Maori and Blackfellow

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 4, 30 October 1931, Page 1

Maori and Blackfellow

Mr. W. E. Bedggood, Waimate Nth., sends us the following interesting incident. An old Maori proverb runs: “He tao rakau ka taea pare, he tao kuekore e taea”—A wooden spear can be parried, a slanderous (lit. a spoken) spear cannot be parried. In olden times the spear was the most destructive missle known. In 1805-6 when Te Pahi was on his first visit to Sydney, he witnessed a fight between the Australian Blacks. It was after the funeral of a black who had died from the effects of a spear wound in the knee. One of their number named Blewit was accused and singled out to be slain. “The flight of spears was seldom less than six, and managed with a precision that seemed to promise certain fatality. After 170 had been thus thrown, ten of the most powerful blacks stationed themselves so as nearly to encircle the culprit, and from front and rear darted their weapons at the same instant. His activity and strong presence of mind increased with the Singer ; five he dexterously caught with his feeble targe, and the others he miraculously managed to parry off.” Te Pahi viewed their warfare with contempt—he considered the shield “an unnecessary appendage, as the hand was sufficient to turn aside and alter the directions of any number of spears.” When he saw an old man wounded through one of the turned spears striking hint, Te Pahi’s friends had a job to restrain him from joining in the fray.

“So great was the terror of the New Zealander in the mind of the Australians, that when one of Te Pahi’s sons

lifted up a spear every man, woman and child fled.” If the New Zealander looked with contempt upon that performance, a man turning 170 spears and then having 10 hurled at him at the same time and still come off unhurt, he must have been pretty good himself.