XXIX
The Maoris

We fought these people, and had the fighting been man to man with no great backing of civilisation behind either side, it is not at all likely we should ever have beaten them. They were brave and honourable as fighting men, and many of them of very considerable ability and sturdy character, and during the last sixty years of peace they have kept the respect and even the affection of all good Englishmen. (Plate XXVI.)

I felt warmed to the heart when I heard that the only approach to anything like a mutiny in the New Zealand contingent in the war took place when some ignorant person, a British officer, slighted or insulted "one of our Maories."

On my voyage out to New Zealand in '17 there was on board a little group of New Zealand soldiers invalided home, among them a rather dark-skinned Maori. We were delayed coaling at Newport News and every-one went ashore. The officers arranged among themselves that their brown colleague should always have two of them with him every page break

Plate XXVI

Plate XXVI
Some of Our Maoris

page 213minute of the time he was on shore, in case of any misunderstanding or unpleasantness.

You will gather from these things that the colour question in New Zealand does not amount to very much. The Maori is a gentleman and could not be servile if he tried. Neither his company at meals in hotels nor his society in other public places is shunned; he is quite as likely to be sought after, for he is often both humorous and sociable, and I remember well that the best bred English ladies in our district agreed among themselves that a certain well-educated half-caste of our acquaintance was in the full and highest sense of the word the finest lady in the "Bay."

There is a self-respect, an un-selfconsciousness, a social aplomb about a well-born Maori, that can only have come from an ancestry, which, if occasionally cannibal, was essentially "gentle."

Though often very bright as a schoolboy, I am not sure whether the average Maori's brain goes on developing as long as does that of the European, and he certainly has not the acquisitiveness of the latter, his lust for getting on. "Having food and raiment" he is accustomed to be "therewith content." And this very Christian frame of mind does not tend to raise the Maoris in the social scale of our most unchristian lands.

Of course there are all sorts of Maoris. I call to mind a half-caste whose father was Irish and who inherited humour and powers of oratory from both his parents. He began by interpreting with astonishing ability, as I have been told, at the Native Land Court, and though he never really did anything in his whole life, talked so well that he talked himself into a high political position and a title.

When running for Parliament in our parts, he drank freely with everyone and never, I am told, went to bed sober, but he succeeded, nevertheless, in capturing the whole of our prohibition vote. It was the first time women had voted, and he was, in those days, a very personable man. Drunk or sober, he was a very pleasant fellow, who probably had not an enemy in the world.

Talking one day to someone who was Interested in native education, I asked:

"What becomes of the Maori boys that you put through your colleges?"

"They all go to gaol, sir," was the reply, a humorous answer containing, however, some grains of truth. My friend went on to explain that up country, where hard cash was almost unknown, and the payment of wages, like every other money transaction, carried through by the writing of cheques, the bright page 215young Maori, not having received any Instruction In the orthodox or any other Credit System, reasons thus: The boss writes his name on a special form and you take it to the store and get a saddle or a gun for it. Why should not I, now I can write so well, do the same? And when he gets out of gaol, neither his native friends nor ourselves, fully understanding the matter, think any the worse of him. He has probably done his little time among quite human people, decently treated, and almost unguarded, away in the wilderness, engaged in the honourable and useful business of planting trees, but the puppy has not been entirely happy and will not make a second meal on that particular soap.

In the little township at the mouth of our river was a general store, an inn, a horse-ferry, a school-house and; living on his adjoining run, a very respectable lowland Scottish farmer, Mr. McHardy the magistrate.

Now the local patriotism, not to call It the narrow parochialism, of such little places Is known to everyone in the country, and our most worthy and well-meaning, though by no means brilliant magistrate, having by chance put this feeling into a sort of epigram, his fame spread abroad like wildfire, a delightful naïve judgment of his being quoted in every paper throughout the Aus-page 216tralasiancolonies, to his extreme consternation. It was this way:

Eru Parata wrote an unorthodox cheque, obtained for it, at the above-mentioned store, a bridle, baccy, and so on; and later was run in. In the newspaper of our seaport, a day's journey down the coast, the case was reported as follows:

"His worship adjudged the prisoner very clearly guilty of having forged the cheque, but decided to let him off with a caution on the ground that he had spent the money In the district."

"I said nothing of the sort," complained the good Beak to me later in woe and indignation. "I stated that obviously the silly boy did not really know the wrong he was doing, or he would not openly have cashed the cheque here under our very noses. He did not deserve gaol at all. May the Power above everlastingly damn that reporter!"

The leading man among our shearers, who were all Maoris, was a fine big brawny fellow, handsome and jolly. He was, we understood, very popular and highly respected among his people, a preacher and a pillar of the church, further up the coast.

Rewi had, not very long before, been sent down to the richer and earlier settled district to raise money for building a new page 217tabernacle for his fellow parishioners. With his pleasant way, his probably quite genuine religious enthusiasm, and his good record, he succeeded in collecting from the rich descendants of the early missionaries in that province quite a considerable sum of money. Returning with this, he had to wait a day in Napier for the steamer north. The races happening to be "on," he blessed his luck and hurried out to them. Good fortune, however, did not further attend him, he lost, tried again and again unsuccessfully, and before he had left the course, he had "blued the lot."

"Blurry bad luck, indeed," he said to himself, but, a previous booking of his passage saving him from being completely stranded, he journeyed unperturbed, and even quite complacent, back to his waiting tribe.

When he reached his village, the little community, though a trifle disappointed, received him in the most friendly way; there was kindly condolence, but never a word of blame He had not, in fact, done anything blameworthy, nothing but what any one of them would have thought it quite natural to do, placed as he had been, "Misfortune," they reasoned, "may overtake any man. Let us hope for better luck next time."