MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 July 1940, Page 8

MAORI MEMORIES

CONVERTING THE MAORIS. (Recorded by J.U.S., of Palmerston North. ’ for the “Times-Age.”) In 1855 a settler named Marsden, in a state of delirium through drink, murdered a Maori woman. After a long trial he was sentenced to death. - ' The Governor’s absence in the South caused another long delay which prompted the Maoris to say that a Maori life was of far less value than that of a Pakeha. This was followed by a similar crime at Port Ahuriri where another white drunkard killed a Maori. In both instances the Maoris claimed that the person primarily responsible for the crime was he who served the poisonous liquor, and that he also should be indicted. Wholesale robberies, hitherto little known among the Maoris, were practised as Utu for these wrongs. They yearned for human sacrifice as proof that the blood of a Maori was equal in the eye of the law to that of a Pakeha. The hatred of international wars is a trifle when compared with that of races or families morally separated yet locally mingled. Rauparaha, who died some six years earlier at Otaki.. noted for his acts of revenge against the Pakeha confiscation of Maori lands, now became a holy spirit in Maori memory, and was worshipped as a God, sacrificed by white men. Rauparaha was not known to us until contaminated by many of the vices and endowed.with but few of the virtues r.f civilised life. No man knew better how to direct others to desperate deeds without risk to himself. He was small and wiry with a wide but receding forehead. Such was his selfish cunning that for fifty years he eluded danger and died in his blanket at home, pretending to have become a Christian convert.