THE LAST REBEL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 204, 30 August 1933, Page 6

THE LAST REBEL.

Hone Toia, who died lately at Waima, Hokianga, .it the. a<re of seventy-two, helped to make a little history in his day. lie was the , last Maori to lead his tribe in a rieins against the pakeha law. It was not a particularly serious revolt, and it was quite bloodless, nevertheless it aroused considerable excitement and some trepidation in North New Zealand, and in one- way and another it piled up a large bill for the taxpayers at large. There was a later unpleasantness between Government and Maori, this time . involving the loss of life —Ruatapu the prophet's collision°with the armed police, at Maungapohatu, in the Urewera Country. But that was a quite unpremeditated shooting affair; at any rate the Maoris did not take to their guns until they 1 saw their leader seized by the police, and then they rushed to defend him in a sudden fit of anger. But Hone Toia's little rebellion of eighteen years earlier was the last deliberately- ■ planned act of armed resistance to the Government by a native tribe. Hone was a chief of the Mahurehure tribe, a small clan which had always been rather given : to fighting for fighting's sake. In their beautiful valley of Waima and Taheke they waxed fat, and every now and again sallied out on the warpath. That was in the old days; and the old tradition persisted. In the 'nineties the Mahurehuro grew restless again and Hone and hie people found in the dog tax and the rates levied by the Hokianga County Council a highly annoying interference with Maori liberties as assured by tho Treaty of Waitangi. Hone was something of a soothsayer as well as a patriotic leader; he practised the ancient art of "whiowhio," or calling up the whistling spirits of the dead, and the voices of martial ancestors spoke through him to the people. Tho night seances in the meetinghouse at Pukemiro, Hone's headquarters in the Waima Valley, worked the assemblage up to the fighting point. Over two or three years rifles and shotguns and abundant ammunition were laid in, and in May, 1898, seventy or eighty men were ready for the war path. There was a very narrow escape indeed from fighting when a Government armed force of 120 men marched from Kawene to Waima, over a wooded range where the Mahurehure lay in ambush on both sides of the road. But for the opportune arrival in the Maori camp of Mr. Hone Heke, M.H.R., who had hurried np from Wellington and rode at top speed from Whangarei to Waima, using frequent relays of horses, the hidden natives would have fired on the troops marching in close order along the track below them. , Through Heke's intervention. Hone and Jiis principal "men surrendered next day. They were charged with treason and making war on the portentous 'ndictments which, after all, brought mild punishment. When Hone emerged from" prison after nine months he was a popular hero in the North. He had asserted the dignity and mana of the Maori, and by his prudent surrender had saved his people from War and slaughter. And all ended very agreeably indeed, for the local authorities, with a tact and humour combined which authorities too seldom display, appointed Hone Toia the official dog tax: registrar and collector for his tribal district; and peace reigned ever afterwards in the beautiful valley of Waima, , —J-C-