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Maori Hill-Forts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Raymond Firth
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Many a wanderer through the country districts of New Zealand has found interest in the sight of the monumental earthworks which crown so many of our hills. There is something grand and yet pathetic about these old fortresses. Once the scene of turmoil and activity, they now lie neglected and still beneath the sky, clothed in bush, or scrub, or fern, or grass-grown and dotted with sheep. Their day is over, the Maori long since has ceased to swarm on their slopes and man their palisades; they are but a memory of the warring and the peacemaking, the fighting and the feasting of the eventful past.

In this paper it is my object to give a brief account of the general features of their construction and of their importance in Maori life.

Type
Research Articles
Information
Antiquity , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 1927 , pp. 66 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1927

References

1 See the excellent discussion of this point in Allcroft, Hadrian, Eurtheoork of England, 1908, pp. 162-7.Google Scholar

2 Best, The Maori, 11, p. 321 ; Smith, S. Percy, Maori Wars of the Nineteenth Century, 1910, p. 364.Google Scholar

3 Cook, J., Account of a Voyage Round the World, Hawkesworth, 1773, ii, pp. 340 Google Scholar and 342 ; Banks’Journal, ed. by Hooker, 1896, p. 199.

4 Journal Polynesian Society, 1925, 24, 19-23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 For a full account of this fort with plan and photographs see the writer’s paper “The Korekore Pa,” Journal Polynesian Society, 1925, 34, 1–18.Google Scholar

6 In recent years the valuable researches of Mr Geo. Graham have thrown much light on the history of the isthmus and its hill-forts.

7 Graham, Geo., Journal Polynesian Society, 1921, 30, 146.Google Scholar

8 Terraced forts with the scarps faced with stone have also been described from Rapa-iti, in the Pacific, by S. and Routledge, K., Jour. R.A.I., 1921, li, 454–5.Google Scholar

9 The Maori, II, 320-1.

10 Allcroft, op. cit., p. 167n. contrasts the skill in fortification of the Maori with their ignorance of other arts and crafts, and regards them as being a very primitive people. But material equipment alone should not be taken as the criterion of culture. In decorative art, music, poetry, the Maori had reached a high standard. It is quite incorrect to say of the Maori that “They were in fact, in the Palajolithic stage of culture.” They were a neolithic people, well advanced in the arts of grinding, polishing, and drilling stone, even the pounamu, the green jade, which is known to modern lapidaries for its hardness.

11 The same material is employed to-day by the natives of certain forest districts, to lash their wooden fences. A native of Ruatahuna explained that the aka stems (of which several varieties are employed for different purposes) are cut some time before use, laid out in the open to dry and toughen and then steeped in cold water to render them supple.

12 See the excellent description giving full native terminology by Best, The Maori, 2, 321–31.Google Scholar

13 Cook, op. cit., p. 340. Banks, op. cit. 199.

14 Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand, 1817, 1, 174.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., pp. 269-70.

16 Nicholas, , op. cit., 1, 336–7.Google Scholar

17 Hamilton, A., Maori Art, 1896, p. 123 (plan).Google Scholar

NOTE.- Marsden, , Missionary Register, Dec., 1816, pp. 502–3Google Scholar, says in his description that there were three rows of trenches. This discrepancy may be partly due to his having included the scarp in this category. But if his account is correct then the pa was defended still more strongly than represented above.

19 Dominion Museum Bulletin, no.5, pp. 81 sqq.Google Scholar

20 Firth, op. cit., pp. 9-10.

21 Smith, S. Percy, History and Traditions of the Taranaki Coast, 1910, p. 365 Google Scholar. For other instances of sieges see Ibid. pp. 244, 246, 288, etc,; also Best, op. cit., pp. 335-8. The occurrence of such sieges of pa in Maori warfare is an interesting commentary on the opinion expressed by A. H. Allcroft (op. cit., p. 210), that “of sieges, and blockades, it is practically certain the prehistoric period knew nothing. A single rush, a succession of rushes, at most a day’s assault, was all that was to be feared.” Such was not the case with the neolithic Maori.