THE ANCIENT MAORI.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3835, 23 August 1928, Page 3

THE ANCIENT MAORI.

PAST GLORY AND PRESENT PROBLEMS. Speaking at the meeting of the Palmerston North Luncheon Club on Tuesday, Mr. Te Ari-taua Pitama dealt very interestingly with the glories of the ancient Maori, their beliefs, and present-day problems. The tattooed Maori of the past presented a wonderfully picturesque figure, said Mr. Pitama. His life was distinctly communistic. Belonging as he did to the privileged class, he passed through the whare-wananga where he was schooled in all the lore of the Maori, in astronomy, agriculture, armoury, arts, oratory, and theology. The Maori claimed the same an-4 cestry as the Briton, and truly the period of time when their common ancestors had lived side by side was trifling when compared with the countless years from the founding of the human race. The Sahara had been their common ancestral home and thence the exodus had takeq the ancient Maori northward and eastward to the Pacific. In a corner of the British Museum in London were to be seen two skulls, one of an early Briton, one of an ancient Maori. These skulls were practically identical. Both had a hole in the top of the skull to let out the evil spirit, a belief common to the early Briton and ancient Maori.

His religious belief consisted of a purely spiritual belief in 10, the Parentless —known only to the inner circle —and a multiplicity of gods who presided over the destinies of the world. For him there was no heaven or hell, but merely a place of departed spirits, where he would one day join his ancestors, and live eternally in peace and quietude. The Maori had evolved a system of communism that could never be attained by the socialists of to-day. All things were shared by the tribe ip common, yet they had their chiefs and tohunga to whom they looked for authority. They had their own laws of tapu and miru. The Maori of to-day was a decided contrast to his powerful ancestors. He had been relegated to the background and his former glory was almost unknown. In this the Maori had no one to blame more than himself. The pakeha should be very patient in their dealings with the Maori, remembering that they were in one hundred years trying to absorb the civilisation Thatthe white people had enjoyed foxover five hundred years. The Maori had evolved practically from the stone age to modern civilisation in the last century. It was a remarkable thing that the Maori had no racial pride. Individually, the Maori were proud of the traditions of their respective tribes, but they had no national pride. These tribal differences had done much to raise barriers between the Maori tribes in the past, but, fortunately, the modern tendency was to promote more social intercourse anxong the various tribes. These would do much to bring the Maori solidly together, and they would then be able to take their proper place in the land. As a separate race the Maori could not expect to preserve their identity. They would eventually merge with the people who claimed the same remote ancestry. At the present time there were many problems to be considered in dealing with the native race. The speaker paid a tribute to the personal interest displayed by the Prime Minister. Were the Maori themselves to take the same interest in their own affairs, all would soon be well.