1857 - Hursthouse, C. New Zealand, or Zealandia, the Britain of the South [Vol.I.] - CHAPTER VIII. NATIVES

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CHAPTER VIII.

ORIGIN. -- Strong personal resemblance, certain affinities of language and customs, and positive traditional history, may satisfy us that the ancestors of the "Maori" 1 originally emigrated to New Zealand from Hawaii, one of the Sandwich Islands, a group of the North Pacific, distant about 4,000 miles; and it seems probable that this emigration took place some 500 years ago.

It is conjectured that over-population led to a considerable early migration from Hawaii; and that under various leaders, numerous canoe parties, from time to time, put off from the parent swarm. Some of the emigrant-adventurers settled in the nearer islands of the Southern Polynesia; others, bolder navigators with better-provisioned canoes, pursued their way from island to island, through the summer seas of the Pacific, in search of a larger kingdom, until at last, by accident or design, they reached New Zealand.

Some native indigenous race probably existed in

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New Zealand when the Hawiian emigrants arrived. But if so, these ancient New Zealanders were either eaten by the new coiners, were amalgamated with them, or were, in some way, blotted out as a distinct race, quite as effectually as the ancient Britons were blotted out by their Roman and Saxon conquerors.

The present New Zealanders are a mixed race. Either their emigrant ancestors did not arrive a pure race from Hawaii; or, after arrival, they amalgamated with some indigenous race; or they afterwards intermixed with later emigrant-adventurers, arriving from Tahiti, Waiho, or other overpeopled islands of the South Pacific. The majority, allowing for differences of food and climate acting on twenty generations, resemble the good-looking Sandwich Islanders, the parent stock; but some, much darker, have woolly hair; others have a look of the Tartar with a dash of negro blood; and a few are startlingly like Jews.

EARLY CUSTOMS.-- Cannibalism was common among the New Zealanders up to thirty years ago; but the custom is now quite extinct, and any allusions to it are received by the natives of 1857, much as we should receive allusions to any family faux pas, bankruptcy, or break down, which might once have sullied our escutcheon. Tattooing, Tapu, 2 Slavery and Polygamy were all common

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customs among the New Zealanders of the last generation, and are not yet extinct. They possessed a mythology rudely resembling the classic heathen. Gods and goddesses, benign and malignant deities, ruled over elemental kingdoms; whilst gods and demi-gods, Jove-like, seduced the fairest daughters of men and peopled the elements with Heroes. They offered no human sacrifices; but possessed a savage priesthood who propitiated the Deities with rites and ceremonies; and who were the prophet oracles of the people, both in war and peace. They seem to have had no very distinct ideas as to existence in a future state, but to have believed that the spirits of the departed went to a sort of Hades, where the most wicked were finally annihilated. Firm believers in sorcery witchcraft and incantations, they held that not only wicked deities and priests, but that every person could bewitch; and that sickness was the effect of witchcraft. Infanticide of female children was common, but age was respected, and adultery was death; though then, as now, girlhood chastity was little valued, and virgin brides were rare.

Split into numerous tribes and sub-tribes, ruled with patriarchal despotism by hereditary chiefs, they seem ever to have lived with each other in a state of "chronic hostility"--periodically bursting out into the acute form of internecine massacre. Tribe-feuds and bloody wars did not, however, arise among the New Zealanders as they arose among the

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Australian aborigines and the American red men. The Maori had no wild larder of possum and kangaroo to defend against hungry marauders; no Sioux or Black Feet rovers poached his hunting-grounds, trapped his beaver, or harried his deer and buffalo. The Maori was a stationary, man-eating, fisher-farmer--not a hunter living by the chase, and forced to fight to obtain or to preserve his daily food. The Maori fought because blood for blood was the one law which he ever obeyed; because revenge was the precious heir-loom bequeathed by ferocious father to ferocious son; because victorious war gave him wives and slaves; and because, like the Irishman, he loved fighting for fighting's sake. In the year 1600, some Waikato native might slay a Ngapuhi; Ngapuhi would know no rest till a dozen Waikato were cut off in return; a counter retaliation would ensue; some of the victims would be distantly related to other tribes; these would take the war path; idle tribes would rush in to join the fray as amateurs; the bloody circle would go on widening and widening; until at last, in three generations, the one murder would be forgotten in the thousand, and none of the belligerents would know, or care to know, the original cause of quarrel.

Thus the Temple of Janus was scarcely ever closed in New Zealand. Two neighbour tribes might patch up a month's truce and club tomahawks for the slaughter of a third--but the

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pastime over, slaves divided, convivial ferocity duly displayed in the cannibal feast and the war dance, they would straight revive their feud; or "step on the trailed coat" to begin a new one; and would fight with such exterminating fury as, sadly enough, to remind one of nothing so much as of the old story of the "Kilkenny cats."

