THE ARIKI.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 161, 9 July 1926, Page 5

THE ARIKI.

SIR JAMES CARROLL'S EARLY DAYS.

MAORI BITES, AND WARPATH ADVENTURES.

(By J.C.)

"The Chief of Chiefs,'' the -acred head of the clan, is the pakelw equivalent of '"Te Ariki," the terms by which that most picturesque figure of the New Zealand Legislature, the Hon. Sir James Carroll, is affectionately known to-day among his friends of both races. The jovial "Timi Kara" of earlier days, when hearts were young and when life was taken less seriously, perhaps, than it is to-day, ga\ - e place to the more dignified "fa Hemi' , when a knighthood was bestowed as a Royal mark of recognition and regard 15 years ago. To-day, with his seventieth birthday only a few weeks ahead, Sir James feels the weight of hie years now and again, and his recent sudden illness, from which he made a happily quick recovery, is a reminder that life is a more hazardous adventure at threescore and ten than it was even when the Ilauhau bullets were whistling merrily around old Waikaremoana shore fifty-odd years ago. "Te Ariki" has always been distinguished for his warrior mien, his straight, soldierly bearing, as much as for his gift of poetic eloquence. "The tongue of the tui" has been his from birth: and he was a youngster of only 13 when he marched out on his first war-path. There wasn't much drill, there was less uniform, in his campaigning life, but there was hereditary warrior pride, the strenuous work of the field, that put the military fire into the Wairoa boy. that stiffened his backbone and made of a child a competent and fearless bush-fighter.

Carroll's early boyhood is a curious little story. One day, when we discussed that campaign of 1870 against the Hauhaus at Waikaremoana, the Ariki told how he was taken away when an infant into the heart of the wild Maori country, and he did not see a white fa« till he was seven years old. His father, the pioneer trader of the Wairoa, had no voice in the matter; the kinsfolk of Tapuke, his mother, had the disposal of the little "tamaiti," born under the now historic cabbage-tree on the banks of the beautiful Wairoa. Th? child was "tapu'd" and "tohi'd," that is, he was consecrated with all the rites of the ancient Maori religion. The sacred ceremonies, the prayers and charms of the old tohunga school were still-used in the seclusion of the Maori country; the true Maori was faithful to his ancient gods in sprite of all the pakeha mifisionary propaganda. The Maori tohunga and ariki sixty and seventy years ago was a truly learned, skilled man, and his rites of baptism, the "tohi-tu-tama." had at the back of them the fervent desire to make the man-child brave and industrious, and, in fact, the complete man for the necessities and requirements of the Maori life.

A singular rite associated with the "tohi," or dedication of the little chief, in those days was what was known as the "Kokoti-paepae," which was intended to make proof of the child's pluck, a kind. of "case-hardening" ordeal. In former times a piece of human flesh was i placed hetween the tiny warrior's teeth; that was to make him a "Toa" warrior. A Maori equivalent for, and in one sense an improvement on, the pakeha child's "silver spoon in the mouth." The old-time Maori chief sometimes had a slave killed for the purpose. In Timi Kara's time slaves, no doubt, were scarce and probably such as there were had acquired a new sense of their importance in the world, and so raised strong objection to the chief's tomahawk. At any rate none were knocked on the head for Timi's "tohinga," which is rather a pity, for he surely would have enjoyed in these days the opportunity of describing to a Rotary Club his infantile "Kai-tangata" taste. With the Hamlin-Witty Expedition. The first white man little Timi saw was his father, who went up inland, in the Wairoa (H. 8.) Country, and ransomed him from his mother's folk, who had taken possession of him, and then a new and wonderful world opened to the Maori boy. He went to school, he wore pakeha clothes, he developed quickly into a hardy young athlete—the real thing in boy scouts. He had very early learned to go bird-snaring, and especially how to capture the kaka parrots. And when the lads of Wairoa formed a party to join the Government native expedition led by Mr. Hamlin and Lieutenant Witty, in 1870, for military operations at Lake Waikaremoana, Timi Kara was one of them; in fact, he was the senior in his squad of barefooted young "toas." That expedition was composed alnjpst entirely of Maoris of the Xgati-Kahungunu tribe, from the Mahia Peninsula to Mohaka; the only pakehas were Hamlin and Witty and J. T. Large (later Major Large).

