News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1894-09-13

Copyright, Louis Klopsch, ls94l
DUNEDIN. Ecw Zealand, July IS
What the Indians are to America the
Maoris are to New Zealand These
aborigines are dying out very rapidly,
but you see them in all the upper por-
lions of New Zealand. All this country
was once theirs, and they would have
kept it, but from whaling ships the
foreigners alighted to furnish enough
rum and vices of all sorts to kill the
Maoris. They are said to be a superior
race Of savagcs, but the nobility of them
l fail to see. Their faces are plowed up,
not with age, but by tattoolng which
they suppose pictorializes aud beauties.
Sharp shells scooped out these burrows
of the countenance. Their greatest fun
was massacre. When some Of them
adopted Christianity, they received the
Old Testament, but rejected the New
Testament. They liked the war scenes
of the Old, but not the peace of the
New. On occasions they made cartridges
of the New Testament. When they
could not eat all their enemies, they
preserved them in tin cans and sent
them as delicate presents to their
friends. The ship Boyd, bound for Eng
land, put i'll at one Of the New Zealand
harbors, and all on board were slain
and eaten except woman and three
children, who hid away, the only sur
vivors to tell the story.
Of course all ships knew that if they
were wrecked on these shores they
would become a part of the diet of the
people. Two of their chiefs taken to
London in 1920 aroused much interest,
and they were loaded with presents of
all sorts, but before starting for home
these recipients exchanged the presents
for muskets, with which they drove
back and destroyed the neighbOring
tribes who could not afford muskets
Some of these savages went so far as to
lend clubs and powder and knives to
their enemies that lively fighting might
be kept up. On one occasion they re
fused to capture the trains carrying food
and ammunition to tho opposing forces
and when the chief of the Maoris was
asked the cause of this he replied
"Why, you fool, if we had captured
their ammunition and food, how could
they have Fought" One of the mission
aries says that he held a religious service
at place between two fighting tribes
and from both tribes the audience was
made up on Sunday, but on Monday
they resumed their old fight. If they
had had plainly put to them the first
question of the catechism, "What is
the chief end of MANI" their reply, if
frankly made, would have been, 1.-THE
chief end of man is to make an end of
him"
De Quincy wrote an essay on "Mur-
der as q Fine Art, " but to the MaOris
murder was a pastime. Assassination
was for ages their gladdest recreation.
Massacre was their sport. 1t was to
them what the tennis court and croquet
ground and baseball are to many mod
erns. No hunter ever enjoyed shooting
reedbirds or fetching down roebuck,
no fisherman better liked throwing a fly
and watching a spotted trout rise and
snap it, than did these Maoris the
slaughter Of man. Give beef or NUT
ton to others, but the appetite of the
Maori wanted something human in the
bill of fare.
Many of the Maoris may be good and
kind and noble, but their ancestors
were without nobility of nature unless
laziness and heartlessness and revenge
and malGvolence be noble. What an ap-
petite they must have had for soup of
human bones, for white man on toast
and for spare rib of missionary! We
search New Zealand in vain from top of
North island to foot of South island
to find among the Maoris anything more
noble than seen in the American Indian
seated by bride path of the Rocky
mountains, wrapped in filthy blanket,
hair combed once in 40 years, waiting
for cowboy to toss him rusty cent.
These Maoris were the impersonation of
cruelty and diabolism. 1t was to them
rare sport when they could take an CHI
envy and scalp the skin from the bottom
of the feet-if you can apply to the
lower extremities the word usually APP
piled to theupper extremities-and make
the victim walk on a rough place, and
the shrek of pain would make those
noble savages laugh till you could hear
them half mile away. Sometimes they
would, in order to have fresh meat, cut
the flesh from their victim just as they
needed it by nice tidbits and day after
day. Back Of Osborne, New Zealand,
to make a fine peroration of their &C.
complishments, they killed all tho men,
women and children so that the authors
might not be charged with lack of thor
oughness
They tell the most enormous stories
of the bravery of their ancestors These
ancestors, they say, killed the two great
warriors at Wellington and
Napoleon-and the tribe believe it too.
Within a few days one of their chiefs
was buried amid wild scenes of lamen-
tation, and after the body was put in
the ground the chiefs hat and blanket
and umbrella were thrown in after him,
and then many Of the tribe leaped upon
the grave with bowls and dancing Not
satisfied with deeds of cruelty while
living, these noble Maoris in oldeG time
expected their wives to strapgle them
selves, and while twisting the flax for
the rope the sister of the dead chief is
reported by q recent writer as looking
up at the moon and saying: