quality of these stone tools, much could be written of the sources of their material, the mode of their manufacture, their uses, and the level of culture they represent, but that is the work of one skilled to an extent to which I do
For the most simple yet comprehensive treatise on stone tools known to the author the reader is referred to the manual entitled Flints, written by Reginald A. Smith, Keeper of the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities at the British Museum, and issued by the Trustees of the Museum. Further information may be derived from the reading of Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain, by Sir John Evans (1872); The Men of the Old Stone Age, by H. F. Osborn (1916); Hunters and Artists, by H. J. E. Peake and H. J. Sleure (1927); Stone Implements of the Maori, by Scenes and Legends he has recorded that impression in a passage at once vivid and comprehensive:
I have seen in the Museum of the Northern Institution, at Inverness, a very complete collection of stone battle-axes, some of which have been formed little earlier than the last age by the rude Natives of America and the South Sea Islands, while others, which have been dug out of the cairns and tumuli
of our own country, bear witness to the unrecorded feuds and forgotten battlefields of twenty centuries ago. I was a good deal struck by the resemblance which they bear to eath other; a resemblance so complete that the most practised eye can hardly distinguish between the weapons of the old Scot and the New Zealander… Man in the savage state is the same animal everywhere, and his constructive powers, whether employed in the formation of a legendary story or of a battle-axe, seem to expatiate almost everywhere in the same rugged track of invention. For even the traditions of this first stage may be identified, like his weapons of war, all the world over.
That tools of a similar type and similar material should be found in different Moa-hunters' camps in New Zealand is not surprising, and is easily explained. Such unanimity might result from the common origin of the people, from one tribe teaching another, from one tribe copying another, or from the system of internal exchange that we know went on so freely from north to south and from east to west. For a description of the trade in tools carried on between the Neolithic tribes of Britain and the Continent, see The student in search of further information on this fascinating subject will enjoy reading three books, Early Man in Britain, by Professor Boyd Dawkins, pp. 280–281.Human History, The Diffusion of Culture, and In the Beginning, by Professor Sir G. Elliot Smith. This writer maintains that the similarities to which attention is here drawn are not the results of indigenous invention, but are the fruit of a world-wide “diffusion of culture.”
The common need seemed to produce the common remedy, and in its humble way served to forge another link in the brotherhood of man. “In the Salisbury Museum a most interesting collection of prehistoric remains is to be seen—perhaps the largest in England. It contains many stone, bronze, and iron implements of Danish, French, and German, as well as British origin; also some from Asia, with others from Polynesia and Australasia, and many from North and South America, thus affording an excellent opportunity of comparing those from different parts. The close resemblance which they all bear to each other is very striking, and leads to the conviction that, however widely separated those races were in locality, age, and form of skull, as well as in other respects, still in mind there was no difference, hence each section of the human family, when placed in similar circumstances and subjected to similar wants was led to supply them by the same means and in the same form and fashion as well.”—Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, pp. 419–420 (1870).
The ancient Maori was ever ready to adapt himself to his circumstances, and one of the methods by which he quarried his stone was simple and original. Where he found a protruding rock, close of grain and in all respects suitable as a material from which to manufacture his many requisite tools, he would, in the event of his finding it resisting his hammer, light beside it a fire, raising the temperature of the stone to a high degree of heat. When in the judgment of the experts the stone was sufficiently hot, open calabashes of water were brought and dashed against the face of the heated rock, which, yielding to the sudden change in temperature, would burst, crack, and flake off in slabs of a size suitable for working up into smaller tools. Thus by a simple process, involving little labour, did the primitive Maori make good his lack of adequate quarrying implements.
In the manufacture of his weapons, domestic tools, and ornaments much, of course, depended upon the material at hand, and, as this varied in different districts, the same kind of tool is frequently found in different material, yet always true to type. Much
“The stone knives of the Maori so closely resembled those of the ancient inhabitants of Denmark that a casual observer might be led to the conclusion that both belonged to the same period and people. It was certainly equally the stone age with both, but one thing seems singular in each case: if the skill of the age to which each belonged could not contrive an implement more advanced or better finished off than those rude stone knives, one would have supposed that they would have been too much prized to have been abandoned and thrown out on the midden in such numbers. The very fact of their being thus cast away seems to prove that they had not much value attached to them, and were merely extemporized for the occasion to save better and more highly prized implements. From the polished fragments of stone axes found beside these rude chert knives, this was evidently the case with the Maori.”—Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, p. 416.
That the ancient Maori of North Otago and South Canterbury had a wide range of stone from which
As we examine some of these worked pieces of glittering stone, shaped to serve a definite purpose in the daily life of the Moa-hunter, we cannot but admire the skill and the communal zeal of the craftsmen who made them. This he did sometimes by pressure from a simple tool made of wood or bone; sometimes by a series of deft blows, one stone upon another. Nor can we escape the belief that the tawny artist, as he sat in a shady spot in his workshop, must have had such an acquaintance with the characteristics of stones that he knew at a glance how a given piece of flint would react to his treatment, and what result a blow delivered in a given way would yield.
The natural fracture was sometimes sufficient for all his purposes, providing a keen edge or a sharp point for his cutters, planers, scrapers, or borers. On other occasions much more was required. Sometimes the tool had to be shaped for right-hand use, sometimes for left-hand use. Sometimes it had to be so fashioned as to provide a firm grip for the fingers, or firm attachment to a haft.
Sometimes a saw-like edge was called for to render it more efficient, and it will long remain a source of wonder how these delicate—almost microscopical—serrations were formed with an almost mathematical exactness. A sure hand and a certain eye were never more imperative in a civilized artisan. But perhaps the secret of their success lay here—that, unlettered though they were, they yet were of that happy band who toil in a spirit of sincerity, and of whom it has been said, “Their desire is in the work of their craft. Ecclesiasticus xxxviii, 34.
As we look at an assembly of these tools gathered from the various Moa-hunters' camps throughout the Dominion—especially the beautiful collection in the Otago Museum, or that formed by Mr.