Jimmy Carroll wore a "rapaki" or waistrshawl like his mates; there wasn't a pair of trousers in the expedition. He was armed with a Terry carbine. He had a horse, but on the return march from Waikaremoana, where Dr. Scott, an old resident of Wairoa, had joined the force, he gave up his horse to the doctor, who had broken a leg. On that homeward march Timi walked 4S miles in one day, crossing the swift Waiau River (a tributary of the Wairoa) several times. A Forest Skirmish. The most lively affair in that five months' winter campaign at Waikaremoana was the brush between a party of Carroll's comrades and some Hauhaus of the Urewera Country at Taumataua. on the north side of the lake. Forty young fellows of the Ngati-Pahauwera (the "Burnt-Beards") and others crossed over from Onepoto early one morning in canoes, to forage for potatoes in an enemy clearing in the bush. They were fired on by a scouting party of the Hauhaus from Matuahu Pa, near the entrance to the deep northern arm of the lake, and a hot skirmish followed. "When we got that volley," said Timi, "we bolted for cover under the slope of the bank above the lake and we returned the fire. There was a most dramatic picture which I've always remembered most vividly. With us wae an old warrior named Pita, a tall, lean, welltattooed man from Whangawehi, at Mahia Peninsula. Out he rushed in front of- us, bounding up and down, dashing back and forward, leaping like a deer, defying the Hauhaus and yelling to us, exhorting us. He was a perfect picture. And not a bullet touched him, though they were whizzing all about him. Not a bit did he care for the bullete, that fearless old chap, a real old-time warrior."

Another memory: "Young Wiri Witty and I each put a bullet into a Maori we saw cxouelung down in the fern. We found afterwards, when his body was examined, that he had stopped twelve bullets." A peaceful, slumbrous place to-day, those olden battle-grounds on Waikaremoana's grandly wooded shores. The Ariki especially loves to recall his cruisings around that lovely bay of many bays and little sounds, the Wairaumoana arm of the lake. A place of calm and quiet—"it's like a benediction/ 5 Timi the Peacemaker. Sir James Carroll's best work for his country and his Maori people has been done far away from Parliament Buildings. It was in peace-making that he shone, that his peculiar and great talsnts found fullest play. Thirty or forty yeare ago he was often called upon to settle disputes over lands and surveys, quarrels that threatened sometimes to develop into bloodshed. His services in 1895, when the Urewera Maoris turned back the survey parties, seized their instruments, and took to their arms because of a misunderstanding of the Government's intentions, should not be forgotten. They were sulky and suspicious in the extreme, those Urewera chiefs and their men, when we met them in that year at Ruatoki. They eat in grim silence when we arrived there from Whakatane; they called no welcome —an ominous sign—they glowered at us, ready for anything, as it seemed. There were two hundred of them there; their guns were in a large house close by. The Government party was between forty and fifty men of the Permanent Force, Auckland, Lieut. Hume supporting the civil authority, of which Colonel Roberts, the magistrate, was head. The speeches were truculent in the extreme. But the next day as I rode down to Whaaktane I met Mr. Carroll, riding a big black horse, rider and horee showing signs of hard travel. Timi Kara had ridden through from Gisborne as fast as he could come on that then difficult track. And soon after his arrival there was a wonderful change in the temper of the Ruatoki people. Timi talked, and the Urewera chiefs talked. The crooked paths were set straight, the Government's intentions made clear, the suspicions of the Maoris allayed; and very soon the chiefs were laying giins at Timi's feet in token of peace-making. And there was a later dramatic 6cene in the great meeting-house at Mataatua, in the heart of the Urewera Mountains, when Timi Kara put forth all his powers of argument, his poetic appeals to the heart of the Maori, and won them over to the side of peace and progress. The story of that tenee and moving interview in the crowded "Whai-a-te-Motu" will make a capital story in itself some time, for it deserves historical record.