Post by Melanie on Apr 5, 2015 10:30:52 GMT
The Maori and the Huia
David C. Houston
Maori ancestors came from Polynesia and after reaching New Zealand developed
their cultural associations with their natural surroundings. An extinct bird, the
Huia, was especially revered. The distinctive black-and-white tail feathers were
prized and could only be worn by chiefs of distinction for special ceremonies or
when going into battle. Huia were remarkable in the extent of their bill dimorphism,
which was probably greater than that of any other bird species. As a
consequence, the male and female assisted each other in finding food and were
always found together. It is likely that Huia were revered by the Ma¯ori because
their foraging behaviour came to represent extreme fidelity, devotion and faithfulness.
The tail feathers were stored in specially constructed and intricately
carved boxes, and were passed from one generation to the next.
Introduction
The ancestors of the Maori people probably reached New Zealand from the
Cook Islands within the last 800 years (Howe, 2006). Once established they
developed a complex and close association with their natural surroundings,
and especially with the bird fauna. Birds were important as sources of food and
were also the basis for a great many legends and beliefs. Riley (2001) has given
a detailed account of the attitude and relationship of the Ma¯ ori to all the birds
of New Zealand. Some species were regarded as ‘tapu’, being sacred and
protected, especially the extinct Huia Heteralocha acutirostris, which is
described by Phillips (1963) as ‘sacred above all other denizens of the forest’
and the spirit of this bird protected the tapu of the whole forest (Riley, 2001).
The distinctive black-and-white tail feathers of Huia were especially prized as
hair decoration, and could only be worn by chiefs of distinction (see Plate 1)
and the Huia came to be highly esteemed by the Ma¯ ori.
The peopling of the Pacific is a remarkable aspect of human expansion
around the world. The navigation technology that allowed canoes to undertake
the epic ocean voyages only developed during the last few thousand years
(Howe, 2006). Pacific colonization all occurred from a single source, the
Lapita peoples of South-East Asia. They eventually would become established
on all the habitable islands of the Pacific, as far east as Easter Island, and also
travelled west across the Indian Ocean to people Madagascar. These journeys
were comparatively recent. Fiji and Samoa may have been reached by 2500 to
3000 years BP and, from there, the further islands of Hawai’i and Easter Island
were probably settled in the last 1000 years. New Zealand was the last sizeable
habitable land mass on the planet to be reached by humans.
The bird assembly that the Ma¯ ori found in New Zealand was unique. New
Zealand became isolated from Gondwanaland about 80 million years ago and
is the only large land mass in which evolution has proceeded in the absence of
any terrestrial mammals (Gibbs, 2006). Bird radiation proceeded to occupy
many unique niches, some of which would in other parts of the world be
expected to be taken by mammals, such as the nine species of Moas in the
endemic order Dinornithiformes, the endemic order of kiwis Apterygiformes
and the endemic family of wattlebirds, Callaeatidae – which is the group to
which the Huia belonged. The Huia was a medium-sized passerine bird, about
45cm long (see Plate 2). It had an orange wattle at the base of the bill, black
iridescent plumage, with a white band at the tip of the tail. Despite being
seemingly dull in colour, it was the tail feathers that were especially prized by
the Ma¯ ori as decoration, with single tail feathers worn in the hair, or the 12 tail
feathers kept together by severing the entire tail, which was called a marereko
(Philips, 1963). These were the emblem of a high chief, and were only worn in
the hair for special ceremonies or when going into battle (Riley, 2001). They
were highly valued and carefully stored and protected when not in use.
Although Ma¯ ori beliefs and traditions developed within New Zealand, they
retain many features common to all Pacific cultures. Among these is the association of the colour red as a symbol of rank and status (Kaeppler, 2008). The
reason for this is unclear; but red has obvious richness and vibrancy as a colour
and the association with blood (childbirth) and sunrise may also have been
significant. Whatever the origin, Ma¯ ori maintain this tradition and use red
paint or ochre widely on important buildings or carvings (Neich, 1996).
