THE HERETAUNGA NATIVES.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 5, Issue 278, 14 June 1865, Page 2

THE HERETAUNGA NATIVES.

[Communicated.] A feeling of intense melancbohr is taking possession of the mind of the Heretaunga natives. This feeling has been growing upon them ever since the defeat of Waikat), and the frustration of their attempt to establish a separate nationality. This feeling is also greatly strengthened by the rapid decrease of their people ; sickness being extremely prevalent amongst them - Many of them have recently died and many more are either sick or dying from a species of diptheria called by them “ Kurawaka.” It has become in fact so universal among them ms to be noted by every person acquainted with them. The laughter and song that has been formerly so characteristic of the maori, has given place to a listlesness that is quite remarkable, as but a few years ago notwithstanding their gradual decrease, they always were thoughtles and outwardly happy, hut now all this has passed away. Another great change has of late likewsie taken place'amongst them. The fearful vice that will, should it continue to extend as it is now doing, save the colonists of the future all the trouble and expense of future wars—this is the fast increasing habit of drunkenness, fostered and encouraged by the reckless

sellers of strong drink. So common has this evil of drunkenness become amongst the natives that it would be difficult to find at the present time a solitary person of either sex who abstains from it, even those few of their principal men, who formerly stood as a barrier against its progress, and an example to.the people—these have all fallen and are become, like the others, consumers of the alcoholic poison that is so rapidly effecting their destruction. No longer do they hold their runangas over the drunkards, nor enforce fines for this offenge as they did in former times, and it is likely that in a very short time, drink will ' have so enslaved them thatthey will cease to cultivate their lands and no. longer growproduce for sale, for as they say, and not without truth, they are not any the richer from so doing at the end of the year, than if they had remained idle. They also complain that' they are unable to compete with Europeans in raising produce for market, and so deep and strong is their despondency and their feeling of sadnes become, that it threatens in the course of a very few years t© reduce all the courage and energy, for which they have been famed, to the state of a mere traditional thing. It only then remains ftr the government of this province to be honest and true to tne interests of the people, to secure not only the plains of Heretaunga, but also all the runs in the province that are now illegally held by the squatters under the natives. Already the leasing of the Havelock and Waipureku plains by the government,has caused a marked feeling of uneasiness to be exhibited by some of our woidy conscienced squatters, whose--scheeming designs of future freeholds are a x little rudely disturbed by this action, which has tended to make them ,feel but doubtfully secure as they can only regard it as the insertion of the thin end of the wedge. As a proof that this is not an assertion merely but an actual fact,- it may be mentioned that there are certain lines of fencing commenced some time since, but now left in an unfinished state, beside.other contemplated lines that are being postponed for a time, in the hope that a short delay will restore confidence, hut, it is fervently hoped- that the people of Napier will by every means in their power, support and help forward the present movement which has for its end the suppression of the squatting system, and the recovery of the Napier plains from the hands of their present illegal holders, to rescue them from the grasp of the few in order that they may be placed in the bands of the many who are now waiting for them, when instead of a few head of sheep and cattle depasturing upon the coarse scanty herbage of the plains, we shall see smiling villages and hamlets, homesteads inhabited by an industrious and prospering yeomanry, such as constitutes the glory and the strength of our native land, and forming a colony which in the course of time will be second to none in existence.