MISCELLANEOUS.— (Cowimuef/.) 



Art. LXXV. — A Studrj of the Causes leading to the Extinction of the Maori. 

 By Alfred K. Newman, M.B., M.E.C.P. 

 [Bead before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 22nd January, 1882] . 

 The increase or decrease of a race living in our midst must necessarily be 

 a subject of vital interest to each of us, and a study of the causes leading to 

 such change is, I think, worthy of inv3stigation. That the Maoris as a 

 whole are very rapidly decreasing, needs but little proof. Everyone who 

 has lived long in the colony must admit the fact. The early statistics are 

 of course very loose ; but the number of the observers and their general 

 unanimity of statement, forms a mass of evidence which there is no deny- 

 ing. According to tradition, the Maoris came hither in thirteen canoes 

 from Hawaiki, about five centuries ago. There is no evidence whatever to 

 show that they found any race inhabiting these islands, and no faith can be 

 placed in the vague tradition that these lands were inhabited by a dark race, 

 the Ngatimamoe. The crews of these canoes were the first human beings 

 who obtained a footing here. Finding a suitable climate and abundance of 

 food, the race bega«i to multiply and spread first over the northern half of 

 the North Island, then gradually moving south, crossing over Cook Strait 

 and overrunning the South Island and thence to Stewart's Island. Later on 

 a number found their way to the Chatham Islands, forming a provincial 

 branch— the Morioris. Various remains in the shape of old axes, and of ruins 

 of old hill-forts, showed that these islanders were constantly engaged in 

 intertribal wars, and that they were cannibals. The evidences of their hav- 

 ing existed everywhere in these lands in what we may caU pre-pakeha times, 

 are very abundant. It is also abundantly proved that their advent to these 

 islands was not above several centuries back. By the term " pre-pakeha " or 

 "prehistoric," I mean here the years immediately before the discovery of 

 these islands by the first pakeha, Captain Tasman, in the year 1642. Mr. 

 Colenso, quoting from a very rare book, says that Tasman describes how 

 his ships were in one place attacked "by 8 canoes" and that " 22 more 

 boats put off from the shore," these latter being double canoes. Paren- 

 thetically, I might here remark that Tasman says the warriors wore "each 

 a large white feather in his hair." This was a mark of chieftainship. I 

 saw similar feathers nearly two and a-half centuries later in the heads of the 

 released Maori prisoners who had been ennobled by Te Whiti at Parihaka 



