Testimony regarding Peter Grant by grandchild Mateiwa Te Ruahanga

1. My name is Mateiwa Te Ruahanga. I am also known as Ivan Grant.
   My mother was Hangaia Te Whareaorere, and my father was Pita Grant.
   My paternal grandmother was Te Maringi Wi Keepa, and she was Waitaha. She married Peter Grant, a Scotsman who achieved some notoriety in his day.

2. My mother’s mother was Wharekauere. My mother’s father, Whareaorere, was also Waitaha, but he and his sisters were raised up north. The family had gone gum-digging right up north because there was nothing for them here. They came back when the gum-digging work became very hard to find, and also because my grandfather fell ill. My grandmother Te Maringi brought the family back here, but it was very hard for them. They were very poor. They built a little hut up the back of the marae here.

3. My grandmother Te Maringi was a direct descendant of Te Iwikoroke. She was a chief of Waitaha. When Waitaha were given the land back in at Manoeka, she had to divide it amongst the people. They say it was she who divided the land equally among everyone. She finished up with practically nothing. She and her sister had 16 acres between them.

Peter Grant

4. I would like to tell the story of my grandfather Peter Grant. He was an interesting character. He was in the Waikato Regiment at the time of the wars, but his heart wasn’t really in it — he liked the Māori better. He was drawing pay from the army while he was giving horses to the Māori. He was branded a horse thief, but he wasn’t. He was a despatch rider for the army and could confiscate horses as he saw fit. He would give the horses he confiscated to the Māori.

5. An old family story that I was told was that my grandfather fought against Te Kooti while he was in the Waikato Regiment. He shot Te Kooti’s finger off, and Te Kooti said to him, “This is yours.” My aunt who told me the story took that as meaning that Te Kooti would be the one to kill him. After that they chased Te Kooti and his followers up into the hills. Night fell, and they ran out of water. My grandfather was sent back to get water. When he returned, he found all his comrades hanging from the trees. They thought that Peter Grant couldn’t be touched after that — that only Te Kooti could kill him. Te Kooti never caught up with him though.

6. My grandfather is mentioned in several history books. The historical reports talk about his role carrying messages for the Māori during the Bush Campaign, so I would say he had left the army by then (this is mentioned in Mary Gillingham’s Waitaha Report, p. 67). It also seems that during the Bush Campaign my grandfather was staying at Taumata with Ngāi Tamarāwaho, and had a child by the daughter of Paraone Koikoi, the chief of Ngāi Tamarāwaho (see Hazel Riseborough’s Ngāi Tamarāwaho Report, p. 75 fn. 280).

7. When my grandfather first met my grandmother, she was staying on the Hairini side of the harbour. The story goes that my grandfather was arrested one night, and he swam the harbour handcuffed to get back to my grandmother. They married and came back to live on the pā with Waitaha. He had a Pākehā wife as well, who died before he met my grandmother. He must have been short on names because several of his second family had the same names as children from his first marriage.

8. My grandfather was the first publican in Te Puke. He had a table on two barrels by the side of the road at Kenneally’s Corner, and later there was a tin shed as well. He was also a horse trader. He had a white horse by the name of Tam-o’-Shanter, and the story was told of my grandfather’s son riding Tam-o’-Shanter from Tauranga Hotel to the Te Puke Hotel in less than an hour. That record remained unbroken for years and years.

9. My grandfather is buried in the Soldiers’ Cemetery at the Mission Cemetery (Tauranga). The fact that he is buried there makes me think that he wasn’t a deserter from the army, as some people say, or they wouldn’t have allowed him to be buried there.