Big Man of the Border.

It was in this post-war period of the early Seventies that Reihana adopted his ancestral name Wahanui, a highly befitting name in every sense. Wahanui was a man of fame and weight when I first saw him, in my boyhood on the frontier; that was in 1881, when Tawhiao laid down his guns at Major Mair's feet in Alexandra township, and six hundred of his people marched to Kihikihi and enlivened the township—Rewi's home—with their war-dances of new-made peace and their Hauhau religious chantings. Wahanui and all the Ngati-Maniapoto chiefs were there. And often thereafter we saw the great man; and I call to mind now that the pakehas of the border country appreciated the fitness of the big chief's name and nicknamed an uncommonly strapping lad “Wahanui.” Literally it means “Big Back,” and also “Big Mouth,” hence “Great Voice.” In both respects the name became him, but chiefly it fitted his unusual powers of eloquent speech.

“This ponderous Demosthenes” he was called by an officer who settled in the Waikato. Ponderous he was; he weighed, at one time, twenty-four stone. In his later life sickness reduced his giant proportions; but in the days of the young Eighties when we saw the great mouthpiece of the Kingites striding with that proud, disdainful bearing that was always his characteristic, along the road to the Land Court, he was indeed a man of weight in the world. He invariably wore the rapaki, the Maori kilt, consisting of a shawl or a piece of calico twisted about his magnificent middle. The time came when it was necessary, in the course of political negotiations with the Government, to visit Auckland and Wellington. Dignified Wahanui could not enter the pakeha towns in the simple and free costume of the kainga. But there were no trousers in the stores large enough. Wahanui was an out-size. So the nearest township with a tailor was visited, and the necessary civilised garb for the big chief was procured. It was tolerably certain that the measurements for appropriate trouserings were the largest that that tailor had ever taped.