Slavery and the Maori Horror of it prove a
Large Aboriginal Population

(9) A fourth argument for the existence of a large aboriginal population in New Zealand before the Polynesians arrived is the place that slavery takes amongst the Maoris. The slave was a thing of naught, without ancestry or posterity, past or future, religion or status, rights to hand on to children or spirit to pass into the world beyond. The sacrifice of a slave was thought no more of than the killing of a pigeon. Hence the horror of slavery amongst the warrior or aristocratic class. Now such a development of the institution the Maori did not bring with him from Polynesia; the aborigines must have been absorbed in the islands at an early stage, and later they were too crowded to admit of slavery. It seems inconceivable that this horror of it could have sprung up in New Zealand, had the Polynesian had from the first none but his own kin to operate upon. And the fear of enslavement remained intense, in spite of the later mitigation of its conditions.