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As to their manner of disposing of their dead, we could form no certain opinion of it, for the accounts that we received by no means agreed. In the northern parts, they told us that they buried them in the ground; and in the southern, that they threw them into the sea: it is however certain that we saw no grave in the country, and that they affected to conceal every thing relating to their dead with a kind of mysterious secrecy. But whatever may be the sepulchre, the living are themselves the monuments; for we saw scarcely a single person of either sex whose body was not marked by the scars of wounds which they had inflicted upon themselves as a testimony of their regret for the loss of a relation or friend: some of these wounds we saw in a state so recent that the blood was scarcely staunched, which shows that death had been among them while we were upon the coast; and makes it more extraordinary that no funeral ceremony should have fallen under our notice: some of the scars were very large and deep, and in many instances had greatly disfigured the face. One monument indeed we observed of another kind, the cross that was set up near Queen Charlotte’s Sound.
Having now given the best account in my power of the customs and opinions of the inhabitants of New Zealand, with their boats, nets, furniture, and dress, I shall only remark, that the similitude between these particulars here and in the South Sea islands is a very strong proof that the inhabitants have the same origin; and that the common ancestors of both, were natives of the same country. They have both a tradition that their ancestors, at a very remote period of time, came from another country; and, according to the tradition of both, that the name of that country was HEAWIJE; but the similitude of the language seems to put the matter altogether out of doubt. I have already observed, that Tupia, when he accosted the people here in the language of his own country, was perfectly understood; and I shall give a specimen of the similitude by a list of words in both languages, according to the dialect of the northern and southern islands of which New Zealand consists, by which it will appear that the language of Otaheite does not differ more from that of New Zealand, than the language of the two islands from each other.
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© Derived from Vols. II-III of the London 1773 edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, pages 473 - 474, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv23/473.html