ELSDON BEST ON THE PA MAORI

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 263, 27 January 1928, Page 14

ELSDON BEST ON THE PA MAORI

EIGHTY-TWO year s ago, British soldiers marched to battle against a brown-skinned foe. Their officers anticipated a short and victorious campaign. Yet within a few weeks those same British soldiers were using, vainly, a sort of atinkbomb, because other means of driving the enemy from his stronghold had failed, artillery and all. That was the first and only instance of the use of any sort of poison-gas attack in warfare in' New Zealand. The British had learned that the Maori had great skill in the making of fortifications. And time and time again, in the campaigns that followed, British officers had good reason to respect the ingenuity of the Maori military engineers. Yet, strangely enough, few of themen who realised what the pa meant in Maori warfare bothered to put any descriptions of these fortified places on record. As Mr Elsdon Best points out, until the present year the only complete and concrete paper describing any form of pa was that which was written by Mr W. H. Skinner, descriptive of the form of fortified place formerly constructed by the tribes of the Taranaki district, and which was published in the "Journal of the Polynesian Society” about 15 years ago. It ha s been left for Mr Elsdon Best to give us the first comprehensive description of the Maori forts. This he has done in “The Pa Maori,” which has been issued as Bulletin No. 6 of the Dominion Museum. The sub-title of the book further indicates its nature: “An Account of the Fortified Villages of the Maori in Pre-European and Modern Times; illustrating Methods of Defence by means of Ramparts, Fosses, Scarps, and Stockades.” Besides giving a general account -of the old Maori fort, with its later modifications, the book, which runs to 340 quarto pages, gives detailed descriptions and plans of numerous individual pa, many of them famous in Maori history. It may be noted, In passing, that the Maori word pa has the same form for the plural as for the singular, and that the “pas” which we see so often is wrong. Mr Elsdon Best is the greatest authority on Maori matters generally, and no one has made a closer study of the pa. So far as the Maori pa is concerned, then, no one is competent to criticise his judgment, except, possibly, on minor points. His plan of dealing with the subject in this book is good. . First, he has an interesting introductory chapter, in which he discusses, among other things, the references of earlier writers to the subject, mentions the neolithic forts of ancient countries, and classifies the Maori methods of fortifying villages. The old-time Maori: forts showed great diversity of form, because the plan was based on the physical conditions. The old Maori engineer followed no hard-and-fast system of fortification. As Mr Best says: “He simply selected a suitable site, and then studied its contour lines and surroundings, until, with no help of pen or paper, he had grasped the solution of the problem, and worked out his plan. He then proceeded to mark the lines of scarp and fosse, of rampart and stockade, after which lje set his men to work and superintended their labours. At certain weak places he threw in an extra stockade or fosse, or erected an elevated platform to comma/id it. The entrance passage he laid off by narrow and tortuous ways flanked by strong defences. According to the contour of the ground, and relative levels, he devised a defence of scarp and stockade, or of fosse and parapet. He cunningly carved a hill into terraces of unequal sizes and levels, each of which became a defensive area in itself. The easiest approach to that fort possessed the strongest defences, and for an enemy to reach the summit area meant most strenuous fighting to reduce the various fortified sub-divisions.” Next, we have described for us the general appearance and defences of the fortified places of the Maori before the coming of the whaler and the trader, and the various 'defences are detailed, as well as methods of dttack and defence. Protective talismans and the ceremonial opening of a new fortified village are discussed. A detailed description of old fortified villages follows. From that we pass to a discussion of the modern pa Maori, the changes which were made in the Maori’s defensive works after the introduction of firearms being illustrated.

The concluding section of the book (apart from the appendices and the index) is devoted to a survey of the fortified villages of Polynesia, Melanesia, etc., for comparison with the pa Maori. In this Mr Best has gathered together many interesting references to fortified places, though he seems to have missed William Lockerby’s description of a Fijian fort, the building of which was seen by Lockerbv in 1808. The work that Mr Best has done In this book was greatly needed, and It has been done well. The book is freely Illustrated. "The Pa .Maori.” Elsdon Best. Published under the direction of the Board of Maori Ethnological Research, for the Dominion MU6CUm. BOOKS IN DEMAND AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY NON-FICTION “POMPS AND VANITIES” by A Gentleman with a Duster. “KIEL AND JUTLAND” by Commander Georg Von Hase. “ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL” by E. M. Forster. “THE ART OF STORY WRITING” by F. M. Perry. “THE CONTROL OF THE MIND” by Robert H. Thouless. “THE LIFE OF THE WHITE ANT” by Maurice Maeterlinck. “HOME” by Alan Mu\gan. “WAR BIRDS.” “LAWRENCE AND THE ARABS” by R. Graves. “TWENTY-FIVE” by Beverley Nichols. FICTION “KITTY” by Warwick Deeping. “GOD AND THE GROCERYMAN” by Harold Bell Wright. “SOMETHING ABOUT EVE” by James Branch Cabell. “THE BOOK OF SANCHIA S TABLE - TON” by Una L. Silberrad. “THE UGLY DUCHESS” by Lion Feuchtwanger. “NO OTHER TIGER” by A. E. W. Mason. “THE MISSES MALLETT” by E. H. Young. “ARISTOCRATIC MISS BREWSTER” by J. C. Lincoln. “FORLORN RIVER” by Zane Grey. “THE INN OF THE HAWK AND RAVEN” by George Barr McCutcheon.