NUMBERS AND DECREASE.--It is somewhat remarkable that neither the Missionary body nor the New Zealand Government, which for many years was little other than a professed "Aborigines Protection Society," ever attempted to take any native census. There is, however, good reason for believing that the present Maori population of New Zealand does not exceed 70,000.

It is strange that a missionary author so well informed as the Rev. Mr. Taylor, should appear blind to the fact that the New Zealanders were once a far more numerous people. It may be that their former numbers were over-rated, and from the cause which Mr. Taylor assigns. But after making ample allowance for this; there would still remain anew deserted gardens, villages, strongholds, and fortifications, to prove the former existence of a much larger population. Such exterminating internecine wars as the New Zealanders long waged with each other, coupled with their short-sighted policy of destroying female infants as incumbrances in war, must, in a few generations, have thinned the ranks of even a populous nation. Old whalers point to

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bays and creeks once alive with native settlements where, now, no canoe is to be seen; and patriarchal Maories show the localities of Tribes whose very names are becoming extinct. Indeed, nothing is more freely admitted among the natives themselves than this fact of decrease of numbers; and without troubling ourselves with speculations as to what (and when) was the "maximum" of the Maori population; or as to what (and when) was its greatest ratio of decrease, we may safely conclude that if it be 70,000 now, it was full thrice this number sixty years ago.

CAUSES OF DECREASE.--Such decrease has been attributed to the following causes:---1st, to some ethnological law of nature that the black savage shall disappear before the white settler; 2nd, to a change of dress and diet; 3rd, to European-introduced diseases and intemperance; 4th, to a blighting sense of inferiority and degradation in the presence of the white man.

Now it is not a law of nature that the black man shall die out where the white man comes. The two live and flourish together in Asia Africa and India. Where the white settler comes, rum in one hand, rifle in the other, to seize the hunting-grounds of a chase-subsisting people, as in America and Van Diemen's Land, there he will drive back, reduce, or even extirpate either red or black man. But this fact no more proves the existence of any ethnological law of nature that Whites must con-

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sume Blacks, than the fact of one man's getting drunk on gin, proves the existence of any teetotal law of nature that no man shall taste port.

No life-supporting hunting grounds have been wrested from the Maori. He cultivated "garden-spots" out of millions of fertile acres when the white man came; he did so ever after, and he does so now.

The change of diet and dress has been an improvement: physiologists hold that variety of food is best for man. Formerly, the Maori had but fish and potatoes; now, in addition, he has bread and meat. And considering the sudden artificial changes of temperature to which he exposes himself, the new blanket is a more life-preserving garment than the old mat. Scrofulous diathesis may be somewhat prevalent among the natives; but no proof exists that this is either a new or an introduced disease. They have never been swept off by small-pox or by fever epidemics; whilst as to intemperance, they are so sober a people that in five years I saw but six in a state of intoxication. The fourth assigned cause savours of the joke. The Maori ungrudgingly admits our superiority in the soft arts; he regards us as the expertest of traders and tailors; but still holds, despite Heke's rout and Te Rauperaha's capture, that in the noble art of war, or in any work of manhood, the Maori is quite equal to the Englishman. 3

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The true cause of decrease is--the small proportion of women and the sterility of such small proportion. And a minor cause may be, neglect of sick children, occasionally amounting to unwitting infanticide, and some slight prevalence of scrofulous diathesis.

Certain local statistics, corroborated by the reports of colonists familiar with the native life, may convince us that to every 100 adult males there are not more than 75 adult females and 4-5 children. 4 Statists familiar with the laws of population will instantly see that such a monstrous disproportion is, alone, sufficient to account for a rapidly-decreased and decreasing population. This "fewness-of-women-state" has gradually been brought about by the infanticide of female children in war; by the lesser care which seems to have been bestowed on the rearing of female children in peace; and by certain life-shortening sexual and hard-labor evils to which female children are exposed when arrived at girlhood and womanhood. The still more remarkable "fewness-of-children-state" may be attributable, to some slight extent, to the cir-

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cumstance of a few of the women being monopolized by native polygamists and by white men; but it arises mainly from a fact to which missionaries are, or affect to be, somewhat blind--namely, the common want of chastity among the girls, and the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes before marriage, resulting in barrenness and wide-spread infertility. 5

LOCALITIES.--The 70,000 semi-civilized natives now in New Zealand are divided into some dozen chief tribes, and into numerous sub-tribes and "Harpu;" and are almost entirely located in the North Island -- 1st, in a chain of Cook's Strait and west-coast villages, extending 400 miles from Wellington to Waikato; 2nd, in a chain of east-coast villages extending 300 miles from Ahuriri to the Bay of Plenty; 3rd, in inland villages planted round the hot springs of Taupo and Rotorua, and along the banks of the Wanganui and Waikato; and 4th, in various villages scattered through the long peninsula north of Auckland and about the Bay of Islands.

