LINKS WITH THE MAORI KING MOVEMENT

Turnbull Library Record, Volume IV, 1 July 1941, Page 12

LINKS WITH THE MAORI KING MOVEMENT

C.R.H.T.

recently through the kindness of Mrs. Lindsay Mackersey of Hastings, the library received a letter written by the famous Maniapoto Chief, Rewi Manga Maniapoto. It is an insignificant and humble little note, yet it is one of the few that survive, written by such an eminent Maori, one of the last of the older order. From Mamuorihi on June 24, 1878, he writes (translated) “To Charlie Brown, Friend, greeting. My word to you is for one tea kettle and one bucket to cook tea. You give them to me. That is all. From Manga Maniapoto.’’ Tare Paraone, Komihano (Waitara).

Charles Brown (Tare Paraone) was civil Commissioner (Komihano) in this region from 1875. He also derives a certain interest in that he was the son of Charles Armitage Brown, the friend of Keats and his circle.

Rewi Maniapoto received his name at baptism in the Roman Catholic Church, but he reverted to Manga during the King movement. Perhaps the most spectacular event of this remarkable movement was the destruction, at the instigation of Rewi, of the Government press at Te Awamutu. It was here that John (later Sir John) Eldon Gorst produced and published on behalf of the Government, the short-lived little paper Pihoihoi Mokemoke, which was designed to counter the propaganda of the Maoris’ paper Te Hokioi. Sets of these papers are in the Library.

The full story of the many developments of these years are fully and interestingly told in “The Maori King” by Gorst, 1864. In the Library is probably the most interesting copy of this work one can imagine. This was formerly owned by Sir Thomas Gore Browne, Governor of New Zealand 1855-1861. It is well known that Governor Gore Browne’s term of office separated the two terms of Sir George Grey. The Taranaki land question was leading apparently to war when Gore Browne was relieved of office and Grey recalled. Not unnaturally, he felt some chagrin at being so displaced, and in the copious notes that cover scores of margins of this book he justifies, explains and discloses many of his actions, such as are nowhere else so clarified. Incidentally, Gorst himself is at times cor-

rected or taken to task for his mis-statements. The volume is a document that no careful historian of the period can afford to overlook. It has one additional interest, for it was a gift from Bishop W. L. Williams to Alexander Turnbull in 1911.

Gorst was absent from New Zealand for over thirty years after these events, and returned in 1906 to represent the British Government at the Christchurch Exhibition. Subsequently he published New Zealand Revisited in 1908, and in its pages he tells how, again living in memory the eventful past, he found copies of Pihoihoi in the library of Mr. Turnbull in Wellington.