ABSORBING ADDRESS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 85, 26 September 1947, Page 5

ABSORBING ADDRESS

ROTARY LUNCHEON SPEAKER ‘ OUTLINE OF MAORI HISTORY An interesting address on the history of the Maori people was given to members of the Whakatane Rotary Club at their luncheon on Wednesday. The speaker was Rev. J. G. Laughton of Whakatane. Early Visitors The speaker began with the coming of the first Maori explorers befor the year 1100. There was some coming and going of these men, indicating the great knowledge they had of navigating by the stars, before the main migration of the seven canoes in the year 1350. These included the Matatua which landed at the Heads. Major Adaptions The people who travelled in the canoes had to make extensive changes in their manner of living. They came from a sub tropical country to a much colder climate where their accustomed foods were non-existent. Of the plants they brought with them the taro and kumara were about the only two to survive. Their tapa clothing was discarded for flax

•garments which were hand woven. There was no scource of tapa and the colder weather conditions demanded a thicker and warmer material. They also had to build better houses more capable of withstanding the harder weather conditions. The tools for all the woi’ks had themselves to be made painstakingly by hand. The latent art .of the Maori is shown by the fact that instead of being content , with just making the article he embellished his work richly with carving and decorative work. House of Learning The high born Maoris attended school (wharewananga) where they underwent an intensive 3 to 4 year course. The speaker quoted extracts from the translation of the law of this school indicating the remarkably high conception the Maori had developed of the supreme being. The religious and moral standard of the early Maori was very high, particularly in its relation to the sanctity of marriage. Delinquents in this case usually paid the supreme penalty. Advent of Pakeha Then came the white man and it is to be remembered that after the discovery of New Zealand the missionaries were not first in the field but escaped convicts from across the Tasman and other seafaring men of the wilder class. The first contact of the Maori with Pakeha civilisation was much to the detriment of the Maori. He has suffered down through the ages from his contact with the white man’s vices, particularly from the strong drink which was introduced to him. Firearms. degraded the ancient chivalries of Maori hand to

hand fighting into sheer butchery. The epidemic diseases the Pakehas brought with them took a further heavy toll. Coming of Christianity Christianity was introduced by the first missionary, Samuel Marsden in 1814. In spite of the fact that it had never had an open field, due to its being preceded by the worst samples of the European race, Christianity after a time took root. Before there was time for the missionaries to follow up the work of inadequately instructed but enthusiastic Maori evangelists, other factors came about to give the cause a long and heavy setback. Treaty of Waitangi The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 but the Maori did not look on the Treaty in the same light as the Pakeha. To the Maori everything has spirit, trees, rivers and land. When they signed the Treaty the Maoris said that they were putting the spirit of their land under the care of the British Queen but the substance still belonged to them. The sparse white population was soon augmented by a rapid flow of immigrants eager to secure land. The Maoris found that they were losing the land they had discovered, settled and loved. This was the root cause of the Maori Wars which began with the Wairoa Massacre in 1843 and concluded at the end of the Te Kooti Campaign in 1871. The 28 years of conflict cost the Colonial Government £3,000,000. Defeatist Attitude

A defeatist attitude followed for long years during which the numbers of the Maori population rapidly declined. When the first white man arrived the Maoris numbered 250,000 but by 1896 these had dropped to 39,000. The last census gave the Maori population as 103,000 and at the present rate of increase, which is 13 times that of the Pakeha, in 50 years there will 648,000 Maoris.

These were facts confronting both Maori and Pakeha with great issues concerning the future of this land and which give food for thought to such organisations of goodwill and human advancement as the Rotary Club.

A hearty vote of thanks to the speaker, moved by Rotarian Spong, was carried.