Sources

Stephen Savage

The Stephen Savage Dictionary – The Dictionary’s compiler, Stephen Savage, was born in New Zealand in 1875 and came to Rarotonga in 1894. He was part New Zealand Maori, from the Whanau Apanui Tribe in the Bay of Plenty. He was Registrar of the Native Land Court of the Cook Islands and a translator for the Cook Islands Administration until his death in 1941.  Savage’s notes show that he began compiling words for a dictionary in the early 1900s. This original dictionary was lost in a house fire.

Savage died before completing his dictionary.  The manuscript was purchased from his estate by the New Zealand Government in 1950 and published by the Department of Islands Territories, Wellington in 1962.  In 1980, it was reprinted by the University of the South Pacific and in 2013 for a third time by the Cook Islands Library & Museum Society Incorporated.