One would expect the chief form of Moari architecture to be
some sort of temple structure. The carved meeting house is a sacred place, but
its primary function is not to worship gods. Nor was Moari architecture
immediately “polluted” or “debased” by European contact, the larger structures
could not have been built without the social and economic changes which
Europeans effected. But that is not to say that their buildings are missionary
structures; they reflect, specifically, Moari cosmology and culture.
Originally the population was largely nomadic. Hawkesworth
mentions family groups of fifteen to twenty people, and Forster observes that
these groups would build and leave temporary huts where they travelled. However
these groups sometimes retreated into pas or fortified villages, which evolved
as the standard mode of settlement by the time of the initial European
influence from 1800 to 1850. The pas were strategically situated on a hill or
headland, and made use of palisades, ditches, earthworks and fighting
platforms. Although the houses would often be quite crowded on the artificial
terraces, the areas may be divided to retain the identity of individual groups.
With the cultivation of the sweet potato the pa became less and less a retreat
in times of trouble, and more permanently lived in. The largest of these
villages could accommodate thousands.
Unfortified settlements, called kainga, of five or six
houses, continued to be used occasionally in the nineteenth century. The family
unit generally consisted of one to four houses (whare) which were basically just
places to sleep. There would also be a cooking shelter (kauta) over an open
fire and earth oven (hangi), a rubbish dump, and possibly one or two roofed
storage pits (rua). Some of the whare would be three-sided shelters, but the
more permanent ones would be one room, door and window in the front wall, and a
stone lined hearth. In the colder parts of New Zealand the floor may be at a
sunken level. They were usually less than ten feet by six feet and built of
poles and thatch, with piles of bracken supporting plaited flax mats for
furniture. Each major settlement had a marae: an open space for formal assembly
and ceremonials, for entertaining visitors, and often for communal eating,
talking, working and recreation.
Remains of early structures are few and far between, mostly
door lintels. One of the earliest carvings to survive was found in a swamp near
Kaitaia. Its exact function is not known. Skinner thought it may have been part
of a mortuary structure. It was probably not a conventional lintel since it
appears to have been carved to be seen from more than one angle. The
composition is basically that of a lintel but the style is distinctive,
portraying a large head with legs and arms. This seems to suggest that it is
either Eastern Polynesian in origin or it is just much earlier than the classic
Moari door lintels. The more typical door lintels (pare) are composed either of
three frontal human figures (tiki) and six spirals or a single human figure
flanked by an interlocking profile form (manaia) or spirals with full manaia
figures at each end.
It has been suggested that the thinness of the manaia figure
may be the expression of a lizard, or bird monster cult, but there is no
evidence for this other than their initial impression on the Western eye. If
the manaia form is connected to its mirror image it forms a fuller face. After
all it is not surprising that the profile should be used. Most of the carving
is applied to a two-dimensional architectural element so the two views that are
most likely to be flattened out are the full frontal and the profile. The
central figure in the pare is often female and, if flanked by other figures,
they in turn are often male. In both cases, in early pare, their genitalia were
emphasised. With the arrival of Christian missionaries and their attitude to
explicit sexual forms the sex of the pare figures became more ambiguous. More
often than not a subsidiary human figure would be placed between the legs of
the main figure in the wall panel carvings.
The pare compositions are invariably symmetrical, and the
spirals serve to lead the eye from the central figure to the manaia and back
again. On the East Coast a maze of dismembered forms are sometimes used to
connect the tiki and manaia. In all the pare the tiki are carved in high
relief, the manaia in lower relief and the interlocking forms lower still, so
that the more objective the form is the greater the prominence it is given. The
pare were painted with red ochre mixed with shark oil.
The pataka, or storehouse, was where the community valuables
would be kept. Polack referred to the pataka as the powaka which is the same
word that was used for the family carved box. Sometimes the valuables, taonga,
would be huia feathers; it is not impossible that the pataka developed from the
powaka or waka huia. With increasingly settled communities, accompanied by the
economic and social impact of the first Europeans, groups became larger and the
symbolic expression of their unity in collective valuables similarly became larger.
The paepae, or threshold beams, are comparable to the pare in composition, but
here the manaia are turned inwards towards the central figure. The maihi,
bargeboards, often have a whale motif and a series of manaia who appear to be
dragging the whale towards the apex. This may be an expression of luck in
fishing and hunting, and of the fecundity of nature. The Kuwaha at the apex is
thought, with its large hands, to represent fertility and rewarded labour. Embracing
couples, which often adorn the amo, are more explicit symbols of sexual
fertility.
The kinship structure of the Moari is based on
identification with ancestral canoe tribes arriving on the island or from
internal migration. Moari architecture is built upon the social and religious
structure of the society and so is best seen in context. The whanau (family
unit) is much smaller than the iwi (canoe tribe). The whanau holds children and
property in common and is answerable to a group of whanau or hapu (sub-tribe).
