VILLAGE SQUARE IS MAORI MEETING PLACE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19108, 28 June 1930, Page 19 (Supplement)

VILLAGE SQUARE IS MAORI MEETING PLACE.

MARAE AT OHINEMUTU IS REMARKABLE CAMPUS.

In a lecture in Auckland lately Dr; Peter Buck, who baa seen so much of the Polynesian islands during the last, few years, apokc of the Maori practice from times immemorial of holding tribal meetings on tho village square, the marae, and said that tliie custom waa more closely observed than in any of tho South Sea Islands. Perhaps Te Rangihiroa could have made an exception in the case of Samoa. But the Maori U the only race which preserves the word marae so markedly as an everyday; expression for the community meeting-; ground; in the Eastern Pacific Island* it remains only as a relic of the past, applied to the ancient stonework places of worship and sacrifice whose ruina are *cen in many a sacred grove. Nearly every important marae inMaori "Land has its special name, bestowed often in honour of some trib%* ancestor, or commemorating some epis«* ©f the past. The lakeside village square, at Ohinemutu, Rotorua, is called T* Papa-i-ouru. This is the most remarkable tribal campus in New Zealand. On two side* ©f it hot springs send up their steam clouds, wool-white against the blue of lake and sky. There is much artistry in. wood-carving about it; the meetinghouse Tama-te-Kapua faces it on the south; the Maori mission church on the north; there is an old carved flagstaff, with a name of its own, the mast called Hou-taiki. Sixty years ago there was a high double stockade across the landward 6ido of the square, with a trench for riflemen; in those days many of the Arawa of Rotorua lived for safety on the Muruika Peninsula, about where tho Maori church now stands. An Island Marae. There is, or rather was, an Arawa marae of sinister and tragic memory. This is the assembly ground called Te Pakira, on the top of the pretty island Motutawa, in the Shellfish Lake, Rotokakahi. Here the Tuhourangi tribe, whose descendants now live at Whakarewarewa, had their headquarters over a century ago, and here they met and planned the massacre of a party of Ngapuhi people who were visiting Lakeland, a massacre instigated by that cunning villain of old time, Te Kauparaha. The Northern men were killed singly as they were landing in canoes from the mainland, or when they reached the marae. That red deed was the undoing of the Arawa, for it was tq avenge it that Hongi Hika and his army of gun-armed Ngapuhi invaded the Lakes Country and captured Mokoia Island, killing hundreds and leading many away as slaves.. To-day Motutawa is silent, a green place ©f tapu, small-wooded everywhere like a wild park, peopled only by ghosts; it i» the burial place of Tuhourangi’s chiefs. Famous Hinemoa, too, was buried there, in a recess of the steep bank below Te Pakira marae. Some places come to mind as village*' with a model marae. One of the neatest and best-arranged I have seen is Meremere Pa, in South Taranaki. It is near the main road along the level top of tho Meremere hills, from which /ou see* Hawera town spread out in the* distance and old Egmont rising beyond in a snowcone of pearly glitter and blue haze, the mountain god of this good land. At tbe> inner end of the marae the parade ground is closed by an old-fashioned carved house; ©n either side is a straight and regular row of whares. At one sida of this grassy campus is a flagstaff; her© aforetime stood the Haubaus’ squarerigged Niu flying its war flags. / On a Mountain-top. Parinui. high up the Wanganui River,' in the wildest part of the great canyon country, is perhaps the most healthilyset marae in New Zealand. Certainly I have seen nothing to equal its situation, for bold beauty of outlook. The village is on a hilltop three to four hundred feet above the river gorge, narrowing to a. cliff-edge; it occupies the site of an ancient fortified pa. The summit of* the mountain has been levelled off for the marae, at one end is the large carved meeting-house; at the other are the houses of the local tribe, the NgatiRuru—appropriate enough, it means the Bush Owls clan. On one side of the long parallelogram of a campus when I saw. it was a large tent-house for meals; on! the opposite side were the cooking quarters. Inland, below the cookhouses, m clear mountain stream rushed down a. little gully; from this camp water supply was drawn by means of buckets —filled by a lad on the creek bank—drawn up with a light hauling line and travelling block rigged on a wire rope. All around, wherever one looked, there: were ranges upon ranges, of broken and. ©ften savage aspect; ranges with greati scars where the papa rock was exposed; by landslips; ranges and forests upon forests. The winds blew pure and free, across Parinui’s top. They cannot but! develop ravenous appetites, those Ngatn Ruru and their gueeta. A King Country Sanctuary. In the old days, before the Rohepota* country was settled by pakeha farmer*, we knew a place called the Marae-o-: Hine as a Maori farm, a pleasant placej with grass fields and orchards, that* made a welcome break in the great ex-j panse of the fern wastes south of thePuniu River. It was tho home of pioneer Frenchman. Louis Hetet, whoj settled among the Ngati-Maniapoto and became the head of a rangatira half-! caste family, numerous in the King. Country to-day. The track to Otoro-j hanga passed through the Marae-o-Hiuej a mile or two before that Maori was readied. It was a place with &i 4 uncommon history. In ancient days itj was a sanctuary, or caznp of refuge.’ shadowed over by the mana of a gTeatJ lady. Here, about 300 years lived Hine, the daughter of the chieiii Maniapoto. She was an “Ariki-tapairu,'7 a chieftainesa of high degree, renowned] alike for her beauty and for her lovat of peace. When she proclaimed her wishthat warlike dissensions should neverj trouble her home, her desire bccaxucj law among Ngati-Maniapoto. “Iu former times,** a descendant ©fi Hine told me, “when war-parties from* the other side of the Waipa River, the! west, came this way in pursuit of a* flying enemy, they ceased the chas* when they came near Mohoaonui andj thereabouts (Otorohanga). They would* not cross the river or otherwise tres-J pass on the sacred soil.**

It is a peaceful land of many homes) to-day, this rich land on the east side! of the Waipa, where the Hine kept open house for the flying anq the wounded three centuries ago.