MAORI MEMORIES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 June 1938, Page 10

MAORI MEMORIES.

WHAKATAHURI (Convert). (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) In 1838, isolation of the tribes by vast forests and want of tracks retarded the spread of Christianity. Not a third of the Maoris had ever seen a missionary, yet all had heard of their work, and the marvel was that they were not armed. It passed around from Pa to Pa that missionaries were not like whalers, sailors, or traders, that they taught the arts of peace and •condemned war, that they cultivated new foods and gave the seeds to Maoris. They knew a God who did good, not evil. The one thing in our religion to which the Maori earnestly objected was everlasting torture, so the missionaries had perforce to leave it in abeyance. Rauparaha’s son Tamihana at Otaki, went to the Bay of Islands in 1839 and persuaded the Rev. Mr Hadfield to return with him “to preach the gospel of peace to those tribes who had been conquered by his father, Rauparaha.” The Maori schools, where missionaries taught children the magic power of marking rec (language) by ripeka pango (black crosses) on white paper, were crowded by men and women, anxious to learn “God’s own unspoken thoughts.” It may seem unkind to attribute worldly motives to these simple folks, who then so eagerly sought conversion, yet this became apparent in every appeal made by converts to their fellow men. Seeing the comforts of homes, food, and clothing, cows, horses, and fowls enjoyed by Christians, they concluded that the missionary God was better than all their Gods. Upon those grounds their chiefs openly advocated conversion. In all sincerity and innocence, they promised their hearers that their complexions would become “whiter than the snow, and so outshine the Pakeha guests, who would then inter-marry with the Maoris and produce an angelic race.”