CHAPTER III. THE NATIVE RACE
[Image of page 16]
CHAPTER III.
THE NATIVE RACE.
ORIGIN AND NUMBERS. --The New Zealanders, or "Maories" as they call themselves, are a remnant of people of mongrel Malay origin, bands of whom, incited thereto by the feuds and tribal wars ever raging among savage races, abandoned Hawaii, one of the Sandwich Islands, 1 about 400 years ago, and in questing about the seas in search of some new Land, had the good fortune to find New Zealand--slumbering
[Image of page 17]
in her summer seas, and a-glow with beauty and fertility; but revealing, then, no footprint or trace of Man.
Tradition relates that the Immigrants, numbering about 1000, in a dozen large canoes, brought little or nothing with them into the new world they had lighted on save the dog and the rat, an edible root, the gourd, and a berry or two--but plains of farinaceous fern, woods alive with birds, lakes teeming with eels, bays choked with fish, offered them a bounteous larder, and they found that in lighting on New Zealand they had made a most lucky land-fall. They took root in the country, multiplied, and spread; and, judging by existing traces of their old villages and fortifications, it seems not improbable that at the period, whenever it was, when their numbers were the greatest they may have amounted to upwards of 200,000 souls. Those ferocious tribal wars, however, which had originally driven them from Hawaii, remained their curse in New Zealand; and, these, together with other causes of depopulation, so reduced them that when they were first visited and described by Cook, about a hundred years ago, their numbers certainly did not exceed 150,000. The same self-inflicted evils operating on them for the period of seventy years which elapsed between Cook's time and the commencement of our colonization of the country, in 1840, further reduced their numbers to 80,000; and though, after this date, tribal wars virtually ceased in New Zealand, yet such have been the continued depopulating effects of the Natives' piggish mode of life, of the semi-promiscuous intercourse of the sexes before marriage, and of other barbarous customs to which they cling, that they have now reduced themselves to a mere handful of people not numbering even. 50,000 2 --divided, though, into no fewer than eighteen tribes, and all, save a few hundreds, located in the North Island. It is believed
[Image of page 18]
they are still decreasing--at the annual rate, too, of four or five per cent.; and there is grave reason to fear that, in another decade or so, the Maori race will not be more an element of population in New Zealand, not more a "power" in the State, than the Gipsy race is found to be in our own Isles, while, that half a century hence, the New Zealand Native, like the New Zealand Moa, 3 may even be extinct.
PERSONAL APPEARANCE. --Tattooing is now no longer the fashion, and the fairest and best looking of the young people are not much unlike our Gipsies--often, though, presenting a little of the Tartar, and, here and there, a little of the Jewish type. The old and middle aged women, bent and broken by toil, 4 become terribly weird and witch-like in appearance; but some of the girls are beautiful brunettes, and the alliances formerly existing between these and the early Settlers have produced four or five hundred specimens of an Anglo-Maori race, which, in regard, at least, to physical gifts, have made some lament that in these present more "fastidious" days of colonization New Zealand is no longer that primeval garden wherein men, sick of cities, could realize the following Tennysonian dream:--
"There, methinks, would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind.
In the steam ship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind;
There, the passions cramped no longer shall have scope and breathing space--
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race:
Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, hurl their lances in the sun.
Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks--
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books."
[Image of page 19]
LANGUAGE. --Many of them understand a little English, and a few can speak a broken jargon of it; but their own rude language, or rather a serviceable smattering of it, is easily acquired, and all intercourse with them is carried on in their own tongue. One or two proverb specimens of it may interest some of our readers:--"He kuku ki te kainga, he kaka ki te haere." A Muscle at home, a Parrot abroad--meaning that a man of no mark at-home often makes himself out to be a very big fellow abroad." He pai tangata ekore e reia; he kino Wahine ka reia." Who looks at a handsome man! but let a woman be ever so ugly men will still run off with her--a proverb strongly corroborative of that scarcity of Eve's daughters named in the note at page 17.
DRESS. --Our English blanket, often of fine quality, and gracefully worn in the old Roman Toga fashion, is still their favourite and generally their sole apparel; but, despite the sufferings of smartness, the Maori will occasionally array himself in fine coat, stiff collar and tight boots, and stand forth, the "howling swell." The chief dress of the women is the coloured cotton "roundabout," a short, bed-gown sort of garment-- but on high days and holidays, here and there, the Maori Belle may be seen glistening in silk or satin, with crinoline and parasol.
