pa

or Pah

n.

The former is nowconsidered the more correct spelling. A Maori word to signifya native settlement, surrounded by a stockade; a fort;a fighting village. In Maori, the verb pa means,to touch, to block up. Pa = a collection of housesto which access is blocked by means of stockades and ditches.

1769. `Captain Cook's Journal' (edition Wharton, 1893),p. 147:

«I rather think they are places of retreat or stronghold,where they defend themselves against the attack of an enemy,as some of them seemed not ill-design'd for that purpose.»

Ibid. p. 156:

«Have since learnt that they have strongholds – – or hippas,as they call them – – which they retire to in time of danger.»

[Hawkesworth spelt it, Heppahs; he = Maori definitearticle.]

1794. `History of New South Wales' (1818), p. 175:

«[On the coast of New Zealand] they passed many huts and aconsiderable hippah, or fortified place, on a high roundhill, from the neighbourhood of which six large canoes wereseen coming towards the ship.»

1842. W. R. Wade, `Journey in New Zealand' (Hobart Town),p. 27:

«A native pa, or enclosed village, is usually surrounded by ahigh stockade, or irregular wooden fence, the posts of whichare often of great height and thickness, and sometimes headedby the frightful carving of an uncouth or indecent image.»

1858. `Appendix to Journal of House of Representatives,' E-4,p. 4:

«They seem, generally speaking, at present inveterate in theiradherence to their dirty native habits, and to their residencein pas.»

1859. A. S. Thomson, M.D., `Story of New Zealand,' p. 132:

«The construction of the war pas . . . exhibits the inventivefaculty of the New Zealanders better than any other of theirworks. . . . Their shape and size depended much on thenature of the ground and the strength of the tribe. They haddouble rows of fences on all unprotected sides; the innerfence, twenty to thirty feet high, was formed of poles stuck inthe ground, slightly bound together with supple-jacks, withes,and torotoro creepers. The outer fence, from six to eight feethigh, was constructed of lighter materials. Between the twothere was a dry ditch. The only openings in the outer fencewere small holes; in the inner fence there were sliding bars.Stuck in the fences were exaggerated wooden figures of men withgaping mouths and out-hanging tongues. At every corner werestages for sentinels, and in the centre scaffolds, twenty feethigh, forty feet long, and six broad, from which men dischargeddarts at the enemy. Suspended by cords from an elevated stagehung a wooden gong twelve feet long, not unlike a canoe inshape, which, when struck with a wooden mallet, emitted a soundheard in still weather twenty miles off. Previously to a siegethe women and children were sent away to places of safety.»

1863. T. Moser, `Mahoe Leaves,' p. 14:

«A pah is strictly a fortified village, but it has ceased tobe applied to a fortified one only, and a collection of hutsforming a native settlement is generally called a pahnow-a-days.»

1867. F. Hochstetter, `New Zealand,' p. 22:

«They found the pah well fortified, and were not able totake it.»

1879. Clement Bunbury, `Fraser's Magazine, June, p. 761:

«The celebrated Gate Pah, where English soldiers in a panic ranaway from the Maoris, and left their officers to be killed.»

1889. Cassell's' Picturesque Australasia,' vol. iv. p. 46:

«A sally was made from the pah, but it was easily repulsed.

Within the pah the enemy were secure.»