TE KOOTI RELIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 21 September 1938, Page 9

TE KOOTI RELIC.

GIFT TO MUSEUM.

HISTORIC CARBINE.

u*m> nr bioodt massacres

i (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, thie day. 1 Gift of Mrs. J. O. W. Dalrymple, } Wellington, whose late husband made 1 a collection of interesting weapons, an < historic muzzle-loading carbine hae been acquired by the Dominion J Museum. Captured by Te Kooti's ' followers Ifhen they seized the schooner j Rifleman at the Chatham Islands in ( 1868, it was subsequently used by the ( Maori rebels against the whites in i bloody massacres of the Haubau rising, ' ■ays the "Dominion." The carbine is a long-barrelled .577 ealibre Enfleld, fired with a percussion cap, the last type of muzzle-loader used j in the British Army. It was this type which was converted a few years later to a breech-loader by the adaption of i the Snider breech-block and cartridge extractor. The weapon is in excellent condition, and would be an interesting piece even without its historic associations. Inadequate Guard. The story behind this antique firearm tells how Te Kooti' Rikirangi, an East Coast Maori, exiled without trial to Waitangi after the fall of the Hauhau stronghold Waerenga-a-Hika, gained repute among the Maori prisoners as a prophet of Jehovah. He the prisoner* rose in arms, tomah ** k< ~ a trooper against whom they had a grievance, overpowered the Jgf-g inadequate guard, end *euea w»

schooner lying at anchor in the bay. The captain was put ashore and the first mate ordered on pain of death to navigate the schooner to Poverty Bay. With all the available arms and ammunition, including thie old carbine, the rebel band returned to their native land.

It is told of Te Kooti that on the way he dumped overboard his uncle, whose influence he regarded as subversive. He declared him to be a Jonah!

Seizing a quantity of further weapons and munitions of war at Paparatu, Te Kooti and his men fled into the Urewera. Thence they descended on the infant township of Gisborne and massacred 33 white eettlers, men, women and children, at Matawhero. They seized an ammunition train at Patutahi. Besieged by Colonel Whitmore at Ngatapa, they escaped down a sheer cliff under cover of darkness and were back in the safety of the ranges. There were more massacres at Whakatane and Mohaka. Evaded White Scouts. Whitmore hunted Te Kooti through the wild Urewera, where white men had never penetrated. It was in vain. For a dozen years, with a price of £5000 on his head, he evaded the white scouts. He crossed into the King Country and tried to raise an army in the Waikato. A small spare figure with the hooked nose and commanding eye of a Roman general, a straggling white beard, the name Rikirangi tattooed across his chest, and a sixth sense to warn him of impending danger, he was never taken. In 1883 he was pardoned. He died 10 years later, and his body was buried secretly in the Urewera fastnesses.

Of those wild years, within the lifetime of living men, few relics remain, and those which pass into the hands of the Dominion Museum—a carved house, an ancient carbine—will prove of great i interest to the historians of to-morrow.

In addition to the gun, Mrs. Dalrymple presented to the museum a bundle of interesting swords, including a Georgian duelling sword, South \merican machete, Ghurka kukri, and a cavalry sabre believed to have been used in the Charge of the Light Brigade,