WILLIAM WALLACE RANG!

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 24 September 1901, Page 4

WILLIAM WALLACE RANG!

Died September 18th, 1901.

(OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT-)

No Town, September 18. There passed away in the Grey River Hospital on Wednesday last at a ripe, old ago a noble-hearted Maori, Wallace Rangi, an old pioneer of the West Coast and other goldfields of New Zealand., and the writer takes this opportunity of paying a last tribute to the many excellent uid sterling .qualities of the deceased, who, indeed, was a Rangatira and largely endowed with nature’s true nobility of character. Rangi was born near Wanganui, in the North Island, and’Relonged to a small hapu, or section, at the warlike Ngatiwai tribe, the time being a period of great unrest among the Southern Maoris, before the advent of European settlement, To Rouhjoreka and his fighting general Rangiheclu keeping the country in a perpetual state of turmoil. About this time Rangi’s (then qui’calad) people made their way to Otaki, then the principal whaling-station in Cook’s Straits. Hero the captain of a whaler took a fancy to young Rangi, christened him William Wallace (he must have been a Scotchman), induced his people to let the lad try the sea, and took him for a cruise round' the Island in search of whales. The life suited Rangi and from thenceforth his kainga and kindred were komaiti (dead) to him. Often (as he informed the writer) has ho sailed upon the waters of the Waitemata (Auckland) and Poneke (Wellington) harbors, his ship being the only one sailing on those fine inlets, a war canoe or two, perhaps, being the exception flitting by _ filled with warriors on some raid intent. After a few years of this life, the discovery of gold in Victoria in the early fifties took Rangi and some other Maoris away from their seafaring life never to return. But again Rangi was lucky in his new adventure, and male quite a little fortune and took a trip to England and saw and enjoyed life of ycung men generally do as long as his money lasted, and when that was done ho made his way back to his o:d haunts again where ho was more or less successful until the discovery of gold in New Zealand took Rangi back to his native land never to leave it again. In the early sixties, Rangi with a lot of other miners found his way to the Sho lover river and there at the famous Maori Point, rich in gold, accnled an episode, that brought the warlike spirit, now somewhat dormant, back to Rangi, and strongly reminded him of the sense of his youth, a party of white roughs, seeing that the Maoris were on good gold, and scattered about in its search, resolved oni inking possession, and ousting by force, the occupants out of their claims and lawful right. Armed with long handle shovels they soon effected their object for taken by surprise and scattered as they were at the time they could make no effectual resistance, helpless, very dark and pouriri. So Rangi informed me in subsequent years, they went back to their tents and held a consultation. The ivoren was shovel and knife among themselves with whatever they could lay their hands, in the shape of weapons. They came down on the foe, now in their turn somewhat scattered, and the miners a good deal surprised at the warlike array, for every man was stripped to the waist and in battle costume. The first preliminary, the war dance, was quite enough. They did not even wait for the finish, but cleared at the double quick, only to glad to have their cowardly skins safe from the vengeful tomahawk cf the deeply wronged but now victorious Maori, whose blood now being up and excited by the wrong they had suffered, were not inclined to be too merciful to the evil doers as Rangi quietly, but jocularly expressed in language to me. “.I would have cried for them childs if we could have come on to them at the breaking out of the West Coast.”

Eangi made his way over and lias ivs’ded in the Ecd Jacks district more or less over 30 years, and was at first very lucky in his finds, for in Eangi Creek, situated in the gorge between No Town and Bed Jacks, he unearthed the largest nugget found this side of the Grey, over 57ozs in weight, about £220, —a nice little haul for a hatter. For all this Eangi died poor, but, thanks to the old age pension, he was placed above want in his declining years. Ever generous, he was always ready to place his last shilling at another’s command if he had the least 'thought that the party was in want. Under a coloured skin he carried a white and humane heart; his spirit has now sped to the regions beyond the setting sun, but the earthly body lies in Greymouth cemetery, and whore the great Antua’s trumpet call shall resound and rejoin its kindly soul in (let us pray) trust in brighter realms above.