Rejected

Sir Peter Buck Rejected Magic Calabash

r:E “sacred calabash” story, mentioned in Mr. Holmes’s article on Poynesian and Micronesian navigation, was firmly discounted by the late Sir Peter Buck, the New Zealand-born Maori director of the Bishop Museum, Honolulu, and possibly the greatest of all students of the history of his race.

“I am convinced that no such contrivance was ever used by the Poynesians,” Sir Peter wrote in a letter to Mr. J. E. Frame, of Nelson, NZ, which was published in the Auckland Star on March 2, 1951, and quoted in PIM in February, 1952.

Following are other extracts from the letter; “The magic calabash story was started by Admiral Rodman, of the United States Navy. He told it to me on board the USS Virginia at Auckland in 1925 . . . He later wrote an article entitled The Sacred Calabash in the US Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 53, 1927.

This article led to inquiries at the Bishop Museum, but no such calabash as that described by Rodman was present in the collection.

“J. F. G. Stokes, of this museum, wrote an article questioning the

authenticity of the calabash, anij Rodman’s reply was really ai evasion. Rodman had told me a* Auckland that he had seen thi calabash and measured the angle which was 19 degrees, the elevatioi of the Pole Star in Hawaii.

“The general feeling is that Rodman constructed the story on a theory which is not supported b;< any material evidence. We cannoc find any mention of such r calabash in Hawaiian tradition, am convinced that no sucl: contrivance was ever used by thr

Polynesians.”