"TE KITOHI."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 241, 1 March 1913, Page 1 (Supplement)

"TE KITOHI."

LAST OF THE OLD MISSIONARIES. MR. DITTOS AND HIS LIFE WORK. (My "Waikuto," in Auckland Star). "To Kitolii*' is the name by which he is universally known amongst the Maoris. Jt is the native way of pronouncing (iittos, but to the Maori mind there is al»o a coincidence of special appropriateness in the fact that the name as ilaorilied holds reference to the special functions of the missionary, for baptise with sprinklings and incantabaptise will) sprinkilngs and incantations. Perhaps there is no missionary teacher, with the possible exception of the first Sclwyn. whose name is held in greater honor amongst the Maoris of the Auckland province than that of the venerable man who has just completed his sixty years of religious work amongst the native people. He is about the last of the old generation of missionaries; if there be another it is the aged Bishop Williams, late of \Vaipu. His memories of the Maori go back considerably further than his sixty years of service; they begin, in fact, with the very foundation of New Zealand as a British settlement, for he landed in Auckland as a youth seventy-three years ago. A wonderful record, without a parallel in our missionary chronicles, for most of the early pioneers of Christian work in this wild new land arrived at a much more advanced age. and. none of them, as far as the writer can call to mind, lasted out sixty years ot this hard, dangerous and self-sacrificing task. lie is a cheerful veteran, the Reverend William f.'ittos. this Grand Old Man of the Methodist Church. His broad shoulders are stooped, and bis beard has been quite white this many a year—as far back as I can remember Mr. Gittos he was an old man—but bis face holds a twinkle of pleasant shrewdness. The bard and frugal life he has led and the constant travelling in all kinds of weathers have been, perhaps, a youth-renew-ing tonic. But there comes a time when all tonics fail, and then the tired frame must be laid oil the shelf. At any rate, "Te Kitolii" hasn't wasted his life. He can look back upon three generations of sound and useful nation-building work, work of far more account than that of the average soldier or the average politician; and now in the honorable decline of his laborious days he could say with one of old Ossian's heroes: "The darkness of age comes like the mist of the desert. My shield is worn with years! My sword is fixed in its place. I said to my soul. Thy evening shall be calm, thy departure like a fading light."

PIONKKRIXO ON THE KAiPARA. When the writer first made tlie acquaintance of "Father" Gittos he was working amongst the Kingite natives of the Waikato. old Tawhaio's people, coaxing tliem back from liaiiliau-ism. working against strong opposition and much war-made hitterncss, but in the end succeeding. But the beginning of his missionary work was well-nigh forty years before that. Jle was already a .Maori linguist when, in the early fifties, he went up to the Kaipara and commenced work amongst the Xgati-Whatua, tribe. Jn lS.")(i he established a Wesleyan mission at Oruakharo, opposite the spot where the settlement of Port Albert was founded six or seven years later. Later he settled on the Waingohi. a branch of the Oruawharo. and there he gathered round him a band of faithful adherents, and made a pleasant garden in the Maori wilderne-s. When the Matilda AYnttenbach settlers arrived in ilie Kaipara in ]S!k> lie was the first lo welcome them to that new and strange land, and eiiuless were his kindnes-.es in settling them in their hu.-di homes and in negotiating between them and the natives, "dittos is the father of Albertland," is what those Kaipara pioneer* used to tell everyone in after years. It was indeed a wild place, the Kaipara of the Northern W'airna. in the 'fifties and early 'sixties: bu-h everywhere to the margins of (lie great tidal rivers, with just a tiny Maori or pakeha-Maori clearing here and there. lint the Maoris received the early settlers with the greatest kindness.

