TOHUNGAISM

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 25, 24 October 1917, Page 5

TOHUNGAISM

AN ELDERLY NATIVE PINED. By Telegraph—Pre6S Association. Gisborne, October 23. An eld/irly Native named Rawiora Tarairi was fined .£25 and .£9 7s. costs by Mr. Barton, Stipendiary Magistrate, to-day on a chargo under the Tohunga Suppression Act. The chargo arose out of an attempt to commit 6uicide made recently by a Native, wiio Alleged that tho defendant had bewitched him.

Amusing evidence was Riven by Native witnesses. The wife of the man who attempted suicide said she -was under defendant's treatment at Napier. He commanded her tn return to Gisborne 011(1 pour boiling water in her boxe? to exorcise spirits, and on reaching Gisborne to spit on the sand and draw her left heel through the spittle. Other Natives in their evidence stated tliat defendant, when consulted for various ills, made the sicrn of the Cross over them, and prayed for them. They described him as a man of prayer, and said that at tho meeting-house he prayed night and morning. Mr. Buriiaird, for the defendant, uriced that there was little difference in these accounts of defendant's acts and in what was done in. orthodox methods of Christianity. His Worship fixed default at two months' imprisonment.