A Question to Answer.

Some might say, perhaps, regarding the case I have been building up: “Dismissed for want of evidence,” but I still think there is a case to answer. How did the Maori so rapidly disseminate news?

Dr. Hocken, in his “History of

(Photo., Theimu R. Kent.)
View looking towards the head of Lake Hawea and Hunter Valley, South Island.

Otago,” writing about Port Chalmers in 1844, says: “Several natives had also arrived from various quarters, for, in the wonderful way in which news spreads among them like wildfire, it was known far and wide that the pakehas wished to purchase a large block of land in the district.” Speaking of some of those who rolled up from Stewart Island and elsewhere he writes: “Some were wild-looking fellows, decked with albatross down and feathers stuck in their nostrils.”

An early settler on the Taieri told me that the Maoris at Henley during the Maori Wars of the ‘sixties in the North Island always knew the result of each fight long before the white settlers round them had received word per the newspapers. ‘I was told the same thing in the Kaiapoi district, and I was asked the reason. This I could not answer, and my interrogation of the Maoris (forty years later be it said) resulted in no definite information. Most of my informants agreed that the older tohungas could send word to one another by witchcraft or magic, but that now the tapu has been broken and the mana of the Maori has departed, the method whereby they did so has been forgotten or lost. A friend has suggested it was done by a system of thought transference unknown to the pakeha, but I leave the question an open one.