While at Waitaki I could not but observe that the flints picked up on the northern margin of the
Here and there small pieces of obsidian—the Obsidian is obtained chiefly from Mayor Island (Tuhua Island), Rotorua, and Bay of Islands. Of this material there are four kinds—Tuhua, which is black; Waiapu, which is of a light colour; Panetao, which is of a green hue; and Kahurangi, which is red. Only the first mentioned of these was used for cutting up the Moa; the second is used by the mourning women when they cut themselves and cry for the dead; the third is used when the dead are chiefs. Once a knife had been used to cut up the Moa it was never so used a second time, but was immediately thrown away and permanently discarded.mata tuhua of the Maori—have been found at Waitaki, and the appearance of this northern intruder bespeaks visits from strangers, or, at least, intercourse with northern tribes, since obsidian is nowhere native to the South Island. Jet-black, and brittle as glass, it was highly valued as a material from which to strike knives and cutters of all kinds,
Once the tools were made, it would be interesting to know upon what basis they were distributed among the people. The chiefs doubtless had their own supply, and probably obtained them from the expert craftsmen in return for a payment in the shape of valued gifts. But how did the inferior and less-responsible members of the tribe secure the cutters, scrapers, drills, etc., so essential to their varied tasks? Clearly, all these people could not make their own tools, and it is scarcely reasonable to suppose that it was open to them to go and demand them from the skilled craftsmen just when the inclination prompted them or their palm itched to do a job of work.
It is quite within the bounds of possibility that the rank and file of the tribe had learned by hard experience how to flake a boulder or prepare a cutting edge; but the more highly finished adzes and chisels were made by specialists, for undoubtedly in Maori life, ancient as well as modern, a measure of specialization had been developed. There were men who at suitable periods of the year devoted the whole of their time to the snaring of birds, some who reserved their talents for house and canoe building, or tattooing, and still others to carving. In the
Cruise mentions that in 1820 he saw at the Waikare River, at the Bay of Islands, a man engaged in carving slabs for the front of a storehouse, and was told by the chief who had employed him that the expert had been brought for this purpose from the Thames district, a distance of some 200 miles.mere, the adze, and other implements of peace and war were famed at home and abroad, and who received commissions to execute highly specialized pieces of work,rangatira, who could afford to pay for them; but what of the implements of minor value?
In this connection it has been suggested to me that, as the Maori lived on a communal system, the use of the tools was also communal—that is, they were stored in a communal whata, or storehouse, and served out to those who required them by a responsible caretaker, who saw that they were returned at the close of the day, to be given out again next morning to the resuming workers.
After the Pakeha came with his implements of iron and steel the stone tools gradually fell into disuse, so that before the period of regular settlement had arrived their manufacture had practically ceased. This abandonment of the older culture would naturally take place in some localities earlier than in others, for the inhabitants of the coastal districts would the sooner meet the European traders and there the superiority of the iron and steel implements of civilized man would be quickly demonstrated. With the inland tribes the transition stage would be longer delayed, and concurrently the inquiring eyes of the Europeans would be longer in reaching the places where the ancient practices still lingered.
For this reason few moderns saw them in daily employment, and we have to go back to the Journal of Captain Cook “The Neolithic civilization formerly spread over northern Africa, the whole of Europe and Asia, the islands of the Pacific, and the Americas, and lingered in remote places until the introduction of iron in the course of the present [nineteenth] century. In the days of Captain Cook it was to be studied in nearly all the islands of the Pacific, and yet perhaps may still survive in some remote islet.”—Early Man in Britain, p. 337.
They have adzes, axes, and chissels, which serve them also as augers for the boring of holes, as they have no metal. Their adzes and axes are made of a hard black stone, or of a green talc, which is not only hard but tough; and their chissels of human bone, or small fragments of jaspar, which they chip from a block in sharp angular pieces like a gun-flint. Their axes they value above all that they possess, and never would part with one of them for anything we could give them. I once offered one of the best axes I had in the ship, besides a number of other things, for one of them, but the owner would not sell it, from which I conclude that good ones are scarce among them. Their small tools of jaspar, which are used in finishing their nicest work, they use till they are blunt, and then, as they have no means of sharpening them, throw them away.
Of the efficiency of some of these tools Cook gives a striking illustration:
We had given the people at Tolaga a piece of glass, and in a short time they found means to drill a hole through it, in order to hang it round the neck as an ornament by a thread, and we imagine this tool must have been a piece of this jaspar.
The method by which they shaped and polished the greenstone mere, “the weapon which they call Patoo-patoo” [patu], was a puzzle to Cook, but he was not far from the mark when he conjectured that
Possibly one of the last occasions on which a European witnessed the working of greenstone in the Native fashion was during the visit of Mr. The Southern Districts of New Zealand:
Here I saw for the first time, on a large scale, the Native method of grinding the
pounamu, or greenstone, from the rough block into the desired shape. The house belonging to the chief, Koroko, was like a stone-cutter's shop. He and another old man were constantly to be seen there, seated by a large slab of sandstone, on which they by turns rubbed backward and forwards a misshapen block ofpounamu, while it was kept moist by water which dropped on it from a wooden vessel. While one rubbed, the other smoked. They made, however, so little progress on it during my stay that it seemed probable that it would be left for someone of the next generation to finish the work. It is not, therefore, to be wondered that what has cost so much labour should be regarded as the greatest treasure of the country.
For now we see through a glass, darkly. I Corinthiansxiii, 12.
Having, as it were, visited, inspected, and worked upon the ancient Maori camp sites, having in fancy entered into the daily life of their inhabitants, and in spirit participated in their communal Moa-hunts, all that now remains to be done is to formulate an acceptable hypothesis as to the identity of the people who established the camps, and to give a reasonable explanation as to when and why they subsequently abandoned them. The first of these problems is inextricably involved in the question of New Zealand's earliest human inhabitants, for I cannot but think that the hunting of the Moa began with the peopling of the country. Any attempt, however, to more definitely solve the problem is at once met with immense difficulty, for in the absence of recorded history we have no basis upon which we can build, except tradition, and we have no tradition sufficiently stable upon which we can safely build. This is immediately apparent when we observe the
There was a Door to which I found no Key; There was a Veil through which I might not see.
Of this much, however, I am reasonably confident: that the first-comers were members of the Polynesian race, and that the settlement of the country by them was in its process not materially different from the rude colonization by our own nationals that preceded the rule of British sovereignty.
