OLD NEW ZEALAND

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 266, 5 August 1932, Page 18

OLD NEW ZEALAND

Past of the Maori Race RELICS AND HISTORY Objects That Hold Glamour Saying that Maori history was suggestive of further study, Bishop Bennett in an address to the Hastings Rotary Club, stated that the race had much that was worth perpetuating and much that was worth preserving. The bishop exhibited a number of articles dealing with Native lore and history, and gave a short account of each. The first curio'that, he showed was a spear obtained from the Chatham Islands, and in speaking of it he expounded an interesting theory with regard to the possible existence of the' moa on the islands in days gone by. Abel Tasman, he said, had recorded having seen on the Three Kings Islands, off the North Cape, what he surmised to be men of extraordinary stature who took enormously long and gliding strides in covering the ground. It would appear, said the bishop, that what Tasman had actually seen were moas, and many students of Maori history had come to the conclusion that Tasman actually saw the moa on the Three Kings. ■ If the moa existed on those islands, then it was not improbable that it had existed on the Chathams. Unfortunately for that theory, however, no traces, not even traces of bones, had ever been found on the Chathams, though most diligent and thorough search had been made. Nevertheless, the Chatham Maoris who gave him the spear, which was supposed to be a moa spear, and was made probably of maire or of manuka, held to a belief that the moa used to exist there, and their theory was that the Natives of the time hunted the moas from the hillsides, drove them down into the wet mudflats till they were herded together there, and then captured or speared them. That theory might account for the fact that bones were not visible to searchers to-day. The spear was many generations old, perhaps hundreds of years old, and had lain in the water whence it. was taken by present-day islanders. Ancient Cave House. Two Interesting places had recently been brought before his notice. One was an ancient cave-built Maori house in the Mokau, and the other was a fighting pa near Arapuni. It was said that the house in the Mokau was built by a man-eating warrior named Rauparaha, who lived at the beginning of last -century, and whose descendants were still living and had spoken about the house to his Lordship. Rauparaha had migrated from the Waikato to a locality halfway between Kawhia and tho Mokau, and had built his house in a cave high up on a cliff, afterwards building, a path up to it. It was of the low style of architecture anciently used by the Maori, and was no higher than three or four feet from the ground. Indeed, the door was so low' that one had to crawl on hands and knees to enter. , 1 , .. The original flax and reed were still there, and the puriri timbers were in a splendid state of preservation. There were no signs that European tools or weapons had been used in its construction, and it appeared to have been made entirely with Maori axes and carving implements.

The fighting pa at Arapuni also was extraordinarily interesting. It was on the opposite side of the lake from the main road, and consisted of the remains of the original palisade, the dugouts the ditches, and other features. It was little known, however, for even to-day it was so tapii that the Maoris would take nobody on to it. The nearest that they would approach was to within a few hundred yards, when they would stop and point to it. In fact, the Maoris said that no one had ever 'been able to obtain a photograph of. it, and explained that though attempts had been made, the tapu influence caused the exposure to come out black. The Maori belief was that to break the sacred, law of tapu meant only to court subsequent disaster. Bishop Bennett's next exhibit was a shell of the pupurangl, which he had obtained in North Auckland. It was called “the Shell from the heavens,” and was famous for its inhabitant’s habit of climbing trees and whistling. It was usually found in the kauri, about fifty feet up. Actually, it was not the shell-fish itself that whistled. The explanation was that an opening on the shell faced the wind in a certain way, and caused a whistling sound. The whistling could be heard from a quarter to half a mile away, and its sound was considered a bad omen. ' Battle of Oluteawai. The next exhibit by the'bishop was a cannon ball fired by the British at the Battle of Ohaeawai on July.l, 1845. It was one of the best fortified pas that the Maoris ever erected. There were two sets of palisades, one inside and one outside three or four feet apart. The outer palisade was fortified with puriri posts fifteen feet high and sunk five feet in the ground and with flax bushes tied all around both for protection and for camouflage.

Five hundred pakehas under Colonel Gespard were fighting one hundred Maoris who, showing great bravery and cleverness, “wiped the floor with the pakehas.” Of the pakehas. 125 were killed or wounded, and about ten Maoris were killed. The Maori women and children, who were hidden in an underground dugout, helped by making cartridges and filling the men’s muskets with stones, bits of iron, and anything that, would make up the shortage of ammunition. Colonel Gespard, who foolishly decided to attack the pa, which was pretty well impregnable, sent over-100 men to their doom. The pakehas, however, first fired from a big cannon on the hillside, but the ball, instead of striking the pa, went off at an angle and stuck in a puriri tree. It was the cannon ball now in his Lordship’s possession. Bishop Bennett then went on to speak of the ancient Maori custom of mortifying the flesh with cuts as a sign of grief, and mentioned that the practice was referred to in the Pentateuch as having been known in Biblical times. The Maori custom was to use small and sharp pieces of obsidian, and at Putiki in 1902 he had actually seen a young Maori woman at a tangi cutting herself as she walled out her grief. She had three or four pieces of obsidian in each hand, and blood was pouring from every wound. It had been a custom for the relatives to take the most precious relic of the deceased, usually a tiki, and after smashing it to bury it with the dead.

At Ohiuemutu, when he was performing a ceremony at the Native church, he had seen a cave filled with human bones, and from among them he had bbtained a beautiful broken tiki.