MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 March 1941, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

THE PLANTS AND THE MAORIS DIE. (Recorded by J.H.S., of Palmerston North, for the “Times-Age.”) Foreign growths have tended to rapidly replace the native trees, shrubs, and grasses for these have in past ages used up the particular elements in the soil which are essential to their growth. The imported plants and forest trees on the other hand find their special requirements untouched. It is well known that foreign trees grow far more rapidly here than in their native land. Evon the Maori learned this and used it as a symbol in his Waiata (songs) to indicate that the Pakeha would supplant or destroy the Maori. The imported insect pests thrived upon the improved climatic conditions and proved more destructive here, and this provided the Maori with another parable; “That which is true of plants, birds, and animals is also true of man.” The Maori can do anything as well or even better than the average Pakeha, yet the race is dying out. Why? The Maoris say their native birds arc dying out because their friends the Maoris are dying too. At Parewanui and Otaki where high grade Maoris wore numerous the halfcastes were more intelligent, and of finer physique than their brown mothers or white fathers. ft is often wondered why an intellectual race like the Maori descended in the scale of life to man-eating. Starvation, like that of a ship-wrecked crow on a raft, was the cause. We feel more keenly the hopeless future of the Maoris than they do. They ascribe our morality to calculating for profit. They prefer lo bask in the sun and obey the promptings of Nature lo idleness.