Pounamu : Notes on New Zealand Greenstone/Chapter 6

by Horatio Gordon Robley

Chapter VI.

HEI-TIKI.

THERE is one special class of ornaments which, from their remarkable form, the extreme care lavished upon their production and preservation, and the feeling almost approaching veneration with which the Maori regarded them, demand detailed notice. These are the hei-tiki, neck-ornaments, grotesquely shaped as male or female human figures, which were worn by the Maori as memorials of specially dear relatives or venerated ancestors. The illustration (Figure 28) given on the next page is a full-sized drawing of a typical hei-tiki, shewing the front and back of the ornament.

The wearing of tiki by the Maori was as common as that of lockets among Europeans, and they were freely parted with as gifts or in exchange unless the value of an individual specimen consisted in the fact that it had been worn and handled by dead relations. If that were the case, reverence for the ancestor attached, as it were, to the ornament, which thereby became an object to be treasured as oha or an heirloom.

Canon Stack considers that the custom of carving and wearing hei-tiki was brought to their new home in New Zealand by the immigrants from Hawaiki. He notes how Maori art deteriorated after the white man came to the country. He could remember large tiki being worn by old Maori between 1840 and 1850; after the latter year they practically disappeared. Possibly
Figure 28

the adoption by the natives of European clothing partly accounts for the disuse of native ornaments. Certainly the acquisitiveness of curio hunters hastened their disappearance. Anyhow the best expression of Maori art is a thing of the past; and though countless copies and replicas have been made by lapidaries and jewellers they lack the characteristic touch and skill of the old workers and can never deceive a connoisseur.

A curious instance of the native reverence for their ornaments and their customs is recorded by Angus, who relates that he saw a tiki on a child's grave which the tapu made absolutely safe, although it would naturally be an object of envy and a prize easily to be secured by anyone who passed the spot.

It is agreed by all students of Maori art that tiki were not representations of deities. As early as 1830 Mr. Yate, the missionary, who was an industrious collector of native lore, had come to this conclusion; and Canon Stack, whose earliest recollections of New Zealand date from the year 1840, maintains that the tiki “did not represent a god, but the spirit of a deceased relative. It was worn,” he says, “to keep in memory some beloved one, for the same reason that our ladies wear lockets containing the likenesses of those who had passed into the other world.”

The same authority considers that all tiki, whether of wood or stone, were purposely made grotesque, because the artist wished to show that these objects of his skill were not representations of living human beings but symbolical memorials of the dead. The Maori never attempted to copy the human form and features exactly; perhaps they had not the requisite artistic skill to enable them to do so; nor did they ever make statues or other representations of living men. Their carved figures were made to preserve the memory of deceased relatives or in honour of some god; not that they worshipped the effigy, even if it were that of a god; it was merely a symbol of the unseen. They seem to have believed, however, that a spiritual being could, when rightly invoked, enter into the image made to represent it and in some way manifest its presence to the person invoking it.

The Maori themselves declare that these figures were deliberately made imperfect, and are not to be regarded as likenesses of ancestors. Any harm, therefore, which might happen to the figure or any insult offered to it, could not harm the spirit of the deceased. Mr. Polack says “The most valued ornament that has stood the test of many generations is the tiki, made of the pounamu or green serpent-stone in the form of a distorted monster. There is no reason given for the outré shape in which this figure is invariably made. Gods or lares are not in this land; and they are equally unlike departed friends, for the resemblance is neither like anything above the earth or perhaps beneath the waters. These ornaments stand paramount in public estimation; the original cause of their manufacture is forgotten.”

The Maori themselves have lost any traditional knowledge that they may once have possessed of the origin of these remarkable objects; and it is unfortunate that the old priests who knew the symbolic meaning of these figures have all passed away. The Maori who now pose as authorities are untrustworthy. They are at best theorists and less likely to theorize correctly than Europeans, because of their limited knowledge. For while the knowledge of the white man ranges over the whole race, that of the native New Zealander is confined to customs and practices of the particular family or tribe to which he belongs.

