Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1927 THE EARLY DAYS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 11 June 1927, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1927 THE EARLY DAYS

WHEN the bloodthirsty nature of the Maori wars is recalled, and the terrible slaughter perpetrated by such conquerors as Hongi and Raupnraha is remembered, it is only right to state that such practices were traditional among the Maoris, and that they were enhanced by the introduction of the musket. Wherever Hongi conquered, the horrible cannibal feast was held. Ranparaha, at Kaiapoi and Onawe and Takapiuieke, and countless other places where he conquered his enemies, concluded ius triumph with a cannibal feast. Such had been the custom from time immemorial, and such was the custom when Hongi fought,' in the second decade of the last century, and when Rauparaha conquered tho Ngitahu of Kaiapoi and Banks Peninsula, early in the third decade, in spite of the fact that Christianity had been preached in New Zealand since 1814. This bloodthirsty cult had been inherited from the remotest ancestors, and was interwoven with such a complexity of superstitions and' (heathen) religions beliefs that it had become part of the Maori's social system. Of course it made life assume an infinitely terrible aspect, sinco it promoted tragedy of the most poignant sort. It must have stimulated the ferocious nature of the untutored savage to deeds of ferocity which grew greater and greater in the scope of their horror, till they probably reached their culmination in Hongi's wars. But we are reminded by a New Zealand historian that we people of British blood must not be too prono to condemn the Maori for his hor rible cannibalism:—

If we say these are filthy savages, suppose,, before we cast stones at the ancestors of the Now Zealanders, wc glance at our own. Mr Donovan, in Lardner's Cyclopaedia, observes that "Our own ancestors were o!' the number of these horrible epicures. Dindorus Siculus charges the Britons with being anthropophagi j and Saint Jerome, who- lived so lata as the fifth century of the Christian era, accuses a British tribe, from his own personal knowledge, not- only with a partiality fur human flesh, but a fastidious taste for certain delicate parts of it." Gibbon in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," stales that tt valiant n-ibo of Caledonia, the Attacotti, the enemies and afterwards the soldiers cf Valentian, were accused of delighting in the taste of human flesh. True, that was a good while ago. But it must be remembered that, until the end of the 18th century tho Maori had lived in isolation, completely outside the influences of Christianity Mid of the civilisation engendered by Christianity, and it is a noteworthy fact that, within twenty years of Maralen's first preaching, the Maori began to abandon cannibalism, and that when, in 1839, the first colony was founded by the New Zealand Company, cannibalism was extinct in this country, and. so far as we are aware, was never revived during the darkest period of the Maori wars of the 'sixties, except perhaps in thepartial and isolated lapses of Kereopa the Ifauhau, who was chief among the murderers of the Rev. C. S. Volkner, at O.potiki, in 1865. For the comparatively quick conversion of the Maori from this evil of evils wc must give the chief credit to the early missionaries, who. whatever their shortcomings, undoubtedly weaned the Maori from the horrors of the blood-cult, not immediately, but gradually and after many conspicuous failures. But >in this work '.he early missionary had an ally in the whaler and even in the escaped convict who had become a Pakeha-Maori. This was the more strange because these gentry and ihe misisonaries were constantlv at feud.

There is not much doubt that the lit'si (uiropcwi colonists of New Zealand were escaped convicts and ticket-of-leave men from New South Wales. There were present simultaneously in this country an appreciable number.of whalers, who. while- they were not here permanently, were always represented by some of their calling. Whalers, runaway sailors, nod es-members of the convict,' fraiernity founded the town of Kororareka, and there held high revel. Here is. a description of the wicked little town, in 1831:

The most reputable- of its denizens were trading adventurers from a convict colony: the bulk consisted of runaway sailors, "lags." petty-swind-ler.-', goal-birds, scoundrels of every mark arid brand from Sydney and Van Dicronn's Land. . . Ragged grogshop:- flourished; the population might have been divided into those who sold rum and those who drank ii. . . Dark Helens, aboriginal Messelinas, swarmed in Kororareka. Native women were as ristuinoii as articles nf barter between chiefs and whalers as unlive pi"-s. . . There was neither magistrate p.'ir policeman at Kororareka, neither

law, nor order, nor gospjel; every ruffian, and there were many, did what seemed good to hiru ; and in 1931, this New Zealand village-port was a veritable "Alsatia" of tho Pacific. . . . The missionaries, utterly powerless to turn or stem this flood of vice and violence which had flowed into Kororareka, and which bado fair to gpratd and desolate tho whole country, induced, in 1932, various chiefs 'of the neighbourhood to petition ihe British Government, for some protection and repressive aid. Wicked trough Kororareka was, it drew the linn at cannibalism. Its inhabitants might encourage the. Maoris to indulge in every form of European vice, but they certainly discouraged the Maori vice of eating human flesh, and thai in language the. most lurid and unmistakable. Even the* hardened criminal, who had escaped from penal servitude, was a missionary in one respect, namely that he showed his abhorrence, of the man-eating propensities of the natives. Thus it. was that both from the mission and from the riff-raff Pakeha inhabitants of Kororareka and of all the whaling-stations in New Zealand, the Maori learned the white man's horror of cannibalism, and in the circumstances it is remark-able how quickly the native mind; assimilated the new view which the Pakeha. inculcated. Twenty-five years ago, a. certain New Zealand author was engaged in making a collection of . Maori' folk-tales, with I lie assistance of an aged chief of the Ngali Kouta tribe. He had no difficulty in obtaining excellent samples of rhe. Maori's ancient and interesting tales referring to all the- main subjects which interested the : aboriginal mind, such as fishing, fowling, the' mythical taniwha and ngararu, the underworld, wizardry and makutu, and so on, but when he asked for some folktale which should illumine tho causes of the horrible blood-cult, the old chief was dumb. No, no, he said, I cannot give you tho kore.ro of the kai tangata Maori: all that bid ritenga we try to forget. We did net know it was the bad

ritonga till the Pakeha eamo and told us. Now we know. Now wo feel ashamed and sad whenever we think of that bad custom, and we try to forget, I have no korero to give you of that bad ritenga. Of course, it will bo easily understood,, in the light of what has been .■•aid, that what New Zealand needed in ihe 'thirties of the last century was colonisation by well-behaved, industrious, God-fearing Christian men and women of British stock, peoplo chosen for their healthiness both physically and morally, who would bo an example to Ihe Maoris in their work and in their everyday conduct. It was just such people that the New Zealand Company proposed to introduce as colonists to (,Ins country, and yet it ia a strange but tragic fact that the chief difficulties which it mot with in this good work niT.se from the implacable opposition of the Mission, which, in keeping with Mr Dandeson Coates's threat, left no [done unturned in its endeavours to wreck the Company's enterprise. The mission's opposition to the whalers and the vicious inhabitants of Kororareka is easily understood. But its opposition to the New Zealand Company is one of these regret table features of New Zealand history which are difficult to understand, and have never been explained. That the company succeeded in its splendid work—a success which to-day shines conspicuous in the flourishing cities and districts of Wellington, Nelson, Wanganui, and New Plymouthwas attributable the wisdom of its directors and the sterling qualities of the colonists whom it sent, out to New Zealand. From the two chief factors of civilisation in this country—the Mission and the Government—it received no help.