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BOOMERANG FOUND AT MURIWAI BEACH,

AUCKLAND.

BY H. HAMILTON, DOMINION MUSEUM.

N the 29th of November, 1925, Mr. A. W. B. Powell, of Auckland, was searching among the Maori kitchen middens at Muriwai Beach on the West Coast and came across an undoubted boomerang in a recently exposed midden. There can be no question that the weapon had been buried for some considerable time and had not been recently deposited. Mr. Powell has since donated the boomerang to the Auckland Institute Museum, and I have to thank Mr. Gilbert Archey, the curator, for the opportunity of describing the find.

As far as our knowledge goes, the Maori of history never knew of the boomerang or its use, and, therefore, the finding of such a weapon in a Maori kitchen midden is worthy of introspective investigation.

Before proceeding further, the following is a detailed description of the boomerang found:-The shape is similar to a common type found in South-east Queensland-a local form known as "Berran." This museum possesses a specimen very similar in shape and size to the Muriwai one, and is illustrated as B in the accompanying plate in comparison with A from Muriwai.

In size the Muriwai boomerang is 18 inches between verticals and 20 inches along the curved axis, also being 1 inches wide and 3-10 of-an-inch thick. One face has been weathered by sand action and exposure, but the other shows a fine scraped finish. The wood, no doubt much altered by exposure and weathering, is light and comparatively soft. At first glance the graining suggests kauri as the component timber but botanical opinion suggests tawhero, a common northern timber tree. Whatever the wood is it is certainly not a hardwood such as Eucalyptus. The Muriwai boomerang weighs 23 ozs. and that from Queensland 4 ozs.

We can now consider the question as to how the weapon came to be located on Muriwai Beach associated with Maori kitchen midden refuse.

Early traders from Australia visiting New Zealand in search of flax and other cargoes would no doubt bring curios from other lands with them. Sailors generally are great collectors of trophies and souvenirs, and would bring boomerangs as a matter of course.

The aboriginal Maori would be highly interested in a sailor's version of a weapon that when thrown away, came back to the thrower. The curious New Zealander, if he could not obtain an original boomerang from the traders, would fashion one for himself, having seen and handled the real article. Then he would go to the sandhills where room to try out the new weapon could be found and practise until tired of the sport. Most probably the weapon would be discarded after a few ineffectual efforts.

It may also be suggested that the boomerang drifted across from the Australian coast, but nearly all Australian boomerangs being made of dense, non-floating wood, this possibility is to be discounted. As an alternative some white person may have taken the boomerang out to Muriwai to practice with and eventually lost the weapon in the sandhills.

It will be seen that there are many ways of accounting for the presence of such an article in such a position. As an example of how cautious one has to be before definitely basing any conclusion on circumstantial evidence, I think the finding of this boomerang should be placed on record. Even though the wood could be positively identified as being of New Zealand timber and though the weapon was made by a Maori, it does not follow that the Maori, as a race, knew of the boomerang and its peculiarities.

IN

THE ORACLE-HOUSE IN POLYNESIA.*

BY E. S. CRAIGHILL HANDY,

BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM, HONOLULU.

I.

N fundamentals the old Maori worship in New Zealand resembled closely that in the Cook, Society, Marquesas, and Hawaiian Islands. In various of the details of ritualistic practice there are parallels, so close and so numerous as to prove beyond question that in practice as well as in theory the typical Maori worship stands as a clear-cut exemplification of the ancient Polynesian. And yet there are certain ways in which the old religion in New Zealand contrasts sharply with that of these other islands, one of the most striking of which is the absence of formal structures and arrangements associated with places of worship such as were characteristic of the temple-building region of eastern, central, and northern Polynesia. Vestiges of some features typical of the temple precincts of the northern groups appear in New Zealand-as, for example, the rude elevated platform, or stage (whata) on which offerings were placed when presented at the wahi tapu-indicating perhaps that the more formal elements had been lost through disuse. It is possible, on the other hand, that the Maori's ancestors never, after their arrival in Polynesia at least, worshipped in formal temples, and that the custom of building such temples came in fairly recent time in eastern-central and northern Polynesia, either as a result of local origination, or brought by immigrants, or borrowed from some region in which formal temples were built.