Perhaps in its origin the tiki was a symbol of an ancient creed or a representation of a being worshipped in some long forgotten religion, and its persistent retention of its archaic form would seem to lend support to this theory. Some students, observing the superstitious dread which the Maori have of the spirits of unborn children, consider that the doubled-up attitude of the tiki is suggested by that of the human foetus, and that the ornament, in its original intention, was a talisman to guard the wearer against the maleficent influence of those spirits. Others believe it to be possible that the curious compressed appearance which the tiki presents may be remotely connected with the custom of doubling up the corpse which obtained in many ancient burial customs.^[1] However that may be the tiki had among the Maori no religious significance. Mr. Yate refers to this theory only to demolish it. It was held, he acknowledges, by the earliest European settlers, who observed that when a few Maori friends met together they were accustomed to lay a hei-tiki ceremoniously on a leaf or tuft of grass in the middle of the assembled people while they wept and sang dirges over it. It was addressed by the name of its late possessor, those present weeping and caressing it with loving gestures, and cutting themselves deeply and severely in token of the regard which they bore to the deceased. But this, he declares, was only done to bring more vividly to mind the dead person to whom the hei-tiki had once belonged. These ornaments, he states emphatically, were preserved and worn in remembrance of the dead, not only of the ancestors who last wore them, but of all those in whose possession they had been.

The noun hei means neck; but when conjoined with another noun it has an adjectival force as is shewn in the native lullaby:—

Taku hei piripiri—my necklace of scented moss;

Taku hei mokimoki—my necklace of fragrant fern;

Taku hei tawhiri—my necklace of odorous shrubs;

Taku kati taramea—my sweet locket of taramea.

Tiki are cut from a single piece of greenstone, and vary in length from two to eight inches. They are carved on the front side with rude representations of the face, neck, arms, body and legs. The back is usually plain (see Figure 28), shewing only the piercings which shape the limbs and the reverse side of the hole bored in the upper part of the figure for the purpose of suspension. Tiki worked on the back as well as the front are very rare. One of these is in the Ethnological Collection at the British Museum, where it is exhibited on a raised stand placed above a mirror, to shew the carving on its back.

The face of the figure is consistently of conventional form, with a curious raised band or ridge down the forehead, branching to the eyes and continued as the nose, where it again branches into strongly marked and acutely arched nostrils. The eyes are shewn as little circular shallow pits under heavy overhanging brows. In the more ancient tiki, as was noticed by Captain Cook, the whites of the eyes (Figure 30) were represented by pierced disks of the irridiscent paua shell, which are sometimes marked with serrated edges, apparently to represent eyelashes. When in the middle of the nineteenth century objects of European manufacture began to be introduced by traders it was found that red sealing wax^[2] had a peculiar fascination for the Maori, who often used it to fill the eyes of tiki and for the adornment of other greenstone articles.
Figure 30

The curious heart-shaped mouth is always shewn open, with coarse, thick lips, and the prominence given to the tongue is thought to suggest the grimace of Maori defiance. No marks representing tattoo are ever found on the faces of greenstone tiki. The arms are carefully cut out, and the hands are placed in various positions according to the type to which the ornament belongs. The thumbs are always shewn, but never more than three fingers appear.

This fashion of carving the hand has puzzled many students of the ancient New Zealand art. The Maori have the ingenious, but perhaps hardly credible, explanation of this phenomenon, that the first man to carve and decorate was an ancestor who had himself only three fingers on each hand. Whether this is true or not the fashion has been rigidly followed since the legendary Nuku-mai-teko, the skilful worker, deceived Tangaroa with his art. This representation of three-fingered hands is not, however, peculiar to the Maori. Hands of this rude form have been noted in ancient Chinese ideographs and in other Eastern sculptures, in the relics of the Peruvian Incas and in other forms of primitive art, as is remarked by Mr. Cowan in his Maoris of New Zealand.

