Walsh. — On Maori Preserved Heads. 613 



to all his friends and relations as a tangible evidence that 

 justice had been satisfied and the war brought to an honour- 

 able conclusion. 



As a matter of course, so long as the heads remained in 

 the possession of a victorious chief no amicable relations could 

 exist between tbe rival tribes. Should he, however, desire to 

 make peace, he took them and exhibited them to the con- 

 quered party ; and if these cried aloud at the sight of them 

 this was taken as a signal that they were willing to put an 

 end to the contest, and were prepared to accept the terms 

 which might be offered ; whereas if they kept silence it was 

 understood that they were determined to hold their ground 

 and risk the issue of another battle.* Sometimes it was the 

 desire of neither party to renew hostilities — generally, no 

 doubt, when both sides were weakened by excessive loss of 

 fighting-men and tired of the continued struggle, or perhaps 

 when they were threatened by a common enemy. ]a this 

 case it was not unusual for the heads to be purchased by the 

 friends of the vanquished and returned to the surviving rela- 

 tions, who held them in the highest veneration. 



As in primitive times war was the common pastime of the 

 people, and disputes on a greater or lesser scale were of con- 

 stant occurrence, the number of these preserved heads must 

 have been very large. Mr. Marsden relates that on the 

 return from one of Hongi's expeditions against the East Coast 

 natives no less than seventy were brought to Rangihou in a 

 single canoe. And it was no uncommon occurrence for the 

 early missionaries, during the fighting season, which occupied 

 several months of the year, to see the palisading of the 

 adjacent pa, or sometimes the fence of their own compounds, 

 ornamented with a row of these gruesome trophies. 



As from a collector's point of view a preserved head 

 formed a very desirable item in an assortment of foreign curios, 

 attempts to secure specimens were made from the very earliest 

 period of our intercourse with the Maoris. For a long time, 

 however, these attempts met with little success. Mr. Banks, 

 the naturalist who accompanied Captain Cook's expedition, 

 succeeded, after great difficulty, in purchasing one from the 

 natives of Queen Charlotte Sound in 1770, but no inducement 

 could prevail upon them to part with a second. And although 

 Pomare, one of the principal chiefs of the Bay of Islands, and 

 who was considered the most expert artist of his time in the 

 preparation of heads, offered to show Mr. Marsden an example 

 of his skill, and at the same time furnish him with some speci- 

 mens if he would let him have some ammunition wherewith 

 to shoot the people who had killed his son, his case seems to 



* Marsden. 



