TE KOOTI.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 45, 22 February 1934, Page 5

TE KOOTI.

DEATH AND BURIAL. BODY OFTEN DISTURBED. ZEAL OF HIS FOLLOWERS. (Contributed.) Few men were more familiar with that great hinterland of the early days which stretched from the King Country to the Urewera Country, and on to the Mahia and Mohaka, than the famous rebel Te Kooti. His knowledge enabled him to escape capture when hunted for three years by some of the best bushmen, both Maori and European, that New Zealand has ever seen. In the end (in 18S3) he was included in an amnesty to all political offenders, and he and his people were given a block of 000 acres of land at Ohiwa, near Whakatane. He died in 1893.

Wherever the roads and river-beds Were passable Te Kooti would drive in a buggy. His last journey was down the Whakatane Valley from Ruatoki to Whakatane, and over the hills to Maraetotara. Further . than that wheeled traffic could not go, and there he camped with his followers for the night. While pitching camp Te Kooti, who was not feeling very well, wrapped himself in a rug and lay down. Some dogs started fighting, and put an empty dray in motion. It had been left on a slope above Te Kooti's resting-place, and a wheel ran on to him. He was taken along to a fishing camp at Te Horo, where he died a day or so later. The buggy remained just as Te Kooti had left it, a hut was built over it, and the place declared sacred. Buggy and shed crumbled to pieces long ago, and not a vestige of either now remains. Te Kooti's body was removed secretly by night by a few of his followers and taken across the Ohiwa harbour in a canoe and was buried at Waiotahi. His belongings, such as ploughs, harness,

harrows and other farm implements, and tools, several coils of barbed wire and some sheets of galvanised iron, were carried to the top of Hokianga Island, in the Ohiwa harbour, and buried in a great pit. ! Consternation prevailed amongst a | rival faction of the tribe when the body j disappeared. They searched far and jiiear for about throe months, and would never have found it but for its removal to a safer place. Finding traces of the way they went the second faction stole a march on the first and secured the body. They took it across Ohiwa again in a canoe in the dead of night and back to Te Horo, where they buried it in a little gully up in the fern hills. But the fir = t claimants were not to be denied. After a long search the hunt returned to Te Horo and the resting place was found. The body was again disturbed in the darkness and taken to Wainui, where Te Kooti's land is situated. There it was hidden away in a place known only to three Maoris. When one of the three dies the burial place is shown to a third party by the remaining two. A hut was built on a spur amongst high fern and tea-tree and a large family Bible, with Te Kooti's day-book, written in Maori, also his mere and saddle p.tid bridle were placed in the hut. A very powerful tapu was placed on the building and it was left unlocked.

A few years later two men looked into the hut. One took a stirrup leather to replace one he had broken. The Maoris said he (would lose his hand. He lost the middle finger shortly afterwards. The other man took the mere and the Maoris predicted his sudden death. He was killed years afterwards in the Great War. The hut stood for years surrounded by hundreds of acres of high fern and tea-tree. Time and again the whole country was swept by fire, which burned right up to the walls, leaving the whole country blackened and bare, but the hut was untouched. A monument now stands nearby, to which hundreds of Maoris belonging to the Eingatu Church, of which Te Kooti was the head, make a pilgrimage on July 1 of each year. A feast is held and the rites of the church are observed. Such was the end of the most hunted man in New Zealand. An outlaw, he roamed the back country for years, pursued the whole time by both European and Maori, but slipping through their lines to raid both Europeans and natives almost whenever ho liked. His name will long be remembered on the east coast.