CHAPTER XVI. CAPACITY.
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CHAPTER XVI.
CAPACITY.
MORALLY degraded as the Maories were, in their heathen state, they have great capabilities. Physically well made, they are strong, wiry, and agile. In mental power they compare favourably with Europeans. They may be raised to a high-toned civilization. They are quick, observant, and imitative. Their memory is most tenacious. Their imagination is not greatly developed; but they can reason closely when not under the power of their superstitions.
They learn readily anything to which they apply themselves. With the passions of men, they had the minds of children, in their original condition. Then it was not difficult to impose on their ignorance; but now they are well able to take care of themselves.
Their senses--seeing, hearing, feeling--are remarkably acute. In spirit, they are independent, and will defend their right, in the face of death. Of their prowess, their strategy, their endurance as warriors, they have given ample proof. In building, attacking, and defending their stockades, they show their genius for war.
For the peaceful arts of industry they have equal aptitude. They know something of the first principles of mechanics, such as the use of the inclined plane, the lever, the drill, the screw, and the pulley.
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They have names for everything that grows in the soil, that flies in the air, or swims in the water. They observe the clouds, and give names to many of the stars. They are acute in apprehension, and smart at repartee. In the early days, the chief Te Pahi was dining with a large party at the Government House, Sydney. A discussion arose as to our penal code. He could not reconcile our punishment of theft with his own sense of justice, maintaining that stealing food--when perhaps the thief was hungry--ought not to be so severely punished. He was told, in reply, that, according to English law, every man who took the property of another was liable to be put to death. "Then," exclaimed he with animation, addressing the Governor, "why don't you hang Captain -------?" pointing to a gentleman then at table. "Captain-------, he come to New Zealand, he come ashore, and tiki (stole) my potatoes. You hang Captain ------." The Captain was covered with confusion, for the charge was true: like many other commanders of vessels, he had, when off the coast, and in want of potatoes, sent a boat's crew on shore, dug up Te Pahi's plantation, and carried off the produce, without offering him the slightest remuneration.
In December, 1856, a public meeting was held at Taupo, on the question of the King movement. Some of the orators advocated a clean sweep of all the pakehas (white men),--governor, missionaries, and settlers. One evening, in a large house that was lighted up, one of he speakers was eloquently pressing his extreme views upon his audience. Tarahawaika walked quietly round, and, one after the other, put out the lights, till the place was in total darkness. The speaker suddenly
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stopped, and said, "Don't you think you had better light up the candles again?" "Most certainly," replied Tarahawaika; "it was very foolish to put them out." The meeting at once apprehended the meaning of the symbolical act, and the orator sat down amid roars of laughter, enjoyed at his expense.
In one of Governor Grey's journeys, he told some natives who were around his tent, that they should do good to others as well as to themselves, and ought to give a tenth of their annual income for works of charity. The natives listened with great attention, and afterwards went away. But, in the middle of the night, two of them returned and woke up the Governor, who inquired what was the matter. They said that they had been holding a council respecting his conversation with them, and they were deputed to ask whether he himself had been in the habit of giving a tenth of his income for charitable purposes. The Governor was obliged to confess that he had not hitherto done so, but he would begin from that time.
Their very errors, which brought them into deadly conflict with the Government, arose out of an earnest wish to secure some better system of government, to protect themselves from the demoralizing wave of colonization, and to perpetuate their nationality. It was these objects which formed the basis of the Land League, the King movement, and Maori isolation.
When, in 1872, Governor Bowen made a tour of the eastern coast, from Wellington to Auckland,--a district which had, till just then, been inaccessible to Europeans, being hostile,--he met with a universal chorus of welcome, in which there was not a "touch of servility, couched in language that might have been spoken by the Highland
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chieftains, Children of the Mist, when the clans were gathered together to declare for the unseen, unknown object of their imaginative romantic loyalty, full of the poetic fervour of one feeling common to all, yet strangely distinct, and true to the spirit of clanship."
With countless flags flying, the tribes and their chiefs came to meet His Excellency, and expressed their desire for English education, for the English tongue, and for the roads, the laws, and the knowledge of other lands. Among the many speeches, the following was that of an old chief called Tahira: "Welcome: all I can do is to greet you. I cannot make myself one with you so thoroughly as my friends around you have, because our thoughts are not yet the same; but when I find that I can dwell quietly, and without being disturbed, in my own place, then perhaps I shall see my way clear to do as others have done. It were better that the position of the land were made clear. My hands are quite clean. I do not know your thoughts. Unite yourselves with us to-day, because it has been through you that this place is what it is."
