MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 January 1939, Page 8

MAORI MEMORIES

* MAORI SCHOOLS AND COURTS (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Shortly after landing at the little town of Auckland in 1860, an eminent Englishman remarked upon the strange contrast between the actual poverty and the mental capacity of the Maori race. In all practical signs l .of civilised life they were most backward; their housing, clothing, feeding, and living were barbarous indeed. Yet in reasoning, philosophy, government, and the newly acquired provision for educating their children, they had the most unexpected cleverness and common sense. After the very first example of our system, they created numerous village schools, managed by themselves, Large school houses were most carefully built, the children better clothed and fed than their people. The boys were in blue shirts and trousers, and the girls in clean gay coloured print dresses. All children wrote in Maori and answered our questions intelligently. Their arithmetic was surprisingly clever. Their court houses and hearing of cases were well conducted, and the judgments were never questioned. All these things were swept away in the quarrel over lands, and the excitement of war, never to be replaced.

Another cause of difference where the Pakeha was certainly at fault, led to grave results. When a Maori was charged with an offence against a white person, serious or otherwise, he was at once handed over to the European police; but in the case of a Pakeha criminal, the Government refused to recognise the Native police or their mode of trial (Whakamatauranga), used as a prelude to handing over the Pakeha suspected of an offence against a Maori.