DWELLINGS. --They still dwell in wretched little rush-hut, pig-stye villages, dotted over the country, perched, for the most part, on hill-tops, "odoriferous in tide gale," and often fortified, a la Totleben, by earth-works, rifle-pits and double lines of fence and ditch; and the difficulty of getting them to live in any more sanatory, model-village, fashion will be one of the chief obstacles the Colonists will have to encounter in their humane efforts to preserve the race.
FOOD. --The New Zealanders are not a Hunting People, and, that, for the very sufficient reason that there is nothing in the Islands to hunt. Three-fourths
[Image of page 20]
of their food is derived from potatoes, maize, wheat, kumeras, taro, melons, and fruit, raised by rude cultivation in patches of garden-ground, and from pigs, cows, and poultry, feeding in and around their villages. The remaining portion of their Larder is supplied mainly by fish--their largest villages being on the coast and their inland Settlements all within easy access of some arm of the sea, or lake, or teeming eel weir--and to their plenteous garden produce, their pigs, fowls, and fish, they now and then add, by way of dessert, a bit of stranded whale, a pigeon or wild duck, a luscious grub or two, a truffle, or a handful of Hinau berries-- picked up, for the most part, within gun-shot of their dwelling-places. The little clearings which yield them their substantial food and surplus sufficient to bring them sugar, blankets, and tobacco, are ever found on the richest soil; and such are the goodly crops they yield that the Maori, the most active of the active in War, but rather the lazy, sun-basking Maori in Peace, finds that a very small amount of field labour, expended on a very small field, will fill the belly and the pipe, and give him plenty and to spare. Hence it is, that his farming and gardening operations are conducted on so singularly small a scale that it has been estimated that the 50,000 Natives of the North Island, where even now they must possess some twenty millions of acres of Land, have not much more than fifty thousand acres of such vast domain, the four hundredth part of it, under actual cultivation.
DISPOSITION AND MENTAL QUALITIES. --Among the various dark-skin Tribes of Men--Australian-Aborigines, American-Aborigines, Negroes, Zulus, Kafirs, Hindoos, Hottentots, --with whom the Anglo-Saxon has wrestled in his world-wide work of Colonization, two races stand out prominent from the rest--the Red Indian and the Maori. In rude nobility of savage character, in haughty, innate, contempt of the glitter of civilization, the Indian, "Aristocrat of Savages," stands far the first--in subtlety, in pliancy, in the
[Image of page 21]
shrewdness of the shop, the Maori is the master, while in warlike prowess, in superb, heathenish, contempt of death, both races are alike.
The following abbreviated passage from an able and impartial Work conveys a fair idea of the Maori character:--
"The New Zealanders have the minds of children and the passions of men. They respect ancient laws and customs, but are ready to embrace new opinions given out by men in authority. So constituted are their minds that it is impossible to decide how certain circumstances will affect them. Futurity is seldom looked into, although, like all mankind, they long for what is unknown, and remember with regret what is lost. Without genius for discovery, and incapable of generalising, they are nevertheless apt at acquiring the rudiments of learning. They are confident in accomplishing whatever they undertake. Fondness for novelty is a passion, but it is almost impossible to excite wonder. In imitation they are strong, and from mimicry derive pleasure. Vanity, arrogance, and independence are universal, but they are more vain than proud. In all their actions they are alive to their own interest, and in seeking this are not overburdened with conscientiousness. Solomon said, 'it is the glory of a man to pass by an offence,' but the New Zealanders could not brook in word or deed an insult when witnessed by others. Wounded vanity caused much strife, and cruelty and cannibalism were occasionally produced by a love of notoriety. They are deficient in that sort of moral courage which causes men to execute the commands of reason and conscience. They value life, but die with indifference when death is inevitable. They have little benevolence towards others: long absent friends are greeted with a profusion of tears; but, as with children, this grief is destitute of impression.
