Maori

“ The Polynesians, as scientists call them, know themselves, and therefore their tongue as Maori. And just as “British” to an Englishman is a word of pride, and “American” to our patriotic schoolboys and orators the greatest word ever coined, so “Maori” actually means first-class, excellent, fine. The Maoris were hundred per centers before the Chosen People.
I have lived much with Maori folk in many archipelagos and listened for years to their soft and simple, sweet and short words. Their speech is like the rippling of gentle waters, the breezes through the breadfruit-trees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Maori is even more courageous in his attempts to secure a true decorative exterior, for he carves the surface of his manly frame into deep meandering channels until he resembles a walking advertisement of crochet-patterns for ladies. ”

“ Socially, the Maori was of a peculiar mould. A communist in property, he was an aristocrat by nature, and in his soul there was a haughty exuberance of spirit that rendered tribal discipline difficult, and domestic peace precarious. In war, the Maori was brave; in diplomacy, shrewd; in council, a born orator.
The Maori remained a savage in Zelania because there was nothing to tame him, but in his nature there was the diamond, and, by a little [Pg 135] grinding, its brilliancy always burst forth. His native environment had given him everything of a superior mould but the final touch. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Cooking-boxes are erected over countless steam-holes; and every here and there, one meets a tall brown man or woman, looking extremely clean and damp, and wrapped in a big coloured blanket and nothing else, stalking house-wards from a refreshing bath. Try to take a photograph, and if the Maori is accustomed to tourists, he will ask a shilling for the labour of posing; but if he has recently come down from the wilds, and is still unspoiled, he will reject an offer of coin with quiet dignity. Taken as nature made him, the Maori is not greedy of money. ”

“ Maori wars are things of the past entirely. When are British journalists going to awake to that fact? Now, settlers outnumber Maori everywhere ten to one. There are roads and railways and steamers, sufficient to convey constabulary to any riotous neighbourhood pretty quickly. But the great point is that the Maori of the present day are decent, quiet, and orderly folk. They are intelligent, and possess as much civilization as would be found in many rural districts of England, Scotland, and Wales—I will not add of Ireland, too, for fear I should be Boycotted! ”

“ As there were no indigenous grains or tameable animals, and as no people ever worked out a civilisation without the assistance of tameable animals, the Maori could only remain a savage, but the climate and general aspect of Nature, the peculiar environing conditions, gave him the noblest soul and most fertile intellect ever housed in the brain of a barbarian. ”

“ From some far land lost amid the shades of the setting sun the Maori brought hither the Pleiades year and his crude reckoning of time by the lunar month. He brought also the knowledge of Ra, and Sina, and Kongo, and Ira, and the Whanau Marama, the Shining Ones who gleam across the realm of Watea when Whiro sends darkness to cover the body of the old Earth Mother, He invoked the aid of those beings in his perilous journey down the path of life, for he believed them to be wondrous powers, to be potent gods in themselves. To Tane, the ruddy sun, he ascribed the origin of mankind ”

“ The Maori population, at the present time, on the West Coast number only between fifty and sixty.
As a rule they are all comfortably settled on their reserves. At the Arahura they have established a settlement, with a school, where the Native children are taught the rudiments of the English language. Many of them have provided themselves with horses, drays, and buggies, and have well built and equally well furnished houses. They are quiet, sober, and peaceable, though apathetic and improvident, apparently caring for nothing beyond the present. ”

“ Small Maori encampments, composed of a dozen lodges each, were scattered along our way, the lazy, tattooed natives—men and women—lingering about the stations with blackened pipes in their mouths, smoking the rankest sort of tobacco, while they kept up a chattering like Benares monkeys. Why Maori women and savage squaws generally are so fond of wearing men's hats, with a feather stuck into them, we cannot understand; for though serving the purpose of a head-covering, they are far from being ornamental. The awkward Maori men looked doubly outré in their ill-fitting European clothes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Maori, as usual, have quaint superstitious fancies about them. An old fellow, who in youth had been "out" with Hone Heke, was once my companion on a journey through the forest. He alluded feelingly to the waka-waka that, as usual, were fluttering about us.
"Ah!" he said, "they are little spirits" (atua nuke-nuke) . "They come to see what men are doing in the bush by day, and go back to tell God at night. To-night they will say, 'we saw the Maori and the Pakeha together in the forest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Maori say that "as the white man's rat has driven away the native rat, so the European fly drives away our own; and as the clover kills our fern, so will the Maori disappear before the white man himself." ”

“ This representation of three-fingered hands is not, however, peculiar to the Maori. Hands of this rude form have been noted in ancient Chinese ideographs and in other Eastern sculptures, in the relics of the Peruvian Incas and in other forms of primitive art, as is remarked by Mr. Cowan in his Maoris of New Zealand.
From this general description it will be seen that tiki conform to a certain conventional shape, which is that which was handed down from generation to generation; for the Maori considered that it was aitua, an ill omen, to depart from the lines laid down by their forefathers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not possible for a Maori to talk for five minutes without uttering words, metaphors, and allusions, that to us convey the most revolting and shocking notions, though the speaker is entirely unconscious of anything but the simplest matter of fact. The language, as colloquially used, is full of stumbling blocks to English refinement, and it is for this reason, doubtless, that few settlers' wives and daughters learn it at all, even though they may be living in the midst of Maori. ”

“ We went across the bush, on the way to Wanganuis river, and passed through thick, jungle-like forest and scenery that made us forget the world behind. I remember we came across one Maori pah where we got the Maoris to stand and have their photographs taken. I played the violin again, as the thick-haired Maori girls chanted and danced. They have many kinds of dances, and the rhythmical movement of their bodies is equal to the weird beauty of the South Sea Island Siva dances.
Some of the Maori girls are exceedingly handsome, but they fade at an early age. ”

“ It is not surprising, then, that we find the Maori character actively alive to such impressions. The oldest men absolutely revel in the abundance of the tales, both prose and poetry, that they are able to relate about the scenes around them. But Young Maori is more civilized, and does not trouble his head so much with these old narratives. ”

“ I went to the Assembly Hall to see "the Maori at home" and to be stirred by the defiant haka and charmed by the rhythmic, pacific poi.
The entertainment opened with a scene depicting Maoris in olden days, and the reception of distinguished visitors. The hosts were a chief of mighty bulk and a number of barefooted women wearing white waists, and red skirts beneath stringy flax petticoats that rattled with every move of their bodies. Several of them had tattooed chins ”