OoLENSO. — On the Moa. 07 



Whakamoa— to make up, or raise a plat, or heap of small stones or of 

 eartli ; to make a raised bed of earth for planting, as in a food cultivation. 



"Whakamaimoa — to show kindness to rough, undeserving people ; to make 

 tame, civil. 



Those several names of places, persons, and things, selected from a large 

 number, would of themselves prove of great service to us in our researches 

 if they could be depended on ; as showing that, in some indefinite period in 

 the far past, they applied to the animal in question. But in almost every 

 case they may mean (or originally have meant) something else ; for some of 

 them may have had reference to a man, or men, named Moa ; others (as 

 Papamoa, Raumoa) to the sea-side grass called Moa, etc. 



It was a common custom with the Maoris (and it is not yet abolished — 

 indeed, it seems of late, during the last 20-25 years, to have been strongly 

 renewed), to name a child after some ancestor of the olden time, which was 

 not unfrequently repeated again and again in the course of succeeding 

 generations, as may be found in their genealogical lists of descent — much 

 the same as obtains among us. In some cases, too, the name of Moa, 

 when derived from that of a man of ancient times, may have originally been 

 only a part of his name — the beginning, middle, or ending* of it, as the 

 case might have been — having subsequently had something else added 

 thereto, as is now still being done by them. Nevertheless I must, in all 

 fairness, allow that it seems to me that such names of places, etc., as 

 Moawhiti, Moarahi, Otamoa, Haraungamoa, etc. (which I have marked with 

 an asterisk in the foregoing list), are derived from the animal in question, 

 viz., the Moa, and that, too, when in a living state. And, if I am right in 

 my deduction, or conjecture, such also serves to carry the age in which the 

 Moa Hved very far back indeed in the history of the Maori ; as the names 

 of places were before anything else with them, and were also never 

 changed.! And this will the more strongly appear to be the case, for, as 



* As obtains also very commonly in modern names among the Maoris, e.g. : Maa (for 

 Makarini t= MacLean), Mue (for Hamuera = Samuel), Neho (for Koreneho =^ Colenso), 

 Tiu (for Matin = Matthew), Pao (for Paora = Paul), Nahi (for Natanahira = Nathaniel). 



t I may here give the translation of a letter from some aged chiefs on the East Ooast, 

 in answer to my repeated enquiries. It will also serve as a fair sample of many received 

 on the same subject : — 



" Friend Colenso, greeting to thee, etc. Listen to what we have to say in answer to 

 thy many questions. We are not sufficient (or able) to reply. The reason of our inability 

 is simply this, that our ancestors themselves did not know, and so that want of knowledge 

 has come down to and is with us of the present day. It is so just because there was and 

 is but one meaning of those several words [names of places] , viz, : the name of the place 

 itself. We know the bones of the Moa from old time ; but the reason why such a name 

 (of Moa or relating to a Moa) was anciently given to streams, to lands, to persons, to trees, 

 to plants, this we don't know, we cannot explain ; and herein is our great ignorance." 



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