The Maori and Polynesian Scribes

Te Ao Hou, November 1964, Page 25

The Maori and Polynesian Scribes Before long the newly literate elders were themselves recording traditional lore. They were encouraged in this by interested administrators, who in a number of instances kept them supplied with writing materials. In New Zealand Governor George Grey, Native Secretary Edward Shortland, and Surveyor-General Percy Smith might be mentioned in this connection. In Hawaii Judge Abraham Fornander, and in Samoa the American Consul, William Churchill, played the same role. The amount of material placed on record by native scribes with or without the encouragement of interested Europeans, is impressive. A Hawaiian published 133 articles on traditional and historical topics in the 1860s. Book-length traditional narratives were written by another Hawaiian and also by a Fijiian. The Grey collection of Maori manuscripts includes about 2,000 pages written by one author, Te Rangikaheke of Ngati Rangiwewehi. And in the Tuamotu Islands, Stimson, who was collecting traditional information there, speaks of informants arriving with bundles of manuscript books. In New Zealand it was, and is, usual for Maori families to keep manuscript books in which are recorded genealogies, the texts of songs known to members of the family, and local traditions. Many such books have been destroyed accidentally, or through ignorance of their true value, or because they were regarded as tapu, and perhaps malevolent. But great numbers still exist. In 1893 the interest of a group of amateur ethnographers and folklorists in such material led to the foundation of the Polynesian Society, and a little later the Bishop Museum, in association with the University of Hawaii, began an extensive programme of ethnographic research in Polynesia, a programme which included the collecting and publishing of myth and tradition. Continued on page 42