MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 November 1940, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

THE DOWNFALL (HINGA). (Recorded by J.H.S., of Palmerston North, for the “Times-Age.”) The pioneers ol Waikato had no occasion to fear the Maoris, who were concerned mainly with obtaining guns and munitions with which to exterminate rival tribes. At that time every tribe, family and- individual, were, in their own attitude and opinion, quite independent of others. A great huihuinga (meeting) would unanimously decide to, forbid the sale of produce, particularly pigs and potatoes, to pakehas, as a protest against their increasing occupation of Maori lands. Yet, to show their independence, the old women (kuia), scores of them, would rush the township at the dawn of day, laden with baskets of root crops, driving pigs in hundreds to exchange for blankets, dresses, sugar and trinkets. Thus would they prove their individual right of action. Wiremu Tamihana, who was versed in Scripture lore, wrote to Governor Browne in 1861: —“I had a great house built as an assembly for all tribes to combine in one interest. It is a veritable Temple of Babel. I set up the Maori king, the runanga, the magistrate and the one Faith. But the blood of my people has turned to water. Your people in the attempt to make it boil with waipiro (evil smelling grog), will, alas, succeed and we will-fall into the swamp. You mark my words. Our holy system of tapu (sacred: sanctified) you destroyed by a false idea of ahi ka roa (everlasting fire). So the evil in the Maori has no restraint.”

Tamihana’s word was verified by the outbreak of the Maori war to exterminate the pakeha for whom they had hitherto shown affection and given protection to.