GOVERNMENT--BRITISH LAW.--They are still ruled, or rather led, by hereditary or self-created chiefs; for under injudicious missionary guidance, and in the presence of a greater power, the old

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sway and rule of their great hereditary Chiefs has been considerably weakened and impaired. They are supposed to be under British law; but this, to some extent, is a mere Colonial-Office and Exeter-Hall fiction. The town-resident natives are made amenable to British tribunals; but in the "Bush" many Maori laws and customs still prevail. If a dozen natives were shot in some native quarrel, Government would scarcely think of interfering; or would do no more than think. If a settler were robbed or maltreated by a bush-native, his chief would sometimes deliver him up to a native policeman, and sometimes not; in which latter case he might himself either inflict some pecuniary punishment on the culprit, or pass him over with only a reprimand. However, though there are some turbulent exceptions, the present Maories, as a people, are orderly and well-behaved; they are every year becoming more so; and, glancing at Burglar and Garotte, life and property are probably safer in New Zealand than in England. 6

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CONVERSION.--Quite three-fourths of the New Zealanders are now missionary converts: perhaps in the proportion of one Roman Catholic to four Wesleyans and eight Churchmen. Many undergo the ceremony of baptism and re-naming, regularly attend church or chapel, pay a somewhat Scotch or Pharisaical observance to the Sabbath, and discuss polemics and the merits of their rival churches with considerable gusto and astuteness. How much, or how little, of this conversion may be Christianity; how much, or how little, of it may arise from the circumstance of the new reli-

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gion being the fashion, and a passport to the rich missionary countries of blankets and tobacco, is impossible to say--nor should we care too closely to inquire. Whites as well as Blacks may pray because it pays to pray; and if, by calling himself Peter and going to chapel in a beaver hat, the Maori is likely (as is the case) to become a better customer and a better man, surely his doing so is a gain to the community and no loss to himself. A gentleman from whom, in a following chapter, I shall be sorry to differ; but with whom, here, I am sorry, in part, to agree, expresses the following opinion on this subject of conversion:--

"What has been the effect of the religious teaching of the missionaries on the native character? I am afraid that it is little more than skin-deep. No doubt there are instances in which individuals have been brought actually under the influence of religious principle; but I speak of the bulk of the natives who profess Christianity. With most of them it is a mere name, entirely inoperative in practice. They will exhibit an attention to forms which would, and often does, mislead a stranger; but the next hour they will exhibit all the habits of the unconverted savage. Thus, when travelling, about four years ago, in the Wiararapa, I came upon a native encampment one Sunday evening. It rained, and we required some assistance towards building a hut, and wished to purchase some potatoes. Not a finger would the natives move because it was the sacred day. The next morning the same individuals attempted most deliberately to cheat us; and one of them, who had undertaken to guide us, for hire, to a river about ten miles off, attempted to trick us by declaring one we came to, at half the distance, to be the one we sought; and he endeavoured to force us to pay and dismiss him, by

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seizing a gun which one of us had carelessly laid down. 7 They will also exhibit smatterings of Scripture, which would lead one to believe them better informed than they are; though their applications of it are often sufficiently ludicrous. One of them, whom the governor was upbraiding with having sold his land three or four times over to different parties, justified himself by quoting the passage, 'After thou hadst sold it, was it not thine own?' Another, a very intelligent native too, to whom I was pointing out the impropriety of his having three wives, replied, 'Oh, never mind; all the same as Solomon.' A much more serious misapplication of the Scriptures occurred during the late war, when many of them tore up their Bibles to make wadding for their guns."--Fox's Six Colonies of New Zealand.

I am not a colonist, though, who regards the missionary body as an obstructive incumbrance idly living on the fat of the land. On the contrary, I would endow every married missionary with a 500-acre freehold; and vote a grant of public money to every denomination of English Christians who would found a missionary establishment. But saying this, I would also say that though the missionaries have done much good in New Zealand, they have not done all the good which their indiscreet partizans insist on our believing. Little more than quarter of a century ago, the New Zealanders were ferocious cannibals,

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gorging at bloody feasts on slaves and war victims, and the terror of every shipwrecked mariner cast on their fatal shores--now, they are professing Christians, pursuing the arts of peace hand in band with the white man, and owners of corn fields flocks and herds. Unquestionably, this mighty stride in civilisation is partly attributable to the missionaries. But there are two sorts of missionaries--religious and civil--and the latter, the Emigrant, bringing the plough, the ship, the mill, the shop, food, clothes, the industrial arts, and the practical example, has probably done as much in converting and civilizing the New Zealand heathen as the former, armed even with the Bible. Further, it seems to me that in the work of converting the heathen, Christianity and Civilization should go together: the plough with the prayer-book, the carpenter's shop with the chapel; and I cannot but think, that if the missionaries had proselytized more in the spirit of this doctrine, and had sought rather to show the native how to live than to teach him how to die, they would now have numbered more sincere converts to Christianity, and been supported by more rich and powerful aboriginal sons of the church.

