TAI MITCHELL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 73, 16 May 1944, Page 6

TAI MITCHELL

A PAKEHA TRIBUTE

Tai Mitchell is dead. The Canoe of Fate; Te Waka o Atua, has borne j him away on its uncharted course to the spirit marae of his Arawa ancestors. The mists of sorrow enshroud the lakes; as the news of this dire blow spreads through the villages. The giant tree of the forest has fallen. Lifeless lies the skilled navigator of the Arawa Canoe and the great craft drifts helplessly in the enveloping gloom. The mid-post of the house lias snapped asunder. Only now, when he is gone, Avill it be realised what great service this man gave to his people, and hi£ passing will leave a void that will indeed be' hard to fill. Modest, kindly and persevering, 110 man ever heard Tai utter an unkindly word, commit an ungenerous, deed, or fail to extend the helping hand or the grasp of friendship when it was called for. He worked for his Maori people with all the imagination and poetic vision typical of the best of the race. He dealt with the pakelia when racial interest clashed, with the temperate persistence and reserve inherited from his Scots father. How many great huis has he organised? and Vice-Roj*altj T welcomes. Parliamentary receptions conferences, celebrations and gatherings all have been under his guidance and the loose ends gathered together, bu't when the great orations were being declaimed and the praises bestowed, Tai preferred others to step into the limelight. He once said to the writer, that there was nothing lovelier in the world tlian the grasslands of New Zealand running up to the fringe of the native bush or down to the placid fern-embower-ed shores of a lake. It. was his ambition to sec all of his Maori peoples' land developed into smiling, welltended farmlands. That he accomplished much, all 'in Rotorua know, but worn out with the strain of years of constant endeavour, he has gone to his rest. The torch of progress he leaves for the younger members to take up and light the way. His last, day, his birthday, he spent on the waters of his beloved lake, a happy day indeed, and then quietly as was, his wpnt, witli no one to see him embark, he took passage on Te Waka o Atua. He needs no graven stone to remind us of his life The reminder is present in the fertile fields of Horo HoroJ of likitere and of Makctu. It dwells in the great building, Tamatekapua, in which his body lies. His memory lives in hundreds of visible evidences of his work. As that, other great Maori, Maui Pomare, a colleague of Tai's 1 in the now distant days of the young Maori Party, said at the passing of Waiaara, so can be said of the passing of Tai Mitchell. "I weep with you to-day for our common sorrow. I Avecp because a great man lias ceased to live amongst you. Who is there, with a heart big enough to take up his fallen mantle? . Who will now be the parent,?. . . "Farewell, Farewell. Time is short, you have joined our mighty dead. When the Canoe of Fate comes again who knows who w ill bo the passenger? Farewell." (A tribute from a Pa'keha friend).