“PASSING MAORI MEMORIES”

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 4, 1 December 1934, Page 2

“PASSING MAORI MEMORIES”

(Recorded by J.H.S. for “The Manawatu Evening Standard.”) REFORM AND RELAPSE. In 1830 a model farm under the direction of five practical Methodist ministers was decided upon. An area of 250 acres of rich land near Keri Keri was secured. On the day of payment a Maori Chief made a speech of satisfaction to the Mission, and practical encouragement to his people. His opening words were “Be gentle with the Missionaries for they are gentle with you. Do not steal from them for they do not steal from you. Though there be many of us—missionaries and natives—let us all be one—all one —all one.” Practical Christianity was the key to successful conversion of the Maori. A water wheel turned out 48,000 pounds of flour for distant Maoris each year, sheep and pigs increased, ploughs and bullock teams were busy. What they had done in five years was well described by Charles Darwin in 1835. He saw the homes of the missionaries, huts of the Maori workmen, fields of wheat, barley, clover, and potatoes, great community gardens with every English fruit, flower, and vegetable in abundance, free from their accustomed blights. With the keen observant eye of a great naturalist, Darwin tells of our genial climate by showing “the splendid growth of asparagus, beans, cucumber, rhubarb, apples, pears, figs, peaches, apricots, grapes, olives, gooseberries, currants, and hops, with a happy mixture of pigs and poultry as in an English farm yard Timbers, frames, and houses built, fields ploughed and even the trees grafted by these happy Maori workmen.” In glowing terms Darwin described the Maori girls who acted as servants in the Mission houses as “clean, tidy, and healthy, like our dairy maids in England.” He saw the large party of Maori children at the Christmas festival. “I never met a nicer or merrier group; and to think that it was in the centre of this land of cannibal atrocities.” Even then had begun the awful effect of our firearms, rum, and European diseases, which in another ten years had reduced the Native population by 100,000 and had rendered futile all efforts of reform. “KING GEORGE’S SWEETHEART.” Marsden’s sixth and seventh visits to New Zealand marked the closing years of his intrepid courage, among scenes of horror beyond description on one side of the Bay of Islands, and those of industry, peace, and prosperity on the other. His personal “Mana 1 and the law of “Tapu,” which he bad wisely respected to the very end of his mission, seem to have given him a charmed life. He tells of “1400 Maoris intent upon a war of extermination, scores of uneaten bodies roasting on the fires polluting the air. The men stripped naked, war dancing in defiance of each other.” Am.id these scenes he paddled his little canoe ashore, accompanied only by Henry Williams. There he brought peace after a long day and a longer night of negotiation. His terms were ratified. after which both sides held a war dance and fraternised in a feast (hakari). Shortly after this Mr Marsden and his daughter visited one of the fighting Chiefs known as “King George,” who claimed her in marriage for his son. 1 declined the honour, remembering vividly that on a former visit I found that he and his followers had killed and eaten a young woman in the, very room in which we then sat.” The last record of his final trip in New Zealand a century ago is from the facile pen ot his young daughter. She tells how they journeyed twenty miles by canoe ana as far by land, two Maoris carrying her aged father the whole distance on a litter. She herself was mounted oil a chair perched high on the shoulders of two Maoris. In the midst of a five mile forest, the natives cooked a delicious meal of green Indian corn and potatoes. Settlers en route substituted for the fatted calf the fat sucking pig steamed and roasted Maori fashion m a native oven (umu), heated with the same stones that had cooked many a slave in recent years. TAKI TUPANA (Ancestry.) The genesis of the Bible appealed to the old time Maori, because it so intimately resembled his own cherished family tree (whaka papa), committed to memory by the oldest son ol each branch tor twenty generations, or in special cases even forty. In both instances the mothers’ family is quite ignored, and this, according to the successful breeder of stock, is a grave error arising from a prejudice against the indiscretion of our Mother Eve since which time she has been quietly dropped from our pedigiees. The Maori believed implicitly that the boy resembled his mother, and Hie girl was her father’s daughter. Just watch the mental development and personal appearance of children and parents to-day, to see for yourself. For this and for another reason even more subtle, the mother’s line should have been preserved as the more reliable SU The hairy man (tangata puhu ruliuru) was more rarely seen among the Maoris than with us. Possibly he, like Jack London, regarded it as an indication of nearness to our tree dwelling ancestors. That versatile novelist points out that the hair on our lower arm and upper leg grows “upward”; but I that on the upper arm and lower leg grows “downward.” This, he says shows that our ascent, or (according to Darwin) descent, from the men and women who sleut in the branches to escape prowling animals, is but recent. Crouched like a monkey with hands over head and knees to chin, the hair grew thus downward to shed the rain! Then again, every virile child of us dreams so often of falling from a height; but invariably awakens before striking the ground. The origin of this universal dream must surely have been the constant' fear of falling from a tree. Those who struck bottom would have no progeny to whom the impression could be transmitted. Few Maori children (tama riki) have this dream (moe moea), and still fewer Maori adults have hairy limbs, so we must concede their claim to a more ancient lineage than our own.