LANGUAGE.--The New Zealanders possessed no written language; but the missionaries gave them one, and reduced the language to grammatical rules. The alphabet is formed by eight of our consonants and our five vowels; the latter, with the exception of the U (oo), pronounced like the French. Simple in

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construction and pleasing in sound, the language is not difficult to acquire; and all Settlers' intercourse with the natives is carried on in the Maori tongue. Natives often slily understand a little English when they will not essay to speak it. Our harsh pronunciation stops them at the threshold: their nearest approach to sheep being, hepee; to pussy, potee; to Governor, Karwarnar; to Bishop, Peehope. A Maori grammar, dictionary, and vocabulary, by Archdeacon Williams, price 7s. 6d. (studied with advantage on the voyage out), may be procured at Stanford's, 6, Charing Cross.

PROVERB SPECIMENS OF THE LANGUAGE. 8

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PHYSICAL APPEARANCE. -- The men (straight, well-limbed, muscular fellows, five feet ten high, weighing eleven to twelve stone) are not unlike burly, well-bronzed, Gypsies. Tattooing is no longer the fashion; and many a youth might stand for a dark, but dirty, Apollo. In sustained strength and powers of endurance they are scarcely equal to the robust race of white settlers; but, in sporting phraseology, they have plenty of pluck and bottom, and are ugly customers either to row, race, wrestle, or fight.

The ladies, somewhat "petite," are by no means so good-looking as the men. Highly precocious, often leading a sexually dissolute life from childhood, marrying early, and then performing a large share of field labour, they soon become bent and broken, are old at forty, and repulsively-weird and witch-like at sixty. A few of the high-born (Rangatira) girls, however, are richly beautiful--displaying the lithe elastic figure, soft brilliant eye, Grecian face and rosy brown complexion, set off

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by glossy black hair falling to the knees, and a free Diana step, that would create a crowd in Regent Street, and drive Parisian beauties to despair-- or paint.

MODE OF LIFE.--DOMESTIC HABITS.--DRESS, &c.--A tribe generally lives together in little communities of from 50 to 200 individuals in various villages (pas) scattered over their district. These villages planted on some hill or precipice near the coast, or perched on some river's cliff, cover half an acre to two or three acres of ground. A common Pa consists of two or three rows (two or three feet apart) of stout split paling ten to twelve feet high, lashed with flax and creepers to posts and cross rails: entered by two or three narrow posterns, and divided by similar paling into numerous little labyrinth-like passages, courts, and squares.

Here we find built the houses--little rush-and-pole verandah-huts, devoid of window door or chimney, and displaying the firebrands smoking on the floor. Here too are stacks of fuel, the Warepuni, some chief's or rich man's better house, and perchance a bell-decked wooden chapel. Here too is the larder--kits of kumera and potatoes, maize and wheat, dried-eels, roots and berries, stowed aloft on shelves or poles away from rat and dog. Here too will congregate the hundred pests of the village: yelping curs and shrillest cocks, monstrous cats, fleas by bushels, a goat or two, pet calves and foals, intrusive pigs, the mocking tui caged but clamorous,

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and the gloomy kaka, tied to his pole and bewailing his fate in indignant screams like Hiawatha's felon raven.

In eating, the New Zealanders follow the Continental, rather than the English fashion--having two meals a day, "le dejeuner aux doigts" about ten; and the "undress" dinner at sunset. Their simple steam-cooking would make Soyer or the toughest Artiste edible and tender: smooth round stones are heated, rolled in a shallow pit and covered with green leaves; a little water is then poured in, and the food (potatoes, fish, birds, or pig -- no man now) -- is placed on the stones, packed up with leaves and flax baskets, and then covered in with a layer of clean earth. In an hour or so, the earth is carefully removed, the oven unpacked and the food taken out, put into little fresh-plaited flax baskets, and set before the people; who squat down in little groups in the verandahs, and straight fall to with tooth and finger.

Though our Maori friends seldom go near soap and water, and look on washing as waste of time, they are clean in their eating, if not nice as to what they eat; and though they have no knife napkin or finger-glass, they provide a new plate for every meal.

