H.—l4a

14

description. This settlement is conspicuously clean and tidy, due to the efforts of Tihi Whaanga, chairman to the local komiti marae. Wairoa. —At Wairoa. the sites are generally fair and good. The buildings are nearly all well built, but require to hi' kept a little better. The rest of district have sites in fairly good places, hut the dwellings are not so good. The sanitary conditions of the different villages are fair, hut there is plenty of room for improvement. Nuhaka being the only village with W.C.s provided. Education.' —The Natives seem to be keener at present in seeking to educate their children than they were, and are generally agitating for schools to he erected. The parts of district which need schools are Mahia. Tc Whakaki. and Te Reinga. At Opoutania, Mahia. a Board school has only just been completed, and the Natives arc making arrangements lor hoarding their children nearer the school. At Te Whakaki the Natives have given 8 acres for a school-site, and are anxiously awaiting the erection of the school buildings. So far, nothing definite has been done lor Te Reinga. Pa in the way of a. school. There arc over seventy children attending the Nuhaka Native School, and about thirty at the Tuhara Native School. Agriculture. —The Natives at present do not seem to crop so much as they used to. cultivating just enough for their immediate wants. In the case of potatoes this is due to the shortness of seed, caused by the attacks of blight : but kumara is still cultivated a, great deal. The greater number of the people are taking up sheep-farming and dairying. At Nuhaka practically all the suppliers to the dairy factory are Natives. A few of the Wairoa Natives are dairying. Whether the Natives wdl succeed in sheep-farming is a question which cannot he answered at the present time. They are hampered in not being brought up in tin 1 business methods of the pakeha. Yet there are a few who are quite as capable as any business man in transacting business. Before concluding, 1 wish to state that the Natives need the principles of the reasons lor collecting the census taught and explained to them, as a great deal of trouble and delay was caused in collecting the census through their ignorance, some of them thinking that the Government were wanting the information for the purposes of taxation, others thinking that they would be killed or taken to some other country ; and, ill justice to the. Nuhaka people, I may say that t hey were t he only ones who seemed to understand why the census was taken, and did their utmost to give mc the truest information.

5. HAWKE'S BAY, WAIPAWA, WAIPUKURAU. I'ATANGATA, DANNEVIRKE, WOOD VILLE, AND WEBER. Office of the Ekaroa District Maori Land Board. Sir— Wellington, 18th April. 1911. I have the honour, in accordance with your instructions of January last, to transmit herewith a summary of the Maori census taken during the month of March last in the Counties of Hawke's Bay, Patangata, Waipawa, Waipukurau, Dannevirke, Woodville, and Weber. The returns indicate that the present Maori population of the counties referred to totals 1.8112 persons, representing a decrease of 232 on the census returns of 1906. In comparing the present returns for the respective counties with those of 1906, it will be necessary to take the combined figures of Waipawa. Waipukurau. and Dannevirke. as these counties at, the time of the 1906 census eon stituted the single county of Waipawa. In comparing the returns for the County of Hawke's Bay, it will be seen that there has been a decrease in the population of 2-13. which can only he attributable to the death-rate exceeding the birth-rate, as very few Maoris appear to have left the district. It might be mentioned as a curious coincidence that in this county the number of males exactly corresponds with the number of females. The Patangata returns show on comparison that there has been a decrease of six. The sub-enumerator for this county reports that there have been nine deaths since 11)06. The combined returns of the Counties of Waipawa, Waipukurau. and Dannevirke show that there has been an increase of twenty-five in the population when compared with the returns for the same district —viz., the County of Waipawa—in 1906. Against, this, however, must be taken into account the fact that the eleven persons returned in the 1906 census as being resident in the County of Woodville were there temporarily only on a seed-sowing contract, and have since returned to their usual residence, Tahoraiti, Dannevirke. The actual increase in the three counties under notice is therefore hardy worthy of note. There is one family, comprising three persons, now resident in the County of Weber. There are no Maoris or half-castes residing in the County of Woodville. The sub-enumerators in all instances report, that there is a general mark of improvement in livinghouses, most of which are built on European lines, the old style of Maori whare having practically disappeared. There seems, however, to be a sad lack of industry on the part of the majority of the Natives. Most of their lands being under lease to Europeans, they themselves are content to live on the rentals derived therefrom, and in cases where this is insufficient for their maintenance they go out shearing and scrub-cutting. &c., as opportunity offers. There are instance,.,, of course, when' Natives are profitably engaged in farming their lands and rearing stock, but. these are. unfortunately, rare. The agricultural returns show the areas under cultivation to be very small, and in the County of Hawke's Bay a very considerable reduction on the 1906 returns is evidenced. This may to some extent be attributable to the number of sales of Native land that have taken place in the district since the passing of the Native Land Act, 1909. The Natives, while the moneys derived from these sales hold out. do not apparently see any necessity to occupy themselves in cultivating and otherwise improving their remaining lands. It would, in my opinion, be productive of much good if the Natives in this district could be induced to set aside an area to be worked as a co-operative farm under the management of the Maori Land Board, as is being successfully done in the Wanganui District.