MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 July 1939, Page 9

MAORI MEMORIES

LEAVING KAWHIA FOR KAPITI. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) In the centuries preceding the advent of the Pakeha, each of the numerous Maori tribes were deadly opposed to the others. The reason for this isolation did not lay in differences of religious belief, or of the many narrow creeds and formalities as of today throughout the wide world. The main factors were isolation. ' not knowing each other, and the strict prohibition of intertribal marriage enforced by the priests.

Rauparaha’s tribe, the Ngatitoa, and the Ngatiawa. though closely allied in the one aim to be the first and only ones to secure firearms, and thus to conquer every other tribe and its land, were quite ready to kill and eat each other once their main object was attained.

The Ngati Manai’apoto, north of Kawhia, and the Waikato tribes had traces of community with Rauparaha’s Ngatitoas in the days of the canoe voyage, so that wily schemer arranged for a truce at least until his secret objective of fire arms and conquest were attained. He also generously ceded the rich lands of Kawhia to Te Wherowhero’s Waikato tribe as a token of his (temporary) sincerity.

The Ngatitoa left Kawhia, their fatherland, in tears, about 1819. Four hundred of them including 170 trained Warriors whose journey through other tribal lands would occupy more than one season. This would have been a most difficult problem but for Rauparaha’s previous journey and his priest’s wise prediction of a coming famine, causing the tribes to store a year's supply of food.

The farewell to their well-beloved land was “Kawhia remain in peace—we go to Kapiti and to Waipounamu" (the waters of greenstone in the South Island). The resting place of their past generation was more dear to them than any living creature on earth. Their faith in the great leader alone induced them to leave.