OUT OF THE PAST.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 283, 30 November 1933, Page 9

OUT OF THE PAST.

AGED MAORI SPEAKS. LAST OF HER GENERATION. BATTLES OF LONG AGO. I "... And the pakelia wanted our land, but the Maori he wanted not. Once, long ago, the Maoris were many ! and the pakelia few. Now it is the pakelia who are many and we few. It were better that the Maori followed the customs of his ancestors. . . " The aged, tired voice sank to silence. The pipe in her lined hands found a trembling, uncertain way to lier mouth, j Time-worn herself, she sat on the sunny j verandah of a time-worn little house at j I Orakei and gazed.. Though her weak old j eyes scarce could see the little children, j standing within a few yards of her, wide-eyed at the presence of the unaccustomed stranger, yet the corridors of time down which she looked with other J eyes were long indeed aiid re-echoed to many a footstep. Not a modern bus on a modern highway she saw, but bloody battle in many a pa, sudden desperate sallies, the hated redcoat and the peace that was brought to Tawhiao, the first of the kings, by the rangatira, Sir George Grey. These things' she saw, for she is very old —but five more years will see her century. She is the last of her generation in Auckland. She- is one of ! the last in New Zealand. She is one of the hapu of the Ngati-Ruanui, and has lived within a few miles of Auckland for 95 years-. She is Rawinia Tainui, widow of Te Hira Pateoro, who saw the landing of Hobson at Orakei, 92 years ago. One of the old-time Maoris, she has never learned to speak English, so that the conversation was carried on through her daughter-in-law, who interpreted. And because she is so old, she has lost touch with the generation she has outlived; and has only to sit and gaze into the past where she rightly belongs, and into the future where past and present meet.

Maoris Very Brave. She sits and gazes, and scarcely notices her little great-grandchildren who have learned to patter in a tongue which she does not understand. She is waiting, and she thinks all the time, and is content to think, of her "rangatira," as she called him, Te Hira Pateoro, who 6uch a little time ago died and broke the association between them that was as long as an average person's lifetime. It interested her to talk, and she gesticulated with trembling hands, and lier voice quavered like her gesticulations. "Ah! the Maoris," she said, and oft repeated, "they were always brave, but the pakelia soldiers, they were not, not very, anyway. They attacked the Maori because they wanted his land. I remember a fight at Panmure"—though of its date she was uncertain, except . that it was before the Waikato war —"where my people were attacked on a ridge called by the older Maoris Apaarangi. We women, I unwilling]}', for I was young and very I fierce then, had been sent, as was the [custom, to the topmost part of the hill I by the leader, Molii Te Aliiatenga, to be I safe, so that I could see the battle, i "The pakelia had many guns and j many men. But we had defences of I earth, and we held the hill. We were j very brave. Just below me, when the fighting was fierce, I saw one of our warriors, Horomana, shot through here and here"—she pointed to her breast. "He stood very still and then fell like a stricken tree. There was a flash past j me, and down sped his daughter, who j was young and fierce, like me. She I lifted her father, but he would move no more for ever. She looked back to us j and down at the pakelia. Then she took his gun and his bullets; but she came not back to the women. She joined the men and she fought in the place of her father; for have I not said that the Maoris were brave? Ae, and though the pakelia tried, they could not take the hiil." Sir George Grey. Then she spoke of war again, war in the Waikato. "Now I have said that the pakelia soldiers were not very brave; but in this war they were, as brave as the Maori. Because, white man, the Maoris were fighting for their lives and their land; but the pakelias for the Maoris' land." "And what of Sir George Grey?" she i was asked, "Do you remember Sir George j Grey?" . .

Ah, Ta Hori Kerei, the rangatira jHe was. tli3 Governor in those days;" | returned this old. lady, then a young j woman when the present generation was ; not yet born. "Ta Hori Kerei. The j Maoris liked liim, for he was brave, a | good man; and our Tawhiao trusted j him.- He went to tell the pakeha and j the Maoris to stop fighting, for he was i unafraid. One day just below Otorohanga, as he stood talking to Tawhiao, Te Kooti rode up on his horse, clad' in his dress of war. At the feet of Tawliiao he laid down his guns and his ammunition, for he thought that the king would return them to him, meaning that he might then go and kill all the pakeha; but Tawhiao, also a rangatira, set his foot on the weapons of Te Kooti, so Te Kooti coiikl only ride away. "Ae, Ta Hori Kerei was a rangatira. Would that they all had l>een like him!" "And Tawhiao, what was he like?'' "Tawhiao? A rangatira, too, a great warrior; but all pakehas have seen him. His pictures are on the money, the banknotes." The Building of the Canoe. She fell again to silence, and as she looked ahead, over the little settlement there at Orakei, an overseas steamer passed 011 its way to distant lands, ol' which she has never heard. Again she spoke. "111 my days there were many canoes out there, but never a canoe like that. The canoe Taheretikitiki, I saw them make. A kauri, a great kauri, grew at Puketua, near Waimauku. We cut it down, and the canoe builder hollowed it out with, with . . ." but she could not find the words to explain. ("From Waimauku across to Pitoitoi. Riverhead, we hauled it with ropes of flax, women, as well as men, for it was very heavy, but it did not crack, which was a «ood omen.'' "Tt used to be just out yonder," she said, pointing to an open space in front of her house, "but long since it has gone. And so are the Maoris passing," as an after thought, "so are the Maoris passing." And then, this old, old woman, one of the last of her generation, gave to the Maoris of the present a message out of the past. "Passing." she said, "we are passing l . In my days the pas were full. Xow they are empty. Jc were better that the Maori followed the customs of his ancestors. It wenbetter that the children were taughi their own tongue and not another. Iwere better that the Maoris were their own arts and crafts. I'or t!) Maori is a Maori and can never bi- .. pakeha."