Elsdon Best: Notes on the art of war

By GILBERT WONG

The publishers deserve congratulations for this book, which collects the writings on Maori warfare by ethnographer Elsdon Best, author of Tuhoe: Children of the Mist.

Previously much of this work was available only through the yellowing copies of the Journal of the Polynesian Society. In 1895 the Government sent Best, who would later be ethnologist at the Dominion Museum in Wellington, into Tuhoe country to glean what he could.

Tuhoe, who inhabited the rough terrain of the Ureweras, were the iwi who had least contact with Pakeha and were assumed to retain traditional cultural practices.

Best's articles on warfare provide a complete view, from dissection of tactics, warriors and battles to the spiritual and mystical aspects of warfare for the Maori.

An able linguist, he was able to collect much of the previously unknown lore surrounding battle. As he writes on the causes of war, "He wahine, he whenua, e ngaro ai te tangata - Through women and land are men lost. These are the most usual causes of war."

This is a handsome publication which includes striking colour plates, notably work by the artist Horatio Gordon Robley whose portrait of warriors such as Raniera Te Hiahia show how formidable the Maori were in war.

Reed

$59.95