One of the most interesting of the ceremonial structures belonging to the temple precincts in both the Marquesas and Hawaii was the oracle-house. Now since in innumerable features New Zealand falls in line with the Marquesas and Hawaii in preserving traits typical of the older stratum of Polynesian culture, it is interesting to inquire whether there is any vestige of the oracle-tower known to have been

* Read before the Anthropology Section, New Zealand Science Congress, Dunedin, January-February, 1926.

associated with the old wahi tapu. Certain evidence which will be presented in a moment seems to indicate that the little god-houses or shrines in the form of a miniature pataka on the top of a pole represented the local variation in New Zealand of that which became or remained a fullsized oracle-house in Hawaii and the Marquesas. But the miniature shrine must have been at best a far cry from the original prototype of the oracle-house. If there is any evidence of Maori use or even memory of such structures as are about to be described, it would be most interesting to have it brought forward.

II.

In the Marquesas Islands the oracle-house (fa'e tukau or tu'a) was the most important and the most prominent ceremonial structure in the temple (me'ae), dominating the sacred precincts (vahi tapu). Upon occasions of celebration of tribal rites a new house was constructed or an old one was refurbished, with elaborate ceremonial. Erected upon a low stone-encased earth platform, its ground-plan was rectangular, and about 18 feet square. Built otherwise in the form typical of the Marquesan dwelling, its characteristic feature was the great elevation of the roof which, on the island of Hivaoa, was said to have been about 10 armspans (approximately 60 feet) high. Several early visitors in these islands characterized these structures as having the appearance of obelisks. Porter (11, p. 111) speaks of seeing in Nukuhiva “two obelisks, formed very fancifully and neatly of bamboos and the leaves of the palm and coconut trees interwoven. The whole is handsomely decorated with streamers of white cloth. . . . the obelisks are about 35 feet in height, and about the base of them were hung the heads of hogs and tortoises."

On the crest of the ridge of the oracle-tower's roof, so I was told on Hivaoa, in number equal to the number of spans of height of the ridge, there were fixed figures representing the mythical sacred red bird, the manu ku'a, made of pieces of bamboo wrapped in red cloth. At equal intervals between the manu ku'a there were also placed other ornaments called hukihuki, which consisted of three pieces of wood sharpened at the ends and bound round with white and red tapa. From these, long strips of white cloth hung down upon either side of the roof. The hukihuki

with their pendent strips of cloth-the "streamers of white cloth" observed by Porter-were signs of tapu. Within the oracle-house at Puamau, Hivaoa, there was suspended a board on which was burnt a symbolic design representing the cave from which a hero or god named Fai was supposed to have obtained fire. In the interior also there was some sort of frame-work or staging, a sort of shrine apparently, the exact form and use of which is obscure, but the term applied to which, 'ananu'u, is interesting, since in Hawaii the oracle-house as a whole was called lananu'u. The fa'e tukau in the Marquesas belonged to the inspirational priest or diviner (tau'a) of the tribe, whose part it was to be the oracle of the tribe's tutelar god. At Puamau the house was sacred to a certain god named Pupuke who was believed to dwell within the house; but apparently it was not Pupuke, but a deified priest who was the tribe's war god, who inspired the diviner.

When a new oracle-house had been erected at Puamau a most interesting rite was performed. The diviner took his place on the platform (paepae) in front of the new structure, whereupon a body of warriors approached with spears and threw their weapons with all their might toward the ridge of the roof, attempting to hit the ornaments that adorned it. This constituted, evidently, a testing of the mana of the house and of the diviner whose power was somehow associated with the ornaments. I failed to learn what would transpire in case some lusty warrior succeeded in dislodging a hukihuki, but I surmise it would not have gone well with the tau'a (8, pp. 231, ff.).

This ceremonial structure in the Marquesan temple clearly corresponds to the so-called "oracle-tower" that was a typical and unique feature of the Hawaiian heiau. Roughly, this was a tower that was broader at the base than at the top, made of a frame of poles covered with bark cloth and having within it several stages or stories upon which the priest climbed when seeking oracular inspiration. The appearance of these towers is described as follows by Captain Cook, who saw them when he discovered Hawaii on his last voyage (5, pp. 200-201).

"As we ranged down the coast from the east, in the ships, we had observed at every village one or more elevated white objects, like pyramids or rather obelisks; and one of these,