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Introductory.
“The passing of the Maori.” These words have a sad and mournful sound. They almost convey the idea that in order to do justice to the subject we should bind our brows with wreaths of kawakawa leaves, lacerate our flesh with obsidian flakes, and raise the wail of the tangi, for “a race that's speeding sadly onward to oblivion.” Such seems to have been the attitude of most writers in the past.
In 1881 Dr. Newman (1, p. 477) stated: “Taking all things into consideration, the disappearance of the race is scarcely subject for much regret. They axe dying out in a quick, easy way, and are being supplanted by a superior race.” Thus he relegates us to the Shades, and we cease to be as important as the carvings our brains designed and our hands executed.
In 1884 Sir Walter Buller (2), in speaking before the Wellington Philosophical Society, said that it was a “fact that the Maori race was dying out very rapidly; that, in all probability, five and twenty years hence there would only be a remnant left.” He quotes Dr. Featherston as saying in 1856, “The Maoris are dying out, and nothing can save them, Our plain duty, as good, compassionate colonists, is to smooth down their dying pillow. Then history will have nothing to reproach us with.”
In 1896 (3) and 1902 (4) Hill struck a less pessimistic note by enumerating various proposals by which rapid extinction might be retarded.
In a paper read before this Institute in 1907, Archdeacon Walsh (5), after ably summing up the exterminating factors introduced by civilization, sounded our requiem in a more soothing and sympathetic manner, in keeping with his cloth. He said: “The Maori has lost heart and abandoned hope. It [the race] is sick unto death, and is already potentially dead.” He quotes von Hochstetter as observing, in 1865, “The Maoris …
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look forward with a fatal resignation to the destiny of the final extinction of their race. They themselves say, ‘As clover killed the fern, and the European dog the Maori dog, as the Maori rat was destroyed by the pakeha rat, so our people also will be gradually supplanted and exterminated by the Europeans'.“
From Featherston in 1856 to Walsh in 1907 is half a century. The cumulative experience and study of half a century led the writers quoted above to see the Maori race facing nothing but rapid extinction. In view of the fact that these writers gathered the procurable data of their day and subjected them to careful analysis, their conclusions must be treated with respect. The Maori race should show more active signs of becoming extinct; yet in spite of the hopeless outlook expressed to von Hochstetter by the victims of the Taranaki War, the present generation refuses to comply with the picturesque but illogical simile of following the way of the vanished Maori rat and the extinct Maori dog. They do not appear to belong to the same class of mammal. The native fern does not seem to be tamely giving way to the European clover. In this respect the Maori has more in common with the flora than with the fauna.
The quick and easy death prescribed by Dr. Newman has not been availed of as he led us to expect. Sir Walter Bullet's twenty-five years grace expired in 1909. The race that Archdeacon Walsh said was already potentially dead in 1907 should be literally so in 1922.
Of the five papers quoted above, four have been published in the Transactions of this Institute, whilst the fifth was read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, Since the last address was delivered fifteen years have elapsed. It is therefore fitting that the present condition of the Maori race should be reviewed, to see how far the sad prognosis of the past has been borne out by the facts of the present.