Oceania Publications, University of Sydney, Wiley Oceania

Oceania Publications, University of Sydney
Maori Cannibalism: An Interpretation

Author(s): Ross Bowden
Source: Oceania, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Dec., 1984), pp. 81-99
Published by: Wiley on behalf of Oceania Publications, University of Sydney
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OCEANIA
A JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE STUDY OF THE INDIGENOUS
PEOPLES OF AUSTRALIA, MELANESIA, MICRONESIA,

INDONESIA, AND THE PHILIPPINES
OCEANIA Vol. 55 No. 2 December, 1984
Maori Cannibalism: An Interpretation1

Ross Bowden*
. . . to have our sculs made drinking-bowls

and our bones turned into pipes, to delight
and sport our enemies, are tragicall abom-
inations, escaped in burning burials.
Sir Thomas Browne, Urne-Buriall
Cannibalism, man-eating or anthropophagy is a form of social behaviour

that has both fascinated and horrified Europeans since at least the fifth
century B.C., when Herodotus in his Histories first reported the practice
among the Scythians (a 'barbarian' or non-Greek speaking people living
to the north of the Black Sea). Until the discovery of the New World
in the 15th century, however, the existence of cannibalism (as in Hero-
dotus's account) owed more to over-active European imaginations than
well documented ethnographic fact (Evans-Pritchard 1960, Arens
1979a). But with the exploration of central and south America, and
especially with the conquest of Mexico in 1521, more detailed (if not
always more reliable) accounts of cannibalism became available. The
term 'cannibal', in fact, derives from a Spanish corruption of 'Carib', the
name of one of the aboriginal populations in the Caribbean, and a people
who, like most others in the region, were thought to be man-eaters.
By far the most dramatic accounts of cannibalism from this period
relate to the Aztecs, among whom the practice was allegedly associated
with human sacrifice on a large scale, the victims (enemies captured
alive in war) would be dragged to the tops of temples where priests
tore out their hearts to offer them as sacrifices to the gods; afterwards
their bodies were thrown to their captors. The latter would then enter-
tain friends and relatives to stews made from the dismembered limbs,
tomatoes and peppers (Harner 1977, Harris 1978:99-110, cf. Arens
1979a:55-80, 165-7).
The conquest of Mexico and the colonization of the Caribbean even-
tually put an end to cannibalism in Mesoamerica, and in the late eight-
eenth and early nineteenth centuries the focus of interest in the topic
* La Trobe University, Melbourne.

1 1 am grateful to Colin Newbury and Pater Rivière for reading and commenting
on this paper.
81
shifted to the Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa, which only then were being
systematically explored. In Oceania, a people who soon became known as
energetic man-eaters were the Maoris of New Zealand. They acquired
this reputation in the first instance for having killed and eaten such ex-
plorers as Marion du Fresne at the Bay of Islands in 1772, and later
for having consumed the crews of various whalers and other vessels, such
as the Boyd in 1809 (McNab 1914:59-74, 125-37, 147). Apart from
the passing European, however, Maori cannibalism, like its Aztec counter-
part, was practised exclusively on traditional enemies - i.e., on members
of other tribes and hapuu (Vayda 1960:71). To use the jargon, the
Maori were exo- rather than endocannibals. By their own account, they
did it for purposes of revenge: to kill and eat a man was the most
vengeful and degrading thing one person could do to another.
The precise form and frequency of cannibalism in Maori society are
difficult to determine because the original sources vary somewhat in
detail. But by all accounts the overwhelming majority of acts of man-eating
took place on the battlefield after one side had been routed. The victims
would be butchered on the spot and cooked in steam ovens - simple
devices to construct if you know how (cf. Taylor 1870:503f., Vayda
1960:70). What was not eaten was packed up and consumed on the
way home (Percy Smith 1910:392, Vayda 1960:70). Edward Tregear
records:
When the bodies could not all be eaten some of the flesh was
stripped from the bones and dried in the sun, being hung on stages
for that purpose. The flesh was then gathered into baskets and oil
was poured over it, the oil being rendered down from the bodies;
this was done to prevent it spoiling from damp. Sometimes the
flesh was potted into calabashes as birds were potted. The bones
were broken up and burnt in the fire. The body of a chief might
be flayed and the skin dried for covering hoops or boxes (1904:
358-9).
The heads of important victims, Tregear adds, were taken home and
impaled on stakes where they became objects of derision (cf. Elder 1932:
151-2, 154, 167-8, 172, 177-8 et passim).
Considerable ritual, it seems, was associated with the first victim slain
(the so-called 'first-fish'). Some accounts state that no part of the body
was eaten but that it was offered up whole as a sacrifice to the deities
who presided over the war party; others that only the heart was used
sacrificially and the rest eaten (Shortland 1854:231f., cf. Elder 1932:
173-4, Percy Smith 1910-435, Thomson 1859:144ff.). All writers agree
that the bodies of slain enemies were never used as common food in a
village, and that women were rarely, if ever, permitted to eat human flesh
(Elder 1932:173-4, Vayda 1960:70-1). In addition to cannibalism on
the battlefield, enemies taken alive and used as slaves were occasionally
killed and eaten for food. 'Otherwise', one authority remarks, slaves were
Veil treated' (Best 1924a:II, 299, cf. Buck 1949:102, 402).
Some idea of the frequency with which the Maori practised cannibalism
can be gained from the following remarks made by Samuel Marsden in
1820. Marsden, in addition to being the Senior Chaplain in the penal
colony of New South Wales, was a founder of Christianity in New Zealand
and one of the first Europeans to explore the Bay of Islands area of the
North Island. During his seven visits to New Zealand between 1814 and
82
Ross Bowden
1837 he came to know a number of the most famous warrior chiefs of

