DRAMATIC END

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 July 1939, Page 9

DRAMATIC END

FAMOUS MAORI CHIEF. To Heu Heu was one of the most important of the inland chiefs in 1840. As ho lived on the shores of Lake Taupo he was remote from direct European influences for some time, and he was one of the few important chiefs who refused to sign the Treaty of Waitangi. He did not even become a Christian; his reply to Bishop Selwyn is well-known: “I have come to the cross-road, and I see three ways —the English, the Wesleyan and the Roman. Each teacher says his own way is the best. I am sitting down, and doubting which guide I shall follow.” He never made up his mind. On May 7, 1846, he and his village of Te Rapa were overwhelmed by a landslip, a disaster that left only one survivor. With him was buried his famous mere. Some years later one hundred men dug up both the mere and the bones of its owner. Te Heu Hen's remains were carried high up on to Mount Ruapehu and there left on a ledge of rock, a fact that makes the mountain sacred to this day. One of the peaks of Ruapehu boars Te Heu Heu’s name. He himself in 1839 had been very indignant with John Carnc Bidwill for ascending Ngauruhoe, another mountain regarded as sacred, but a gift of tobacco had appeased his wrath.