Feathers were also of important symbolism in themselves through their association
with birds as symbols of the link between the land of the living and spirits
of the air. Because of these varied associations, red feathers were considered
especially significant and, throughout Polynesia, were widely used in personal
adornment for people of status and rank. Perhaps their most spectacular use is
in the feather cloaks of Hawai’i, where brilliant red feathers from the extinct
and endangered species of Hawaiian Honeycreepers (Drepanididae) were
combined with yellow plumes from the extinct O’o Moho nobilis and Mamo
Drepanis pacifica to create striking colour patterns. It might have been
expected that when the Maori reached New Zealand they would have selected
from the native birds those with red feathers to use as their symbol of rank or
status. Several suitable species were available. The most brilliant red feathers
among New Zealand birds are to be found on the head of the Red-crowned
Parakeet Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae and the Yellow-crowned Parakeet
Cyanoramphus auriceps, and a duller red feathering is found on the underwing
coverts and other parts of two parrots, the Kaka Nestor meridionalis and Kea
Nestor nobilis. Kaka were, after the Pigeon Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae, the
bird that was most frequently caught by the Ma¯ ori for food (Riley, 2001), so
red feathers would have been freely available. Kaka feathers were used to a
limited extent on feather cloaks (Riley, 2001). Perhaps the reason that the
Ma¯ ori revered the comparatively dull black-and-white feathers of the Huia so
highly may lie in the behaviour of Huia.
Biology of the Huia
Huia became extinct in 1907. New Zealand has lost 58 (26 per cent) of the 223
bird species thought to have occurred there at the time of first human settlement
(Tennyson and Martinson, 2006), the causes being a familiar story of
habitat destruction, introduced predators and, in the case the Huia, possibly
exacerbated by excessive collecting (Wilson, 2004; Tennyson and Martinson,
2006). Several reviews of what is known about Huia have been published by
Phillips (1963), Moorhouse (1996), Tennyson and Martinson (2006) and other
earlier authors. Huia were remarkable in the extent of their bill dimorphism,
which was probably greater than that of any other bird species. The male’s bill
was stout and chisel-like, while the female’s was slender, with a downward
curve (see Plate 2). Moorhouse (1996) measured 30 Huia skins in New
Zealand museums and found a mean length of 62.3mm for males and 91.6mm
for females: I measured 23 skins in the collection of the Natural History
Museum at Tring (UK), using the same methods described by Moorhouse, and
these give very similar values, with mean bill lengths for the 15 males of
59.3mm (width 12mm) and for the eight females 90.2mm (width 9.5mm). As
Moorhouse (1996) points out, all such measurements from skins have some
potential error. In ten of the British Museum skins the sex is not identified on
the label, and even in those where it is stated it is not known whether sexing
was based on dissection or assumed from bill morphology. Bills of juvenile
females may have been similar to those of males, and so young birds may have
been assigned to the wrong sex. But, despite this, it seems clear that the female
bill was about 30 per cent longer than that of the male and also differed in
being considerably thinner as well as being markedly de-curved (see Plate 2).
Their bills were so dissimilar that Gould, the first ornithologist to describe the
bird, regarded them as belonging to separate species (Phillips, 1963). Jamieson
and Spencer (1996) and Frith (1997) pointed out that sexual bill dimorphism is
not unique to the Huia, but the Huia is remarkable both in the extent of this
bill dimorphism and because, in tarsus and wing length measurements, the size
differences between the sexes were otherwise modest. The significance of the
different bill shapes has been much debated (e.g. Moorhouse, 1996; Wilson,
2004); but most authors agree that the two sexes must have foraged in quite
different ways. Detailed observations on Huia feeding appear in the classic
work of Buller (1888), who observed birds in the wild and also kept a pair in
captivity in his house for about a year. They fed on the large grubs of woodboring
beetles, especially Huhu grubs Prionoplus reticularis, which grow to the
size of a man’s finger. Buller provided his captive birds with larvae-infested logs
and observed how the shorter bill of the male was used on the more decayed
timber, hammering it open like a woodpecker to reach the large grubs, while
the female’s long probing bill was used on the more resistant timber that had
then been exposed, probing into holes in the hard wood to seize the smaller
grubs that were out of reach of the male. Burton (1974) has shown that the
musculature of the jaw also differed between the sexes and allowed the male to
use the bill to prize open rotting wood in a way that would not have been
possible for the female. Once a Huhu or other insect grub had been extracted,