the early nineteenth century, including Hongi and Te Merenga, and fre-
quently discussed topics such as cannibalism with them. In the light of
the interpretation which I give below, Marsden's comments are revealing
and worth quoting at length:
I met with no family but some branches of them had been killed
in battle and afterwards eaten by the enemy. If any chief falls by
the chance of war into the hands of a tribe whom he has oppressed
and injured, they are sure to roast and eat him; and, after devouring
his flesh, they will preserve his bones in the family as a memento
of his fate, and convert them into fish-hooks, whistles, and ornaments.
The custom of eating their enemies is universal ... It is a subject
of constant conversation with the principal families I have visited,
and though they generally speak of it with a degree of horror and
disgust, yet they expect that ¡this will be their fate in the end as it
has been the, fate of their forefathers and friends ... If the head
of a tribe is killed and eaten, the survivors consider it the greatest
disgrace that can befall them, and, in ¡their turn, they seize the first
opportunity to retaliate in the same way. By this means their mutual
contests are continually kept alive and war becomes their study and
their trade (Elder 1932:285).
The fact that the Maori were cannibals at all, it might be added, was
a source of some puzzlement to nineteenth century ethnographers, for,
like most other Polynesians, they were regarded right from the start as a
very 'superior' preliterate people. As one writer remarked, They were an
exceedingly good tempered and sociable people, . . . courteous and polite.
Chiefs and women of rank were spoken to in a respectful and ceremonius
manner, and it was considered a mark of inferior breeding to be rude in
either speech or bearing' (Tregear 1904:28-9, see also p. 37). At the same
time the Maori were recognized as being extremely 'touchy' and quick
to take offence at what they regarded as a slighting remark or other insult.
Elsdon Best remarks:
If there was one quality more highly cultivated by the Maori than
that of revenge the writer has yet to learn of it. To avenge insults,
wrongs, etc., was considered to be one of the most important duties
of man. Hence it was that a slight mishap might develop into a
feud, and that feud might continue for generations. The duty of
squaring accounts with any tribe that had slain a tribesman was
ceaselessly impressed upon young folk. These feuds often meant
the dispatch of raiding forces until the account was settled, but
winter and spring were, as a rule, peaceful times. The duty and
recreation of guerilla fighting was postponed until the crops had
been planted. By the time an account was deemed squared the other
side probably held that it was more than square, and they would
busy themselves in equalising it, and so the feud was continued
(1924a:II, 232, see also Beaglehole 1967:71, Dieffenbach 1974:11,
109-10, Elder 1932:387, Percy Smith 1910:329f., Vayda 1960:
45-6, Yate 1970:130).
II
Various explanations or motives have been advanced for the practice

of cannibalism, although not as many as one might at first expect. One
is that by eating the slain the victor ¡ingests qualities admired in the enemy,
83
such as fighting ability or strength. To my knowledge, this motive did

not apply in the case of the Maori (Buck 1949:401). Another explana-
tion is that it was practised for revenge. This motive certainly is relevant
to the Maori, centrally relevant in fact. But revenge on its own does not
provide a sufficient explanation, for not all peoples among whom ven-
geance is the motive for killing necessarily eat the slain, and among those
who do one still wants to know what it is about eating the enemy that
gives the act its social and symbolic significance.
Recently three theories have been advanced in explanation of canni-
balism generally, so that before examining the Maori material in more
detail and offering my own interpretation (a variation on the revenge
theme) I comment briefly on each of these in turn. I do so not because
I think they are necessarily wrong or irrelevant (although the last is
certainly not applicable) but more to place my own, structural, ap-
proach in perspective. I would say, however, that none of these theories
on its own provides what I would regard as an intellectually satisfying
explanation of the phenomenon.
The first, which relates specifically to the Aztecs (but is intended to
have a much wider significance), explains cannibalism in terms of its
importance as a contributor of animal protein to the diet. In an article
entitled The ecological basis for Aztec sacrifice' (1977), Michael Harner
argues that cannibalism among the Aztecs (and, by implication, else-
where) arose from certain distinctive ecological problems found in the
Valley of Mexico, the home of the Aztecs. Central to these was the fact
that there were no large mammalian herbivores such as the llama (found
further south in the Americas) or, as in the Old World, sheep, cattle,
goats and pigs, which could be domesticated and used to supplement
local plant foods. To simplify greatly a complex argument, Harner con-
tends that as the population in the Valley of Mexico grew, especially
during the fifteenth century immediately before the European conquest,
the limited local resources of wild game were slowly depleted. The
specific ecological problem lay in the fact that the plant foods available,
although in principle adequately varied to provide a balanced diet, were
not always sufficient in quantity or of the right combinations (because
of periodic drought) to enable them to make up for the decreasing quan-
tity of animal protein. In time, Harner argues, the people had no
alternative but to turn to the only large-scale source of animal protein
available: other people. As a consequence, they either invented or
greatly expanded a religious system which required large scale human
sacrifice, the victims of which, conveniently enough, could be eaten. The
animal protein thus provided, Harner estimates, would have been roughly
equivalent to that which pigs contribute in some Highland Papua New
Guinea societies today (1977:128-9, cf. Price 1978).
Marvin Harris has recently endorsed this argument in his essay The
cannibal kingdom'. The Aztec priests who presided over the sacrificial
system and actually did the killing were, in his view, little more than
'ritual slaughterers in a state-sponsored system geared to the production
and redistribution of substantial amounts of animal protein in the form
of human flesh. Of course the priests had other duties, but none had
greater practical significance than their butchery' (1978:109; for other
discussions of the potential dietary value of cannibalism - or lack of it
- see Garn and Block 1970, Walens and Wagner 1971, Dornstreich and
Morren 1974, Hunn 1982, Harner 1982).
84
Ross Bowden
In order to assess the relevance of this argument so far as the Maori

are concerned one needs to be a specialist ecologista which I am
not. All I intend to do, therefore, is make a few brief points, some of
which might be regarded as supporting such an argument and others as
not. First, in favour of the argument, it might be noted that the traditional
Maori, like the Aztecs, lacked large mammalian herbivores such as sheep,
cattle and goats. They also lacked the pig, a major source of animal
protein in Melanesia and other parts of Polynesia, and in addition lacked
large flightless birds such as the cassowary, another important souce of
animal protein in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere.2
Second (again in favour of the argument), two of the leading twentieth
century authorities on the Maori, Sir Raymond Firth and Sir Peter Buck
(the latter himself a part-Maori), both explicitly attribute cannibalism to
the absence of such large animals (Firth 1929:133-4, Buck 1949:102,
400, cf. Earle 1966:92, 117). Firth, for instance, notes -that although
there were forest rats, birds, fish and eels to provide animal protein,
the diet was basically vegetarian. He even suggests that to relieve the
tedium of vegetable foods a village might occasionally dispatch a maraud-
ing party to capture any 'hapless wayfarer' they might meet and use him
(or her) as a relish to brighten up the monotony of the meals (1929:
134, cf. Percy Smith 1910:41, Vayda 1960:70-2, 76-7). If a slave was
killed for any offence, he adds, he likewise was not wasted but 'was taken
off to the ovens for culinary purposes. As a kindly thought joints might
be sent round to friends and neighbours and were much appreciated'
(Firth 1929:134).
But if evidence can be adduced in support of the argument, it can also
be adduced against it. For example, the earliest writers such as Cook
and Marsden, both of whom initially thought that cannibalism was prac-
tised for lack of large animals, eventually changed their minds when they
got to know the Maori better and attributed it to other factors. Marsden
says: 'From all that I have been able to learn relative to the New
Zealanders eating human flesh, this custom appears to have its origin in
religious superstition. I could hear of no case of any man ever being
killed merely to gratify the appetite . . . ' (Elder 1932:169, see also
Beaglehole 1961:818-19, Nicholas 1817:11, 63-71, 291f., Thomson
1859:147).
A second point that might be made here is that, if people were eaten
for their food value, why was only one sex permitted to eat the flesh?
Presumably women would have suffered from dietary deficiencies as much
as men (cf. Shortland 1854:71, Thomson 1859:147, Rusden 1883:1,
44-5 ) . Again, if cannibalism was practised for dietary reasons we could
expect that it would have declined following the introduction of animals
such as pigs, goats and cattle by explorers and pioneer missionaries in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Harner (1977), in fact,
attributes the rapid decline of cannibalism in Mesoamerica in the early
sixteenth centry, in part at least, to the introduction from Europe of
animals of precisely this type. In New Zealand, however, some of the
most spectacular and well-documented cases of cannibalism took place in
the 1820s and early 1830s, several decades after the introduction of large
2 For data on foods traditionally available to and exploited by the Maori see,
among others, Beaglehole 1955:282-3, 1963:11, 4ff., 19-22; Buck 1949:85-106;
Dieffenbach 1974:11, 43-9; Firth 1929; Nicholas 1817:11, 254-60; Thomson 1859:
152; Travers 1906:178-9; Yate 1970:71, 107-10.
85
domesticable herbivores - principally pigs - and in areas where they

