Maori and Polynesian: their origin, history and culture

Their Military Engineering is strikingly Modern

Their Military Engineering is strikingly Modern

(11) A great contrast to this is the development of the art of war. The earthwork, ditches, and palisades of the pas have drawn unstinted praise from European military engineers. Little in modern warfare could surpass the skill of the old Maoris in the choice of a site or the industry and art in making it impregnable. And the art of siege was naturally as advanced, including the testudo of the Romans, the staged and movable tower for attack, and various methods of setting the pa on fire. The development of this military engineering art in New Zealand far surpasses anything to be seen in Polynesia. There the only forts were stone refuges with occasional stockades for non-combatants in the interior, roughly made of boulders and rocks, as seen in Hawaiia kind of fort occasionally seen in New Zealand too. The only exceptions to this are the wonderful megalithic forts in Rapa-iti, that little island far to the south of Polynesia, and the hill-fortifications of the Marquesans; and they are not to be compared to the New Zealand pas for skill and elaboration.

(12) The contrast bears its own natural significance. It is that the Polynesians, warlike though they were when they reached the new country, had, in many districts, if not in all, a powerful, wary, and vigorous foe to meet. It was no pleasure excursion for them, even though their aristocratic pride has obliterated the genealogies and records of their predecessors, and obscured the trouble they had to keep up for so long against a well-matched enemy, whom they had ultimately to absorb, often peacefully and as allies. Nothing else will explain the extraordinary evolution of military engineering, and the extraordinary precautions they took for the protection of their villages. It is useless to say that the few hundred immigrants that the six canoes brought required this because of their quarrelsome disposition; the country was spacious, and each tribe had room for centuries of growth, without trenching on its neighbour's land. And why did they depart from the traditional methods of their Polynesian forefathers, if there was not a formidable enemy to meet? Even though it is evident that some of the aborigines were unwarlike and easily subdued, exterminated, or driven out, the most reasonable explanation is that the strong, obtrusive new-comers had to learn from their enemies, and that the elaboration of earthworks was one of the things they learned. New Zealand, as the cul-de-sac of Polynesia, and as a land of mountain and valley, forest and flood, was the natural scene of such an evolution long before the six canoes arrived. It must have been the perching place of many defeated peoples driven out of the tropical islands, and its climate and environment would harden their courage and character into something warlike.