the bird then clipped off the hard head and jaws before tossing the grub into
the air so that it could be swallowed whole. The main disagreement in the
subsequent literature was over whether the male and female actually shared
any food items that they obtained, or just foraged together and both benefited
from the activities of the other (Wilson, 2004). Jamieson and Spencer (1996)
have pointed out that when other authors misinterpreted his writing to imply a
sharing of the food, Buller (1888) himself corrected this and stated that the pair
did not share their food once it had been obtained. There seems no doubt from
Buller’s observations that the pair foraged together and their extreme bill
dimorphism makes it likely that to forage optimally, both sexes needed to
cooperate. Such niche separation in feeding, in which the two sexes avoid
competition for the same prey items, is thought to be one of the main evolutionary
factors leading to bill dimorphism in birds (Selander, 1966). All
accounts suggest that in Huia, the sexes were always seen together in the forest,
in close proximity, not only when feeding but also when flying around the
forest. Buller (1888) reports that at night the male and female would perch
together, their bodies snuggled together in close contact. He records how the
pair would play with each other, were constantly active, and would regularly
meet to caress each other with their bills, uttering low twittering noises. When
his male captive bird died accidentally, the female ‘manifested the utmost
distress, pined for her mate, and died ten days afterwards’. Colenso, another
early writer on New Zealand natural history (cited in Phillips, 1963) also noted
that the birds kept together in pairs and that the male and female were greatly
attached to each other and that they, naturally and mutually, helped in their
search for food. It seems likely that Huia were revered by the Ma¯ ori because
their foraging behaviour came to represent extreme fidelity, devotion and faithfulness.
Maybe these features more than compensated for their apparently dull
colour and explains the high status with which the birds were revered.
Huia were hunted by the Ma¯ ori, under a quota system, for their tail feathers.
These were highly valued, and when not in use were carefully stored and
protected in specially carved wooden feather boxes. Huia feathers were passed
from one generation to the next and, because they were so carefully preserved
in these feather boxes, there were probably few birds originally killed for their
feathers. This was to change when Europeans developed a fashion for the
feathers, leading to overhunting that may have contributed to species extinction
(Phillips, 1963). Wood carving was integral to all Polynesian cultures, but
New Zealand had several natural advantages which led Ma¯ ori carving to
develop into the finest examples of this art form in Polynesia. First, New
Zealand had abundant forests, with trees that provided excellent timber,
especially totara Podocarpus totara and kauri Agathis australis. Wood from
these species was ideal for carving, being rich in colour and having a dense,
short grain that allowed and retained great detail in the carving (Neich, 2001).
Equally important, and uniquely among Pacific Islands, the south island of
New Zealand had supplies of jade (greenstone) from which fine woodcarving
chisels could be made. New Zealand, being derived from Gondwanaland, is
geologically complex and includes areas of dense metamorphic rocks. Most
other Pacific Islands are volcanic or uplifted coral atolls and lack hard rocks
suitable for making fine stone tools. Greenstone, although extremely hard, and
so difficult and time consuming to work, made chisels that were capable of a
similar level of complex woodcarving to modern steel tools (Neich, pers
comm). The feather boxes (see Plate 3), made to contain the tail feathers of
Huia, perhaps represent the finest examples of all Maori woodcarving (Neich,
1996, 2001). There were two basic shapes to these feather boxes. Wakahuias
were long and thin in shape, specifically to hold the single Huia tail feathers
(see Plate 1), from which the boxes get their name (waka signifies a long canoeshaped
box; huia the bird). The second form is a paphou, which is rectangular
in shape. The word hou denotes tail feathers and these boxes were probably
used for whole Huia tails and feathers from other birds, as well as greenstone
pendants and other precious items. The boxes were suspended by cords from
the roofs of houses, probably so that the feathers would be in dry, smoky air
that would help to preserve them from insect attack. As a consequence, often
the most detailed and complex carving was on the base of the boxes because
these were normally viewed from below. These boxes to hold Huia feathers are
supreme examples of Ma¯ ori art. They demonstrate the status that the Huia
received from the Ma¯ ori. And the choice of the Huia as a bird of such high
esteem may be one of many indications of the close observation and study that
lay behind the Maori view of their world.
Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to Dr Robert Prys-Jones and Dr Mark Adams for permission to
examine and measure the Huia skins in the Natural History Museum at Tring (UK), and
to Professor Roger Neich of Auckland War Memorial Museum for information on
Ma¯ ori carved feather boxes. Dr Ron Moorhouse kindly commented on the chapter, and
Gordon Maitland of the Auckland War Memorial Museum arranged permission to
reproduce the portrait of Te Aho-o-te Rangi Wharepu.
References
Buller, W. L (1888) History of the Birds of New Zealand, 2nd edition, London
Burton, P. J. K. (1974) ‘Anatomy of the head and neck in the Huia Heteralocha
acutirostris with comparative notes on other Callacidae’, Bulletin of the British
Museum Natural History (Zoology Series), vol 27, pp1–48
Frith, C. B. (1997) ‘Huia (Heteralocha acutirostris: Callaeidae)-like sexual bill dimorphism
in some birds of paradise (Paradisaeidae) and its significance’, Notornis, vol
44, pp177–184
Gibbs, G. (2006) Ghosts of Gondwana: The History of Life in New Zealand, Craig
Potton Publishing, Nelson
Howe, K. R. (2006) Vaka moana, Voyages of the Ancestors: The Discovery and
Settlement of the Pacific, David Bateman/Auckland Museum, Auckland, New
Zealand
Jamieson, I. G. and Spencer, I. G. (1996) ‘The bill and foraging behaviour of the Huia
(Heteralocha acutirostris); were they unique?’, Notornis, vol 43, pp14–18
Kaeppler, A. L. (2008) The Pacific Arts of Polynesia and Micronesia, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, UK
Moorhouse, R. J. (1996) ‘The extraordinary bill dimorphism of the Huia (Heteralocha
acutirostris): Sexual selection of intersexual competition?’, Notornis, vol 43,
pp19–34
Neich, R. (1996) ‘Woodcarving’, in Starzecka, D. C. (ed) Ma¯ ori Art and Culture, British
Museum Press, London
Neich, R. (2001) Carved Histories, Auckland University Press, New Zealand
Phillips, W. J. (1963) The Book of the Huia, Whitcombe and Tombs, Christchurch
Riley, M. (2001) Ma¯ ori Bird Lore, Viking Sevenseas, Paraparaumu, New Zealand
Selander, R. K. (1966) ‘Sexual dimorphism and differential niche utilisation in birds’,
Condor, vol 68, pp113–151
Tennyson, A. and Martinson, P. (2006) Extinct Birds of New Zealand, Te Papa Press,
Wellington, New Zealand
Wilson, K. (2004) Flight of the Huia: Ecology and Conservation of New Zealand’s
Frogs, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals, Canterbury University Press, Christchurch
Source: David C. Houston: The Maori and the Huia In: Ethnoornithology Birds, Indigenous Peoples, Culture and Society Edited by Sonia Tidemann and Andrew Gosler. Earthscan Ltd, Dunstan House, London 2010. ISBN 978-1-84407-783-0, p. 49-54
David C. Houston
Maori ancestors came from Polynesia and after reaching New Zealand developed
their cultural associations with their natural surroundings. An extinct bird, the
Huia, was especially revered. The distinctive black-and-white tail feathers were
prized and could only be worn by chiefs of distinction for special ceremonies or
when going into battle. Huia were remarkable in the extent of their bill dimorphism,
which was probably greater than that of any other bird species. As a
consequence, the male and female assisted each other in finding food and were
always found together. It is likely that Huia were revered by the Ma¯ori because
their foraging behaviour came to represent extreme fidelity, devotion and faithfulness.
The tail feathers were stored in specially constructed and intricately
carved boxes, and were passed from one generation to the next.
