1921 .] 
Best.—Huru, or Ngahuru. 
249 
Savage also gives teecow (tekau) as the term for twenty, and apparently 
he heard a native counting when he noted catteekow cotihi (ka tekau kotahi) 
for twenty, or “ one score,” as he has it, and catteekow cadooa (ka tekau 
ka rua) for “ two score. 5 ' 
Nicholas, who sojourned at the Bay of Islands in 1815, gives ngahoodoo 
for ten, and tikow manahoodoo (tekau ma ngahuru — tekau and ten) for 
twenty, which is confusing, for he has not stated that tekau denotes ten. 
He then, however, gives kadooa tikow {ka rua tekau — two tekau) as forty, 
and katoodoo tikow (ka torn tekau — three tikau) as sixty, and so on, thus 
showing that one tekau must necessarily be twenty. Some light will be 
thrown on this confusion later on. On his own evidence tekau ma ngahuru 
should denote thirty, as it did on the east coast of the North Island. 
We have now to consider some contradictory evidence as to the value 
of the term tekau as formerly employed by the Maori in his system of 
numeration, and which I belie\e to be explainable only by the fact that 
the Maori possesses two such systems. Some evidence lately perused, but 
unattainable when the writer was compiling a former paper (see Trans¬ 
actions of the New Zealand Institute, vol. 39), casts an interesting light on 
the above question. . 
Archdeacon Maunsell and Bishop Williams both left us some remarks 
about tekau being employed by some tribes to denote eleven, and A. S. 
Atkinson notes a remark made by the latter to the effect that the Maori 
in some districts counted by elevens. A more correct view is, I believe, 
that tekau was used in some districts as a tally cry in a decimal system of 
numeration; at the same time, we have evidence to show that tekau was 
employed among the same people to denote twenty. This could only mean 
that two modes of counting* were employed by such people, the one decimal, 
the other vigesimal. We have already seen that tekau was noted by early 
visitors as expressing twenty in the northern districts, and that ngahuru 
was used for ten. Another early visitor to that region shows that both 
lekau and ngahuru were applied to ten, but that the latter only was used in 
actual counting. The following evidence tends to show that the expression 
tekau was employed in its true Polynesian sense (i.e., te kau = the collection 
or assembly) for both ten and twenty, according to which multiple system 
was employed, the ten fingers or the twenty fingers and toes, 
Lieutenant-Governor King, who visited the northern part of the North 
Island in 1793, collected certain information relating to the country and its 
inhabitants, which was published in Collins’s History of New South Wales 
in 1804.* The Maori numerals, as given at page 562 of that work, are 
misspelt but recognizable :— 
Ta-hie 
(Tahi) 
. . One. 
Du-o 
(Rua) 
Two. 
Too-roo 
( Toru) 
Three. 
Wha 
(Wha) 
Four. 
Dee-mah 
(Rim a) 
Five. 
O-no 
(Ono) 
Six. 
Whee-too 
(Whitu) 
Seven. 
Wha-roo 
(Wciru) 
Eight. 
E-wTia 
(Iwa) 
Nine. 
Ng-a-hu-du ( Ngahuru) 
.... Ten. 
* First edition dated 1798. 
