Whaikoorero a study of formal Maori speech

Abstract

Many writers have commented on the oratorical skill of the Maori,and his powers of debate. George French Angas, one of the first recorders of the Maori scene, during his travels through the Waikato in the spring of 1844, attended a funeral service for a child at Ngaahuruhuru, a native settlement about four miles from Ootaawhao. He described the oration he heard on that occasion as one of the finest and most impassioned bursts of eloquence he had ever heard. Describing his meeting with Te Wherowhero, a Waikato chief who was later to become the first Maori King, he noted that 'Te Wherowhero, like most of the New Zealand orators, was full of imagery and figurative language'. The Austrian naturalist, Andreas Reischek, during his wanderings through the King Country in 1882, observed that poetical gifts were held in high esteem by 'this impressionable race', so much so that one of the duties of every chief was to qualify himself as a poet and orator.