THE MAORIS OF NEW ZEALAND. 785 



presents had been interchanged all were satisfied." It was some- 

 times the custom for a man who had many wives to lend one of 

 them to a guest whom he wished to honor greatly. 



Disease was supposed to be caused by the entry of an evil 

 spirit into the body or by the anger of some deity or demon. 

 Curses were sought through exorcisms, etc., by the priest ; while 

 for certain affections special methods of medical treatment were 

 used, apparently with considerable success. Wounds were gener- 

 ally left to themselves, after broken pieces of spear or bone had 

 been extracted ; and they healed in a manner that a European 

 could hardly credit. 



To avoid having the home tapued by death, chiefs when dying 

 were carried into some shed. At the sound of the wail from the 

 wives and relatives, friends gathered and cut themselves with 

 sharp shells and pieces of flint — women in the face, and men on 

 one side of the neck. The hair was cut off on one side, while a few 

 long locks were sometimes left untouched as a memorial of the 

 departed. The burden of the lament was, " Go on, we follow." 

 The friends, who came from long distances to mourn, wore wreaths 

 of green leaves or lycopodium. Sometimes the body was buried ; 

 in other parts of the country it was placed in a little house with 

 the greenstone club, etc., of the deceased ; sometimes in two pieces 

 of a canoe placed upright together, the corpse being tied in a sit- 

 ting posture on a grating through which the decomposed parts 

 fell ; at other times it was placed in a small canoe and set up in 

 the branches of a tree. Slaves were killed sometimes, and the 

 chief wife strangled herself, to be buried with her lord. A taro 

 root was placed in the hand of a dead child that it might have 

 food for its journey to JReinga; food was also buried with a chief. 

 The exhumation took place from a year to two years after death, 

 with intricate ceremonies, including the consecration of the spade 

 with which the body was dug up, the charms for the binding up 

 of the bones, for the scraping, for the bearers, lustrations of those 

 engaged, lifting the tapu from them, etc. The bones were scraped, 

 anointed, decorated, painted, and set with feathers. When they 

 had been seen and wept over by all the relatives, they were packed 

 away in the dark ancestral burial cave, or else thrown into some 

 inaccessible rift or deep chasm, lest some enemy might get hold 

 of the skull, to taunt it or to use it as a baler for a canoe. Fish- 

 hooks made from the jaws, and flutes, pins, etc., from the bones, 

 were supposed to be terrible insults to the relatives. Hence the 

 secret sepulture. 



Murder must be revenged by every member of the tribe until 

 satisfaction had been obtained. A chief, when dying, left as his 

 last words a reminder of revenge for his people to carry out, and 

 would generally nominate some one person to devote himself to 



