GREAT MAORI LEADER

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1935, Page 7

GREAT MAORI LEADER

DEATH OF WI KINGI 50 YEARS AGO CHIEF FIGURE IN TARANAKI WAR.. Fifty-thrOe years is A long period for memory to span, but there are still a few people in Taranaki who can remember January 13, 53 years ago. On that day died the Maori chief Wiremu' Kingi Whiti Rangitahi, usually known as Wi Kingi .or William King, the man who first led the Taranaki Maoris against the pakeha and whose objection to a sale of land at Waitara plunged the province into a war which racked it for nearly a year. Six foot three and proportionately broad, Wi Kingi was a magnificent specimen of manhood. In his “History of Taranaki,” Mr. B. Wells records that his physiognomy was “heavy and disagreeable, and his character that of a blusterer and a coward.” Yet the attitude of that day, taken by a public who hated and feared the chief, was not supported by that sane and kindly judge of men, Bishop Selwyn. / He openly espoused Kingi’s cause and wrote that it was his “deliberate conviction that Wiremu Kingi has no ill-will whatever against any of our countrymen, not even against those who publicly expressed their desire to take away his land. Let those who complain of his duplicity cease to force him into a position of hostility by their suspicion or their threats.” The quarrel over the sale of land by Te Teira, one of Wiremu Kingi’s minor chiefs, led to the Taranaki Wars. After the war Wiremu Kingi returned to Waitara from Waikato, whence he had fled. Later he went to live at Parihaka, finally settling at Ngatimaru, where on January 13, 1882, he died.