Title: Attitudes to the Maori in Some Pakeha Fiction

Author: Bill Pearson

In: Fretful Sleepers and Other Essays

Publication details: Heinemann Educational Books, 1974, Auckland

Digital publication kindly authorised by: Paul Millar

Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection

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Those who did write of contemporary Maoris were hardly serious writers and their attitude is a dilution of the sardonic humour Grace saw in the situation of the Maori adapting himself to Pakeha ways. Grace began this tradition (which still exists in occasional pub-yarns) with his Hone Tiki Dialogues (1910). In these twelve sketches, which first appeared in journals so diverse as the intellectual Triad and the popular Free Lance, a mythical character in a dented bowler hat philosophises shrewdly and ineptly on Pakeha customs. Sometimes we are meant to wonder at his shrewdness, especially when he remarks on Pakeha women and parsons, but on these subjects Hone Tiki is voicing Grace's own opinions. On the whole, Hone is presented as a clown, and it is notable that Messrs. Gordon & Gotch designed the book for sale on railway stations as light travelling entertainment. These sketches imply, in Joan Gries's words, 'the hopelessness of the Maori's efforts to adapt himself to the European way of life'.²⁴ It is a rationalisation of Pakeha superiority to laugh at any Maori attempts at adaptation; and there were many.

Pat Lawlor's collection of over a hundred Maori Tales (1927), only some of which he wrote himself, is a feeble modern imitation of a jest-book like the 100 Merry Tales of the 16th century. It is a collection of paragraphs partly culled from the light Sydney monthly Aussie, rather like those that readers used to write about Aboriginals in the Sydney Bulletin, stories about cunning, simple old Hori, his speech full of 'prurrys' and 'py page 53 korrys'. In an introduction to the collection, Dick Harris writes of 'that Maori mentality so delightfully compounded of guile and simplicity'. The text of one of the illustrated jokes is enough:²⁵

Look here, Hori! That horse I bought from you dropped dead when I was driving him yesterday. Py corry! That funny, he never do any trick like that when I have him.

Letters from Private Henare Tikitanu was written during the First World War, by V. C. Fussell, Vicar of Waiuku,²⁶ and the profits of the first edition went to the Blind Soldiers' Fund. It was followed by Corporal Tikitanu, V.C. (1918). Private Tikitanu, described on the back cover as 'a fine stamp of Waikato Maori youth' and by the New Zealand Herald reviewer as 'a typical Maori soldier', is half-literate, simple-minded to the point of stupidity, and writes home in mongrel English. He is shrewd to the point of cunning, but his heart is in the right place, full of what the author calls 'the latent courage and devotion of his countrymen'. It may be that this book was intended to counter Pakeha hostility at the opposition of Waikato Maoris to enlisting in the white men's war, especially when outstanding claims had not been settled; a hostility that may have pained a vicar who liked Maoris, though he saw them in part in his own image. Here are some of Henare Tikitanu's observations:²⁷

My korry, te British Empire te big place all right. I tink half te world belong to us.

One Sherman bloke he wery frighten when I grab him. He shake all over an' say 'Please no you eat me mister.'

I tell him: 'Py cripes, I eat you all right when I find te cook. Te Maori like te poaka.'

When I catch te ole Sherman Kaiser I bring him home in the cage for you to see him. Some feller say more better we drown him over here, but I want you see what he like first.

So the attitude is as to our pet natives: as if to say, how lucky we are to have a native people who are such simple, lovable children but good fighters when there's a war on, and not always as stupid as you might think either.