Maori Houses
"The Houses of these People are better calculated for a Cold than a Hot Climate; they are built low and in the form of an oblong square. The framing is…
From: Unknown To: 1908 C.E.
Location: New Zealand
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
Although Tasman discovered New Zealand he never landed there, and until Cook landed there a century and a quarter afterwards, the civilized world knew nothing of the inhabitants except that they had murdered some of Tasman's crew. Cook spent nearly a year about the group, but his report gives us little information about the housebuilding. What is known as Cook's First Voyage was edited by Dr. Hawkesworth from such material as he found in the journals of all the officers of the expedition. In this we read:
“Their houses are the most inartificially made of anything among them, being scarcely equal, except in size, to an English dog-kennel; they are seldom more than eighteen or twenty feet long, eight or ten broad, and five or six high, from the pole that runs from one end to the other and forms the ridge, to the ground; the framing is of wood, generally slender sticks, and both walls and roof consist of grass and hay, which, it must be confessed, is very tightly put together; and some are also lined with the bark of trees, so that in cold weather they must afford a very comfortable retreat.”
“The roof is sloping, like those of our barns, and the door is at one end, just high enough to admit a man, creeping upon his hands and knees: near the door is a square hole, which serves the double office of window and chimney, for the fire-place is at that end, nearly in the middle between the two sides: in some conspicuous part, and generally near the door, a plank is fixed, covered with carving after their manner; this they value as we do a picture, and in their estimation it is not an inferior ornament; the side walls and roof project about two feet beyond the walls at each end, so as to form a kind of porch, in which there are benches for the accommodation of the family.”
“That part of the floor which was allotted for the fire-place, is enclosed in a hollow square, by partitions either of wood or Stone, and in the middle of it the fire is kindled. The floor along the inside of the walls, is thickly covered with straw and upon this the family sleep. Some of the better sort, whose families are large, have three or four houses enclosed within a courtyard, the walls of which are constructed of poles and hay and are about ten or twelve feet high.”
“When we were on shore in the district called Tolaga, we saw the ruins, or rather the frame of a house, for it had never been finished, much superior in size to any that we saw elsewhere; it was. thirty feet in length, about fifteen in breadth, and twelve high; the sides of it were adorned with many carved planks, of a workmanship much superior to any other that we had met with in the country; but for what purpose it was built, or why it was deserted, we could never learn.” —Cook’s First Voyage, p. 437.
This carved house, we shall see presently, was one of the buildings that make the Maori architecture noteworthy, but in the meantime we may note what Cook himself says in his Journal (p. 223) which has only recently (in 1893) been published exactly as the great navigator wrote it:
“The Houses of these People are better calculated for a Cold than a Hot Climate; they are built low and in the form of an oblong square. The framing is of wood or small sticks, and the sides and Covering of thatch made of long Grass. The door is generally at one end, and no bigger than to admit of a man to Creep in and out; just within the door is the fireplace, and over the door, or on one side, is a small hole to let out the Smoke. These houses are twenty or thirty feet long, others not above half as long; this depends upon the largeness of the Family they are to contain, for I believe few Familys are without such a House as these, altho' they do not always live in them, especially in the summer season, when many of them live dispers'd up and down in little Temporary Hutts, that are not sufficient to shelter them from the weather.”—Cook’s First Voyage, p. 223.
This is the first group of those whose housebuilding we have glanced at, that extends beyond the Tropics and, in the southern part, into a decidedly cold climate. Snow-capped mountains with glaciers and extensive mountain lakes lower the temperature even in summer, and we should naturally expect a very different form of building from the veranda-like houses of Tahiti or Samoa.
While hurricanes do not visit New Zealand as they do Fiji, Samoa, and the southeastern Pacific generally, yet the prevailing winds are in places very severe, as at Invercargill, where trees hardly venture to grow above the shelter of stone walls, and even in the charming city of Wellington there are storms of wind and rain that make a tight house necessary for comfort. On the northern island where the climate passes into the subtropical, the houses of the aborigines are still well enclosed against the weather. In the King Country, on the Wanganui River, I have seen houses such as Cook describes, and others with more or less carved ornamentation. At Ohinemutu in the Hot Spring district are good examples of the carved houses.
All of the illustrations are of houses or parts of houses that I have seen, and many of the houses I have examined with some care. I will give one more description of the Maori house in modern time, and it will be seen that there is little difference from the pictures left us by the first discoverers, so far as the general plan is concerned. In the matter of decoration there has undoubtably crept in unmistakable traces of foreign influence, but this is of little importance if we know the fact.
The most modern as well as the most complete description of the dwellings of the Maori has been given by Mr. Augustus Hamilton, but to his admirable work I must refer those who wish to go more fully into the detail of the Maori house, as Mr. Hamilton's work is doubtless accessible in all good libraries. I shall, however, quote from Mr. Hamilton's work where there is need to explain or modify the account, much more brief, given by Rev. Richard Taylor which I have decided to quote in full:
“The European traveller who crawls into a native hut for the first time, will see nothing particularly interesting in it; he will perhaps, only view it as a dark smoky hovel; but when he becomes acquainted with native customs, and observes the order and arrangement displayed, the careful way it is constructed, and how perfectly the object aimed at is attained, he will not withhold its need of praise.”
