MAORI LEADERS OF THE PAST — 1 A NEW LOOK AT TE KOOTI by Leo Fowler The time has come to write the story of some of the great Maori leaders of the last century. Our first subject is Te Kooti Rikirangi Te Turuki on whose life Mr Leo Fowler of Gisborne has brought to light many new facts. With the help of Maori scholars and other unpublished evidence. Mr Fowler challenges the old history-book picture of Te Kooti, and does not hesitate to be controversial. Naturally, this magazine does not take responsibility for the author's views. Te Kooti according to F. B. Lysnar. Is this picture genuine? Many have doubted it. In our next issue we present some pictures that may be more reliable. It is important that we should have a new look at some of the leading figures among the Maori leaders of the last century for two reasons. The first reason is that most of them were, inevitably, written of with a bias inseparable from the fact that their critics were too closely associated with them and with the circumstances which projected them into leadership. The second reason is that we are in the last decade when anything like first-hand, or even second-hand information is available from living witnesses. In no case is this more so than in that of Te Kooti Rikirangi Te Turuki, one of the most picturesque, the most important and the most generally misunderstood and misinterpreted of all those leaders who fought against pakeha power during the years of pakeha-Maori conflict. Before embarking on an assessment, or a reassessment of Te Kooti however, it would be wise briefly to review the wider field of Maori leadership during the first century of British rule. The rapid spread of pakeha settlement during the nineteenth century produced marked changes in the pattern of Maori leadership which are still playing their part in modern Maoridom. Within this pattern we can place nineteenth century Maori leaders in three main groups, though of course many of them tend to overlap from one classification to another.

THE MOTIVE OF REVENGE In the first group were those opportunists who took advantage of pakeha-introduced methods of extermination, especially the musket, and embarked on bigger, bitterer and more extensive campaigns of mass slaughter. Their motives were the old motives of inter tribal animosity and the personal aggrandisement of the chiefs themeslves.