MAORI & PAKEHA

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 293, 24 September 1935, Page 3

MAORI & PAKEHA

TWO TRAINS OF THOUGHT.

SOME COMPARISONS. The outlook of the Maori of the old days and some matters in which ha found it difficult to understand the reasoning of the pakeha, were described to members of the Wellington Centre Local Bodies Officers Guild recently by Mr Johannes Andersen in a chatty address.

The early European visitors to New Zealand 1 , who called the Maoris savages, yet were capable of providing them with weapons to foment their tribal wars, and in one instance gave one tribe corrosive sublimate to insert in another’s food, have savage traits themselves, said Mr Andersen. It was true that the Maori had different ways of thinking. In our own laws, if a man was found out he was punished, but for a breach of tapu, the offender, directly lie discovered that he had infringed tapu, began to punish himself. The Maori usually died. As an instance, a travelling party ate some potatoes, and when, in describing their day’s events at the next village they discovered that these potatoes were tapu, having been left where they were found by a tohunga, everything belonging to whom was tapu, they began to feel sad 1 , and in three days all were dead. Unintelligible Laws. That was called superstition by the whites, but the Maoris could not in the least understand our laws. When a Maori had been detected of theft, and had spent a week in gaol he came out, and his friends thought nothing of it. The man himself was happy; he had paid for his misdeed. Yet lie found that the whites would not speak to him. When fined for being drunk, the Maori asked “What about the man who made me drunk, does lie not get fined?” They could not understand the slow process of trials when it was known that a man was guilty, say of murder, and still less could they understand telling the convicted murderer that he was to bo hanged a week before the event, knowing that the mental anxiety was equal to being hanged every day. They did things a different way. When it was known that a man was guilty of an offence meriting death, nothing was said to him, in fact ho did not know lie was to die, until somebody walked quietly up behind him and hit him with a club.

Hell, as a punishment after death, was quite unknown to Maoris, who only knew of punishment while alive. Hie place where the Maori thought he went alter death was described just as indefinitely as white people described their liell', but it was a place where a man simply joined his friends. Mistaken missionaries alluded to the cape in the north as hell and when a Maori friend about to die said, “1 will meet you again at Te Reinga,” the good mau was naturally shocked. No Fear of Death. There was no fear of death in the Maori, because he did not fear anything after death. ft seemed to the whites that they must live a miserable life, always fighting, but fighting was their pastime. Friendly Maoris who joined the pakehas could not understand the great pains taken to cut off the enemy’s supplies. “How will they be able to fight?” the whites were asked. Sometimes two friendly parties meeting at sea. would light to relieve the monotony. Like tho old Vikings it was their pastime and children were trained from the earliest days to be fighters and use the Maori weapons. There were other ways in which the Maori showed contempt of death, accepting it, for instance, when they died of age, with equanimity, it not welcome.

It was considered wrong to die indoors, said Mr Andersen, and he knew of a man, who knowing his time had come, built himself a shelter outside, where lie was visited by friends, and cheerfully chatted until the end came, within three days of liis “call.” He recalled l another authentic case when a young girl came up to say good-bye to a white friend, who asked, “Are you going away then?” She replied, “No, I am going to be eaten.” Quite reconciled to her fate, within three hours she was in the oven. A swift young Maori, who loved to run races, used to take delight in running races* with falling trees in rather an unusual form of sport. He would stand by the butt of the tree until it gave the loud preliminary crack before falling, and then raco in the direction it was falling, turning after the tree was down to dance derision. The bushfellers took pains to clear the track for him in the course the tree would take.

One thing the Maoris could not understand. The Queen’s head was stamped on coins, yet the coin could be sold for food and the sacrilege of being “eaten” in this way was quite beyond their understanding when the Queen was so revered by' the whites. Maori Came Laws. The Maori had been in New Zealand 600 years when the first white man came. Three-quarters of the North Island then was in forest, much of which lias quite uselessly been felled since. After 600 years the birds and fish were little diminished by the Maoris, although a good hunter could take 100 kakas in a day. The reason was that “rahui” was placed on fish and birds in the brooding season and to break it the Maori considered the same as breaking tapu, and bad to punish himself. lie bad our close seasons for birds and fish, but also had poachers. If the poachers were caught they were fined, but if they were not caught they were not punished. On the whole, concluded Mr Andersen, the good learnt by the Maoris from the white had predominated, and they' were coining to live closer in thought with the white race as friends.