MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 July 1938, Page 3

MAORI MEMORIES

AFTER WAIRAU. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Dreading vengeance Rauparaha and his fleet of canoes returned to Kapiti, and across to Otaki, where he excited his followers by showing the iron handcuffs of a convict with which the white men sought to degrade him in the eyes of his fellows. A Weslyan minister ventured to the scene of the battle, usually known as the “Massacre,” and buried the bodies. None had been mutilated. Each had the skull cleft by the Maori stone patu (club) their method of ending suffering. In 1848 Bishop Selwyn consecrated the spot and set it apart as the site of a church and a burying ground. The spot has also been made Tapu (sacred) by the Maoris for all time. This outstanding success against the wholesale land robbers (tahai whenua) had great influence over the mind of every tribe, and the reports, greatly exaggerated, spread like a flax fire from end to end of New Zealand. Rauparaha and Rangihaeata carried the sympathy and support of nearly every district. A Northern chief in addressing his warriors said “Are we all to allow Rauparaha to have all the pakiwaha (boast) of killing these pakeha land robbers.” Panic among the settlers in every district tended to encourage the Maoris in their growing ambition to “exterminate the white plague.” Omens of victory were drawn from a severe earthquake at Wanganui and the great comet in 1843. Military relief came only just in time to avert the prospect of exterminating the white population.