The Pink and White Terraces and nineteenth-century spirit traditions

Record summary

The Pink and White Terraces at Lake Rotomahana were described by nineteenth-century Māori informants, missionaries and tourists before their destruction or burial in the 1886 Tarawera eruption. Accounts surrounding the area include Māori understandings of sacred beings, tapu and dangerous landscape features, as well as European interpretations of unusual phenomena. This lead matters because it permits comparison between Indigenous place traditions and colonial travel writing without collapsing them into a modern haunting report. The precise transmission and translation of individual narratives require careful source criticism.