From this general description it will be seen that tiki conform to a certain conventional shape, which is that which was handed down from generation to generation; for the Maori considered that it was aitua, an ill omen, to depart from the lines laid down by their forefathers. Some of these little effigies are squat and others more elongated, a result no doubt due to the dimensions of the piece of stone at the artist’s disposal. They vary in form, as our illustrations shew, but a close inspection shews that they fall into two main types, in both of which the head is inclined to right or left, and in many cases resting, as it were, upon the shoulders.

In both types the legs are shewn with the knees bent, and the feet, with what appear to be sometimes two and sometimes three pairs of toes, gathered under the body. But these limbs are really an attempt to represent the motif of the manaia (see page 41) pecking the body. Figure 29 is an illustration of a wooden tiki which shews these fabulous monsters very clearly. Tiki made of bone^[3] have also been preserved which distinctly shew that the parts, which in greenstone tiki degenerated into a rude likeness to the legs of the figure, are in their origin not legs but manaia.
Figure 29

Type A, of which Figure 28 at the beginning of this chapter is a well marked example, shews the arms akimbo with the outspread hands resting upon the thighs. It has four teeth in the mouth, indicated by knobs at the middle and ends of the lips, beyond which the tongue does not extend.

Figures 31–37 shew these various points in more or less detail. In Figures 31 and 32 we give examples of tiki that have cut-out necks. The former of these is a full-sized representation of the head of the figure only. It will be observed that it has the eyes of shell, and the additional peculiarity of a projection at the top of the head pierced for the cord by which it was suspended.

Figure 31
Figure 32 Another method of suspension is shewn in Figure 33. Here it will be seen that the cord by which the figure was hung at the wearer’s neck was tied round a knob at the top of its head.

Figure 33

Figure 34

Figure 34 is an illustration of a very ancient tiki brought from New Zealand by Midshipman Burr, who sailed with Captain Cook on his last voyage. In this case the boring is through the right eye. In the tiki illustrated in Figure 35, the boring is through the right ear, while that in Figure 36 was suspended by the hole at the left elbow, where the wearing of the hard greenstone by the friction of the suspending cord is plainly visible.

Figure 35

Figure 36

A comparison of this ornament with those illustrated on pages 72 and 76 shews that hei-tiki suspended by the elbow naturally hang in a horizontal, instead of an upright, position. In Figure 37 overleaf the cutting out of the neck is shewn only on the right side.

It will be observed that the tiki illustrated in Figures 33, 34 and 35, have the necks not cut out; the heads rest solidly upon the shoulders. The ornament shewn in Figure 36 has, on the other hand, its head quite clear of the body.

In tiki of the A type the ribs, either one or two pairs, are indicated by raised ridges forked at their lower ends, where in some cases (see Figs. 28, 33 and 34) the navel is shown.

Figure 37

A historic tiki of the A type, over six inches in height and of very fine workmanship, was brought to England in 1820 by the chief Hongi and presented by him to the Rev. Basil Wood, a life governor of the Church Missionary Society, who received him and his companion, the chief Waikato. After many vicissitudes this ornament is now preserved in the Dominion Museum at Wellington, having been secured for that national institution by Mr. T. E. Donne.

In the Tourist Department at Wellington is an oil painting by J. Barry, presented by the Church Missionary Society, through Mr. Donne’s instrumentality shewing Hongi wearing a tiki and a feather cloak, and accompanied by Waikato and Kendall the missionary.

