Heavens Streaked with Sun

On a sentry tower above the historic Pa (native Maori fortress) near Auckland, New Zealand, a single Maori warrior stood waiting. When the government car rounded a bend in the road, he called the traditional chant of welcome and challenge. A tall, bronzed man stepped from the car and picked up the ax that the sentry tossed toward him. At this gesture (the time-honored sign to show that a visit is peaceful) hundreds of Maoris in native costume sang their ancient haka, song of welcome.

To the Maoris, the visitor was Te Rangi Hiroa (The-Heavens-Streaked-with-the-Sun). The outside world knows him as Sir Peter Buck, onetime member of New Zealand's Parliament, major in World War I, now head of Honolulu's Bishop Museum, traveling professor at Yale and the world's leading authority on Polynesian anthropology. To the Pacific Science Congress, meeting at Auckland last week, Sir Peter brought along some distinguished delegates. Under his guidance they came to learn more about his mother's people, the vigorous islanders who fought the New Zealand whites until the 18703 and now live beside them in peace.

Grandmother Cloudless. Sir Peter's father was a North Irishman who fought the Maoris in the '70s and finally married a chief's daughter named Ngarongo-ki-tua (Tidings-that-Reach-Afar). She died when Peter was a child and he was brought up by his grandmother, Kapua-kore (Cloudless), who lived to be 102 years old and was, he recalls, "more tattooed than any woman I have ever seen or heard of among my people."

A white farmer-clergyman sent Peter to the Te Aute College for Maoris, where he made top marks at both books and sports. He graduated from the School of Medicine at the University of Otago in 1904 and went back to his mother's people as a government health officer. In 1909, he was elected to Parliament and soon became a member of the cabinet. In World War I, he won the Distinguished Service Order as second in command of the Maori Battalion.

Back in New Zealand after the war, he turned to the scientific study of his Polynesian kinsfolk, traveling all over the Pacific to record their customs and help solve their problems. He joined the Bishop Museum in Honolulu as a field anthropologist and became its director in 1932. In 1946 he was knighted by George VI.

Nakedness Regained. The leading authority on everything Polynesian, Sir Peter has lived in tiny islands where the ancient customs are still in use. Helped by his ancestry and knowledge of the Maori language, he has been able to study and understand them as no mere white man could. In general, he believes, Polynesians are better off if they do not stray too far from ancient ways. Stimulating desire for imported foods, for instance, might prove disastrous. Their traditional houses are perfect for the climate and the life they lead.

Sir Peter told the Pacific Congress about the difficult problem of clothes among the Polynesians. Early missionaries, shocked by their healthy nakedness, taught them to cover their shame with long, ugly Mother Hubbards. Now some of this teaching is wearing off. On certain islands, reported Sir Peter, the natives go naked on weekdays, wear their Mother Hubbards only for Sunday churchgoing. "They are in something of a quandary," he explained. "They have observed that the whites, who made them wear clothes, are wearing less & less themselves. 'Perhaps we were right about clothes in the first place,' the Polynesians say."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.