MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 August 1940, Page 9

MAORI MEMORIES

MAORI DOWNFALL. (Recorded by of Palmerston North, for the “Times-Age.”) Maori life in their primitive conditions was strenuous and healthy. Living on the dry hill top forts for protection in tribal wars, they enjoyed fresh air day and night. When guns were introduced their defences were changed to trenches and rifle pits, the approaches to which were partly guarded by rivers or swamps. When cur commerce induced them to prepare muka (hand dressed fibre) in vast qauntities in exchange for European clothing, it brought their location near the flax swamps. The spread of fever, consumption, and other Pakeha diseases was carried on night and day by millions of ngaeroa (mosquitoes). To those who have had no experience of Tilts plague, there can be no conception of its miseries and dangers. The construction of the giant works of the Panama Canal was made impossible until wo discovered the means of eradicating these poisonous little pests. The porous nature of their handwoven clothing permitted them to work and perspire, and then rest at meal times in winter weather without danger to health. In similar conditions they worked in summer naked, always with their bodies smeared with oil from birds or fish, which was a protection against sunburn and cold. Then came the attractive calico and coloured prints, non-porous, and when soaked in perspiration caused lung trouble or pneumonia. Their kumara (sweet potato) were far more nutrituous than the easily grown potatoes which are blamed for the reduced stamina of the Irish race. Beyond all other influences strong drink was then and is now the main cause of their downfall and decrease.