appear to have been most abundant.3
Nevertheless, as I am not a specialist ecologist, I should be
presumptuous to attempt to come to a final decision about the matter
here. I should say at this point, however, that although we will now leave
the cannibalism-for-food argument, we are far from being finished with
the idea of food as such; for the notion of food in my view is central to
the topic, although its significance, I shall argue, is symbolic, not dietary.4
A second general explanation that has been advanced for cannibalism
(and other forms of extreme violence in human society) has been
developed by the ethologically-oriented anthropologist Derek Free-
man (1964). In Freeman's view cannibalism, like warfare, cruelty
and all other forms of 'murderous attacks' and 'deadly quarrels" is to be
explained by man's innate aggressiveness. The study of human history,
Freeman maintains, leaves us no choice but to conclude that there are
unimagined strata of malignity in the human heart, and that aggressive-
ness, in Freud's terms, is an 'innate, independent, instinctual disposition
in man' (1964:109). Cannibalism, in Freeman's view, is but an extreme
form of man's innate bellicosity.
The difficulty with arguments of this kind is that they are too general.
As Martin Harris has rightly remarked (1978:104) they are useless
for explaining variations in the intensity or style of intergroup conflict,
variations in attitudes to particular forms of aggression, and (of course)
why cannibalism should occur in one society and not in another. Not
all Polynesian societies, for example, ate human flesh: Tahitians ap-
parently regarded the practice with abhorrence.
The third of these theories is presented by Arens (1979a) in his book
The man eating myth: anthropology and anthropophagy. This work has
created considerable controversy among colleagues and has occasioned a
lively debate in the literary weeklies. Put in its simplest terms, Arens'
argument is that cannibalism is a hoax: that it is not and never has been
a customary form of behaviour in any society. In Arens' view, it is
3 For data on the distribution of pigs in early 19th century New Zealand see
Nicholas 1817:1, 77, 81, 173, 217, 405, 429 et passim; Elder 1932:97, 105, 109,
194, 191-4, 263, 268, 296, 300, 320, 526n.; Percy Smith 1910:404, 468; Thomson
1859:148, 157; Travers 1906:209-11. On cannibalism in the 1820's and 30's see,
among other sources, Elder 1932:386; McNab 1908:11, 578-603; Percy Smith 1910:'
113, 152, 154-63, 177, 188, 190-8, 392, 414, 431; Thomson 1859:144, 148; Travers
1906:50-2, 124, 134, 138, 147, 155-6; Vayda 1960:94-5, 102 et passim.
4 In a variation of the cannibalism-for-food argument Vayda (1960:70-1) con-
tends that the eating of human flesh in New Zealand can be explained in terms of
its dietary value during long-distance military expeditions. By exploiting this readily
available food source, he argues, especially when living off the land was impractic-
able, warriors were able to undertake military expeditions far from their home
bases, and of much greater duration than would otherwise have been possible. The
fact that Maori women rarely, if ever, ate human flesh (but see 1960:71), he
suggests, is explained by the fact that they did not accompany men on such ex-
peditions. However, even if it could be demonstrated that the eating of human
flesh did have dietary significance in some military contexts (although Vayda, I
suspect, overestimates its significance in this regard), his argument nevertheless begs
the question; for what we want to know is why in this society, and not in most
others, warriors did regard the bodies of dead enemies as potential food objects.
Vayda's argument would only have substance if he could demonstrate (as he has
not) that using the bodies of dead enemies in military contexts to supplement more
usual food supplies was common or typical cross-culturally.
86
Ross Bowden
simply the sort of vile practice that people typically attribute, for ide
logical reasons, to outsiders or enemies, but do not admit to, or engage i
themselves (cf. Shankman 1969:59-60). 'Excluding survival conditio
I have been unable to uncover adequate documentation of cannibalis
as a custom in any form in any society. Rumours, suspicions, fears an
accusations abound, but no satisfactory first hand accounts' (1979a:21,
emphasis supplied). Arens' argument is, in fact, more complex than thi
But at least as far as the Maori are concerned, it simply does not hold
water, for there is an abundance of reliable historical and ethnograph
evidence for the practice. This derives from explorers such as Cook an
Banks, missionaries and explorers such as Marsden and his associat
and middle and late nineteenth century ethnographers such as Shortlan
Maning, Taylor, White, Percy Smith and Elsdon Best.5 Arens, inciden
ally, makes no mention of the Maori, nor does he undertake a systema
analysis of the ethnographic material relating to any Pacific society.
further curious defect in his argument is that he nowhere satisfactori
defines what he means by a 'customary' form of behaviour or indeed ca
nibalism itself (Needham 1980, Arens 1979b, J. Leach 1979, E. Lea
1979, Downs 1980, see also Shankman 1969: 58-9). 6
III
After this somewhat lengthy introduction I shall now outline an alter-

native, structural interpretation of Maori cannibalism. By a structural
interpretation I do not mean an historical or causal explanation. I am not
concerned to explain why the Maori practised cannibalism and the
Tahitians, let us say, did not. (This would be a perfeotly legitimate
enquiry, but given the absence of reliable prehistoiical data, and the range
of ecological and other variables involved, any such explanation would of
necessity be fairly speculative and tendentious.) Raither, my concern is
to take a well-documented but puzzling form of social behaviour and
'explain' it (if explain is the right word), by placing it in its widest social
and symbolic setting. My object is to take the mystery out of the phen-
omenon by seeing how it forms part of a wider and readily comprehensible
structure or pattern of behaviour and values.
5 For historical and ethnographic evidence of Maori cannibalism, varying from

