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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 5 (September 1, 1928)

Otorohanga and its Stories

Otorohanga and its Stories.

At Otorohanga we used to see the thatched whare in which Robert Barlow captured Winiata, the murderer. This was an incident of 1882 which greatly excited the King Country Maoris. Winiata had killed a white man at Epsom near Auckland, and had taken refuge in the King Country. There he lived for some years with a Government reward of £500 on his head. Barlow, a herculean half-caste, undertook to capture him and deliver him up to justice. He pretended to be a pig-buyer, and in his house he made Winiata drunk. It is said he got a Waikato chemist to put an opiate in the rum bottle. He tied him across a led horse, after taking a revolver from him, and in the night rode away with him to Kihikihi, a distance of some twenty miles. Early in the morning he handed his prisoner over to the police in the Kihikihi Redoubt after a desperate struggle on the road in the township, for Winiata had recovered his senses. The murderer was convicted and hanged, and Barlow received his reward. It was a really daring deed, for Winiata was protected by Kingites, and there were many who would have shot Barlow had they overtaken him on that night ride to the border. Barlow bought a farm at Mangere with the money, but he did not live long to enjoy its possession. A big powerful man, he wasted away and died, and all the Maoris believed that he had been bewitched—makutu'd—by some King Country tohunga in revenge for the capture of Winiata.