EAST CAPE DISTRICT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8268, 29 May 1890, Page 3

EAST CAPE DISTRICT.

[FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT. J Waiapu, May 12. IS TOE MAORI DYING OUT? It is much to be wished in the interests of truth that people who know little or nothing should not undertake or presume to enlighten the reading public. These remarks are applicable to Messrs. J. Anthony Fronde, Anthony Trollope, and to all other Anthonies and globo-trotters who, after skimming or skating over the surface of any society, forthwith sit down at their composing table (where, as the second Anthony says, " beeswax goes a great deal further than inspiration"), and proceed to enlighten that ignorant Beotian known as the general public," on matters that appertain to the lowest depths—a very long distance below the surface skated over. The above remarks are drawn from your correspondent by a paragraph which appears in the Sydney Morning Herald of the 19th April, and with which your readers are made acquainted in the issue of the Weekly News of sth May. The drift of that article is to insist that the Maori, although, as they say, superior to other aboriginal people, is surely (however slowly) dying out. The principal reason given for this conclusion is that Rewi Maniapoto an a certain day in March received the Governor "dressed in dark trousers, light dustcoat, and belltopper." It is also said the aforesaid hero of Orakau was " wrinkled and old." It is highly probable that Rewi will not survive another decade, and that the twentieth century will not know him, but that is in the order of nature. Rewi has been making history for half a century, and when he lays down his patriot head it will rest in an honoured tomb. Rut there are a great many young Maoris coming on to nil his place, and, figuratively speaking, to use the ploughshare as he used the sword. It were much to be wished that some of your country correspondents would step out some time (say on a wet, indoors day) and give their views and opinions on matters not strictly confined to their own particular district. Some of us are " old in the horn " and know a lot. People who have been writing to the papers for a quarter of a century are entitled to speak from experience. Now, it is perfectly true of some districts that the Maoris are fading away, and that not only old people are departing to the happy hunting grounds of their cannibal ancestors, but that the tender stripling and the helpless iniant are disappearing in undue proportions. Hut in other parts of the North Island the Maori is not by any means decreasing in numbers. It is hard to blame the white man and his devices and near neighbourhood for the decadence of the Maori. Rum may be said to have done its work, and is now to a great extent out of fashion with the Maoris. Other deleterious influences have also passed into the limbo of forgetfulness. It remains however, a hard and fast fact that the Maori does not adopt the refinements and general appliances of civilisation. His house is the same as it was in the year one of his arrival in New Zealand. His clothes, if of European production, are not kept either whole or clean, and do not serve the generally accepted use or clothes covering one's nakedness, and keeping out the heat of summer, the cold of winter, and the wet of the whole year round. Yet, within his sordid, smoky den, and clad in his hlthy and scanty habiliments, he lives and thrives. Then, out of doors his farming arrangements are of the simplest, and when his crops are in he acts as one who has never heard or laid to heart the maxim " buy in the cheapest, sell iu the dearest market." Yet he always has plenty to eat. His land tenure is the worst conceivable. All the land about is his, but yet he cannot utilise it. Although he fences bi his cultivations in common with his tribal co-partners, yet his fences are as a rule of the most perishable materials, and will last only four or five years. This entails a ,'. at deal of work, and that is good for the health. The Maori does not work hard all the year round. Even at planting time, three or four fellows are attached to a plough and torn, and when one is tired, or thinks himself so, he lies down and smokes or sleeps, and another keeps up the work. Probably the solution of the diversity in Maori society lies in this : That where lie is clear of settlers and their ways, he retains his selfreliant habits, thrives, increases, and multiplies. In addition to this, he probably requires a good locality— that is, a fruitful"soil. (jive him that, and he demands no more. His wr.nts are iow, and, as for a surplusage of comforts and making rich, that does not enter into his reckoning. As regards roads, the state of which is such an important matter with us pale-faces, he can do without perfectly well. The bed of a creek will do to drive his dray in, and if there is too much water, well, he can wait a week or longer till the Hood subsides. He is in no hurry. He is his own master. Ho has no rent to pay, and what lew taxes he does pay are through the Customs Department, and considered as part of the price of articles bought at the store, ofteUor also bought than paid for. He generally lives well, although it goes against his grain to kill any animal for food that can be turned into money or money's worth. "Happy-go-lucky" is his motto, and anxiety of mind doesnotcause any grey hairs. In many districts, however, even without the occasion of a feast, he kills a bullock for food, and pigs are slaughtered with even less compunction. This is mostly, howevor, in those out-of-the-way places where store cattle would fetch only 10s or l">s, and even at those prices there arc few purchasers. Therefore the charges for freight, commission, and other intermediary expenses add to the comfort of the country settlers, especially where they are like the Maori, who has few wants to supply, and scarcely requires to go beyond his own farm for the actual necessaries of subsistence. In other places, where the Maori lives on rents or on capital, that is on the sale of his land, and does not require to do any work for his daily food, there he dies off. The conditions of life amongst the Maoris are. however, generally eminently easy. Without having all things absolutely in common, no one is allowed to starve. They have no law against begging, and Lazarus is not put in gaol, as he would certainly be if he presumed to sit on the door-step of a wealthy noble or merchant of the most civilised (?) of cities, and beg humbly for " the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table." He goes from home and lives well himself, but leaves his young ones at home without any regularity in any of their meals, or in any of their habits whatever. Thus the children and young people die off. Probably in a district such as Rewi occupies the Maori must succumb to the surroundings of the iron horse, but in places like the lire worn or the Ngatiporou country, where the Maori rules the roast, a more thriving condition of life remains tor the aboriginal. Whether the Maori is capable of accepting and following an English mode of living is a problem which, after 50 years of English rule, or rather occupation of the colony, lias not been solved. Some of us, old correspondents and settlers, maintain that it has not been proved that he is capable of so assimilating himself without deteriorating in the direction of extinguishment of the race. That is indeed a great question, and your East Cane district correspondent would like to hear the views of others besides himself. THK HARVEST. To come down from this theme to the actualities of every-day life, I may note that after an inclement summer we have now here, thanks to the absence up to date of any frost, a pretty fair harvest. Kumeras and potatoes are very plentiful, and the maize crop, though none of it is yet off the stalk, will not be far short of an average. The Maori farmers say their kumera and maize crops have been infested with slugs and other crawling things (ngarara he calls them). Serve them right, say I, for they allow their crops to be overrun with a rank growth of grass, clover, and weeds, whereas they ought to have had the scarifier (they have such implements here) going to keep these weeds down.

SHEEP FARMING. Considerable flocks of sheep have this year got into the possession of Maori owners in the Waiapu Valley. These are bought from the pale-faced sheep farmers along the coast, and are to be settled for when the wool is shorn. It is to be hoped that the sheep will act as a oiviliser, to the extent of convincing his owner that the sheep's natural enemies— the dog and the pig—must be got rid of. In summer, when the sward is hard for lack of moisture, the pig eats the grass in the same manner as other graminivera do j but when the autumn rains saturate the soil the snout of the unclean animal comes into requisition and little or no grass remains for the legitimate feeder. The worst of it is that it is diffioult to find the owner of these pigs. Their name is legion. A law ought to be enforced for registering the owners of pigs running at large, or else permission ought to be granted to treat them as /tree natures.