Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1890 — Fashion with the Maori. [ARTICLE]

Fashion with the Maori.

It appears that white women are responsible for the rapid depopulation of New Zealand. When female missionaries went among the Maoris they insisted that the Maori women should wear clothing. The latter could not be induced to overcome their prejudice against skirts, but discovering that the missionary women wore corsets, they decided that the latter was a garment not wholly devoid of merit. The result is that every Maori woman now goes about her daily work clad in a corset laced as tightly as the united efforts of half a dozen stalwart warriors can lace it. Being unaccustomed to tight lacing, the women are dying off with great rapidity, and the repentant female missionaries now regret that they ever asked their dusky sisters to consider the question of clothing. The mortgagee generally has a fat thing In his lien.