NATIVE AFFAIRS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume II, Issue 129, 9 July 1881, Page 2

NATIVE AFFAIRS.

(from our own correspondent.)

Normanby, Yesterday.

Having lately returned from Parihaka, I am fortunately in a position to give you reliable particulars about the pulling down of the fence at Okaiawa. The natives who went to prison from this district, and who have but lately been released, are at present on a temporary visit to their tribal homes. On their "way across the Plains, they travelled along their old dray tracks, and finding that a fence had been erected across one of these near Okaiawa village, they pulled the fence down along a space sufficiently wide to allow their drays to pass through. A gate close to the road offered sufficient facilities for passing in the direction the natives were going, but it appears that nothing would satisfy these natives but that a passage must be made across the fence at the identical spot where thenold dray track intersected it. The land and fence are the property of Mr. E. Collins, of Normanby, and that gentleman is particularly annoyed at the wanton destruction of his fence, only lately completed at considerable cost. Had the natives been law abiding and acquiescent in the division of the land made, they would have used the gate, but it is evident that they are following out the ideas promulgated by Te Whiti hi his speech of the 17th ult., when he said that the land between White Cliffs and Wanganui was set aside as an arena for the contentions of Tohu and his band of released prisoners with the Government. The natives are at present scattered through the bush from the Mountain road to Omuturangi, shooting pigeons, tuis, and kakas for the meeting of the 17th instant. Should they not be successful with the birds, they will turn to pig-hunting, and having killed a supply of pork, will return to Parihaka on the 14th.

A large quantity of greenstone ornaments, rings, and pendants, made by the prisoners in gaol, were all given up to Tohu on their arrival at Paiihaka, and. on Friday last these were divided amongst the natives assembled at Parihaka. A feast ot birds did honor to the ocasion.

Those of the returned prisoners your correspondent has seen evince a decided disinclination to converse on the land question, expressing an opinion that the greater wrong of the two is the imprisonment of the men without trial, for no crime against person or property. They content themselves with asking, where are the laws which made the person of a subject of the British Crown sacred from wanton arrest and imprisonment, and they evidently consider themselves martyrs and sufferers from the oppression of a nation with more might and less right than themselves.

The map lately published by the Government showing the continuous reserve on the Plains, and the portion taken from it by the Government for European occupation, timber reserves, &c, is not calculated to raise the spirits of the natives. Whatever vague statement may have been made to the contrary, the natives thought that they were to have the whole of the continuous reserve, and having acquired this idea, the subsequent allocation of portions for Government purposes does not give the natives any great faith in whatever promises may be made. Te Whiti told your correspondent that he had seen this map, and that he considers that all the Royal Commission had settled during the whole of their sittings was the apportionment of reserves for Manaia and Hone Pihama. The growth of the latter's reserve from 1500, as recommended in the interim report, to 1800 acres, as it appears on the map, is hard to explain, and the woeful shrink in the reserve for his men from' 1500, as proposed, to 700 in fact, is harder, to justify. This latter reserve is nominally for Nga-titama-ahuroa, a tribe which has been extinct as an individual tribe for generations, and which was absorbed into the Taranaki tribe, who decimated it for its misdeeds. The list of men of the tribe, as given in the third report, is said by the natives to be fallacious, and made for the purpose of favoring the natives mentioned.