That the Polynesians are an ancient people goes without saying. How they came or whence they came into the region of the Pacific is scarcely germane to our subject, but it is of importance to note that after the region of the Pacific assumed something like its present proportions of land and water they by force of circumstances became a nation of sea-rovers. Dismembered as the land area is,
To meet the conditions of the moment, canoes of surprising stability were built, sea routes were laid down and remembered, and men learned to steer by the stars. The navigation of the Pacific thus became a commonplace, and to the adventurous spirits its dangers ceased to be an impediment, but instead became a positive joy. Misadventure, no doubt, oft-times carried them beyond their objective, resulting sometimes in disaster, but as often may have had the happy termination of adding to their thrills and of enlarging the horizon of their knowledge.
So far as the discovery of New Zealand is concerned, I believe it was not the result of misadventure with a happy termination, but the result of shrewd observation and accurate calculation. Standing upon their island shores, the people saw, year after year, the godwits—known to them as the kuaka—and other migratory birds go by on their annual flight, and, reasoning as keen students of nature would reason, they concluded that these birds were not flying on an aimless quest, but were, with unerring instinct, going to a summer land.
Once that conviction took hold upon the public mind there was never wanting the courage to test
Not for nothing did Ngahue return with the block of greenstone found at Arahura, from which sacred adzes and famous pendants were made. Such material being highly valued in a region still in the Stone Age, to secure it became at once the dream and the resolve of many a bold island captain and his island mariners.
In the desire to obtain greenstone was, I believe, the foundation of New Zealand's Maori colonization laid, and in the quest for it many an unnamed and unrecorded migration came to this country from the islands—migrations unnamed and unrecorded because they never returned. Finding the country agreeable in configuration and climate, the voyagers remained, and by their original numbers and a rapid
tangata whenua —the men of the land—who were here when the later and better-known migrations arrived.
That these original people came from many parts of the Pacific is easy to suppose and reasonable to admit, for the news of
To attempt to reduce such events to historical dates or to invest them with an historical veracity would be futile. It is not even possible to say whether Ngahue was or was not an historical personage. The fact remains that around his name
pounamu that, whether he willed it or not, he brought about in Polynesia a revolution, the reverberations of which were felt long after his own demise.
That the glamour of migration continued down to historical times is suggested—indeed, confirmed— by the coming, in approximately A.D. 1350, of what is known as “the fleet” of eight canoes. This event is recalled in a song which to this day is chanted by the poi girls of Taranaki as they swing the flashing poi balls and sway their supple bodies to the rhythm of a haunting air:
Give ear, O tribes, whilst the world looks on And the hosts of heaven illuminate the sky. Lo! the beckoning glimmer of Tautoru Orion's Belt.
As it sets forth its challenge from on high— First, to the constellation of Pipiri; Winter.
Secondly, to Kounuunu; Thirdly, to the great white Mangoroa; The Milky Way.
Fourthly, to the reflections of the dawn, And to the source of its origin. Alas! my significance, for I am but from The excavation of Kaitangi Ariki, The Coalsack.
Of the contingent of Ngai-Tutawake. Defeat and death are not for me— I am of the seed sown hither from Rangiatea. The island in the Society Group whence the ancestors of the Taranaki tribes migrated.
Thus did Toto enter the domain of Tane God of the forest.
And felled he a tree from which were made these two canoes: Matahorua he gave to Kuramarotini, Kuramarotini and Rongorongo, daughters of Toto and wives of
Kupe and Turi respectively (seeMaori-Polynesian Dictionary—Tregear).Aotearoa to Rongorongo. So stand and chant the fame of Tainui, Chant the fame of Te Arawa, Chant the fame of Matatua, Chant the fame of Tokomaru, Chant the fame of Kurahaupo, Chant the fame of Takitumu, Chant the fame of Matahorua, Chant the fame of Aotearoa— Chant in battle, chant in peace, Chant in meekness, chant in love. Let Rehua ascend like vapour to the heavens and remain, Antares.
Above in all creation's space, In light supreme, in blaze of day, A pendant in the sky, Hold fast, for it is the soul of power, Soul of earth and heaven, Ah! and life unlimited.
[Note—As the composer of the above poem is now dead, the Author has, without success, made an effort to obtain from living authorities the meaning of the terms “Kounuunu” and “Ngai-Tutawake,” which appear to have no celestial significance. Regarding these terms Mr.
“I regret to say that I cannot throw any light upon their meaning or derivation. The last of my Maori acquaintances who really had the ancient knowledge of the people of the Taranaki coast passed away a few weeks ago. I referred these words to a younger man of Chieftain rank, and he stated, without hesitation, that ‘Ngai-Tutawake’ was the name of the hapu of his mother (Mere Taura), of the Ati-Awa tribe, who, in conjunction with the Kairoa hapu, held the country of Manutahi (Lepperton), Matai-tawa, Kairoa, and Moa (Ingle-wood). Tutawake was a noted toa (fighting chief) of these people. ‘Kounuunu’ was a prominent ancestral leader of the Puke-rangiora hapu of Ati-Awa, the adjoining hapu of the above Ngai-Tutawake. This information does not, however, harmonize with the other names in the chant which are of celestial origin—a rather sudden drop from the heavens to the earth.”]
In our analogy the momentous migration of “the fleet” typifies the coming, in 1840, of the New Zealand Company's settlers, and later the official colonization of the country.
In this, or in some such way, New Zealand became populated. Portion of the first migrants would in the very nature of things land in the North Island; but in the passage of the years their identity has been lost, and they are represented to us in the mass as the tangata whenua, the mild-mannered people who were in possession when the more truculent migrants of 1350 arrived, from whose coming all prominent northern personages now emerge and all northern events now date.
When, therefore, we ask ourselves the question, “Who were the Moa-hunters of the North Island?” we are safe only in assuming that the first arrivals—unnamed and unrecorded—commenced the work; but there is ample reason to believe that it was continued by their successors, the vikings of “the fleet.” Of this fact there is little discernible evidence in the North Island middens, for, the early and later comers being one people, their methods would be the same in all cases, leaving no clear line of demarcation between them.