mere suspicions to first-hand reports and eye-witness accounts, see, among many
other sources, Beaglehole 1955:171, 174, 203, 236-7, 239, 242, 1282; 1961:291-5,
578, 743-4, 749-52, 818-20; 1963:1, 404, 420, 443, 455-6, 462; II, 12, 19, 30-1;
1967:66, 71, 814-15, 998, 1297, 1299; Cruise 1824:96-7, 118, 177, 271-3, 292;
Earle 1966:60-1, 78-9, 111-17, 149-50, 154-5; Dieffenbach 1974:1, 166; II, 126,
128-30; Donne 1927:133-7; Elder 1932:129-30, 156, 168-9, 172-4, 185, 205-6, 214-
15, 262, 265-7, 275, 285, 299, 323, 373, 377, 386. 402, 407-10, 434, 455; 1934:81,
105, 107, 265; McNab 1908:1, 573-4; II, 195-6, 283, 329, 401-3, 582, 585; 1914:
59-74, 125-37, 147; Shortland 1854:231-2, 235, 237-9; Percy Smith 1910:26, 41, 48,
53-4, 57, 59, 64, 68, 86, 97, 99-104, 106-8, 110-14, 136, 177, 179, 188-90, 198, 205,
214, 223, 226, 232, 252, 254, 267-8, 285, 294, 297, 299, 304, 332, 348-9, 355-6, 358,
372-3, 377, 379, 392, 400, 402, 414, 425, 428, 431; Taylor 1870:189-91, 193, 512-13,
515, 517-19, 531-2, 534-5, 542, 704, 706, 709; Thomson 1859:129, 142-8; Travers
1906:18, 30-1, 50-2, 55, 66, 93-5, 102, 109-11, 117, 121, 124, 129-30, 134, 136,
138, 147, 155-6, 193, 206, 229; Vayda 1960:70-2, 76-7, 94-5, 102 et passim', Yate
1970:120, 129-30.
6 See also correspondence in The Times Literary Supplement February to May
1980, New Scientist 4-25 October 1979, and The New York Review of Books 22
March 1979.
87
I propose to argue that much of what would be called 'institutionalized'

behaviour in Maori society, including the phenomenon of cannibalism,
is based on or informed by a dualistically structured set of symbolic
values, some of the main categories or sets of oppositions in which are
those indicated in the figure below (cf. Hertz 1973).7
Structure of Maori symbolic values

female male
noa (profane) tapu (sacred)
junior senior
low high
Earth Sky
cooked raw
left right
inauspicious auspicious
night day
darkness light
death life
younger elder
peace war
moon sun
inferior superior
cultivated food uncultivated food
sweet potato fern root
More particularly, I argue that phenomena as apparentlv diverse as

differences in personal status, the division of labour between the sexes,
verbal insults, and eating other people can be understood only when it is
realized that categories such as male, sacred, senior status, high (in a
physical sense), raw food and the sky are symbolically or analogically
associated, and collectively opposed to the contraries of these categories:
female, profane, junior status, low, cooked food, the Earth and so on
(cf. Salmond 1978 :9ff). To illustrate this in detail would take more
space than is available here. All I intend to do here, therefore, is illus-
trate the argument in four different contexts: by reference to the way
differences in personal status are conceptualized and one way in which
they are expressed behaviourally; in attitudes to food; in connection with
tapw-removal ceremonies; and, finally, in connection with verbal insults
and cannibalism.
First, to explain the part of my argument based on differences in

personal status, I need to give a very brief sketch of Maori social or-
ganization. Before about the middle of the nineteenth century Maori
society was made up of some 50 or so politically-autonomous tribes
(iwi), which ranged in size from a few hundred to several thousand
7 In arguing that Maori symbolic values have a basically dual structure, and in
displaying them in two columns in this way, I do not wish to imply that the
categories in each of the two columns are associated in the same way in all contexts.
Indeed, in certain contexts the alignment of particular categories might be reversed.
Thus, in ritual situations a tohunga's left hand, or foot, might be classified as tapu
and be used to perform various acts, since the wider social setting (e.g. peace-
making as opposed to war, tapw-removal as opposed to tapw-imposition, or destruc-
tive as opposed to beneficial magic) makes the left, rather than the right, the
symbolically appropriate and auspicious side (see, for example, White 1887-90, 1:167:
Best 1924b: 234).
88
Ross Bowdem
members (Metge 1976: chapter 1). Tribes were composed of a number

