Human sacrifice and agriculture

Here we come across an extremely ancient custom that has been practiced in many parts of the world. Countless cases are recorded describing such sacrifices as made by many races for the purpose of obtaining bountiful harvests. We will see that it was not a question of a Maori custom of later times, but that certain survivals and traditions tend to show that it must have been a question of a custom of their ancestors from a distant past, fallen into disuse over time.

Such agricultural sacrifices were evidently practiced in Asia for a very long time, and probably the custom spread from there westward into Europe, where curious survivals are reported. It was also likely transported east from Asia into the island system. Several phases of the custom were practiced in India down to fairly recent times, and in this country we find that it has survived down to modern times in its wildest and most revolting form. 

For example, among the Kandhs, a man was dragged through the fields and pieces of flesh were cut from his living body until he died; these pieces being carried away and buried in the various fields to ensure good harvests. Compared to such gruesome savagery, the local Maori custom of using the bones of the dead for a similar purpose seems mild.

Grant Allen has advanced the theory that human sacrifice by farmers – and, indeed, the art of agriculture itself – originated in the observation that plant life on graves is particularly lush; seeds germinate easily and plants thrive in newly turned soil. This seems like a somewhat far-fetched theory and one that we hardly need to investigate. The person buried, of course, was superseded by the body of a man killed for that very purpose, to grow the crops. 

Allen gives a considerable amount of information concerning this custom, but the works of Mr. Fraser are the great reservoir of this data. Like the Greeks, Asian peoples and many others, the Maori personified food products and religious ideas were therefore closely related to agriculture. 

The Maori belief that the sweet potato, their chief cultivated product, has a life principle which requires careful handling lest it stray, and the East Indian belief that rice is animated by a soul, would necessarily lead to very particular uses, and in such cases beliefs might even be found the ideas which prompted human sacrifices in connection with agriculture. 

There can also be found a basis for the evolution of concepts such as corn gods, personified forms of cultivated foodstuffs. The particular uses to which this belief has led in Indonesia go far. The belief that a plant that one wishes to destroy and consume is inhabited by a sensitive spirit must necessarily lead to the practice of very singular customs. This was obviously the origin of the particular attitude of the Maori towards the kamara (sweet potato) and its personified forms, or tutelary beings, Rongo and Pani. 

Therefore, we have the tapu of growing crops and the fields in which they grow; hence the formulas or magic spells recited on the seed during planting, the deference shown to the plant, the attitude, actions and conciliatory words of the planters when they injure a tuber. Very astonishing evidence regarding such beliefs has been recorded, and Maori can contribute to this data. From our local Pani and Rongo to Ceres and Persephone of the far west, the chain stretches across the vast land.

Maori tradition knows so little about human sacrifice related to agriculture that, to describe an illustrative case, we are forced to go back some twenty generations in indigenous history. It may have been a well-known custom at one time among the Maori, but it must have belonged to a remote period in their history. In the tradition of the introduction of the kumara, or sweet potato, to these islands, we are told that it has been difficult to retain the life principle or soul of the precious tuber, without which the very important element of the plant could not flourish. 

This difficulty was overcome, and the vitality and productivity of the tubers ensured, by killing the unfortunate traveler who had introduced them from Polynesia, and by sprinkling with his blood the door of the store where the harvest was deposited. In addition to this heroic remedy, for many years after the skull of the victim, a Taukata by name, was placed in the fields so that a bountiful harvest could be assured. Apart from the case cited, it is only the latter custom that we hear of in local Maori history. 

It is obviously a survival of the most barbaric method of which Taukata fell victim. We hear of a number of cases in which the bones of the dead were placed in the fields of cultivation to produce a good harvest. In some cases, these were the remains of clan members, relatives; in others they were the bones of enemies; both appear to have been effective. Probably only the remains of persons of a certain importance were thus used. 

In one instance that occurred about a century ago, the head of a slain enemy chieftain was used by the Tuhoe to "guard" a famous bird tree. The Awa tribesmen of Te Teko heard of this event and requested the loan of the head, so that they could use it to procure good harvests. Frazer of Golden Bough fame tells us that the Wa natives of Upper Burma “still hunt human heads as a means of promoting crop welfare. Without a skull, his crops would fail.”

Survivors and other proofs of ancient cannibalisms are still to be found among the most civilized nations. and we see the same survivals in regard to human sacrifice. For example, Grant Allen mentions the case of the restoration of Holsworthy Church, Devon, in 1885, when a human skeleton with a mass of mortar stuck to its mouth was found embedded in a corner of the building. 

The introduction of savage customs into Christianity was truly remarkable, of which the aforementioned author gives some interesting examples. The communion of the Christian and the placing of coins under a foundation stone are survivals of barbaric ceremonial, cannibalism and human sacrifice.

There were other minor occasions on which a human sacrifice was sometimes made, although I disagree with some writers who imply that such sacrifices were universal, or even common. They were only made in connection with members of ruling families and were obviously often omitted. 

Again, I am by no means inclined to concede that the examples mentioned below should fall under this rubric simply because the victims were not killed as offerings to the gods, but simply to enhance the prestige of the individual, family or function. To some extent the sacrifice was ceremonial, but can hardly be called a religious rite.

The minor occasions alluded to included (1) tattooing the chin and lips of the chief's daughter; (2) the piercing of such a girl's ears; (3) the function of baptizing the firstborn son of a prominent chief; (4) the function that ended the period of mourning the dead. Of these occasions, the evidence shows that No. 3 was the one most often marked by the death of a victim, and that it rarely occurred on the other occasions. 

Such killings, we are told, only occurred in the case of the firstborn of either sex, for the Maori observed the law of primogeniture. It is to these first-born descendants that the tapu particularly belonged.

There is a phase of this killing of men as human sacrifice, or for purposes of self-glorification, which the natives frequently dwell upon. When the victim was a person from another tribe or sub-tribe, the inevitable result in later years would be that mockery would be hurled at the victim's descendants, such as "Your ancestor was killed for the tanga ngutu [lip tattoo ] of my ancestor. That would be tantamount to saying that the person addressed was no one whose family had been obliged to provide such victims. It would be a bitter taunt for a Maori.

When a person of rank died, his near relatives, as a widow, entered the whare potae, or house of mourning, which is a purely figurative expression employed to designate the period or state of mourning for the dead. At the end of this period, a certain religious ceremony was performed above the mourners in order to free them from the condition of tapu. It was at this function that occasionally a slave or other person was killed in order to add significance to the ceremony. 

In one case that occurred in Te Whaiti, a slave was killed, his body being cut up, cooked and eaten as part of the ceremonial feast that accompanied most Māori priestly performances. Some notes on these so-called sacrifices can be found in vol. 15 of the Journal of the Polynesian Society, at p. 153, also in Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, vol. 30, p. 37-38.

There was another curious form of human sacrifice, or at least the killing of men, which may be mentioned, the meaning of which is unclear. It may have been instituted as an offering or reward to the gods in exchange for certain powers bestowed by them. When a man had been trained as a tohunga and gained knowledge of the charms and formulas of black and white magic, his powers were put to the test. We are told that there have been several such tests. 

In one of them the student held a stone in his hand, over which he recited a certain charm, after which he struck the stone with a stick held in his right hand, and thus broke the stone. In another test, he killed a tree by means of a magic spell; in yet another, he killed a bird by the same means. But another test assigned to him in some cases was the killing of a person by means of such formulas of black magic. This is called the price paid by the student for the knowledge he has acquired.

The prize consisted of the life of one of his relatives, possibly his mother, or his brother. We are told that sometimes the chosen person was the adept who taught the student. One such victim was killed by magic alone; no personal violence was offered to him. Fear would probably kill him. All the natives strongly believe in the powers of black magic to perform these wondrous things. The body of such a slain relative would, of course, be buried, not eaten, and the person sacrificed was called the tauira patu of the student who killed him.

