FITTING BURIAL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 33, 1 October 1931, Page 4

FITTING BURIAL

MAORI WQRKER GOES TO REST TOWED ON BARGE ROUND LAKE. TANGI AT MOUREA. Although the last ech^es of his death were the prosaic tapping of the court room typewriter and the drab formality of the pakeha inquest, Keepa Te Piki, the Mourea bush-work-er who met a terrible death last Friday when he was crushed hy a swinging log, went to his last rest with ceremony fitting- a leader of his tribe and a bushman. With his coffin resting upon a great timber barge, so often the scene of his labours during his life, and with nearly 200 of his relatives and friends crowding the funeral craft, Keepa made his last procession of Lake Rotoiti, before he went to the burying ground of his forefathers at Motutawa. The death of Te Piki, a well known and'highly respected member of the Pikiao sub-tribe, created a deep impression and the tangi which marked his burial was one. of the largest which has been held at Mourea. With that sense of the fitness of things which so often marks the Maori sentiment, Te Piki was given a typical timber-worker's funeral. He had spent the whole of his life working in the bush and beside the lake on the timber barges, and it was very fitting that on one of these he should go to his last rest. After the funeral service had been conducted at the Mourea meeting house by the Revs. Tumatahi and Tahuiorangi, the coffin was placed in the centre of the barge and all the relatives and friends of the deceased, to the number of approximately 200, went on board to accompany him on his last journey. Flags on the barge were dipped to half-mast and with a band playing appropriate music, 'a launch towed the craft with its funeral cargo on a complete circuit of the lake. Then; the barge was brought to anchor off' Motutawa burial ground and the last rites for the dead were accorded.