376 Transactions. 



skill in the open air. But it was in the late summer or early autumn that 

 the " great games," or tribal or intertribal tournaments, usually took place ; 

 for it was at this season — when the days were long and the weather gene- 

 rally fine, when the kumara plantation had been cleaned up and required 

 no further attention until the harvest-time — -it was then that the Maori was 

 wont to give himself up to enjoyment, provided always that he was not 

 engaged on the war-path. At this time the inhabitants of villages, or groups 

 of villages, would turn out in parties — men, women, and children — and go 

 on their hunting or fishing expeditions, or perhaps on a visit to some neigh- 

 bouring hapu or friendly tribe ; and whenever a number of people were 

 assembled a great part of their time would be spent in whatever game 

 happened to be the craze at the moment. 



It was generally characteristic of Maori games that they engaged the 

 strength of the whole number of available contestants. They had not yet 

 reached that stage of civilization at which the game is played by a few 

 trained athletes while the whole crowd sit round as spectators, as in a Spanish 

 bull-fight or a colonial football match. Even if the games were such that 

 only a few could play at a time, the rest were ready to take their turn ; and 

 very often, in the larger competitions, a haka, or posture dance, would form 

 part of the programme, if it did not, as was often the case, form a sort of 

 chorus to the game. 



Of all the games in vogue amongst the Maoris that of kite-flying was 

 one of the most ancient as well as one of the most popular. There is pretty 

 frequent mention of the practice in several of the older writers on New 

 Zealand, but the notices are fragmentary and incomplete. It seemed to me, 

 therefore, that it would be a good thing to put them, along with such infor- 

 mation as I have been able to obtain from other sources, into a connected 

 form ; and the result is the paper I have the honour of reading to you this 

 evening. 



It may seem strange that neither in the writings of Captain Cook nor 

 in those of any of his companions do we find any mention of the kite ; but 

 when we consider the character of the Maoris, as well as the circumstances 

 of the navigator's visit, we realize that there is nothing remarkable in the 

 omission. The head of the primitive Maori could contain only one thing at 

 a time — what he felt he felt most acutely, to the exclusion of everything 

 else ; and we can easily conceive that they would be so taken up with the 

 kaipuke (ship), with the strange race of beings that it brought to their shores, 

 with the wonders of the fire-arms, and the (to them) priceless value of the 

 taonga, or goods, that for the moment such an every-day thing as the mere 

 flying of a kite would have quite lost its interest. The same absence of 

 mention of the kite is noticeable in Crozet, the historian of the ill-fated 

 Marion expedition, which took place in 1772. Crozet was a very accurate 

 observer, and his account of the primitive Maoris and their customs is one 

 of the most exact and graphic that we possess. If he had seen the kite he 

 would certainly have described it. But it must be remembered that his 

 visit was confined to a very small part of the country — ■ a hilly, forest- 

 covered, and sparsely populated region on the coast of the Bay of Islands, 

 where kite-flying would scarcely have been practised. 



According to the universal Polynesian tradition, Maui, the hero-god, and 

 the common ancestor of all the brown races of the Pacific, was himself a 

 kite-flyer,* and wherever his adventurous descendants have settled they 



* See " Maui the Demi-god," by W. D. Westervelt, p. 114. 