"Gratitude is unknown, and no word expressive of this feeling is found in their language. Theft is rare among them. Revenge is their strongest passion, and this feeling is kept alive for generations. They are jealous of each other, and love to excite terror. When excited they derive pleasure from cruelty and bloodshed. Tried by the European standard, their conversations are sensual and their ideas unclean. Secrets are kept with difficulty. Of their deeds they are boastful. They accost their equals without levity, and their superiors without awe, and it is reckoned disgraceful to give way to anger. Cheerfulness, more than laughter, predominates. They are liberal in giving presents, but presents are merely modes of trade, as returns are always expected. They possess a great flow of words, and are fond of eloquence and oratory. They are dirty and indolent. They are strong against the weak, but weak against the strong. When mastered,
[Image of page 22]
either physically or mentally, they become as manageable as children; but this power must be exerted in the right way, for, like their own supple-jack they are more easily overcome by gentle and skilful management than by ill-directed force. This character of the New Zealanders is less favourable than that usually given. It is, however, drawn up from the history of the people, and from personal observation among them in their days of happiness and sorrow, and in their hours of sickness and death."--DR. THOMSON'S "Story of New Zealand. "
ATTAINED DEGREE OF CIVILIZATION. --The abandonment of cannibalism by the Maori race, their reputed conversion to Christianity, the tales told of their accounts at the Bank, their reading and writing, their skill in war, have gained them credit in this country for the attainment of a far higher degree of civilization than they have yet cared to reach. Cuvier tells us that it takes forty generations to turn the wild duck into the tame. We trust that the Maori will be preserved long enough for the experiment, and that his metamorphose will be effected in far less time. Little progress, however, has, as yet, been made with him. It was said by the great Napoleon that if you "scratch the Russian you find the Tartar," and with equal justice might it be said, if you "scratch the Maori you find the Savage." His abandonment of cannibalism, is indeed, a fact, and may well be quoted as a great first step in his rise from utter barbarism; but his conversion to Christianity has been only nominal. The new religion was a novelty, and reaching him, as in early days it often did, in unavoidable connection with the creature comforts of blankets and tobacco, it became, and long remained, the "fashion" with him. All honour is due to the Missionary Fathers who sacrificed the solace of friends and the sweets of home to carry the Gospel into the wildernesses of the antipodes; and, in aiding to humanize the Maori and to prepare him for civilization, the missionary, in New Zealand, has played no fruitless part. Yet, if by "conversion to Christianity" be meant, not the Maori's-"bell-pulling" and "Sabbath-keeping," but the impregnation of his mind with those great Bible truths which influence
[Image of page 23]
actions, and lead men to shun evil and do good, then, it must be seen by all who have lived among the natives, and who have not been blinded by bigotry or professional zeal, that the goodly harvest of "Maori conversion to true Christianity," is a harvest not yet reaped in New Zealand. 5 As to Bank accounts, here and there an advanced chief may have lodged money in a Bank; but this would no more prove the civilization of the natives, taken as a race, than the existence of a Rothschild would be a proof of the individual wealth and civilization of the thirty millions of people of the British Isles. With regard to the arts of reading and writing, they hit the Maori taste; but the ability to read and write is only that slight tincture of letters which the most stolid of savages could not fail to have acquired had they enjoyed the advantages offered by the New Zealanders' Mission Schools; while as to that "Art of War" in which the Maori takes so high a degree, it is not an art he has acquired through civilization, but one to which he seems to have been, in the manner, born, and one which, as we know, he practised with infinite skill and gusto on his brother Maori long before he enjoyed the opportunity of practising it on us.
The real progress the New Zealanders have made in civilization is best tested by the progress they have made in the simple Industrial Arts, and by the state of their Domestic Life. For a quarter of a century, they have had around them the farmer, the carpenter, the smith. In this period, for portions of their vast domains of unused wild land, for their pigs, gum, potatoes, and native produce raised chiefly by their women, they have received from the Colonists many hundreds of thousands of pounds. They have had ample pecuniary
[Image of page 24]
means, if such had been needed, of learning all the surrounding Arts of Civilization; and both Government and Colonists would eagerly have encouraged any desire on their part to acquire such humanising knowledge. But, despite these advantages, they have chosen to learn so little, that of the 50,000 natives still left (excepting the few who have been attached to colonist and missionary families) it may be said that there are not probably more than a hundred who could even plough a furrow, shoe a horse, or make a door. The truth is, they have preferred to bask in the sun, smoke the perpetual pipe, see their women work the gardens, and reserve their own energies for War. As to their "domestic habits," promiscuous intercourse before marriage, leading to widespread female infertility, though more concealed, is perhaps as common as ever; and, save that they have exchanged the mat for the blanket, and have a more varied and abundant diet, their life is substantially the same savage, pah-dwelling, piggish life that it was a hundred years ago. In short, in regard to any actual advances the Maori tribes have made in civilization, there is every reason to believe that if the colony were abandoned by us to-morrow, they would relapse into the barbarism of Cook's days, and in twenty years utterly exterminate themselves by renewals of internecine war.