of genealogically related and ranked units known as hapuu, the members
of each of which traced descent cognatically from its founding ancestor.
The hapuu, not the tribe, was the basic social and political unit. The
members of a hapuu lived together, and with in-marrying spouses and
slaves made up one or two local communities.
Personal status was determined by two criteria: sex and genealogically
defined rank. On the basis of both 'these criteria, differences in status
were conceptualized in terms of the opposed categories of tapu ('sacred')
and noa ('profane'). In Maori belief, men were intrinsically tapu and
superior in status to women, who were intrinsically noa or devoid of tapu
(Bowden 1979). This belief was itself based on the dogma that men
were descended from Rangi, the Sky Father, and through Rangi the
sacred upper world, Te Ao; and that women were descended from Papa,
the Earth Mother, and through her from the profane underworld, Te Po
(Best 1924a:I, 299, 404-6).
The intrinsically tapu nature of all males and, to a lesser extent, the
intrinsically noa nature of all females were modified by genealogically
defined rank. An elder sibling was superior in status to, and more tapu
than, a younger sibling, and the descendants of an elder sibling were
superior in status to, and more tapu than, the descendants of a younger
sibling. From a genealogical point of view, therefore, a high ranking
woman might be more tapu than a low ranking man. But from the point
of view of ritual symbolism, as the structure of tapw-removal ceremonies
indicates, even the highest ranking woman belonged unambiguously to the
noa or profane side of the moral universe (Best 1925a: I, 251, Metge
1967:10).
Defined in terms of both sex and genealogical position, the highest
ranking and most tapu members of a community were the male 'aristo-
crats' or rangatira: men who could trace descent back to the eponymous
founding ancestors of hapuu and tribe through elder and preferably male
siblings in each generation. The senior male member of each hapuu was
the village chief. The senior chief of the senior hapuu in a tribe was the
ariki or high chief (Bowden 1979).
Differences in personal status (conceptualized in terms of the differ-
ential possession of tapu) were correlated with, and underpinned by, an
extraordinarily complex set of rules about how people should interact
both socially and physically. The basic principle underlying these very
complex rules was that as far as practicable persons of different rank and
status should remain physically apart, for all contact (actual or symbolic)
between tapu and noa persons, or relatively more- and relatively less-tapw
persons, resulted in pollution (taamaoa) or social degradation of the
person of higher status. In extreme cases, it entailed also supernatural
danger (in the form of illness or death) to the person of lower status
(Best 1925:1, 1118).
One of the ways in which differences in personal status were expressed
behaviourally was in terms of relative height: physically high as opposed
to physically low positions were regarded as equivalent to, or as metaphors
for, high as against low social status. For instance, for a person of low,
or lower, social status to place himself/herself physically above a person
of higher status was regarded as a gross 'insult' to that person of higher
status and represented a serious pollution or degradation of his tapu.
89
Thus it was strictly forbidden for a woman or girl to step over a man
while he was lying down, or to step over a man's extended legs while
he was sitting. To do so, it was believed, would be belittling or insulting
to the man. If a woman or girl stepped over a young boy's legs, Maori
believed, the results would be even more serious, for his legs would lose
their strength and in manhood he would be unable to run after (or from)
enemies in battle (White: 1885:126, Best 1924a: I, 406).
A further illustration of this analogical or metaphorical relationship
between height and status is provided by an incident involving two sons
of a Nga-i-Porou chief recorded by the mid-nineteenth century ethno-
grapher John White. The chief in question had several wives of different
rank all of whom had sons. One day the son of the last and lowest ranking
wife was flying a kite (a traditional Maori artifact) when it became lodged
in the roof of the house belonging to the chief's eldest and highest ranking
son. Thoughtlessly the lower ranking boy climbed on to the roof to
retrieve it. The higher ranking brother happened to be inside at the time,
and when he realized what was going on rushed outside and ordered
his brother off his roof. White does not record what happened to the
lower ranking boy, but the incident was apparently regarded by the rest
of the tribe as such a serious desecration of the senior brother's tapu
(and for tapu read status) that for some years there was doubt as to
whether he could ever succeed to his father's position as ariki (White
1887-90:111, 53-4).8
Thus far in the discussion I have indicated that differences in personal
status are conceptualized in terms of the relative possession of tapu (or,
more accurately, in terms of the opposed notions of tapu and noa), and
that there is a metaphorical or analogical relationship between status
and height. I have also said that if a person of lower social status brings
himself (or herself) into direct physical contact or even symbolic associa-
tion with a person of higher status - for example by placing themselves
physically above such a person - the action represents an 'insult' to the
person of higher status and degrades their tapu. This metaphorical or
symbolic association between height and status is implicit, of course, in
the Maori myth of origin; for men, who as a category are tapu, are
descended from the Sky (i.e. the upper world), whereas women, who as
a category are devoid of tapu or profane, are descended from the Earth
(i.e. the lower world). The same symbolic association between height
and status also underlies the Maori belief that the upper part of the body,
and especially the head, is more tapu than the lower part (Beaglehole
1967:72, Elder 1932:244, Dieffenbach 1974:11, 104, Maning 1863:63,
Nicholas 1817:11, 119ft., Savage 1807:23, Yate 1970:87). There is a
whole range of other symbolic associations implicit in this myth which
we could also explore if space is permitted. For example, the term for the
tapu upper world from which men derive, Te Ao, literally means 'day'
or 'light' (Williams 1971:11, Tregear 1891:14) and also has connotations
of life and creativity. Te Po, the term for the lower world, on the other
hand, literally means 'night' or 'darkness' (Williams 1971:285, Tregear
1891:342, Salmond 1978:14-15, 21) and also has connotations of death,
for it is the place to which the souls of the dead go. Let me now extend
the argument, however, by considering a further and crucial opposition
8 For further illustrations of the metaphorical or analogical association between

height and status see Nicholas (1817:1, 248, 291, 339, 402; II, 93).
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listed in the figure above: viz., that between the raw and the cooked,
which, as we shall see, are metaphors for male and female respectivel
and also for sacred and profane.9
I have said that personal status is conceptualized in terms of the op
posed notions of tapu and noa (respectively sacred and profane). Thes
two categories not only apply to persons but to a whole range of oth
entities as well. In addition - and this is most important - the rules o
separation or keeping apart that apply to persons of different status ap
equally to relations between tapu and noa persons and things.10
The range of things that are either tapu or noa is determined in sever
ways, but primarily on the basis of which of the two sexes is habitual
associated with the things in question. In the category of noa or profa
things, those which stand out most prominently (at least symbolicall
are entities associated with a woman's domestic role as a cook and pre
parer of food. In fact, apart from woman herself, the most noa or profane
thing in the Maori environment was cooked food. (Raw or unprocesse
food items, on the other hand were not regarded as anything like
profane, but in certain contexts could actually be mildly tapu. Howeve
once an animal or other entity had been caught or collected for food a
brought into the domestic sphere, it and all instruments associated wi
catching and cooking it - for example, steam ovens, fish hooks and s
on - immediately fell into the noa or profane category of things.)
The belief that food and all things associated with its preparation we
profane (and thus potentially polluting and degrading of tapu) was ex
pressed in a variety of contexts relating to cooking and commensalit
Best, for instance, states that each large village had a sacred place
which tapu rituals were customarily performed (Johansen 1958:2
64-5). Such a place, he says, was often termed mua, 'meaning "the fron
before" . . . apparently as the antithesis of muri, "behind, the rear", wh
is often applied to a cooking shed, a place the very reverse of tapu' (Be
1925:1, 1076, see also 1924a: II, 72-3). Again, all dwelling houses w
tapu; eating, as a result, had to be done out of doors. As Best remark
'. . . all food was considered contaminating and a defilement to the t
of the dwelling' (Best 1927:142, see also Nicholas 1817:1, 176, 271f
356, 358, Elder 1932: 116f., 1934:87, Yate 1970:87). High ranking
men, moreover, being highly tapu, never went near cooking huts an
steam ovens or assisted with the cooking if they could help it (Manin
1863:140). All domestic cooking, in fact, was done by women and slav
(male and female). Raymond Firth observes:
Cooked food and all things connected therewith were the very ant
thesis of tapu and contact with them was sufficient to destroy t
tapu of any object, however sacred. Hence no man possessed of an
self-respect would engage in cooking, or collect firewood, nor, sin
the most tapu parts of his person were his head and back, would h
carry burdens of cooked food. Such work was left to slaves, who h
9 By 'raw' I mean 'poten tial' or 'unprocessed*. It is the distinction betwee

