The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1894-03-07
A RACE DYING OUT.
T Is PERlSHlNG OF MELANCHOLY
AND HEARTBREAK.

Ing people, sung by its chief, is the plant
made to the civilized world by Apirana
Turupu Ngata, head of the Maori nation,
In series of essays lately printed in
New Zealand paper. The chief is a we'll
educated man, graduate of n colonial
university, the equal i'll culture of the best
class of white people who occupy his ma
tive land. But he is native ut heart,
Maori i'll feeling, sympathies and aspi-
rations, gnd all his thoughts are those of
his peopss
AT the advent of the white man in New
Zealand the Maoris, heroic race, then
sole owners of the country, were numer-
GUS people. Twenty years ago although
even then much diminished by diseases
brought by their conquerors, they number
ed 100000. Today but few more than
1000 of the race remain. Outwardly it
Is much changed people, too, for it has
adopted the white mans clothes, his Gus
toms, most of his vices and ostensibly his
religion. But ut heart tho Maori is saw
age yet.
In his series of essays on his people the
chief tells much that is interesting of their
history, their ideas, their habits and their
feelings, but ever and anon he comes back
and dwells on the one theme that is filling
his mind and soaring his heart-the decay
1nRand approaching extinction of his race
His language is remarkably eloquent and
full of lofty metaphor and symbolism,
and somberness oversprcads all his
thoughts, and sorrow echoes in all he says
lie writes bitterly, yet not vengefully, of
the woes the white man has brought to
his people, not alone of wrongs inflicted
but of the suffcrings and defeats that in
eVitably must come of the contact of
weaker and n stronger race. The Maoris,
he says, are dying of contact with the
70 "A L.
save them, and n miracle there will not be-
He gives an interesting account of tho
impression made by Christianity on the
Maoris. His countrymcn, the chief says,
were attracted to the white mans creed
almost wholly because of the miraculous
career ascribed to Christ. They have a
great craving for the supernatural and
the doings of Christ took great hold Oh
their imaginations. But the native priests
taking advantage of the lesson, have large
ly turned their people from even n sem
blance of adhesion to Christianity by feed
ing their craving for the miraculous, and
in the lines of the old beliefs or rather by
formulating II new creed called Hnnhau-
ism, which has spread greatly.
1.-The feelings and motives that influence
the Maori's inner and more private life
today, says Chief Apirana, ''are the same
that influenced him ages ago, though
tanned and refined by conformity to Euro
pean customs, by contact with European
civilization and by the farrcaching inlu-
ence of Christianity. Your Maori of today
IL but tho savage of yesterday polished
and draped in English finery Within him
There are raging the fierce passions that
but awhile ago made him revel in slaugh-
ter and cannibalism. His hands are bound
with the manncles of civilization and hui
manity, but they are restless to grasp once
more the spear, the taiaha and mere Out
wardly he accepts the truth of Christian
teaching and worships the Pakeha's god
most revercntly, but his mind is governed
by superstition, and his secret longinps
ana natural tendencies are toward the to-
hungas, the only visible monuments of his
old priestly regime"
Tho Maori, says the chief, hates the Pa
keha, the white man, and yet is irrcsisti-
bly, drawn to his settlements and COMPEL
ed to degrading imitation of the worst of
his ways Of life which eventually kill off
the pure race and leave only the dcgener-
ate, half caste people, against whom Chief
Apirana is specially bitter. "Illicit inter
course, vice and immortality have already
destroyed the purity of the race" he saws.
have stuntcd n race once famous for its
physique, have rooted out whatever indus
trial tendencies survived other pcrnicious
influences and degraded the charactcris-
tics 1t once possessed of hospitality, liber-
ality, bravery and manincss" The only
hope of improvement he sees is in the de.
portation OF all the lower whites, and this
he himself declares to be impossible Ed
ucation only renders the Maori unfit to
take part in the struggle for life in which
MS race is engaged. Taking away the
outer show OF their Savagery, it takes away
ut the same time their stamina Notable
Maori men and women there have been,
educated and enlightened to Il high degree.
but iii the majority of cases there has
eventually been Il total relapse of the os-
tensibly educated Maoris into the ways of
their forcfathers. And now this once pow
erIul people Is on the verge of extinction.
Explanations to account for the fading
out of existence of the Maoris are not hard
TO ind, and one seems TO be near the truth
TINT is, that the race is perishing of mel
0ucho!y aud hcarthreak. There Is in nil
the Polynesian and Meanesian races n
strange and strong liability to despair
Entire independence and unhampered i'm
aBlnation seem essential to their vitality,
ana when these attributes are subdued
and cowed by the obvious superority of
an lntruding race, as by the white man,
they seem to give up the wish to live, to
lose even the capacity for living This
hopelessness has been clearly traced in all
tho Australian tribes and is akin to that
felt by conscript soldiers engaged in eX-
petitions for which they have had no
heart 1t seems to have been especially
strong in the Maoris, who in their prime
were proud, imaginative people, full of
the love of poetry and story and of pride
In the achievements of their tribes Hope
lessness and heartbreak one must con-
clude from the remarkable essays by Chief
Apirana Turupu Ngata are the melan-
choly explanation of the fading out of ex.