By Edward Shortland

A keen and sympathetic observer of Maori custom at a significant time make this an authoratitive account of genealogy, traditions, astronomy, witchcraft, charms, education, mode of warfare etc.

Capper Press, Christchurch, 1980. Hardback with dust jacket. 316 pages. Good clean condition.

Little is generally known of the superstitious practices of the New Zealanders. The Missionaries, who, from their knowledge of the language, alone had it in their power for many years to converse freely with the native race, seem to have avoided all enquiries on such subjects. They came to teach a religion, and not to learn the principles of superstitions, which, however valuable in reference to matters of ethnological interest, they regarded as having for their author the great enemy of mankind.

Similar views have probably influenced Missionaries in all new countries; for precisely the same course was taken by the early Spanish Missionaries at the Philippine Islands, who, we are told, 1 did their utmost "to extirpate the original memorials of the natives, substituting religious compositions of their own, in the hope of supplanting the remains of national and pagan antiquity."

Several years' residence in New Zealand, passed for the most part in constant intercourse with its native inhabitants, either while travelling or while stationed at Maketu--a large village on the shore of the Bay of Plenty, where the influence of the Missionaries had made little or no impression-- gave the writer of the following pages opportunities of studying the manners of the Aborigines, such as they were before they became modified by intercourse with Europeans.

The first seven chapters give the result of the author's personal observations and inquiries touching the Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders. The succeeding chapters are chiefly devoted to the consideration of points of the social condition and manners of this people, which could be learned only by residing among them on terms of intimacy.