EARLY DAYS

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3183, 28 May 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

EARLY DAYS

A PIONEER AMONG THE MAORIS. REMINESCENCES OF A BY-GONE ERA. One of the most remarkable achievements of British colonising has been the transformation of the Maoris in New Zealand. The earliest white settlers and missionaries encountered a, people sunk in primitive savagery, among whom. human sacrifices and cannibalism had been practised for centuries. Their gods were assunied to delight in bloody offerings, and every misfortune was interpreted as the malevolent action of some capricious deity who needed to be conciliated. Sometimes a body would be cooked between burning logs and eaten, not so much to satisfy hunger as to ensure that the strength of the ■victim would pass into the votary. A graphic picture of the trials and difficulties of early missionaries amid such intractable human material has been reconstructed by Rev. M. A. Rugby Pratt, president-elect of the New Zealand Methodist Conference. Mr Pratt writes with vigour and animation and his narrative gives evidence of diligent research into the first hei'oic attempts by Christian men and women to wean these people from a savage barbarism. Rough whalers, escapers from penal settlement in Botany Bay. and van Diemen’s Land, and other outcasts from ordered society provided the first impact of European civilisation on the Maori race, aggravating the task of missionaries. Many of the older Maoris bitterly resented the intrusion of the pakeha and rebelled at the proclamation of British sovereignty in 1840. Land “sharks,” making irregular deals with Maoris, claimed about five-sixths of the total area of the country in exchange for rum, blankets, tobacco, tomahawks and muskets. The treaty of Waitangi guaranteed to the Maoris possession of their lands, while rights and powers of sovereignty were ceded by the chiefs to the Queen. Mission work in Otago was initiated by Rev. James Watkin, who arrived from Sydney with his wife and five young children in 1840. For weeks the family was reduced to a diet of potatoes and sa’t, with damper on Sundays,. until a vessel arrived with food from Sydney. The Maoris lived in community houses, and Watkin gradually induced them to provide separate whares for each family, while striving to induce habits of cleanliness and industry. One of his major difficulties arose from the variation of dialect between the northern and the southern Maoris—a dilemma that confronted many other visitors and mission workers. Watkin, who had lived for some time in Tonga, and had studied the Maori language in text books, had to form an alphabet afresh, compile a vocabulary from the lips of the native and construct a grammar, setting himse’f to learn the vernacular sounds by imitation. The Maoris had no words to express some vital facts of revelation, nor any concept of particular Christian virtues. Such was Watkin’s assiduity that, within three weeks he could make himself understood on common

topics; and seventeen weeks after arrival was able to preach to the natives in their own tongue. He established schools, compiled an intensive vocabulary and composed hymns. Although not endowed with the poetic gift, he avoided such blunders as that made by one heaven-sent translator who, when rendering Showers of Blessing into the vernacular, set the native congregation singing:—

Let some squirts now squirt on me, even me.

The whares in which the natives lived were most.y squat shanties, made of logs and fern trunks, and entered by crawling on all fours through “ doorways ’’ two feet squaie. Above this aperture was another of similar size to admit light and ventilation. The floors were of earth, and people crowded into the filthy and evil-smelling huts. Very few women had any idea of cleanliness. The o.dtime Maori wife regarded it as a compliment to her husband not to wash during the frequent absence of her “man,” and the faces of women and girls were often smeared with the red juice of a wild berry. Their hair was ill-kempt, some smoked tobacco and crying babes were “ soothed ” or drugged by a suck at the short black pipe, usually held between lips black with tobacco juice. The average Maori lived in the passing hour amid alternations of unwelcome fasts and gluttonous revels. Fighting, fishing, and pig hunting were his chief pursuits. He hated anything like avoidable work, and invariably replied “By and by ” when urged to efforts. After planting potatoes* the Maoris would neglect the beds for months, and only sheer necessity drove them to dig and prepare the fern root that annually saved them from starvation. Disinclined to render any service without pay, they made exorbitant demands, and if they bestowed a gift, looked for a greater one in return. Mails from England took eighteen months or two years in transit. Watkin’s work among scattered Maoris involved long and fatiguing walks over mountains so steep as to be “ more fit for goats than for human beings,” and wading through rivers, tideways and swamps up to his chest.

Mr Pratt gives many graphic sketches of the rangatiras, or chiefs, one of them Tuhawaiki, had been presented by Governor Gipps, that good friend of the Maoris, with several old military suits. Tuhawaiki formed a body guard of six native soldiers, arrayed in British uniforms, minus head gear and footwear. On occasions he would appear resplendent in the full dress staff uniform of a British aide de camp, with gold lace,! trousers and cocked hat. While early whites filched land from .the natives, the Methodist Mission Society, in accordance with its rules, abstained from acquiring property, either in stock or lands. Eight years’ pioneering efforts of the missionaries in the South Island prepared the way for the Scottish settlement formed at Dunedin, and laid £ure foundations for all subsequent civilising influence. Sanguinary laws and practices gave way to Christian usages, and obscene war songs to assemblies for Christian worship. These standard bearers of the Methodist church interpreted, with a splendid self-abnegation, the great affirmation of John Wesley: “I look upon all the world as my parish.”