Abstract
ELSDON BEST, doyen of Polynesian ethnology, died at Wellington, New Zealand, last September. He was born in 1856 at Porirua and had little schooling, but was from his earliest years associated with the Maori population. At eighteen years of age he was in the Poverty Bay district, then emerging from the shadow, of Te Kooti's massacres, working in the bush on fencing and felling contracts. He joined the armed constabulary for the, as it turned out, bloodless campaign against Te Whiti, the latter part of his service being in control of a party of ‘friendlies’ in the bush. In 1883 he went to Honolulu, later moving on to California, engaging in timber work among the redwoods of the Sierra Nevada. He then moved east into Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, working as a cowboy and as foreman in railroad construction. At the end of 1886 he returned to New Zealand and entered on the period of twenty-five years' intimate connexion with the Maoris which furnished him with the material for his long series of books and bulletins. The latter part of his life was spent in Wellington, on the staff of the Dominion Museum.
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SKINNER, H. Mr. Elsdon Best. Nature 128, 929–930 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/128929a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/128929a0