MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 October 1940, Page 3

MAORI MEMORIES

TECHNICAL SCHOOLS FOR MAORIS. (Recorded by J.H.S., of Palmerston North, for the “Times-Age.”) The most numerous and altogether the strongest Hapu (tribe) of all Maori forces was the Mana ia polo whose name suggested “brief influence.” an altogether misleading title. Their policy was steady hostility to all Europeans. Hanga tiki (transport work) was the suggestive name of their main fort, from which they made their regular raids on our settlers. Rewi, their great chief, was our principal enemy. Wiremu Tamihana, chief of the Ngati Haua (tribal anger), though a strongsupporter of the Maori King movement, steadily sought peace between the Maori and Pakeha. Having ,beeii the means of stopping the Taranaki war. Wiremu was regarded by Rewi as a renegade. Wiremu was a peacemaker. Rewi a Hitler. In those days the Ngati Haua tribe, with the inherited instinct of their migratory ancestors, had a small fleet of modern schooners on which they carried the whole supply of wheat and many vegetables io the Auckland market via the Hauraki Gulf. Their home was in the fertile valleys and their safe retreat was the natural fortress “Maunga Tautari,” an isolated mountain protected by giant trees growing close together “like tautari” (the reeds bound together on the inner walls of a house). The Waikato Maoris gave land for a Mission station on the bank of the’ Mangahoe where Sir George Grey, at their request, established the first Industrial School to teach trades to Maoris, the best and most useful system of education in existence, yet war wiped it off the map for more than half a century and destroyed the civilisation of the Maori race for another hundred years. Our Technical Schools would redeem the Maori boys and girls, yet our education authorities are silent on the one hope of their redemption—work.