THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE MAORI.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 8359, 19 December 1892, Page 2

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE MAORI.

Bt Apirana Tctruptt Ngata. (Conttmied.) There is the faintest hope that the Maori as a race will not die out. This hope is entertained by a few amongst the more intelligent natives and a few European sympathisers. The Maori census, taken last year, showed a slight increase in the" population. The cause of this increase was traced to the fact that in many districts drunkenness had to a great extent ceased, and the natives had become more industrious and more steady in their habits. It might also be noticed that during the last few years there has been a slight falling away of the followers of the great prophets, Te Whiti and Te Kooti, and a greater organization of the population under the Established Church, while education must have materially aided in the increase. With the more complete settlement of the land by the pakeha, there is every likelihood that the Maori, being confined to smaller and more workable areas, and having agricultural improvements around him, will be induced, if not compelled, to apply himself to agriculture and industry. Nothing will compel him to put his hand to the plough until his curiosity , is awakened by what he sees around him, until his imitative faculties are called to action by the close encroachments of European industry, settlement, and improvement. Those who are sanguine that the race will not die out feel hope grow stronger when they flud that already, in different parts of the colony, the natives are beginning to appreciate the benefits of agriculture. What doubts on the point still linger in their minds vanish when they come to view the influence of education upon the future development of the race. W"b,eu they consider thegreat number of native schoolsand the good average attendance at them, they think that education mint have influence for the best in people and must tend to check the decrease in their numbers by raising their morals and, therefore, their social condition. But is the native educational system such that-it will tend to stop the decrease in the Maori population and cause an increase ? A system with that goal in view should first strive towards a closer point; it should seek to rouse amongst the younger Maoris the spirit of reform, the desire to ameliorate their race; it should seek to implanc in tbe minds of the children the most elementary truths of sanitary science, aud the simpler principles of morality; it should lay down rules for their guidance that they may pass into the busy world prepared to battle against the foul influences of European contagion, able to discriminate, from amongst the many customs of the European, soma that they may imitate with advantage to themselves and their race. Such a purpose the originators of the present system had clearly in their minds, and a small number of the teaching staff exert thenisewes-faithfully to fulfil it,; to these benffwlent intentions the Maori race owes thofhigher native schools and colleges. Bufclt is this scheme that most of the teachers are atterapSing to thwart by allowing amongst their pupils evils, the most injurious and the most disgusting, to grow unchecked; untidiness, uncleanliness, disrespect, irreverence, corruption, immorality. These men, who are by no means well qualified for their post, lose sight of the enormous responsibility resting upon them, and shut their eyes to the truth that on their teaching and example depends the existence of a race. They think that their sphere of work does not extend to the villages and the inhabitants of the district around, but that it ends with the school gates and the school grounds. They do not for a moment consider that the harm they do in this limited area must spread beyond and work havdc amongst the people. If there is any hope at all that the race will, as a race, continue to live, those who entertain such a hope must exert themselves to remedy the abuses in the native educational system and have men placed on the teaching staff, who will strive, heart and soul in the interests of philanthropy.

