General copyright and disclaimer - ResearchSpace@Auckland ...

The peculiar characteristics of want of fecundity of the females, extraordinary inequality of the
sexes among the non-adult population in a directly inverse order to that obtaining in other
countries not influenced by immigration, 126 the extreme mortality among the children, the great
paucity of births, together with a rate of mortality of both adults and non-adults far higher than any
average known in temperate climates, must tend to produce a conviction in the mind, that so long
as so many and such powerful causes antagonistic to increase of population exist, and
simultaneously operate, any result except a decrease is impossible. 127
There can be no denying that the Maori population was indeed diminishing, and reached the low
point of around 42,000 in 1891-96, 128 but from there on it steadily increased, although this was
not always recognised at the time. 129
Hochstetter, in contrast, predicts the Maori will be “ziemlich ausgestorben” (467) around
the year 2000, while the number of Europeans will rise from a total of approximately 84,000 in
1860 130 to 500,000 at the present rate of immigration. 131 However, there is no mention as to what
Hochstetter considers ‘extinction’ to mean, i.e. whether in a ‘full-blooded’ sense, a physical sense
or merely a cultural sense, if not all of the above, in which total assimilation would therefore
mean the Maori become “nothing more than that exotic ‘golden tinge’ in the blood of their
conquerors”. 132 Furthermore, unless he regards a population of little more than 6000 as “ziemlich
ausgestorben”, which is the approximate figure for that year at the 19.42 per cent rate of decrease,
it would appear the decline after 1956 follows a significantly accelerated rate. This is no doubt
due to the philosophical significance of the millennium and the length of time of their eventual
extinction at the above rate dragging out too long to be acceptable for ‘fatal impact’ believers, in
conjunction with the subsequent outbreak of hostilities, and the doom and gloom of the following
warning:
Notwithstanding that the decline of the numbers of the people appears at the present rate of
decrease to be very rapid, there is reason to fear that a population which has once reached such a
126 It was believed that a healthy population should “possess a slight excess of females” when not competing with
immigration, yet the Maori appeared to display the “remarkably abnormal condition” of the reverse at roughly a rate
of four males for every three females (ibid., 24).
127 Ibid., 28.
128 The census figures were officially as low as 39,854 in 1896, yet Pool posits 42,564 as a more accurate estimate,
therefore making the 1891 figure of 41,993 the lowest total for the Maori population (Pool, Te Iwi Maori, 76).
129 See ibid., 59-227, 239-44; cf. Pool, Maori Population 25-39, 52-105, 145-228. The most recent census figures
taken in 2001 show a total of 2,689,308 Europeans compared with 526,281 Maori. However, the issue of selfidentification
today complicates census figures, especially when one considers the degree of mixed backgrounds and
the fact that many people of both Maori and European descent identify with only one of these groups (Pool, Te Iwi
Maori, 11-25; Maori Population, 40-48).
130 According to a separate census taken in 1858, the European population was 59,413 (Pool, Te Iwi Maori, 55).
131 Even by the end of the nineteenth century his predictions are way off, as the 1901 census reported a total of
770,313 Europeans compared with 45,549 Maori (ibid., 61).
132 Belich, Paradise Reforged, 191; cf. Kolig, “Ferdinand von Hochstetter”, 70f.
194