TE RAUPARAHA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1940, Page 3

TE RAUPARAHA

4 ANNIVERSARY OF DEATH. (N.J.8.) November 27, 1849, was a memorable day in Otaki history—the day on which the celebrated Maori warrior chieftain. Te Rauparaha, passed away. Readers of Alan Mulgan’s outstanding centennial compilation, "The City of' the Strait.” might again turn to page 138 and assure themselves of this fact, and also wonder what lay at the back of its author's mind when he inserted the brief footnote thereon which merely hints at the strange legend concerning the surreptitious later exhumation of Te Rauparaha’s body from the Otaki Mission Church cemetery to some secret cave or other on Kapiti Island—this celebrated Ngati Toa strategist’s once historic stronghold when waging internecine warfare on the mainland tribes, whose peoples were not sorry, it is said, to see the body thus removed from “Rangiatea’s” sacred burial ground; choose his own trusty tribesmen, the midnight hours or the open light of day. Be the legend true or untrue. I care not, for the fact of his epitaph beingdecipherable when I first copied it down for future reference (forty years back) still reads good and historic to me:—

E Tapu ana Tenci Hei Whakamaharatanga Ki a Te Rauparaha i mate i te 27 O Nga ra 0 Nowema i te 1849 O Nga Tau O to Ta tori Ariki. It is just possible that the above inscription on Te Rauparaha s original graveplot headstone (an iron one at that) is not decipherable today; and thus I feel pleased to pass it on to those wishing to see ancient (and especially historic) graves and headstones preserved in howsoever humble a way. The lovely Norfolk Island pine overshadowing this spot may also have passed away; but its /beauty is also entwined in personal memory with that of my long-since-deceased Pressman-comrade, the late Mr George Henry Cullen, of Masterton. Then a member of the “Otaki Mail' staff. Mr Cullen first showed me the way to Rauparaha’s grave.