Grandfather's Yarns.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 20, 11 August 1894, Page 6

Grandfather's Yarns.

(Ai/f; Bights Beseeved)

MAOBI CUSTOMS

EMBALMING THE DEAD

A n6ted CHIEF

. SOME OF HIS DOINGS

No. f

“ Grandfather, please tell us something more about the Wakataupuka,. said Jack. “ Grandfather, did they embalm all the Maories who died in the olden days ?” asked Fred. « E'o, Fred, only the most important ones were embalmed, and mothers often had their babies embalmed too. I remember seeing a baby that one woman had kept; it looked for all the world -like a child asleep. She kept it in a pretty little house, and only looked at it on fine days, as the damp spoilt it. They loved to look at the child’s body and cry over it. “ I should thi.nk the Maoris must be descended from the Egyptians; a good many of their fashions were the same; but Jack wants to know about the Wakataupuka, so I must tell you about him.

“ The Wakataupuka was a tyrant among his own people, but very good to a white man. I have of ten thon ght that under more favourable circumstances the Wakataupuka would have boon hero. Something of the Hapoleonic type, it is true, but he had many noble traits of character, though to his own people he was often coldblooded and cruel.

“ Jack Tiger told me that once two boat loads of white people and a good number of klaories — the puka amongst them went pigeonshooting up the Taieri. Towards evening they all came down to the boats again, laden with their day’s spoil. One Maori was saying to another he wondered if shot would kill a man as it would a pigeon, and the Wakataupuka overheard him. He ordered the man to go over to a tree a few yards off, and the man, without a moment’s hesitation, did as he was bid, never thinking for a moment what his chief was going to do. “ The Wakataupuka then borrowed a gun from a white man, and before anyone guessed his intention shot his man dead. Then, handing back the gun, he coolly remarked, ‘ Oh, shot will kill a man.’ Jack Tiger said that he never could bear the sight of a pigeon after that. “In’34i Mr Weller had a whaleboat built, but it was affairand no good for whaling, so he sold it to Bloody Jack.. Young Taiaroa —Matapui a they called him was saying what a great man Jack was. Ho had two boats while the Wakataupuka had only one. ‘l’ve got two,’ said Taupuka. • Ho, you’ve only got one,’ persisted young Taiaroa. So Wakataupuka said it was his boat lying at the kaik about a mile off ; but Matapura declared that it belonged to Tuturakipawa. ‘ I lent it to Tuturakipawa to come down from Cloudy Bay in, otherwise he’d have had to walk; but it’s my boat,’ said Wakataupuka, and he ordered his men to bring the boat up. “ When the boat came there was no more said about it that night, and we all went home to bed. The Wakataupuka had a hut just next door to mine ; and at daylight next morning I knew there was going to be a great row, from all the noise that was going on. I heard the Wakatapuka’s aide-de-camp come and tell him that the boat was gone—taken back to the kaik. He ordered the fellow t<? tell the men to bring it back.

“ Jasfc as I went outside the door I met the Wakataupuka coming out of his door. ‘ Good morning,’ said I, ‘ What’s the matter ?’ ‘ Good morning,’ he answered. ‘ Nothing the matter, nothing, nothing at all.’ “ There comes the boat,’ I said.

‘ Yes, boat come, all right.’ He was as unconcerned and cool as possible, and when we got to the beach just opposite Mr Wbller’s house, he waited quietly till the boat came up. Then he ordered the men to haul it up, and they brought it up almost out of the water.

“ Presently from all quarters you cculd see the Maories coming, armed to a man, with mipes and meres, and here and there a stray musket—they all had something. “ Bloody Jack and his men were standing there ; Jack didn’t say a word either way, but they were all armed. Out from the mob rushed young Taiaroa, with a small carpenter’s hammer in his hand and struck the boat-twice on the bow. ‘You hit that boat again just once,’ roared the Wakataupuka, ‘and I’ll come down and drown you.’ He would have done it, too, and young Taiaroa was wise enough to know that. “ Then a Maori carpenter named Kauti said something, I don’t know what it was —I couldn’t understand them very well in those days—but the Wakataupuka picked up a stave of a cask and hit the fellow across the shoulders and knocked him down, and called for his sword.

“ But the man with the sword was some way off, and in all my life I never saw anybody pick themselves up as smartly as Kauti did that day, and he ran, and then they all ran —■ old and young, they did scamper. The Wakataupuka stood there flourishing his sword, and it was funny to see them all flying from one man ;it was high water, too, and they went splashing in almost up to their knees to get along t the beach. Laugh—we all laughed till we almost cried, and Mr Weller was crying out —‘ Gro it, Taupuka, go it!’ “■Next year (’35) Wakataupuka died of the measles. He took ill when he was with us, but insisted on going home to Rhuapuka. He started one afternoon, and got as far as Bloody Jack’s’ Island. He went ashore there and died. He ordered them to burn his body and bury his ashes —that was so that none of his enemies could come and take his bones to make fishhooks of—a peculiar way they had of giving an insult and revenging themselves on the living by showing such disrespect to the dead.”