Time and Tupuna

Tu Tangata, Issue 30, 1 July 1986, Page 60

Time and Tupuna

I NGA RA □ MUA

Alan Taylor

The past is close to the present. And often, this is experienced in an unexpected way. Recently I discovered a newspaper clipping hidden in the back of an old Maori Testament. It was an obituary briefly reporting the death of Pare Te Putu, a kuia of Ngati Paoa-Ngati Mahuta descent.

BORN at Te To (Freemans Bay, Auckland) in 1848, Pare Te Putu was remembered for the part she played in the battle of Rangiriri, Waikato, in 1863. At fifteen, she had helped construct the pa fortifications and was present during the fighting and retreat. Following the war, Pare Te Putu married, raised a large family and, in 1934, died.

In itself, the clipping was interesting as a short biography, an account of a remarkable woman. However, it was history; a life lived a long, long time ago ... Yet, 1934 wasn’t so long ago - Pare Te Putu was still alive when I was a child. So, I thought about it.

The obituary mentioned Titoko, mother of Pare Te Putu, who was born about 1830 and was eighteen at Pare Te Putu’s birth; the father of Titoko being born about 1800. In this genealogy or whakapapa, three generations reach back to a more-or-less Classic pre-Euro-pean period and culture to the 20th Century and to the immediate present (1986), through living great-grand-children of Pare Te Putu; providing, of course, that they are over 50 years of age.

Naturally, the focus of interest in the whakapapa is Pare Te Putu: she most certainly would have nursed at least one great-grandchild, living in 1986, while she herself would assuredly have been nursed by her grandfather - a man who was born into a neolithic culture but who would have lived through the musket wars of Hongi Hika (1820 s); could have been present at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi; could have fought alongside Pare Te Putu at Rangiriri; and (if he had lived to Pare Te Putu’s

age, 86) could have seen the first steam ship and train, made a telephone call and met the Father of the Atom Rutherford - who virtually created the present Nuclear Age.

Such is the power of an old press clipping to evoke the past, to place time in perspective - and teach the history and achievement of tupuna.

At fifteen Pare Te Putu was a girl of great courage and determination. And she is not forgotten.