Te Kooti

Te Ao Hou, March 1964, Page 2

Te Kooti The Editor, ‘Te Ao Hou’. In the September issue (44) of ‘Te Ao Hou’ part of the editorial reads, ‘our understanding of the past depends (so much) on what we are taught about it … the things which are included, and the things which are left out.’ Of all the great Maoris the greatest of them all, and the most maligned man in New Zealand school history books, was Te Kooti. Te Kooti, falsely sent without a trial into exile on the Chatham Islands, was a cleverer soldier and strategist than any general or officer in the Pakeha regiments. Moreover he was a very humane man, in spite of all the dreadful things that have been written about him. ‘How many European generals could have brought off the great coup of imprisoning the Prison Governor with all his guards and soldiers, as well as the women and children living on the island, and capturing the supply ship with its ammunition and stores, with the loss of only one life, and that an accident?’ a very wise and distinguished Pakeha Colonel (Lieutenant-Colonel Gudgeon) asked me once as we discussed the greatness of Te Kooti. ‘What is more, how many would have bothered to protect them from hurt after the year of torment in exile which Te Kooti had endured?’ ‘None of them could have done it,’ was his answer. I am now in my three score years and ten; the allotted space of life. Colonel Gudgeon was eighty-two when he told me this and I was then a young girl of twenty. Te Kooti was a fine Christian, a converted one, but his love of God and the Bible was so great that he carried the Bible around his neck everywhere he went … On the stolen prison ship as it fought its way through dangerous seas, he stood on the deck with the hundred-odd Hauhaus he had rescued from the prison island, and showing no sign of fear, he prayed until the storm abated. In the captured shop were two white steersmen whom he had kept under lock and key in one of the cabins of the ship until it sailed, compelling them under a strong guard to sail the ship, as neither Te Kooti nor any of his men could steer it. When at night they safely reached the lonely beach where Te Kooti had planned to land, it was no mere man that the awed steersmen saw as he directed the unloading of the stores and ammunition the ship had been carrying to the Chathams, but a man of power, who in a stentorian voice handed the ship back to them to take back to the Government. ‘Tell your Government that Te Kooti sends the ship back with its crew unharmed. God sent it and the arms to free my people.’ To the growing-up Maori children I advise—read all you can about this great prophet, for he was a man of God who sought freedom and equality. When Colonel Gudgeon, fifty years ago, told me of his great admiration for Te Kooti, he told me also the following story about another Maori leader. ‘I have fought many campaigns in the Waikato and other parts,’ Colonel Gudgeon said ‘and at one time I was in the dreadful pre-

dicament of watching my soldiers dying from rotting food and tainted water. No relief was in sight, and my spirit was alarmed and depressed when I was told that the Maori chief I was fighting was outside my lines with a flag of truce. He came into my tent with several of his warriors behind him carrying fresh food and water. He didn't fight sick men, he told me. When my men were strong we would fight again.’ The Colonel finished his story by telling me, with tears in his eyes, that he saw Christ in this Maori chief's action. ‘I didn't want to fight him again. I found I had an unbidden love in my heart for such a humane race.’ FAY McDOUGALL (Queensland, Australia)