OBITUARY.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 April 1922, Page 5

OBITUARY.

MR. S. PERCY SMITH. EX-SURVEYOR-GENERAL. A POLYNESIAN AUTHORITY. - The death occurred at his residence “Matai-Moaua,” New Plymouth, yesterday morning of Mr. Stephenson Percy Smith, in his 82nd year. Mr. Smith was widely known and respected through a long and distinguished career in the public service and his close association with the study of nature and the pursuit of Polynesian research work. He entered the Survey Department at New Plymouth in 1855, was appointed chief surveyor, Auckland, in January, 1877, and in 1888 he was advanced to the office of assistant surveyor-general. In 1889 he succeeded to the position of surveyorgeneral and secretary for lands and mines. He retired in 1900. The late Mr. Smith was born in Suffolk on June 11, 1840, being the eldest son of John Stephenson Smith, at one time Com-! missioner of Crown Lands for Taranaki. He came to New Zealand with his parents by the ship Pekin, arriving at New Plymouth on February 7, 1850. His father was one of the Taranaki pioneers; the Stephenson Smiths, Hursthouses, Richmonds, Atkinsons and other families were among the makers of the New Plymouth settlement. From his earliest days Mr. Percy Smith knew the Maori people intimately, and in those years, before the native wars began, he laid the foundations of a friendship with the tribes which developed into a close and sympathetic study of. their ancient history, traditions, folklore and religious beliefs. At the age of about sixteen he entered the Provincial Survey Office, New Plymouth, under MrJ Carrington, the pioneer surveyor of the settlement, and there was thoroughly grounded in the profession in which h.e attained such distinction. He and his cousin, C. Wilson Hursthouse, while yet lads, carried out survey work and field sketching under fire in the inter-tribal warfare on the Waitara which preceded the outbreak of Wiremu Kingi’s rebellion in 1860. In 1857-58 the two young surveyors and two other Taranaki settlers made an adventurous journey up the Mokau River, thence to Taupo and Rotorua, returning via Wanganui, a canoeing and walking tour which occupied four months. WAR IN TARANAKI.

In 1859 Mr. Percy Smith was sent to Kaipara as Government surveyor, and remained in the Auckland district for about five years, carrying out a great deal of important survey work and native land purchases. When he returned to Taranaki the province was distracted by war, and the task of the surveyor in cutting boundaries and laying out military settlements was often attended with great risks. Maori snipers frequently took shots at the surveyors from the edge of the bush, and on one occasion Mr. Percy Smith had a very narrow escape from death while riding with Mr. Carrington and several others through the hostile country where the town of Hawera now stands. A party of Hauhaus • lying in ambush in the fern poured a volley into the party at a range of a few yards, but fortunately the bullets flew wide, and the surveyors galloped off unhurt. Mr. Percy Smith carried on survey work, often interrupted by the Hauhaus, until after the end of the war in 1869, and in the early seventies he was sent to Auckland. He made a triangular survey of the Rotorua-Taupo country, and was, in fact, the pioneer map-maker of a great deal of the wonderful country over which the tourist travels to-day. In the beginning of the eighties, when chief surveyor of the Auckland district, he laid out the Government township of Rotorua. In 1886 he wrote a valuable report on the Tarawera eruption. Eventually he became head of the Lands and Survey Department, in New Zealand, and held that appointment until his retirement from the Government service. LITERARY ACTIVITIES. During his official life Mr. Percy Smith was frequently called upon to undertake special work of an important character. ' In the eighties he was sent up to the Kerin adec Islands in the Government steamer Stella to take possession of the group for the New Zealand Government. In 1901 he spent four months on, Niue (Savage) Island, one of New Zealand’s tropical possessions, as Government Resident. His mission was to found some form of provisional government, with a view to settling the many tribal disputes then causing much trouble on the islands. His tact and good work proved a great success in establishing peace, contentment and progress on Niue since the year of this mission. He framed a system of laws for the island, and on his return he wrote a book entitled “NiueFekai (or Savage Island) and its people” (1903). Ever since 1892, when the Polynesian Society was founded, Mr. Percy Smith has been the editor ofjhe society’s journal, the volumes of which’form a mine of expert information bn the Maori and Polynesian race. He himself has been one of the largest contributors to the journal, and he was certainly the foremost authority on the origin, migrations, history and folk-lore of the native people, His travels in the South Sea Islands bore fruit in a book, “Hawaiki”, which is the standard work to-day on the whence of the Maori. Other books from his pen, written in a charming style and with a vast amount of first-hand information, are “The Peopling of the North” and ‘ Maori Wars of the Nineteenth Century”. His latest work, “History and Traditions of the West Coast, North Island of New Zealand” (1911) is a complete historical record of Taranaki from the earliest times to the foundation of the British settlement; there is no book in existence in which the story of any one district is so completely covered. For seventy years Mr. Percy Smith had known the natives of the West Coast, but the scope of his extraordinarily close and diligent work in native history hps taken in every part of the North Island and a good deal of the South Island as well. New Zealand historians in the generations to come will find an enormous amount of material in the matter in which Mr. Percy Smith has amassed and recorded with such detail and accuracy. THE HECTOR MEDAL. The bestowal of the Hector Medal upon Mr. Smith in February, 1920, w r as' in recognition of his long and valuable work in ethnology. He was a fellow or member o.f the following societies or institutions: A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (since 1880) ; a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute (one of the first 20 fellows elected) ; Hector Medallist for Polynesian ethnology, 1919; an honorary member of “The Spalding Gentlemen’s Society”, of Spalding, Lincolnshire (the oldest antiquarian society in England) ; an honorary member of the Auckland Institute since 1889; a corresponding member of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, 1914; a corresponding member of the Societa d’Anthropologia d’ltalia; corresponding member of the Royal Geographic- r

al Society of Australasia; corresponding member of the Hawaiian Historical Society. As a citizen he also took a full share in the activities of the town and district, although of late years he had to relinquish much of this voluntary work. He was elected first president of the Astronomical Society. He was a valued member of the Pukekura Park Board, also of the High School and Egmont National Park Boards. Always a staunch churchman, he waa elected to various offices of trust connected with the Anglican Church. He was chairman of the Taranaki Church Trustees, an administrative body dealing with endowments, etc., also a trustee of the Taranaki bishopric fund and other offices. In public life he was strictly just and courteous in all business transactions connected with his office of Surveyor-General* When twenty years of age he was sent to survey the Kaipara district among tha Ngati-Whatua tribe, and for many yearn his field workmen comprised only young men of that tribe. He often spoke <rf* the pleasant times be passed with those primitive people in his early surveying days. It was ever a pleasure to hear him. discourse on the trials of the early settlens. He was a great admirer of New Zealand’s early literary men, especially Crosby Wi .1, Edward Jarningham Wakefield, and A’ 1 Domett. The latter’s “Ranolf and Amohia” was to him a colonial classic whici. strengthened the more his love of the native people and the glorious scenery of his adopted land. He well knew the native trees and shrubs, and the many native legends associated with them. The beauty of the native bush was ever a delight to him. He was chairman of the SceneryPreservation Commission, 1894-95-96, which also set aside old historic Maori pas in both islands. His genial nature and love of the Maori people, his great knowledge of the language, lore and mythology; of all the tribes, acquired during seventy years of .-nest study of those subjects, endeared him to all the tribes he went among them. He possessed, abova all pakehas known to the Maori, the ability,; of arbitrating amicably between Maori ami Maori. The Maoris had absolute faith in all his adjustments of disputes arising between tribes and individuals. The name of Pete Meta iPercy Smith) has long been and will long continue to be cherished by the native people of both islands. 1 j