Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/91

 "the Maori could not be expected to understand pakeha ways, as the pakeha could not himself. The Maori and European ethical systems are totally different."

Singular illustrations of Maori ethics are furnished by native marriage customs. In a trial where one Maori woman was charged with assaulting another wahine, counsel for the complainant said that Maoris believed that "when a husband has been away for seven years he is as good as dead, so that in this case the wife was considered divorced, and in consequence was treated somewhat lightly."

A further illustration is furnished by the murus, or punitive expeditions, that sometimes raid Maori households. With Maoris it has always been a recognized rule that when there has been misconduct on the part of either husband or wife a raid may rightfully be made on the offender's property. By the raided couple a muru may be regarded as the equivalent of a formal divorce. In one plundering excursion I learned that property to the value of five hundred dollars was seized.

The Maoris of old were industrious; idlers they did not have, as they have to-day. Every man able to do so was expected to work, and when the Maoris were not engaged in war they occupied themselves in many ways. On hills they built and fortified their important villages. Around them they dug ditches and sometimes built as many as four palisades, which they adorned with wood carvings that represented years of toil with stone implements.