Page:The authentic and genuine history of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand, February 5 and 6, 1840.pdf/26

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

24

form for Tareha, and for Hakiro, and for other chiefs to make their running speeches in, à la Nouvelle-Zélande.

Hakiro (son of Tareha, but who on this occasion appeared and spoke on behalf of Titore,^[1] deceased, principal chief of the Ngatinanenane Tribe) arose and said, “To thee, O Governor! this. Who says ‘Sit’? Who? Hear me, O Governor! I say, no, no. Sit, indeed! Who says ‘Sit’? Go back, go back; do not thou sit here. What wilt thou sit here for? We are not thy people. We are free. We will not have a Governor. Return, return; leave us. The missionaries and Busby are our fathers. We do not want thee; so go back, return, walk away.”

Tareha, chief of the Ngatirehia Tribe, rose, and, with much of their usual national gesticulation, said, “No Governor for me—for us Native men. We, we only are the chiefs, rulers. We will not be ruled over. What! thou, a foreigner, up, and I down! Thou high, and I, Tareha, the great chief of the Ngapuhi tribes, low! No, no; never, never. I am jealous of thee; I am, and shall be, until thou and thy ship go away. Go back, go back; thou shalt not stay here. No, no; I will never say ‘Yes.’ Stay! Alas! what for? why? What is there here for thee? Our lands are already all gone. Yes, it is so, but our names remain. Never mind; what of that—the lands of our fathers alienated ? Dost thou think we are poor, indigent, poverty-stricken—that we really need thy foreign garments, thy food? Lo! note this.” (Here he held up high a bundle of fern-roots he

↑ I may here briefly state, in a note, that Titore was one of the most powerful and best of the many Ngapuhi chiefs of high rank—so much of Nature’s true nobility of manner and appearance about him; his voice, too, was mild, yet firm, possessing more of the suaviter than the fortiter, so contrary to the usual loud bluster of the Maori, especially of those chiefs residing on the shores of the harbour, whose manners were not improved through their common intercourse with shipping and low-class whites. I had visited him on his death-bed (he died comparatively early, from consumption), and, though he was not a Christian, I was much pleased with his demeanour. Our parting was a mournful yet very affectionate one. There is a very fair likeness of him (there called “Tetoro”) given as a frontispiece in Captain Cruise’s “Ten Months’ Residence: in New Zealand,” taken before the invention of photography.

[1] I may here briefly state, in a note, that Titore was one of the most powerful and best of the many Ngapuhi chiefs of high rank—so much of Nature’s true nobility of manner and appearance about him; his voice, too, was mild, yet firm, possessing more of the suaviter than the fortiter, so contrary to the usual loud bluster of the Maori, especially of those chiefs residing on the shores of the harbour, whose manners were not improved through their common intercourse with shipping and low-class whites. I had visited him on his death-bed (he died comparatively early, from consumption), and, though he was not a Christian, I was much pleased with his demeanour. Our parting was a mournful yet very affectionate one. There is a very fair likeness of him (there called “Tetoro”) given as a frontispiece in Captain Cruise’s “Ten Months’ Residence: in New Zealand,” taken before the invention of photography.

[1]