BEST, ELSDON (1856-1931) was born at Porirua, where his father, William Best (who arrived in 1844) had taken up land. Until the age of nine he lived in close touch with nature in the bush and learned much of the habits of birds and the lore of the countryside. In 1865 the family moved to Wellington and he had a few years' education in the Commercial School on Wellington Terrace. He passed the junior civil service examination and obtained a post in the office of the registrar-general.

After one year of sedentary occupation he gave up his post and went to Poverty Bay (1874). There he worked for some years on a sheep station, but when the Parihaka trouble arose he joined the Armed Constabulary. He left the force after the coup of 1881 and returned to the East Coast, where he was employed with W. D. S. Macdonald on a cattle station. In 1883, wishing to see the world, Best left for Hawaii. Thence he proceeded to California, where he worked amongst the redwoods and then farther east, ranching in Texas and the Middle West states. Returning to New Zealand after the Tarawera eruption in 1886, he worked for some years in sawmills in the Urewera country, then being opened for the first time. Then he joined the lands and survey department.

Altogether Best spent about sixteen years in the Urewera, in circumstances which enabled him to gain a competent command of the language and a rich knowledge of the customs, traditions and lore of the Tuhoe. At the suggestion of S. Percy Smith he made a special study of the Urewera from 1896. He was a tireless explorer, a patient observer and a methodical recorder, and when he returned to Wellington in the early years of the century his knowledge of the Maori people made him a desirable officer of the Dominion Museum. There in the following years he devoted study and care to the arrangement and setting forth of the vast mass of material already in his possession and to the acquisition of further stores. He wrote a series of papers on Maori life and customs which were published as Museum bulletins and monographs, holding a unique position as authoritative studies of various phases of Maori ethnology and philology. These monographs were on such topics as the Maori canoe, the pa, fishing and sea foods, storehouses, agriculture, mythology and religion. Many papers were contributed by him to the proceedings of the Polynesian Society and the New Zealand Institute and he published also several volumes of greater importance in size, though not necessarily more scholarly, than these modest bulletins. Best's first noteworthy paper, on the neolithic Maori, appeared in the Yearbook of 1892. In 1896 he published a paper on the Rangitaiki basin and in the following year one on Waikaremoana. His period of greatest output was following the great war. His material was now better digested and arranged and he was able to publish fourteen bulletins within seven years. During this period also he published his two most important works, The Maori as He Was (in 1924), and Tuhoe, the Children of the Mist (in 1925). Each was in two volumes. During the same time he provided much historical information for other purposes and wrote smaller volumes on the history and topography of certain localities.

In 1914 the New Zealand Institute honoured Best with the award of the Hector medal for research in ethnology, and five years later he was elected a fellow. He was a foundation member of the Polynesian Society (1892). Sir Apirana Ngata, speaking in 1922, said: "There is not a member of the Maori race who is fit to wipe the boots of Mr. Elsdon Best in the matter of the knowledge of the lore of the race to which we belong." Best died on 9 Sep 1931.

Polyn. Jour., pass. (notably Mar 1932 with p. and bibliog.); Trans. N.Z. Inst.; Best, op. cit.; Annals N.Z. Lit. (p); James Cowan in N.Z. Railways Magazine, 1 Jan 1936 (p); The Dominion, 10 Sep 1931 (p); Evening Post, 9 Sep 1931.

Reference: Volume 1, page 49

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