Figure 38

In tiki of the B type, of which Figure 38 is a good example, the design varies from those of the A type in several important particulars. The head is generally cut free of the shoulders and not resting upon them, the ears are usually shewn, and the neck is thicker. One hand with its outspread fingers and thumb is placed on the breast. The other hand, which is always that on the side towards which the chin points, rests on the thigh. The eyes in this type are smaller in proportion to the size of the head than those of type A. As a rule it has no ribs. Its tongue, called arero rua, is forked and its teeth are two or three in number. In some cases the navel is shewn. Figures 38-44 illustrate this type. Figure 38 is an example shewing in admirable detail all the characteristics just enumerated.
Figure 39Figure 39 shews a tiki of B type, now in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge, with the characteristic double tongue which, however, is of unusual form, being given in relief by the holes at either
Figure 40side of it and going to the chin instead of to the side of the mouth. The little tiki illustrated in Figure 40 is exceptional in having three ribs on the right side. The tiki shewn in Figure 41 indicates a change of motif on the part of the artist during the process of manufacture. It is evident that the right hand of the figure was at first designed to rest on the thigh. But this hand was awkwardly changed to the B

Figure 41

position on the breast, and thus a tiki begun in the style of type A was changed to the conventional rendering of type B, to which also the double tongue belongs.

A comparison of this very remarkable tiki with the illustration of the three pieces of jade in Figure 42 shews quite plainly that the original intention to make it of the A type. For the illustration of the partially formed ornaments proves that the first cuts in the greenstone were those that outlined

Figure 42

the legs and arms. This point appears to be emphasised by the drawing in the middle of Figure 42, where the beginnings of the work upon the head prove that though the Maori artists were not always particular to finish the lower part of their figures first, they began work on the limbs with a clear intention as to the type to which the figure was to belong.

A tiki, now in the Salford Museum, illustrated in Figure 43, is noteworthy in having little cuts on its hands, as if to denote the joints of the fingers and thumbs. It is drawn here in

Figure 43

outline to make this peculiarity more clearly visible. The tiki shewn in Figure 44 is an admirable example of the B type. It was presented to Colonel Mundy, the author of Our Antipodes, by Tamihana, son of the notorious chief Rauparaha, who about the year 1828 devastated the South Island in his relentless greed for greenstone. Less than two decades later Tamihana,

Figure 44

helped by his cousin Matene-te-whiwhi, nobly atoned for his father’s cruelty by winning the Southern Islanders to Christianity.

A greenstone neck-ornament of rare form (Figure 45), now at Dresden and known as Heke's tiki, has great affinity with the B type, but is exceptional in having both hands placed upon the breast. This attitude is very unusual in figures made of jade; it is, however, common in wood carvings. Mr. Elsdon Best, in a recent letter to the Author, speaks of a very fine hei-tiki belonging to Mr. John Baillie, which is said to have been

Figure 45

taken home by the mate of the “Endeavour.” Its length is 6¾ inches and its width 3¼ inches. This ornament is remarkable in having both the arms extending downwards with the hands clasping the thighs, an attitude also found in some tiki of bone. The tiki shewn in Figure 46 also resembles those of the B type, but departs from the regular design in the upright position of the head. The support under the figure’s left arm is also unusual. This ornament shews signs of long use. Its surface is greatly worn; the legs are broken off; and the original hole has been broken or worn through and a fresh hole has been been bored on the other side of the nose ridge.
Figure 46
Figure 47The British Museum possesses two curious little greenstone figures of tiki form, shewn in Figure 47, which have the right arms raised to the head. They have the appearance of great age, and are perhaps relics of a time before the form of these ornaments had settled down into the two normal types. It will be observed that the tiki illustrated at the right of Figure 47 has the fingers of the raised hand carefully worked with perforations between the fingers.
Figure 41This figure has lost its legs. Figure 48 shews part of another remarkable tiki with the upright head that has already been remarked as a departure from the usual form, and with the fingers of the left hand raised to its mouth. It is possible that this attitude is a memorial of the legend of Tamatea's slave who was punished for breaking tapu.

Hei-tiki were difficult to make, and only the most skilful tohungas who were experts in the arts of carving and tattooing undertook their manufacture. A pointed stick, sand and water were the simple tools that they employed, together with the shell of the pipi or common cockle, which was used as a ready-made tool by the Maori craftsmen.