The attitude of opposition which is usually assumed towards this view is founded upon what is alleged to be the absence of tradition regarding the Moa among the present-day Maori. It is claimed that they could have known nothing of the bird, otherwise they would have recorded more of it in their sayings and in their songs. On a subject such as this opinions differ, for here is the view of a trained ethnologist—W. S. W. Vaux, M.A., F.R.S., Balliol College, Oxford—expressed in relation to this identical discussion, exactly bearing out one of the postulations of Mr. F. E. Maining, to which reference will be made later:
Old traditions brought by the few Maoris who first landed in New Zealand would be preserved, and, perhaps, accounts of some of their early wars, but
the daily incidents of the expanding population in the new country would not be preserved. As a rule the histories we learn at school are better impressed on our memories than the historical incidents in our lifetime. Incidents occurring in savage or uncivilized states of society must be surrounded by romance and elaborated by a generalizing mind before they pass into tradition or literature. “The Probable Origin of the Maori Races,”
Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. VIII, p. 5.
Whether the existence of the Moa had ever been glorified by a Maori “generalizing mind,” or whether it remained a matter so commonplace that it was not deemed worthy of a higher ranking in their lore than has been given to it, must remain a matter for individual judgment. It is, however, entirely an error to suppose that there is no mention of the Moa in Maori tradition, or that the Maori of the migration was ignorant of the Moa's existence or of its habits.
That early visitors to New Zealand, such as Captain Cook, did not hear of the bird is scarcely proof that the Maori did not tell them of it because they did not know of it. There must have been many things the Maori did not tell the early visitors, but with a more intimate acquaintance fuller information was given.
The Maori had many curious superstitions in connection with his hunting and gathering of food.Jour. Poly. Soc., Vol. VII, p. 132.puhore, or an omen of ill-success. When digging for the perei, an edible root (Orthoceras Solandri), the diggers were warned against mentioning the name perei, or the root would never be found. At such a time it was termed maukuuku. “This,” says Best, “appears to spring from the ancient belief, common among primitive races, that man, the lower animals, trees, stones, etc., shared a common life and understanding.” Thus the perei root and birds were assumed to possess a knowledge of the Maori language, or at least the vernacular thereof, and an unusual word is made use of in order that they might not understand it. Consistent with this spirit of precaution, might it not, then, have been considered indiscreet to become communicative regarding their Moa-hunting exploits?
If the Maori of a later day—1831–1837—knew nothing of the Moa, how was he able to direct the attention of New Zealand, by Ibid, pp. 307–308.
How else were the elders of the race possessed of the meticulous knowledge which they imparted to Mr. karakia that were offered up to ensure the success of the projected hunt, and even the class of knife that was used at the feast to dismember the captured game? Why, in all the bones that the Natives of the East Coast brought to the Reverend William Williams in 1839 and in the succeeding years, did they never make a mistake, if they had no knowledge of the bird for whose bones they were searching to win the missionary's reward?
From whom, if not from the Maori himself, did Sir George Grey derive the information which in
The Natives all know the word Moa as describing the extinct bird, and when I came to New Zealand twenty-five years ago the Natives invariably spoke to me of the Moa in exactly the same manner as they did the kakapo, the kiwi, or the weka, and an extinct rail in districts where all those birds had disappeared. Allusions to the Moa are found in their poems, sometimes together with allusions to birds still in existence in some parts of the island. From these circumstances, and from former frequent conversations with old Natives, I have never entertained the slightest doubt that the Moa was found by the ancestors of the present New Zealand race when they first occupied the islands, and that by degrees the Moa was destroyed and disappeared as have several other wingless birds from different parts of New Zealand.
Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. VIII, pp. 73–74.
Was there any hesitancy on the part of his guides when, in 1843, the Reverend
It was here I first heard the word Moa. They told me that these huge birds were very abundant before the Europeans came, but they gradually diminished and finally disappeared… The birds used to conceal themselves in the koromiko thickets, from which they
were driven and killed by setting the thickets on fire: “ Te koromiko te rakau i tunu ai te Moa”(“The koromiko is the tree that roasted the Moa”).
With the exception of Sir George Grey, few Europeans had better opportunities of penetrating to the inner recesses of the Maori mind than Old New Zealand. During his long and intimate association with the Native people of rank and breeding in the North Island, this gentleman acquired at first hand many important facts relating to their knowledge of the Moa, and these he put on record in a paper read before the Wellington Philosophical Society on the 4th October, 1875. Of these facts the following seem to bear most importantly upon our subject:
ngoikae) as a Moa.”
Forty years ago Mr. See also pp. 109–110. This is not strictly correct. The bone was used for many purposes.waiata and whakatauki.Waiata and whakatauki—song and proverb.Hopara makau rangi Manu-whakatau”
Ko wai tou tamaiti kapa ko te Manu-whakatau?” (“Is your child noble like the Moa?”). When Tamatea came to the country his fire ran through almost the whole of the island. Many of the birds, seeing fire for the first time, fled to the swamps for protection, but many were caught in the conflagration. Some were left, and our forefathers long ago hunted with dogs those that remained. There were never very many, and on this account they were very tapu. Its feathers were used for mat-making. The body-feathers alone were used. In colour the breast and back were grey, the neck approaching to white. It was still alive in the South Island after it was lost in the North. It disappeared in the South Island eight generations (200 years) ago. The old Maoris recognized by their bones four different species. Some birds were lower set than others, some had heavy bodies, and some had very long necks. Of the biggest, one of our tall men would reach only to its back. The Moas were usually to be found along the banks of creeks, rivers, lakes, or swamps, seldom in the bush. It has been reported that they caught the small fresh-water fish—the kokopu, the inanga, the kakawai, and the karohi (swamp spotties).pakuru, of which I have heard but never seen. The trachea ring bones were sometimes worn as a neck ornament by a chief's daughter.
In the upper Whanganui district there is a legend to the effect that a certain chief went out to kill a bird called a weka-nui, or the giant weka—presumably a Moa. Several men had previously tried to kill this bird, but had failed. The chief took fifteen dogs with him in the early morning, and first sent one of his dogs to engage the bird in combat. After a time he knew by the dog's silence that he was killed; therefore he sent his second dog. That dog met a similar fate, and, as is usual in Maori story, he sent forward all his fifteen dogs, one at a time, but they were all killed by the weka-nui. By this time evening had fallen, and the chief knew that the bird would now be fatigued with its day's fighting; he went in himself and slew the bird, which fell surrounded by his fifteen dead kuri.
