MAORI WOMAN’S DEATH

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24932, 20 July 1946, Page 2

MAORI WOMAN’S DEATH

AGE OF 105 YEARS REPUTED

OTHER INSTANCES OF LONGEVITY

(P.A.) ROTORUA, July 19. Reputedly at the age of 105, the death occurred this week at Murupara of Mrs Aka Nihi Parakiri. According to her relatives, she would have celebrated her hundred and sixth birthday on July 24 had she lived. Her husband, a member of the Tuhoe tribe, died in 1913, and of her family four sons and a daughter survive. The eldest son lives at Wanganui and the others at Murupara. Two sons have been in receipt of the age benefit for a considerable time.

The late Mrs Parakiri retained all her faculties to the end and some confirmation of her extreme age is found in her recollection of events at the time of the Tarawera eruption 60 years ago. She was living at Fort Galatea but, being driven from there, the family moved to Murupara, where Mrs Parakiri had lived ever since.

One apparently authenticated episode in the late Mrs Parakiri’s early life is that she was baptised by Bishop Pompallier, the pioneer Roman Catholic B bishop in New Zealand, when he first visited the Urewera Country about 1840. While it is practically impossible to verify claims of age among Maoris, evidence is increasing that among some of the tribes longevity is not uncommon.

Judge J. Harvey, of the Rotorua Native Land Court, says that in the last four months he had granted probate in the wills of three Maori women, all of them well over the century. One who died at Opotiki was reputed to be 103 and another at Tauranga. who had a granddaughter drawing the age benefit, was stated to be the same age. The third, who lived near Oruanui, had a brother SQme years her junior who was named Pitiroi, the Maori version of Fitzroy, after the Governor of New Zealand who was in office between 1843 and 1845.