ISLAND RACES DYING OUT.

Taihape Daily Times, 5 February 1919, Page 4

ISLAND RACES DYING OUT.

INJURY OF EUROPEAN CLOTHING

Many of the cativo people in the Pacific are dying off, some more rapidly than others, and various reasons are given for this melancholy fact. In the opinion of Mr. H. S. Newton, a Government official from the Gilbert Islands, who is in Sydney on furlough, nothing has contributed more to the general decay than the introduction of European clothing. In most of the islands cotton smocks for women and cotton trousers and shirts for men and women have come to be regarded in the native mind as indispensable to professed Christianity. Mr. Newton considers that the native kilt is graceful and sufficient, and the healthiest costume, and that fd encourage them to dress in our clothes is aiToutrage on all hygiene and artistic conceptions. It is impossible, he declares, to overestimate the mischief that has (been done to the general physique and health of the natives of the Gilbert Islands by European clothing. The old method of lubricating the "body with cSceanut oil was the best possible precaution against chill in these regions of sudden rains. Clothes reduced the endurance of the skin and rendered it more i susceptible to the chills which wet clothing engendered. The result was colds, pneumonia, and eventually tuberculosis, which was decimating the natives in many parts. Apart from this aspect, native? did not understand the i principles of hygiene, aifu thus skin diseases were spread, for the natives were fond of exchanging and borrowing each other's clothing. During the recent drought in the Southern Gilbert Islands the natives had been unable to buy new colthinpf. or soop. with the result that the old unwashed clothes i were worn week after week and month j after month, in many cases never being removed from the body.

Mr. Newton says the ■Government officials went to much trouble to lecture to the natives on the uselessness, expense, and danger of wearing European clothing; and on the following: Sunday the mission teacher would preach a whole sermon on the evil of appearing in public with..any "part of the body exposed. Mr. Newton does not disparage the* work of the missionaries generally. On the other hand, he speaks of i t in high terms. They have, throughout the Pacific, he says, done wonderful thing* for the welfare of the natives. But he is firm in his opinion they are making a very grievous mistake in insisting upon the wearing of clothes in the remote islands, and also in r)rohibitin£r the native dan n ' > s without first substituting other forms of amusement and exercise.