MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Daily Times, 20 April 1935, Page 4

MAORI MEMORIES

(By J.H.S. for “The Daily Times.”)

PARADOX (HE TATA).

Intelligence and perception were soon found by the pioneers to be outstanding features of the Maori; but he lacked one of the chief characteristics of those who were to be his competitors in the game of life—the faculty of foretelling the results of contact with civilised men and women.

When not engaged in the. stress of war, their life was regular and work of various kinds, not over laborious, was healthy and constant because happily none could live without it. Each fine morning they went from the pa on a hill top to the Mara (cultivated lowland). The men with a club or spear in the right hand, a Ko (wooden spade) in the left, the women following. At even they returned to to . the hill in reverse order, women and boys laden with fuel for the night fires and heavy kits of kumara and potatoes. When crops were growing the whole tribe would build a pa on a cliff by the sea or river side, and lived there for months fishing, making nets, clothing, spears, baskets and utensils. The crops could be left in perfect safety from an enemy, for they never destroyed an unripe crop or attacked the owners until it was ready for the harvest or the subsistence of the invaders. The end of summer was the time of preparation for fighting in! attack or defence of the crops. There were no browsing animals, so no labour was wasted in erecting or repairing fences.

Their life was a paradox. Happy in work and kindly domestic relationships, hospitable to all in peace—then roused to acts of fiendish cruelty by superstitious conformity to the universal law of Tapu,. a sacred obligation. Mailing says: "Nothing was more valuable or respectable than strength and courage. To acquire property by war and plunder was more honourable and desirable than by labour.’ ’ Cannibal rites were glorious, and the habit led to dreadful atrocities and 1 indifference to suffering.

Colenso alludes to their love for children, and remarks that nothing shows more clearly the truth of the old adage "The best, corrupted, is the very worst, ’ ’ than that a party of Maoris could bo so carried away by frenzy as to forget their- highly characteristic feelings, and to kill, roast, and eat little children as a religious duty.