Maori Morals And Capacity For Love

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_ When Hawkesworth visited New Zealand with Captain Cook, he one day came accidentally across some women who were fishing, and who had thrown off their last garments. When they saw him they were as confused and distressed as Diana and her nymphs; they hid among the rocks and crouched down in the sea until they had made and put on girdles of seaweeds. "There are instances," writes William Brown , "of women committing suicide from its being said that they had been seen naked. A chief's wife took her own life because she had been hung up by the heels and beaten in the presence of the whole tribe."

Shall we conclude from this that the Maoris were genuinely modest and perhaps capable of that delicacy in regard to sexual matters which is a prerequisite of sentimental love? What is modesty? The _Century Dictionary_ says it is "decorous feeling or behavior; purity or delicacy of thought or manner; reserve proceeding from pure or chaste character;" and the _Encyclopaedic Dictionary_ defines it as "chastity; purity of manners; decency; freedom from lewdness or un-chastity." Now, Maori modesty, if such it maybe called, was only skin deep. Living in a colder climate than other Polynesians, it became customary among them to wear more clothing; and what custom prescribes must be obeyed to the letter among all these peoples, be the ordained dress merely a loin cloth or a necklace, or a cover for the back only, or full dress. It does not argue true modesty on the part of a Maori woman to cover those parts of her body which custom orders her to cover, any more than it argues true modesty on the part of an Oriental barbarian to cover her face only, on meeting a man, leaving the rest of her body exposed. Nor does suicide prove anything, since it is known that the lower races indulge in self-slaughter for as trivial causes as they do in the slaughter of others. True modesty, as defined above, is not a Maori characteristic. The evidence on this point is too abundant to quote in full.

Shortland describes in detail all of the ceremonies which were in former days the pastimes of the New Zealanders, and which accompanied the singing of their _haka_ or "love-songs," to which reference has already been made. In the front were seated three elderly ladies and behind them in rows, eight or ten in a row, and five or six ranks deep, sat "_the best born young belles of the town_" who supplied the poem and the music for the _haka_ pantomime:

"The _haka_ is not a modest exhibition, but the
reverse; and, on this occasion, two of the old ladies
who stood in front ... accompanied the music by
movements of the arms and body, their postures being
often disgustingly lascivious. However, they suited the
taste of the audience, who rewarded the performers at
such times with the applause they desired.... It was
altogether as ungodly a scene as can well be imagined."

The same author, who lived among the natives several years, says that

"before marriage the greatest license is permitted to
young females. The more admirers they can attract
and the greater their reputation for intrigue, the
fairer is their chance of making an advantageous match."

William Brown writes that "among the Maoris chastity is not deemed one of the virtues; and a lady before marriage may be as liberal of her favors as she pleased without incurring censure." "As a rule," writes E. Tregear in the _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_,

"the girls had great license in the way of lovers. I
don't think the young woman knew when she was a virgin,
for she had love-affairs with the boys from the cradle.
This does not apply, of course, to _every_ individual
case--some girls are born proud, and either kept to one
sweetheart or had none, but this was rare."

After marriage a woman was expected to remain faithful to her husband, but of course not from any regard for chastity, but because she was his private property. Like so many other uncivilized races the Maori saw no impropriety in lending his wife to a friend. (Tregear, 104.)

The faces of Maori women were always wet with red ochre and oil. Both sexes anointed their hair (which was vermin-infested) with rancid shark's oil, so that they were as disagreeable to the smell as Hottentots. (Hawkesworth, 451-53.) They were cannibals, not from necessity, but for the love of human flesh, though they did not, like the Australians, eat their own relatives. Food, says Thompson (I., 160), affected them "as it does wild beasts." They practised infanticide, killed cripples, abandoned the sick--in a word, they displayed a coarseness, a lack of delicacy, in sexual and other matters, which makes it simply absurd to suppose they could have loved as we love, with our altruistic feeling of sympathy and affection. William Brown says that mothers showed none of that doting fondness for their children common elsewhere, and that they suckled pigs and pups with "affection." "Should a husband quarrel with his wife, she would not hesitate to kill her children, merely to annoy him". "They are totally devoid of natural affection." The men "appear to care little for their wives," apparently from

"a want of that sympathy between the sexes which is the
source of the delicate attentions paid by the male to
the female in most civilized countries. In my own
experience I have seen only one instance where there
was any perceptible attachment between husband and
wife. To all appearance they behave to each other as if
they were not at all related; and it not infrequently
happens that they sleep in different places before the
termination of the first week of their marriage."

Thus even in the romantic isles of the Pacific we seek in vain for true love. Let us now see whether the vast continent of North and South America will bring us any nearer to our goal.

[THE END]
Henry Theophilus Finck's Book: Island Love On The Pacific

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