the tiki presents may be remotely connected with the custom of doubling up the corpse which obtained in many ancient burial customs.[1] However that may be the tiki had among the Maori no religious significance. Mr. Yate refers to this theory only to demolish it. It was held, he acknowledges, by the earliest European settlers, who observed that when a few Maori friends met together they were accustomed to lay a hei-tiki ceremoniously on a leaf or tuft of grass in the middle of the assembled people while they wept and sang dirges over it. It was addressed by the name of its late possessor, those present weeping and caressing it with loving gestures, and cutting themselves deeply and severely in token of the regard which they bore to the deceased. But this, he declares, was only done to bring more vividly to mind the dead person to whom the hei-tiki had once belonged. These ornaments, he states emphatically, were preserved and worn in remembrance of the dead, not only of the ancestors who last wore them, but of all those in whose possession they had been.
The noun hei means neck; but when conjoined with another noun it has an adjectival force as is shewn in the native lullaby:—
Tiki are cut from a single piece of greenstone, and vary in length from two to eight inches. They are carved on the front side with rude representations of the face, neck, arms, body and legs. The back is usually plain (see Figure 28), shewing only the piercings which shape the limbs and the reverse side of the
- ↑ cf. Hewitt, Primitive Traditional History, pp. 216-218, 377-389.