After the stone had been polished, the last operation was the boring of the hole for suspension, a piece of work requiring great care.

The hole, like all other holes pierced in greenstone was, as is mentioned above, made by boring from both sides of the stone, and being usually bored at the top of the head of the effigy, the tiki was normally worn so that it hung upright. But if it so pleased the wearer, the ornament might be worn hanging from that arm which allowed the face to look downward. The chin always pointed downward; that rule was invariable.
Figure 49 Figure 49, which is a drawing of part of an ancient wooden monument raised to a Maori chief, shews in careful detail the tattoo marks on his face. For our present purpose it is of special interest as shewing that he wore a tiki of the B type suspended, in the same way as is shewn in Figure 36, by the left arm.

The left-hand drawing in Figure 42 shews a tiki in process of formation from a water-worn piece of greenstone, which is now in the British Museum. The work, as has already been noted, began with the fashioning of the limbs. The same illustration shews two adze-blades of greenstone on which are the beginings of the perforations, which prove that it was also intended to make tiki of them. When iron axes supplanted the native adzes many tiki and other ornaments were made out of the discarded blades of greenstone. Tiki made from these blades can be readily recognised, because the adzes being thin in section the ornaments made from them are not so plump as those more ancient specimens that were cut from rough blocks or water-worn fragments of nephrite.

Famous tiki were named in the same way as famous weapons. The largest in the British Museum collection, which was given to Sir George Grey in 1848 by Hone Heke, had the title Ko wakatere kohu kohu. Another noted hei-tiki is mentioned by Canon Stack, who describes how he made the acquaintance at Grahamstown, near Auckland, of a native clergyman named Hohepa Paraone. This man showed the Canon a highly prized tiki called Mihi rawhiti, that is, 'object of lament and greeting in the East,' which was an heirloom in the two branches of the family into which Maru Tuahu’s descendants had split, being held alternately by the one which lived at the Thames and by the other which had settled at Taranaki. The ornament was always buried with the person who happened to be wearing it at the time of his death. When his bones were taken up in due time to be placed in the tribal sepulchre, the ceremony of the second burial was performed by members of the other branch of the family, who returning to their own home took back with them the family heirloom. They then kept it until it passed once more into the hands of the other branch who in their turn performed the funeral rites of the last wearer of it.

There is a tradition that this venerable and crudely formed ornament was worn by Maru Tuahu when he arrived in New Zealand; and Canon Stack, who had an opportunity of examining it, was confirmed in his belief that finely wrought specimens were not produced till the art of working greenstone had been practised for many generations after the coming of the first canoes.

One of the three tiki deposited in the Auckland Museum by Mr. Arthur Eady, has the name of Maungarongo, that is, the peacemaker, It belonged at one time to Rangi Purewa, a priest of the Wairau Valley, who allowed Te Rauparaha to see and handle the precious trinket. It chanced that that chief had a feud with a man named Pukekohatu, and seized and imprisoned a kinsman of his enemy. Whereupon Pukekohatu, in fear for his relative's life, asked the aid of the priest Purewa, who lent him his tiki, saying "Here is a tiki that will make peace. Put it round the neck of your wife's slave girl and offer both as payment; and your wish that your kinsman may be restored will be granted." And so it fell out. But some time afterwards one of Rauparaha’s relations became ill, and the priest was accused of having bewitched the man. Purewa maintained that the patient was ill because he had broken tapu in wearing the sacred tiki, and would surely die if it were not returned to its rightful owner; which being done the sick man was restored to health. Afterwards the tiki had many owners till at length it passed into the possession of Europeans and eventually found a resting place in the Auckland Museum.

Henare Tawha, a Maori chief whose remarks on the working of pounamu are quoted in Chapter II., once told Canon Stack that very few people know how to make hei-tiki, the natives of the North Island being more skilful in their manufacture than those of the South. It did not require, he said, very great skill to make weapons and tools and the simpler ornaments, but only very clever workers could make tiki.

Hakopa-te-atu-o-tu, a noted chief of the Ngai Tahu, who won great fame for his defence of Kaiapoi against Rauparaha’s besieging army, wrote, in July 1882 when he was upwards of eighty years of age, a letter to Canon Stack, which is so striking a confirmation of much that has been said above that we are glad to have the opportunity of reproducing it here.

“Friend, greeting. I never saw the making of a hei-tiki in my childhood. The North Island natives were the people who made hei-tiki. The tools used to perforate the greenstone when forming it into ornaments were not chisels, but pieces of obsidian and flint with which drills were pointed. The shaping of the holes when made was done by rubbing with gritty stone. Maoris never worshipped the hei-tiki. It was only an oha tupuna, he tohu ki ona uri, a relic of an ancestor, a sign to his descendants. The names of the different kinds of greenstone were hauhunga, kawakawa, inanga, kahurangi, tangiwai, matakirikiri, aotea,

Figure 50

kahotea. The places where greenstone was formerly found were Arahura, Waininihi, Hohonu (i.e., Taramakau) and Pio pio tahi (i.e, Milford Sound). Some pounamu was so hard that it could only be broken by using hammers of greenstone.”

The detail drawing (Figure 50) illustrates the method of fastening the ornament to the kaui-tiki, the cord which went round the wearer’s neck. The tiki was firmly fixed to the kaui by its own separate fastening, which was a loop passing through the suspension hole and made of the wiry fibre of the toi or mountain palm (cordyline indivisa), a material of very great strength obtained from the outer part of the mid-rib (tuaka)

Figure 51

of the palm leaf. This fastening fairly filled the perforation, to prevent, as far as possible, friction of the stone. The kaui with the tiki so attached by its fibrous fastening had at one end a small loop, and at the other a toggle about two inches long, called puau if made of wood, or poro toroa if of albatross bone. The cord being now clasped by toggle and loop about the wearer’s neck the hei-tiki lay suspended as is shewn in Figure 51.

Our last illustration (Figure 52) of these singular and characteristic ornaments represents a beautiful little greenstone tiki of the A type. Although, no doubt, it was originally a hei-tiki, it was not so used by its last Maori possessor. It was worn as an ear-pendant by a Ngatipikiao warrior, and was taken from him in battle on 21st June, 1864. It is here shewn in its exact size, as indeed are all the tiki illustrated in this chapter.

Figure 52

A striking contrast to this diminutive piece is exhibited by the remarkable hei-tiki of kawakawa in the Museum of Geology, in Jermyn Street, London. It is an unusually large figure of the A type, having eyes of irridescent shell, and is quite 8 inches high with a width of nearly 5 inches from knee to knee. This ornament shows signs of a great age. Its surface is in parts worn almost smooth by constant wear, and it has had no less than three suspension holes bored through the upper part of the head, two of which are broken through.

Nowadays old and good specimens of tiki and other ornaments and implements of the native greenstone are rare in New Zealand. Very many have left the country; and those that remain in private hands are for the most part in the possession of rich natives, who are keenly alive to their value, and can rarely be induced to part with those treasured memorials of their ancestors.

When, however, in the course of their memorable journey to the Dominions beyond the seas, their present Majesties visited New Zealand, in 1901, the Maori chiefs loyally presented to the royal visitors many valuable heirlooms and works of art, which are now exhibited in the British Museum by command the King.

1. cf. Hewitt, Primitive Traditional History, pp. 216-218, 377-389.
2. Red was the colour of mourning among the Maori, and stains of red ochre may still be seen on ornaments which have been buried with the dead, or whose wearers had daubed themselves with it.
3. In the British Museum there are two specimens of hei-tiki made from pieces of human skull.