The adventures of Kimble Bent: A story of wild life in the New Zealand bush
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Title: The adventures of Kimble Bent: A story of wild life in the New Zealand bush
Author: James Cowan
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ADVENTURES OF KIMBLE BENT: A STORY OF WILD LIFE IN THE NEW ZEALAND BUSH ***
THE ADVENTURES OF
KIMBLE BENT
[Illustration: MAP OF TARANAKI, NEW ZEALAND.
(_Showing engagements in the Maori War_)]
THE ADVENTURES
OF KIMBLE BENT
_A STORY OF WILD LIFE IN THE
NEW ZEALAND BUSH_
BY
JAMES COWAN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
WHITCOMBE AND TOMBS, LIMITED
LONDON MELBOURNE
CHRISTCHURCH, WELLINGTON AND DUNEDIN, N.Z.
1911
PRINTED AND BOUND BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
PREFACE
This book is not a work of fiction. It is a plain narrative of real
life in the New Zealand bush, a true story of adventure in a day not
yet remote, when adventure in abundance was still to be had in the
land of the Maori. Every name used is a real one, every character who
appears in these pages had existence in those war days of forty years
ago. Every incident described here is a faithful record of actual
happenings; some of them may convince the reader that truth can be
stranger than fiction.
Numerous instances are recorded of white deserters from civilisation
who have allied themselves with savages, adopting barbarous practices,
and forgetting even their mother-tongue. In the old convict days of
New South Wales escapees from the fetters of a more than rigorous
"system" now and again cast in their lot with the blacks. Renegades of
every European nationality have been found living with and fighting
for native tribes in Africa and America and the Islands of Polynesia.
But none of them had a wilder story to tell than has the man whose
narrative is here presented--Kimble Bent, the _pakeha_-Maori. Ever
since 1865--when he first "took to the blanket"--he has lived with the
New Zealand Maoris. For thirteen years he was completely estranged from
his fellow-whites; he had deserted from a British regiment and a price
was on his head. British troops and Colonial irregulars alike hunted
him and his fanatical Hauhau companions. His hairbreadth escapes were
many; he had to risk death not only from British bullet and bayonet,
but from the savage brown men of the forest with whom he lived. When at
last he came out of hiding, and dared once more to face those of his
own colour, he had almost forgotten the English language, and could
speak it but with difficulty and hesitation. He has been out of his
bush exile many years, but is still living with his Maori friends,
and is still known by the Maori name, "Tu-nui-a-moa," which his chief
Titokowaru gave him in 1868. When he writes to me, he usually writes
in Maori, and he is practically a Maori himself, for he has lived
the greater part of his life as a Maori, and he has assimilated the
peculiar modes of thought and some of the ancient beliefs of the
natives, as well as their tongue and customs.
One of the most remarkable portions of Bent's narrative is his account
of the revival of cannibalism by the Hauhaus in 1868. Vague stories
have been heard concerning the eating of soldiers' bodies by the
bushmen of Ngati-Ruanui and Nga-Rauru and of rites of human sacrifices
performed in the woods of Taranaki, but this account of Bent's is
the first detailed description from an eye-witness of the man-eating
practices in Titokowaru's camps. Many of Tito's Hauhaus are still
alive; but they are very reticent on the subject of "long-pig."
I first met Kimble Bent in 1903. In that year Mr. T. E. Donne, now the
New Zealand Government Trade Commissioner in London, had induced the
old man to come to Wellington for the purpose of being interviewed and
photographed; and it is these interviews, very considerably expanded
during a seven years' acquaintance with Bent, and carefully checked by
independent Maori testimony, that are now embodied in this book.
In confirmation and extension of Bent's story, I have gathered data
at first-hand both from Taranaki Maoris who fought under Titokowaru,
and from soldiers and settlers who fought against him, and these
particulars are incorporated with the old _pakeha_-Maori's narrative.
The 1868-9 portion of the book is, therefore, practically a history of
the Titokowaru war in Taranaki; and it embraces a great deal of matter
not hitherto recorded.
Many of the settler-soldiers who survive from those wild forest days
now farm their peaceful lands within sight of the battle-fields of Te
Ngutu-o-te-Manu, and Pungarehu, and Moturoa, and Otapawa. With them the
recollections of bush-marches and ambuscades and storming of Hauhau
stockades are still fresh and vivid. But the younger generation know
little of the dangers and troubles through which the pioneers passed.
The available histories deal very meagrely and often very inaccurately
with the story of the Ten-Years' Maori War, even from the white side,
while the Maori view-point is absolutely unknown to all but a few
colonists. Therefore it is fortunate, perhaps, that one has been
enabled to gather before it is too late from the old Hauhau warriors
themselves the tale of their ferociously patriotic past, and to place
on record this true story of wild forest life from the lips of one of
the last of that nearly extinct type of decivilised outlander, the
_pakeha_-Maori.
