FRIENDLY NATIVES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2591, 26 April 1869, Page 3

FRIENDLY NATIVES.

{From the Southern Cress.) No question has assumed a greater diversity of forms, or has given more genuine cause for anxiety and alarm in this island, than that of friendly natives. It is always assumed as a point of infinite importance in our favour, in the calculations so freely indulged in by our English contemporaries, that there is a large number of natives of whom it cannot be said that they are hostile. Every mail brings us some article in the London papers in which are hashed up the statistics of the colony,and the estimated returns of the native population ; and these are held up as examples of our folly and weakness, and of the perfect propriety of leaving _us to help ourselves. And really, at first sight, these returns are rather startling, even to the colonist. It is startling to be told that there are nearly a quarter of a million of colonists, while there are not more than about a sixth-p.irt «s many natives in the country. It is startling to be told that of the natives in the island something like one-third are friendly, and quite one-half very tolerably well-affected, while only a small remnant are really at all hostile to us. On reading such statements, we are ready to exclaim at once that we must be a very miserable community if we cannot manage this matter for ourselves, and put down the handful of hostile natives without help. It is only when we look closely into it that we begin to understand how the matter appears so simple in theory, and yet proves so difficult in practice. The truth is that the preponderance of friendly natives has, throughout the wars in this colony,‘been our greatest difficulty. From time to time our settlers have been murdered by this class of natives ; from time to time we have been induced to give sections of them arms, which in nine cases out of ten they have turned to our own destruction just at the critical moment. And during the whole period the shelter of friendly Maoris has been extended to afford a covering to all the worst and most desperate characters of the race. And this has really been our experience in this matter of friendly natives. Massacred and put to all sorts of loss and peril by tbe action of the hostile natives, as we have been systematically for many years back, we have suffered far more at the hands of the friendlies than from any other class. And this is easily explained. If a Maori is hostile we know exactly what that means. It signifies, in short, that he will kill us in any way he can, if he can do so with a fair chance of escape. It means that he will do us all the harm he possibly can do us, either by destroying our property, or by hurting our persons. But who can tell what a friendly Maori will do ? He, too, may be ready to kill us quietly if he sees an opportunity, only we cannot in the least foresee or guard against it. He, too, may see no objection to destroying our property, only he will do it in such a way as shall not do us the justice of warning us against the danger, or enabling us to punish it. This is the general character of our relations with friendly tribes. They make many professions, they obtain many benefits and indulgences, and as a rule they are more vexatious and dangerous than the honestly hostile Maoris, who are supposed to form our only danger. The account of the pah seized in the very heart of the hostile country by Colonel Whitmore, the other day, and containing some forty armed savages of the most unexceptionable loyalty, or at least friendliness, serves to show one aspect of the difficulty. The discovery, upon a surrendered follower of Te Kooti, of a rifle that had been served out to an inmate of an intensely loyal pah on the East Coast, may illustrate another. But the fact needs few illustrations, for it is only too patent to the most cursory observation. The hostile natives are dangerous enough, but we can at a pinch deal with them j the friendly ones, on the contrary, we never have been able to Heal with, and have always been at their mercy.

Friendly natives are, we believe, a mistake in any districts with which we are called on to deal as we are with Wanganui and Taranaki. They are utterly useless for good in most cases, and very powerful for evil in all. They may not fight thetnseives in some cases, although it is well known that tiiey very often do so ; but they, in nearly all cases, help, and feed, and shelter those who are in arms against us. The men who so unexpectedly proved loyal at Wanganui the other day had probably done both, and yet they were protected, and could not but be so, by the magic of a name. Ido far as we can see, there is hut one effectual way of getting over this difficulty, and it must, we think, consist in getting rid of the species. Not that we would destroy all friendly Maoris with fire and sword, but simply that we would have them either loyal or hostile in disturbed districts. This might be attained by some simple test, such as assigning a particular place where loyal natives might live in safety while the troubles lasted, and all who rejected the test would declare themselves hostile. Such tests, we know, are by no means pleasant things, but we are convinced that in some cases they are necessary. Like every other practical measure for meeting serious difficulties, it has its hard arid paiuful side. isut it is worse to find all our blood and treasure wasted, not so much in the attempt to subdue men like To Kooti and Titokowaru, as against au impalpable foe whose numbers we cannot know, out whose power for evil we feel at every turn in our campaign.