MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 February 1939, Page 8

MAORI MEMORIES

NATURE’S FORTS.

(Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”)

With 1000 well armed soldiers to defend the outpost settlers around. Aucklang against each 100 Maori warriors, the British House of Commons could not understand the difficulties of our position in those pioneer days. The facts were that the Maori canoes on the 200 mile course of the Waikato (flowing) River from Tongariro through vast forests to within 30 miles of Auckland, passing many of our distant homesteads, was a highway reserved for the Maori warriors, for we had but one small vessel fit to traverse it.

The dense Hunua forest 30 miles by 10 was to them an ideal retreat. Yet despite these advantages and their earnest wish to acquire our rich stores of comfort and wordly wealth they refrained from violence, until a few unworthy whites sought to rob them of their very existence, the land, and to demoralise their women and men with waipiro (drink). For a long period during the early wars, the Maori warriors kept secret valuable means of defence from the soldiers, causing them to waste thousands of rounds of British ammunition in a single engagement. Eventually the Maori secret was discovered by accident. It was this: A few hundred Maoris each lying flat on the ground with his musket barrel thrust between the pliant leaves of a flax bush, took deadly toll against our soldiers. The tough yielding leaves diverted every bullet from our attacking force. The Maori King’s’ “palace” at Ngaruawahia was a plain looking raupo whare, decorated on the inside by stained toi canes in many patterns. Its low door and single small window in the front end giving it the appearance of a dog kennel to shefter a score of Maori kuri.