THE MAORI RACE

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24135, 29 November 1941, Page 8

THE MAORI RACE

INCREASE IN NUMBER PREDICTIONS FALSIFIED HOCHSTETTER'S FORECAST - A prediction of the rapid disappear- I ance of the Maori race, published in the Bristol Times in 1865, was referred to in Wednesday's Herald. The reference recalls a classic passage on this subject appearing in Hochstetter's New Zealand, which was first published in 1863. According to the Bristol .paper, the Maoris were to disappear in 50 years' time. Hochstetter's prediction, if somewhat less gloomy, was more precise and scientific. Quoting from "Observations on the State of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of New Zealand by F. D. Denton (Auckland, 1859)," then the latest official document, Hoehstetter said the approaching time when the native population would have altogether vanished from the face of the earth was calculated from their then rate of decrease. The decrease of the population, as far as it could then be ascertained, amounted within the past 14 or 15 years to 19 and 20 per cent. "Should the decrease continue at this rate," continues Dr. Hoehstetter, "then the Maori population will number in the year 1872 only 45,164; in 188G, 36,363; in 1900, 29,325; in 1914, 23,630;' in 1928, 19,041; in 1942, 15,343; and in 1956, 12,364; and we come to the conclusion that, about the year 2000, the native race will have quite l died out, while the European population at the present rate of increase will have risen from 84,000 inhabitants in 1860 to half a million in the year 2000." Dr. Hochstetter's comment is that "the Maoris themselves are fully aware of this, and look forward with a fatalistic resignation to the destiny of the final extinction of their race. They ' themselves say, 'As clover killed the ' fern and the European dog the Maori ' dog; as the Maori rat was destroyed 1 bv°tho pakeha rat, so our neople also ' will be gradually supplanted and exterminated bv the Europeans.' " In later editions, Hoehstetter added 1 a footnote stating that "in consequence 1 of the most bloody war of the last years, this proportion has become much less favourable for the Maoris, while the European population of the South Island was increased by immigration in a proportion quite unexpected, in consequence of the gold discoveries. In sharp contradiction of these prophecies, the decline in the number of Maoris ceased about 1901, and since then they have continued to increase : until the estimate for 1940 was over • 90,000. From 1926 to 1936, the Maori ! population increased by 29.30 per cent and the European by 10.93 per cent.

Copies of photographs taken by Nt\\ Zealand Herald and The Weekly News staff photographers may be purchased from the Pictorial Department, third floor, Herald Build imps. Telephone 30-078. The price of whole-plate prints is 2/6 each ana halxplate 1/0.