CUSTOMS RELATING TO THE DEAD. 
99 
In some parts, it was customary for the widow to spread her 
mat over her husband’s grave, and constantly sleep upon it; 
but in former times, one or more of the chief’s wives would 
strangle themselves to accompany and wait upon their lord in 
the other world; for this purpose, also, several slaves were 
killed, that the chief might not be without attendants. Some¬ 
times, the chief wife would have her husband’s head cut off, 
and dried, and then always sleep with it by her side. 
In other places, the body was put into a kind of frame, 
formed by two pieces of an old canoe, standing about six feet 
high, and forming a hollow place, in which the corpse was 
seated on a grating, to allow the flesh, as it decomposed, to 
fall through. After a certain time, the skeleton was removed, 
and the bones were scraped ; this was the Ngapuhi custom. In 
the south, where the body was interred, the first rukutanga 
tupapaku, or digging up of the corpse, took place about four 
weeks after the nelmnga , or burial, when a feast was made by 
the relations and friends of the dead; on this occasion, the 
tohunga extracted two or more of the molar teeth of the 
corpse, which he tied to a small stick or fern stalk, and then 
laid upon the food, which was prepared for the oven ; this 
was called te umu o te pera, or the oven of the putrified flesh.* 
I he first was tapued for the tohunga; the second oven was 
for the guests. While the teeth laid on the food, a long 
karakia was repeated over them ; afterwards the ornaments of 
the corpse, which had been buried with it, consisting of shark’s 
teeth or green-stone, were removed, and worn by the relatives, 
for the ceremony appears to have been chiefly intended to 
wakanoa, or take off the tapu from the body, so that the orna¬ 
ments might be again used, which otherwise they could not 
have been. When the ceremony was over, the two teeth were 
bored, and worn as ear ornaments by the nearest relative; the 
body was then again wrapped up in a fine mat, and reinterred. 
After two years, the bones were again dug up ; this was 
called te Ruku-tanga tuarua, or the wcikanoa-tanga tuarua, 
when the hahunga, or scraping of the bones, took place. This 
* Psalm cviii., 28 —“ And ate the sacrifices of the dead.” 
ii 2 
