MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 August 1940, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

HORSES AT £1 PER HEAD. (Recorded by . J.H.S., o£ Palmerston North for the “Times-Age.”) Captain Jackson Barry’s old records report that in 1842 when there were very few settlers in Taranaki, all were practically at the mercy of the Maoris who were thought to number ten to one of our available men. Mr Cdrrington was busy selecting and preparing to survey the “site of that embryo capital cit/ of New Zealand,” when 80'0 half naked savages paraded the locality “dancing and gesticulating in perfec' unison, thrusting out red tongues al most to touch Adam’s apple, stretchinc quivering fingers as though 1600 hands were automatically controlled by machinery, then repeated explosive voices which sounded like the explosions of a big gun, caused the surveyors to run for shelter to Dicky Barret’s whare.”

The shipment of 400 horses from Taranaki to India a century ago by c Mr Smith is also told by the same his torian. These were said by Barry to have been bred from two pairs which had been secured by the Maoris in exchange for a vast tract of bush country. Fifty years later Mr John Stevens, of Rangitikei, actuated by the report from those Taranaki Maori horse dealers of their original “splendid. sale of .£1 per head ” bought three separate cargoes of 600 well-bred horses and took them to India where they were sold to the British Army stationed there. He paid £l2 10s per head, for them here, the cost of transit was £7 10s, and the price realised averaged £25. /X fair number of these were lassooed on the Taupo plains and broken in by the Maoris.