The mere abstract question as to how far the Maori has advanced in civilization is not, perhaps, one which would interest the majority of our readers; and if it were a question confined only to missionary circles, to aborigines protection societies, and to the habitues of Exeter Hall, we should not care to discuss it here. But, partly through the mistakes and misrepresentations of these bodies, an idea has got abroad that the New Zealand Native of 1866 is no longer the turbulent savage, but the poor oppressed civilized man, whose chief fault and failing is his dark skin. This monstrous notion has spread even to Westminster and Downing Street, and, in leading the Colonial Office to believe that our Maori patient in New Zealand is in a far more
[Image of page 25]
advanced and healthful state than he really is, has laid to the prescription of mild remedies and half measures for him, utterly unfitted for his malady, and which may even have aggravated his case.
In recognition of such good qualities as the Maori does possess, in desire to benefit his race, we yield to no one; and, in common with nine-tenths of the colonists, we indulge in the pleasing, perhaps in the "Quixotic," hope, that the remnant of his race may be preserved to grow eventually into useful citizens of our young Britain of the South--but nothing can be more fatal to the interests of the Maori in these days than to smear him over with a "lacquer" of civilization and then to call him civilized--nothing more likely to produce causes leading to his extinction than to treat him as any other than as that improved Savage, that biped, half "Ferae Nature," which, in realities, he, still, is.
FEELING OF THE COLONISTS TOWARDS THE NATIVES. -- Among the many gross libels showered on the New Zealand Colonists by Secretaries of Aborigines Protection Societies, bigoted Missionaries, dilletante Humanitarians, professional Philanthropists, and the like, who are ever inventing excuses for their pet protege, the Maori, and ever palliating his misdeeds, one has been this--"that the Colonists in their daily intercourse with the Native have treated him as the mere black fellow, like the weeds of the country, fit only for extirpation." Nothing more opposite to the truth than this has ever been foisted on the public. It is notorious to all who are familiar with the stamp of emigrants who leave our shores for America and Australia that the body of people who in the last twenty-five years have settled in New Zealand has been a body of people drawn, to an unprecedented extent, from our upper and middle and educated classes: a body of people eminently qualified to take large and just and generous views of that interesting Native Race among whom they had cast their lot. Now, here and there, among this body of Colonists will be
[Image of page 26]
found some "Vieux Moustache," old follower of Havelock or Clive, who believes that the Maori, like every other black skin among the whites, would relish a safe Cawnpore--but the sentiments with which nine-tenths of the New Zealand Colonists have regarded the New Zealand Natives have been these:--that the personal character of the Maori was, substantially, that which has been depicted by Dr. Thomson; but that, nevertheless, the Maori was a splendid savage whom it was desirable to succour and civilize--that his military merits were great, and that he would make a noble addition to that self-reliant "defensive force" which all British Colonies should keep up--that his presence in the country imparted a warmth, a variety, a piquancy, a "picturesqueness," to its fields and forests far superior to that shed by red deer or any noble game--that there was land enough in New Zealand to sustain millions of either race in easy plenty--and that the most practically humane and curative school for the Maori would be that which he would find in his own fields and gardens, in his model cottage, in his carpenter's shop. That these views of the Maori, these wishes for his good, are not so strong as they once were is undoubtedly true. The bloody Mumbo-Jumbo, "Hau Hau," superstition to which some of the tribes have abandoned themselves has led many a Colonist to entertain a profound contempt for the intellect of a people who could so brutalize themselves, and in a moment renounce the missionary teachings of fifty years. Nevertheless, even now, the great bulk of the Colonists would gladly let bygones be bygones, would rejoice should it prove possible to save and civilize the remnant of the Maori Race, and would ever desire to make it their boast to merit the following pulpit eulogium passed on them by good Bishop Selwyn--that Polynesian St. Paul. "In defence of the Colonists of New Zealand, of whom I am one, I say most distinctly and solemnly, that I have never known, since the Colony began, a single act of wilful injustice or oppression committed by any one in authority against a New Zealander." 6
