ADDRESS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3769, 29 August 1907, Page 2

ADDRESS.

Presented to Miss Murcutt by the Maoris of Rotorua. “ Haere tnai e te manuhiri.” Welcome, O distinguished stranger from beyond the skies. We, the Maori people, welcome you to Rotorua, to the home where our ancestors lived and flourished. The sheltering totara trees of the great forest of Tane have fallen, the lofty mountains have been levelled, and the authority and power have departed. Our fathers, who would have stirred you with their oratory, have been laid to rest in the bosom of their mother, Papa-tu-a-nuku, the Earth. We are but the remnant of a race whom fate directed through the Isles of the Pacific afar from the activities and. intellectual evolution of other races, and decreed to remaiu'within the age of polished stone until the quickening hand of the white man opened the doors of our stone prison with a key of metal. The gap of three thousand years that lies between us, cannot be bridged over in two generations. Yon, the White People, the product of centuries of education and progress, rendered possible by the happy chance that gave you metals, often wax impatient* at our tardy progress; whilst we, your Neolithic brethren, cast into one of the back eddies of the world, and left behind by the stream ot evolution, oft grow weary of the arrogance and inconsistency of civilised man. You brought us your civilisation and you decimated our ranks with strange diseases and modern armaments. You supplied us with fire-arms, and when in the lust of war we had slain almost half of the flower of our race (and a few of yours) you punished us as rebels and confiscated our lands. You gave us the Bible and you broke its precepts. You taught us ethics, and you had no scruples in 3’our transactions with us. You gave us alcohol, and then punished us and gave us an evil name for using it. Our fathers desired to be civilised, but because of your inconsistencies they abandoned your teaching and opposed it with their hearts’ blood. We retrograded, and the gap between us widened. You have to make up the ground lost by the bad example of fathers ; we have had to overcome the distrust and suspicion engendered in the hearts of ours and transmitted to us, ere we could once more take up the broken thread to progress. Of the evils introduced by the white race that of alcohol has wrought us incalculable harm. Though by wise enactment sits evils have been considerably lessened, we are not allowed-a public expression of opinion upon the subject. The race which introduced the liquor traffic speak for themselves and for us, but that voice is the voice of the white man alone. We think the time is now ripe when our own voice, however feeble, should be given an opportunity of being heard. We consider that the local option should be extended to us as a matter of common justice. We therefore pray you to assist us with your sympathy, with your voice and with your influence in moving the Government of this country to grant this humble petition of the Maori people. Help us lest the sun set upon the Maori race forever ; lest the proverb of the old men come true : “ Kua ngaro amoa te iwi nei,” this race has become extinct as the moa.

We welcome you as a distinguished traveller, who has seen many lands and many peoples. Come and see us, the Maori people, a Neolithic race, striving to assimilate civilisation. Come and seethe “ maramara toenga,” this remaining fragment of a race in their struggle for existence. Many fall by the wayside, but the survivors struggle on, for we are in the “matikuku pango, the black finger-nail of death, and we would draw the remnant of our race out of the clutches of “Hine-nui-te-po,” the great Goddess of Night, to some “ taumata okiokinga,” some summit of rest, where we may emerge above the threatening clouds of extinction, where the sun may smile upon us as of old, and where we may behold once more “ te-ao-marama,” the World of Light. Haere Mai! Haere Mai! Haere Mai! Welcome, thrice welcome. Rotorua, August 2ist, 1907.