WOHLERS OF RUAPUKE A Tohunga by Adoption by Sheila Natusch J. F. H. Wohlers About ten years ago, when Southland Province was celebrating its hundredth year of existence, two memorials—one in Invercargill, the other on Stewart Island—were dedicated to the missionary J. F. H. Wohlers. There was no mention of Wohlers in our school history books, nor would he have expected it. All he asked was to push quietly on with his work. Should any civilisation impose its teaching and preaching on another culture? In Wohlers' day there was no doubt about the answer, though there were always those who thought the home community was the most in need of mission work—‘not that they ever did any,’ said Wohlers. He had been brought up as a ploughboy in North Germany; he had a terrific thirst for learning (and little chance to do anything about it); and when he stumbled upon a pamphlet called Pity Poor Fiji he thought he would be able to expand his horizons by going out to the heathen. He wasn't sent to the tropics, as he hoped, but to New Zealand. When Wohlers and three other mission workers arrived in Nelson in 1844, they found the Maori population already flourishing prayerbooks. Though a little apt to ‘unrest’ (this was the year of the Wairau affair) the people were already Christianised. The missionaries settled for a while in the Moutere, where their flax-and-raupo hut was washed out. ‘Thus must the people have fled at the time of Noah's Flood!’ cried one, as they headed for higher ground. The ship that had brought them to New Zealand had also brought German immigrants, who settled along with them in the flood-prone valley, later moving to the Waimea. There was at least some church work to be done among these people. When the survey-vessel Deborah set off to look for a site for what is now Dunedin, Wohlers went too, hoping to find some wild corner of New Zealand where he could do real mission work. At Port Cooper (now Lyttelton), he met the southern chief Tuhawaiki, who sugested his home island—Ruapuke in Foveaux Strait—as a good centre for mission work. Wohlers was accordingly put ashore there, with his few belongings (he had been warned to travel light because of muru), a good mission school grounding in Hebrew and Greek, and a smattering of Maori. What a wonderful chance, he thought, to learn about these people and their language! One thing had shocked him about the mission school: the learned squabbles that went on about whether it was holier to be Lutheran Church or Reformed Church. Out here in New Zealand he found people arguing the point about the respective merits of Methodism, Anglicanism and all the rest. He couldn't be bothered with ‘isms’ himself: his teaching was straight from the Bible. But he needed to be able to put it in Maori. Ruapuke at this time was still an important place, where chiefs from all over the South Island gathered in conference, but it was an uneasy mixture of Maori and European cultures. The pakehas had brought fleas and swear words and measles, as well as a few rough-and-ready seamanlike virtues; the old Maori traditions and cultural patterns were on the wane. A very few of the old tohungas were left; and it was to these old wise ones that Wohlers went, evening after evening, to learn Maori. Hearing the old tales told in Southern Maori, for almost the last time, was a memorable experience. The old men looked upon him as their successor, who would pass the stories on; and he did. They are printed in the Trans-