it was well; if only dead silence, she covered her head with her robe and was ashamed.  This was not often, as she generally had managed to ascertain (either by her own inquiry or by sending a girl friend) if the proposal was acceptable.  On the other hand, sometimes a mother would attend and say ’I want So-and-so for my son.’  If not acceptable there was general mocking, and she was told to let the young people have their house (the wooing-house) to themselves.  Sometimes, if the unbetrothed pair had not secured the consent of the parents, a late suitor would appear on the scene, and the poor girl got almost hauled to death between them all.  One would get a leg, another an arm, another the hair, etc.  Girls have been injured for life in these disputes, or even murdered by the losing party.”

LIBERTY OF CHOICE AND RESPECT FOR WOMEN

The assertion that “the girl generally began the courting” must not mislead us into supposing that Maori women were free, as a rule, to marry the husbands of their choice.  As Tregear’s own remarks indicate, the advances were either of an improper character, or the girl had made sure beforehand that there was no impediment in the way of her proposal.  The Maori proverb that as the fastidious Kahawai fish selects the hook which pleases it best, so a woman chooses a man out of many (on the strength of which alone Westermarck, 217, claims liberty of choice for Maori women) must also refer to such liaisons before marriage, for all the facts indicate that the original Maori customs allowed women no choice whatever in regard to marriage.  Here the brother’s consent had to be obtained, as Shortland remarks (118).  Many of the girls were betrothed in infancy, and many others married at an age—­twelve to thirteen—­when the word choice could have had no rational meaning.  Tregear informs us that if a couple had not been betrothed as children, everyone in the tribe claimed a right to interfere, and the only way the couple could get their own way was by eloping.  Darwin was informed by Mantell “that until recently almost every girl in New Zealand who was pretty or promised to be pretty was tapu to some chief;” and we further read that

“when a chief desires to take to himself a wife, he fixes his attention upon her, and takes her, if need be, by force, without consulting her feelings and wishes or those of anyone else.”

This is confirmed by William Brown, in his book on the aborigines.  But the most graphic and harrowing description of Maori maltreatment of women is given by the Rev. E. Taylor: