MAORI WAR FLAG

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19961, 12 June 1939, Page 14

MAORI WAR FLAG

ROMANTIC HISTORY BRAVE NATIVE WOMAN SIEGE OF THE GATE PA WATER FOrSfHE WOUNDED An interesting story bearing on the Maori flag of pink silk that is preserved in a glass case in the vestibule of the Auckland Public Library was related by Mr. T. Walsh in an address to the Auckland Historical Society upon the Waikato War of 1863-64. The flag, as an inscription on the case shows, was captured by Major William Jackson's Forest Rangers in a surprise attack on a Maori encampment in the Wairoa Ranges late in 1863. In giving an account of the guerilla warfare which was waged ■between colonial volunteers and bands of Maoris in the rear of General Sir Duncan Cameron's main front, Mr. Walsh said that a prominent Part in the fighting among the bush-clad eastern hills was taken by a small but truculent group oi natives constituting the whole of the .Koheriki hapu of the Ngati-Paoa tribe '■'••' Expelled from Waiheke These people before the war had fallen out with the rest of the tribe, and, after being expelled from Waiheke Island, they led a rather wandering existence on the near by mainland. One-of the ablest of the band, taking a full share of fighting with the men, was a young half-caste woman named Heni te Kiri Karamu, more generally known as Jane Foley, who had been educated in a convent school in Auckland. Some of the Koheriki were among the Maoris surprised by Major Jackson and his men in the bush encampment. They fled, leaving several dead, but an elderly man returned and tried to recover a. blackened tin which was on the camping ground. He was shot dead and.when the tin was examined it was found to contain a flag, which Major Jackson, in an account of the affair described as "made of silk, neat and handsome." Only Woman Among Defenders The flag., said Mr. Walsh, had been made by Jane Foley. She accompanied the men of her tribe in later fighting and was the only woman among the defenders of the Gate Pa in April, 1864. Her reason for being there was that she would not leave a favourite brother. In one of the assaults Colonel Booth, "f an Imperial regiment, fell wounded a few yards cutside the pa ditch. Hearing him and other wounded calling for water, the woman filled a can from a spring at the back of the pa and took it out at the risk of her life, giving him some of the water from her cupped hands and leaving the can behind. In the night that followed she brought more to the wounded men. On the authority of Bishop Selwyn. a Christian Maori named Henare Taratoa, who. later was killed at Te Ranga, had been given credit for this act of mercy. Mr. Walsh remarked, but Colonel Booth, when in hospittl. recounted that Jan c Foley had aided him. Years later, when she hai married and with her husband kern the hotel at Maketu, she often rohted the exocrine? hcr?eli. Mr. Walsh believed that she reached a good old age and died not very long ago at Rotorua.