potential food items and those that have been transformed into food by collectin
cooking and/or eating that I wish to contrast here, rather than the opposit
between the raw and the cooked as such.
1(>Cf. Best's (1925:1, 1118) remark: The rule is that anything noa (common,
free of tapu) coming into contact with any tapu thing or person, pollutes such
tapu, and endangers the life of any person guilty of such act of pollution . . .'.
91
lost their tapu, and to women, who did not have any (Firth 1929:
168-9 cf. Shortland 1851:292, Vayda 1960:67-8).
In relation to male slaves Firth notes that capture, having reduced them
to the lowest rung on the status ladder, had stripped them of their tapu
and as a result 'cooked food and all its adjuncts had no destructive effect
upon [them]' (Firth 1929:202, see also Elder 1932:198).
In addition to refraining from cooking and avoiding the areas where
ovens were located men had to be extremely circumspect in their handling
of food. Thus they avoided all situations in which food might be located
physically above them. Elsdon Best cites the case of an old warrior who
came to stay with him at his camp and whom he directed to sleep in a
tent which happened to have a bag of flour hanging from its ridgepole.
'As he lay down he looked up and saw, with horror, the polluting food
suspended over his body, whereupon he fled to the tent of the writer and
there passed the night' (Best 1925:1, 1114, see also Donne 1927:75,
Cruise 1824:180, Dieffenbach 1974:11, 104, Savage 1807:23, Percy Smith
1910:14, 223, Yate 1970:87).
Although all men (excluding slaves) were to some extent intrinsically
tapu, the profane or noa nature of cooked food did not normally interfere
with the act of eating: most men were able to pick up food items and
place them in their mouths. However, the highest ranking men, such as
ariki, were so highly tapu that the act of eating itself became problematic.
The reason for this was that physically to touch food would have entailed
a defilement or pollution of their own tapu. This was particularly the case
when an ariki or other high ranking man was engaged in some exclusively
male activity (such as sweet potato planting or housebuilding) which
made him temporarily even more tapu than he normally was. Consider
the case of a high ranking ritual specialist or tohunga (priest) :
A tohunga under heavy tapu could not possibly go near a cooking
shed or any other place where food was cooked, nor yet partake of
a meal in his house. Nor could he touch his food with his hands.
In some cases he used a primitive kind of fork, merely a pointed
piece of stick, termed a tiirou, to convey the food to his mouth. A
person who was not tapu was not allowed to approach a person in
this condition. Food was carried from the precincts of the kitchen
by a noa or common, tapw-less person who placed it at a certain
spot and retired. A tapu person then approached, carried the food
to the priest and fed him in some cases. Some form of charm or
invocation was repeated when the priest partook of food ... It
sometimes occurred that a priest, when eating food offerings made
to the gods, had to gnaw at it on the ground, without touching it
with his hands. This would be when there was no person sufficiently
tapu, or of sufficiently high rank, to feed him (Best 1925:1, 1080-1,
see also Nicholas 1817:11, 173-6, Elder 1932:286, Travers 1906:
201-2, Maning 1863:124-7).
Best also notes that a highly tapu person normally ate away from women
and usually alone (cf. 1925:1, 1112).
I have said that contact between tapu and noa results in pollution of
the person of higher status. Yet, the precise consequences of such acts
depended very much on context. Broadly speaking, the greater the sym-
bolic distance between the persons or entities involved, the greater the
pollution and social disgrace to the tapu person, and the greater the
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danger, also, to the polluting agent (see, for instance, Maning 1863:
122-3). One of the most extreme forms of pollution and social disgrace
was slavery (Buck 1949:401f., Vayda 1960:107-9), for by being captured
and made a domestic servant a man was brought into daily contact with
food, with all the social and symbolic connotations that that entailed. But
there were other forms of pollution and social disgrace which were just
as extreme, or even more so. One involved insults, which I discuss below.
Another was cannibalism. But before examining the logic of insults and
cannibalism let me briefly recapitulate and comment on one other topic.
I have said that all contact between tapu and noa - that is the mixing
of categories that should be kept apart - resulted in pollution of tapu
and degradation of status. The majority of such acts of course would
be fairly minor and accidental (cf. Best 1924a:II, 227f.). Thus a low
ranking man might unwittingly sit in a spot normally occupied by a higher
ranking man. There were contexts, however, where noa (or profane)
persons or things were deliberately brought into association with tapu
persons or things for the express purpose of polluting or profaning that
tapu. One such context involved ta/?w-removal rites (J. Smith 1974).
To simplify a complex topic, all exclusively men's activities (such as
sweet potato planting, bird-snaring at the beginning of the fowling season,
and warfare) were tapu; before engaging in these activities, furthermore,
men had to be made more tapu than they ordinarily were, by ritual means,
to make them fit to undertake them. To fail to be made more tapu, Maori
believed, would offend or slight the gods who presided over the activities
and entail automatic supernatural punishment in the form of bad luck:
no birds would be snared, no fish would be caught, and so on. But
having been made more tapu than they normally were - and intensely
tapu at that - the men had to have the excess tapu removed when the
activity came to an end. Domestic life otherwise would have been in-
tolerably burdensome, for the men would have had to observe the same
stringent rules relating to eating and so forth which normally only an
ariki observed. At the end of all tapu male activities, therefore, the par-
ticipants underwent a tapw-removal rite, the most common term for which
was whakanoa, which literally means 'to make profane' or 'to make noa\
Tapu-Tzmovd\ rites varied somewhat in detail, but in essence they all
consisted of bringing women and cooked food (and occasionally only the
latter) into actual or symbolic contact with the men. The men were not
personally profaned by this, however, since the act was ritually regulated
and done only for the purpose of removing the excess tapu involved (cf.
Best 1924b:241-2, Tregear 1904:362-5).n
Tapw-removal rites represented one occasion (indeed the only occasion)
in Maori society when noa or profane entities were deliberately brought
into contact with tapu persons or things without such acts entailing pol-
11 The fact that warriors were tapu during a military expedition created special
problems in relation to the handling of food. Percy Smith notes that war canoes
were occasionally too tapu to carry food in any form, and that crews had to go
ashore regularly to cook and eat. The same writer indicates that non-tapu canoes,
paddled by women and slaves, commonly accompanied the war canoes on a military
expedition and carried their food supplies (Smith, S. P. 1910:73-4; see also pp. 101
and 112; Maning 1863:146). Thomson similarly observes that women and slaves ac-
companied 'tapued* warriors to battle to cook and carry food, and generally 'act as
a commisariat' (1859:125; Dieffenbach 1974:11, 125; cf. Vayda 1960:41-2, 67-9,
72-3). Elsdon Best (1902:49) notes that if warriors were required personally to
carry food they held it on their left or profane {noa) sides.
93
lution or loss of status for the persons involved. There were other oc-
casions, however, when profane or noa things were deliberately brought
into association with tapu, with the explicit intention of polluting or
degrading a person. Such acts, needless to say, were regarded as highly
provocative, and if they involved a high ranking member of another hapuu
or tribe frequently led to, or followed, war.
One form of deliberate pollution was a verbal insult. The logic of
Maori insults is highly interesting, for the most insulting or degrading
thing one man could say to another was to associate him with food. One
term for such insults was kai upoko, an expression which literally means
to eat or make food (kai) of a person's head (upoko) (cf. Salmond
1978:22). Donne lists three main types of insult. The first, called
kanga, involved associating a person with some item of food, or
asserting that you would use his head in connection with food - TU
cook in your head' for example. The second, called apiti, consisted of
referring to a person's head (or other part of his body) as being cooked -
'your cooked head'. The third, called tapatapa, involved naming some
food item or other profane object after a person (Donne 1927:88, cf.
Elder 1932:455, Thomson 1859:123, Travers 1906:18, White 1885:
150ff.).
Peter Buck states that insulting or degrading remarks did not have to
be made in the presence of the person to whom they were directed to
have dire consequences. Indeed, even a seemingly innocent remark could
be interpreted adversely if the person about whom it was made was of
high rank. He cites the case of the nineteenth century Ngati Mutungu
ariki named Kahukura. Kahukura was walking along a beach one day
when a man in a fishing canoe offshore (from a different tribe) caught
a gurnard. The chief was liberally daubed with red ochre - a traditional
insignia of rank - so the fisherman held up the gurnard, which is red
in colour, and said jocularly to one of his companions 'he looks like this
fish'. One of the other men in the canoe was related to Kahukura and
later that day informed the chief of the remark. 'The gurnard' Buck
writes, 'in spite of its chiefly colour is poor eating and about the least-
desired of all fish. To compare a high chief to food, and poor food at
that, was an insult and early next morning, the jester's village was attacked
and destroyed' (1949:387).
Another case of an insult which precipitated (or, in this instance,
escalated) an armed confrontation involved Te Morenga, a prominent
war chief in the Bay of Islands area in the early 1800s. In 1806 two of
Te Morenga's female relatives were abducted by the crew of the brig
Venus and eventually taken down the east coast where they were sold
as slaves. One was sold to a Turanga chief named Hukere. Some time
later Hukere quarrelled with a neighbouring chief, Te Waru, and the
latter, to slight the former, killed the woman and ate her. When Te
Morenga learned of the woman's fate he resolved to avenge the killing,
but was unable to do so, through the lack of a fighting force of sufficient
strength, for fourteen years. However, in 1820 he and 600 men set forth
in war canoes: 200 men from his own tribe, 200 from neighbouring
tribes in the Bay of Islands area, and 200 from Bream Head, the area
from which the girl had been abducted. He landed near Turanga on a
small island at the mouth of Mercury Bay. Te Waru soon came out to
ask what had brought him to the area. Te Morenga informed him that as
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he, Te Warn, had killed and eaten one of his relatives, he had come to
demand satisfaction and that he wished to know what he was disposed
to offer on that account. According to the account of this meeting that
Te Merenga gave Marsden (Elder 1932:265-7), Te Warn replied: 'If
that be the object of your expedition, the only satisfaction I will give will
be to kill, roast and eat you also'. This gross insult, Marsden records,
'raised the angry feelings of Te Merenga', who immediately instructed his
men to prepare to fight. The two sides met the following day, and in the
ensuing battle twenty of Te Waru's men were killed, including two very
high ranking rangatira. Te Morenga then informed his party that he was
satisfied and would not pursue the fleeing enemy. His allies, however,
were disgusted with what they regarded as his leniency and urged him on,
saying that if he was now satisfied with the deaths of the two rangatira
in revenge for the killing and eating of his relative, he should separately
avenge the insult. Te Morenga accordingly determined to renew the
attack and on the following day he and his forces killed between three
and four hundred of Te Waru's men; in addition, they took two hundred
and sixty men alive as slaves. Following the battle, Te Morenga told
Marsden, the victors spent three days on the battlefield gorging themselves
on the enemy dead (Elder 1932:265-7, cf. Percy Smith 1910:56-7, 89-
95, 154-63, Vayda 1960:88).12
This brings me finally to the specific topic of this paper. If insults in
traditional Maori society derived their effectiveness from symbolically
associating a person with food - the paradigm of a profane or noa
object or thing - cannibalism can be regarded as taking the logic of
verbal insults one step further. Instead of insulting a person by verbally
associating him with food, cannibalism derived its effectiveness as an in-
sulting and degrading form of behaviour by actually converting 2l person
into food. As Edward Shortland, a mid-nineteenth century ethnographer,
cryptically put it, 'The greatest injury one man could inflict on another
[was] to eat him . . .' (1851:292, cf. Thomson 1859:146, Salmond
1978:22).
This interpretation of the symbolism and 'purpose', if you like, of can-