The principal houses are called whare puni, or warm houses; this name may be given either from the number of persons generally residing in them, or from their being so built as to exclude the external air.
They are usually sunk one or two feet in the earth, and nearly always front the sun; the sides of one are seldom more than four feet high, being formed of large broad slabs of totara (Podocarpus totara), the most durable timber, having a small circular groove or opening cut into the top to receive the rafters.
These slabs are either adzed, and painted with red ochre, or, if it be a very superior house, each one is grotesquely carved to represent some ancestor of the family, in which case they become a kind of substitute for the nobleman's ancestral picture gallery.
Between these posts there is generally a space cf two feet, which is filled up with a kind of lattice-work, composed of slender laths, dyed black, white, or red, and bound together with narrow strips of the kiekie (Freycinetia banksii) leaf, very tastefully disposed in patterns; this is called arapake; there is also a skirting board (papa whai) painted red; and the rafters which are either carved or painted with different colored ochres, rest on a ridge pole (tahuhu or yahu), in which a notch is cut to receive them.
This ridge pole is always the entire length of the building, including that of the verandah, being generally of a triangular shape, and very heavy; it is supported by a post or pillar (pou tahu) in the middle of the house, the bottom of which is carved in the form of a human figure representing the founder of the family—and is thus a kind of lares; immediately before the face of this figure is the fire-place, a small pit formed by four slab stones sunk into the ground; perhaps this is some relic of ancient fire-worship in the position of the fire, which, as a domestic altar, always burns before the face of the image of their deified ancestor.
The entrance to the house is by sliding door (tatau), which is formed of a solid slab of wood, about two feet and a half high, and a foot and a half wide; the way of fastening it when the owners were absent, was by means of a stick, which passed through a loop in the door and crossed the side posts; it could of course be opened by any one, but was always regarded as tapu; they were also accustomed to secure their doors by complicated knots, when likely to be absent for any length of time.
On the right side of this is a window (matapihi), generally about ten inches high and two feet wide; this also is furnished with a slide which goes into the wall of the building; another window is placed in the roof, a kind of trap-door, termed a pihanga or puhanga, literally gills or lungs, a breathing place, more than an aperture for admitting light, which is not required in a whare-puni at night.
On entering, there is a low slab of wood on either side, to partition off the sleeping places, leaving a path down the middle, that nearest the door being about eighteen inches high, in which the inmates lay in rows, each with his feet towards the fire, and his head to the wall; the chief, or owner of the house, invariably takes the right side next the window, the place of honor ; the next in point of rank occupy those nearest to him, whilst the slaves, and persons of no consequence, go to the furthest end.
Their bedding (wariki), seldom consists of anything more than one or more ground mats (waikawa), upon which sometimes a finer one (tihenga pora) is laid, and a round log, or a bundle of fern serves as a pillow (urunga).
Formerly they never ate in their houses, therefore verandahs (mahau) were required. The length of a whare puni is from twenty to thirty feet, and the breadth sixteen; the verandah is seldom more than six feet in depth, being a continuation of the gable end of the house, having the entire width of the one building; it has a broad slab in front, about two feet and a half high, which separates it from the road; from this a post rises to the ridgepole which is surmounted with a caved figure. The verandah is ornamented in the same way as the interior of the house; its wall plate is often carved to represent the prostrate figures of slaves on whose bodies the pillars which support the house stand; this seems to refer to an extinct custom of killing human victims, and placing them in the holes made to receive the posts, that the house being founded in blood might stand; the custom still prevails in Borneo and other parts.
Over the door is a board called maihi (also pare or korupe), elaborately carved, and adorned with bunches of pigeon feathers; the facings of the door-posts and window are similarly ornamented; the building is covered externally with raupo (Typha augustifolia) or sedge, and roofed with the same, then with grass or a similar substance, to a considerable thickness; earth is generally heaped up against the sides, so as almost to reach the eaves.
At sunset, a fire is made in the house, which is allowed to burn clear for some time, and fill the little pit with embers, when it ceases to smoke the occupants enter; the door and window being closed, the heat soon becomes almost as great as that of an oven, and of such a stifling nature, from the fumes of the charcoal, that few Europeans can bear it, yet frequently twenty, thirty, or more natives will sleep in this place huddled together, and almost in a state of nudity; sometimes even they suffer, from thecharcoal being too powerful; this was formerly attributed to the visits of the patupaiarehe (fairies).”—Te Ika a Maui, p.500
To the description of Maori dwellings must be added some account of their pataka or storehouse, a small structure on which the carver used all his art and industry. Being comparatively portable these pataka of the old Maori have mostly been gathered, either as a whole or in part, into museums and no longer add to the picturesque value of a native village.
This small house, for it was merely a reduced model of the whare puni, was raised from the ground on one or more posts, and its general appearance may be understood by reference to Fig. 29, from a photograph of the beautiful specimen preserved in the Auckland Museum. When very small and raised high on a single post, the pataka resembled a bird-house and served as the depositary of a chief's bones which were in due time exhumed, cleaned and thus stored.
