MAORI MEMORIES.

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18874, 18 February 1933, Page 3

MAORI MEMORIES.

INTERESTING VIGNETTES. (Recorded by TEAM WORK. The Maori is a true Communist— Altana, the Maori prophet, realises, this. He did not attempt to work his people singly, but always in parties, a* at his Ratana pa near Turakina where they claim the distinction ol being the biggest wheat producers in this Dominion. Sir Aplrana Ngata, too, has made their scattered id.e blooks of land into industrial communes, with marked change in their leisurely habits of life. He may yet see his people emulate the Danes in intensive dairy farming. About 68 years ago Hosta te Kahuhui realised that no Maori worked alone. He and his tribe secured 36 fine porkers, drove them on foot 40 miles to Wanganui, and traded them away for four saoks of “genuine Virginia tobacco seed," which they carried on their baoks to Awahurl. This they cultivated under special directions translated to them by the wily trader. In pretended Innocenoe he had supplied them with more easily prooured dock seed. Awahurl became a veritable garden of docks, and the Maori incentive to work had been cheoked by a man they trusted as a “Christian trader." Even the Chinese have recognised this aptitude for team work in the Maori, 'for they now employ scores of them, men and women, working side by side, growing vegetables for the market of our Empire City.