ART AND HISTORY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 431, 26 September 1947, Page 21

ART AND HISTORY

MAORI AND PAKEHA IN NORTH OTAGO. By G. B. Stevenson. A. H. & A. W. Reed. AORI rock paintings are a teasing subject. Who made them and when? What do they mean? It is difficult, looking at the photographs of them in this book, not to believe that they include side by side both symbols and pure aft (that is, pictures made for the joy of the object itself). Mr. Stevenson describes his searches during many years of the North Otago countryside for cliffs (cliffs rather than caves) which might hold these paintings and drawings, and communicates his own interest and some of his enthusiasm. But his discussions of the origins and meanings of local place-names are rather unremunerative reading for anyone without a strong interest in the district itself. It is, in fact, only the geographical area of North Otago which gives this book any sort of unity. It includes Maori legends, chronicles of the journeys of the earliest European travellers (quoting largely from their own narratives), and discussions of the historical problems of the moa. Perhaps the tit-bit (the book is incorrigibly scrappy) of greatest general historical interest is the account of the eviction from lands at Omarama of a group of Ngai-Tahu Maoris, an affair which enacted with less flam-

boyance and on a smaller stage similar proceedings to those a few years later at Parihaka. Mr. Stevenson is a modest and diligent writer whom I am sorry to see appearing between such unsuitable covers.

David

Hall