TEE LATE NATIVE MEETING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5491, 23 June 1879, Page 3

TEE LATE NATIVE MEETING.

THE EDUCATION CS , THE NATIVES. A correspondent, dating Ongohi, May 27, writes :— Sir, —The course taken by Tawhiao at the late meeting must have surprised many well posted in native affairs. Though living remote from Te Kopua, I have occasional opportunities of hearing from reliable natives what passes in Tawbiao's councils, and I know that it was fully expected by one section of the natives that the result of the meeting would be the cession of land for a railway to Taranaki. Tawhiao's pretensions as to sovereignty over the North is nothing new. Immediately after the Hikurangi meeting, he laid claim to rule as far north as the Barrier Islands, and promulgated a lot of talk about some supernatural influence that was to put him in possession. Absurd as it will appear to some, I honestly believe if the Government had circulated 500 copies of the Weekly News (in Maori), each issue, for the last five years, the difficulty would have disappeared before this. What can any one reasonably expect of a people foreign in language, whose education by Europeans, at least that part of it best remembered, consists of digesting and signing lethal documents, and the parting with an estate in land, bewildering to them by its everchanging value. What the natives want, to explode their conservatism, is a thorough knowledge of every-day transactions among Europeans. As an instance of their desire to look back instead of forward, I picked up in a Maori wliare, nigh 200 miles from Hikurangi, Sir George Grey's "Traditions of the New Zealanders," and I found the book was greatly prized. It had been lent to this settlement by Te Ngakau, and was a present to him by Sir George, as was written on the title-page. Wishing to possess the autograph of our honest Premier, in. such a happy combination, I offered considerably above the value of the book to the native who had it, but to no purpose. Anything relating to times gone by is especially attractive to the natives at preßent.r*-Yoars, &e., Te 0 I WBiKt, .