Methods of Research.

The special value of the life work of “Te Peehi” lies in its particularity and exactness. In his writings he did not strive after effect; his purpose was to page 20 page 21 place on record with strict regard to fact, as fully as possible, the manner of life and the beliefs of the Maori before the coming and the teachings of the European had transformed, more or less, the native mind. He neglected no detail, he enquired minutely into aspects of life and folk-lore and spiritual belief which others might overlook.

He was a man of system and method. One notable service he did for the cause of knowledge was to record many hundreds of words which were not in the Maori Dictionary; these have been included in the latest edition of the Maori Dictionary edited by Bishop Herbert W. Williams.

In putting together all his volumes of notes Best was actuated chiefly by the desire to rescue all he could of the olden wisdom and faiths and folk-ways while his life lasted. He was a student of primitive man for the pure love of the work. Naturally, as the old men who were his mentors passed to the Reinga, he came to be regarded by the Urewera and their kin as the repository of their sacred lore; he was the white ruanuku of the Tuhoe folk.

His history of the Urewera tribe is a work of unsurpassed merit in the field of records dealing with a particular district; the only local history which nearly approaches it is S. Percy Smith's History of Taranaki and the West Coast. The present and coming generations of the Urewera clans should treasure this great history; it is their family Bible and their Domesday Book. There is a truly wonderful range of tribal chronicles here transmitted from generation to generation by word of mouth, and rescued by “Te Peehi” from the last of the sages of the bush, rescued only just in time.

There is a sympathy, a poetic touch, in much of Best's writings about his beloved bush region that give them a peculiar charm. His first book about those parts, a pamphlet issued by the Department of Lands and Survey in Mr. Percy Smith's time, narrating a pioneer excursion to Lake Waikaremoana, with a Maori party, is a little classic in descriptive guide books.

A little mannerism of “Te Peehi” which readers of his books will note is his frequent use of Spanish terms, a reminder of his adventurous young days in the South and West of the United States, from the Rio Grande to Colorado; that was in the ‘Eighties. He was fond of writing of the village marae or square and assemblyplace as the “plaza.” He would as often as not style his horse his “cayuse.” Another Spanish - American trait was his habit of wearing the poncho as a cape in his bush travelling in wet weather. The old poncho, with the hole for the head, slipped over his shoulders, a bit of a blanket or a shawl round his waist in place of trousers, and often barefooted, thus the tough bushman-student took the rugged and wet forest trail in his pioneer years in the last retreat of the Maori as he was.