The potato is still their staple vegetable; and wild ducks, pigeons, parrots, wekas, tuis, and titis; eels, lampreys, sea-fish, crawfish, and shell fish, still form the greater portion of their animal food. But they

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grow the kumera, taro, hue (a gourd which forms their crockery ware), carrot, turnip, cabbage, pumpkin, and water melon; the Plain supplies them with fern root and the Forest furnishes the pitau, nikau, karaka, and kiekie. Bread and pork, too, are becoming more regular articles of diet; and tea, sugar, and various shop articles, are frequently purchased during their trading visits to the Settlements. In fact, the Maori now lives more generously than some of our Scotch or Irish peasantry; and has not only enough for himself, but can afford to feast and entertain his friends. They have not yet acquired a general taste for spirits, and the law forbids their buying it; but they like beer, and would, I think, seldom refuse to get tipsy on sweet wines, such as sack, champagne, or metheglin. Men women and children, however, are inveterate smokers of short pipes and negrohead; and just as you present an English Belle with Jouvin's gloves, you present a Maori miss with pipe and pound of tobacco.

DRESS.--The usual and the sole apparel of the men, the year through, night and day, is our common white or red blanket fastened at the neck, and worn like the Roman toga. Shirts and trousers, however, are now frequently worn; and near the towns, on high days and holidays, some Exquisite will array himself in dress coat or surtout, and ogle the girls in tall hat, stiff collar, and tight boots. The ladies (simplex munditiis) are chiefly arrayed in

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pink and blue cotton "roundabouts" (a bed-gown sort of garment, cut short) with a blanket for a mantle; but they often have silks and satins in the "kist" at home; and gay damsels, at feast and races, will take the saddle with gauntlets and silver whip, habit, hat, and plume. The Maori likes to partake of the amusements of the settlers; is a bold rider at races; and enjoys himself at regattas, anniversary-fetes and merry-makings, with something of that cheerful vivacity and good-humour which delight us in the French. A Chief, asked to dine with the Governor, will acquit himself with a grave elegance worthy of Belgravia; and on his return, relate to his listening village the minutest features of the feast: what he had to eat and drink, what the Governor said to him, and what he said to the Governor, how the lady who sat next him was not so pretty as the Governor's wife, but wore more rings; and how another fair creature pestered him with silly questions, and even asked him to dance.

LABOUR.--They will occasionally take a contract from the settlers for clearing timber land, or for harvest work or road work; and, round the towns will sometimes work at fencing, firewood-splitting, or other little jobs, by the day. Now and then, too, a girl or lad may serve in some missionary's or old settler's house, as a sort of "American help;" but they do not perform much labour for the Europeans, and are chiefly, perhaps better,

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employed, in working for themselves in their own fields.

AMALGAMATION. -- The early New Zealand whalers, sealers, and squatters, generally took Maori mistresses; and the progeny of this intercourse, is a handsome race of half-castes, perhaps numbering 500. Some connections of this nature still exist, and a few marriages have taken place even between educated European settlers and native girls. Personally, I should have no objection to espousing a Maori belle with a handsome dowry of wild pigs, stream, and forest; but tastes differ, and for the benefit of any bachelor reader who might think of trying for some ex-cannibal chiefs daughter, I am bound to say that although he might do worse, it is just possible that he might do better. The lady herself might be "black perfection," and with shoes and stockings on, (and the pipe hidden,) might bring him credit or notoriety anywhere. But unfortunately, in marrying the lady, you marry her Tribe. Little free-and-easy parties of fifty or a hundred of your kinsmen keep dropping in on you, for a week or two, in a friendly way, during your lifetime, with such regularity, that you may be said to pass a large portion of your existence in an exasperating state of chronic hospitality; and may chance to find that your Princess has endowed you with a little army of black satellites and blood retainers who much prefer carousing in your halls to labouring in your fields; and who, though eager

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enough to fight your enemies, might now and then display no great reluctance to fighting you or your friends.

I think that only three or four marriages have taken place between white women and Maori men; and looking at the very small proportion of Maori women, their habits, their inferiority in civilization, low domestic qualities, fee, I conceive it to be highly improbable, if not impossible, that there should be any general intermixture of races; and hold that if amalgamation is ever to do anything to save or change the Maori, it will do nothing till the Maori has very considerably changed himself. 9

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PROPERTY AND INHERITANCE.--As explained in Chapter II. all the wild lands in New Zealand, or to speak more closely, all the unbought wild lands of the North Island, some thirty millions of acres, with the timber and all which is on and under it, belong to the natives. But in addition to this fine estate, and to their villages, gardens, pigs, guns and personal chattels, they have created and acquired (mainly with monies received for wild land, for market-produce, and for labour) a considerable

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property in European wealth. In the absence of statistics, any estimate as to the amount of this property would be a mere conjecture; but we know that it comprises hundreds of acres of wheat and potatoes, hundreds of horses and cattle, some fifty coasting vessels (chiefly sailed by themselves) a few little flour mills, and a few thrashing machines (worked mainly by themselves) carts and ploughs, and a considerable sum, (say £100,000), in silver and gold.

