NOTABLE POLYNESIAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 7 (Supplement)

NOTABLE POLYNESIAN.

KING JOHN OF MANGAIA. FINE OLD RULER PASSES. (By F. W. CHRISTIAN.) Yet another link is broken in the chain of history connecting the old Pacific with the new. Wprd has recently arrived of the death at One-roa, at the age of 84, of John Trego Arikl, the King of Mangaia (Southern Cook Islands). Happy, they say, is the people that has no history, and Mangaia, protected by its formidable circling reef, oince the days of Captain Cook's visit and the coming of the F.M.S. missionaries, enjoyed a long spell of comparative immunity from the fever of "world politics." Even the wild war-music of the four years Armageddon-strife of the nations reached her_ but as a faint, far-off echo. An Unspoiled Peopie. The London Missionary Society withdrew their representative from the island in 1017, and handed over their native school to the New Zealand Government. Mr. F. W. Platts, the exceedingly able Commissioner in charge of the Cook Islands, entrusted to Mrs. Christian and myself the education of over 250 Mangaian boys and girls, children of a simple, kindly, primitive, unspoiled people, highly Christianised in the best possible sense of the word, most teachable and exceedingly amenable to discipline. During our two years and a-half teaching there, until I was most unwillingly invalided , back to Wellington, we saw a good deal of this just and kindly old native king, of whose death, Mau-tairi, one of our' boy-scholars, has recently informed us by letter. John Arilcl was a practical, and at the same time a very broad-minded person considering the limitations of his environment. Like many of hie lesser chiefs 'he understood clearly and valued very highly the benefits of education to young Mangaia, and spoke very firmly and wisely and well on the subject on several public occasions. He was a stout pillar of the local church, and turned up regularly every Sabbath morning and afternoon, decently attired in raven-black, to take his seat in his beautifully-carved pew in the elaborately decorated place of worship, a marvel of the chiseller's art dating back to nearly a hundred yeare ago. John was a staunch "Rekabi" or prohibitionist, as he realised very clearly the havoc done in Tahiti and elsewhere in the Eastern Pacific by the unbridled indulgence of the natives in the strong waters of the white man, and crude native beverages of coconut toddy and orange and banana beer. When the King Relaxed. Yet, like Stevenson's native teacher friend, Maka, of Butaritari, the dear, rigorous man could relax on beh'alf of his friends upon certain special occasions. One day he held a grand birthday feast on his verandah, and, after much execution had been done upon fowl, pork, fish and sundries, two silver teapots were brought forth, full and hissing-hot, and displayed pridefully to view on the table. John then proceeded to beckon forward Sam Bulkeley, George Brown and Charley Proctor, the three white teacKers of the settlement, and asked them to have a drink. Nothing loth, Brown stepped forward, reached for the nearest teapot and began to pour out, when His Majesty stopped him short, saying, "No, George! I thmk this 'tea-potti' more better," and shoved over the second one to his white guests. It contained a delightfully potent brew of sound Scotch whisky, compounded excellently with limes and sugar. The colour of the liquids in 'both, teapots was identical; thus the letter of the law stood inviolate, and all were well satisfied, except two or three grumpy old deacons sitting close by, who sniffed disapprovingly, stared gloomily, but 'held their peace. Old John, like the Manchester cotton lord in Kingsley's "Two Years Ago, was too sure of, and too secure in,, his own "mana," to worry himself about wearin«* elaborate dress to show his high station, save only the regulation suit ot sables for Sundays. Therefore he went about in old blue dungaree trousers and a well-worn grey flannel shirt aJid a terribly battered old yellowish-white straw hat. He loved playing some elmple childish game of cards or other, for which. He appeared to find plenty of lekure from affairs of State, and now and then he liked" to tinker about a. little at boatbuilding. • ■ ' , A biggish notebook with pencil stub was his inseparable companion on his walks'abroad. - Whenever you met him he was always jotting something down in his crabbed handwriting, just like Nadgett, the indefatigable detective m 'Martin Chuzzlewifc." He had been doing this sort of thing for nearly forty years, and had quite a lot of these filled-up notebooks stowed away somewhere in an old sea chest. I daresay that anybody who could read the spiderleg handwriting of his Majesty might dig out some interesting facts about old Mangaia, always supposing that he understood the quaint old-fashioned Mangaian dialect. v ... Blowing Bubbles with the Children. John, like all Polynesians I have ever met in some thirty years' experience of those kindly folk, had a very tender affection for little children. He used to love to sit down on the Atea with two of my young" daughters, brownhaired Enid and golden-haired Juanita, with a couple of clean, long clay pipes, a lump of soap and a bowl of spring water, and practice diligently at blow-' ing the biggest possible rainbow bubbles in" the air. All our little folk loved him, and he took great pleasure likewise in designing, digging and decorating elaborate sand castles on the "one-tea" or beach of silvery whiteness on the sea front of "One-roa," the long sand stretch, where a population of some eight hundred natives form Mangaia's little metropolis. . . • ; And now a fine old Polynesian identity has passed away to Avaiki, ajld many will long miss him.