MAORI MEMORIES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 June 1938, Page 9

MAORI MEMORIES.

THE TREATY CONDEMNED. (Recorded by “J.H.S,” for “Times-Age”) At the first presentation of the Treaty, twenty chiefs spoke in its favour and six against it. Objectors said it was smooth and oily to hide the treachery beneath it. Tamati Waka Nene, our best ally in subsequent battles, spoke of the degraded condition of, the Maori before the white man came. He urged them to sign the treaty and acknowledge the Queen’s sovereignty and protection. The Governor said the opposition to the Treaty was due to France’s ambition to rule the country. Next day forty chiefs signed, the first of them being Kawiti, afterward a leader of the war against us in 1844. By. the end of June 512 chiefs from all parts of New Zealand had signed, each being given a red blanket and tobacco, two most coveted comforts in life. Quite a number who signed, refused to accept these awards, “fearing that they might be regarded as payments for the land.” On the 21st May, 1840, sovereignty was proclaimed over the North Island by virtue of this mystical Treaty, and over the South Island by the equally problematic right of discovery. According to Parliamentary papers of that year, the sovereignty of Stewart's Island rests on thelast named issue alone. Few Maoris understood the Treaty—Nopera, an intellectual chief, explained to a gathering of 1,500 followers that “the shadow of the hand goes to Queen Victoria, but substance remains with us.” Mr Busby’s book says that because of the dread of the Treaty a conspiracy was hatched in the North to kill every white settler and appropriate their wives; but the Maori missionaries prevented this atrocity.