MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 July 1939, Page 3

MAORI MEMORIES

EXIT RAUPARAHA.

(Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”)

Tamihana, son of Rauparaha, conformed to the ways and teachings of the church missions of which he became a member and an eloquent preacher. He would have been a National reformer among his bewildered people, but for the deplorable fact that half a dozen self-seeking unprincipled men who became popular preachers among them, w’ere discovered by the Maoris in circumstances unworthy of their professed principles. This was chiefly in connection with what the Maoris called Tahae Whenua (land robbery). Unworthy exponents of every good cause are its worst enemies.

Sir George Grey arranged the capture of Rauparaha near Plimmerton, and when he was released in 1846 he made a profession of Christianity, and was reported by his son Tamihana .and Bishop Hadfield as “a true Christian, repentant to the hour of his death on the evening of November 27, 1849.” During those three years he directed the Maoris in the building of his own Maori Church in the village of Otaki. The place he had named “Hadfield” in honour of the good missionary then stationed there. The association of Rauparaha with his tribal atrocities even caused a prejudice against the name of his good confessor, so the village is still “Otaki.” The church building after 93 years is sound, and is the most substantial of its kind in New Zealand.

Dr. Thompson, of the British regiment, saw the death of the old scoundrel, and doubted his sincerity to the last breath. The doctor's summing up of the final unrepentant scene was: “But age and his passions had written the message of fate on his brow, And out from the Shadows came Death, with his pitiless syllable ‘Now.’ ”