Peter Henry Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa)

Peter Henry Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa)

Sir Peter Buck is recognized throughout the world of science as an ethnologist of the highest standing… He stands as high in his own field as did Lord Rutherford in physics, Dr Cockayne in botany, or Sir Truby King in the promotion of the health of mothers and children.

Peter Fraser, Prime Minister and Minister of Māori Affairs, foreword to The Coming of the Maori, 2nd edition, Whitcombe & Tombs, 1950

Peter Buck was a pioneering Māori doctor, a soldier, a sportsman, and a member of parliament. By the end of his life, however, he was famed for being the foremost anthropologist of Māori and Polynesian peoples. Buck was descended from Ngāti Mutunga through his mother and Anglo-Irish stock through his father. The name Te Rangi Hiroa was conferred on him by elders. He lived his early years in the European settlement at Urenui in Taranaki, and between 1896 and 1898 attended Te Aute College where he passed the medical preliminary examination and gained entry to the University of Otago.

Buck excelled academically at Otago, was elected president of the Students’ Association, and became national long jump champion. In 1905, after qualifying as a doctor, he was appointed medical officer for Māori health and campaigned to improve sanitation in Māori settlements. In 1909, Apirana Ngata recommended that he replace the deceased Hone Heke Ngapua as MP for Northern Māori. He served on the Native Affairs Committee and held Cabinet office before leaving parliament in 1914.

In 1915, Buck left New Zealand as the Māori Volunteer Contingent’s medical officer. Following the Gallipoli campaign, the Contingent became the New Zealand Pioneer Battalion. Buck transferred to combat duty and became the Battalion’s second-in-command. Upon his return to New Zealand he was appointed director of Māori hygiene for the Department of Health.

Increasingly, Buck’s interests focused on anthropology, and he and ethnographer Elsdon Best cooperated in fieldwork to record the culture and music of Māori communities. In 1923, he presented a paper on Māori migrations at the Pacific Science Congress. There he met Herbert Gregory, director of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii. Gregory funded Buck on a field trip to the Cook Islands, and then offered him a five-year fellowship at his museum. Buck later replaced Gregory as director of the museum.

Buck researched and wrote prolifically, publishing numerous monographs and articles. He also produced general surveys, the most popular of which was Vikings of the Sunrise (1938). He claimed to have special insights because of his ‘Polynesian corpuscles’, but his work was framed in Western intellectual traditions and he questioned Māori oral sources.

Buck died in Honolulu in December 1951 and his ashes were laid to rest at Okoki near Urenui in 1954. He is commemorated through the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Te Rangi Hiroa Medal, established in 1997 and awarded biennially to recognise excellence in social sciences.

By Francis Lucian Reid

Medals and awards

Hector Medal 1932, Rivers Memorial Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1936, KCMG 1946, Percy Smith Medal of the University of Otago 1951, Huxley Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1952

Further reading

Peter Henry Buck biography – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography website

Read Buck's Ethnology of Manihiki and Rakahanga online – New Zealand Electronic Text Centre website

Read Buck's Ethnology of Tongareva online – New Zealand Electronic Text Centre website

Read Buck's Vikings of the Sunrise online – New Zealand Electronic Text Centre website

Permission of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of this image

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