Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/226

202 said to have been the scene of severe fighting in the early days of the colony. "While we were looking at it a man joined our group, and our guide told us he was a pakeha Maori. You will wonder, as we did, what a pakeha Maori is.



"Well, he's a white man who lives among the Maoris, and in former times, before the colonization, there was a goodly number of them, for the simple reason that unless a man was a missionary he couldn't easily stay in the country without living among the natives. Pakeha means stranger, and is applied to any white man, and a pakeha Maori is a white man living among the natives. The tribes were very desirous of having pakehas among them, for the reason that they could learn useful matters from them, but more particularly they could buy muskets, gunpowder, tools, and other trade goods, of which they were in great need. A pakeha who had trade goods was always welcome, but a man who had nothing was of little consequence, and sometimes had a hard struggle to keep his head on his shoulders.

"With a judicious present of a few shillings we got on the right side