RAROTONGA MOURNS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1052, 16 August 1930, Page 10

RAROTONGA MOURNS

REMAINS OF SIR MAUI AT ISLAND TOMORROW GREAT TANGI TO BE HELD On the long journey to New Zealand with the ashes of Sir Maui Pomare, the Makura arrives at Avarua, Rarotonga, tomorrow. The rites by the Maori people of Rarotonga will bo an appropriate preliminary ceremony to the obsequies to be held at Manu Ivorihi Pa, at Waitara. when the ashes of Sir Maui are at last borne to the home of his people. In the fashion of Maoris, the TTarotongans are to hold a tangl to bid farewell to the spirit of Sir Maui, for they regarded him as much their chieftain and leader as did the Polynesians of New Zealand. They are, indeed, anxious to have the ashes buried at Rarotonga, or at least, retained for a period sufficient for full rites of remembra nee.

When Sir Maui travelled, a sick man, from New Zealand to California for the purposes of his health, tho vessel stayed at Rarotonga. He was met by chieftains of tho island and was welcomed with true Polynesian ceremony. The reception spoke eloquently of the affection held for fcsir Maui by the Polynesian races under the administration of New Zealand. While liis principal lines of ancestry went back to the Great Migration of 1350 from Tahiti', and to the nobles of the islands of Tahiti, Sir Maui was also related to the Rarotongans. On the Great Migration to New Zealand, at least two canoes stopped at Rarotonga, and there is reason to believe that communication, for many years after that time, between Tahiti, Rarotonga and New Zealand was comparatively regular. Tho ashes will reach Wellington at tho end of this month, and, for a certain space of time, they will be lodged in a memorial erected as a tribute to two great Taranaki Maoris —Sir Maui and AViremu Kingi. The origin of the name Pomare was in Tahiti, where there was a famous king of the name. The king was seriously ill and the words, po-mare, signify “coughing in the night.”