They are exceedingly fond of money, knowing its value to a penny; but they are keen traders rather than hoarding misers; and are shrewd natural lawyers, bringing to business a cleverness and dexterity of practice that might extort the admiration of Westminster-Hall. A few of them run bills at the shop, and keep an account at the bank; and some of the northern chiefs are, I think, to be found among the shareholders of the Auckland and Sydney Steam Company.

They are, however, rich as tribes rather than as individuals: most of their natural and much of their acquired property being owned, or at least enjoyed, by a group of families in common, rather than by any one exclusive member in particular. Thus, there is neither great individual wealth nor poverty among them. Even the chiefs are richer than common men more in power than in wealth, and seem to be the recipients and dividers of land-sales monies and other property, rather than the keepers or consumers of it. When a man dies he

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may, perhaps, make a verbal will bequeathing his property to his male relations, but never to his daughters; it being gallantly held that a lady is sufficiently valuable in herself to need no bait of fortune to enable her to hook a husband: a practice and a theory which, I regret to say, have not been favourably received by certain enterprising colonists who have looked on chiefs' daughters and sighed for amalgamation.

INTERCOURSE AND MODE OF TRADE.--Several natives live in or round the northern towns, and form a portion of the regular urban and suburban population. These, hawk about their fruits and garden produce, firewood and pigs; employ themselves as carters, boatmen, coast-sailors, policemen, postmen, inland-guides, and messengers; or, if lazy and unambitious, smoke about from house to house and make a round of morning calls. Further intercourse takes place through white men (those settled among the natives) visiting the towns with their Maori friends and relatives; and through town dwellers and settlers, stopping at the native villages when on their pleasure trips or business journeys through the interior. But trade does most to unite the races and to cement the union. Once a month, or oftener, some tribe or Harpu 10 will decide to visit one of the Settlements on a trading expedition. Contributing and collecting their produce, they cram one or two canoes with kits

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of wheat, maize, potatoes, kauri-gum, cape-goose-berries, peaches, melons, apples, bundles of flax, fodder and firewood, perchance a tui or two, a kaka, pigeons, poultry, pigs, dogs, and cats; when a dozen men women and children creep in, and gently paddle the lively freight to market. Safe arrived, they put up a rush hut, or proceed to the Maori hostelry (public store and rough lodging-rooms erected for them) squat and smoke a few hours, and then leisurely proceed to hawk about their goods. Rather than accept sixpence less for a pig than some friend once got before, they will drive it to a dozen houses, with amusing remarks on the instability of trade and the fall of pork. The cargo sold, they commence their purchases of blankets, clothes, groceries, crockery, ironmongery, and tobacco. Slow sellers, they are even slower buyers; insisting always on having the best article at the lowest price. An old chief will minutely examine a dozen caps for an hour before he can fix on the best, and will then go to another shop to look for a better, before he buys it; whilst an urchin of five summers, will turn over every pipe in the box to make sure of getting the biggest. Shopping finished, they load their canoes and paddle slowly back; halting at every friendly village on the route, to discuss the news and impart the market prices. 11

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POLITICAL STATUS.--Many of the natives have property sufficient to entitle them to the suffrage. They are excellent public speakers; and some of the leading chiefs might, I think, be stimulated to take a useful part in public affairs. Hitherto, however, they have been utterly regardless of provincial politics, and have been known to sit and smoke unmoved under the most rousing orations of the provincial hustings. The only instance on record of their having attempted to possess themselves of any political power, is that afforded by a southern native who, at election time, travelled some distance to the abode of the respected Super-

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intendent of Otago, to ask that functionary what he would give him for his vote.

MORAL CHARACTER, INTELLECT, EDUCATION.-- By superficial observers who have had only slight means of judging, the New Zealanders have been both overrated and underrated. The enthusiastic "missionary-smitten" visitor has entered a picked village, and boldly proclaimed them a noble people, equal to the highest career; the "anti-aborigines" visitor has entered another village, and denounced them as greedy savages, fit only for extirpation. The good qualities of the Maori have, however, been far more overrated than underrated. Captivated by his bravery, we have forgotten his ferocity; charmed with his missionary conversion, we have excused his mercenary cunning; and dazzled with his aptitude for civilisation, have not cared to see his lingering inherent fondness for barbarism. Towards him it has not been "nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice,"--but, "be to his virtues very kind, and to his failings very blind."

In their present state of semi-civilisation (but assuming that further civilisation will educe more good than bad qualities) I should call the Maori race artful, overreaching, suspicious and designing; singularly mercenary 12 and ungrateful; and still

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somewhat passionate, capricious, and revengeful. But not dishonest, 13 generally merry and good-humoured, high-spirited and (to each other) neither ungenerous nor unkind; sensitive of ridicule but fond of a joke, inquisitive, and so femininely communicative as to be incapable of keeping even a life secret.

