OPOTIKI MAORIS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 17, 28 August 1946, Page 3

OPOTIKI MAORIS

THE WHAKATOHEA ORIGIN, RISE AND FALL In the military settlement of Opotiki, at the end of the war with the Tauranga people, the new settlers were exposed to raids by the late owners of the land. These embryo farmers (there were very few practical men amongst them) were roamers from far and wide and an interesting lot of people. From the remote Orkney Isles the counties of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and from large- industrial centres, and of varied occupations, they were unused with a few exceptions, to agricultural life. But they could tell one of the Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, of wars in Burma and China, and experiences as prisoners of war in Russia, of gold-min-ing at Ballarat, Bendigo, Lambing Flat, the Ovens, and of the Eureka stockade, all from personal experience. Most of them were prepared to make homes, finding the climate congenial and the soil fertile. They aimed at establishing permanent homes. No longer would they follow the “lure of distant drum” or the quest for the golden fleece and that aim steadied their arm when out on expedition. Maoris Surrender Arms

In order to bring ‘"the Maoris to

terms, orders were given the troops to destroy all crops and habitations. Wheat fields were burned, potatoes, kumaras and maize were all destroyed; and the escaping Maori had to hide in the bush. Even there the contingents followed them up and finally, after many engagements, the Maoris surrendered and came into Opotiki and gave up their arms. My father who was on duty at the time, told us that they were in a pitiable state and had evidently undergone great privation. Some land was returned to them on which they settled, and they reoccupied their old pas. Time and changed conditions have brought the Pakeha and Maori into closer unison, and they are now united for the common good of the community.

Perhaps a brief outline of the origin of the Whakatohea and its sub-tribes may be of interest and lead any who still look askance at our coloured people to modify their views, and recognise that they have a just claim to “a place in the sun.” Forfeiture of Lands After all, the brown skin may be the result of an ancestral, transmitted weakness in the suprarenal glands, and if we do draw the col-our-line we must not ignore our indebtedness to coloured races in religion, science and the arts. And I hope to show that Opotiki tribe has suffered more than any other in the country in the wholesale forfeiture of their lands—a forfeiture enacted by people in office who could not have known their needs at the time or the need for provision for their future.

Through that dark wall which so effectively hides the past and tempts us to search for some gleam as to the future, we get glints as to the early inhabitants before the Maori established himself. Those people were the Wliakatohea—evidently a brown race who were no doubt, deeply steeped in originalisrn, though they did not follow Adam’s cultural methods. To the arrivals from Hawaiki the Whakatohea owes the kumara, the taro and the knowledge of agriculture. A Light-Skinned Race

But before continuing the subject I should mention that, even preceding this apparently aboriginal brown race, there is evidence of the existence of a lig'nt-skinned, fair-hair-ed race, traces of which are still to be found amongst the Maori and known to them as Urukehu. As to them one may, if so the mind tends that way, admit the possibility that they were the remnant of a people who inhabited ancient Lemuria, a great continent that extended north and west of the fragment now known as New Zealand. A number of them lived about Napier, but were exterminated by the Maori long years ago. Those, on the canoes that arrived here about 600 years ago found the land occupied by a people speaking a language almost identical with theirs, and so numerous that they had difficulty in Finding land on which to settle. With the permission of the aboriginals, a few landed at different places, and married, and until they increased by such means as natural increase the Hawaiki people lived quietly with their hosts. New Arrivals’ Influence If we exclude the benefits conferred by introducing the kumara and taro, and instruction in cultivation. the new arrivals were not any blessing nor were they up to the standard of morality of the people who, in time, they were to sup-

plant..- To them cannibalism and human sacrifices to the gods were unknown and repugnant. They believed in a Supreme Being, but not in the mythological gods of the new arrivals. They were brave, thin and active. Not cultivating the ground, he lived on Nature’s products—fish, eels, birds (including the moa), berries, etc. But of his general life little is known, and the Maori as a rule prides himself on his Hawaikian ancestry more than the traces of his aboriginal ancestors. After six hundred years, the characteristics of the visitors are now dominant.