For information and assistance in regard to various engagements in
Titokowaru's war I am indebted to Colonel W. E. Gudgeon, C.M.G.,
Colonel T. Porter, C.B., and other old Colonial soldiers. Tutangé
Waionui, of Patea, who was one of Titokowaru's most active scouts and
warriors, has given me many details concerning the campaign from the
Maori side; and the Rev. T. G. Hammond, Wesleyan Missionary to the
Taranaki Maoris, has also furnished assistance on the same subject. To
Mrs. Kettle, of Napier, daughter of Major von Tempsky, I owe my thanks
for permission to reproduce three of the illustrations in this book,
copies of water-colour sketches by her celebrated father, representing
scenes in the Taranaki campaign of 1865-6. The picture of the fight at
Moturoa in 1868 is from a black-and-white sketch by a soldier-artist
who took part in the engagement; the original was in the possession
of the late Dr. T. M. Hocken, of Dunedin, who allowed me to have it
photographed for this book.
J. C.
<sc>Wellington, N.Z.</sc>,
_Feb. 1, 1911_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE DESERTER
On the banks of the Tangahoé--The runaway soldier--A
Maori scout--Off to the rebel camp pp. 1-6
CHAPTER II
KIMBLE BENT, SAILOR AND SOLDIER
Kimble Bent's early life--An Indian mother--Service in the
American Navy--Departure for England--"Taking the Shilling"--British
Army life--The flight to America--A sinking
ship--Rescue, and landing in Glasgow--Back to the Army
again--Soldiering in India--The 57th ordered to New Zealand--The
Taranaki Campaign--A court-martial--At the triangles pp. 7-21
CHAPTER III
THE CAMP OF THE HAUHAUS
In the Maori country--Arrival at a Hauhau _pa_--Maori
village scenes--The ceremonies round the sacred flagstaff--"_Riré,
riré, hau!_"--The man with the tomahawk--A white slave--The
painted warriors of Keteonetea--The blazing oven pp. 22-33
CHAPTER IV
IN THE OTAPAWA STOCKADE
The return from Keteonetea--The hill-fort at Otapawa--A _korero_ with
the Hauhaus--Bent's one-eyed wife--"The wooing o' 't"--Bent is
christened "Ringiringi" pp. 34-42
CHAPTER V
TE UA, PRIEST AND PROPHET
Te Ua and his gods--The _Pai mariré_ faith--"Charming" the British
bullets--Bent's interview with the prophet--His life _tapu_'d--Preparing
for battle--Life in the forest _pa_ pp. 43-54
CHAPTER VI
THE STORMING OF OTAPAWA
British forces attack the stockade--The bayonet charge--Flight of the
Hauhaus--Through the forest by torchlight--Doctoring the wounded--The
_tangi_ by the river pp. 55-65
CHAPTER VII
BUSH LIFE WITH THE HAUHAUS
Wild days in the forest--The Hauhau hunters--Maori wood-craft--
Bird-snaring and bird-spearing--The fowlers at Te Ngaere--The slayer
of Broughton--Another runaway soldier, and his fate--The tomahawking
of Humphrey Murphy pp. 66-77
CHAPTER VIII
THE HAUHAU COUNCIL-TOWN
Life in Taiporohenui--A great praying-house--The ritual of the
_Niu_--Singular Hauhau chants--"_Matua Pai mariré_"--Bent's new
owner, and his new wife--The tattooers--Another white
renegade pp. 78-91
CHAPTER IX
A FOREST ADVENTURE
The two eel-fishers--Bivouac in the bush--A murderous attack--The
Waikato's tomahawk--"Ringiringi's" escape pp. 92-101
CHAPTER X
THE WAR-CHIEF AND HIS GODS
The war-chief Titokowaru--Ancient ceremonies and religion
revived--Uenuku, the god of battle--Titokowaru's _mana-tapu_--Bent
makes cartridges for the Hauhaus--A novel weapon pp. 102-107
CHAPTER XI
"THE BEAK-OF-THE-BIRD"
The stockade at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu--In the _Wharé-kura_--Singular
Hauhau war-rites--The "Twelve Apostles"--The enchanted _taiaha_--The
heart of the _pakeha_: a human burnt-offering--An ambuscade and a
cannibal feast pp. 108-118
CHAPTER XII
THE ATTACK ON TURUTURU-MOKAI REDOUBT
Hauwhenua's war-party--A night march--Attack on Turuturu-Mokai
Redoubt--A heroic defence--The heart of the
captain--Touch-and-go--Relief at last pp. 119-133
CHAPTER XIII
THE KILLING OF KANE
Bent and Kane brought before Titokowaru--Kane's flight--Captured by
the Hauhaus--A traitor's end pp. 134-138
