THE MAORI IN WESTLAND
MAORI PLACE NAMES IN BULLER COUNTY. By G. G..M. Mitchell. A. H. and A. W. Reed, Wellington. "HE rewards and problems of the collector of Maori place names are both illustrated in Mr. Mitchell’s 59-pag@ booklet on Buller County. Once the home of a not inconsiderable settled Maori population and serving as an important highway to parties travelling south towards Arahura and greenstone, this rugged strip of Westland will in a very short time have only its place names to remind us of its Maori past. That these now number 106, and range from off shore rocks to mountain streams, is in part due to the labours of the author, and his informant, the late Tama Mokau Te Rangihaeata Kawharu. This chief was however the descendant of newcomers who moved from Cook Strait to conquer the district in the eighteen twenties, so that the meaning of the place names given by the earlier tribes must always remain a matter for conjecture, This problem is well illustrated in the name of the Buller itself: "Kawatiri." Spelt this way it has been variously translated as "green like greenstone"; "the lifting of tapu and the thanks offering made to the Atua of the | river for a bountiful supply"; "bitter sounding waters"; finally "repeat again and again ghe planting ceremonies." If spelt "Kawatere" as Tama Mokau insisted, it might be translated "deep (and) swift." The author resists the temptation to fix on any one of these, and avoids the tendency, no less of Maori than of European inquirers, to attempt to give all place names a logical meaning. Many, like those conferred by the Pakeha since European settlement, commemorated an original homeland name, many were given ‘after tribal ancestors or incidents in tribal history, and their significance vanished with the tribe that gaye them. In two places one must charge the author, or his printers, with a spelling error, namely "Toko" (instead of "Toka’’) for "rock," and "Korakora" (instead of
"Korokoro") for "throat."
R.S.
D.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 490, 12 November 1948, Page 17
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335THE MAORI IN WESTLAND New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 490, 12 November 1948, Page 17
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