Just as Pita and Pora were brandishing their axes within a few feet of me, yelling and dancing, or rather bounding, towards me, the two half-breeds rushed swiftly past them and threw themselves between us. Without a word they seized me by the arms and dragged me into the thicket. Then they explained, saying—
"Run for your life! They mean to kill you!"
When I rejoined the working-party an hour or two later, Pita and Pora were calm again, and had resumed their work. They merely growled and menaced me. Afterwards, when we were lying side by side in camp, Pita reverted to the matter as a pleasant episode. He told me all about the ngarara, how tapu it was, and what a dreadful insult I had unwittingly put upon him and his mate. He said they would certainly have killed me in their wild gust of passion, though they would have been sorry for it afterwards. It was all over now, he added, because he and Pora had had time to reflect, and remembered that I was a poor ignorant Pakeha who knew no better. Besides, they were Christians, which they had forgotten in their heat. Now, they were my two apostles once more. I understand that Pora alluded feelingly to the matter during an exposition of the Scriptures, with which he favoured the rest of the gang the following Sunday.
At the present day, the rites and ceremonies of the tohunga have entirely given place to Christian observances; and, as is the wont of primitive intelligences, the Maori are most rigorous observers of all outward forms, whatever degree of fervour they may have spiritually attained. In the young days of Christianity here, the converts ascribed to the missionaries a magical mana, such as they had formerly believed to reside in the tohunga. This was the natural result of that terrible day of wrath on the Keri-keri, when a "great awakening" was brought about through the instrumentality and efficacy of Epsom salts, and when the mana of the tapu Pakeha was thereby so fully demonstrated. Consequently, the ceremonial prescribed and the doctrines inculcated by the missionaries were most unquestioningly accepted.
The Maori adopted religion with a marvellous zeal, and, had it not been for European colonization, sectarianism, and other reasons, they might have become a startling example of fervid Christianity. The differences between denominations, even in the early days, created much bitterness, and, as we have seen, led to Hau-hau. It has needed, at times, all the mana of the missionary, and more, to prevent actual hostilities between communities professing the differing creeds of the Episcopal, Wesleyan, or Roman Catholic bodies. One often meets with sad examples of sectarian animosity manifested among these simple people.
In the early days the missionaries were a political power. Long before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed they had attained a supreme and widespread influence among the tribes. As has been already noticed, it was their desire to have formed a Christian Maori nation, under their own ægis; and, to effect this, they seem to have disregarded the wants of their own countrymen. But all this is retrospective matter, with which it is not now necessary to deal. Neither may I revert to the action of missionaries in the young days of the colony, either with regard to the general government, or to the land-sharking attributed to certain of their number. Too much acrimony has been given rise to already by the discussion of such topics.
The missionary influence has now less practical power, perhaps, than clerical direction in England. Only among secluded hapu (communities) is anything resembling the old force to be found, and there it is necessarily limited and localized. It is felt more among the elders than among the younger generations, who have learnt to read and write, have mixed more with Pakeha, and whose minds are consequently more open, and less inclined to accept spiritual authority as absolute. Their conceptions are not the same as their fathers', to whose minds Christianity came as a new form of tapu, and to whom the missionary appeared as possessor of a more powerful mana than the tohunga.
Sunday is a kind of tapu day with the Maori. They are often more Sabbatarian than Scotsmen, and more pharisaic than the Pharisees themselves. To the letter of the law they pay the minutest attention, whether they estimate its spirit rightly or not.
But there is great diversity of character in this as in other matters, and what is recorded of one tribe or community will not always apply to all. The perfect equality with the Pakeha that the Maori enjoy, and the degree of education that has grown up among them, have produced effects. Among others is a gradual change from fervour to hypocrisy, and from an exaggerated piety to a lesser regard for the forms of religion. Year by year fewer tales will be told of Maori affectations, simple pieties, or childish formalism.
Religion is often the fashion in some of their communities, and is entertained with the most rigid observance. Travellers coming to a Maori kainga upon a Sunday, have been denied shelter and food until sunrise on Monday; and, when Monday came, they have been cheated by the same tattooed Pharisees, who were too sanctimonious to sell a potato to a hungry traveller upon the Sabbath, or to help him build a hut as shelter from the wind and rain.