OLD MAORI HISTORY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 12

OLD MAORI HISTORY.

INTERESTING luS. FOITND. GENEALOGIES OF NORTHERN TRIBES. _An old Maori manuscript compiled eighty yeare ago by a northern chief, Aperahama Taonui/'Ms been found in Auckland. It consists of forty-three pages and contains genealogical trees of the northern tribes. Owing to the loss of much important information of this kind the 'book is considered by authorities to 'be one of exceptional importance. It opens with a description of the discovery of New Zealand by Kupe and ■tells of liis having left some of hie family in various parts of New Zealand, including Hokianga, while he returned to the South Sea Islands. Then the writer records the arrival of Nukutawhiti in the canoe Mamari. It is stated that Kupe and "Nuku" met in midocean, 'and the former told the Mamari commander how to navigate his canoe to the Hokianga entrance, where he ■would find Ttiputupuwhenua nnd hie tribe- set: tied. The book then goes on to record the safe arrival in the northern harbour of "Nuku" ami his associates, whose pedigrees are given down to the time of Toi, whose people were living in different, parts of Now Zealand and were quite numerous when a later canoe, ;the Ma'huhu, arrived at -tihe Ivaipara Heak, bringing the first kumara and uwhi (yam). The wars between the older native residents and descendants and the immigrants by the Mahuhu are fully described in the MS. The MS. deals with matters down to the beginning of the nineteenth century. One genealogy shows forty-two generations from Knpe (900 A.D.) and is within twenty yeare of the chronology worked out by Mi , . S. Percy Smith. The matter is to be translated 'by Mr. George Graham, of Auckland, and will foe of considerable interest ip Maori etudenie.