File:A WOMAN AND HER SONS OF NGA TI TOA TRIBE, PORIRUA COOKS STRAITS, The New Zealanders Illustrated, 1847.jpg

English: A WOMAN AND HER SONS OF NGA TI TOA TRIBE

PORIRUA COOKS STRAITS

[Image of page 39]

PLATE XIV.

E PU and HER CHILDREN.

ON the opposite plate we have E Pu, a woman of the Nga-ti-toa tribe, and wife of one of Rangihaeata's people, with her sons, E Roro, and E Toa, and her infant child seated at her back, wrapped in the flax garment that forms her outer dress. They reside at Porirua Pah.

The boy in a sitting posture, wears a coarse mat made of rough flax, called E Kakahu; his brother is clothed in a variety called E Mangaika, in which black and yellow strips of the leaves are inserted, and which is impervious to the weather. In the ear of the sitting figure is attached the skin of the fan-tailed fly-catcher, a small and very elegant bird that is frequent in the forests of New Zealand; birds are often used as ornaments for the ear amongst these people; occasionally the head with the breast feathers of the huia (Neomorpha Gouldii) forms an appendage which is highly valued; at other times the white feathers of the Albatross or the gull, are fastened into bunches, and worn in the ears. Besides these decorations, pieces of poonamu, or green jade, the mako taniwa, or tooth of the tiger shark, and occasionally a pipe, a key, a button, or a shell, are made use of as ornaments, and introduced into the ears of both sexes.

The men usually have their hair cut at stated periods; a few still adhere to the ancient custom of wearing it long and fastened up in a bunch at the crown of the head; the married women allow it to flow loosely over their shoulders; and unmarried girls invariably let it cover the forehead, and cut it in a straight line an inch above the eyebrows; boys and young girls generally wear it short