Turner tells us that Samoan traditions tell of human sacrifices to the sun as having been done in ancient times, but the story seems to be vague. We have no knowledge of any such practice having existed among our New Zealand Maori people. If he had ever existed, then such a sacrifice would probably have been made to Tane, the personified form of the sun.

We are sometimes told that POWs were often sacrificed when a raiding force returned home, after which the widows of slain local men killed a number of the prisoners. This, however, does not appear to have been a religious ceremony in any sense, but simply motivated by a desire for revenge.

It is, of course, incorrect to attribute the custom of human sacrifice to the lust of cruelty. What may be called true human sacrifice, the killing of people to serve as offerings to the gods, or for similar ritual purposes, is obviously the product of superstition and ignorance. It has been embraced and continued by religious systems around the world. The savage slaughter of people by Christianity's Holy Inquisition is far less religious than the killing of a man to grow crops or to appease a tribal god.

We now see that many of these killings of human beings, practiced intermittently by the Maori, were not religious rites. Those related to funerary observances do not seem to have been perpetrated with the aim of pleasing any god, but rather to please the spirit of the deceased or to enhance the mana of his family.

In these explanations of the Maori atua, their attributes and their activities, it has not been thought useful to give lists of names of the innumerable beings of the fourth class; they would be tedious and unprofitable. A partial list of those of the Matatua tribes can be found on p. 64 of the Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 11; also flight. 17, p. 102.

In flight. 7 of Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, p. 4, Wohlers tells us that “the pagan religion of the Maori of New Zealand had entered into such confusion that no meaning could be found in it…. But the Maori religion had completely lost its grip on the old gods and had taken hold of their living chiefs and their surrounding tapu. He argues that the original gods (i.e. departmental deities) had been neglected and replaced by new, deified ancestors. 

In this assertion, he was certainly wrong. The worship of widely known departmental gods, or personifications, was retained until the introduction of Christianity. The deified ancestors of the fourth class never completed them, nor confused them. The apparent confusion that deceived Wohlers is now better understood; we now know how to classify these atua and assign each class its place in the Maori pantheon. 

This group system of gods is seen by Montgomery, in his past and present religions, as an advance on animism, and which could eventually lead to the concept of a supreme God.

The original basis of the Maori religious system, and indeed of the entire Polynesian race, was probably animism, the attribution of life and personality to things. This view of natural phenomena has led to widespread personification, and these personifications form what we have called second-class or departmental gods. 

This was probably a very old form of belief, and the concept of the Supreme Being must have evolved after that of departmental tutelary beings. Below these come a multitude of lesser beings, gods, familiar spirits and demons. The whole system bears a striking resemblance to that developed by the ancient peoples of Babylon.

Andrew Lang urges us to keep in mind that gods do not improve, morally or otherwise, as civilization advances, and also emphasizes the moral gods of lower races. To the present author, the cause of this peculiar fact, in many cases, seems to be that already mentioned. The Maori, with their numerous and ranked gods, had no difficulty in preserving the purity of the worship of Io, and the moral status of this being.

He did this by confining this advanced worship to a few higher spirits and allowing people to deal with whatever type of lower gods they liked or saw fit to use. As a people rise above the cultural level of the Maori, the appealing view of monotheism opens up to higher minds, and efforts may be made to introduce such a belief, or a god is given many names. But lower spirits are in no way suited to receive and appreciate monotheism, which is why a solitary god is doomed to endow himself with undesirable qualities. He becomes degraded by gross superstition and thaumaturgical practices.

It has already been said in these pages that the Maori word atua has a very special meaning and in many cases to translate the word as meaning 'god' is to give the totally wrong impression. However, it is often difficult to find an appropriate term to use. The expression atua whakahaehae, applied to a person, seems to mean an evil or terrifying demon. 

However, this word atua also applies to the Supreme Being of Christianity and to a virulent or repugnant disease. Europeans, firearms, watches and compasses were all referred to by the natives as atua. Anything supernatural, or strange, or reprehensible, anything not understood or mysterious can be so called.