LINK WITH PAST

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 260, 2 November 1928, Page 11

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OLD NATIVE PASSES RELATIVE OF MAORI “KING.” (Special “Chronicle” Service.) AUCKLAND, Oct. 31. A link with the days long before the first Maori wars was broken to-day when a relative of the Maori “King” Tawhaio, Mrs H. H. Reynolds, died at her homo, Kaipiha, Pirongin, at the age of 104 years. Her father was Mr Payne, and her native name was Mihi Nepenc (Maori for Payne). Her mother was a native. Mrs Reynolds’ age was reckoned from the date of a famous tribal battle, believed to be Pukerangiora. She was very intelligent and an interesting personality, and could relate the events of the Maori wars and describe the peaceful settlements in the Waipa V alley, years before the coming of the wars. In those days wheat was cultivated by the Maoris and there were little mills by the riversides where wheat was ground between two flat stones into flour. Goats were milked and the Maoris were busy farmers. War came and spoiled their simple civilisation; the goats became wild and roamed 9*l the sides of bush-clad Pirongia Mountain. Mrs Reynolds was «, close friend of the late Captain Gilbert Mair. When the war broke out her brothers joined in, the cider half brothers fighting with the pakehag and the younger with the Maoris. Tho youngest, Peter, then a boy of nine or 10 years, was too young to enlist, but ho can remember eating one of the white captains taken by the M a oris.