A Chapter on Pai-Marire.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 7, Issue 344, 25 January 1866, Page 1

A Chapter on Pai-Marire.

THE NEW RELIGION OF THE MAORIS. (From Fraser’s Magazine, for October.) Continued from our last. The more intelligent rebel chiefs, such as Thompson and Eewi, have favored this new fanaticism from political motives. While they are far too enlightened to give it credence themselves, they have adopted it as a powerful instrument for rousing the flagging energies of their countrymen, who, driven from their lands and worsted almost in every engagement, were beginning to despair of success. There is no courage equal to the courage of fanaticism ; it has infused a new life into the Maori race, revived old hopes, and nerved them h r the struggle. It has spread its baneful influence among tribes who have remained outwardly loyal from prudential motives, but are rebels at heart, and will prove themselves to be so on the first favorable opportunity. In some cases these neutral tribes have been restrained from open rebellion by the presence and personal influence of a few brave-hearted missionaries, who have remained among their former flocks, and endeavored to stem the torrent of superstition which has hurst upon them. They have confronted the emissaries of the new faith, and challenged an exhibition of their miraculous powers. The following incident recently occurred on the east coast. The district which one of the missionaries had occupied for years as his special field of labor was visited by a party of Pai Marires, who boasted of their miraculous powers, and began to preach their peculiar doctrines. It so happened that her Majesty’s ship Eclipse was then cruising on the coast, and it reached the ears of the missionary that the leader of the Pai Marire band had openly declared that he could draw the vessel ashore by putting forth those miraculous powers with which he was endowed. The missionary brought matters to the test by assembling the natives and challenging the Pai Marire

leader to make good his words. There was the vessel about a miie from the shore; let him put forth his power and dash her on the rocks ; if he did so the whole assembly would become his followers, if he failed they would know him to be a rogue and au imposter. The puzzled Pai Marire priest tried to escape from the dilemma; the spirts were not favorable, the audience saw that he had notafoot on he lost his temper, denied that he had to stand offered to perform this miracle, andmade a hasty retreat, followed by the scoffs and jeers of those who witnessed his defeat. Thus one man, by the exercise of a little moral courage and common sense, routed a baud of fanatics and saved his flock from being swept into the vortex of rebellion. The most active of the Pai Marire converts go to swell the ranks of the insurgents. When they renounce Christianity they at the same time renounce their allegiance to the Britsh Crown ; the one act involves the other. Hence every convert may or does become a recruit for the rebel army; he may remain neutral for a time, watching the current of events, but all his sympathies are with his countrymen in arms. The Pai Marire superstition has spread rapidly among the so-called friendly natives who are resid ing in the province of Auckland, and the authorities have wisely abstained from attempting to repress it by force. Prosecution or the employment of force in such cases, tends only to aggravate and prolong the evil. The Maori, so long as he keeps within the limits of the law, has an unquestionable right to choose his own religion; it is only when he is guilty of crime that the authority of the law ought to be vindicated. Rebellion may be the natural result of Pai Marire teaching, but no man can be treated as a rebel till he has declared himself to be so by some overt act. The magistrates residing among the friendly natives have wisely adopted this view of the matter, and made no attempt to arrest the progress of the new religion by force. They have warned the natives that while they are at liberty to adopt any religion they choose, they have no right to violate the law under the cloak of religion, and that every such violation will be punished. A singular case was recently tried before one of the resident magistrates in the province of Auckland. A Pai Marire

preacher had established himself among a friendly tribe, and was allowed to preach the doctrines of the new faith without, opposition. At first he enjoyed a high reputation for sanctity, and the women of the tribe flocked to him to be indoctrinated in the Pai Marire faith. The husband of one of them, who happened to be of a jealous or sceptical temperament, was led to watch the movements of his wife, and soon saw enough to satisfy him that she was unfaithful to the marriage vow. Now, while chastity before marriage is an unknown virtue among the Maori woman, infidelity to the marriage vow has ever been regarded as the greatest crime of which they can be guilty. _ It was formerly punished as a capital offence ; but the Maori has now become so imbued with Pakeha ideas that he has learned not to condone the injure, but to seek such compensation as the law has provided for injured husbands. In the course of this trial facts were disclosed which forcibly remind us of the tales of priestly deception related in Boccacio’s Decameron, and produce the conviction that Pai Marirism is only another name for systematized licentiousness. The aggrieved husband obtained J£3o of damages ; not a large sum according to English ideas, but equal, we presume, to the damage sustained.

