Maori people

“ As for the Maori people in general, they are neither so good or so bad as their friends and enemies have painted them, and I suspect are pretty much like what almost any other people would have become, if subjected for ages to the same external circumstances. For ages they have struggled against necessity in all its shapes. ”

“ The question of the origin of the Maori people of New Zealand necessarily involves that of the whole Polynesian Race, for the Maoris are but one of a number of branches of that race, although the most important in point of numbers and in a few other respects, which we shall have occasion to refer to in the course of this narrative. The homogeneity of this race is a remarkable feature, scattered as it is over an extent of the earth's surface that equals in actual area—if it does not exceed that occupied—by any other race of like homogeneity. ”

“ The British New Zealander is not especially race-tolerant, nor has he always been an idealist. The surprising thing is that the Maori’s rise from death to life came about largely through the genius of certain Maoris, of one generation at least, who seized the opportunity and so brilliantly improved it that their zeal revived the flagging soul of a conquered people. ”

“ Like the elves of other countries, these fairies of Maori Land dread daylight, and appear only by night. Sometimes, on dark and gloomy days, when the thick mists descend and envelop the bare crags and deep ravines of the mountains of the South, the fairy people will be heard chanting songs in a thin sweet cadence, and then too will be heard the doleful sound of the fairy trumpet, and the faint and plaintive music of the Koauau, or nose-flute, and the voices of the fairy children laughing and singing above the clouds. ”

“ The ancient habits of that interesting and progressive race, the Maori, who preceded white people in New Zealand, were shown in some remarkably realistic and unique carvings and paintings. The Maori has long since passed the savage state and has shown his ability to attain the highest stages of modern civilization. The contrast between the position of the Maori in 1840 and in 1904 constitutes a remarkable progress in racial development. ”

“ In the year 1937 the Dominion spent well over £1,000,000 on education, building, sanitary improvements and pensions for the Maoris. Public schools were thrown open to their children. Industrial training fostered the Maori’s natural ingenuity with tools. Too much, perhaps, was being done for the native; [Pg 250] it is only human for a spoon-fed people to do as little as possible to lift the spoon.
On the Pacific New Zealand is unique: her million-and-a-half Europeans outnumber her natives by tremendous odds. ”

“ They are fine intelligent people, but from what I heard and what I saw, are extremely lazy. Many of them are wealthy, their wealth being chiefly derived from ground-rents paid to them by the white adventurer who wishes to occupy portions of their territory. Thus it comes that there are Maoris worth from £20,000 to £200,000. When papa dies, the property goes to the daughters. No wonder that Maori maidens secure Caucasian mates.
From Wellington we had considerable variety in our fellow-passengers. There were examples of a new-born aristocracy, the democracy, and the Maori. ”

“ It was most amusing to see them meet one another and rub noses, which is the Maori mode of salutation. It would be an exaggeration to call these people a cleanly race, though the tribes that occupy the Hot Lake District (whither we shall take the reader in another chapter) spend two thirds of their time in the water. The half-breeds are generally of fine physical appearance, the men especially being tall and well-developed; indeed it would be difficult to find more admirable specimens of physical manhood than exist among these Anglo-Maoris. ”

“ Nature‘s work in New Zealand is not the same as that which she is quickly doing in North America, in Tasmania, in Queensland. It is not merely that a hunting and fighting people is being replaced by an agricultural and pastoral people, and must farm or die: the Maori does farm; Maori chiefs own villages, build houses, which they let to European settlers; we have here Maori sheep-farmers, Maori ship-owners, Maori mechanics, Maori soldiers, Maori rough-riders, Maori sailors, and even Maori traders. ”

“ It is from the chiefs of the canoes that formed the fleet of 1350 that Maori aristocracy loves to trace descent; the descent from the old tangata-whenua, or previous migrations, is with many tribes ignored or made little of. There is plenty of evidence that this last migration was composed of people more advanced in ideas and of far greater warlike powers than the original inhabitants; and it is clear that within a few generations they had practically conquered and absorbed the others, often enslaving them ”

“ Contact with the British settlers has of late years effected a marked and rapid change in the manners and mode of life of the natives, and the Maori of the present day are as unlike what they were when I first saw them as they are still unlike a civilised people or British subjects. ”

“ It is true that the Maori question, with all its hopes and fears, has practically come to an end. The bubble of Maori civilization has burst, the idea, that seemed at one time not unlikely to become an actual fact, of a native race becoming truly Christianized and civilized, and prospering side by side with their white brothers, has gone where many a noble and well-fought-for idea has gone before. The true level of the Maori, intellectually and morally, has become tolerably well known ”

“ From the end of last century down to 1840, a few individual white men took up their residence among the Maori here and there. These Pakeha-Maori, as they are called, were runaway sailors, or such as had been shipwrecked or made prisoners, or were wild, adventurous characters who preferred the savage life to the restraints of civilization. They married Maori women, raised families, and conformed to all the native customs, sometimes becoming chiefs and leaders in war. ”

“ The seamy side of Maori life, as of all savage life, was patent to the most unimaginative observer. The traveller found it not easy to dwell on the dignity, poetry and bravery of a race which contemned washing, and lived, for the most part, in noisome hovels. A chief might be an orator and skilled captain, but, squatting on the ground, smeared with oil, daubed with red ochre and grimly tattooed, he probably impressed the white visitor chiefly as an example of dirt and covetousness. ”

