MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 April 1939, Page 3

MAORI MEMORIES

Wl PATARA TO TAMATI NGAPORA. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Just as the political and sectarian differences throughout Europe and Asia today may preserve any great nation from absorption or extinction, so the tribal rivals of 1863 saved our rural population from slaughter. Our military force and equipment were greatly superior, but the Maoris were not handicaped by want of roads. -Bush tracks and rivers for canoes were their highways and transport. Rewi and the Lower Waikato gathered at Rangiriri, and were intent upon, converting the soil of a wide and deep ditch, intended to be 100 miles long, into an equally great wall, rivalling that of ancient China of which they had had been told so much. Less than a mile had been made when General Cameron's cannon destroyed six months’ work in one night. A letter from Patara to Tamati Ngapora in the scholarly style of an Oxford graduate, dated April 27, 1863. gives us an idea of the moderate peace party’s opinion. To Tamati —“Word will have reached you that Manaiapoto has expelled our good British magistrate and trampled upon the word of our King. The dead fotatau’s words are as naught to them. This is their ultimatum —that pakeha missionaries or settlers living among them must acknowledge their King’s sovereignty. Those who give allegiance to the foreign Queen must be expelled as traitors, whether the land they live on is their own or another’s. We say that only a mighty Saviour can uncover the magic power of Peace which lay buried at Vfaitara with the sacred person of Pukehawani (the Maori Deity). Let the pakeha be the first to leap over his grave and suffer the consequence.”— From Wi Patara.