These excerpts should be sufficient to substantiate a claim that the Maori of the migration knew something of the Moa; they negative the contention that the bird was extinct long before the arrival of man, and, although they do not particularly specify for us who the hunters were, they definitely state that hunting took place, and in that way are substantial confirmation of the middens already described.
Quite obviously the Moa was hunted in the North Island, and, as has been shown, with every probability by the ancestors of the present-day Maori. Yet withal, owing to certain physical disadvantages in its environment, the bird did not flourish so lustily nor in such numerical strength as it did in the sister isle, and for that reason it was almost certainly extinct in the North Island long before it disappeared in the South Island.
In our estimate of the peopling of the country it is possible that the quota of migrants received by the South Island has not, in the past, been properly appraised. For many years it was popularly supposed that the South Island was not inhabited until long after the North Island, and that when at last it was peopled the new-comers arrived from the north, first in waves of defeated fugitives, fleeing before their stronger rivals in northern wars, and
In recent times a new complexion has been put upon this phase of our country's colonization. Genealogies have been unearthed which make it appear that there have been Maori people in the South Island for possibly a thousand years, and that these tangata whenua came not as fugitives or conquerors from the north, but as colonists from Polynesia. Of this phase of an intricate subject Mr.
At one time discussions took place as to whether there had been any inhabitants in New Zealand prior to the arrival of the Maori about
A.D.1350 in the famous fleet of half a dozen big canoes (probably double canoes, with a deck between). Further research established the fact that people had been here when the big fleet arrived, and these people were roughly classed astangata-whenua(men of the land) by the later arrivals. Patient investigation revealed a number of traditions preserved by the tribes which had mostly intermarried with the earlier immigrants, and from these fragments the history of man in New Zealand was extended back a century or two. Then the Polynesian Society secured and published the very full traditions preserved by the learned priests of the Ngati-Kahungunu tribe, and from these the arrival of Maori people in New Zealandwas pushed back to the time of Kupe , whose genealogy would make his birth aboutA.D.925. At this point the Maori traditions preserved in the South Island leave the North Island accounts behind, and proceed still further into the past, and relate the arrival of Rakaihautu in the South Island aboutA.D.850. They go further, and mention the arrival of canoes even earlier, but the details have not been preserved with much amplitude or clarity.
Otago Daily Times, 30th June, 1930.
Mr. Beattie's information is that Rakaihautu, as chief of the Waitaha tribe, arrived in the canoe Uruao, forty generations ago, and, touching at the north end of the South Island, ventured upon a great feat of exploration. Dividing his party, he and a few of his followers struck inland, while his son, Te Rakihouia, explored the seaboard and examined the food resources of the eastern coastal regions. Rakaihautu and his band stout-heartedly pushed their way along the western foot of the Southern Alps, through Otago's fiordland, across her great lakes, over mountain passes, and then, having discovered Murihiku, “the last joint in the tail,” they turned northward again, and with great rejoicing met and reunited with his son and his followers on the Canterbury plains. It is only fair to say that this account differs somewhat from that given by Mr. Compendium of Official Documents, published in 1873. Here it is made to appear that Waitaha came to New Zealand in the Arawa canoe, commanded by Tama te Kapua, and first took up their abode in the interior, near Lake Taupo. About two hundred years after the arrival of their ancestors from Hawaiki military pressure or social ambition caused them to migrate across Cook Strait and take up their residence in the South Island. There the tribe dwelt, alternatively at peace and at war with their neighbours; but eventually they attained to a position of power, opulence, and eminence in the land.
Both stories agree that the north end of the South Island was the point of approach, but beyond this they have little in common. Yet closer investigation may disclose further agreement, for the sequel clearly suggests that Waitaha had a measure of intercourse with the North Island tribesmen. South Island tradition of to-day is, however, very firm in the assertion that Waitaha's arrival took place at least one thousand years ago, and it does not admit of any North Island origin.
In the South Island there is also a common agreement that it was the Waitaha people who there played the most important part in the diminution of the Moa stock, if not in its actual extinction, and
When the writer questioned Mrs. Matene (Mrs. Martin), an extremely intelligent woman, who speaks English excellently, and who is now the principal Maori resident in the vicinity, as to what she knew of the origin of the Waitaki camp, she at once threw up her hands in despair, and replied that she knew nothing of it, but supposed that it went back to Waitaha times. To the writer this reply smacked somewhat of that with which one is apt to be met when visiting old churches in England. Nearly every one of these edifices has somewhere a broken window, and by way of apology for not having it repaired the aged and ingenious verger or janitor will tell you with all seriousness, “That was broke in Cromwell's time.”
Assuming, then, that the Moa was “broke” in Waitaha times, to what conclusion does that lead us? Undoubtedly, to the conclusion that they were the first human inhabitants of the South Island, and that they it was who began the human attacks upon the Moa in that part of the country. This they continued until the bird was becoming a negligible
There are references in the early traditions to the Rapuwai and Hawea people, but these probably were hapu of the main Waitaha tribe.
This view bears out the traditional story, that Waitaha were a fortunate and wealthy people—fortunate in the sense that they had no troublesome neighbours, and wealthy in a Maori sense, in that they had abundant food supplies.
They seemingly became numerous, for they are said to have “covered the land like ants,” but whether by accessions to their ranks due to the arrival of additional immigrants or merely by natural increase it is impossible to say. Prima facie they would appear to have occupied all the Moa-hunter camps at or about the same time. That they were influential enough to have intercourse with North
Though they lived in the intangible past, the episode in Waitaha story that appears to have an element of dependability is the narrative transmitted to us of their downfall and the manner in which they contributed to their own misfortune. The story seems well authenticated that it was the generous use they made of their abundance of food that brought about their destruction:
In an impulse of generosity the Waitaha sent across the Straits to their friends the Ngati-Mamoe
some of the superabundant stores that it was their good fortune to have accumulated in “the food-abounding island.” As their friends smacked their lips over these dainties furnished from the southern island, they resolved to wrest the coveted preserves from Waitaha. Unused to war, the old inhabitants were easily subdued, and their possessions taken from them The Ngati-Mamoe account of themselves is that they descend from Hotu-Mamoe, or Whatu-Mamoe, a chief of the
tangata-whenuapeople living in or about Hawke's Bay some four or five generations before the migration of “the fleet” in 1350. This migration pushed them southward to the Wairarapa and the neighbourhood of Wellington, and it was from there they migrated across Cook Strait to the South Island. Their headquarters in the South Island was Banks Peninsula.by the invaders, but after a while peaceful relations were restored between the tribes and intermarriage took place.
