Logo
Prev
Bookmark
Rotate
Print
Next
Contents
All Pages
Related Articles
Browse Issues
Help
Search
Home
'
National Geographic : 1974 Aug
Contents
European diseases, and fierce fighting with the British decimated the islanders. Their numbers have quintupled since 1901. place marched the many-hued hatchments of British and New Zealand regiments that fought in the Maori wars. Archdeacon Butt, a tall spare man who even in a cassock looks like the fighter pilot he used to be, was not surprised that I should be curious about this display of military badges in a place of Christian worship. Dur ing the Maori wars, he explained, the church had been used to quarter troops. "At one time, the nave was used as an ammunition store," he said. "I don't know what the vicar was thinking about, but there you are." He led me to the back of the church, where a handsome group of carvings surrounded a plaque covered with writing in the Maori language. The plaque told of the siege of a Maori pa, or fort, an incident that occurred during the tribal warfare of the first half of the 18th century-a century before the Maoris, with the pakehas' firearms, would slaughter perhaps 80,000 of their own. "The besieged pa's water was cut off," Archdeacon Butt related, "and the attacking chief's son, Takarangi, a splendid warrior, went up under the walls with a calabash of water for his thirsty enemies. Takarangi's eye fell on the beautiful daughter of the enemy chief, and the inevitable happened. They wed, and through their love peace fell on their two peoples. I think the parable is rath er plain for modern New Zealand." Pioneer Spirit Alive Today New Zealand was built less by force of arms than by force of character on the part of both races. If the Maori clung to his old idea of the universal spirit of nature, the pakeha clung to the Anglo-Saxon concept that work will make a home in any wilderness. A visit to a sheep-and-cattle station in the hill country of the Wairarapa, which lies on the coast northeast of Wellington, gave me some feeling for what those early Englishmen faced, and what they accomplished. There I met Jim and Airini Pottinger, owners of 1,300 acres of emerald pastureland near the little town of Tinui. Jim, his cheerful face burned and bitten by the easterlies that howl off the Pacific, is as much a pioneer as any yeoman who came out from England's West Country in the last century. Today 5,000 Romney sheep, grown for wool and mutton, and 600 head of crossbred beef cattle fatten on the ryegrass and white clover that cover the dizzy slopes of the Pottingers' upland farm. 199
Links
Archive
1974 Sep
1974 Jul
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page