ABSTRACT
With the Maori, as with most Pacific peoples, the feast was an institution of great cultural importance. It was always an affair of excitement and pleasure, it represented the pinnacle of satisfaction in community life, the focus of interest for months ahead. It gave scope for generous display both of provisions and of the personal accomplishments of those who attended. It offered, too, a peculiarly favourable opportunity for selective friendship and sexual choice. The feast also played a valuable social rôle in providing the occasion for the meeting of different groups and promoting harmonious relations between them. Food had a very mellowing influence when it was a question of patching up tribal differences.
