﻿TRANSACTIONS 



OF THE 



NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE, 



1871. 



-MISCELLANEOUS. 



Art. 1. — Ethnogra'phiGal Considerations on the Whence of the Maori. 

 By J. T. Thomson, F.RG.S. 



(With lUusti'ations.) 

 \Read before the Otago Institute, 22nd November, 1870.] 

 Native tradition has indicated the Navigators' Islands as the directly prior 

 home of the Maoris or aborigines of New Zealand, from whence they are 

 said to have migrated throxigh, or by way of Eorotonga, which latter island 

 is still denominated "the road to Hawaiki," an island of the former groiip. 

 (" Story of New Zealand," by Dr. Thomson). With tradition this paper has 

 little to do, as our object is to examine the ethnographical relations of the 

 Maori with other races of the world, in as far as his physical form, customs, 

 and language will guide us. To enable us to perform our task with any degree 

 of satisfaction, we must give wide sco]3e to our observations by first taking a 

 glance at the map of the old world, tracing thereon the seats of the great 

 divisions of the human family. 



The human family may be reduced to three primary divisions — by coloiir, 

 white, 1 ed, and black ; or by name, Caucasian, Mongolian, and Negro, between 

 which there are innumerable subdivisions and modifications of shade, and 

 diversity of form, customs, and language. Before the discoveries of Columbus 

 and Vasco de Gama, which gave such wide expansion to the white and black 

 divisions, the seat of the first was confined to that area extending from Iceland 

 over Central Europe to the confines of Hindostan ; the seat of the second was 

 over North Europe, North, Central, and Eastern Asia ; while the seat of the 

 third was confined to the continents and islands of the tropics, extending from 

 Cape de Verde to Malicolo. Where one division bordered on another at various 

 points they intermingled, and thu.s graduated one into the other, or the weaker 



