ORIGIN OF MAORIS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 August 1939, Page 7

ORIGIN OF MAORIS

LINKS WITH SOUTHEASTERN ASIA DISCOVERERS OF MANY LANDS. ARRIVAL IN NEW ZEALAND. “ ‘I came from the Great Distance, from Long Distance, from the Very Distant Places, from the Gathering Place of Souls, from Hawaiki’—this summarises the idea that the Maori has of his origin,” said Mr E. C. Coddington in an informative address at the Masterton Rotary Club yesterday on the origin of the Maori. All New Zealand natives seemed to agree, Mr Ccddington went on to state, that the direction of Hawaiki was in the north-west. The Hawaiians believed that Haiwaiki was in the southwest while Polynesians of the more tropical regions believed it to be in the west, thus the islands of the East Indies were strongly indicated. It seemed fairly 7 certain that the Maoris came from the west, and from at least as far west as the shores of south-eastern Asia. Ethnologists differed as to the exact place of origin of the Polynesian people. It was now generally recognised that they came from India, while many experts had brought forth fairly convincing arguments pointing to a still more distant origin. Custom was more persisted than language, and many of the customs of the Polynesians might be traced back to the coast of Arabia and the shores of the Red Sea. Il was apparently fairly certain that the Polynesians wore living in India about 450 8.C., and that the eastward migration to the East Indies and the Pacific began shortly before the birth of Christ. A.fter indicating the probable route followed by the migrants, Mr Coddington said that in spite of the mixture of races en route, many of the Polynesian races remained remarkably pure. The heads and facial features of many of the Hawaiians, Samoans, Tahitians and Maoris were exactly those of the Caucasian or white type. From the East Indies the Polynesians set out. in great voyages in all directions, discovering many lands. There was strong evidence of their having visited Alaska while the stories of seafarers indicated that they penetrated well into the regions of Antarctic drift ice. New Zealand was discovered by Kupe about 925 A.D. Nothing was done about colonisation, however, until Toi arrived with a small party in about 1150. The main migration did not take place until about 1350. Mr Coddington gave instances in which the customs of the Maori-Polynesian race were similar to those of natives of Somaliland or Arabia, and of resemblances between certain words. Of great interest from the point of view of tracing Maori origins was the old native religion, said Mr Coddington. Briefly, the ancient religion was reverence and worship for the personified powers of nature and for the spirits of ancestors. There was much that was sublime in the Maori conception. Nowadays most Maoris had accepted some form of Christianity, (hough even now the Maori still showed traces, at times, of the ancient beliefs, and the effect of the older religion was one that was not to be ignored when estimating the Maori character. There was one thing that connected the ancient religion of the Maoris with the religions of the Christians and Jews and which perhaps pointed to a common 'origin of the Polynesians, and the people of the near East. That was that the Maori religion included an account of the flooding of the whole earth and the destruction of the whole of humanity except for a few who reached the top of the holy mountain Hikurangi. ‘Thus we have evidence that our Maori people came from a very far distant origin." said Mr Coddington in conclusion, "that they have been throughout the ages a race of great courage and enterprise, a people fond of adventure, skilful in arts, poetic and musical in temperament, embodying many of the finest qualities possessed by man. It is surely with great pride that we can point to the history of the native people of our country, and it is with much pleasure that I have taken this opportunity of saying a few words about a race for which I have the greatest admiration.”