Introduction
The ancestors of the Maori people probably reached New Zealand from the
Cook Islands within the last 800 years (Howe, 2006). Once established they
developed a complex and close association with their natural surroundings,
and especially with the bird fauna. Birds were important as sources of food and
were also the basis for a great many legends and beliefs. Riley (2001) has given
a detailed account of the attitude and relationship of the Ma¯ ori to all the birds
of New Zealand. Some species were regarded as ‘tapu’, being sacred and
protected, especially the extinct Huia Heteralocha acutirostris, which is
described by Phillips (1963) as ‘sacred above all other denizens of the forest’
and the spirit of this bird protected the tapu of the whole forest (Riley, 2001).
The distinctive black-and-white tail feathers of Huia were especially prized as
hair decoration, and could only be worn by chiefs of distinction (see Plate 1)
and the Huia came to be highly esteemed by the Ma¯ ori.
The peopling of the Pacific is a remarkable aspect of human expansion
around the world. The navigation technology that allowed canoes to undertake
the epic ocean voyages only developed during the last few thousand years
(Howe, 2006). Pacific colonization all occurred from a single source, the
Lapita peoples of South-East Asia. They eventually would become established
on all the habitable islands of the Pacific, as far east as Easter Island, and also
travelled west across the Indian Ocean to people Madagascar. These journeys
were comparatively recent. Fiji and Samoa may have been reached by 2500 to
3000 years BP and, from there, the further islands of Hawai’i and Easter Island
were probably settled in the last 1000 years. New Zealand was the last sizeable
habitable land mass on the planet to be reached by humans.
The bird assembly that the Ma¯ ori found in New Zealand was unique. New
Zealand became isolated from Gondwanaland about 80 million years ago and
is the only large land mass in which evolution has proceeded in the absence of
any terrestrial mammals (Gibbs, 2006). Bird radiation proceeded to occupy
many unique niches, some of which would in other parts of the world be
expected to be taken by mammals, such as the nine species of Moas in the
endemic order Dinornithiformes, the endemic order of kiwis Apterygiformes
and the endemic family of wattlebirds, Callaeatidae – which is the group to
which the Huia belonged. The Huia was a medium-sized passerine bird, about
45cm long (see Plate 2). It had an orange wattle at the base of the bill, black
iridescent plumage, with a white band at the tip of the tail. Despite being
seemingly dull in colour, it was the tail feathers that were especially prized by
the Ma¯ ori as decoration, with single tail feathers worn in the hair, or the 12 tail
feathers kept together by severing the entire tail, which was called a marereko
(Philips, 1963). These were the emblem of a high chief, and were only worn in
the hair for special ceremonies or when going into battle (Riley, 2001). They
were highly valued and carefully stored and protected when not in use.
Although Ma¯ ori beliefs and traditions developed within New Zealand, they
retain many features common to all Pacific cultures. Among these is the association of the colour red as a symbol of rank and status (Kaeppler, 2008). The
reason for this is unclear; but red has obvious richness and vibrancy as a colour
and the association with blood (childbirth) and sunrise may also have been
significant. Whatever the origin, Ma¯ ori maintain this tradition and use red
paint or ochre widely on important buildings or carvings (Neich, 1996).
Feathers were also of important symbolism in themselves through their association
with birds as symbols of the link between the land of the living and spirits
of the air. Because of these varied associations, red feathers were considered
especially significant and, throughout Polynesia, were widely used in personal
adornment for people of status and rank. Perhaps their most spectacular use is
in the feather cloaks of Hawai’i, where brilliant red feathers from the extinct
and endangered species of Hawaiian Honeycreepers (Drepanididae) were
combined with yellow plumes from the extinct O’o Moho nobilis and Mamo
Drepanis pacifica to create striking colour patterns. It might have been
expected that when the Maori reached New Zealand they would have selected
from the native birds those with red feathers to use as their symbol of rank or
status. Several suitable species were available. The most brilliant red feathers
among New Zealand birds are to be found on the head of the Red-crowned
Parakeet Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae and the Yellow-crowned Parakeet
Cyanoramphus auriceps, and a duller red feathering is found on the underwing
coverts and other parts of two parrots, the Kaka Nestor meridionalis and Kea
Nestor nobilis. Kaka were, after the Pigeon Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae, the
bird that was most frequently caught by the Ma¯ ori for food (Riley, 2001), so
red feathers would have been freely available. Kaka feathers were used to a
limited extent on feather cloaks (Riley, 2001). Perhaps the reason that the
Ma¯ ori revered the comparatively dull black-and-white feathers of the Huia so
highly may lie in the behaviour of Huia.
