TO A HERO.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 116, 22 June 1914, Page 9

TO A HERO.

1 CHIVALROUS TO ENEMIES. Press Association. TAURANGA, June 21. Colonel Logan, A.D.C., officer in command of the Auckland military district, unveiled to-day in the presence of a large gathering of Maoris and white residents the memorial erected in the military cemetery by European and Maori subscriptions to the chief Rawiri Puhiraki. Rawiri was the man who led the Natives when the British forces suffered a reverse at the Gate Pa on April 29, 1864, and who—again led the Maori warriors at Te.'Ranga on June 21-of the same year, ?phen lie was killed. Rawiri was buried at Te Ranga battlefield, but the body subsequently was removed to the military cemetery. The monument is of red granite, twenty feet high, and is the most imposing memorial in the Bay of Plenty. It bears the following inscription, also an inscription in Maori:—.

"Sacred to the memory of Rawiri Puhiraki, a chief of the Ngaiterangi

tribe, who led the Maoris in battle at the Gate Pa on April 29 and at Te Ranga on June 21, 1864, being killed in the latter engagement. This monument was erected on the fiftieth anniversary of his death by people of the British and Maori races to commemorate his chivalrous and humane orders for the protection of unarmed or wounded men who fell into the hands of the Maoris, and for the respectful treatment of the bodies of any of their enemies slain in battle. This order, framed by Rawiri, with the assistance and approval of lienare Taratoa and other chiefs, was loyally observed by his followers, and after the repulse of the assault On the Gate Pa the British wounded, who lay al! night in and around the pa, were given water and treated with kindness. This chivalrous conduct of the Maori leader and his people so impressed their contemporaries that Rawiri's. body was fcxhumed in 1870 from the trenches of Te Ranga and was reinterred at this spot with befitting ceremonies. The seeds of better feelings between the tvvo races thus sown on the battlefield* have since borne ample fruit. Disaffection has given place to loyalty and hostility to friendship. British and Maori now living together as one united people.— June 21, 1914."