HISTORIC MAORI PLACES

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 11 December 1928, Page 4

HISTORIC MAORI PLACES

BATTLEFIELD AT OHANGAI

A GAVE OF BONES. The country round Hawera contains many places of historic interest and of these districts, none is more intimately associated with the life of the Alaori, his forts and battlegrounds and his settlements than the vailey stretching down from north of Taiporohenui, along the Alangimangi Stream past Ohangai and the Aieremere Pa. Of them all quite the greatest interest centres round the old pa of Te Ruaki, south of the junction of the Tongahoe and Alangimangi Streams, for there in the faterul year, 1834, an invading party of .some hundreds of Waihato natives, which had been laying waste, the more northern portion oi the province and defeating the local people, though at Te Namu they were decisively dereated. In the raid in 1834 the outstanding feature was the siege of the fortified pa, Te Ruaki. Air Percy Smith records that it was very strong ‘‘with a deep fosse with high embankments leading down to the Tongahoe Stream, a. covered way for water supply, said to be a rarity in Alaori fortifications.’-’. In addition there was a- fortification on the sloping ground, a- modern addition to the main and more ancient part, and ‘‘due to the fear that it would be occupied by an enemy with muskets who could, from there, command the main position.” The Taranaki natives were the last to have firearms because there was no port in their district, whereas- the Waikato Alaoris possessed them iong before, securing them from the Europeans at the northern towns. The Waikato raiders were under the control of Te Whero Whero and other northern chiefs, and were said to number 2500 men. Again, says Air Percy Smith, in his “History of the Taranaki Coast” : “Waikato finding that assaulting the pa- was useless, now. proceeded to starve the garrison into submission. They went to- the trouble of building a palisade all round outside the pa so that no one might escape, and kept careful guard all the time, knowing full well that- the provisions must fail in the end. Three months, the native accounts say, did they hold out and then a Waikato chief was admitted to discuss terms of surrender. Alany of the principal people v r ere taken prisoners, among them a high chief. Te Rei Tano Taua.” A GAVE OF OLD BONES.

Not far from the site of Ruaki and in a bank in a gully off the mam stream is the remains of what was. once' a cave in which were found large numbers of human bo.nes. A local farmer, who saw tne place about eight years ago, says that he discovered it by accident when searching for a cow and at that tune tne bank-had not fallen away and the cave was hidden by scrub and under-o-rowth. Looking in, he found large numbers of skulls in a state of good preservation with the full sets of teeth. There were other human bones, neatly arranged, Aiaori kits, paewai .shells, and other relics-of Alaoris. It was evidently a burying ground. He was away for some year or two and when lie returned he once more went to see the place and lound that the face of the bank had fallen away into the creek, either through the action of water or from excavations by a hunter after relies. The bones and skulls were still there, but dirty and muddy and looking very gruesome. The place now has last much or its picturesqueness, but the fact that it is the last resting place of the remains >f Alaoris of old times, it should be nreserved and kept sacrecl, because of the reverence of the Alaoris for their dead. A wealth of history is no doubt 'ocked up in that little cave and in the remains which lay there long and these should now be re-interred. Ibe reverence for the departed and interest in the traditions of Aiaori race would make this an action that would no doubt be appreciated by the Maoris.