In natural intellect they are undoubtedly quite equal to any European race. Indeed, I think (with a good teacher) a Maori child would learn to read and write more quickly than an English child; and if an average Maori boy and an average English boy of 15 were apprenticed to a carpenter, both having equally good masters, and both equally fond of their pursuit, I think the young New Zealander would turn out his sash or panel-door sooner than the young Anglo-Saxon. The missionary schools in the settlements and the branch native-conducted schools in the interior, have been very successful in teaching the rudiments of knowledge. The Bible has long been a familiar book among the natives; Robinson Crusoe and one or two other little works have been translated; a Maori periodical and a Maori newspaper circulate

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among them; and geography, simple and even fractional arithmetic, are becoming rather popular studies.

Of 104 Maori labourers once employed by the Royal Engineer Department at Auckland, it was found that all were able to read the New Testament (in Maori), and that 102 could write: a statement which, as Mr. Swainson justly observes, could probably not be made of an equal number of common labourers in any country in Europe.

HEADS OF SUGGESTED MEASURES FOR PRESERVING AND INCREASING THE NATIVE POPULATION, AND FURTHER RAISING IT IN CIVILISATION.

If we be sincere in our desire to civilise the Maori Race, it is plain that our first care should be some earnest practical attempt to arrest its rapid decrease. To do nothing but preach and pray to a people who are fast passing away, is to exhibit as much practical philanthropy as we should display, in seeking to restore a half-drowned man by reading over him the twenty-second chapter of the Book of Job.

Some dozen years ago, Her Majesty's Colonial Office, Her Majesty's Ministers, both Houses of Parliament, Exeter Hall, the Aborigines Protection Society, and divers professional philanthropists, told the world what they had done, and what they were going to do, to save the godly Aborigines of New Zealand from the grasping Settlers, who meant to bury the entire race and their traditions under the plough and to grow better crops on their remains; and from the noise made about the "converted Maori," one might have thought that it was some rare exotic fox or pheasant, which a considerable portion of the

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British nobility and priesthood were sworn to cherish and protect. The Colonial Office and the New Zealand Missionary-government were the special instruments of grace appointed to carry out this great national policy of preserving the Maori and repressing the settler--and what would the reader imagine the Colonial Office and the Missionary-government did for their Maori subjects--I don't say wrote about them, blue books show that--but did for them, in the ten years they ruled the colony, and in which period their Maori subjects contributed thousands of pounds to the public revenue?--they shot some 200 of them in two rebellions; and built for them six wooden huts.

It is perhaps not remarkable that such a government no longer exists. A colonist's government has been raised on its ruins; and a colonist's government would now do well to join the missionaries in making some earnest, practical, attempt to preserve, increase, and civilise, that remnant of the Aboriginal population which still exists.

Even if the Maori did not decrease, no reason would exist why we should not aid him to increase. New Zealand's want of wants is Population; and if she counted 200,000 industrious natives instead of 70,000, she would be all the richer and more powerful.

The continued decrease of the native population, leading to its virtual extinction in twenty years, may be an evil which it is now, too late to arrest. The following suggestions, therefore, are not offered as specifics for a curable malady. They are but hints of practical measures which (among others) might prove useful if any attempt were made to arrest the evil: hints for the Reader who, emigrating to New Zealand, and becoming a member of the Legislature, may espouse this "Native Cause," and press the Executive to adopt some policy of Maori preservation and increase.

Fewness of women, and the sterility of the few, is the great first cause of decrease. But certain pernicious domestic habits unquestionably form a minor but serious cause. There are no people in the world whom "a know-

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ledge of common things" would benefit more than the New Zealanders. The Maori will gorge on grease, oil, eels, and rancid fish, till he has induced or aggravated scrofula; 14 or will hold fierce night arguments in hia foul Warepuni about the "immaculate conception," and then rush out and sit in the damp night blast to check perspiration and cool himself, till he has induced consumption. And with habits like these, giving him hospitals, the whole Pharmacopoeia, and Holloway's Pills to boot, is mere idle quackery. Prevention is the thing for him--not cure.

(A.) Let the General Assembly at once appoint a "Native-affairs Commission" composed say of such men, as Bishop Selwyn and the Rev. Missionaries Taylor, Whiteley, and Turton, His Honor Charles Brown, Mr. MacLean, Dr. Thompson, and Dillon Bell. Let such Commission ask the Missionaries and the Colonists, generally, to send in short "prize essays," familiarly addressed to the natives, showing (in familiar, easy, style):

1st. That the Maori race is rapidly decreasing; and that the Queen, the Governor, the Bishop, the Missionaries, and the Colonists, all desire to see it increasing.

