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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 8 (November 1, 1935)

The King of Taupo

The King of Taupo.

There is material for a bookful of legend, song and history intertwined with the story of the Heuheu line. I have a great deal not only from the late Te Heuheu Tukino, who was a member of the Legislative Council when he died in 1921, but from his elders, such warriors of old time as Tokena Kerehi and Waaka Tamaira, Whata-iwi and their contemporaries. But for the present it may be more interesting to quote, for one thing, what was written about the greatest of the Heuheu family by an enterprising pioneer traveller, that noted character and entertaining writer, Edward Jerningham Wakefield.

There is a splendid declaration of royal authority in a speech made by Te Heuheu to Wakefield, who gives it in his book, “Adventures in New Zealand.” He was on an expedition page break page 19 through the heart of the Island, and on the day before leaving Tokaanu he went to Te Heuheu's village, Te Rapa, to take leave of the old chieftain. It was the first of January, 1842.

After the usual greetings had passed, he (Te Heuheu) told me at once that he suspected our two parties had met, one from Wellington and one from the Waitemata, to consult over his land, with a view to buy it, or even seize it forcibly, at a later season.

“‘If this be your wish,’ said he, 'go back and tell my words to the people who sent you. I am king here, as my fathers were before me, and as King George and his fathers were over your country. I have not sold my chieftainship to the Governor, as all the chiefs round the sea-coast have done, nor have I sold my land.

I will sell neither. A messenger was here from the Governor to buy the land the other day, and I refused. If you are on the same errand I refuse you too. You white people are numerous and strong; you can easily crush us if you choose and take possession of that which we will not yield; but here is my right arm, and should thousands of you come you must make me a slave or kill me before I will give up my authority or my land. When you go you will say I am big - mouthed, like all the other Maoris who have talked to you, but I am now telling you that by which I mean to abide. Let your people keep the sea-coast, and leave the interior to us, and our mountain, whose name is sacred to the bones of my fathers. Do not bring many white people into the interior who may encroach on our possessions till we become their servants. But if you can make up your mind to come yourself now and then and visit this mean place, whose people are your slaves, you will find the same welcome. The place and the people are yours. Go to Wanganui.'

“The old man,” continued Wakefield, “said all this calmly and without working himself into a state of excitement; but while he disclaimed any intention of swaggering, and on holding up his right arm from beneath his mat, displayed his herculean proportions unimpaired by the sixty years that have whitened his hair, I could not but help admiring his calm and manly declaration; and believing it to be, as he said, true, I succeeded after much trouble in making him understand that we had all come to Taupo out of curiosity only, and with no view of acquiring land, and assured him that the Southern pakehas, at least, would never annoy him by any attempt to wrest from him his chieftainship or his land.”

The chief told Wakefield also about the missionaries and their faith. “Te Hapimana”—the
Te Heuheu the Great, and His Brother Iwikau. The famous old chief was killed in the landslide at Te Raps, South Taupo, in 1846, two years after this picture was drawn by G. F. Angas, the Australian artist. Iwikau te Heuheu succeeded him as head of the tribe.

Te Heuheu the Great, and His Brother Iwikau. The famous old chief was killed in the landslide at Te Raps, South Taupo, in 1846, two years after this picture was drawn by G. F. Angas, the Australian artist. Iwikau te Heuheu succeeded him as head of the tribe.

Rev. Thomas Chapman—from Rotorua, had repeatedly pressed him to accept books and become a “missionary,” but he had steadfastly refused, as he saw in the conversion of his people to the white man's religion an inevitable levelling of rank and the end of his regal sway. “When I last heard of him, in August, 1843, he was still threatening to use the missionary books as cartridge paper, and the tapu still dwelt on the sacred mountains.”