AUTHORITY ON MAORIS

Grey River Argus, 15 June 1931, Page 2

AUTHORITY ON MAORIS

DEATH OF MR W. BAUCKE. The death of Mr William Baucke, of Otorohanga, who has been well-known to the reading public as “W.8., Otorohanga.” for the past 20 years, occurred at Otorohanga on Saturday. The career of Mr Baucke, who was in his 84th year, has been an interesting one. He was the author of the book “Where the White Man Treads,” which first appeared in serial form in the N. Z. Herald in 1903, and in more recent years he had been engaged upon the preparation of a volume of reminiscences.

Until with :) a very short time of his death he continued and published the writings which had occupied the latter years of his very interesting life. Mr Baucke was a native of the Dominion. having been born at the Chatham Islands on July 7, 1847. His parents hailed from Bavaria. Very early in the history of New Zealand as a British possession they came out as missionaries of the religious body known as the Moravian Brethren, to Christianise the Maoris, landing at Nelson in 1841, and sailing thence to the Chatharas, where they carried on their labours among the Morioris for many years. At the Chathams William Baucke learned as a child the Moriori and Maori languages, in addition to English. Recently he was probably the only person living who knew the Moriori language and he was the last link with that, vanished race. His ambition as a boy was to become a civil engineer. On the other hand, his father prepared him for the work of South Sea missions. For economic reasons, however, the paternal plan was never carried into effect. At 14 years »f age he was sent to Wellington to school and four years later he returned to the Chathams, where his father and his two associates carried on a sheep station of 50,000 acres, an] he became the schoolmaster of both pakeha and native. His thirst for knowledge took him into languages. He learned French German, Italian and Greek, Greek in particular( for the sheer love of it. The needs of the life made him smith, carpenter and mechanic. Life in North Island. The vocation of smith came first in I his estimation. “It obsessed me,” he once said. “I was happy in the work. I consider it most rangitira. You must remember that armour-making was a regal occupation at one time.” He also became possessed of a wide knowledge of the sea and seamanship. When the family property at the Chathams passed into other hands William Baucke came to the North Island. He settled in the King Country when it was being opened, and, finding a congenial sphere, he became a Maori interpreter. His mana among both pakeha and Maori was great. He was in action in the Maori wars under Von Tempsky, and a slash across his foot was a reminder of those campaigns. His was a rugged exterior, but it enshrined a heart of extraordinary tenderness, a spirit of true fellowship, a mind of remarkable capacity, and, with all this, a natural pride and sensitiveness, the gift, of the proud people whence he sprang. To the last the Greek classics were his constant study and his unfailing friends.