MAORIS MIGRATED FROM EGYPT

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6844, 23 February 1929, Page 10

MAORIS MIGRATED FROM EGYPT

ESSENTIALLY CAUCASIAN IN ORIGIN. Interesting comment on the origins of Now Zealand’s earliest inhabitants was made by Mr A. B. Chappell in the course of an‘address in Auckland recently. Although no evidcnco was visible of an actual visit to New Zealand at that date, it was now held the Phoenicians sailed the seas in this part of the world as long ago as 700 8.C., said Mr Chappell, and the migrations of the Maori-*s ancestors could be traced from Egypt, the very cradle of the human race, into India and Japan and thence into the PacificAlthough in the course of ages the Maoris gained an infusion of negroid blood, their Polynesian characteristics remained predominant. They were essentially Caucasian in origin, like the Europeans, with a touch of Mongol, and spread to New Zealand through the pressure of three main circumstances — quarrels for elbow-room, the accident of their fishing canoes being blown by adverse winds out of their customary courses, and the urge of the wanderlust.

The name "Maori” was not bestowed upon them until as late as 1850; the name itself meant “ordinary,” and conveyed the meaning that they were the ordinary inhabitants of New Zealand. The first Europeans to settle here called them "New Zealanders,” and Cook describes them as "Indians.” "While it is true the Maoris had predecessors, known as the Maruiwi or Mouriuri, the Maoris brought a distinctly higher type of civilisation to New Zealand.

According to the speaker, a theory is at present being examined that New Zealand was, in days before Tasman, visited from the island of Juan Fernandez, on the west coast of South America, implying an early migration from east to west.

Dealing with the white colonisation of the Dominion, Mr Chappell called 1 attention to the curious fact that New Zealand had many ‘anniversary days,’, thus perpetuating the separate.settlement of different localities. The earliest colonisation was effected without the sanction of the British Government the first settlers coming out at the urg-| ing of an unchartered company, hot on tho heels of the missionaries, to whom the credit of the first definite settle-1 ment was due. It was a significant fact that when the Crown sent James Busby out to the new colony he was accredited to the Maori chiefs, and the Treaty of Waitangi, securing to a' brown-skinned race their rights and privileges as British subjects and extending to them the protection of the queen, was for those days a magnificent experiment.