“ Probably no European has so thoroughly mastered the Maori tongue as he, or done so much toward producing a correct impression concerning the race. In any serious trouble between the aborigines and the colonists, both parties are always ready to abide by his settlement of the matter. The natives know he has their best good at heart, and follow his advice under all circumstances. He was Governor during the last and most serious war which occurred between the Maoris and the whites, and to his influence was chiefly due its successful and amicable end. ”

“ Although the old Maori are commonly spoken of as savages, they certainly did possess a degree of civilization of their own. They had a traditional history, a well-defined mythology, a code of laws based on the tapu, a perfect tribal organization, [Pg 144] industries and arts of no mean kind. Among them were men, renowned long after their death in song and story, as great statesmen, warriors, poets, artists, and so on. Their dwellings are of simple construction, but they are superior to Irish cabins by a long way. Many of them were extravagantly decorated with carvings and ornaments. ”

“ Sunday is a kind of tapu day with the Maori. They are often more Sabbatarian than Scotsmen, and more pharisaic than the Pharisees themselves. To the letter of the law they pay the minutest attention, whether they estimate its spirit rightly or not.
But there is great diversity of character in this as in other matters, and what is recorded of one [Pg 121] tribe or community will not always apply to all. The perfect equality with the Pakeha that the Maori enjoy, and the degree of education that has grown up among them, have produced effects. ”

“ Ah! live in the bush, reader! Live and work from month's end to month's end without even a sight of a petticoat, and then go slap into the middle of a "spree" at some such place as Tanoa or Te Pahi. Then you would appreciate the charms of our Maori belles. Under the influence of music and the dance, supple forms and graceful motions, scented hair and flower-wreaths, smiles and sparkling eyes, the graces of nature not wholly lost under the polish of civilization, you would say our Maori girls were very nice indeed. ”

“ Unhappily these anticipations were not realized, but on the contrary a war burst forth out of the long-despised movement, of such dimensions, and of such terrible cruelty, that the results of the civilization of the last twenty years have been seriously imperilled, and the original Maori, divesting himself of the whitewash of superficial Christianity, has become suddenly visible in all his savage thirst for blood. ”

“ Now, the Maori is not altogether such an absolutely superior person. Relatively to some other aboriginal races—the Australian black, for instance, and perhaps most of the North American tribes—the Maori may truly be described as a splendid race; but compared with the Anglo-Saxon, the Maori is nowhere. He [Pg 94] cannot match our physical development nor our intellectual capacity, average compared with average. ”

“ On the other hand, there are Maori of a more cultivated condition, and these have no small influence with their less sophisticated compatriots. Maori members sit in both houses of the Legislature; Maori have votes at elections; there are some comparatively wealthy Maori; there are Maori farmers, store-keepers, hotel-keepers, artisans, policemen, postmen, teachers, and clergymen. There are two or three Maori newspapers, partly written by Maori, for Maori to buy and read. They are no longer to be regarded as savages, or as a distinct race, even. They are but one of the classes of our community. ”

“ When Captain Cook came here the Maoris were savages and cannibals, though they had a patriarchal form of government, and in several ways had made an approach to civilization."
"They practised tattooing, did they not?" one of the youths asked.
"Certainly," was the reply; "and some of them still do so, though the habit is dying out. In another generation it will hardly be heard of any more. The Maoris are becoming assimilated to the European population around them. Many of them own houses and farms, have large herds and flocks, and there are several Maori merchants and ship-owners. ”

“ Yet the Maori seems to have attained to a surprising degree a fairly full mental and physical stature. He has eloquence, perception, inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness. He has everything but—civilisation. He has the soul, but it needs tuning; the material, but it needs shaking-up and seasoning. The magic touch of a newer, a higher inspiration is needed, and that is being injected into his awakening consciousness by a benign social sentiment. ”

“ There did not exist among the Maori a middle class as we understand the term. Every Maori whose birth placed him in a position between the aristocracy and the tutua class was a warrior by choice. Among such were men of property, poets, philosophers, literary men who did not write, but told their stories to eager audiences—in a word, gentlemen of leisure until the need for fighting arose. ”

“ Like the Tongans, the Maories pay great reverence to their well-born women; slave women are of no account. The Friendly Islanders exclude both man and woman slave from the Future Life; but the Maori Rangatira not only admits his followers to heaven, but his wife to council. A Maori chief is as obedient to the warlike biddings, and as grateful for the praising glance or smile of his betrothed, as a planter-cavalier of Carolina, or a Cretan volunteer; and even the ladies of New Orleans cannot have gone further than the wives of Hunia and Ihakara in spurring on the men to war. ”

“ Like all other primeval races the Maori does not bear the transition to civilisation at all well. The noble savage in his native state is a picturesque and romantic figure, with of course many customs that we pale children of modern days cannot away with. Now the Maori has unquestionably many noble qualities, but he shares with all other native races an intense and invincible repugnance to settled employment. As long as he can get his few primitive needs supplied he will not work. ”

“ I have already said that war is always in the thoughts of a genuine Maori. Unlike the vaporing Fiji warrior, who is always ready to boast, and seldom ready to fight, preferring to knock his enemy on the head when asleep, the Maori is a brave soldier, accustomed from his earliest childhood to deeds of war. ”

“ Under the collective name of Atua, the above were the principal gods of the Maori. Every tribe possessed an honoured tohunga-whakairo, or woodcarver; but the quaint finial figures upon the gables of their houses were not adored as gods, the Children of Maui never having been idolaters.
The Maori looked forward to a future existence wherein their state and condition would remain very much as they had been in this world. A slave in life continued a slave after death, and, when a great chief died, several of his slaves were slain, that he might not go unattended among his fellow shades. ”