THE MAORIS OF HAWKE'S BAY

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 33, 2 November 1937, Page 6

THE MAORIS OF HAWKE'S BAY

Sir Apirana Ngata'* Address , In Hastings * ^ ORIGINS AND HISTORY Siories of tte early Maori history oi ihe Hawke's Bay district were told b Sir Apirana Ngata, M.A., LL.B., M.P., io b iarge audienee in the Hastings .Methodist Hall last evening. The meeting was arranged by the Hastings Historical Society. * The hall was filted to' overflowin Aecommodation was taxed: to 3uch an extent' that 'extra seats had to be placon the stage, the body'of the hall being full, and numbers had to.stand. But the inflnv continued and many .were turned away. " The auclience was unprecedented, and W&s a token of the interest in the speaker and the subject, said Mr. "W. A. G. Penlington, M.A., who occupied the chair, in the absence of the president, the Bishop of Aotearoa, the Rt. Hon. F. A. Bennett. "I have studied Maori history for a great many years, but I have found it % difficult, confusing and thorny subject/' began Sir Apirana". "The geologists resort to the cliffs tq as.sess the age of the district, and the hjstorian must adopt a similar method by taking % cross-section of the history of the population. 5 shall take two cross-sec-1 tions, one from Hawke's Bay and one from Poverty Bay, to show the origin of the tribes in Hawke's Bay." Communications between Hawke 's Bay and Poverty Bay had always been difficult, but the "Maori -was able to move easily along the hill-tops, unmolested by the gurrounding tribes. In some cases a guess had to be made Tom the genealogies handed down or from the traditions to iind out which event in Maori history came first. This was a dif*culty arising from the lack of written xecords. There were originally many distinct iypes of the Maori people, but to-day they were all intermingled. Dealing with what was termed the Maruiwi jnyth-— which had formed the subject r

fcf a previous lecture to the society by the Bishop of "Waiapu, the Et. Rev. H. "Williams — Sir Apirana said he was glad that Bishop "Williams had attempted to apply a corrective to the traditions about this myth spread by the late Mr. Elsdon Best towards the end his life. The Ngatikahungunu tribe had been good caTvers in the early days, but the "seat of carving" was round Gisborne The speaker described in detail' the early tribes of the district, five in number, and traced their orlgins and ultimate arrival in Hawke's Bay, Poverty Bay, he said, ranked as' one of the greatest breeding-grounds for the race, puid from there the Maoris later dispersed all over the island. Maori Tootballers' Descent, The two Hawke's Bay footballers, Tori Reid and Jackson, were both de ecended from .East Coast Maoris and had only slight Ngaikahungunu blood 4n them. He told the stories of a chief who made the voyage to Kew Zealand from Hawaiki on the back of a whale, and .of. the young son of a high chief -who was so sacre'd that-he made the ground tapu wherever he touched it, so that he had to be carried round all , the time in a littef. The chief, Kahunguna. came from the finest stock in the Maori race, and he was fully entitled . to the renown that he had been given. The speaker told of this chiefs iinp er turbabili ty , in which respect he likened him to tha late Sir James Carroll. On one occasior. Kahungunu lay in bed while a besieging party stormed the pa. Af ter » week's fighting, when the last trench had fallen into enemy hands, Kahungunu stirred and' asked What was the matter. Then he quietly had his jdaughter handed over the wall to the enemy, and peace was at once restored. Kahungunu turned over in bed again and went to sleep. This episode, "said fiix Apirana, demonstrated the cool and philosophical nature of the man. ' • Aristocracy by Migration. There was, he said, a strange resemHance m migr»\hioiis ot jjeopio all over tin world at all pernls oi' history * l have been asked it tJiere was any disgrace in my peoy e i uugrution to N'c-w Zealand," he said. "Our ancestors were forced out of Hawaiki — there is no doubt about that — but they got New Zealand. Then the pakeha was turned out of his .country and came and took our oue. There is nothing to be ashamed" of in it. In fact, it is now considered to be a sign of aristocracy for one's ancestors to have taken part in William the Conqueror's Nmman migratiou to Englaud or in the voyage of the Piigrim Fatbers to America. 'T liave skimiued, cautiously over the genealogieal part of the tribal history," said Sir Apirana in conclusion. "There are too many descendants alive to-day jmd I am not going to risk upsetting pnybody. I am determined not to set «p a target for the Maori people here shooi at." The young man of to-day2 he gaidj

ishould not think there was nothing 16ft to do. A vast amount still remaoned to be done in gathering information. There was a great deal which could be found on the hillsides and plenty of room for research in Native I/and Court records and in the records of Boyal Commissions. Much ■ of the genealogical evidencf was scattered, and should be gathered together. Place names and their history should be recorded, and there was plenty of opportunity to collate. traditions and ;write them up. All this work was jWaitjng to he done by the historical societies. T , "Even though we may find it difficult to remember the details, yet it is a great experience to listen-to an address like this," said Mr Penlington, in thanking the epeaker. "History means trying to understand how people felt and thought, not nlerely learning dates and facts. Sir Apirana has told ua this, and he has told us, too, .how they. think to-day." The pakeha} he added, was not one race, so the closer union between them and the Maori was just a matter of adding one more to the mixture. ' It was well to remember that the animosity in the past between the Maori and the pakeha had been nothing compared with that at times between the peoples making up the pakeha race — the English and the Scots, for example. Yotes of thanks were moved by Mr T. Mason Chambers and Mr Waimarama Puhara,