Youthful Cohabiting.

There is a Maori saying, “He iti kopua wai, ka he to manawa.”^* This saying is heard when a girl wants to marry too soon, before she is old enough, in the opinion of her elders. Early marriages seem to have been common among the Maori, although the elders appear to have believed it to be harmful, judging from such sayings as the one given above, and which were somewhat plentiful. The young folk early arrive at puberty—Colenso says from twelve, and even eleven, years upward. There was no system of obligatory defloration of girls, nor was it in any way necessary or practicable. The girls attended to that, for illicit intercourse was, and is still, common among the young people. It often happened, say the elderly people, that a girl would have intercourse with a youth before she arrived at puberty— “before the growth of hair,” as a native puts it. Daughters of chiefs were probably looked after better than those of the common people, and those girls who were made puhi were tapu to all men until married. Girls who had been with young men were sometimes detected by traces of parapara, &c., being found upon them.

In former times many girls married, or were married, very young, even sometimes before puberty and before the commencement of menstruation—at least, so say these natives. A young girl of this district was lately married and she cannot have been more than thirteen, or at the most fourteen, years of age. This is, however, unusual here. The term kōpěpě is here used to denote this marrying of very young girls: “E tama ! He kopepe koi i te tamaiti na.”

Several causes may be assigned for the early marriages of the Maori—the early age of puberty; the carrying-out of the taumou, or infant betrothals; the keen sexual desire of girls, not repressed or controlled by long generations of self-control and moral teachings of elders, as among more advanced peoples. Possibly it was as well so, for youthful cohabiting being common, and a prolonged course o general intercourse being conducive to sterility in the female, it were better for the girl to be married to one man. For her days of freedom in sexual matters would then be over. Adultery spelled trouble in the days of yore.

An old native saying has it thus: “Korerotia ki runga ki te takapau whara-nui,” the meaning of which is, “Let matters be properly arranged by the elders in council. Do not let the young people cohabit promiscuously, but let the tribe marry them according to proper rules and older custom.”