The article presents estimates of New Zealand Maori vital rates from the mid-nineteenth century to World War I. Recently, some South Pacific populations appear to have undergone rapid declines in mortality after decades of very high death rates. The available evidence suggests that mortality levels increased after contact with Europeans reaching peaks in the nineteenth century, particularly during epidemics, then declined gradually until the period of accelerated decrease after World War II. Probably the birth rate was, under normal circumstances, reasonably high. To obtain estimated vital rates for the population as a whole one must use enumeration data as a base. There are many methods available to carry out such an analysis, but the minimum requirement is the availability of at least one and preferably two censuses with a published breakdown by quinquennial age groups. Moreover, the populations under analysis should, in principle, be closed and stable. For a "closed" population it is not necessary to assume that the structure is quasi-stable if one uses for estimates the survivorship of cohorts between censuses as a basis. However, there is the problem of intercensal differences in the quality of enumeration for the same cohort.