THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC SITUATION OF HAURAKI MAORI AFTER COLONISATION

transferred from the Justice Department (where it had gone on the demise of the Native Department in 1892) to the Health Department (where Maui Pomare had been working as the first Native Health Officer since 1901). It was returned to the reconstituted Native Department in 1909-1911. Each transfer was accompanied by sometimes acrimonious exchanges, which have left behind some useful archival traces—that, eg, in 1906 there were 38 'Medical men subsidised by government for attendance on Maori'—i6 in the South Island (with a minute Maori population) and 22 in the North Island—at an annual cost of Czo67 8s 7d. None of these subsidised doctors were located in the Thames/Hauraki district; the nearest were at Otorohanga and Whakatane (MA 21/zo for this and the next three paragraphs).

5.5 The Chief Health Officer, T.H.A. Valentine, protested in 1910 that the Department of Public Health was not responsible for medical treatment of any sort, whether for Pakeha or Maori, apart from the control of infectious diseases and matters of sanitation. But in the same year the Native Minister, James Carroll, made it clear to the Minister of Public Health that his Department was mainly concerned with the provision of medical assistance to 'Indigent Natives'—a group which had earlier been defined as the old and for whom care was provided chiefly in the form of rations. The problem, it seems fair to conclude, was one which nobody wanted to own.

5.6 In the course of this exchange Valentine asserted that 'in most parts of the Dominion no special machinery is necessary to provide medical treatment for the Natives'; only where the number of Maori was great and hospital provision was small was 'special machinery' needed. A year later, R.H. Makgill, the Auckland District Health Officer (a district that included Hauraki) expressed his vigorous dissent. Writing to the Under-Secretary of the Native Department, he noted that Maori neither registered deaths nor notified infectious diseases and argued that a new department was needed 'to break them of their uncivilized habits'. He went on: 'It is chiefly in Auckland, where typhoid is endemic among the Maoris, that one appreciates the danger of the present position.' He made it clear what he had in mind: 'They are a danger to their white neighbours. ...'

5.7 Makgill certainly believed that the health of Maori in his district was worse than that of other people and further, that Maori were a source of danger to the rest of the community. That opinion would have been supported by a teacher at an Education Board school at Manaia (or Kaiaua) in 1903, even though the danger was of a less extreme kind than typhoid. In that year T.F. Warren wrote to the Health Department asking how to proceed in order to get medicines for the 3o-4o pupils at his school. 'About half of these are Maoris and there is always more or less sickness and disease among them, and consequently considerable danger to all attending these schools. A short time ago one school had to be closed owing to the prevalence of waiakeake [hakihakid or Maori itch.' (JI 1903/634). Whether as serious as typhoid or as unpleasant as a skin infection, diseases among Maori were seen as a threat to the settler community. Such testimony leads firmly

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