Na to Hoa Aroha, from Your Dear Friend, Volume 1

The Correspondence of Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck, 1925–50 (Volume I, 1925–29)

Sir Peter Buck, Sir Apirana Ngata

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781775581260
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The leading historian Keith Sorrenson has collected in three volumes the complete correspondence (174 letters in all) between two distinguished twentieth-century M?ori scholars and statesmen, Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa). 'The letters confirm that each man was indeed a totara tree of some magnificence and that each was a tree that stood alone. Even today such trees remain rare,' writes Hirini Moko Mead.

1

Department of Health,

Division of Maori Hygiene.

c/o District Health Office,

Auckland, N.Z.,

Oct. 20th. 1925.

Dear Api,

Your description of the Sec. of the M.P. Board1 picturing the fishing scene at the ancient reef bounding Pikopikoiwhiti2 is vivid in the extreme and truly Polynesian in setting. There is no doubt that of late years you have been doing work in a quiet way that as regards finance, would have startled us in the old days. In fact we wouldn’t have got it.

Clark Wissler of ‘The American Indian’ fame passed through the other day.3 He is accompanied by a Mr. Embree, who belongs to the Rockefeller Research Foundation.4 They are visiting the Universities and going on to see Best,5 Skinner6 etc. If you read the paragraphs in the last P. J.7 concerning Wissler and the new Department at Yale, it looks as if they were after something. I asked Embree if there was anything in which we could help, and he said he hoped to have important news after coming back from Dunedin. They leave for Australia from Wellington and Embree asked me if I could go down to Wellington for a day if he wired at the week end. They may want me for some research trip or to give me a job. It would have to be pretty good before one could become an exile from home.

Yes I think it would be a good thing to send some of our records in exchange for Hawaiian or other Polynesian records!

I went to New Plymouth the other day with forty-one members of the Auckland Savage [Club]8 on an official visit to the local Savages. On the way, we stayed a ½ day and night at Urenui as the guests of the Ngati-Mutunga tribe. They put on all the old Te Whiti9 stunts to welcome us with, which is unique on that coast. I took care to stress the significance of the dying out of the old feeling engendered by the War. I influenced a Press Reporter in putting in the effect of setting up a Commission to inquire etc as a result of Pom’s10 efforts so he got quite a local ad. to help his electioneering. Boyle, the United States consul in Auckland, was much struck by the country and the Maori hospitality.

I suppose you are now in the thick of the election business. Good luck, not that there is the slightest need to worry. Pom will have a good run in spite of Moffat, the Labour Member11 splashing some money on Te Puea.12 In Auckland here, they are working up to the verge of a free fight.

Yours

Peter.

1 The Board of Maori Ethnological Research. It was established in 1923 to administer funds derived largely from the Maori Land Boards, the Maori Purposes Fund, and the Maori Trustee, which were to be devoted mainly to the publication of ethnological material. The Board was chaired by the Native Minister. Ngata and Buck were members. The secretary was Henare Te Raumoa Huatahi Balneavis (1884–1940), usually referred to in the correspondence as Bal., Te Raumoa, or H.R.H.; Private Secretary to the Native Minister; friend and confidant of Ngata and Buck. Bal. was a son of J. H. Balneavis, who had also worked in the Native Department, and a grandson of Lieutenant-Colonel H. C. Balneavis of the 65th Regiment and Hineiahua of Whakatohea of Opotiki. He was educated at Te Aute College.

2 A lagoon on the eastern peninsula of Tahiti, which is renowned in Maori legend as the departure point for Toi in his search for Whatonga, and later the Horouta, the Takitimu, and other canoes on their voyages to New Zealand. See J. C. Andersen, Maori Place-Names, Polynesian Society Memoir, No. 20, Wellington, pp. 154–6, 176–7.

3 Clark Wissler (1870–1947). He had just been appointed to a chair of anthropology at Yale University, and head of the anthropological research section of the Institute of Psychology. Buck was referring to Wissler’s The American Indian, Douglas C. McMurtie, New York, 1917.

4 Edwin Rogers Embree (1883–1950), Director, Division of Studies, Rockefeller Research Foundation, 1924–1927.

5 Elsdon Best (1856–1931), sometimes referred to by his Maori name, Te Peehi; ethnologist at the Dominion Museum; the doyen of New Zealand’s amateur ethnologists. For a sympathetic study, see E. W. G. Craig, Man of the Mist: a biography of Elsdon Best, A. H. & A. W. Reed, Wellington, 1964.

6 Henry Devenish Skinner (1887–1979). In 1919 Skinner was appointed lecturer in ethnology at the University of Otago, the first such appointment in a New Zealand university. He is treated to some excessively astringent comment by Buck and Ngata in later letters. For an assessment of Skinner’s contribution to New Zealand anthropology, see J. D. Freeman, ‘Henry Devenish Skinner: a memoir’, in J. D. Freeman and W. R. Geddes, eds, Anthropology in the South Seas: essays presented to H. D. Skinner, Thomas Avery & Sons, New Plymouth, 1959, pp. 9–27.

7 The Journal of the Polynesian Society (J.P.S.), v. 34 (September 1925), 273–4.

8 A cultural and social club which emulated the London club of the same name. Buck was an esteemed member.

9 Te Whiti o Rongomai (c. 1837–1907), the Christian prophet who led resistance to the European occupation of Maori land confiscated in south Taranaki during the wars of the 1860s.

10 Sir Maui Wiremu Piti Naera Pomare (1876–1930). With Ngata and Buck, one of the giants of the Young Maori Party: educated at Te Aute and Battle Creek Medical College, Michigan; Director of Maori Hygiene, 1901–11; Member for Western Maori, 1911–30; Minister for the Cook Islands, 1916–28; Minister of Health, 1923–28. Pomare was one of the main instigators of the Royal Commission to Inquire into Confiscations of Native Lands, which the Prime Minister had promised in a statement to the Parliament on 28 September. N.Z.P.D., v. 208 (1925), p. 773.

11 Rangi Moffat (1880–1961), sometimes referred to as Rangi Mawhete. He was not, as Buck implies, a member of parliament but merely Labour’s candidate for Western Maori in 1925. He was defeated by Pomare by 4010 votes to 1287.

12 Te Puea Herangi (1884–1952). A grand-daughter of Tawhiao, the second Maori King and, on her Pakeha side, of H. N. Searancke, Te Puea became the power behind the throne in Waikato, being particularly notable for the construction of carved houses at Turangawaewae, Ngaruawahia, and, in association with Ngata, Maori land development schemes. For a recent study see, Michael King, Te Puea: a biogr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM Honolulu, Hawaii.
• 11: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM Honolulu, Hawaii.
• 12
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 16
• 17
• 18
• 19: BERNICE BISHOP MUSEUM Honolulu, Hawaii
• 20
• 21
• 22
• 23
• 24: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUMHONOLULU, HAWAII.
• 25: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII.
• 26
• 27
• 28
• 29: BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM HONOLULU, HAWAII.
• 30
• 31
• 32
• 33
• 34
• 35
• 36
• 37
• 38
• 39
• 39
• 40
• 40
• 41
• 42
• 43
• 44
• 45
• 46
• 47: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, WELLINGTON, N.Z.
• 48
• 49
• 50: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, WELLINGTON
• 51
• 52: OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF NATIVE AFFAIRS, PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, WELLINGTON, N.Z.
• 53
• 54
• Plates
• Copyright