MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1940, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

JUSTICE AND COURTESY. (Recorded by of Palmerston North, for the ''Times-Age.’') Wiremu Kumeti, whose name means “solid wooden bowl,” went on a sporting trip from Waikato to Taranaki. General Pitt reported that in a reckless Maori attack on the British redoubt, Kumeti and thirty other Maoris were killed. Kumeti’s name is still on record as “a leader of fame who died there in a heroic effort to reclaim the Maori heritage.” This report, confirmed by his tribe, turned out to be a deliberate attempt to raise him in the minds of his enemies and friends to the high estate of “having risen from the dead.” Having harvested his crops, Kumeti went down the Waikato river to sell his produce and buy powder and shot with which to carry on his war of extermination against the invaders. Finding that his “disciples” and other tribes had ceased fighting, he made a joke of his divine claims, and admitted that he had been “killed spiritually by the Governor’s Gazette.

The Parliamentary Assembly, supported by the Chief Justice and the Bishop of Nev; Zealand, confirmed Wiremu Kingi’s claim to the Waitara land, and declared that its seizure was merely a conspiracy of the Taranaki settlers, who wanted it for themselves. Others declared that the dispute between Wiremu and the Governor should be referred to a court of justice, and that the Governor could not justly or legally be both judge and claimant. This illegal aspect of the question was not made public, but the logical mind of these primitive people saw the injustice from the beginning, yet natural courtesy awaited the declaration tq be first proclaimed by those who were to blame.