tiik olden rimers and tohi'\"<:as. Amongst tin l Ngati-Whatna were -imic splendid old chiefs, such as Paikea. Tiravaii. Parore te Awlia ami Taoho: (rue rangatiras. diguiticd old fellows, wonderfully tatooed and full of the ancient lore of their race. From men like these Mr. dittos learned much of the history and customs, and poetry and hidden wisdom ] of the Maoris. Day after day and night 'j after night he used to talk with these chiefs and tohtingas. leaching them the new faith, and listening to their curious store of knowledge in return. Then, further north, he made the acquaintance of the Xgapuhi. the Karawa. and other luiiuerous trihes. teaching them, listening to their tronhle-. advising them in temporal as well as spiritual matters, often liy his counsel an;! influence averting war and bloodshed. Thus he worked, always with the good of his Maori race before him. until from the Wuiteiiiiitii to the waters of llokianga tliere was no single man, "Maori or white, who could command so much respect and "aroha" as himself. "Te Kitohi." It meant much hard work, and often danger. "Te Kitohi" could paddle his own canoe, and sail his own bout, and he developed a tireless capacity for riding and walking all day. and then talking, or being talked to. all night to finish it off. And withal lie conhl live on the foods of the Maori with contentment and thankfulness, for civilisation was often n long way of)'. , I THE I.AM) OF FF.W WIHTF. SKINS.' I In the year 15.V.1. says Mr. S. Percy Smith. cx-Surveyordeneral. who is spending his leisured old age in his New Plymouth home, there were very fewwhite men living on the Kaipara. and of these. Mr. dittos was the most influential. Tie was then in the prime of his youiiir manhood, and was doing line work amongst his friends of the Ngati-Wha-tna. Mr. Percy Smith was then engaged ill Coverninent survey work along the shores of the great harbor. The only white men besides himself and Mr. dittos were the late Mr. (.'. E. Nelson. Mr. lieorge Tiix. Captain Statinauay and Mr. Marriner. who was in charge of Drown and Campbell's establishment al Manga - wharc. on the Wairoa. with some few | Europeans ensured under him in the kauri .spar trade. "It would be dilli'cillt." Mr. Percy Smith wrote some few years ai;o in one of his historical works, "to find anvwhere a liner people than (he Niiali-Whatiia were at that lime: tbev rciained all the best points of the Maori character, whilst the worst had been eradicaied by the efforts of (heir missionaries, the T>v=. Messrs P.nller and Citfos. Thev were strictly honest and honorable in all their dealings, hospilable (o a fault, and appeared to me to follow Ihe teachings of ihe missionaries in a true spirit of riirislianilv." The l!ev. -lames P.nller. who is mentioned liv Mr and who wa- the father of the late Sir Waller liuller. was die lirsl ini-sionarv to settle on the Northern \V : ,iroa: bis old station is still to he seen at a beautiful spot ill a bend of the creaf r : v r al Tangifcoria.

Often had Mr. dittos to intervene in inter-tribal disputes over land and other troubles. In 1803 he was the means of averting serious trouble in the Kaipara district which would have involved the European settlers, for the rebel Waikatos who had been captured at the battle of Rangiriri, and who thereafter escaped from the Kawau, Sir George Grey's island in the Hauraki Gulf, passed through the Albertland district, and there was talk of some of the XgatiWhatua joining them and turning Kingitas. However, Xgati-Whatua remained loyal to the Government, and it is believed to be largely swing to Mr. Gittos' appeals that the doubtful ones remained friendly.

HONE TOIA'S "REBELLION"." One exciting affair in which Mr. Gittos did the State some little service comes well within the writer's personal recollection. It was up at Kawene, the little township on the Hokianga Harbor, in 1898, at the time of Hone Toia's short-lived rising against pakeha taxes and pakeha authority. The seat of the trouble was the Waima Valley, twelve miles from Hokianga; our Government column in the end marched through the bush to the Waima Valley, without meeting with any more serious opposition than a couple of shots lired over our heads by a Maori fanatic. But Hone Toia had seventy or eighty men armed with riiles and shot guns, and it very nearly came to a serious ambuscade and light on the Waima road. Now, a day or two before the arrival of the troops from Wellington, and when Rawene was practically defenceless, a war party of Toia's Mahurehure tribesmen, all armed, made a threatening demonstration close to the township, by way of searing the pakehas, if nothing more. Mr. Gittos happened to be there; he had hurried up to Hokianga to try and persuade his old flock to abandon their silly little rebellion. The alarm was given, "The Maoris are on us!" and the scared population, or most of it,' took refuge in a coastal steamer lying at the little wharf. Mr. Gittos decided to go and have a talk with the Waima fire-eaters. As he ascended the hill towards them, together with his Maori coadjutor, the Rev. Piripi Rakena, he found himself covered by the guns of about a dozen Maoris, all stripped for the lighting trail. Piripi, not liking the look of things, suggested, ■'Had we not better go back?" "No," said Mr. Gittos; ••there's no fear of them shooting us. We'll go on." Piripi, somewhat reassured, went on with his "father," but, as he said afterwards, there was no knowing but what some of those guns would go off at any time, for the faces behind them looked very determined. However,, there was no shooting. The Maoris received "Te Kitohi" with friendliness; they no longer "drew a bead" on their spiritual adviser, and they listened with respect to his counsel—although they didn't take it in its entirety. Anyway, they retired to the hush, and no powder was burned that day. Their leader, the old chief Romana te Paehangi. was a I picturesquely martial figure, with something of the piratical cut about his costume that hardly accorded with his i benevolent face, liis (lowing grey beard and his portly form. He was attired in a red shirt and red pyjamas; round his waist was a leather belt to which cartridge pouches were attached, and through which a short-handled tomahawk was_ thrust; and., he carried a double-barrelled gun. The rest of the war party were in fighting rig. consisting of a shawl round the wnist, kilt-fashion, with cartridge belts and bags across their shoulders. They were out for business, I as they afterwards assured this scribe. But the anti-dog tax and land tax rising came to an ignominious end—and when Hone Toia came out of gaol the Government, with admirable discretion, made him dog tax collector. There'll be no more •■risings" at Waima.

Such are sonic of the memories the fine old missionary can look back upon, lie certainly could give us a readable early-days book if he liked; and if he were to" embody in it, as he could, the folk-talk and 'savage wisdom of the Maori of half a century ago, it would be a i|iiite enthralling chronicle of a wild life that has passed away for ever.