THE HISTORFvOF THE MAO HI.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8693, 9 October 1891, Page 6

THE HISTORF v OF THE MAO HI.

The Rev. Mr.' Hammond, who has laboured as a missionary for many years among the Maoris, lately delivered a lecture in Dunedin, upon " Whence and How Came the Maoris?" The Chairman {Dr. Hocken), in introducing the lecturer, said the subject had engaged the attention of scholars for many years, but ib was still shrouded in darkness. Mr. Hammond said his wish was to give as realistic a view as possible of those things which be had learned in bis intercourse with the native people. If the Maoris were asked where they camo from they would readily reply, " From Hawaiki," and the question arose, Where was Hawaiki? In this connection he did nob wish to speak contemptuously of anything that good men, who had inquired into the subject, had done before, and he thought the colony was greatly indebted to Messrs. John White, Tregear, Colenso, Sir George Grey, the Rev. Richard Taylor, Mr. Wohlers, Mr. Stack, and others who had thrown light on the past, and also to Dr. Thomson, the author of the History of New Zealand." Mr. Tregear had very boldly said that the natives had been in New Zealand for 4000 years at least, thab they spoke a language that was older than the Latin and Greek; and that they; were Aryans by descent; and Dr. Thomson contended that the Maoris were Malayans; but the lecturer thought the old home of the Maoris was much nearer to the Bible lands than that. They must not expect that he would prove that evening the whence of the Maori, or to commit himself to an opinion as to where the first home of the Maori was—he only desired to point out certain things, and he would leave them to draw their own conclusions. He pointed out that the difference between the Maori tongue and that .of Rarotonga was very little " indeed, especially when they considered the various • dialects that prevailed in New Zealand. _ The lecturer recited a number of incidents to support his conviction that the home the Maoris loft when they came to New Zealand was Rarotonga. He was perfectly well aware that the Rarotongans said they came from Hawaiki, and he believed that if one went on to the Navigator Islands, it would be found that the natives said they came from Hawaiki. We were at a loss to know, where Hawaiki was, but bis own conviction, was that the natives brought with them the traditions of some of the oldest people in the world. Those traditions were largely lost, and had been rendered almost unrecognisable by the additions which had from time to time been made to them. The Rot. Wyatt Gill said that about 450 years ago the people in the Rarotongan islands commenced wars of decimation, and were sometimes in the habit of making people transport themselves ; and in the many islands of the Pacific were to be found descendants of families who had been forced to leave Rarotonga. It would appear that the ancestors of the native race had been compelled to migrate, and that some of them found their way to this land. He need not tell his audience that numbers of canoes, according to Maori tradition, had arrived in this land, but he would not speak about the fortunes of any bub the Aotea. He described at some length the circumstances which had induced the people who came in the Aotea to leave Hawaiki. As to the articles which were taken in the canoe, the lecturer mentioned the native rat, .the water hen or pukeko, a peculiar kind of karaka, taro, and kutnnra, as being among other things spoken of by the natives, and he then went on to deal with the voyage of the Aotea, which, tradition said, first touched at the East Cape, and ultimately went to Patoa. Probably 600 years was about the time that the Maori people had been in Mew Zealand, as ho gathered from what the natives told him.