Beview of Revieir^, ^'Ji'^fOS, 



The Mat Makers of Mataatua, Urewera Country 



IN THE HEART OF MAORILAND. 



THE MOUNTAINEERS OF THE UREWERA COUNTRY. 



By J. Cowan. 



Fifty miles south-east of Rotorua, in tfie Thermal 

 zone of New Zealand, a long range of wooded moun- 

 tains, broken into peaked summits of sharp but sin- 

 gularly regular outline, and cleft at intervals by deep 

 and narrow river-gorges, rises suddenly like a great 

 purple wall from the tussocky plains of the Rangi- 

 taiki. This is the outermost rampart of the Urewera 

 Countr\-, or Tuhoe Land, a strange, wild region of 

 forest and mountain, the most remarkable of the 

 purely native districts in the colony of New Zealand, 

 inhabited bv a tribe of Maori highlanders whose 

 hostility to their European neighbours and isola- 

 tion from the outer world, until quite recent years, 

 tended to the preservation within their borders of 

 many peculiarlv primitive ways of life. Roughly 

 circular in boundary outline, this mass of most 

 rugged and broken country is about forty miles in 

 diameter, extending from the plains of the Rangi- 

 taiki and Bay of Plentv on the north and north- 

 west to the beautiful lake Waikaremoana and the 

 Hawke's Bay watershed on the south. The Urewera 

 and their kindred hapus or clans number about a 

 thousand people. In truth they were never very 

 numerous but for many centuries thev have held 



their mountain fastnesses, in spite of almost per- 

 petual forays and raids from without — for the 

 Maori's normal state was one of war — and they pre- 

 sent to this day those independent conservative 

 traits that have in all ages and all lands marked the 

 dwel'ers in a high country. 



When I first made the acquaintance of the Ure- 

 wera, they were verv^ literally one of the "new- 

 caught sullen peoples." The infrequent pakeha tra- 

 veller venturing into their territory was well treated, 

 provided he was neither a surveyor nor a gold pros- 

 pector. These two were (and are) the pet aversions 

 of the Urewera. They saw the rest of the island 

 " slipping away to the white man, and were stub- 

 born in their determination to hold their lands. 

 Durincr the p>eriod from 1869 to the end of 1871 

 several Government expeditions invaded their moun- 

 tain lands in pursuit of the rebel chieftain Te Kooti 

 and his followers, but there was little glor}' in fight- 

 ing these wily bushmen, whose dense forests were- 

 their chief strongholds, and who matched, the cun- 

 ning of Red Indians in the art of laying ambus- 

 cades. So. after the close of the last Maori war,, 

 thev were left prettv much to their own devices.. 



