Tuhoe: 2

As with Volume One, Elsdon Best compiled the material for this volume of Tuhoe: The Children of the Mist as he travelled through the Urewera, holding countless first-hand sessions with kaumatua, principally Paitini Wi Tapeka of Ruatahuna and Tutakangahau of Maungapohatu. Volume Two contains the detailed whakapapa (genealogies) and fold-out map of this rugged corner of Te Ika-a-Maui (the North Island).

Now in its fifth edition, Tuhoe ranks as one of the greatest tribal histories of New Zealand. This is a facsimile of the book first published in 1925 by the Board of Maori Ethnological Research on behalf of Best and the Polynesian Society.

As Dr Rapata Wiri writes in the preface to Volume 1, the social and anthropological contexts for Best’s research have changed significantly in the intervening hundred years, but their value endures: ‘Although this book is a product of its time, it significantly contributes to our understanding and knowledge of the tribal traditions and history of Tuhoe and Te Urewera, its lands and its people. To celebrate, we are proud to reprint Tuhoe: The Children of the Mist in 2025, a century after its first publication.’

Author Biography

Elsdon Best was born at Porirua in 1856, later moving to Wellington with this family. He passed the junior civil service examination and entered the office of the Registrar-General. Indoor life did not appeal to the young man. He worked on a sheep station in Poverty Bay, joined the constabulary at the time of the Parihaka affair, spent some time in Hawai’i, California and Texas, returned to New Zealand, and after working for several years in the Urewera country joined the Lands and Survey Department. During this period, while living among the Tuhoe people, he filled endless notebooks with information which took shape in the present book. Eventually he became an officer of the Dominion Museum, where he compiled the many bulletins, monographs, and ethnological papers for which he is famous. He was a foundation member of the Polynesian Society, and in 1914 was awarded the Hector medal for research in ethnology. Nine years before his death in 1931, Sir Apirana Ngata said of him, ‘There is not a member of the Maori race who is fit to wipe the boots of Elsdon Best in the matter of knowledge of the lore of the race to which we belong.’