As we write the English mail for March has just come. The colonists are as sensitive to home criticisms as the Yankees themselves, and our first enquiry is, “ What do they think of us in England ?” Every debate in Parliament bearing on the war is read with intense interest; every leader is devoured with unflagging zest. The writers of these articles display as much knowledge of the question as could be expected from men living so remote from the field of action, and dependent on others for their information; it detracts nothing from their merits that they occasionally betray a ludicrous ignorance of the real state of the country. We glance at one of the leading articles in the Times on Maori affairs; it is well and carefully written ; but when the publicist asserts that a missionary may travel in safety through parts of New Zealand where any other pakeha would be exposed to certain death, we shake our head in sorrowful dissent. No statement could convey a more erroneous impression of the state of feeling among the natives towards their former instructors. When we first arrived in this country the war had only just broken out; Pai Marirism was unknown, and the natives were outwardly attached to the Christian religion. To have shed the blood of a missionary would have been deemed an act of sacrilege; in repeated cases the Maori musket was turned aside when it was discovered that it was aimed at a minister of religion. This inherent feeling of respect for the cloth was supplanted by that fierce fanatical hatred of everything connected with the Christian religion, which Pai Marirism produced. The missionaries are hated because it is believed that they acted the part of political spies to the Government, and taught a religion which they knew to be false, for the purpose of keeping the natives in ignorant subjection. They are hated because it is known that in many cases they enriched themselves by purchasing land from the natives when the latter were ignorant of its true value, of which they are now fully sensible. So powerful is this feeling of hatred that if the writer in the Times had reversed his statement, and asserted that a layman may now travel through districts of New Zealand where no missionary could appear without exposing himself to certain death, no one would gainsay that assertion. The fact is only too patent to all; it may be lamented, but it cannot be ignored. A few days before this article appeared in the Times the Pai Marire fanatics on the East Coast exhibited their deep-rooted hatred of the whole missionary body by torturing the unfortunate Yolkner to death under circumstances of atrocious cruelty. He had done nothing, to incur hatred; a more amiable or inoffensive man never lived ; but he had the misfortune to be a missionary, and nothing cquld save him. The native catechist who replaced him during his absence was one of the first converts to Pai Marirism; the members of his own flock, among whom he had labored faithfully for

years, assisted in putting him to death. The other missionary who shared his captivity would have shared the same fate had it not been for the heroic efforts of a Jewish sailor, who saved his life at the risk of his own. The public at home are now familiar with all the details of this tragical affair, and the name of Carl Sylvius Volkner will he preserved in the annals of missionary labor as the first Christian martyr of New Zealand. It is painful to dwell on human ingratitude, hut the conduct of Mr Grace, the surviving missionary, deserves some passing notice. The warm sympathy felt for him among all classes of the community was converted into a different feeling by a letter which he published after his return to Auckland. With much complacency he compared his deliverance to that of the Apostle Peter, but failed to recognise any points of resemblance between the Hebrew who saved his life and the angel who opened the gates of the prison ; in fact the name of Levi was conspicuous by its absence. Startled by the outburst of indignation which his ingratitude evoked, he wrote a second letter in which he stated that the name of Levi had been omitted through inadvertency, as if it were possible to forget the saver of his life within a fortnight. This only rendered matters worse, and a public meeting was convened for the purpose of acknowledging the gallant conduct of Mr Levi, the master of the schooner Eclipse, in effecting the rescue of Mr Grace from the Pai Marires at Opotiki. We had the curiosity to attend that meeting, which was composed of a strange admixture of Judaism aud rowdyism, the Hebrew element preponderating. The audience soothed their impatience with the fumesof tobacco till the proceedingsbegan, when they laid their pipes aside and cheered Mr Levi, the hero of the occasion. He is a smart, good-looking, little Hebrew, and he told his story with all the bluffaess of a sailor. From the first there seems to have been as much congeniality between them as might be expected in the case of a solemn pointer and a playful monkey bound together with the same chain. Mr Levi went in medias res at once. “ Could he account for Mr Grace’s conduct ? He could not; because up to the very hour of their going away they were on the best of terms.” Mr Levi proceeded to show what he meant by the best of terms. “ He slept with him in the same house, and took every meal with him. They had had several rows, —he might say a great many; but nothing to interfere very materially with their friendship. They had had a row, and half-an-hour afterwards they had taken meals together and conversed together. He had called him (Mr Grace) bad names; he bad called him a liar, a hyprocrite and told him that he was not fit to wear the cloth of the Church; and he was prepared to prove it before auy tribunal in the world.” Mr Levi then proceeded to lead proof of Mr Grace’s falsehood and hypocrisy, and after making due allowance for Oriental exaggeration, the impression left on our mind was a very painful one. The audience identified the whole missionary body with their unworthy representative, and expressed their contempt by shouting, “ You men of God is not to have it all your own way.” It is a significant fact that Mr Grace, once so eager to rush into print, has never publicly denied the very serious charges brought ugaiust him, and there can be no doubt that bis conduct, coupled with other causes, has turned the tide of public opinion against the missionaries. The colonists, as a body, have as little sympathy with them as the Maoris ; both class them with the landsharks from Sydney, who acquired the best lands in the colony at a nominal price and refuse to part with them on reasonable terms. At Tauranga, on the East Coast, is a block of laud consisting of about fifteen hundred acres. In-1838 ft was bought by the missionaries from the natives for a heifer and some articles of merchandise, the exact nature or value is not given. About a year ago the natives in the vicinity joineU the rebellion, and after a temporary success, were defeated and forced to surrender. Part of their land was confiscated, and a regiment of military settlers sent down to occupy it. Negotiations were opened with the .missionaries to effect the purchase of their property, which lies in the very centre of the confiscated kud; the

