THE MARAE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 103, 3 May 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE MARAE.

MAORI MEETING GROUNDS. 3JHE ANCIENT VII.LAGE SQUARE .(By J.C.) ; i In a lecture in Auckland lately Dr. Pet6r Buck, who lias seen so much of the Polynesian islands during the last few years, spoke of the Maori practice from times immemorial of holding tribal meetings on the village square, the marae, and said that this custom was more closely observed than in any of the South Sea Islands. Perhaps Te Rangibiroa could have made an exception in the case of Samoa. But the Maori is the only race which preserves the word marae so markedly as an everyday expression for the community meetingground; in the Eastern Pacific Islands it remains only as a relic of the past, applied to the ancient stonework places of worship and sacrifice whose ruins are seen in many a sacred grove. Nearly every important marae in Maori Land has its special name, bestowed often in honour of some tribal ancestor, or commemorating some episode of the past. The lakeside village square at Ohinemutu, Rotorua, is called Te Papa-i-ouru. This is the most remarkable tribal campus New Zealand. On two sides of it hot springs send up their steam clouds, wool-white against the blue of lake and sky. There is much artistry in wood-carving about it; the' meetinghouse Tama-te-Kapua faces it on the south; the Maori mission church on the north; there is an old carved flagstaff, with a name of its own, the mast called Hou-taiki. Sixty years ago there was a high double stockade across the landward side of the square, with a trench for riflemen; in those days many of the .Arawa of Rotorua lived for safety on the Muruika Peninsula, about where the Maori church now stands. An Island Marae. There is, or rather was, an Arawa marae of sinister and tragic memory. This is the assembly ground called Te Pakira, on the top of the pretty island Motutawa, in the Shellfish Lake, Rotokakahi. Here the Tuhoarangi tribe,.whose descendants now live at Whakarewarewa, had their headquarters over a century ago, and here they met and planned the massacre of a party of Ngapuhi people who were visiting Lakeland, a massacre instigated by that cunning villain of old time, Te Rauparaha. The Northern men were killed singly as they were landiri" in canoes from the mainland, or wlu.i they readied the marae. That red deed was the undoing of the Arawa, for it was to avenge it that Hongi Hißa and his army of gun-ar'med Ngapuhi invaded the Lakes Country and captured Mokoia Island, killing hundreds and leading many away as slaves. To-day Motutawa is silent, a green place of tapu, small-wooded everywhere like a wild park, peopled only by ghosts; it is the burial place of Tuhourangi's chiefs. Famous Hinemoa, too, was buried there, in a recess of the steep bank below Te Pakira marae. Some places come to mind as villages with a model marae. One of the neatest and best-arranged I have seen is Meremere Pa, in South Taranaki. It is near the main road along the level top of the Meremere hills, from which you see Hawera town spread out in the distance and old Egmont rising beyond in a snowcone of pearly glitter and blue haze, the mountain god of this good land. At the inner end of the marae the parade ground is closed by an old-fashioned carved house; on either side is a straight and regular row of whares. At one side of this grassy campus is a flagstaff; here aforetime stood the Hauhaus' squarerigged Niu flying its war flags. On a Mountain-top. Parinni, high up the Wanganui River, in the wildest part of the great canyon country, is perhaps the most healthilyset marae in New Zealand. Certainly I have seen nothing to equal its situation for bold beauty of outlook. The village is on a hilltop three to four hundred feet above the river gorge, narrowing to a cliff-edge; it occupies the site of an ancient fortified pa. The summit of the mountain has been levelled off for ithe marae, at one end is the large carved meeting-house; at the other are the houses of the local tribe, the NgatiRuru—appropriate enough, it means the Bush Owls clan. On one side of the long parallelogram of a campus when I saw it was a large tent-house for meals; on tha opposite side were the cooking quarters. Inland, below the cookhouses, a clear mountain stream rushed down a little gully; from this camp water supply was drawn by means of buckets —filled by a lad on the creek bank — drawn up with a light hauling line and travelling block rigged on a wire rope. All around, wherever one looked, there were ranges upon ranges, of broken and often savage aspect; ranges with great scars where the papa rock was exposed by landslips; ranges and forests upon forests. The winds blew pure and free across Parinui's top. They cannot but develop ravenous appetites, those NgatiRuru and their guests. A King Country Sanctuary. Ia the old days, before the Rohepotae country was settled by pakeha farmers, we knew a place called the Marae-o-Hine as a Maori farm, a pleasant place with grass fields and orchards, that made a welcome break in the great expanse of the fern wastes south of the Puniu River. It was the home of a pioneer Frenchman, Louis Hetet, who settled among the Ngati-Maniapoto and became the head of a rangatira halfcaste family, numerous in the King Country to-day. The track to Otorohanga passed through the Marae-o-Hine a mile or two before that Maori village wa3 reached. It was a place with an uncommon history. In ancient days it was a sanctuary, or camp of refuge, shadowed over by the mana of a great lady. Here, about 300 years ago, lived Hine, the daughter of the chief Maniapoto. She was an "Ariki-tapairu, a chieftainess of high degree, renowned alike for her beauty and _ for her love of peace. When she proclaimed her wish that warlike dissensions should never trouble her home, her desire became Jaw among Ngati-Maniapoto. "In former times/' a descendant of Hine told me, "when war-parties from the other side of the Waipa River, the went, came this way in pursuit of a flying enemy, 'they ceased _ the chase when they came near Mohoaonui and. thereabouts (Otorohanga). They would not cross the river or otherwise trespass on the sacrtd soii." It is a peaceful land of many homes to-dav, this rich land on the east side of the Waipa, where the wvr ttetestnig Hine kept open house for A he flying and th£ wounded three centuries ago, L