CORRESPONDENCE.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 22 April 1920, Page 4

CORRESPONDENCE.

■ ■ ♦ ■— [Correspondence is invited on any mat tt r of public interest. We do not, however, aecessarily agree with the views expressed by correspondents.] WHITE TOHUNGAS [to the editor]. Sir, —Are we to believe that civilisation has failed, and that we are drifting back to the dark ages ? It would appear so, judging by a report published in the N.Z. Herald of April Ist, and copied from the Church Gazette. The report is made by two clergymen of the Church of England sent out to the Far North, to undertake a mission among the Maoris. The missioners found " the tohunga and magician flourishing and crudest superstition rampant," and that the people had fallen away from their Christian teaching and relapsed into tohungaism, and that these same tohungas taught the people that their sick and dying were possessed of evil spirits, " and we believe truly," the reporter adds, thus tacitly acknowledging that the tohunga is right after all, and that they themselves in some cases exorcised evil spirits from the sick, and they were immediately cured. This beats the tohunga out and out at his own game. One grievance was that these tohungas and their agents made money out of it. I am wondering if the missionaries come away empty-hand-ed. The report goes on : "We were solemnly told by one who had suffered that some of the possessed behaved like pigs, others like dogs, cats, rats, etc.. and we met with two young children who did behave in every way like little pigs, and become quite normal immediately when the evil spirits were exorcised " (presumably by the missionaries). One can easily imagine the feelings of the clerical gentlemen, in immaculate collars and broadcloth, looking across the gulf between themselves and the Maori children, playing in the mud like little pigs. If these same worthy missionaries are so fortunate as to possess any young children, such as those they saw " behaving like little pigs," and j let them exercise their free will on I a wet, sloppy day, they will find j them also acting like little pigs in the mud, and enjoying it, too ! If I Miss Elsie K. Morton would republish a charming sketch of children enjoying a wet day, it would well illustrate these little piggies. The Maori tohungas are imprisoned or fined for practising their simple faitli in their prayers, and at the same time in their medicines, for the cure of their own people, and the highly-trained white man goes I among them and sees for himself, j and then reports that he believes ] there are such things as persons | being possessed of evil spirits, thus ! agreeing with and confirming the tohunga in his belief of such things. I am, etc., CRITIC.