J. B. Condliffe (1891–1981)

“Te Rangi Hiroa did not succeed in publishing his analysis of the changes in Mangaia brought by the advent of Christian missionaries and later of civil administration. The notes he had… They tell a sad story of overzealous and narrowminded missionaries destroying not only the pitiful little idols representing the native gods, but everything remotely connected to their worship. With the gods and their shrines, the enthusiastic converts destroyed maraes and temples, houses and carvings and weapons. They abandoned their ancient dances and forgot their legends – or rewrote them to conform with the first chapter of Genesis. With the dances went the ancient songs and chants. Hymns took their place. When the ceremonies were abandoned, a fatal blow was struck not only at the priestly function, but at the authority of the chiefs. Tribal discipline exercised by chiefs and buttressed by tradition was replaced by the narrow theology of the missionaries, whose conviction of sin was centred on their obsession with sex, which the Polynesians had enjoyed without any sense of guilt. The young were encouraged to reject the authority of chiefs and elders but found it difficult to behave as the missionaries thought they should. Inevitably an apparatus of discipline and policing, amounting to snooping, emerged with the missionary as judge and lawgiver, and his more pious supporters as detectives. Eventually, in many Polynesian lands, this form of theocracy had to be replaced by civil administration. New Zealand took over the Cook Islands in 1900; but by then much of the Polynesian culture was irretrievably lost” (page 207)

J.B. Condliffe found this passage in Te Rangi Hiroa’s notes towards Christianity in the Cook Islands pp. 641-705 of original MS, omitted from Arts and Crafts of the Cook Islands, Bishop Museum bulletin 179, 1944. Hope to find these notes at Bishop Museum one day.

J.B. Condliffe writes the story of Te Rangi Hiroa. A man of many accomplishments, including: “It was to Te Aute that he left his diplomas and honors – his earned medical degrees and doctorate in medicine, his honorary degrees from Yale, M.A. (1936) and D.SC. (1951), two other honorary doctorates in science from the universities of New Zealand (1937) and Rochester (1939) and a doctorate in letters from the University of Hawaii (1948). With them went his Distinguished Service Order, awarded in 1918, his British and Swedish knighthoods (K.C.M.G. and Royal Order of the North Star, both in 1946) and his scientific prizes – the Hector Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute in London, both in 1936, the Terry Prize of Yale University in 1939, the S. Percy Smith Medal of the University of Otago in 1951, and the Huxley Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institue that came in 1952 after his death.” (page 63)

Many passages from letters exchanged between Te Rangi Hiroa, his wife, friend Ngata, and many others enrich this biography. J.B. Condliffe writes about how Te Rangi Hiroa stayed true to his Maori roots, traveled around Polynesia and the world, searching and researching about the way things are, and the way they came to be. Many times mentioned how Te Rangi Hiroa was more concerned with learning how communities made and developed tools, and making the tools himself, than the superficial interpretations of modern museums.

“It is in keeping with the Polynesian traditions that groups, when death was imminent, should trust themselves to the mercy of the waves rather than that of their fellow man.” (page 292)… (altro)