2nd. Pointing out the causes of decrease; showing that the fearful revelations of old-world cities prove that prostitution and promiscuous intercourse result in barrenness and sterility; that girlhood-marriage produces sickly death-

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born infants, and that the white females who have large robust families don't marry till they are full grown. Showing that to have plenty of men and women we must take good care of infants; and how the best white mothers manage their children. That woman is the "weaker vessel" and should only do the indoor work; and that the sight of a girl staggering along for a dozen miles under a 60 lb. potato-kit would be disgusting among the wretched black fellows of Australia, but is both disgusting and disgraceful among the educated Christian Maories of New Zealand.

3rd. That many of their habits of life are destructive of life; that their huts are too close and ill-ventilated; that now they have no enemies to fear, there is no excuse for fencing themselves up in a Pa like stupid Kakas in a cage; that it would be worth many thousand pounds to them if they would burn down every Warepuni in the island, and take a plunge in the river in the morning instead of a foul-air sweat at night; that three light meals a day are better than two heavy; that as no sane white man sleeps in his coat, the Maori should have a blanket for day and a blanket for night; that frequent soap and water makes man, woman, and child, not only clean but strong; that if (like the silly drunkard) they must have their poisons-- rancid-eel, shark, dog-fish, putrid-maize, raw-roots, berries, and other dog and pig food--they should take them only as occasional zests: that bread and meat, milk, potatoes, and eggs, are the things to fight and multiply on; and that it would pay them far better to raise and eat these things, themselves, than to raise and sell them to the white man.

4th. That for many years in England, the white men lived foolishly and piggishly as the Maori does now: killed themselves with bad food and bad air; and then asked quacks and doctors to make them live again; but that white men having been taught better, now live better and longer than they did, and multiply faster.

(B.) Let the Commissioners select the best two of such Essays, and award the writers £100 each. Then let them

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cull the best parts of the two essays, and translate them into one. Print this in the form of a neat dozen-page book, and send a score copies to the chief of every village in the north island. We know that the natives would at least read and discuss this "Book of Life;" and we might hope that they would make it one of those books, which, Lord Bacon says, are to be "chewed and digested."

This I would make the Missionary, or spiritual half, of the attempt--and this Governmental, or physical half.

(C.) To allow the natives of any village who might desire to do so, to sell (at any price) six, 100-acre, lots of land to any six government or missionary approved married settlers (white wives) on condition of their cultivating it, building a house on it (as near the village as possible) and regularly residing there as "Training-exemplars." 15

(D.) Where the natives might be induced to desire it, to send some intelligent, married, carpenter to every village; to allow him (in any way) to acquire 100 acres of village land; to build him thereon a small model-house and shop; and to allow him, say £25 a year--on condition of his devoting three days a week to teaching and helping the natives to build similar houses for themselves; and to make common articles of furniture, &c, &c.

(E.) To appoint a leading native chief, as Magistrate and Assessor, to about every 2000 natives: allowing him £25 a year with a civil uniform. And to take stimulative measures to have one or two Maori members in every northern Provincial Council; and three or four principal chiefs in the General Assembly--giving the South Island one or two more white members in the House of Representatives, as a counterpoise.

(F.) And further, to petition the Crown to raise and pay (say from the Ngapuhi and Waikato Tribes) 300 picked Natives as a sort of rifle-armed, Irish Constabulary Force-- one company for Auckland, one for New Plymouth, one for

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Wellington:--inasmuch as it is believed, by the humble author of this Work, that such a Force would prove an admirable Military Police, one capable, too, of acting most efficiently with the Queen's Troops in the Field; and that such a Force would beneficially flatter the Native Race, and (indirectly) propagate, among the whole body of the Aborigines, those personal habits of cleanliness, domestic economy, order, and self-respect, which would conduce to longevity and increase of population. 16

To professional philanthropists who give away no money, on principle, I would hint that philanthropy which shuts the purse, should shut the mouth; and to colonial economists who do the state cheese-paring, that the whole expense of these measures (excluding F.) would not exceed some £4000 a-year; that £7000 a year is set aside for "Native Purposes" by the Civil List; that the Maori already contributes probably a tenth of the colony's annual revenue, and produces a tenth of the colony's annual exports; and that the Maori is perhaps as profitable an article to invest a little money in as short-horn or merino.

To those who say you cannot change the leopard's spots or wash the negro white, I reply that I am aware of the fact; but recollecting what the Maori was a few years since, and what by example he has become, I say that if we could only preserve him a while longer, we might reasonably hope to give him a fresh lease of life, to increase his numbers, and to see him become a robust cottager and a hardy yeoman--the colony's wealth in peace, the colony's strength in war.