THE ARAWA AND THE PAKEHA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 1973, 8 January 1907, Page 1

THE ARAWA AND THE PAKEHA.

SOME INTERESTING ANECDOTES. tor, Captain Mair, who is intensely <l, rth voted to bis Arawa friends, tells son: I good stories in illustration of thei 01 . e keen sense of humor. Mirth bubble in I"9 80 naturally within them, h 1 Isays, that often, in the days of th native war, when he had, perhaps 1111 four hundred men under his charg , 0 and they would be on the sliortes ivo commons, barely subsisting on the ku morns they could rail, the few eel; I they could catch in the bush, and i 00 ' viW P'B killed once in a while, the} would tell him that it was not bun', ger that they found hard to endure. ; s but the necessity of suppressing co their fun and jokes, so that the JO enemy should not learn their wlioreld abouts. id On one occasion an old chief whoso mother had been accidentally burned to death in an adjoining pa, invited Captain Mair to accompany him to rs tho tnngi. Tho head of this pa re--10 coivcil them, and seemed to feel some g concern as to whether tho visiting i- Chief might attribute some blame to d Jus people for the fatality which had a happened m their midst. But tho bell reaved one, turning to Captain Mair, . observed: “AVcll, after all, its no use grieving over spilled milk. My mother was very old, and probably this acci- ‘ dent has only anticipated the course • of nature by a day, a week, or a ’ month. Besides, I’m much too hungry , to cry properly now.” And then, I perceiving that the chief, their host, I had approached within hearing, he went on in a louder voice to Captain Man-: “This is a strangely lonely place. \\ e might be in the middle ol the great forest, such is the stillllef.® fchat prevails. Ido not hear the splitting of wood, or the yelling of a pig that is being killed.” The host, whoso people for some I reason had been unusually beliind'a 1 . 1,< ~m preparing food, rushed stiaightaway to the wliares, and was overboard bidding the men kill pigs at once and have food prepared with all despatch for tlie hungry guests. I Captain Mair has lived for many 1 years among the • Arawa, and so 1 closely lias he been identified with them that other tribes make it a common lament, and even grievance, that they also have not a pakelia of - their own. Sometimes when he lias boon away from them for several | months, and common friends have died m tho interval, lie has been f given great receptions at pa after pa on Ins return, and united to a succes- 1 -“ion of tangis for tho departed. To n Wi°J Jt T t]l .° , D-ioud .of those they had loved and lost is to have da life- C long claim on the affection of the Arawii’ and in their common greeting C to Captain Mair they refer to him poetically and lovingly as “tliou on whom the eyes of our departed elders have been wont to rest.”