Stephenson Percy Smith (1840 1922) was a New Zealand ethnologist and surveyor. As a young man, he travelled six hundred miles exploring the volcanic interior of North Island, and had many interactions with the Maori population, whose language, history and traditions fascinated him throughout his career as a government surveyor. In 1892 he co-founded the Polynesian Society, in whose journal this study originally appeared. The first book edition was published in 1898, and this third, updated edition in 1910. Using indigenous sources gathered in Polynesia and New Zealand, Smith constructed an...