New Zealand Reminiscences. RECOLLECTIONS OF KOWHAI NGUTU KARA.

Freethought Review, Volume II, Issue 21, 1 June 1885, Page 15

New Zealand Reminiscences. RECOLLECTIONS OF KOWHAI NGUTU KARA.

BY HIMSELF.

[ALL rights reserved.] (Continued). So far, so right, but otherwise it would be a great loss to the whole tribe, and the man who was the consequence of all this coming trouble was one we had befriended; yes, it evidently was about as nasty a piece of kokuru as ever we had been told of, or dreamt of. “Lay hold of him,” cried my great-grandfather; take him out of his kotiroa, long coat, and other clothes. This was done more quickly than a boiled kumera is taken out of its skin. Remove his head on to the short pole in front of our big house; stick it upright, and cook the rest of his body in a priest’s sacred oven. This order was quickly obeyed, and in less time than it takes to remove the feathers from a fat pigeon the man of incantations was in the oven, and prevented from creating further mischief. He had done quite enough. Some of him we ate, but the most part of him was cut up into many portions and sent away to the tribes far and near, to show that my great grandfather was not a chief sent to be insulted with impunity, or a man to allow his ancestors to be cursed for nought. Every day for a whole moon after this Tanas came upon us, robbing us first and then condoling with my great-grandfather, and showing their respedt for him to such a degree that when the Tauas left off coming we had not a kumera left, or had my greatgrandfather a flax or kiwi mat in his house. A few other missionaries were by distant tribes killed at once by the tribes they had taken up their abode with, as they said, “ Who could tell when a fit of cursing might seize them and cause the same trouble to fall on them as have fallen on us.” Some of these missionaries were afterwards eaten in a fit of animosity, to see what they taste' 1 like, but they were not approved of, as I have hea’ .. tell. The rest of the missionaries met when things had cooled down a bit, and told us through some of our slaves who had been baptised and made catechists of, that a letter was being written to King George (George the Fourth), who would send war parties in big ships and batter us. We believed this, as it was natural and right that the English king chief would want payment for the death of one of his wizards, and we felt uneasy, though why he should have sent that style of men to our shores to curse us we could not tell. On the receipt of this news, two lines of adtion were recommended to us by our chief men. The first was to kill all the missionaries and cook the lot; then they could not make personal complaints against us when the ship of King George came. But some of us knew of other things done and contrived by some of these Pakeha necromancers. The more discerning of us had discovered that there was a greed to possess land — own it. One or two of these missionaries have offered to give us fish-hooks, axes, and even guns and powder, for land; but they wanted for, say 10,000 acres, to give us a dozen fish-hooks, and a few axe-heads, iron hoop, go-a-shore’s (iron three-legged pots). Ah, the greed for our land was great! Then they told us that the land was for their God. Then whispers came that the conduct of some of these men towards one woman and young girls was strange and unpriestly. We knew something was wrong, as other of these missionaries said that the conducft of these priests was bad. Then we found that even among the missionaries they differed in religion, though all owning one God and His Son Jesus Christ. One said I am a Roman Catholic priest, and the others are deceivers. Others said we are Church of England men, and all Catholics are bad. Then the other men said they were Wesleyans, and these last in our opinion were the worst of the whole. The next were of the Church of England; but the men we respedted most were the Roman Catholics; but we suspccftcd

them all. It was give, give, give, work, work, work for nothing. But if we wanted a fish hook or a stick of tobacco, it was how many baskets of potatoes or fat pigs. The Protestants told us not to feed any of the Catholics, and the Wesleyans told us not to harbor the Catholics or Church of England people; but the Catholics were always hospitable to all. So another line of adtion to avoid the results of King George’s Taua in his big war ship was prepared and generally accepted, and that was to temporise and let each missionary have his fling, when perhaps they, thinking we had given in, would avert any bad consequences that might be in store for us. So we lied to them, and told our young men and our daughters to do as they were requested. Yes, we lied to them out of fear— and this is the truth —and they lied to us out of greed, and took advantage of our credulity, and great was our pollution. But, sir, all the missionaries were not bad; some will not mention the names of the bad ones, but the men, who in time we were able to separate from the hypocrites were men like Marsden, Maunsel, Woon, Hobbs, Williams, and that brave man amongst men, Bishop Selwyn, and others. Nevertheless they had, it was thought, much better remained away in place of coming in the evil company they did, and remember we judged from our point of view, and so we lived on. At length we perceived with grief and sorrow that the inferior men of the tribes, men who have never yet come to the fore by any deeds either of their own or of their ancestors how could they when it was not in their blood? They were the men who were placed in authority, and became installed as the inferior wizards, and that the mana influence of the chiefs were being undermined. They told us that to have more than one wife was breaking the seventh commandment, but they broke it once and once again themselves. They told us it was breaking the commandments to covet, but they not only coveted our lands our sons and our daughters but possessed themselves of them. Thus King George’s ship’s men came to get utu for the missionaries who had been killed, and we afterwards found out from other Europeans that King George never heard anything about us. So we knew they were liars withal ; but by this time many of our inferior men had joined their churches and ways of praying. And other ships brought fresh tribes to our shores. They were the early settlers. You must know that the missionaries had the names for our people, those who were baptised, and said they believed all they were told, were called missionaries. Those who would not be baptised were called by them Taweras (devils) —a nice name for us, don’t you think? But when the early settlers came, those wizards of priests said they were devils, too, just as we were called devils; and we were glad to hear of it. Anyway, we would be even with them now, and give a welcome to the new tribe called the Pakeha Devil Tribe. Before I go into the matter of the new tribe of pakeha rewera (devil pakehas) I must inform you of a few of a new code of laws laid down for us to follow by this wizard tribe of missionaries lest we, by negledling them, incurred the anger of the new gods whose powers were being made known to our people. The Ten Commandments we had already been made acquainted with, and on the whole we thought them good. But we were much puzzled about the new laws for our tribe and people. We were not to spin humming-tops on Sunday, or peel kumeras or potatoes. They were to be peeled on Saturday evening, or we must boil them in their skins. We were not to gather firewood on a Sunday, or fish, or bathe, or go into the woods to get tawharas, or catch eels; and if any traveller came to our village on a Saturday evening, he was to be asked if he meant to continue his journey on the morrow, and if so, he, or they, would not be permitted to rest there, but would have to move on, as it would be desecrating the Sabbath. If the village or pa (and pas were pas in the old days) was of the Church of England persuasion, no Wesleyan or Roman Catholic was to be entertained; if the pa was Wesleyan, no Church of England or Catholic was to remain but were to be told to pass on. (To be concluded in our next).