ARAWAS AND PRINCESS.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 August 1922, Page 5

ARAWAS AND PRINCESS.

TRIBAL WEDDING GIFT. MUCH-PRIZED POSSESSION. In thanking the Arawa tribe for the wedding present they sent her, Princess Mary wrote to the Prime Minister of New Zealand as follows: “Dear Prime Minister, —May I ask you to express to the Arawa tribe my most grateful thanks for the wonderful symbolic gift which they have sent to me, and for the loyal and affectionate good wishes by which their present was accompanied? Will you tell them that from henceforth I shall always count “Taingaru” among my greatest treasures, and shall never look at this beautiful token without remembering the loyal friends from whom it came, and the long history it has had among their warriors both in peace and war. I should like the Arawas to know that Sir Francis Dillon Bell himself ■ brought this gift to Chesterfield House and gave it into my hands. He told me of his visit to the Hot Lakes district, and described how—at the opening of the new tribal meeting-house on the day after my wedding—some of the chiefs of the Arawas gave him the greenstone ornament, and asked him to bring it to England as a wedding gift to me. I wish al! the Arawa tribe fully to understand with what pleasure I accept their gift, and how heartily I thank them.—Yours, etc., (Signed) Mary.”