There are three classes of people in the society: the chiefly Rangatira, the
common people (the tutua) and slaves captured in war and used for the most
menial tasks (taurekereka). Most couples were monogamous but chiefs (males) were
polygamous. Occasionally a chiefly woman would also have more than one husband.
Couples were usually endogamous, ie. marrying within the tribe, and the wife
would typically go to live in the husband’s house.
With the influx of European weapons the pa became obsolete.
Other changes included the common potato largely displacing the sweet potato
and, more importantly for carving, steel tools replaced the stone adze and
chisel. The craftsmen were called tohungas, or skilled persons, and usually
came from the Rangatira class, as were the warriors. Woodcarving was regarded
as a sacred occupation which could influence the gods and the spirits. It was
part of the communal insurance of tribal welfare. The apprenticeship for
tohunga was long, and conducted in the whare wananga (schools). The students
would meet masters during the winter months, working from sunrise to noon.
A high ranking person and his family often used to live in
whare puni. Among the Tuhoe it was an unembellished structure with no interior
carving, plain posts, but sometimes a few carved exterior panels. The whare
whakairo, or carved meeting house, may have superseded the whare puni and taken
on extra functions. With a settled life, larger social groupings, and more
capable tools, the second half of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of
the whare whakairos. They required co-operation on a large scale – to fell, dress
and transport timber, paint rafters, prepare decorative panels, thatch the roof
and so on. Quantities of food and prestige items had to be accumulated to pay
the workers as building was not regarded as a menial task. On the contrary a
chief would pride himself on how much he could give. Meanness would not only
entail loss of prestige but would jeopardise the quality of the work. Economic
sacrifice was essential for the gaining of mana, fame, power and prestige.
Another key concept for Moari architecture, and related to
mana, is tapu, meaning sacred. The creation of canoe paddles or domestic bowls
could be done openly but for more serious and sacred work, such as a carved
house, certain rituals had to be observed. Both the carvers and the carving
were subject to tapu – the origin of our word taboo. The carvers, for instance,
were not allowed to prepare food, especially cooking. To do so would destroy
the mana of the thing they were creating and that behaviour was regarded as
tapu. The cooked food would become something noa (non-sacred or profane). Food
cannot be taken into the house of a superior, for example, and eating would more
normally take place in the open air or in special huts segregated according to
class and sex.
Similarly space inside the whare whakairo is divided into
tapu and noa areas, usually longitudinally, to allow for different functions.
Hamilton describes a house where a guests would sit on the right side and
slaves on the left by the door. There also seems to be sexual divisions, for example
in work on the house. The males carve the pou, which are representative of ancestors
and are curvilinear, use hard materials and are mostly painted red. The females
weave the tukutuku panels, which are decorative and rectilinear, naturally in
soft materials and are typically coloured alternating yellow, black and white.
As the pou and tukutuku panels alternate with each other along all four walls this
is clearly not used as the basis of sexual division of space for use within the
building as this would be impractical. A more likely hypothesis for allocating
space conceptually might be found in thinking of the house as a prostrate
ancestral body. The ridgepole represents the spine, the rafters as the ribs and
the barge boards (maihi) would then be seen as the arms with the raparapa as
fingers.
According to Best, in Moari thought, ‘the right side of the
body is the male side, the tama tane, the strong and lucky side. It stands for
vigour, health, virility, life. The left side is the female side, the tama
wahine, the weak, listless, unlucky side and represents death…’
This corresponds in part with the division of space in the
whare whakairo observed by Anne Salmond. The side with the window is tapu, it
is the important side; associated with men, visitors and death. The side with
the door is noa, is regarded by male society as unimportant and is associated
with women, locals and ordinary life. Accordingly, if a local man, even if he
is a chief, sleeps in the place then he would sleep in the kopa iti, in the the
corner by the door, because it is te pakitara whaniti or the unimportant side. A
visiting chief would be honoured by sleeping in the iho nui, in the corner by
the window which is te pakitara whaanui, the important side.
Death, according to Salmond, is associated with male characteristics
and a funeral coffin would be placed in te pakitara whaanui. In contrast Best
describes the vagina as representing destructive energy and cites the goddess
Hine-nui-te-po who brought death into the world. This leads to a slightly
schizophrenic approach to death as its female agent is the one who takes away
and gives back life. In this sense the female side can never be totally tapu as
the funeral rites are too important and sacred. Yet tapu can be associated with
some female activities such as menstrual blood. Moari religion, as other
religions, is riddled with ambiguities and paradoxes. Perhaps it would be unrealistic
to expect otherwise.
There is also a certain amount of confusion as to where the
vantage point is for saying which is the right side and the left side of the
building. You could view it looking back to the door from the inside, on the outside looking in from the door or
either facing the other way. If, as Salmond suggests, the concepts of tapu and
noa are older than the image of the building representing the ancestral body then
not only does the vantage point become less clear but also the anthropomorphic
elements are seen as later additions to the original spiritual conception of
its internal space. Salmond offers no evidence other than ‘I have heard it
said’, and, on this basis, attempts to explain the contradictions as recent
invention. In fact it is just as likely that contradictions indicate original,
if independent, sources, and that a recent invention concerning the use of
space, in order to be credible, would have to fit the rest of Moari cosmology
more tightly than it does.
