ORIGIN OF THE MAORI.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 268, 22 March 1911, Page 7

ORIGIN OF THE MAORI.

To tlie Editor. Sir,—ln allowing me to acknowledge llr. W. A. Mackay's notice of my letter oil the "Origin of the .Maori," which was published in your issue of the 15th inst., I'might just mention one or two slightly striking mis-prints inadvertent.lv occurring in my somewhat carelessly written communication. "Oakuru" in Maori signifies a place "where tlie sunlight, lingers," not "wtieu the sunlight lingers." "Kakou" is "had" ill ancient (Jreek, not ■'Kakou," In the suppositious exclamation of an aborigine on witnessing the proceedings of a Hindu fanatic, "He plenty big," the finish of the criticism is omitted, viz., "one duffer," "duller" being a colloquialism, implying the lack of conspicuous intelligence in some individual. That the Maoris are any more a remnant of the lost ten tribes of Israel than are the British, I can scarcely concede. Shalmanesen, an Assyrian king, conquering Samaria, carried oft those tribes, and dispersed them among the cities of the Medes, among which people ethnologists usually consider them to have become finally incorporated. lam not aware either that Egypt can be considered the "land of the Jew." They may have migrated at times there, but certainly were not natives of that country, nor of "Araby's sunny green" highlands, from which, I suppose, the Maoris might have come rather than from India . —"Araby the blest." My theory of' Maori origin is that they are the degenerate remains of a remote prehistoric civilisation, dating long before the Biblical period at all, whose epoch does not trace back probably more than 5000 years at the most, or little more thai kalf the time recorded now by existing Egyptian and Chaldean monuments, mummies, and Babylonian tablets. The Maoris, I think it will be found, had no form of idolatrous worship whatever. What spirits they believed in were look- 1 ed upon as evil, and were exorcised by their tohungas rather than worshipped "evil spirits," which the Australian black children say come from "behind the sunset." The insitution of "prophets" and other like superstitions among the Maoris is wholly subsequent to, and the result of the introduction of the Bible and Christian religion among them, they having originally had no conception of an Almighty God or Supreme Being. In fact, Te Heu Heu, of Taupo, ridiculed the notion. Though some of tlie Maori customs may bear a little similitude to 'those of the Jews, their facial expression is 1 not, I think, Jewish, the distinguished feature 'oij. the aquiline nose not being titfitfti 1 iff evidence. In short, there seems to me not the slightest proof of the identification of the Maori with the Jewish people, the -Maori origjn, according to mv impression, dating long prior to the time when Jewish history begins, and the Maoris, if thought to be Jewish or a portion of the ten tribes, could not have become savage in the interim of Israelitish history or no more than the rest of the race has done.—l am, etc.,