MAORI PHILOSOPHY

Hokitika Guardian, 10 July 1930, Page 3

MAORI PHILOSOPHY

ITEMS FROM AN OLD JOURNAL

HEX ARE’S STOLEN TROUSERS,

(By J. C. in Auckland Star.)

There was a Maori gazette-news-paper published by the' Government in Wellington in the ’sixties''and [seventies which provides some curiously interesting reading to-day. -It was called the “W.aka Maori,” and the object in publishing it was to keep Maoris posted in all official and legislative matters affecting them and their lands and to give then a variety of news of the day conceiting New Zealand and the rest of the world. Going through a file of the “Wnka Afaori”—which in its later days had the Alaori and its English translation in parallel columns—one discovers items, far removed ifrotn the dry and formal intelligence usually sot forth in our pakeha gazettes.

For example here in the “Waka” o! an issue in 1876 we, have on the first nage, which is headed by the iloval

Arms, a letter from Te Aho-orte-Reti'd, •f the Waikato, indignantly, criticising some of _the ‘(vulogistic., obituary notices published in. the paper., “AVe hear noth'll?, of these peo 'le,” be complained, “during..their..lifetime, but when they die we are informed that they,were generops and ,bosp ; .table.

-nd. that they possessed a multitude of itlier.virtue-. .Wily are not the names -f. these people published during tlrir lifetime, so that peoplp. might visit 'hem and, make trial of their, genoros'Lv and hospitality?”

To Aim’s naive inquiry may find an —oho anion- the pakeha tribe. Many a man who was nothing in particular in \s life gets a beautiful death write-up. ‘Do inortuis nil .nisi bonum,” of course.

A DROLL COMPLAINT,

T'n another number of the same year an. East Cf st .man by the name of Henare -Parca,, writing from Waiapu, 'ays a droll complaint .against his fel-low-tribesmen of Ngati-Porou, and niakes a confession that strikes one as fr’iikness in excelsis. He wishes to Inform the editor of the , “Waka

Tnn"i” and .the world in general of +he misfortunes which befell him Dirough indulging too freely in.intox:mating, liquor ..He, attended a social gathering at,, Whareponga, at which all the, people got drunk. AVheii .ridng away lie. fell from his horse, being helplessly drunk; the horse galloped away, leaving him senseless on the beach. AVhilq^in.That condition some person pulled off Ins , trousers and appropriated ,the;n. • A woman named Herata Hayete came along, and, seeing liim-lying there, she. took pity on him, ; ; and ;covered. hun .with a native mat. 1 Later she returned • and nqured \vatqiicon him, -which .brought him to ' his .senses*'' 'Tliis was some hours after his accident. He rase and went into, the meeting-house, where a' out three .hundred people were gathered, holding a “runanga.” He stood afore them and begged that he should fie given a pair of trousers, but. the assemblage only,laughed at him, ami suffered him to depart ,in bis nakedness. He considered, their . conduct most unfeeling, as be bad very many -vies to travel to bis home. Trntbfv' Henare concluded his pathetic epistle by expressing a hope that others might take warning by bis case and ad a n don the evil habit of drinking, “lest they lose their money and trousers and coat abd hat, and probably their wives also.”

To Henare’s open-hearted conles-slon, the editor of the “Wnkn” solemnly appended a note . improving; the-peeasion ■or the benefit of his readers.*, “We have no pity for-Henare,” he said;

•‘be-has only himselfb-to.. e. f or. unpleasant ;- position ,in - which; lit! was placed ;”, aud- he;followed, this ujv with, n lav sermon on the destructive habit of “inu waipiro.”. t .-r. >

CHANGE IN .HABIT;

Ngati-P.orou, by the way, was given to that convivial habit in most liberal measure in the days o'f ’seventy-six,. The Rev. Mohi Turei, writing from Waiapu a description of the tangi o-.er his late wife, mentioned as an unusual and pleasing fact that there was no rum there, and that it w".s the first funeral among the tribe that had been conducted respectably. It was the usual practice at tangis for each man. to provide two or three gallons uf nun, “to increase the flow-, of tears, which was considered a sign of genuine sorrow.” Hence the rowdiness of the subsequent,, proceedings, when tliere were perhaps 200 or 800 gallons consumed. Mold appealed to liis •• be. “Tet us have no more rum at .our wailings.” r ”n,.tes in liquid refreshment cer+n;uly have chanced for the better '•nong both Maori and onkeba s : -'-e those days when, powerful weipV' flowed so bounteous’y at the wake, an-1 festive gatherings of the hard>'led old-timers on tlie coast.