HINTS FOR THE MAORI PEOPLE.

Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume VI, Issue 17, 15 August 1859, Page 1

HINTS FOR THE MAORI PEOPLE.

Chapter 11. But it is not only the women who suffer from want of good food. Some of them are strong enough still to bear many children. Again and again we have heard Maori women number up on their fingers the children they have had, But it ends with the same sad words always, '' they are dead." Perhaps out of six or seven children born alive five are dead, or four. Now why is this? It is not the common lot of infants thus to die? It is not so in other countries. It may be prevented in New Zealand. The main cause of the death both of babies and of older children is from bad food when they are weaned. God has provided the fit food for the infant

when born, that is, its mother's milk. Sometimes the mother has no milk. Our Eng-1 lish woman then gets another to nurse the j child for her. If she is too poor for that, she buys cow's milk and mixes it with water j as the next best food. Bye and bye she feeds it with thin arrowroot or with ground barley or with bread soaked in milk. Till the child has back teeth, she will not give it meat or potatoes or any such hard food. If she does, the infant has just the same complaint as Maori babies, the wasting which is called by the New Zealanders, kohi kiko. In large cities in England where some of the women are very poor and very dirty and careless, the same ailment prevails. Why is this? Why because the child's stomach cannot bear the food which is given to it. Instead of strengthening it, the food lies undigested there. We have nursed Maori children for years when sick and can therefore speak about their illness. In nine cases out of ten the cause of their death is from the bad food. The mother was half starved when the baby was born, and all the time she was suckling it. So the baby sucks and sucks, but in vain. There is no milk for it, and the poor little one cries all day long. And the mother, sorry for her child and ignorant of the evil, puts fish and potntoes into its mouth before it has teeth to chew them; T'jis food lies undigested in the stomach and by slow degrees causes disease there. Low fever begins slowly, the legs and arms waste, the belly becomes hard and big, the eyebiows gr»w long and straight, a short cough tomes next, bard, quick

breathing and burning heat of skin. According as the child has strength, it lasts a few months or a few years. If we could look within the stomach of the child after death, we should see that the whole canal is in a state of ulceration. The food has lain there week after week, till inflammation has begun, and then a sore, and at last the child dies of kohi kiko, that is, it has died of bad food. Now is there any remedy for this great cause of the decrease of the Native population ? Surely there is. Let us only look at the number of bushels of wheat grown every year by the Maories. There is wheat enough grown in Waikato to feed every woman and child there through the winterPlenty would yet be left for sale for buying many of the things desired by the Maories. They would have of course to give up some of the luxuries on which their money is wasted. We write to the Chiefs in Waikato I and in all other parts of the country where wheat is grown, and pray you think the mailer over. A few weeks ago we asked an old Chief from Waikato what food the women and children had this winter. The answer was, Potatoes only. We asked if there were good potatoes? No, bad, small ones. Now this is the very same food which the Maories bad twenty years ago. Then they had no ploughs, no horses, no mills, no money to buy them with. We were sorry for you then, now we are angry with the men —exceedingly sorry for th2 women and the children. How is the money spent which you get by the sales of wheat and corn? It is spent in buying schooners, canoes, horses,

powder, guns and such things. Some of these are good things and much to be desired. The mistake is in pulling these sources of wealth first. Men and women are alike in this, they will be willing to work for months and live on wretched food that they may get two or three hundred pounds. Then the schooner is bought, or the horsp, and when they are got safely to the port or village everybody is satisfied. But what is wealth? Is it wealth to have ships and horses, or to become a healthy race multiplying in the land ? The greatest wealth a man can have is his children, "a gift and heritage which comeih from the Lord." Treasure gained at the cost of his wife and children is a curse to a man, not a blessing. When he dies his name perishes with him. He has no children to care for him when he is old, none to hold the land after him. Maori Chiefs know this and are sad enough when one by one their little ones die off, and yet it is not God's will that thev die, but through man's folly. Will you, the Chiefs and teachers, make no effort to stop the evil ? In some parts Dear IheEast Cape, the r eople have cows, and milk them, and the women make large loaves of bread. They bake them in iron pots. In those parts the children have began to multiply again. Again, at Otawhao, the children in Mr. Morgan's school have milk and bread all the vear and only one dies in a year for 84 wholive. In the Maori villages, where the children eat potatoes only and rotten corn, one dies every year out of 31. In Ireland, the poor people are worse [fed than in England. They live nearly all the year on potatoes. But they have plenty of milk lor their children. A man keeps a cow and feeds the litile ones on milk, or gives them butter with their potatoes and they thrive and multiply. In England and here, Englishmen are as greedy after wealth as Maori men. But an Englishman is not so foolish as to starve his children. Bread and butter, bread and milk for them. If he is very poor indeed, and asks for help of some richer man, nis words always are, •« I don't care for myself, but I can't bear to see my wife and my children starve." That is to say, if he is an honest, sober man, of course drunkards care for nobody but themselves. The very birds of Heaven teach us to care for our young. They are all day flying to and from the nest to gathar food for them, and they give the best to their young ones. Shall we, to uhom

God has given understanding be less wise and have less love than the birds?