MAORI CHILDREN

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 6 (Supplement)

MAORI CHILDREN

By OLWYN RUTHERFORD

» S children of many races in all ri. parts of the world we have a

great fellowship for all of us

?eem to i-hare and enjoy some of the

same pleasures. If we could meet

the young people of a strange, far

off country we should probably find that some of the games they play would be so like ours that we could join with them, for we would be at home with some toys they used. We could not be shy then, and we would feel that we knew and understood our new friends in the excitement of the game. The happy young Maori children played with many of the toys that we have loved, although, of course, they were simpler, as ours would be if we could not buy them at a toy shop; if we had to make our own, or get our busy parents to spare time to make them for us, as did the Maori. Many of our best toys are made of metal, but the Maori did not know how to work this, so his children's toys, like most of the other things he used, were usually neatly made of wood.

We know that before the pakeha came to Kew Zealand the children who were our ancestors in England were playing some of the games which still delight us to-day, and which the happy Maori children of that time were also playing in much the same way. When our greatgrandmothers in bonnets and long frilled frocks were sedately trundling their hoops in English gardens the Maori children of this land played gaily, with the sun on their brown skins, as they bowled their hoops. Theirs were made of vine bent into a circle with the ends joined by firm binding of flax cord. The hoop was

light and springy, and bounced and rolled when the playera threw it before them.

Neither Maori nor pakeha children seem to use Hoops much these days, but we occasionally see them bowling along an old motor tyre which seems to have replaced both the big iron hoop and the one of creeper.

Now that summer is coming the fashion of kite-flying will begin.

One day a kite will be drifting in the sky, like a signal for the hundreds of others which will soon follow it as boys and girls eagerly fly them on sunny, windy days. The big paper kites will sail where other ones made from different materials once flew, tugging at their strings as their Maori owners held them.

In all parts of the Pacific, as in bo many other parts of the world, boys and even men go out excitedly on windy days to fly their kites and the Maori was as enthusiastic as any of us., He probably spent even more time and trouble making his kite than we do, for his materials, gathered from the plants, were not

so easily prepared, and were more fragile. The children's kites were not larger than ours and were made in simple shapes. The drawing shows you one in the Auckland Museum. It is made from the light leaves of the raupo, which grows in swampy places. These have been bound on to a light framework of toitoi stems and the plumy white flowers of these were left to decorate the kite. An extra flower has been fastened at the top and some bunches of feathers have been added to make it look gay. Sometimes the maker tied bunches lof shells to the framework, too, so