The Early Maori

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 196, 16 May 1936, Page 26

The Early Maori

The old-time Maori was a line specimen physically, and numerous instances arc quoted of famous warriors who continued to take their place in the battlefield even when they had attained very advanced ages. My grand-uncle used to tell how, when the pa at Omaranui, near Napier, was captured, and the Hau Haus were driven out, he pursued an old man with a white beard, who was running for the scrub some distance off. Being a young man himself, he had little difficulty in overtaking his quarry in the open, and was bringing him back a prisoner, when the old man began to slow down and to limp badly. His captor, thinking he must have been wounded, and that the effects were beginning to tell on him, became solicitous, quite oblivious of the fact that they were edging closer to the manukacovered hillside. Like a flash, the old savage leapt to one side and darted into the scrub. The whole thing happened so quickly that before the white man realised it the Maori had disappeared out of sight and in the cover had no difficulty in making good his escape.— S.J. (Wellington).