These considerations may., to a certain extent, justify us in hoping for the preservation of the Maori race from extinction. But when we come to face the other side of the question we feel that our hopes rest on insecure foundations for fact and theory all seem to falsify them. The truth of the principle that where two races, widely differing in blood and in morals are brought into contact, the weaker must die out before the stronger has been shown in the case of the natives of Tasmania and Australia, and of the red Indians of North America: and there are only too apparent grounds for fearing that it will be further illustrated in the case of the Maoris. The introduction of drink, tobacco, and blankets, depopulated Tasmania, for its aboriginal inhabitants, by no means hardy, intelligent or strongwilled, too easily succumbed and fell victims to the vices of their civilizers. The Australian blacks and the Bed Indians were fast drowning, borne along to oblivion by the destructive wave of Immigration, but the exertion of benevplent men rescued them and the spread of education in America carried to the Indians the gospel of reform and the ready means to escape extinction. We have in Btill more recent times the decay of the native population of the Sandwich Islands and the check pat to it. In these islands defective social morality, the lethal influences of heathen superstition and drunkenness, had caused the population to decrease rapidly. The efforts of a board of health to stay the decrease were neutralized by the action of the native priests. It was only the promptness and decision of the native Queen in suppressing all obnoxious customs and in attempting to have prohibitory laws against drink passed, that effectually checked it, and the outlook for the increase of the Hawaian race assumes aspects of hope. The same causes that brought about the decay of the Hawaians, the Bed Indians, and the Australians, are now acting together to decimate the Maori population. We have evidence chat the native population, was very numerous [ before the pakeha came. With the advent of the pakeha the decay began. The introduction of fire-arms raised the banner of destruction, and for twenty years great war* worked havoc amongst the male population. During thie period "rum, tobacco, and blankets wrought their -due effect on a weak, yielding, people; contact with the lower and degenerate Classes pf the p*ke*a, the adoption of a half-European and half-Maori mode of dreeainar and living decimated their numbers. Pah after pah was deserted, and the population gradually drifted to the i neighbourhood of towns and pa olij houses. ! More obnoxious fcaan these are fche evils of I the influence of tobangas, of the institution of what are called "fcangls * or burials of the dead, and of defective social morality. To anyone unacquainted with Maori habits of thought and feelings, the terrible influence of these tobungas is unintelligible. These are the men who, by actiosc upon the feelings of a superstitious people, by twisting the meaning of God's word to uphold their pernicious views, by fcerrifyinst their victims with incantations of import and of still more doubtful efficacy, place an obstacle between philanthropy and its object, bar the road to good will aud amity between the two races, and raise aa insurmountable barrier to the progress of civilization. These men attemps to stay an epidemic by depriving it of its prey, by murdering j fcjje inhabitants of a district, that the dreaded evil might be passed over as soon as possible: then they would boast of the number they" had rescued from the jawaof

death; they are dumb when asked how many they have murdered or spirited away. Not less destructive are the few customs that still remain-among the Maoris, as an inheritance from their ancestors. Marriage feasts, burial feasts, dedication feasts, and other gatherings are the scenes of all that Iβ corrupt, degraded, ana immoral. After living closely huddled together in dirty, ill-kept, ill-ventilated houses for a month, the meeting disperses, leaving the hosts thoroughly fatigued and disgusted. They lament the kamaras and potatoes, that have been consumed, the precious mats and greenstones, the still more precious bank-notes, gold, and silver that their mistaken hospitality has lavished on their guests. But till next year they are content to starve and to go about untidy and almost naked. Then somebody dies and the whole village must go to howl over his dead body, to condole with hia bereaved relatives, to benefit by their kindness and hospitality, and to receive themselves from the dead a substantial legacy in the form of low fever, typhoid and ocher valuable bequests. Unfortunately for the legatees these are often deadly aod costly to handle, and in many districts the death of a great chief is the herald to an onset of disease and mortality. Tne greatest and the worst evil Is sexual immorality. The harm done through this cause is not apparent on a cursory view of the social condition of the Maoris; and a European, who has no close acquaintance with the race, will not understand that, if all other causes were removed and rendered migratory, sexual immorality alone would in a century efface from the earth the whole Maori population. The closer the Maori is brought to the pakeba the more rampant grows the evil; for your low. vulgar, uneducated, degenerate pakeha is a hero in the eyes of his dusky brother. It is the ambition of the Maori lad to ape the manners and habits of this lamp-post adorning class. It is the ambition of the Maori maiden to please and fascinate the lad. With their ambitions these two seem to rise above the common herd, and to view from their elevation their struggling race on the one side and the vast mass of strangers on the other; some, those whose example they have taken, others, men who are holding forth to them helping hands to restore them to earth and salvation. With their ambitions they soar to heights where they may disregard all rules of social morality, where they may violate the most fundamental laws of civilisation, where they may defy the Creator of their race to save it from destruction. Illicit intercourse vice and immorality have already destroyed the purity of the race, have stunted a race ones famous for its physique, have rooted out whatever industrial tendencies survived other pernicious influences, and degraded the characteristics ifc once possessed of hospitality, liberality, bravery and manliness. You view iustead a pigmy race of men and women, a degenerate cross between the pakeha and the Maori, inheriting the worst qualities of both, elevated by no sense of rank, with a dignity, possessing mental qualities, that are employed for the fabrication of notorious schemes ; of theft, burglary, murder and crime. The Maori race cannot and will not live, unless you attempt the impossible task ot exporting from this colony that class of the pakeha which has so greatly corrupted it; it will not live until you remove the source of temptation and make the Maori apply, his imitative faculties to higher, more moral and less pernicious examples. Will education, civilization and Christianity tend to the good of the race and ultimately to its rescue? They will tend to its good, but uot to its rescue. Education and civilization will raise it intellectually and even morally ; but as it is now, so will it be in the future, these excellent remedies, elsewhere fouml so efficacious, will here poison all spirit of industry, and deaden all sense of connection, race and nationality.

