OLD TIMES AND OLD TIMERS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 245, 22 February 1911, Page 7

OLD TIMES AND OLD TIMERS

TROUBLE AT TARANAKI. (By "Old Identity" in Auckland Herald). Of all the early New Zealand settlements Taranaki—in those early days it was generally known as New Plymouth—was the moat isolated and apart. This was not literally true, of course, as a mere matter of distance, but it was so in the more important respect of accesibleness. There was in those times no way of communication by land either with Wellington or Auckland, and the west was then, as now, generally too stormy for easy travelling by water. In addition to this there was no harbor, and it was usually difficult to make a landing with surfboats on the open beach, owing to the long roll of the westerly seas. The choice of place for one of the earliest settlements was due to its being almost exactly the extreme limit of the original land purchase of the New Zealand Company to the northward. Except, however, for the difficulty of reaching it in the early days, either by land or sea, the little New Plymouth settlement had a good many advantages of its own, the chief of which was the fertility of the soil of the country surrounding it in all directions. This, with the mildness of its climate, made it an almost ideal district for dairy farming, the only drawback being the fact that nearly the whole country behind the settlement was still in the possession of the Maoris. j When Governor Grey left New Zealand, at the end of 1853, he was able to renu, to the English Minister of State, whose j Department at the time included the colonies, that there were no native diffi-1 culties, arid that none seemed to threaten the peace of the country. At the time this seemed to be correct, but there was in the background a danger, the extent of which could hardly be estimated, even by such experience as Grey possessed, and an intellect as keen as his. It was not very many years since the Maoris had owned hardly any property at all; yet even then they had considered the,lands on which they lived worth fighting for to the death. Of the causes of tribal war, the old Maori proverb, indeed, had mentioned three; but of these land was so' distinctly the chief, that "pigs and women" were apparently thrown in rather to cover all possible cases than because they counted for much. This had been the feeling in the old times when, except, as a matter of sentiment, or merely for the protection it afforded to a happy pig-hunting ground, land had little of what we should call value. Since the coming of the white man all this had been changed. If the Maori had little else to offer which the pakeha wanted, he had this, at any rate, which was of exchangeable value. The white man's Governor might not be willing to give a very great deal for every acre; but, at least, he would give enough tp make the tribes richer than they had ever been before. The case of the New Plymouth settlement was peculiar. The back country that hedged in the little town and its surrounding lands, which were little more than suburban, was all Maori land, but it didn't all belong to one tribe. For several generations past, in fact, its ownership had been disputed between the descendant of the tribe to whom it had Once belonged, as everybody admitted, but who had moved away to the south and given Up living on it, and the descendants of the people of another tribe who had settled upon it in their absence. This had led to some trouble and ill-feeling, even when there was nobody who wanted the land for any useful purpose; it was a very much more serious thing now that the officials of the Native Department had let it be known that they were ready to buy it for the Government, t

Nov rivmoutn was a curious little town in those days, nestling under the | shadow of Mount Egmont, and throwing out little tentacles of farming settlement along its skirts, and even a little beyond it. Its population had of late increased but slowly, partly owing to its j want of a harbor, but even more because it had little or no land for settlers. There was said to be less than 2000 white people in the province, and the town itself was no more than a village at the time. One little straggling fringe of houses, that faced the beach some little distance away; a little street running inland till it met another, parallel with the beach, which formed the main business thoroughfare of the town; these were practically all that seemed to a visitor to represent the little capital of the little province. Except for its want of a harbor, and the fact that the land was more level, it reminded one of what Auckland had been twelve years before. In one respect, indeed, it was very like the Auckland of 1850—which was the large part that native visitors seemed to play in its business population. Maoris sauntered along its little streets in very primitive clothing; Maoris, men, women and children, gazed longingly at the goods in the shop windows; Maoris j crouched on the beach, and watched the boats trying to get their cargoes ashore without being swamped by one of the long rollers that thundered on the beach. These were, for the most part, the friendly Maoris, as they were called—meaning the Maoris of the tribe that wanted to sell more land to the pakchas, and so to induce more pakchas to settle in the district. Here and there one or two of the other tribes might be seen, too; but one could tell them -from the others by the watchful look they generally had in their eyes, as if they were hardly certain of their welcome.

And this fairly represented the position of things at the beginning of 1855, when the trouble began. It was probnblv a blunder of one of our land purchase officials that led to it at the moment—though it was sure to have occurred before long in any case. The tribe that wished to sell part of their land insisted that the boundary of what was undisputably theirs was in a particular place; the official suggested that they had make it quite certain by cutting a line throii'rli the bush, as the surveyors did, at the boundary of the land they wished *.o soli to the Government. It turned out that the boundary was by no moans undisputed. While, the line was being cut a war party of the tribe that was opposed to any more sales of land to the white men came down upon and attacked the amateur surveying party, which was being led by a chief of the tribe favorable to selling land whose name was Rawiri, and who held the position of a native assessor, and was, therefore, to a somewhat indefinite extent, a Government official. The assessor and six of his party were killed, and the rest driven off by the attacking party, which was led by the rival chief, named Wiremu Kingi —a name that was to become only too; well known a few years later. The event was felt to be a serious one, especially in New Plymouth, where the settlers felt not only that the hopes they had been indulging, of a widening settlement and an increasing population, were likely to be disappointed, but, what was even worse, that there was a great risk of the settlers being drawn into the native quarrel, and perhaps attacked in their turn. Taranaki was now a pro- \ vince. however, with a Superintendent I and Council of its own, and no time was I lost by the provincial authorities in takI injr the people into their confidence, and I laving the facts before them. The result was an earnest appeal from the Superintendent and people to the Acl" i Governor to lake slops to protect the settlers, by sending troops to New PlvI mouth as a garrison until the tribal I (UKirrel should be settled, as they honed 1 it would be by the punishment of Ki»»ri and his people, who were looked upon as

unfriendly to the white settlers, though Kingi himself denied this, and said he only wanted to lie let alone, and he would promise not to meddle with thein. The Taranaki Council wont farther, by asking for a loan from the colonial revenue to enable the Provincial Government to buy arms and ammunition with which the settlers might protect themselves. The loan asked for was nfil, a very large one, and servos to show the very modest scale on which things were still conducted in the young colony. It was only £ISOO that was asked for, and it may 'be interesting to remember that under these circumstances, and on this modest scale, the beginning was made of a militia and volunteer force for New Zealand's defence.