A MAORI RECEPTION.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2169, 7 February 1881, Page 3

A MAORI RECEPTION.

The Murimotu correspondent ,of the “ Wanganui Chronicle” supplies that journal with a lengthy account of the “ goings on” of the war party sent up by Kemp to surrey certain boundaries, but which intention has since been abandoned, owing to the resistance shown by the Taupo and Napier tribes. After alluding to the probable results of a dispute, the correspondent says : —The warriors who hare lately arrived were received on Saturday last with the usual welcoming, feasting and speechifying. They took advantage of the occasion to indulge in a war-dance—a not very seemly spectacle on the Sabbath day. The procession of mounted warriors, carrying a banneret in front of them, left Whakahi pa at 1 p.m., and crossed to the opposite side of Tokiauru Creek, where a large assemblage of Natives awaited them at the new shed erected to hold the impounded wool of Messrs Studholme, Morrin, and Co. When the procession reached a flax mound about 400 yards from the shed the warriors dismounted, and disrobed till they stood in a state of nature, with nothing but a fig-leaf filament about their loins. In this becoming costume—and, seriously speaking, it was a decided improvement on the habiliments of rags they had just discarded—they proceeded to the pah, dancing, grinning, twisting, twining, and contorting their limbs and features into every grotesque and imaginable order and shape. A simi-larly-clad body of warriors were awaiting them at the entrance of the pa. One of these ran forward to meet them in a beeline, and extending his tongue to its extremest limit, and rolling up his eyes till nothing but the white was visible, was understood to convey thereby a challenge to “ come on.” A challenge they lost no time in accepting, for they " came on ” at full split, and, on reaching the body of opposing braves, who received them in squatting order, they danced round them, and contorted over them, and mouthed at them, and faced to them in a style and attitude that a monkey would have envied. They then returned and went through the same extraordinary manoeuvres at a short distance, commanded by “ Brave Murderer ” on horseback, who could not be restrained, although in that elevated position, from mechanically going through the same performance. So fascinating an influence, indeed, did this sort of thing exert on the Native mind, that even some of their ladies joined in it. I noticed one very beautiful dusky dame in company with Kemp’s warriors thus affected: but, although she went through the most graceful of the manoeuvres, she took very good care not to distort her features, but the rather to exhibit to perfection the most beautiful and regular row of dentals I ever saw in a human mouth. Similar antics were indulged in by the pa Natives, and then this most seemly exhibition of decorum on the Lord’s Day was brought to a close by the warriors re-robing: But, Oh ! what a change was effected. In their war-paint and fig-leaf filament they were a really noble-looking body of young men, with most intelligent and good-looking countenances, and a splendid physique. But, alas ! When they went back to the flat and once more put on their robes, they emerged therefrom a lot of ragamuffins.