Warfare was frequent in olden days and each man was trained in the use of weapons. Hand-to-hand fighting was preferred, and ambuscade and stratagem were frequent. In later warfare against Europeans the Maori showed himself extraordinarily proficient in the military art. In time of peace the social side of life was de veloped, visits were made, and neighbouring tribes were invited to feasts at which dart-throwing, wrestling, top-spinning and posture dancing held the interest of the people. Such receptions were held on the marae, the meeting place in the centre of the village. Feasts also took place at tangi, the ceremonial wailing for the dead, at which many relatives assembled from long dis tances.
The religion of the Maori was closely bound up with his social and economic life. The ordinary people recognized a number of departmental gods, as Tane-mahuta, guardian deity of the forest, trees and birds, or Tangaroa, the Polynesian Nep tune, lord of the sea and fish. The higher priests and chiefs also held belief in Io, a supreme god of rather negative attributes, to whom appeals were made in birth, baptism and marriage ceremo nies for people of rank. This knowledge was jealously conserved, being kept from the common people, as also from European ethnographers until recent years. All Maori believed in a host of minor atua, rather malignant beings who provided omens, gave force to black magic, and punished breaches of tapu. The tapu (Polynesian= taboo) was one of the strongest forces of law in the Maori community. With the significance of sacred or unclean according to circumstances it conveyed in essential the idea of a prohibition. For instance, the person of a chief, his goods, his place by the fire and the remnants of his meal; all things con nected with the gods; a corpse and the surroundings of death were all tapu, as were also a cultivated field, or a new house or canoe. Thus things of social importance to the native were protected from improper interference.
According to Maori belief, man was endowed with several spiritual potentiae, the wairua, the spirit which wanders abroad in dreams, the mauri and the hau, allied metaphysical concepts representing the vitality of a person, his essential life principle. At death the latter are dissolved, but the wairua, the soul, wends its way to Te Reinga, or Te Po, the underworld beneath the sea, a peaceful abode where men pursue their ordinary avocations as in life.
A high degree of intelligence is shown by the Maori, who, on the impact of white civilization, adopted its material symbols eagerly at first, but reacted vigorously when they began to realize its full implications, especially as threaten ing their tribal land, their greatest treasure.
The majority are farmers. Such men as the late Sir James Carroll, Sir Maui Pomare, Sir Apirana Ngata and Dr. P. H. Buck, have rendered excellent service to the community as doctors, law yers and Cabinet Ministers. At present the native people number about 54,000, but the percentage of white blood is rapidly in creasing, so that ultimately miscegenation may be expected to absorb the Maori into our New Zealand population.
The Maori (Welling ton, 1924) ; J. Cowan, Maoris of New Zealand (Christchurch, 1910) ; F. E. Maning, Old New Zealand (1863, new ed. Christchurch, 1924) ; Racial History:—S. Percy Smith, Hawaiki (4th ed. 1921) ; Judge J. A. Wilson, Story of Te Waharoa (1906) ; Te Rangihiroa (Dr. P. H. Buck), Coming of the Maori, Cawthron Lecture II. (Nelson, 1925). For traditional legends—Sir Geo. Grey, Polynesian Mythology (ed. 1907) ; Te Whatahoro, Lore of Whare Wananga (2 vols. Mem. Poly nesian Soc. IV. 1913-15). For economic life:—Raymond Firth, Eco nomics of a Primitive People. Elsdon Best in Transactions N.Z. Insti tute, Bulletins and Monographs of Dominion Museum, Wellington; Te Rangihiroa's Evolution of Maori Clothing, Mem. Polynesian Soc. VII.; papers by W. E. Gudgeon, Archdeacon H. W. Williams, Geo. Graham, H. D. Skinner, etc. in Journal of Polynesian Society, New Plymouth.
Maori Dictionary (1917). (R. F.) MAP (or MAPES), WALTER (d. c. 1208/9), mediaeval ecclesiastic, author and wit, to whose authority the main body of prose Arthurian literature has, at one time or another, been assigned, flourished in the latter part of the 12th and early years of the 13th centuries. He studied at Paris under Girard la Pucelle, who began to teach in or about 116o, but as he states in his book De nugis curialium that he was at the court of Henry II. before 1162, his residence at Paris must have been practically comprised in the decade II so-116o.