MAORI MEMORIES

Taranaki Daily News, 18 February 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

MAORI MEMORIES

knowledge of heavens

(By

J.H.S.)

Where was that legendary land of Hawaiki? Whence came the Maori? Was it from the lost Atlantis? Was it from India or the Isles of Greece? They have Fatima’s three-fingered God, Italy’s vow«>l sounds, India’s astronomical knowledge, but no man has yet traced them to their source. That they sailed their canoes for many thousands of miles over uncharted oceans is clear. A great knowledge of the stars is proven by their original names of so many. To select but a few—Matariki (the wanderer) is that star in the Pleiades which disappears annually. Pari a rau (the chaplet of leaves) certainly points to the rings of Saturn. Mars, so named because of its reddish light when seen through a telescope, is Matawhero (red face). Jupiter, the giant planet, is Kopunui (the great paunch). Canopus, which does not appear to accompany the other stars of the Zodiac, is aptly named Aotahi (the lonely, one). Ra, their name for the sun, is as old as Nineveh. The poetic mythology of the Maori concerning the heavenly bodies is comparable only to that of ancient Greece. Goethe and the Maori.

Away back in the forties there came to Whanganui a foreigner who gave his name' in guttural sound as “Yohann Gotty.” He farmed successfully, soon learned the Maori tongue, and married one of the almost extinct tribe of Nga uru kehu (the owl’s feathers), a brownhaired Maori beauty. Their sons, John and George, bom and bred in Rangitikei, were educated at Oxford at a cost of £7OOO. With the capacity of those of mixed race they attained scholarly distinctions and costly habits. John proudly showed a handsome volume of Macaulay’s “Laws of Ancient Rome,” with solid gold clasps, bearing the signatures of W. E. Gladstone and G. A. Selwyn, “first prize for elocution in competition with all England.” They were received into the best homes. But these clever, handsome lads soon fell victim to easy gotten wealth. They married among their own folk and went back to the mat. A few years after their reversion to the ways of Maori ancestry, a visitor to the home of the greatest German poet-philosopher of all time discovered that his wild son Johann Goethe, after killing a fellow student in a duel, had “departed to an unknown foreign land.” The date coincided with that of the sailing of Yohann Gotty for Maoriland, and the identity was subsequently confirmed; How the Maori gets Religion.

At Matahiwi, on the. bank of the Rangitikei, stands an empty Maori Church with a cracked bell in its tower. Sixty odd years ago one of that fine family of Maori educators (Williams) rode 30 miles once a month to preach the New Gospel to them. In the • intervals they decided to surprise the well-loved pastor who understood them. Seven days a week -in the saw pit, the, bench, and the bush sawing and dressing timber, and splitting totara shingles, then in building “like the Pakeha.” The town clerk of Bulls generously presented them with the town’s discarded cracked fire-bell weighing 2001 b.

They had seen pictures of swinging bells rung by angels. So the village blacksmith bored a hole in the margin, to which they fixed a stout muka rope and strung up the bell on a titoki beam, where, it creaked and rapped out the call to worship. The services began to fall to a layman whose theology bewildered them. A friendly Pakeha lady who attended to encourage them, describes the final Sunday service thus: “In the empty church, a stalwart bell-ringer hauling at the rope in measured strokes, sweat on his brown shoulders, chanted to the creaking of the clapping bell. ‘Ore-you-Maori — Ma-ta-hiwi — Come to Church-you raisy b—s.” Thus ended their frenzy of worship. “Sacred to the Memory of—”

The fate of most memorials threatened the fine marble statue of Peeti to Aweawe, which stands in the midst of the rose garden in the square at Palmerston North.- Peeti was a prominent figure in the famous purchase of the RangitikeiManawatu block in 1866. He was aho the friend and protector of the Pakeha pioneers of Manawatu, for which splendid service Sir Donald McLean, Native Minister, presented him with a gold watch. His sister Erini paid an eminent French sculptor £l5OO for the life-like statue, upon which is engraved his dying words: “Kua kaupapa e au te ariha, Ma koutou whakaoti” (I have laid the foundation of friendship for your consummation).

The white marble figure became begrimed with the smoke and dust of the years. The Borough Council was frequently appealed to in vain to cleanse it. In despair a local humorist wrote a letter in Maori, and signed the name of a dead chief who had been a signatory to the Treaty of Waitangi, beseeching the Mayor to wash his kinsman’s face and feet. As intended, the letter was sent to an interpreter with the customary guinea for translating. The figure was at once restored to its original beauty, and .an apologetic letter sent to the mythical Maori. The Law of Tapu.

Tapu involved a ceremonial restriction, a sacred condition universally applied throughout Polynesia. Among the Maori people of good intent or evil, there were no exceptions to its restrictive influence. East or West, in Europe or Asia, under Christ, Bhudda, or Mahommed, there was no spiritual, moral or material law which could hold mankind like it. Fortunate indeed for the character and spirit of the old-time Maori that he had no Hell fire, and that his good angels were far more real than our fancied visions of Mons. Just as many of our fiercest battles in. history were “to defend the Faith,” so were many Maori fights to uphold their sacred law of Tapu. Utu, the law of satisfaction, was prompted by this same spirit, and not, as we suppose, for revenge or payment. It was a pitiful error of judgment that our good missioners openly derided this sacred observance of Tapu. That was the primary cause of the Maori Wars and the Hauhau rebellion. “By ceremonial usage I Become a sacred entity A thing forbidden that the eye Alone may dwell upon and see.” Such was the Maori poet’s conception of their sacred law. So firmly did they observe the Tapu that a coveted “hei tiki” of valuable greenstone would remain for a year lying exposed to view for 10 lunar periods on the grave of a favourite child.