VideAlexander Mackay ,Compendium of Official Documents Relative to Native Affairs in the South Island, Vol. 1, Part III, p. 40.
This, in general terms, in an account of an historical event which the Reverend Best thinks this date too recent, but does not supply an alternative.pas overrun, and for a time, at least, their people would be fugitives, taking little thought of their destination so long as they could elude the vigilance of their pursuers.
The wars which followed the invasion of Britain by the English delayed in an important degree the destruction of the larger and fiercer wild animals that found shelter in the uncultivated lands. The wolves increased in numbers after that time and became sufficiently formidable to be worthy of special enactments in the days of Eadgar and Edward the First. They were exterminated in England about the end of the fourteenth century, in Scotland in 1680, and in Ireland in 1710.
So wrote Professor Boyd Dawkins in his monumental work, These invaders are said to have come from the district of Hataitai, now a portion of the city of Wellington.Early Man in Britain; and just as wars of invasion delayed the destruction of wild animals there, so two such events in New Zealand might very well have provided a respite for the Moa. By the coming of Kati-Mamoe, Waitaha's attacks upon the bird were almost certainly interrupted, and it would be long ere Kati-Mamoe would have time and peace sufficient to acquire the hunting habit for themselves. These operations would, in turn, be suspended by the Kai-TahuA.D. 1670 and gave Kati-Mamoe something to think about more important than hunting a defenceless bird, for they were then themselves being remorselessly hunted.
Unfortunately, owing to Waitaha's conquest by Kati-Mamoe, their tribal story has been almost completely obliterated, and beyond the fact that odd individuals have preserved their tribal characteristics and identity we know little of them. Waitaha's absorption by Kati-Mamoe has robbed us of any information as to where their main pas were, and from what points their great influence radiated.
This state of negation Mr.
I found that all the families of the present day, of any consideration, traced their origin to the Turanga, or Poverty Bay, sources—as being the conquering side and therefore the more honourable—and neglected altogether the Ngati-Mamoe
sources beyond the time of their conquest. Hence it was very difficult to obtain information about the early history of the tribe. “The origin of the Ngati-Mamoe is nearly as obscure as that of their predecessors. Like them they came from the North Island, being probably driven down before a stronger tribe. Their pitiless treatment of Waitaha was afterwards repeated upon themselves by the stronger and more warlike Ngai-Tahu. Their destruction of the Waitaha and their own subsequent destruction accounts for the absence of all tradition relating to the visit of Abel Tasman in 1642, just as the destruction of the tribes inhabiting the shores of the Straits by Rauparaha in this century explains why no account of Captain Cook's visit in 1769 has been preserved amongst the Natives now residing in that neighbourhood.”—Stack,
Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. X, p. 64.Referring to their lack of traditions, the
Otago Daily Timesof the 5th April, 1871, says: “The aboriginal inhabitants of the southern portion of this Island possess no traditions about their ancestors.” Is it any wonder, then, that they knew so little of the Moa?
The important point now to be noted is that by the time Waitaha had been subdued, and Kati-Mamoe had become the dominant people in the South, the Moa is said to have dwindled to a negligible quantity. Mr.
Mr. Beattie, like the writer, accepts this as a general statement of the position, but believes that a remnant of the Moa family still lingered in secluded places long after the coming of Kai-Tahu; but it is probably safe to say that not for 300 or 350 years have the Moa-hunters' camps from Little Rakaia southward been occupied by the people who founded them or by those who succeeded them.
There is one historical circumstance, and only one such circumstance, known to the writer that might furnish us with a faint lead as to the date of these camps, and that is that nowhere have remains of the pig been found in the Moa-hunters' ovens. Had this animal been roaming the country with even less freedom than it is known to have done in later years, it could scarcely have escaped capture and subsequent consumption in much the same way as
Difficult as it may be, in view of the state of some of the remains, to realize this, in the absence of definite data the reasonable probabilities of the situation irresistibly lead us to that conclusion; and even that may be a conservative estimate. It is a case of “the desert heart is set apart, unknown to any man.” We do not know.
In dealing with these questions it is only possible to grasp the relative duration, for the measurement of time absolute in terms of years outside the reach of history is beyond our powers. We do not know the length of the interval separating any two events not recorded in history, nor are we possessed of any natural chronometer by which to fix a date in the historical sense. We are dealing merely with time relative, and not with time absolute.
Professor Boyd Dawkins,
Early Man in Britain, p. 265.
In the graceful words of Edwin Arnold:
Shall any gazer see with mortal eyes, Or any searcher know by mortal mind? Veil after veil will lift—but there must be Veil upon veil behind.
All that we can with any degree of certainty say is that here at each of these camps there were once busy scenes of life in which men and women moved about their daily tasks with all the animation of moderns. But while engaged in schemes and intrigues, in projects large and small, there was perhaps no event of the day which so moved them to a common purpose as to assemble upon their improvised marae and there give lusty welcome to “the hunter home from the hill.”