The gable end of a pataka which was perforated by the very small entrance was composed of five or seven thick planks usually of totara wood, on which were carved gods or deified ancestors of the owner, the figure over the door in the centre representing the chief ancestor, and the pantheon served to protect (under the tapu system) all treasures stored within, more than locks or human vigilance.
These planks were bound to smaller posts intervening by cords of native flax (Phormium). As in the case of many, if not most Maori carvings really old, these figures represented facts which in Anglo-Saxon civilization are deemed indecencies, often so gross that they are not pictured by the foreign artist: to the Maori they did not so appear, nor do I believe they were made, as were many of the sculptures and paintings revealed by the excavations at Pompeii, to pander to mere sensuality. That they were often caricatures of realities is true, and such examples amused rather than in any other way disturbed the Maori.
In many Maori carvings of human or superhuman heads the eyes are represented by nacreous shell (paua—Haliotis iris and H. stomatæformis) cut in ring form and attached by a projection of the dark wood which represents the pupil. Bunches of feathers are also often attached to the cords tying the structure together.
The principal carvings, to recapitulate, that distinguish a Maori Whare kopae are, within the house the poupou or heavy carved slabs serving as posts, of which Fig. 30 one from the Rununga whare or Council house of the pa at Maketu, supposed to have been carved in 1820, and now in the Bishop Museum, gives a fair idea. These were generally memorials of the ancestors, human or divine, of the builder and not infrequently show a great amount of patient work. Even to the present day there are Maori skilled in this work, and with the white man's chisel the work is much lightened.
The principal post, poutokomanawa, supporting the ridge-pole, was carved in the lower portion in a more realistic way, and I have seen an outstretched hand from one of these figures that might have been the work of a competent European sculptor.
Externally the sculpture was expended on the gable front of these houses, as may be seen in several of the illustrations given. Of these the amo of which a fine pair from Tarawera is shown in PI. XXII, supported the lower end of the maihi or bargeboards; the latter supporting at the peak a figure, usually a mask (koruru) , above which is the tekoteko.
As shown in the illustration (Fig. 25) these images were of varied form, often grotesque, but always possessing some attributed power of protection, and so strong was this that the tapu often withheld the hand of the victorious enemy who had killed the inmates from disturbing the house; if the owners were all dead no one would despoil it even for firewood.
Over the door was an elaborate carving called pare or korupe one of which is shown in PI. XXII. This rested on the whakawae or ngawaewae. The fancy of the Maori sculptor had free play on these lintels and they are among the most artistic Maori monuments in museums. Besides the one figured this Museum possesses another carved by the grandfather of Matangi, an old man in 1820. Thus dating from the time of Cook's visit, or perhaps earlier.
The ngawaewae were, in the old houses, very short; a fine pair in this Museum from Tetaheke, Lake Rotoiki, shown in PI. XXII, measures only thirty inches in height, but with the advent of foreigners the height of the doorway increased, and modern carved ngawaewae are made high enough to accommodate a tall foreigner; one of these is shown in Fig. 26.
In the modern work the old design, however, still appears, one figure upon another. The round bellies of the figures, the curious three-fingered hand, the fingers of one or the other hand inserted in the mouth, the mouth itself recalling the mouth of the Hawaiian idols, who also have the same oblique eye, all are repeated in most of the doorposts I have seen. A section of one of these ngawaewae is of L form, the figures occupying the short arm, while the longer one is decorated with Maori arabesques.
In the fine doorway shown in Fig. 33 the same figures are at either side of the door. The main figure over the door has so large a head that the remarkable device of two necks does not seem unreasonable. In the Fig. 34, the central slab of a fine pataka in the Bishop Museum, the interlaced strap pattern of the ground is good even for old Maori design. The main figure holds a patu in which is an English penny. The door has been fastened by an old English lock, of which the keyhole is seen on the right. While the human figures in Maori carving seem grotesque in the extreme, the mythical animals frequently found in sculptured decoration out-herod Herod.
The Maori was well able to treat his subject ad naturam, and if he distorted the actual models before him, he had his reason, and it was not lack of power; but when his subject was a taniwha he perhaps came as near the idea as the Greek in his Chimaera or Hydra. The figure given in illustration (Fig. 31) is a remarkably fine bit of old carving, in private hands in Auckland, when I saw it a few years ago. Other carved slabs were found with it buried in a swamp, and on all the carving was of the highest order, although in some places decayed. The designs were often remarkably obscene to the Anglo-Saxon sense, although proper enough to the Maori.
It may be repeated that the strange figures on the poupou or other parts of the Maori house represented ancestors, human or divine, of the owner of the house, and the faces bear the moko or carved face decoration which was distinct in each head, and cut on the living flesh much as the sculptor carved it on his block of wood. An old Maori could have told who the carved face portrayed from the pattern of the moko.
Brigham, William T. The Ancient Hawaiian House. Bishop Museum Press, 1908.
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