MAORI WARFARE

Taranaki Daily News, 16 May 1930, Page 3

MAORI WARFARE

PSYCHOLOGIST’S VIEW.

WHAT WERE THE MOTIVES K.

Treating his subject from poinfe of view of cultural psychology, Dr, I, L. S. Sutherland gave an address on “Maori Warfare” at the annual meefc l ing of the Australasian Association of Psychology and. Philosophy at Wellington. He was concerned chiefly with the analysis of the relations between forms of culture and patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving. The doctor stated that the modern scientist was tending more and more to regard race as mythical, and to explain in cultural terms and in terms of history and geography much that used t<& bo explained in terms of racial inheritance. This made necessary tho restatement of much anthropological material. Maori mind and. character was to be explained in terms- of Maori culture and its institutions. Warfare was a dominant institution, and Maori mind and' character were patterned, in x terms of war and its usages. What were the motives to warfare? We could dismiss at once the popular assumption that warfare was prominent in Maori life because of the sanguinary inherited disposition of the people. In 4 this connection it was pointed out that there had been much fallacy due to generalising from happenings of the nineteenth century. Characteristics resulting from the destruction of Native culture had. been assumed, to be intrinsic to the people. In regard to Maori times there was an important distinction to be made between the immediate causes of war and. the explanation of the institution and its x dominantplace. In Maori life thdre was maintained what had been called an inter- ■ tribal debit and credit account in revenge. Lapd and women were frequent causes of war, also tlie infringement of rahui. The belittling of chiefs or slights to tribal prestige were further common causes. There could be no doubt that such occasions were deliberately sought after, insiilts deliberately given, and “clutched/ The organisation of warfare as an institution was remarkably complete, and closely linked with magical and religious forms of culture. War-mak-ing and peace-making were not only carefully, organised, but punctiliously formalised also. There had. been much misunderstanding of cannibalism as ft result of generalising from' the prac-J tices of the nineteenth century; when it had been fixed from its -ceremonial ’restraints. The outstanding feature of the education of the. Maori boy was the patterning of feeling, thought and behaviour in terms of the institution of warfare. Just how powerful these patterns were could be seen from the range of activities themselves relating to war which were yet carried, on with a semblance of warfare.

In regard to the explanation of the. institution and its important place in Maori life, it was suggested that in every culture save perhaps the very simplest there existed some means whereby a man might prove his own powers and,..achieve distinction among his fellows. This was a psychological and social necessity. In Maori society warfare, partly determined by historical facts, supplied this means. It had also to be considered in relation to the institution of hereditary chieftainship. Chiefs had to maintain their prestige in a society which was in some ways very democratic. Distinction in warfare was the tohu rangatira, the emblem of lordship. With the*destruction of Maori culture went the disintegration of Maori mind. The Maori as Maori was lost. He was left without a motive to take the place of war, arid without the career it offered for the proving of his powers, and the distinction it conferred.