BROWN VIKINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 134, 9 June 1925, Page 4

BROWN VIKINGS.

CROSS PACIFIC IN CANOES.

DARING MAORI VOYAGERS,

HOW XEYV ZEALAND WAS FOUXD,

Although the modern Maoris have long forgotten all about the star lore, which enabled the old navigators to cross the ocean, and have lost nearly all the other arts of the deepwater sailor, they still preserve the sea song-s of their viking ancestors, and still trace back to the Arawa, the A'tea. or some other of the canoes in which the "first fleet" families come to Aotearoa, which we now call New Zealand. So Dr. P. H. Buck told his iudience at St. Andrew's Hall Ust night, -when the winter course of the Auckland Institute lectures was begun. Sir James H. Gunson, president, who was in the chair, sa.id it was fitting that a member of the Council and such a popv.lar lecturer should open the season. Even the rain could not extinguish Br. Buck's popularity, and the hall was full! Dr. Buck has that rare quality in these days, enthusiasm, and from his Maori ancestors he has inherited the gift of oratory. His enthusiasm is devoted to unravelling the origins and history of the Maori, and a-s he is going about the work scientifically, he is more likely to get somewhere nearer the truth than the mere artistic dilettante.

To show how even the most inland of the Maoris, round distanc Taupo, for instance, still cling to the traditions and songs of their sailor ancestors, who came down from Hawaiki, Dr. Buck greeted his audience with the ancieLt song of welcome heard all over Maoridoni when, a stranger arrives, "Toia mai te vaka kuraa mai te waka," which being interpreted means "Haul up the canoe, drag hither the canoe, to the resting place—the canoe," and so on. While it was quite right to examine traditions carefully, it wa3 a mistake to sweep them all aside as the mere imaginingß of childish minds. " " Love of Adventure. Dr. Buck traced the Polynesians (to which the Maoris belonged) away back to the Mediterranean stock of tbi great Caucasian race, with a strong dash of the Mongolian, and reckoned that they set out from the south-east coast of Asia, and then kept migrating eastward and ever eastward until to-day the Polynesians covered a va?t stretch of the Pacific from the Ellice Islands in the west to Easter Island in the east and from Hawaii in the north to Xew Zealand in the south, roughly some 4500 miles by 4000 miles. These Polynesians were born sailors, wonderful navigators, and in 13,">0 they had voyaged, in their dug-out canoes, as far south as New Zealand, whereas the timid Europeans had only got as far as the Madeira Islands.

About the year 050 A.D.. a Polynesian explorer sailed south into Xew Zealand waters and some 200 years later another Polynesian navigator came down. Both those voyages were made in a spirit of adventure, and not because the voyagers were driven out of their homes by enemies or by a food shortage, as was the case later.

Coming then to the peopling of Xew Zealand by these Polynesians, Dr. Buck unhesitatingly placed the centre of distribution in Eastern Polynesia. As for Hawaiki (the ancestral home of the Maori) being identified with the Hawaiian Islands there was just as much reason to identify it with Savaii in Samoa —the "s" in Samoa taking the place of "h" in Maori, the »"v" taking the place of "w," and the "k" being omitted. As a matter of fact, Hawaiki was an ancestral name and was applied to dozens of the resting places of the Poh'nesians in their Pacific wanderings. Modern research was convinced that the Hawaiki from which the Maoris came to >Tew Zealand was to be found in Tahiti nr some of the neighbouring islands of the Society group. Definite Migrations. After touching on the cruise of the great navigator Kupe, who came down to New Zealand about 0-iO on a voyage of discovery and the game of hide and seek that Toi and his grandson about the year 1150 played over the Southern Pacific, eventually to settle down at Whakatane in. the Bay of Plenty, Dr. Buck went, on to refer to the fleet of canoes that definitely migrated from Hawaiki to Xew Zealand. Toi set out to find his grandson who had beeu blown out to sea in his canoe during a race outside the coral reef at Rarotonga, and then in the meantime the grandson got home only to find his grandfather missing, and so the lost began to seek the seeker.

About 200 years after that event the Arawa canoe set out from Hawaiki with the definite intention of finding Kew Zealand. At that time a paramount chief in Hawaiki was a man called Uenuku whose tyrannical ways seem to have been the cause of several of the migrations that took place about the same time. There was evidence that about that time there was trouble in the Pacific partly biving tv overpopulation and a food shortage. The immediate cause of tho departure of the Arawa canoe from Hawaiki was a quarrel between Tama te Kapua and Uneukii' After the Arawa came other canoes, but notably the famous live, the Aotea, Tokomaru. T.-iinui, M.nattin and Takitimu. which all set out from the ancestral home with the definite, intention of colonising in New Zealand.

In confirmation of the story of these migrations Dr. Burk quoted endless traditions and collateral evidence. Fo r instance tlie story about Toi and his grandson read like a myth, but Maari and Earotongan genealogies agreed In an astonishing manner although t ue two peoples had been separated for centuries. Tradition sakl that during some of the migrations the voyager! rested at an island between Rarotonga and New Zealand, and strangely enough there was evidence in certain stone axes and the presence of ihc karaka tree that early Polynesian travellers haS paid a visit to the Kermadeoe. the most likely islands to be indicated in the tradition. Then again the time that certain of the canoes were said to sail from Rarotonga ajut the time they arrived in * cv Zealand had been verified by the separate traditions of Rarotongans md Maoris. There wore many other instances where the story of the migrations received Support, and Dr. Buck saw no reason whatever to say that the traditions were mere myths.

To illustrate his story Dr. Buck dr«w freely on his astonishing knowledge of the old songs, chants, incantations afld stories of the Maoris. He gave them in their musical original with so much gusto that you felt you should understand what he was talking about, an* his translations of the poetic imagery of these line old Maori »«i =:iias were very lino. The audience v.ouJd have liked to hoar more, and the vote oi thanks moved at the rlose of the lecture by Mr. A. G. Lunn was by no means * perfunctory acknowledgement.