THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 1905. THE MAORI RACE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 11, 16 March 1905, Page 17

THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 1905. THE MAORI RACE

'@>){\f& HERE is a deep pathos in the letter recently jW i m addressed to the Premier by the Maoirisr of jSF' I «4r P° m: ° ano when word reached the dus&y and jC*V^yt stalwart tribesmen that the local GovernXV* '^^ ment vill age scheme was likely to be flTfllJS' dipped. 'We are dying fast,' they pleaded, \ 4s& w ' and want you to show us haw to live and y work, so that we may not all go down to the grave.' • - - In days not far gone hy-r-days which living ancients might still remember— the Maori kept their numbers down by intertribal bloqd-lettings that were- pain'il and frequent and free. In the wild days after- gunpowder was introduced into their warfare, Hohgi, Wherowhero, RauDaraha, Te Waharoa, and other noted Toas, or great fighting men, turned many a peopled and cultivated district into uninhabited wastes. Captain Cook, in his day, saw no Maori with any external sign of disease. No doufbt disease was present i n the old Maori pas. But the vices and the long Rst of diseases introduced by the white man have, in- the piping times of peace, been long doing for the hapless Maori spear, the mere, the patu, the toki, and other native weapons did in the days of the old tribal wars. The tendency towards extinction is still further encouraged by sundry changes that peace anfl civilisation have brought to the Maori. The vitality of our splendid native race is, for instance, impaired, and its numerical strength reduced, by the custom of eating putrid maize ; by the lack of ■personal effort and industry— a result of their adhesion, urfder present-day conditions, to their olden principles of communism ; and (as Mr. C. W. Grace pointed out a few days ago to the Wanganui 1 Herald ') by the fearful mortality among children, arising from the ignorance and uncleanly habits of mothers arid nurses, and from residence in pestilential wharepunis ' devoid of ventilation and reeking with tobacco smoke.' ' Had a portion of the money devoted t o education,' said Mr. Grace, • been spfent on bringing the natives out of pahs and getting them to house themselves in well-ventilated dwellings, to attend to tfie piahV cleanliness, and to be constant and intelligent toilers, more real g-cod work would have been done. The land is the place for the Maori, and intelligent activity, wholesome surrounaings, and the ever-present knowledge t)hat he is subject to a law that can reach and strike him are factorq that alone will save him from rustine out.'

The efforts made to preserve the' Maori race Kave never been thorough-going and not invariably according to wisdom. But New Zealand holds, nevertheless, the distinction of being the. only countey in the Englishspeaking world wnere a serious, well-meant, a»d sustained effort at preserving the native race has been the settled policy of successive Administrations 1 . The last Tasmaniian- aboriginal died in 1876 ; the soul of its last half-caste survivor flitted a week or two ago. In Victoria the black man is almost extinct, ana in the other

States o^ the Commonwealth he is vanishing fast under the vices, the diseases, and the brutalities of the low Caucasian. The handsome, copper-skinned Fijian natives decreased by 121 per 1000 between 1891 aid 1901. Their kinsmen in the Hawaiian group are l going with a vengeance.' . The North American Indian is also ' moving of! the earth '—flitting in the wake of the vanished races that have melted on contact with English-sjpeaking civilisation. Among colonising peoples, Catholic Spain and Portugal seem tlo be about the only ones that, from the first, set systematically about converting, elevating, civilising, and preserving the aboriginal tribes with whom they oame in contact. One result of Spanish colonisation is this : that the pure-blood Indians of Mexico are 38 per cent, of the total population, and people of mixed races 43 per cent. In Peru 57 per cent, of the population are aboriginals, and 23 per cent, of mixed blood. And the Philippines, with Ihteir more than six million native Catholics, are a monument move lasting than bronße to Spanish enterprise anS piety.