By educating the Maori you generally render hiai unfit to take part in the struggle for life in which his race is engaged. You render him versatile, pliant and yielding under the influence of an English uiind, conceited and over-bear-ing towards his own. people. It is true that the higher Maori schools have sent into the world men and women who are in every way qualified to fulfil the duties of English subjects, who are socially and morally equipped for the daily battles of life. It is true that their higher education has made them more sensible to the good that may ba derived from industry, and has enlightened them to the danger in which their race is placed. Nay, some of them have even begun in earnest to rouse a spirit of reform and to think out amongst themselves practical means for staying their decjiy. Bat with-all their sound intellectual and moral training they have in the majority of cases relapsed into the ways of tlieir parents and exerted the most evil influence by their example. In* stability of: character and versatility in occupation place them in a position between the pakeha and their own race ; fronvit they view with supreme contempc the shortcomings ot the one in such matters as dress, food, and dwelling, and survey with defective eyesight only the more prominent, the more fasciuating and the more easily acquired customs and occupations of the other. And amongst the combating influences of education and heredity, tawdry fascination and conceit they are lowered in sight of all till they reach a point where they become truly loathsome, contemptible, degraded and despicable: and in their fall they drac: down with them the remnants of their race and the last hopes of their English sympathizers. The Maori as a race must lose his purity and ultimately must be extinguished. It i* now the task of every philanthropic European and educated Maori to devise some means whereby it may eke out; its life existence and transmit to generations to come its better qualities. If any scheme of reform is to succeed, this principle must be recognised and borne in mind, that the less Europeans interfere, the easier will it bo for tho natives to battle against the tide that threatens to overwhelm them. Ib is dangerous for you to interfere at this juncture with a people that has realised, only too late, the true value of land and the benefits of agriculture. Now when the country is full of complaints and grievances about land, imaginary and groundless though they be, it is most dangerous for you to obtrude yourself on a people blinded with rage and unreasonable indignation to all your nobler purposes and qualities. Watch the rather for the leaven that education has placed in the hearts of the young Maoris. See it move them, few though they be, to grander, more noble and more ambitious projects than have ever been put forth in tbts colony; see it swell with hope, though feeble: see new Howards poured forth to leaven afresh a dead and degenerate race. Now the chiefs feel the impulse, now the movement spreads, now the banner of reaction and reform is unfurled oa the breeze, summoning from far and near stragglers and recruits to wage war against disease and death. Only let the chiefs be won; let them be persuaded that what little of their authority remains to them maybe better exertqd to rescue their race than to squabble over a few worthless expensive acres, and glut their own savage appetites with foul and strange beverages. Only let them see that they are departing from the bravery grandeur, and nobleness of their great ancestors, when they help on the general ruin, that they can .retrieve their lost honour only by making a firm stand and rallying round them the remnants of thair people, though they be on the verge of ruin and destruction. Then shall we witness a spectacle once seen never to be forgotten, a spectacle that will fill the heart with pity, though calling for admiration; a race battling: bravely, npbly against the fates, now sinking under the leaden weight of the fear that the struggle is hopeless, now up and striking out fiercely against overwhelming odds, braced with the hope that the day may yet be won; the aged and the feebls trampled underfoot, the ranks for a moment wavering as the black banner of death and destruction sweeps down once more to tbe bloody attack; death gaining the day, warriors weltering in their bipod, leaders stricken in the bloom of manhood, yet gladly dying with the knowledge that though their race ie lost, it has died hard, \ bravely and nobly.