Aged Maori's Death Recalls Old Massacre

Northern Advocate, 1 December 1948, Page 8

Aged Maori's Death Recalls Old Massacre

KAEO, Wed. (Sp.).—Recently one of the most storied personalities of the older generation of Maori people, Mr Hone Tua Motukiwi, died at his home at Matangirau, at the grand old age of over 90. Universally known as Motukiwi, the old man was the son of a woman who, as a girl, was the sole survivor of a fearful massacre at Okahumoko, a high bluff at the head of Pekapeka Bay, which is just inside the north head of Whangaroa Harbour.

In 1826, the redoubtable old Bay of Islands warrior, Hongi Hika, conce.’Ving a notion that the Whangaroa natives were becoming somewhat truculent, determined to pay them a warlike visit.

Ngatipou home pa at Taupo Bay, the first bay on the coast north of the heads.

The defenders put up a strong resistance, and Hongi, employing deep strategy fell back towards Okomako. HURLED OVER CLIFF The trap was sprung.- Falling into the ambuscade the unfortunate Ngatipou were all captured. Dead or alive, all were brutally thrown over the high, sheer cliff. Not one escaped. Sole survivor was a girl who had gone to the still more northerly settlement of Mangonui to visit friends. Later, she bore a son, the Motukiwi who died in 1948. He was known on various occasions to lay verbal claim —on the basis of his descent from the sole survivor of the hapu—to ownership of Peach Island, Taupo Bay and a considerable area of the surrounding district. MISSIONARIES ATTACKED A sequel to the massacre was a series of petty attacks on the missionaries by locals straggling back from the war. They raided several bays down the harbour and then began, stealing items from the preachers, finally starting a “shooting war.” As a direct result the mission broke up and the Europeans left for Te Puna, Marsden's headquarters in the Bay of Islands

He came down into Mangaiti, near where the town of Kaeo stands today, and not far from where the Rev. Samuel Leigh had established his first New Zealand Methodist Mission and the. local Maoris deeming discretion safer than valour, joined forces wijh him. PEACH ISLAND SLAUGHTER The enlarged war party made a landing on Peach Island, a beautiful rounded hill inside the harbour heads, now a resort for picnic parties but then one of the principal pas of the Ngatipou people. The defenders were heavily defeated and a great slaughter took Jilace. Hongi Hika was determined to carry his war on to the absolute conclusion. USE OF STRATEGY He took his party over to Pekapeka Bay and leaving a strong portion of his fighting men hidden in the bush on Okomako, pushed on to attack the