The British New Zealander is not especially race-tolerant, nor has he always been an idealist. The surprising thing is that the Maori’s rise from death to life came about largely through the genius of certain Maoris, of one generation at least, who seized the opportunity and so brilliantly improved it that their zeal revived the flagging soul of a conquered people.
Let me name a few of that generation. Some had a light strain of British blood, but their minds and hearts were Maori. There was “Jimmie Taihoa,” later knighted as Sir James Carrol, a lawyer whose scarifying logic so outmaneuvered Parliament that the Pakeha’s unjust land laws were enfeebled by reductio ad absurdum. Sir Apirana Ngata, probably the greatest of these Maoris, deliberately set himself to learn European ways that he might protect his race against the Pakeha. With a cabinet portfolio he served for years as Minister to the Maoris. When his fire blazed too hot the Prime Minister put him out. But only to invite him back, because as an outsider he was even more destructive. His land laws stand today, a bulwark between the Maoris and the land-grabbers. He is still living and fighting. Highly Europeanized, his great wish is to have his people return to their tribal ways.
Dr. E. P. Ellison, a Maori, was last Director of Maori Hygiene, and served in the Cook Islands with distinction as Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Peter Buck (Te Rangiheroa) began in the same post, developing later into one of the world’s great ethnologists. He was visiting professor at Yale for two years, and in Honolulu he became director of the famous Bishop Museum. I have heard that he is returning to New Haven.
These distinguished Maoris graduated from Te Aute College, and the new generation has not produced such leaders. Possibly it is the fault of a changed educational system for natives. Possibly it is because unusual men are born, not made.
Sir Maui Pomare died a few years ago. We were close friends from the day I met him with Lady Pomare, also a Maori aristocrat. He held down three ministerial positions at one time; but for his racial origin he would have been Prime Minister. Graduate of an American medical school, he began his career as Maori Medical Officer. Once young Dr. Pomare handled a three months’ typhoid epidemic without a soul to help him. As Director of Maori Hygiene he treated a whole race over scattered areas. His preachment of modern sanitation and racial self-respect were lasting things. Often Pomare’s theories ran counter to Ngata’s, for his great desire was to close the gap between two races.
Memories of an ancestral thoroughbred always pleased Sir Maui. About the time the Ministry of Health for New Zealand and the Ministry of the Cook Islands were conjoined under his authority, there was an anniversary service in one of Wellington’s oldest churches. Eloquently the preacher dwelt on the Christian beatification of a certain old-time savage, Pomare’s great-granduncle, who had given the ground the church was built on and money to endow it. The sermon so honeyed the good works of the converted barbarian that the news got around to Pomare, who asked the clergyman to come to his office and hear the real story.
Great-granduncle, a cannibal and head hunter, had led the first Maori War and held the British at bay so long that an embarrassed Crown Governor put a price of five hundred pounds on the rebel’s head. The Maori King called in a few chiefs, who might have been a bit pro-British, and made this counter-proposal: “I am honored by the offer of five hundred pounds on my head. Five hundred pounds is a lot of money, and if any of you want my head, suppose you come and get it.” The chiefs made no reply. “Well,” said the King, “I think I know the value of heads. Suppose I put my price on the Governor’s, an exchange of courtesies. My offer is sixpence.”
Sir Maui informed the clergyman that his ancestor had endowed the old church after he had laid aside his well-worn spear and become a Christian. The gift had to do with horse-racing. The British had built their race track in Wellington, and the craze had spread among the more prosperous chiefs. The retired King, old and feeble, had imported a thoroughbred and entered it for the great meeting of the year. The elderly Maori lay on his deathbed too ill to go near the track, so he posted relays of runners all the way from the course to his bedside. When a messenger proclaimed that the horse had won, the old man straightened up, shouted, “A victor to the last!” and fell dead. His success on the track enriched a church endowment, and a winning horse had crowned his string of victories over the white man.
With relish Sir Maui told me how the old gentleman did a stroke of business. He sold the present site of Wellington to the granduncle of Sir Francis Bell. The deed is recorded, and the price was something like this: two kegs niggerhead tobacco; three dozen red flannel nightcaps; a dozen pipes; a dozen umbrellas; two flintlock pistols; assorted muskets with powder; half a gross of jew’s harps.
When I asked Pomare if it didn’t make him sick to think of his ancestor selling the site of a great modern city for a mess of junk, he said, “It was only a fraction of the land Great-granduncle had. And he got what he wanted. Can’t you imagine the old man walking away, wearing his red nightcap, hoisting his umbrella, playing his jew’s harp and laughing over the way he stuck the white man in that deal? Everything’s relative in this world, and when it came to money-sense—well, he was a Polynesian.”