WAIRAU TRAGEDY

New Zealand Herald, Volume 80, Issue 24612, 17 June 1943, Page 5

WAIRAU TRAGEDY

HUNDRED YEARS AGO TO-DAY'S ANNIVERSARY The 100 th anniversary of the Wairau tragedy at Tuamarina, Marlborough, commonly known as the'"Wairau Massacre," i'alls to-day. The tragedy was the sequel to the claim—subsequently shown to be unfounded —of the New Zealand Company to the ownership of the Wairau lands. The dominant Maori chiefs, Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata, denied that they had sold the land, and by their orders natives burned the huts erected on the area by surveyors sent by the company to prepare the land for occupation. No personal violence was offered, and the natives scrupulously preserved and restored to the surveyors all their personal belongings, burning only the material of which the huts were constructed, and which, as the produce of the land, they regarded as native property. The Nelson authorities, headed by the impetuous police magistrate, Mr. H. A. Thompson, issued warrants for the arrest, on a charge of arson, of the two chiefs. An armed but untrained posse of special constables was despatched to the Wairau as a covering force to the officials appointed to execute the warrants. On arrival at Tuamarina it was found that the chiefs also had assembled an armed force. Te Rauparaha, when confronted on June 17, refused to submit to arrest, and suggested that the whole quarrel be held in abeyance pending the decision of the-Government Commissioner appointed to investigate this and other disputed land titles. This proposal was rejected, and after further parley Mr. Thompson, the prime leader of the expedition, ordered his men to come for-

ward. The killing of Kongo, niece of Te Rauparaha, and wife of .Te .Rangihaeata, by the accidental discharge of a stumbling pakeha's gun, was followed by a rapid exchange of shots, in the course of which several men of both sides were killed. This was the first phase of the tragedy. The remainder of the undisciplined body of Europeans became panicstricken and lied. Their leaders, unable to rally them, surrendered to Te Rauparaha, who agreed to spare thei.v lives, but this promise was revoked on Te Rangihaeata announcing the. fate of Rongo. The men who had surrendered, including Mr. Thompson and Captain Wakefield, Nelson agent of the New Zealand Company, were forthwith tomahawked by the infuriated Te Rangihaeata. Such was the tragedy's second phase, to which alone the word "massacre" may properly be applied. The. total number of Europeans killed in the two stages of the affray was 22. The remainder of the force of 49 (including survey staffs and boatmen) escaped. The subsequent official investigation showed that the New Zealand Company' had not acquired the title to the Wairau lands. RUBBER WORKERS' AWARD Settlement of a wages dispute in the Northern Industrial District rubber workers' award has been announced in a memorandum from the Arbitration Court delivered by Mr. Justice Tyndall. "No argument was submitted to the Court establishing the existence of any anomaly within the meaning of the Economic Stabilisation Emergency Regulations," states the memorandum. "Consequently, the Court has no option but to reincorporate in the new award the same rates of pay as are prescribed in the expired award." The wages of various classes of workers were the only matters submitted to the Court.