The Maori Village
One of the fundamental bases on which any society is organized is that of locality, since certain spatial relations are inherent in the very nature of every group, whether settled…
From: Unknown To: 1929 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 It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Maori by Raymond Firth, 1929.
The Maori Village (Kainga)
One of the fundamental bases on which any society is organized is that of locality, since certain spatial relations are inherent in the very nature of every group, whether settled or migratory. And the great importance of association in a common locality is that it represents not merely a physical fact, but also leads to the formation of a whole body of psychological bonds, due to the common interests of the members and their contact in everyday life. Among the Maori the local group, patent to the eye of every observer, is the village.
The natives of former time lived in village communities, the nature and size of which were largely determined by the physiographic features of the particular district which they happened to occupy. In the rugged gorges of the Urewera mountains, with a food supply drawn from the forest, the population was naturally scanty and the villages were fairly small and scattered. But on the fertile hills of the Tamaki isthmus, where climate and soil allowed of extensive cultivations and the sea was near, the population was great and the villages correspondingly large. The presence of a score or more deserted hill-slopes, each extensively terraced for village sites, within a radius of a few miles, bears witness to the thousands of people who formerly dwelt on this stretch of land. Their disappearance at an early date in the history of the European occupation, however, renders it impossible to give even an approximate estimate of their numbers.
In olden days, when war and its alarms were of frequent occurrence, many villages were in fortified positions, or were constructed on spots which admitted of easy defence. A hill-top, a rocky headland, a bend in a river, the edge of a steep cliff, a spur joined by a narrow saddle to the main range—all were typical sites for a village. When the natural position was lacking, or needed reinforcement, huge earthworks in the form of ditches, ramparts, scarps, or terraces were constructed, and topped with palisades.
These are important from the economic point of view, as the labour of construction was immense. Such a defended position was termed a pa, while an unprotected village—the only type now inhabited—was called kainga. The latter were common in former times, too, but the people who occupied one generally contrived to have a pa near at hand, to which they could flee in time of danger.
For the purposes of our present inquiry the external defences are of less importance than the internal structure of the settlement. In this both pa and kainga exhibited the same essential features, although the fortifications of the former were of necessity so laid out as to conform to the exigencies of the site, and no consistent shape of settlement was in vogue. In regard to social life and institutions, apart from war, one may speak equally well of either.
The village was composed of a number of rectangular dwelling-huts, about 10 by 12 feet in ground plan, some larger, some smaller, built either of poles and thatch, or if of better workmanship, in the wharepuni style, with worked timbers, an excavated floor, and earth heaped up around the sides. This, together with a lining of reeds or tree-fern stems, ensured great warmth within the dwelling, though the small door and window did not admit of much ventilation.
Besides the ordinary dwelling-huts there were in every well-appointed village one or more houses of superior style, large, roomy, and carefully built, ornamented by artistic reed-work and much wood-carving. The purpose and social value of such buildings will be described later.
The food of the village was kept some in underground pits, as for root-crops, some on elevated stages, some in storehouses perched on posts to keep off damp and thieving rats. In the latter type, which were not used for ordinary crops, tools, cordage, and other gear might also be kept.
In one village entered by Crozet in the north there were three buildings on the central space between the two rows of houses, the one nearest to the gateway being the storehouse for tools and spare weapons, the next the store for food—kumara, dried shell-fish, fern-root—and calabashes of water, while the third was the place of storage for nets, fishing gear, cordage, and paddles. At the end of the village were open stagings on which provisions were dried. The cooking sheds were flimsy structures, very open and sometimes having walls of stacked firewood. In fine weather the ovens were usually prepared out of doors. At Waitahanui pa, however, in the quarters of Te Heuheu there was a row of cooking houses 40 feet long by 15 feet broad, with walls 10 feet high, which were constructed of enormous wooden slabs well fitted together. This seems to have been an uncommon usage.
In temporary camps the huts were more slightly built, of poles and thatch, or even of boughs. In 1923, the writer noticed one of sapling framework and raupo walls standing in the bush near the beach of Tutukaka harbour. Sheds of flimsy construction, too, were built as shelters by travellers.
The disposition of houses in a village did not follow any fixed plan. They were all ranged more or less round the central place the marae or village square, while the chief's dwelling and superior houses often occupied the upper end, that is, the one farthest from the entrance gateway. Apart from this the huts were placed fairly indiscriminately, with communication ways between them.
In large villages, fences divided the dwellings into groups as remarked upon by Cook, each occupied by a different section of the inhabitants—usually by a body of kinsmen.
Every village also had its proper sanitary arrangements, in the form of a common latrine near the edge of a cliff or in some retired spot on the outskirts. Cleanliness in such matters was carefully attended to in olden days, as early voyagers have noted. Cook, in fact, contrasted the Maori village favourably with the towns of Southern Europe in this respect. The turuma or beam of the latrine played an important part in certain magical and religious ceremonies.
In another secluded part of the village was the tuahu, the sacred place, the altar often marked by a staff or a rough stone set up in the ground, at which the priest performed his magic rites.
The native village of today still retains certain of the features, notably the marae, or public square, and the whare runanga, the meeting-house of fine workmanship, often embellished with carving. The diagram in Fig. I gives a rough plan of a modern village which the writer visited in January, 1924, that of Ohaua-te-rangi in the Urewera country, situated on level ground above the right bank of the Whakatane River some ten miles below the Ruatahuna valley. Reference to the plan shows the features of a typical small village, the disposition of the dwellings roughly around an open space, a meeting-house (A) of better construction than the rest, cooking sheds, store pits, and a storehouse on posts. The plan should be compared with the photograph in Plate V which indicates the relative size of the village and the nature of its surroundings. It shows also the European type of dwelling now in use among these natives. It may be mentioned in passing that no one has apparently thought it necessary to record such a plan of an old-time village, which would have been of much greater interest.
Firth, Raymond. Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Maori. George Routledge & Sons, 1929.
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