MAORI MEMORIES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 June 1938, Page 8

MAORI MEMORIES.

FOUR NEW ZEALAND WARS.

(Recorded by “J.H.S.” for “Times-Age”) In the evolution of Maori warfare there were four distinct phases. First the original tribal fights, induced by the compelling duty to have satisfaction (utu) for tribal, family or personal wrongs against one’s friends. In those primitive battles, the actual dead and wounded were comparatively few. Utu was often satisfied with having slain the mataika (first victim). Those fights resembled a modern football, wrestling or boxing match, with applause and goodwill to follow. Secondly, in the early mission days, the heathen tribes and the Christian converts bitterly fought each other. Thirdly, the converts to each" creed, t believing their own to be the only true one. actually fought the others for possession of certain sacred premises. Some of these Maori apostles, believing, as many thinking men do today, that there will be no peace on earth until we have one universal religion, donned the black coat, white tie, clerical hat and umbrella, tramping the country as evangelists, each of his own true creed. Fourthly, the last and most bitter of all fought by men made desperate through the loss of their only immortal possession, the land. Their young men and women demoralised by drink and slaughtered by firearms, fought more savagely than in their cannibal days to drive the robbers into the sea from whence they came. ’ • In connection with the third phase of bitterness, the original features of universal hospitality to friend and stranger, Maori and white, gave way io suspicion of every visitor and traveller, who met with the question, “To what church do you belong?” Sir George Grey advised every one to answer, “To the True Church,” when 1 the gates were opend and the feast prepared.