nibalism is supported by observations of the ethnographers themselves.
For example, Peter Buck, who, like Firth, attributed cannibalism to a
shortage of animal protein in the diet, is well aware of the symbolic
significance of eating others:
After a battle, the victors used the slain for food ... In addition
to satisfying the primary urge of hunger, there was a psychological
reason involved. The eating of enemy chiefs reduced them to the
status of common food, and this stigma was inherited by succeeding
generations. In after years, the descendants of the eater could settle
an argument with the descendants of the eaten by saying, 'Who are
you? The flesh of your ancestor is still sticking between my teeth'.
I know of an instance in which an old man taunted another old
man, not only by words, but also by opening his mouth and pointing
suggestively to his teeth. The other old man promptly knocked him
down, knelt on his chest, and was opening a pocket knife with which
12 The so-called 'Girl's War', which resulted in great loss of life in the Bay of
Islands in 1830, was precipitated by a similar insult (Elder 1932:451-69, Percy
Smith 1910:423-36).
95
to cut his throat when peacemakers stopped further action (1949:

400-1, see also Travers 1906:206, 229, Vayda 1960:94).13
If the eating of another man was the greatest injury that could be done
to him, ¡the killing and eating of a high chief was all the more insulting
precisely because of the victim's rank. The victors, in fact, would be
converting the paradigm of a tapu or sacred entity (a high chief) into
the paradigm of a noa or profane entity (food). Indeed, it was precisely
for this reason, Shortland says, that when a high chief was slain in battle
especial care was taken to desecrate every part of his body. The bones
of an ariki, he says, were used for purposes 'revolting to the sentiments
of the New Zealander. The hands and fingers were converted into sconces
[i.e. hooks] to hold baskets of food, and the bones and arms into fish
hooks. The eyes were swallowed raw by the ariki of the [victorious side]'
(1854:214, see also Elder 1932:168). Edward Tregear in his later but
fuller discussion of the treatment of the corpse of a high chief makes the
same point:
If the deceased had been a great chief care was taken to degrade
every part of the skeleton. The thigh bones were made into flutes
or cut into sections that would be worked into rings (pooria) for the
legs of captive parrots. From other bones would be made pins
(aurei) for holding the dress-mats together, or needles for sewing
dog-skin mats. The skull might even be used as a water vessel for
carrying water in for wetting the [steam] ovens. But chiefs heads
were carried back to be erected on posts so that they might be
taunted, or fixed on the corner sticks of a loom to be mocked by
a woman as she sat weaving. In fact no method of showing con-
tempt, especially of defiling the remains of the defeated by associating
them with 'food', was spared (1904:359-60, cf. Percy Smith 1910:
113, Travers 1906:50-2, Vayda 1960:94-5).
If I am correct, then, in suggesting that the bodies of enemies were
eaten not because they were food, but in order to convert them into food,
we are in a position to understand a number of other practices that might
otherwise remain inexplicable.
One such practice is necrophagy (kai pirau). In addition to eating the
bodies of enemies slain in battle, one way in which an injury could be
avenged was by digging up a corpse belonging to the offender's group
and eating it. Stafford in his history of the Te Arawa tribe describes how
the Ngati Whakaue chief Manawa revenged the killing, by some Ngati
Raukawa tribesmen, of people who had been staying with him as guests.
Manawa went to a Ngati Rau burial ground and dug up the corpse of a
man who he knew had been recently buried there; he took the body
home, cooked and ate it. Afterwards, Stafford writes he made the bones
into 'utensils' (1967:139).14
To avenge an insult it was not even necessary to eat flesh as such:
simply to exhume a decomposed body and use the bones for profane
purposes was sufficient (Vayda 1960:44, 94-5). Marsden gives several
!3 Given that 'no man possessed of any self-respect' (Firth 1929:168) would
engage in cooking unless it was unavoidable, it would be interesting to know who
cooked the bodies of cannibal victims, for example, after a battle. Regrettably I
have been unable to find any detailed information on this topic.
14 See Percy Smith (1910:285, 348) and Travers (1906:136, 193) for further
examples of necrophagy practised against enemies.
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very good examples of grave robbing for this purpose (1932:157-62, 466,
see also Percy Smith 1910:163, Vayda 1960:117-18).
The fact that graves could be robbed and the contents profaned by
being eaten or made into domestic utensils was the reason why, tradition-
ally, every attempt was made to keep the burial sites of high ranking
persons secret (Beaglehole 1955:285, 1963:1, 458n.3, Elder 1932:466).
As Best notes, 'it was desirable to draw no attention to the place of
burial, lest it become known to enemies who might filch the bones where
from to fashion spear-points, fish-hooks, and flutes. This use of the bones
of enemies was a common [practice], and it was viewed as a dire calamity
and grievous insult' (1924b:236, see also Best 1914:110, 1924a:II, 55-6,
Dieffenbach 1974:11,44).
Finally, the fact that the bodies of victims slain in battle were eaten
to degrade them and insult their relatives explains one other practice:
the cremation of high ranking dead on the battlefield. When a high rank-
ing person fell in combat there was apparently always a desperate struggle
for the body: the opponents wanted it to eat, and the victim's relatives
wanted it to prevent it from being eaten. If the deceased's own side was
able to keep control of the corpse, they would either take it home or bury
it in some secret spot well behind the battle lines (Percy Smith 1910:126,
199, 299). But, if they were unsure of being able to prevent it from
falling into the hands of the enemy, they would cremate it on the battle-
field during a lull in the fighting (Best 1914:110-11). Stafford reports
that this happened to a Te Arawa ariki in the 1850s during a battle with
the neighbouring Tuhoe.15 Thus, although cremation on the battlefield
was not the customary form of burial - normally bodies were hidden
in caves or buried in or near the deceased's own village16 - the Maori
nevertheless would have agreed with Sir Thomas Browne's remark cited
at the beginning of this paper and which I now quote in full: 'To be
gnaw'd out of our graves, to have our sculs made drinking-bowls, and our
bones turned into pipes, to delight and sport our enemies, are tragicall
abominations, escaped in burning burials' (1967:109-10).
is See Elder (1932:377) and Percy Smith (1910:110) for further historical ex-
amples. Percy Smith (1910:113) also notes that a victorious side would occasion-
ally burn the bones of enemies they had killed and eaten to prevent the victim's
relatives subsequently collecting and formally burying them - and thus restoring
to some extent the dignity of the deceased, and his relatives - after hostilities had
been terminated.
i6 Traditionally the Maori practised a form of secondary burial. A corpse initially
would be interred, or placed on a platform, where it would be left to decompose;
some time later it would be exhumed, the bones cleaned and the remains reburied
in a secret cave or other resting place (see, for example, Best 1914; Cruise 1824:
123-4; Dieffenbach 1974:11, 62-5; Elder 1932:117, 158, 180, 263, 465, 477; Taylor
1870:215-28; Yate 1970:135-39; cf. Beaglehole 1963:11, 34 and note, 455). Slaves
were buried without ritual of any kind.
97
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Maori Cannibalism: An Interpretation

Oceania Publications, University of Sydney, Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to

PEOPLES OF AUSTRALIA, MELANESIA, MICRONESIA,

OCEANIA Vol. 55 No. 2 December, 1984

Maori Cannibalism: An Interpretation1

. . . to have our sculs made drinking-bowls

Cannibalism, man-eating or anthropophagy is a form of social behaviour

* La Trobe University, Melbourne.

1837 he came to know a number of the most famous warrior chiefs of

Various explanations or motives have been advanced for the practice

such as fighting ability or strength. To my knowledge, this motive did

In order to assess the relevance of this argument so far as the Maori

domesticable herbivores - principally pigs - and in areas where they

After this somewhat lengthy introduction I shall now outline an alter-

5 For historical and ethnographic evidence of Maori cannibalism, varying from

I propose to argue that much of what would be called 'institutionalized'

Structure of Maori symbolic values

More particularly, I argue that phenomena as apparentlv diverse as

First, to explain the part of my argument based on differences in

members (Metge 1976: chapter 1). Tribes were composed of a number

8 For further illustrations of the metaphorical or analogical association between

9 By 'raw' I mean 'poten tial' or 'unprocessed*. It is the distinction betwee

This interpretation of the symbolism and 'purpose', if you like, of can-

to cut his throat when peacemakers stopped further action (1949:

Arens, W. (1979a). The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophag

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1960). Zande Cannibalism. The Journal of the Royal

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