Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/392

 358 Some Ethnological Suggestio7is

not characteristic of the mataa. Obsidian implements, other than flakes, are extremely rare in British New Guinea and very few specimens have been procured. It is of interest to note that the above mentioned example comes from a part of New Guinea which is within the area influenced by Melanesian culture.

Among the stone implements of the Chatham Islands are recorded a number of pedunculated blades of flint, chert and schist, to which Giglioli ^ gives the native name mata (a name also given to them by von Haast) and which he says resemble exactly the mataa of Easter Island, al- though they are not of obsidian. I have not had access to these Chatham Islands examples, nor have I seen many illustrations of them, so that I cannot tell how far the resemblance holds good. The culture of the Moriori, in the main linked with that of the Maori, suggests traces of a Melanesian element, just as in the culture of the Maori of New Zeala d evidence of early Melanesian influence is noticeable, and is supported by the native traditions of an early, pre-Maori, population — a tall, slim, dark-skinned, flat-faced, flat-nosed and furtive and treacherous people, with projecting eye-brows and with hair which was often bushy or frizzly, who were known to the Maori as Maruiwi.^ These may have been responsible, in part at any rate, for the several Melanesian characteristics observable in Maori art, industries and customs. Many of the Maruiwi event- ually found their way to the Chatham Islands, to escape from their Maori oppressors, who nearly exterminated them. It is at least possible that the mata of the Chatham Islands may be of Melanesian origin, but this cannot be proved at present with any degree of certainty, I make the suggestion for the sake of its possible bearing upon the Easter Island problem in general.

^ Materiali, 1901, p. 38, and La Colkzione Etnografiia, 1911, pt. i. p. 105. - Elsdon Best, Trans. New Zealand Inst, xlviii. 1916, p. 435, etc.

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