150 Transactions. — Zoology. 



The tapu, with its many rites, forms, and observances, was, 

 so to speak, the foundation of Maori society, and the bulwark 

 of tribal existence. The tapu " commenced with the birth of 

 the New-Zealander, continued with him throughout life in all its 

 varied scenes, and did not leave him until long after he was in 

 the grave. The tapu regulated, or pretended to regulate, all his 

 movements. It certainly enabled the Maoris to accomplish 

 many heavy and useful works which without it they could not 

 have done. Through it their large cultivations, their fisheries, 

 their fine villages and hill forts, their fine canoes, their good 

 houses, their large seine-nets, their bold carvings, and a 

 hundred other things were accomplished — without possessing 

 either iron or metal. Through it their fowl, and fish, and 

 forests were preserved ; " and through it the tombs and graves 

 of their dead — objects held sacred even by the most untutored 

 savage — were preserved inviolable. This far-reaching law of 

 tapu had, as may readily be believed, a powerful influence 

 over the Maori mind ; so much so that, as Mr. Colenso adds, 

 "the stoutest and fiercest of the chiefs bowed like an infant 

 before it, and dared not disobey its behests." The tribal 

 burial-place at Opotiki, primitive as it was, necessarily came 

 under the protection of tapu in its strictest and most uncom- 

 promising form. On the other hand, the beaten Muau- 

 poko, stripped of everything, and reduced in numbers to a 

 mere remnant, who took refuge in the mountains, never dared 

 to impose the spell of the tapu on the scene of their discom- 

 fiture and entombment. No better proof, perhaps, could be 

 given of the complete conquest of the Muaupoko at that time 

 by the Ngatitoa and Ngatiraukawa than the inability of the 

 survivors ever afterwards to enforce the observance of this rite.* 

 The nearest approach to it is what I have myself done in this 

 present year of grace. I will explain. Among those who 

 were killed in the great fight at Papaitonga was a celebrated 

 chieftess named Te Eiunga, an ancestress of the well-known 

 chief Major Kemp Te Eangihiwinui. The island having come 

 into my possession, I have erected upon it, in front of a grove 

 of karaka-trees, the famous carved canoe " Te Koangaorehua," 

 brought from Wanganui for that purpose. This monumental 

 tomb, formed out of the end of a totara canoe of large dimen- 

 sions, and elaborately carved to represent three human figures, 

 one above the other, was erected some seventy years ago at 

 Pipiriki (fifty miles up the Wanganui Eiver) to mark the 

 resting-place of Te Mahutu. After the battle of Moutoa, in 

 1863, when so many " friendlies " fell fighting on our side 



* According to the doctrine of law which governs the Native Land 

 Court, conquest, unless followed by actual occupation, confers no title to 

 the land. 