There have not been wanting among them cases of romantic chivalry worthy of any people. Some few years ago, the Delaware was wrecked upon a rock, near Wakapuka, close to Nelson. The chiefs daughter, Julia, and her husband, immediately put off their clothes, and swam to a rock, near the vessel, carrying a couple of ropes with them: one they made fast from the shore to the rock, and the other they threw on board the vessel, to which it was secured. The crew were thus enabled to reach the rock in safety, and thence the shore. All were saved, except the chief mate, who was ill in bed, and unable to make the effort. This
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brave act produced a great impression in Nelson; and well it might. A subscription was raised; two gold watches were purchased; and the presentation was made by Judge Johnston, with a suitable address in English and in Maori-
During the Waikato war in 1863, we are told by Major-General Sir James E. Alexander, that one day several large canoes were seen coming down the river from Mere-mere, with a white flag flying. On being detained at Colonel Austen's post, they were found to contain a large quantity of potatoes, and several milch goats, as a present for General Cameron and his soldiers, for the chiefs of Mere-mere had heard that the General and his troops were short of provisions; and in obedience to the scriptural injunction, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink," they had sent their presents.
We have seen that powerful tribes were for years in arms against us, but it should not be forgotten that many shed their blood freely on our side, heroically fighting on behalf of law, order, and authority. Among many names worthy of honourable mention, I will refer to two who rendered signal service to the Colonial Government, --Tamati Waka in the north, and Hone Wiremu in the south, in memoriam of each of those brave men, a monument has been raised at the public expense.
Pomare, of the Bay of Islands, gave one of his daughters, a fine, tall, handsome woman, to a military officer. They lived together until the officer's company was ordered to Wanganui, full five hundred miles further to the south. She was left behind, but determined to follow her partner: to do this, she undertook the journey on horseback. It was a bold and hazardous enterprise
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in a country where there were, at that time, no roads, and filled with dense forests and deep morasses, rugged mountains and rapid rivers: still, love carried her through, and she overcame all difficulties. She went, by Mangakahia, to the Wairoa; thence to Kaipara, Waitemata, Waikato, and so through the interior to Taupo, thence to Ahuriri, and crossed over to Otaki.
Being the eldest daughter of so great a chief as Pomare, she was there received with the greatest respect, and a large cortege of young chiefs attended her to Wanganui, which she reached at the head of a cavalcade of fully sixty. Her entrance was that of a princess, and caused quite a sensation.
She found her partner, again lived with him, and some time afterwards gave birth to a daughter--a fine, fair child. She continued at Wanganui for two years, when the officer, with whom she was living, obtained leave to return to England, he having inherited large property through the death of a relative.
Poor Nga Huia and her child were left behind. He had given a promise to send for them: she waited long, but in vain;--no letter ever arrived. She went back to her father, and gradually pined away.
Surely she deserved some better fate than that heartless abandonment! The mother died, but the daughter, Nota Elwes, is still living. Her father is a man of wealth, but strives, perhaps, to blot out of his mind the memory of his child, as well as that of her unfortunate mother--the once well-known and admired Nga Huia!
More than all, the moral lever of the Gospel has lifted many of them from "the horrible pit and miry clay" of their pagan life. It has proved "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth," and moulded the
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dark heathen into the devout Christian, which is "the highest style of man." Take as an instance the following, related by an eye-witness.
A remarkable proof of the power of the Gospel was given when Tamati Wiremu Puna, the chief of Aramoho, was admitted to the Lord's Table. By his side knelt Panapa, a chief of the Ngati-apa, who, in former years, had killed and eaten Tamati's father. This was the first time they had met together: his emotion was most extraordinary; he seemed perfectly to quiver with it. After the service was over, he was asked the cause of it. He then related the circumstance, and said it was only the Gospel, which had given him a new nature, that could make him eat of the same bread, and drink of the same cup, with the murderer of his own father. Who will say that such a people may not be worthy to stand side by side with ourselves? Far distant be the day when the muse shall sing
"THE LAY OF THE LAST MAORI."
