Death of Wi Tako.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 70, 22 November 1887, Page 3

Death of Wi Tako.

Wellington, last night. The lata Wi Tako was buried yesterday, being accorded a grand military funeral

The following letter signed by 11 Old Identity " appeared in a Wellington paper : — Sir, —The death of the much respected chief Wi Tako Ngatata, calls to my mind a circumstance iu which the late chief rendered good service to the infant colony by bringing to justice the murderer Mairoa, a native of the East Coast or Poverty Bay. There was murdered on the old Porirua road near Johnsonville, a settler of the name of John Banks and his three children, about the end of the y-ar 1846, —I am not sure of the date. The Maori had been imprisoned for six months for robbery, aud had left the goal a month or two preceding the commiting of the murders. Banks was sitting by the fireside reading the Bible, and the children were in bed. the hour being about nine o’clock. The Maori called at the house and requested a light for his pipe. He had picked up an axe on the premises and hidden it beneath his blanket, and as Banks stooped down to give him a light, the Maori knocked his brains out with the axe. leaving him dead. On leaving the house the Maori heard the children cry out in their terr ,r. He returned and killed them all in the same manner. He then robbed the house, in which was a pair of men’s drawers, marked H. S. Hill, which were given for the purpose of using for the unfortunate man's wife who had her legs accidentally broken some time previously, and died in the Wellington Hospital. Wi Tako saw the Maori washing some blood out ot the drawers at the stream running throngh the psh at Kurno Toto, challenged the Maori as to what the presence of the blood meant. He replied that he had killed a pig. Wi Tako followed up the scent, and found a Maori policeman with Banka in his possession, and also the native Maiora in bis charge. He was taken before the Police Magistrate, and on the evidence of the two native witnesses and other circumstances, he was brought to trial at the Supreme Court, and after ' a patient hearing of two days, was found guilty by myself and the jury enrpannelled to try the case. He was executed on the hill where the central prison is being erected, that being the site of the prison at that time, but it was destroyed in the earthquake of 1848. Maiora confessed to it all before his execution.