Rewi's Homeland.

Kihikihi township, midway between Te Awamutu and Orākau, was before the war the headquarters village of the powerful Ngati-Maniapoto tribe. Like Orākau, and the neighbouring beautiful farm country of Rangiaowhia, it was a land of abundant food, a place of rich soil and great crops. The Maoris grew wheat and ground the corn in their own flourmills, driven by waterpower on the streams, and everywhere there were the most prolific of peach groves. Every village was embowered in peach trees. In Kihikihi stood the tribal council-house, called by the famous ancestral name “Hui-te-Rangiora.” In that carved whare-runanga Rewi Maniapoto, the fighting head of the tribe, and his fellow-chiefs held their council meetings, debated Kingite politics, and planned the campaigns of Taranaki and Waikato. The great house went up in flames when General Cameron's conquering army invaded these Waipa Valley lands in the early part of 1864, and Ngati-Maniapoto were driven out of their ancient homes and forced across the classic river Puniu into the territory that became known as the King Country. Then came Orākau; on that greatly prized garden-land a band of men—and women, too—fought their last despairing fight for a broken cause. They lost the battle, but they won an enduring name, and won the admiration and affection of their Pakeha antagonists, for their amazing bravery, devotion and self-sacrifice.

And nearly twenty years after the war, the State restored to Rewi a measure of his mana over the old home. A Government house was built for him on a piece of land close to the site of his destroyed council-whare, and to that house Ngati-Maniapoto, with touching speech and page 26 chant, gave the treasured name, Hui-te-Rangiora. On that spot, in the soil for which he fought, his bones lie to-day, a sacred shrine of Maori patriotism in the heart of a Pakeha village.