Best. — Maori Eschatology. 185 



Mortuary Memorials. 



Memorial structures were not an important feature in Maori- 

 land. Burial-mounds were never constructed, nor were graves 

 marked by stones or posts. Two reasons may be given for this 

 omission. In the first place, no burial in the earth was in any 

 way permanent, save in such cases as when a body was buried 

 in a swamp — trampled down into the mud and so left — or in a 

 sandhill. Bodies buried in the ground were merely left there 

 for a few years, when the bones were exhumed and placed in a 

 tribal burial cave or tree. This custom has certainly obtained 

 among the Maori people for centuries — i.e., for so long as inter- 

 tribal warfare has been general. It is possible that there was a 

 period when the dead of the New Zealand Natives were buried 

 in the ground and never exhumed, judging from certain dis- 

 coveries made of skeletons in various parts. However, this 

 may never have been a general custom. If it was so, then such 

 dead were probably those of the original people of these isles, 

 who seem to have been much less warlike than the later comers 

 of the fourteenth century. The second reason to account for 

 the absence of mortuary structures is this : On account of the 

 savagely vindictive nature of Maori warfare, their eating the 

 bodies of their enemies, and the delight they took in treating 

 such bodies with every foul indignity, as also the custom of utilis- 

 ing the skull and other bones of such bodies wherefrom to manu- 

 facture various implements, it was necessary for every tribe 

 to bury their dead in secrecy, and to take every precaution 

 that enemies should not discover the resting-place of the bodies 

 or bones of their dead. Hence nothing was done to mark a 

 grave where a person had been buried. Perhaps the only marked 

 resting-places of the dead to be seen about a settlement in former 

 times were those constructed within the pa, or fortified vil- 

 lage. 



In regard to cannibalism, and the fierce lust for revenge 

 which so often animated the Native mind, a dreadful illustration 

 is that of the kai pirau — namely, the ghoulish custom which 

 formerly obtained of exhuming the body of a buried enemy, 

 cooking and devouring the same, even though decomposition 

 had set in. 



Little wonder that the Maori erected no gravestones. But 

 they often so marked the spot where a man died, or fell in battle, 

 as also a place where a sick man had lain. There were two 

 methods of marking the place where a person had died or been 

 slain. One was to set up a wooden post or place a stone on the 

 spot ; the other was to dig a hole (termed " pokapoka "). Such 

 a post would probably be smeared with red ochre, red being 



