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Some Aspects of Maori Myth and Religion (#1) | Spiritual and Mental Concepts of the Maori (#2)

Elsdon Best

Collection:

Notable marginalia:

None. These monographs are quite unaltered.

Librarian's note:

When the 1954 preface to a 1930s monograph on an indigenous people warns that its contents are a little archaic, you brace for at least a little bit of racism.

And indeed, there's racism to be found in this monograph (as of writing this, I haven't read monograph#2), which unfortunately invites doubt on its accuracy.

The preface tells us that its author, Elsdon Best (1956-1931) was a staff member of the Dominion Museum in New Zealand, who spent time with the Maori people of Takitumu in northeast New Zealand, and is described as an interpreter of ethnology from the Maori point of view.

That sounds like an oxymoron -- the people who can speak from the Maori point of view are.... the Maori. But you can kind of see why they would think to describe it this way. Best himself writes within the monograph that he's improving on the work of white ethnographers before him, in that he thinks the Maori's beliefs should be respected, recorded, and studied.

Considering that the predecessors he quotes are calling the Maori devil-worshipers, maybe he really was taking steps in the right direction; but it wasn't by leaps and bounds, since he uses terms like barbaric races and savages.

One could argue that was the parlance of the time, yet it's still language that demeans and establishes a hierarchy between "us" and "them." And despite his insistence that he's uplifting the Maori religion in the academic world, Best repeatedly describes the Maori as an "uncivilized" people who European cultures have greatly surpassed, calling Christianity a higher system that all other religions are heading towards (10). In fact, in the last few pages, he waxes poetic that the Maori is near, very near to the end of his path, implying that they are an imminently dying culture and that it remains for us to carry on his [the Maori's] task (whatever the hell that means) (41). It's all swept up in this romanticized language that feels at least a century outdated.

Now, what if I were to tell you that Best didn't have an academic background in enthnography? That this was more a later-in-life career, after years of working as a clerk, a forester, caddle-herder, and as a police officer who participated in at least one raid against Maori people who were non-violently resisting against colonial settlers?

This last career makes the language he uses all the more disgusting. But it also makes more sense. Through his work, Best was often in contact with Maori people, and seemed to have developed a fascination and some sympathy for them. He began New Zealand's Polynesian Society, aimed at fostering interest in Polynesian culture and history, and sources I've read suggest he developed some personal connections with important Maori figures, being at times a mediator and advisor between the opposing sides.

For late 19th century standards, he was likely ahead of his time. Reading his writing over 100 years later, he's very archaic.

Some additional notes:

1. I've limited what notes I share on this one, since, not knowing anything about Maori culture or religion, it doesn't feel appropriate for me to spread some of Best's claims, even to question them.

2. the mists of hoar antiquity (5)

3. He writes that in Christianity, the concept of hell was, of course, the result of the strong desire of priesthoods to gain power and influence over the people. (8)

4. He describes a Dr. Savage (oh, the irony) whose 1805 writings on the Maori he highly doubts: A subsequent passage is even more entertaining: 'When paying their adoration to the rising sun the arms are spread and the head bowed, with the appearance of much joy in their countenances, accompanied with a degree of elegant and reverential solemnity.' If these amazing Maori of 1805 were capable of singing a song with a double expression of much joy and reverential solemnity on their countenances, of a verity they must have been a truly entertaining folk. I look with deep and abiding suspicion upon such sun-worship. (8)

5. He writes that subsequent observations by colonists didn't believe the Maori had a religion at all, and derided anything remotely like it as absurd and superstitious ceremonies. Best attributes this, at least in one instances, to these people having a peculiar definition of religion. (8-9)

6. Much talk about gross superstitions, but the The Realness of Witchcraft in America would argue that Christianity has also much of these superstitions. (30)

7. When, some years ago, the old peel Tower known as Elston Tower, in Northumberland, was being repaired, a walled up chamber was discovered in which were three horses skulls placed together. This was an old custom of the Saxons, a survival of paganism; they built such skulls into churches as a survival of the old, old custom of human sacrifice. (35)

8. Quoting Clodd, Among the delusions which have wrought havoc on mankind, making life one long nightmare, and adding to mental anguish the infliction of death and horrible forms upon a multitude whose vast total can never be known, there is probably none comparable for its bitter fruits with this belief in the activity of evil spirits. (38)

9. The last part of the monograph seems to try to justify why people should care about the Mori myths and religions, because the author seems to care. His reason is that learning about the Maori religion tells us something about human beings as a whole, which is a nice sentiment. But he also seems to imply that the Maori 'walked so that Western civilization could run' in a strange way that reeks of paternalism. (39)