In his love affairs the Maori was romantic and poetic. His legends and
his native poetry suggest a state of society in which there was a high
respect for women, who had to be wooed and won, and were not the mere
chattels of the men-warriors. Since this respect for womenkind is a
great force for civilisation, there is but little doubt that, if the
Maoris had been left undisturbed for a few more centuries, they would
have evolved a state of civilisation comparable with that of the
Japanese or the Mexicans.
When Captain Cook visited New Zealand in 1769 the Maori race probably
numbered some 100,000. The results of coming into contact with
civilisation quickly reduced that number to about 50,000. But there was
then a stay in the process of extinction. The Maori began to learn the
virtues as well as the vices of civilisation. "Pakeha" medicine and
sanitation were adopted, and the Maori birth-rate began to creep up, the
Maori death-rate to decrease. It is not probable that the Maori race
will ever come to such numbers as to be a factor of importance in the
Pacific. But it will have some indirect influence. Having established
the right to grow up side by side with the White colonists, possessing
full political and social rights, the Maoris will probably modify
somewhat the New Zealand national type. We shall see in New Zealand,
within a reasonable time, a population of at least 10,000,000 of people,
of whom perhaps 1,000,000 will be Maoris. The effect of this mixture of
the British colonising type with a type somewhat akin to the Japanese
will be interesting to watch. In all probability New Zealand will
shelter a highly aggressive and a fiercely patriotic nation in the
future (as indeed she does at present).
The Malay States bred a vigorous and courageous race of seamen, and
Malay blood has been dispersed over many parts of the Pacific, Malays
probably providing the chief parent stock both for the Hawaiians and the
Maoris. But the Malay Power has been broken up to such an extent that a
Malay nation is now impossible. Since the British overlordship of the
Malay Peninsula, the Chinese have been allowed free access to the land
and free trading rights; and they have ousted the original inhabitants
to a large extent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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