Biology of the Huia
Huia became extinct in 1907. New Zealand has lost 58 (26 per cent) of the 223
bird species thought to have occurred there at the time of first human settlement
(Tennyson and Martinson, 2006), the causes being a familiar story of
habitat destruction, introduced predators and, in the case the Huia, possibly
exacerbated by excessive collecting (Wilson, 2004; Tennyson and Martinson,
2006). Several reviews of what is known about Huia have been published by
Phillips (1963), Moorhouse (1996), Tennyson and Martinson (2006) and other
earlier authors. Huia were remarkable in the extent of their bill dimorphism,
which was probably greater than that of any other bird species. The male’s bill
was stout and chisel-like, while the female’s was slender, with a downward
curve (see Plate 2). Moorhouse (1996) measured 30 Huia skins in New
Zealand museums and found a mean length of 62.3mm for males and 91.6mm
for females: I measured 23 skins in the collection of the Natural History
Museum at Tring (UK), using the same methods described by Moorhouse, and
these give very similar values, with mean bill lengths for the 15 males of
59.3mm (width 12mm) and for the eight females 90.2mm (width 9.5mm). As
Moorhouse (1996) points out, all such measurements from skins have some
potential error. In ten of the British Museum skins the sex is not identified on
the label, and even in those where it is stated it is not known whether sexing
was based on dissection or assumed from bill morphology. Bills of juvenile
females may have been similar to those of males, and so young birds may have
been assigned to the wrong sex. But, despite this, it seems clear that the female
bill was about 30 per cent longer than that of the male and also differed in
being considerably thinner as well as being markedly de-curved (see Plate 2).
Their bills were so dissimilar that Gould, the first ornithologist to describe the
bird, regarded them as belonging to separate species (Phillips, 1963). Jamieson
and Spencer (1996) and Frith (1997) pointed out that sexual bill dimorphism is
not unique to the Huia, but the Huia is remarkable both in the extent of this
bill dimorphism and because, in tarsus and wing length measurements, the size
differences between the sexes were otherwise modest. The significance of the
different bill shapes has been much debated (e.g. Moorhouse, 1996; Wilson,
2004); but most authors agree that the two sexes must have foraged in quite
different ways. Detailed observations on Huia feeding appear in the classic
work of Buller (1888), who observed birds in the wild and also kept a pair in
captivity in his house for about a year. They fed on the large grubs of woodboring
beetles, especially Huhu grubs Prionoplus reticularis, which grow to the
size of a man’s finger. Buller provided his captive birds with larvae-infested logs
and observed how the shorter bill of the male was used on the more decayed
timber, hammering it open like a woodpecker to reach the large grubs, while
the female’s long probing bill was used on the more resistant timber that had
then been exposed, probing into holes in the hard wood to seize the smaller
grubs that were out of reach of the male. Burton (1974) has shown that the
musculature of the jaw also differed between the sexes and allowed the male to
use the bill to prize open rotting wood in a way that would not have been
possible for the female. Once a Huhu or other insect grub had been extracted,
the bird then clipped off the hard head and jaws before tossing the grub into
the air so that it could be swallowed whole. The main disagreement in the
subsequent literature was over whether the male and female actually shared
any food items that they obtained, or just foraged together and both benefited
from the activities of the other (Wilson, 2004). Jamieson and Spencer (1996)
have pointed out that when other authors misinterpreted his writing to imply a
sharing of the food, Buller (1888) himself corrected this and stated that the pair
did not share their food once it had been obtained. There seems no doubt from
Buller’s observations that the pair foraged together and their extreme bill
dimorphism makes it likely that to forage optimally, both sexes needed to
cooperate. Such niche separation in feeding, in which the two sexes avoid
competition for the same prey items, is thought to be one of the main evolutionary
factors leading to bill dimorphism in birds (Selander, 1966). All
accounts suggest that in Huia, the sexes were always seen together in the forest,
in close proximity, not only when feeding but also when flying around the
forest. Buller (1888) reports that at night the male and female would perch
together, their bodies snuggled together in close contact. He records how the
pair would play with each other, were constantly active, and would regularly
meet to caress each other with their bills, uttering low twittering noises. When
his male captive bird died accidentally, the female ‘manifested the utmost
distress, pined for her mate, and died ten days afterwards’. Colenso, another
early writer on New Zealand natural history (cited in Phillips, 1963) also noted
that the birds kept together in pairs and that the male and female were greatly
attached to each other and that they, naturally and mutually, helped in their
search for food. It seems likely that Huia were revered by the Ma¯ ori because
their foraging behaviour came to represent extreme fidelity, devotion and faithfulness.
Maybe these features more than compensated for their apparently dull
colour and explains the high status with which the birds were revered.
Huia were hunted by the Ma¯ ori, under a quota system, for their tail feathers.
These were highly valued, and when not in use were carefully stored and
protected in specially carved wooden feather boxes. Huia feathers were passed
from one generation to the next and, because they were so carefully preserved
in these feather boxes, there were probably few birds originally killed for their
feathers. This was to change when Europeans developed a fashion for the
feathers, leading to overhunting that may have contributed to species extinction
(Phillips, 1963). Wood carving was integral to all Polynesian cultures, but
New Zealand had several natural advantages which led Ma¯ ori carving to
develop into the finest examples of this art form in Polynesia. First, New
Zealand had abundant forests, with trees that provided excellent timber,
especially totara Podocarpus totara and kauri Agathis australis. Wood from
these species was ideal for carving, being rich in colour and having a dense,
short grain that allowed and retained great detail in the carving (Neich, 2001).
Equally important, and uniquely among Pacific Islands, the south island of
New Zealand had supplies of jade (greenstone) from which fine woodcarving
chisels could be made. New Zealand, being derived from Gondwanaland, is
geologically complex and includes areas of dense metamorphic rocks. Most
other Pacific Islands are volcanic or uplifted coral atolls and lack hard rocks
suitable for making fine stone tools. Greenstone, although extremely hard, and
so difficult and time consuming to work, made chisels that were capable of a
similar level of complex woodcarving to modern steel tools (Neich, pers
comm). The feather boxes (see Plate 3), made to contain the tail feathers of
Huia, perhaps represent the finest examples of all Maori woodcarving (Neich,
1996, 2001). There were two basic shapes to these feather boxes. Wakahuias
were long and thin in shape, specifically to hold the single Huia tail feathers
(see Plate 1), from which the boxes get their name (waka signifies a long canoeshaped
box; huia the bird). The second form is a paphou, which is rectangular
in shape. The word hou denotes tail feathers and these boxes were probably
used for whole Huia tails and feathers from other birds, as well as greenstone
pendants and other precious items. The boxes were suspended by cords from
the roofs of houses, probably so that the feathers would be in dry, smoky air
that would help to preserve them from insect attack. As a consequence, often
the most detailed and complex carving was on the base of the boxes because
these were normally viewed from below. These boxes to hold Huia feathers are
supreme examples of Ma¯ ori art. They demonstrate the status that the Huia
received from the Ma¯ ori. And the choice of the Huia as a bird of such high
esteem may be one of many indications of the close observation and study that
lay behind the Maori view of their world.
Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to Dr Robert Prys-Jones and Dr Mark Adams for permission to
examine and measure the Huia skins in the Natural History Museum at Tring (UK), and
to Professor Roger Neich of Auckland War Memorial Museum for information on
Ma¯ ori carved feather boxes. Dr Ron Moorhouse kindly commented on the chapter, and
Gordon Maitland of the Auckland War Memorial Museum arranged permission to
reproduce the portrait of Te Aho-o-te Rangi Wharepu.
References
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Source: David C. Houston: The Maori and the Huia In: Ethnoornithology Birds, Indigenous Peoples, Culture and Society Edited by Sonia Tidemann and Andrew Gosler. Earthscan Ltd, Dunstan House, London 2010. ISBN 978-1-84407-783-0, p. 49-54