New Zealand History - The Truth 3

THE WHITE NGATI-HOTU

The coffins seen above were photographed in 1919 high up a cliff-face in a very remote and isolated part of New Zealand. Each coffin was hewn by stone tools from a single log, like a dugout canoe. These coffins were not “planked” or made from sawn timbers, as one would expect colonial European coffins to be fabricated at any point during the colonial era.

The coffin lids, seen above, were also hewn from a single, thick plank, with the edge “lip” (used for locking the lid firmly onto the coffin box) carved by scalloping out the central region. The cultural habit of carving coffins in this manner, as single hewn pieces, is reminiscent of the "mummy boards" of Egypt, which encased the body of the deceased. One skeleton lies on what appears to have been the base of an old canoe.

These skeletons are recognisable European physiology. They were already very old when found in rugged country, far from the consecrated ground of any European churchyard. These people were obviously the white Ngati Hotu, known in local Maori and European folklore to have hidden from the cannibals for centuries in this inhospitable central North Island region.

The location of this isolated burial cave or shelter was less than 50-miles further into the rugged badlands interior from where the last of the Ngati Hotu tribe were defeated and cannibalised in the “Battle of the Five Forts” at Pukekaikiore (hill of the meal of rats).

Old colonial families living around the Atene area were conversant with the legends related to the Patu-paiarehe tribes hiding for generations in the rugged badlands around this remote and isolated region of New Zealand.