Considerable confusion having arisen in connection with the classification of the Moa, the following lists have been prepared showing the different names given to birds mentioned in this book in recognized classifications:
Mr. ElsdonBest, in The Maori, Vol. I, pp. 416, 417, gives the following description of the Polynesian type of cooking ovens:
The common mode of cooking [among the Maori] was a steaming process, carried out in a manner that seems to have been world-wide in ancient times; it was universally followed by the Polynesians. The food was cooked by steam in a small pit scooped out in the earth, a steaming pit, or steam oven. The Maori called these steam ovens
hangi, umu, kopa, hapi, and by a number of other names. The size of the pit depended, of course, on the quantity of food to be cooked, still they were seldom made very large. When a considerable number of people had to be provided for, then a number of ovens was utilized. An ordinary oven for family cooking is a circular pit about two feet in diameter at the ground line, and some sixteen or eighteen inches in depth. When a meal is to be cooked a fire of dry fuel is made in this pit, the wood being in short lengths and piled up about the ground line, the necessary stones being placed on the top of the fuel. By the time the fuel is burned out, leaving naught save some embers, those stones are extremely hot. While the fire has been burning the cook has been busy preparing the various food supplies to be cooked. She will now clear out the pit, raking the heated stones to one side and taking out any embers that are in it. The hot stones, or some of them, will be arranged on the bottom of the oven. If a large quantity of food is to be cooked, or perhaps some article that requires much cooking, then some of the stones will be taken out and placed on top of the food when arranged in the pit. The stones at the bottom of the pit are covered with agenerous layer of green stuff, leaves or fern fronds, whatever is available, and on this layer the articles of food to be cooked are placed. Supposing that potatoes, greens, and meat, or fish, or birds, are to form the meal. The cook arranges the potatoes on the layer of green stuff, then the greens on the potatoes, and then places the meat, fish, or birds on the top of the whole. In permanent ovens a woven band of long leaves of AsteliaorPhormium, termed akoronae, orkoropae, is employed to line the sides of the oven with; it prevents the intrusion of particles of earth. The arranged foods are now sprinkled with water somewhat copiously, which water percolates through to the hot stones and so generates the necessary steam, and the oven is now rapidly covered in. Another layer of leaves, calledrautaowhen used for this purpose, is arranged so as to cover the foods, and over this are laid certain closely plaited mats, calledtakaandritaka.These, again, are covered with a goodly layer of earth, which is beaten down so as to consolidate it; this is what retains the steam. In some cases the food is placed directly on the hot stones in the bottom of the pit without an intervening layer of leaves, in which case a little water will be sprinkled on the stones in order to wash off any ashes adhering to them. Such is the steam oven of Polynesia, and such was the mode of cooking employed by the Caledonians, as you will see noted in Ossian's poems, in the battle scene.
“Acheron,” H.M.S. Officer discovers Moa bones, 51; Captain describes method of preserving birds, 194.
Arnold, Edwin. Quotation from, 249.
Australian stone tools. Paper on, 28.
Avilion, Valley of. Scene likened to, 115.
Awa-Moa. Middens assigned to Waitaha, 17; named by Mantell, 19; flints found, 212.
Barter. Description of, 192.
Beattie, H. Traditions of southern Maori, 239; extinction of Moa, 248.
Best, Elsdon. Burying of valued weapons, 205; author of work on stone tools, 207; quotation from, 231; dates of Maori invasions, 245, 246; Polynesian ovens, 252.
Birds. Abundance of, 176; at Waitaki hydro-electric works, 150; in fields, 161.
Booth, B. S.
Browning, R. Quotation from, 99.
Brunner, T. Observations on fish, 174; condition of wekas, 180; description of Maori gifts, 192, 193; appreciation of preserved birds, 194; care of greenstone weapons, 205.
Butler, Samuel. Resident of Mesopotamia, 32.
Cannibalism. Evidence of at Taranaki, 19; at Poverty Bay, 112.
Canoes of migration. Reference in poem, 227.
Canterbury Gilpin, The. Poetic satire, 81.
Canterbury Phil. Inst. States case for reference to Dr. Hooker, 78; Hooker's decision, 79.
Chambers, Robert. Writes provocative book, 5.
Chapman, Sir F. Finds greenstone adzes at Shag River, 30; finds skulls, 200.
Chapman, J. B.
Cissbury. Camp of early Britons, 156.
Classification of Moa bones. At Little Rakaia, 20; at Taranaki, 48; at Moa-bone Point Cave, 84; at Shag River, 92, 97; at Pataua, 106; at Kapua, 139; at Papa-towai, 134; at Waitaki, 200; Appendix I.
Colenso, Bishop. Publication by, 6.
Colenso, Rev. William. Begins investigations, 10; article in Tasmanian Journal, 11.
Cook, Captain. Observations on Maori tools, 218; did not hear of Moa, 230; camps abandoned before his visits, 249.
Darwin, Charles. Origin of Species, 5; food of the rhea, 110.
Dawkins, Professor. On early man in Britain, 156, 157; describes bones broken for marrow, 196; trade in stone tools, 208; Neolithic civilization, 218; wars prevent extinction of wild animals, 245.
Dinornis Maximus. Remains found at Kopua, 139; at Papa-towai, 131; at Waitaki, 200.
Emerson, R. W. Quotation from, 3.
Erosion at Waitaki. Progress of, 159.
Explorations. By early colonists, 7.
Fish. Harvests of at Waitaki, 174.
Flints. Works on, 207.
George, Philip
Gray's Hills. Scene of ancient Maori quarry, 154.
Greenstone. Found in Maori middens, 30; grinding seen by Shortland, 220; cause of Polynesian migration, 224.
Grey, Sir George. Investigates Taranaki middens, 40; obtains many curios, 46; traditions of Moa, 233.
Haast, H. F. von. His comment on Hooker's decision, 80.
Haast, Sir Julius von. Influenced in opinions by Colenso, 13; his theory of autochthones, 19; Little Rakaia camp, 20; his estimate of number of camps, 35; undertakes exploration of cave, 52; his discoveries, 59; convinced that
Hamilton, Augustus. Finds polished greenstone at Shag River, 30.
Harpagornis Moorei. A bird of prey, 9.
Hector, Sir James. Date of extinction of Moa, 27; is assailed by Haast, 71.
Hochstetter, Dr. Defines northern limit of Moa, 103.
Hooker, Dr. Opinion in dispute between Haast and McKay, 78.
Hornsey, A. G. Assists in exploring Papa-towai camp, 120.
Hunter-Artists. Contemporary with Moa, 149.
Huruhuru. Native chief, his descent, 151.
Hutchinson, F
Hutton, Professor. Explores Shag River camp, 95; his conclusions thereon, 98; secures bones at Kapua, 135; his theory of deposit, 137.
Jollie, Edward. Suggests exploration of cave, 51.
Kai-Tahu. Tribe begins to acquire European tools, 158; they attack Kati-Mamoe, 246.
Kapua swamp. Visited by Author, 135; Moa bone found, 136;
Kati-Mamoe. Rock paintings ascribed to, 148; they attack Waitaha, 243; their origin, 244, 247.
