“The ancient and most general way of obtaining a wife was for the gentleman to summon his friends and make a regular taua, or fight, to carry off the lady by force, and oftentimes with great violence....  If the girl had eloped with someone on whom she had placed her affection, then her father and brother would refuse their consent,” and fight to get her back.  “The unfortunate female, thus placed between two contending parties, would soon be divested of every rag of clothing, and would then be seized by her head, hair, or limbs,” her “cries and shrieks would be unheeded by her savage friends.  In this way the poor creature was often nearly torn to pieces.  These savage contests sometimes ended in the strongest party bearing off in triumph the naked person of the bride.  In some cases, after a long season of suffering, she recovered, to be given to a person for whom she had no affection, in others to die within a few hours or days from the injuries which she had received.  But it was not uncommon for the weaker party, when they found they could not prevail, for one of them to put an end to the contest by suddenly plunging his spear into the woman’s bosom to hinder her from becoming the property of another.”

After giving this account on page 163 of the Maori’s “ancient and most general way” of obtaining a wife—­which puts him below the most ferocious brutes, since those at least spare their females—­the same writer informs us on page 338 that “there are few races who treat their women with more deference than the Maori!” If that is so, it can only be due to the influence of the whites, since all the testimony indicates that the unadulterated Maori—­with whom alone we are here concerned—­did not treat them “with great respect,” nor pay any deference to them whatever.  The cruel method of capture described above was so general that, as Taylor himself tells us, the native term for courtship was he aru aru, literally, a following or pursuing after; and there was also a special expression for this struggling of two suitors for a girl—­he puna rua.  As for their “great respect” for women, they do not allow them to eat with the men.  A chief, says Angas (II., 110), “will sometimes permit his favorite wife to eat with him, though not out of the same dish.”  Ellis relates (III., 253) that New Zealanders are “addicted to the greatest vices that stain the human character—­treachery, cannibalism, infanticide, and murder.”  The women caught in battle, as well as the men, were, he says, enslaved or eaten.  “Sometimes they chopped off the legs and arms and otherwise mangled the body before they put the victim to death.”  Concubines had to do service as household drudges.  A man on dying would bequeath his wives to his brother.  No land was bequeathed to female children.  The real Maori feeling toward women is brought out in the answer given to a sister who went to her brothers to ask for a share of the lands of the family:  “Why, you’re only a slave to blow up your husband’s fire.”  (Shortland, 119, 255-58.)