Polynesian Race

THE Maori people all belong to the Polynesian race. They are racial cousins to the native peoples who live on the islands within the Polynesian triangle. All these people, including the Maori, have similar customs and social life. They have similar beliefs about this world and the next. They all speak different dialects of the same Polynesian language.

The typical Maori-Polynesian has light brown skin which becomes quite dark when it is burnt by the sun. His hair is black and wavy but not frizzy or kinky as is the case with some dark peoples. His lips are of average thickness. Usually his head is long in shape with a narrow nose, but a broad-headed, broad-nosed physical type is also found in some districts. He is tall of stature, averaging about 5 feet 8 inches in height. Of all the other races in the world, the Maori most closely resembles in physical type the Caucasian race to which the white man belongs.

What made the old-time Maori look so strange to the white man was the fact that every distin­guished Maori man and woman was tattooed. This operation was performed on the adolescent boy or girl by an expert who was paid for his services with valuable gifts! First he outlined the tattooing pattern with charcoal on the skin. Then he dipped his pointed bone tool into a colouring dye, placed it on the traced pattern, and struck the tool with a short piece of wood. The colouring dye was made from the soot obtained from resinous woods or kauri gum.

No Maori really considered himself to be a man unless he was tattooed on the face. Sometimes he was also marked on the thighs and buttocks with spiral patterns. An elaborate tattooing job might take years before it was satisfactorily finished. Women were generally tattooed only on the lips and chin. The commonest pattern for them was a curling line on each side of the chin with three or four fine lines drawn vertically downwards from each corner of the mouth. No Maori woman with­out this indelible facial ornament was considered to be worth marrying. If she were a girl of high rank, then it was sometimes thought necessary to add prestige to the. tattooing operation on her face by sacrificing a slave at the same time.