Vaux.—On the Probable Origin of the Maori Races. 25 
parts of the body, viz., T'amoraho and T'amorau) Marqunesan, tatu and patu ; 
Nukuhivan, pikipatu; Tongan, Tattu; Hawaian, Kakau ; but, curiously enough, 
though as much practised there as anywhere else, there seems to be no 
similar word in the New Zealand language, except the doubtful Z’amoko, or 
lizard, is the Maori word, possibly from the curved lines they rejoiced in 
tracing, in parallel lines, on both sides of the face. As to the origin of this 
curious practice, there is great diversity of opinion, some writers fancying 
that it arose from a sense of decency ; but it seems hardly probable, that a 
people accustomed, in many of the islands, to wear scarcely any dress, 
- should have adopted, for this reason only, a custom so extremly painful in 
its operation.* 
A more likely reason would seem to be that of striking terror into their 
enemies; while, if it be true, as Mr. Ellis asserts, that the attendants of 
the different chiefs were usually tattooed like their masters, only less 
elaborately, this plan would answer well as a means of identification. 
Another curious custom is that of Cava-drinking, the nauseous mode of 
preparing which Cava, in the Tonga Islands, is minutely described by Mr. 
Mariner. I do not know whether this custom is universal, but the word is 
found in most of the dialects, for a species of the pepper plant. 
I think I have now said enough on the subject of some of the principal 
customs, which, if not all peculiar to Polynesia, certainly prevailed in these 
Islands more than anywhere else. They are, as it seems to me, essentially 
such, as would be handed down from family to family, and from tribe to tribe. 
They are, hardly, such as would be invented by two or three separate sets of 
peoples, but point, almost as surely as the colour of the skin or the texture 
of the hair, to a period, when the inhabitants of these widely scattered 
islands were one people dwelling together. I venture, therefore, to hope 
that in drawing to a conclusion, this, the Ethnological portion of my Essay, 
I shall be deemed to have shown some reasonable grounds for believing the 
Maoris, Tahitians and, generally, the dwellers in Polynesia, with the partial 
exception of the Fijeeans, One Race, physically, united under one group, 
with clear and definite lines of demarcation, which separate them from the 
Dark-skinned people on the one hand, and from the White races on the 
other. 
* J do not know whether Polynesian skins are less sensitive to pain than those of 
Europeans; but if not, such tattooing as appears in the portrait given by Ellis of the 
N. i 
a kind of tattoo, in some parts of Melanesia, which must be more hideous to look at, if 
not more painful in execution, than that of Polynesia. It consists in making great and 
permanent wales all over the body. c 