KawanaPaipai. Describes Moa-hunt, 41.
Kenyon, A. S. His paper on Australian aboriginal culture, 28.
Korotua-Heka. Maori kaika at Waitaki, 153.
Larnach, D. T. Finds stone adze, 206.
Lockerbie, Leslie. Finds curios at Papa-towai, 120.
Lyell, Sir Charles
McCully, H. S.
MacDonald, T. A. Discovers deposit at Kapua, 136.
McDonnell, Lieut.-Col. Describes
Mackay, A. Conquest of Waitaha, 244-245.
McKay, A. Meets Haast, 53; assists in exploration of cave, 53; hands his notes to Haast, 71; writes paper on researches in cave, 72; his conclusions thereon, 73; Haast's reaction to paper, 77; Hooker's opinion, 78; his poetical satire, 81.
Mackenzie country. Historic country, 144,154; carried large flocks of Moas, 177; severe winters, 178.
Mackenzie, Sir T. Discovers Papa-towai camp, 114; description of district, 115; describes large totara tree, 132.
Maning, F. E. Traditions of the Moa, 234.
Mantell, W. B. D.
Marwick, Dr. Identifies “Mystery” stone, 170.
Miller, Hugh
Moa. Early arrival in New Zealand, 8; date of extinction, 10, 44, 46, 47, 82, 245; large bone at Duntroon, 145; swamp deposits, 139; immense flocks of, 177.
Moa-Bone Point Cave. Cave discovered, 51; dimensions of, 53; origin of, 54; discoveries in cave, 59; a grave discovered, 65; skeleton of man articulated, 66; bones and artifacts found, 84.
Moa-Hunters. Beginning of hunting, 9; sport in South Island, 31; various camps, 33, 35; not responsible for swamp deposits, 140; their technique, 183; prayers offered, 188; transport of Moas, 188; trade in Moa flesh, 193; cooking of Moas, 185; bones broken for marrow, 196; Moas legs not broken after capture, 197; method of quarrying stone, 211; material for tools brought great
Mokihi. Description of, 190.
Monck'S Cave. History of, 100.
Moorehouse, Dr. Excavates bones at Kapua, 139.
Murison, W. D.
“Mystery” stone. Description of, 170.
Ngahue. Early Polynesian explorer, 224.
Ngai-Tahu. See Kati-Tahu.
Ngati-Mamoe. See Kati-Mamoe.
Normanby. Ancient fishing village, 144.
Oamaru middens. Discovered by Mantell, 16.
Obsidian. Blocks of kept in every camp, 193; where obtained and use of, 215.
Omarama. Site of former Maori settlement, 158.
OmarKhayyam. Quotation from, 222.
Papa-Towai camp. Discovered by Sir Dinornis maximus found, 131; probable age of camp, 132.
Pataua River camp. Description of, 102.
Polack, J. S. His references to Moa bones, 231.
Polynesian ovens. Appendix II, 252.
Polynesians. First arrivals in New Zealand, 8; discovery of New Zealand, 223.
Rakaia, Little. Explored by Haast, 20; stone implements found, 21.
Rakaihautu. Early Polynesian explorer, 240.
Rangatapu. Ancient Taranaki pa site, 37.
Reid, J. S. Identifies species of wood from charcoal, 182.
Round houses. At Moeraki, 168; construction and use of, 169.
Rule, Dr. John. The Moa and marine food, 109.
Selwyn, Bishop. His description of mokihi, 190.
Sevicke-Jones, F. Identifies Moa bones at Kapua, 136.
Shag River camp. Description of, 89; examined by Haast, 90; his considered conclusions, 93; examined by Hutton, 95; his conclusions, 98; Teviotdale's summing-up, 100.
Shortland, E. His prophecy re Waitaki, 151; he misses Waitaki camp, 163; drift-wood, 181; sees greenstone worked, 220; southern Maori tradition lost, 247.
Skinner, H. D.
Skinner, W. H. Note on Maori poem, 228.
Smith, W. W. Account of inland Moa-hunters' camps, 32.
Sparkes, Mr. Excavates bones from Kapua Swamp, 137.
Spencer, Dr. Confirms
Stack, Rev. Canon
Stevenson, G. B. Finds Moa-hunter relics, 149.
Stokes, Captain. Witnesses Maori methods of preserving birds, 194.
Studholme, E. C.
Takiroa Rock-shelter. Rock paintings, 145.
Tasmanian Journal OF Science. Article by Colenso, 11.
Taylor, Rev. R.
Teviotdale, D.
Thorne, G.
Upokongaro Valley. Remarkable find of Moa bones, 137.
Usher, Bishop. His chronology, 3.
Vaux, W. G. W.
Waiapu, Bishop of. Reference to
Waimate. A comely town, 135.
Waingongoro River. Historic camp site, 36; described by Rev.
Waitaha tribe. Associated by Mantell with Awa-moa middens, 17; accumulate shell-heaps, 82; date of arrival, 222; cause of downfall, 244; traditions lost, 246.
Waitaki camp. Visited by Author, 141; description of, 159; erosion of, 159; little ground life, 161; significance of camp, 167; lay-out of camp, 168; absence of stratification, 172; source of food supply, 180; absence of crop-stones, 190; no evidence of manufacture, 199; egg-shell, 201; Dentalium shells, 202; two adzes discovered, 204; cause of camp's desertion, 245.
Waitaki hydro-electric works. Description of, 150; immense body of water discharged from river, 160.
Webb, J. S. Comment on Shag River camp investigation, 99.
Whatahoro, Te. Traditions of the Moa, 235.
White, John. References to Moa tradition, 232.
Williams, Bishop W. Sends first consignment of Moa bones to England, 10; bones brought to him, 232.
Printed by
This is an important New Zealand book. It deals with the time when the Dominion was inhabited solely by the Maori, and when the Moa roamed its open spaces in great flocks. These birds were hunted, killed, and eaten by the Maori, and the purpose of the book is to tell how, when, and where this was done.
The narrative is a fascinating one, and told in Buick's clear and graceful style it carries the reader along in its rhythmic stride from the first page to the last without a tedious moment.
The various known Moa-hunters' camps are visited and described, and for the first time the veils is lifted from the centre of human activity once assembled at the mouth of the Waitaki River.
The story of the Moa-h