MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Daily Times, 19 August 1933, Page 4

MAORI MEMORIES

(By J.H.S., for “The Daily Times.”)

KAHIAKAI ME WAIREKA HOKI (HUNGER MAKES US LOVE OUR

FELLOWS).

The Plymouth Company was formed in England on 25th January, 1840, under the Earl of Devon and many Members of Parliament. Their initial mistakes would have wrecked a party government in a week. They bought 60,000 acres without a title, and employed a banker who failed and left them penniless. However their chief surveyor, Mr Carrington, left for Wellington in August. In January, 1841, he took Mr Barrett, a man variously described as a “capable linguist,” and as one with a “smattering of Maori” which was nearer the truth; but there was then no one to question liis capacity. Mr Carrington was fascinated with the assistance and polite attention of Col. Wakefield, who sold him land without harbour access, and even more disastrous, without a title. The “William Bryant” brought the Company’s first batch of emigrants under the charge of Mr Cutfield, a capable man but of course without any knowledge of the Maoris. His task was beset with danger and difficulty, and but for his tact and the ' forbearance of the Maoris under Wiremu Kingi, would have ended in disaster. He ; reported that “pigs and potatoes were scarce, but rats were in millions.” Four working bullocks were bought in Wellington for £l2O. The Chief Surveyor got a horse from Sydney at a cost of £79, and as it threw him, like David Harum, lie sold it to the Eev. Mr Creed for £39; but a wise horse knows no master, and this one lived a solitary life of luxury, wandering at will in the bush. For two years, without seed or working bullocks and milch cows, the plight of the families was pitiable. The Maori people were then in sympathy with us; but fern root (aruhe) which more than satisfied their hunger, was repellant, even to the hungry white. Fraternity, which was implanted byMarsden, bore good fruit there, for Church of England, Wesleyan, and Maori assembled under one roof to worship by devising means of relief for all.