It may be established that the sexual division of
traditional Moari society is not merely a case of stereotypical tasks with men
hunting, fishing, building and fighting while the women weave, cook and gather
food and fuel. There exists a symbolic and ritual differentiation. The presence
of women during carving would violate its mana and was a serious offence. But
there were many rituals which had developed to alleviate such violations, in
fact ‘profane’ women were essential in order to bring the process of tapu into
operation. When a building is completed a woman has to step over the threshold before
the building can be used. Also, it must be remembered, most door lintels have a
central female figure with exaggerated genitalia, sometimes in the act of
giving birth, so that anybody entering or leaving the house is discharged of
harmful spirits on entry and good spirits contained on exit.
The whare whakairo acts as a sort of power station of
benevolent ancestors as well as a visual record of the tribe’s mythology. It is
easiest to illustrate the latter by example. Te Mana o Turanga is in the Whakato
at Manutuke, near Gisborne. It was completed in 1883 but includes carvings from
the mid-nineteenth century. The carving on the back wall is of Ruawharo who
states his claim to the mana of Turanga. Underneath him is the effigy of Kiwa,
a rival, thus representing Ruawharo’s claim to the mana at the expense of Kiwa.
In one hand Ruawharo holds a circlet of greenery which is an esoteric symbol of
mauri tangata (power over men), mauri whenua (dominion over wide areas of land)
and mauri korero (mastery of the aural traditions). An important function of
the whare whakairo is the sponsor’s prestige.
But the building also honours the whole of the Rongowhakaata
tribe and Moari tradition in general. The freestanding figure at the apex of
the gable (tekoteko) represents Timata from whom are descended most of the
chiefs’ families of Whakato. The figure also stands on a head (koruru)
representing Rongowhakaata, ancestor of the tribe. On the more general level
are the primordial ancestors Papatuanuku and Ranginui (the earth mother and sky
father). This panel shows the story of creation, which Panaterangi caused by
forcing Papatuanuku and Ranginui apart.
As well as mythological figures there are semi-mythological
figures like the culture hero Maui. Several panels show his exploits to help
mankind, including the one in which he perished by attempting to kill the
goddess of death Hinenuitepo by entering her body via the womb. Several of the
stories about historical ancestors are improbably embellished, such as the
story of Pouranguhua who flew on the great bird of Ruakapanga. But this is not
necessarily the result of excessive reverence, some stories involve the amusing
humiliation of an ancestor. One of the panels shows Ruawharo and Tupai who, on
their travels made love to Timu’s wife, Kapua, and, as punishment, suffered the
fate of a powerful laxative. Other panels represent living people; one is Ihu
who, for his persistent interference in finding out how the work is going, is
portrayed with a huge nose.
Another is a pakeha, Agnew Brown, with his dog. The portrait
of Agnew Brown, and some of the ancestors, is done in a naturalistic style which
contrasts with the classic Moari adaptation of the human form to fit the panel.
The latter is symmetrical, has a figure of eight mouth with prominent tongue,
eyes slanted upwards to the outside. The hands are placed on the abdomen, the
short legs bent outwards, spiral forms on the knees and shoulders, and tatoos
on the disproportionately large head. The self-portrait of the master carver
Raharuhi Rukupo is in the latter style apart from the head, since a portrait is
intended.
Moari architecture is an aesthetic and visual phenomenon but
is seen to best advantage as a logical system of thought embracing all aspects
of life. Even if the the logic sometimes appears a little tortuous. The whare
whakairo, in particular, is designed to serve social functions; not the least
of which is to symbolically express that society. It demonstrates chiefly power
and prestige, as well as being a communal effort. Both the building and its
creation are linked with the polarity of tapu and noa in Moari thought, with
sexual roles, and, to a lesser extent, class roles. Death, too, in the
commemoration and continuation of genealogy, and in the utilisation and
placation of spirits, is important. The whare whakairo is a consummation of cosmology,
social structure and visually recorded heritage – the shapes of the parts are
more easily understood with the whole in view.
Bibliography
Te Mana o Turanga – Leo Fowler
Te Ao Tawhito: A Semantic Approach to the Traditional Moari
Cosmos – Anne Salmond
Aspects of Symbolism and Composition in Moari Art – Michael Jackson
Art and Life in Polynesia – Terence Barrow
The Great Carved House, Mataatua of Whakatane – WJ Phillips
and Dr. JC Wadmore
The Moaris before 1800 - ?
The Origins of Moari Art: Polynesian or Chinese? – SM Mead
The Sculpture of Polynesia – Allen Wardwell
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