price they demanded was £20,000, The |ig|fer has proved a good investment, Such facts are well known to the natives, §nd have tended not only to undermine the influence of the missionaries but to produce a feeling of deep and bitter hatred against them, The tragedy at Opotiki is only one of the ipany manifestations of that feeling; we venture to say that Bishop Selwyn himself, if he bad fallen into the hands of Pai Marire fanatics would have met with the same fate. The idea has taken firm hold of the native Kind that Christianity has bv.en used as a ploak to conceal the selfish grasping spirit fif Us teachers, and this idea has fouud its natural expression in the adoption of a new religion. The madman Te Ua, the fanatical founder of that religion, has been a mere instrument in the hands of the King party, have made political capital of bis rhapsodies, and recruited their ranks from Lis followers. They wished to separate themselves for ever from the Pakehas, and they knew that they could not do so as long as they retained their religion. The rapidity with which the Maoris have rejected Christainity is only equalled by the rapidity with which they pdopted it, and the one event need excite no more surprise than the other; both sprung from the same causes. Asapeople they adopted Christianity from purely worldly motives; the Christians who invited them were wealthier and more prosperous than themselves, pod they attributed this to the superior power pf the Christian’s God They abandoned, or professed to abandon, the gods of their fathers because they had done so little for them; they felt their inferiority ; and they rushed to worship as the Pakeha worshipped, from the belief that in that way they would become |n every respect equal to him. They have pow discovered their mistake. They have gained nothing by the change; they have lost much since it was made. They have decreased in numbers, and they are daily decreasing ; diseases before unknown have spread rapidly among them ; their lands are fast slipping from their bands; the rapacity of the Pakeha seems to know no bounds : he sweeps on with the irresistible fury of ope of their own mountain torrents, And to wbpm can they appeal ? They have forsaken the gods of their fathers, and the God of the Pakeha seems to have forsaken fhem. Hence the desire to have a god of their own, a Maori god, quite distinct from fhe object of the Pakeha’s worship. The god pf their creation is the reflex image of their p.wn moral nature, cruel and bloodthirsty as themselves; a being to be propitiated by human sacrifice, and cannibal rites. The transition has been rapid; but all savage paces are liable to be swayed by sudden impulses ; the Maoris took up Christianity lightly, have cast aside with the same levity. To say that they were or ever have been Christians would be a desecration of the term ; it would be as just to affirm that the Ethiopian has changed his skin when he has been slightly covered over with flour. The first sharp shower will wash it away, and reveal him to the world in all his native blackness. The Maori has not changed his peligion, because he never had any to ghange. He has not relapsed into heathenism; he is, and always has been pt heart, a heathen There may have been individual exceptions; bm we are speaking of the Maoris as a race, Some may have sincerely believed in Christianity; but as a people they retained their ancient supersth |ions, and offered a sort of secret and subordinate worship to their heathen gods. There are proofs of the existence of such worship before Te Ua had founded the new religion pr laid claim to inspiration. When the flag pf the Maori King was raised at Mataitawa pn tha iOth of September 1862, heathen incantations were mingled with Christian prayers: a significant proof that Christianity %as already begining to lose the small hold jt ever had pver the minds of the native potuflation, (To be cqntimiefijt