About

Front page of newspaper.
Image: Papers Past

Te Pipiwharauroa ceased publication in 1913. Despite frequent pleas it never did get enough 'supplejack seeds' to keep it flying. The Diocese of Waiapu replaced it with Te Kōpara, The Bell Bird. Te Kōpara was edited by Wi Paraire Rangihuna and was based, like Te Pipi, at the training college for Maori clergy in Gisborne, Te Raukahikatea. In 1917 the Rev F A Bennett became Editor. The first edition tells of the objectives of the paper which were to provide news of Anglican Church events and to spread the Gospel.

I keep in the English text universally used words such as ‘hui’, 'marae', ‘Pakeha’, ‘haka’, ‘poi’, 'mana' and ‘tohunga’.

‘Te iwi Maori’ is most frequently given as ‘the Maori people’ rather than simply ‘Maori’.

To match the capitalisation of ‘Maori’ I also give ‘Pakeha’ a capital P.

Vowel length is not indicated in Maori text except where it is indicated in the original text in which case I use double vowels - not out of loyalty to my teacher, Professor Biggs, but because of my inadequate computer skills.

I have not sought to translate into idiomatic English but to reproduce the Maori sentence structures where possible. I have, though, often used an active form where the verb is passive.

I cannot claim complete accuracy for the translations. There are some words and phrases that I have not been able to translate: these are left in the Maori with the hope that someone will contact me with a translation.

I am grateful to the National Library of New Zealand for making the original paper available on-line at Papers Past and the blog contains links to the original. I have appreciated the accessibility of ‘Te Aka Maori Dictionary’. References are made to it and to Williams’ ‘Dictionary of the Maori Language’ in the text. References to 'Nga Pepeha' are to 'Nga Pepeha a nga Tipuna' by Hirini Moko Mead and Neil Grove (Victoria University Press, 2004).

The page numbers in the original are given in bold square brackets [].

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