Hill. — The Maoris To-day and To-morroio. 169 



Akt. XII. — The Maoris To-day and To-vwrroto. (No. 2.) 

 By H. Hill, B.A., F.G.S. 



[Read before the Haivke's Bay Philosophical Institute, 13th October, 



1902.] 



There is something fascinating in the Maori race. As a 

 people they win the sympathy of every lover of humankind. 

 Brave, generous, thriftless, courteous, and unstable, such are 

 their characteristics when left to themselves, but under the 

 higher influences of civilisation they are progressive, in- 

 telligent, appreciative, and ambitious. Few peoples have had 

 so much written of them during the comparatively few years 

 they have been in contact with the higher civilisation of the 

 world. Americans, Frenchmen, Austrians, Germans, Eng- 

 lishmen, and colonists alike have written of them, praising 

 and blaming according to circumstances of time and place. 

 As one who has studied their characteristics for many years, 

 and coming in contact as I do with them along the whole 

 of the East Coast as far as Cape Eunaway, I have little but 

 praise to bestow upon this fading hut noble race of people. 

 A mere handful amidst the conflicting influences of a new 

 social and political environment, there is little wonder that 

 they should have misunderstood and have been misunder- 

 stood by colonists. The conflicts that have taken place since 

 the incoming of Europeans into their land have only tended 

 to bring out more prominently their leading characteristics. 

 Until the latter quarter of the nineteenth century they were 

 a factor to be considered by colonists, but of late their 

 advancing civilisation(?) and their diminution have tended to 

 lessen anxiety, until at the present time no one thinks that 

 any danger is likely to result from disaffection among isolated 

 hapus to be found among the Ureweras or other of the 

 native tribes. 



The interest in the native race to-day is mamly centred 

 in the question of their probable continuance as a people and 

 a nation. Contact with a higher civilisation has not always 

 been of benefit to a conquered people, and the question has 

 more than once been discussed as to whether the Maori race 

 is doomed to disappear before the advancing strides of civi- 

 lised Saxondom. In discussing the probabilities surrounding 

 this interesting subject it may be well to inquire into matters 



