Abstract
IN an interesting paper on this subject by Mr. Colenso, he gives a great deal of information on this subject, derived from his individual experience during a very long period of dwelling among the Maoris, and that before the country was settled, and by his having travelled very much among them, frequently in parts where no white man had ever been, sometimes on the battle-field, both during and after the fight, ever with them as medical man, often in the confidence of their best head men. The colours of black, white, red and brown were the prized and favourite ones. The purer states, especially of each of these colours were highly valued, to which may be added green and yellow. These several colours and their varying hues comprised nearly all that pertained to their dresses and personal decorations, to their principal houses and canoes. In the olden times a chief's house might truly be called a house โof many colours,โ which were artistically and laboriously displayed. Each tint or shade of colour bore its own peculiar name plainly and naturally, or figuratively sometimes both. They possessed a fine general discrimination of the various shades and hues and tints; they could give an accurate description of a rainbow, of all its various colours; they noticed the iridescent hues of the feathers of a pigeon's neck, of some shells, and the delicate evanescent tints on the ventral surfaces of many fish. From their general hues alone the Maoris could accurately tell whether far off and to them unknown districts were covered with a vegetation of fern or flax (Phormium) or grasses, but far above all their fine discrimination of delicate hues and shades was correctly shown in their nice distinction of the various tints of the flesh of the several kinds of kumara and taro. Once travelling on the coast, nearly forty years ago, Colenso met an old chief who told him that long ago he had cultivated a variety of the taro, which is called Wairuaarangi, but that it had long been lost. Knowing this sort from having met it in the north, and remembering the delicate and curious pink colour, Colenso tested the knowledge of the chief by asking what colour it was, which he immediately minutely described. They had early succeeded in getting brilliant black and red dyes. The old Maoris had a peculiar bias towards neutral colours. Blue was certainly known to them, and they obtained it from two sources, one mineral, the other vegetable; and they had even distinct names for several shades of blue. Throughout this paper Mr. Colenso criticises and contradicts many of the assertions made by Mr. Stack, from probably an insufficient knowledge of Maori, in a memoir recently published on the colour-sense of the Maoris (Trans. New Zealand Institute, vol. xiv. p. 49).
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On the Perception of Colours by the Ancient Maoris . Nature 26, 578 (1882). https://doi.org/10.1038/026578a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/026578a0