CHAPTER XIV
ADVENTURES AT TE NGUTU-O-TE-MANU
In the midst of dangers--Bent stalked by Hauhaus--Old Jacob to the
rescue--"Come on if you dare!"--The white man's new Maori
name--Government forces attack and burn Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu--A new
use for hand-grenades pp. 139-144
CHAPTER XV
A BATTLE IN THE FOREST; AND THE DEATH OF
VON TEMPSKY
The second fight at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu--Titokowaru's prophecy--Tutangé
and his sacred war-mat--Bent's narrow escape--Government forces
defeated--How von Tempsky fell--A terrible retreat--Colonial soldiers'
gallant rear-guard fight pp. 145-179
CHAPTER XVI
THE CANNIBALS OF THE BUSH
After the battle--The slain heroes of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu--A terrible
scene on the _marae_--What Bent saw from his prison-hut--The
sword of "Manu-rau"--A funeral pyre--Priestly incantations--A
soldier's body eaten--Why the Hauhaus became cannibals pp. 180-194
CHAPTER XVII
SKIRMISHING AND FORT-BUILDING
Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu abandoned--On the march again--Skirmishing on the
Patea--_Pakeha_ in pickle--A new stockade--Bent the _pa_-builder pp. 195-200
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA STOCKADE
Kātené's vigil--Attack on the stockade--Major Hunter's death--A
Hauhau warrior's desperate feat--Over the palisades--Government
forces repulsed--A rear-guard fight--An unanswered prayer--Scenes of
terror--Tihirua's burnt-offering--A soldier's body eaten pp. 201-225
CHAPTER XIX
THE TAURANGA-IKA STOCKADE
Another fighting-_pa_ built--Scouting and skirmishing--The watcher on
the tower--McDonnell and Titokowaru--How Trooper Lingard won the New
Zealand Cross--Hairbreadth escapes--Pairama and the white man's
leg pp. 226-239
CHAPTER XX
A SCOUTING ADVENTURE
The passage of the Okehu--A night's vigil--Mackenzie the
scout--"Maoris in the bush!"--The watchers in the fern--A race for
life pp. 240-254
CHAPTER XXI
THE FALL OF TAURANGA-IKA
Shot and shell--The fort abandoned--Flight of the Hauhaus--The
chase--The fight at Karaka Flat--Mutilation of the dead--The ambuscade
at the peach-grove--The sergeant's leg--Rewards for Hauhau
heads pp. 255-261
CHAPTER XXII
THE FOREST-FORAGERS
Fugitive Hauhaus--Hard times in the bush--The eaters of
_mamaku_--Bent's adventure--Lost in the woods--Rupó to the
rescue--The _tapu_'d eels pp. 262-269
CHAPTER XXIII
A BATTLE IN THE FOG
The surprise of Otautu--An early morning attack--Kimble Bent's
dream--"_Kia tupato!_"--A gallant defence--Brave old Hakopa--Flight
of the Hauhaus pp. 270-276
CHAPTER XXIV
THE HEAD-HUNTERS
The skirmish at Whakamara--Hauhaus on the run--Government head-hunters
--Major Kemp's white scout--Sharp work in the bush--Barbarism of the
Whanganui--_Kupapas_--Smoke-drying the heads--A present for
Whitmore--The heads on the tent floor--End of the war pp. 277-292
CHAPTER XXV
THE LAND OF REFUGE
The flight from Rukumoana--Retreat to the Waitara--The Kawau _pa_
--Life in the Ngatimaru country--Rupé and his white man--A Maori
Donnybrook fair--A tale of a _taniwha_ pp. 293-305
CHAPTER XXVI
BUSH LIFE ON THE PATEA
The return to Rukumoana--The forest-village--Bird-snaring and
bird-spearing--Bent the canoe-builder--His third wife pp. 306-310
CHAPTER XXVII
HIROKI: THE STORY OF A FUGITIVE
Hiroki, the slayer of McLean--Strange faces at Rukumoana--A forest
chase--A meeting and a warning--Hiroki's wild bush life and his
end pp. 311-320
CHAPTER XXVIII
OUT OF EXILE
Canoeing on the Patea--The voyage to Hukatéré--The white man's world
again--Bent the medicine-man--_Makutu_, or the Black Art--Bent's
later days--The end pp. 321-332
APPENDIX pp. 333-336
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SKETCH MAP OF TARANAKI _Frontispiece_
PAGE
MOUNT EGMONT, TARANAKI 15
A TARANAKI FRONTIER FORT 17
PATARA, A HAUHAU PROPHET 47
A BRITISH COLUMN ON THE MARCH 69
THE SCOUT 85
THE AMBUSCADE 113
TUTANGÉ WAIONUI, A HAUHAU WARRIOR 151
MAJOR VON TEMPSKY 159
MAJOR VON TEMPSKY 173
MAJOR KEMP (KEPA TE RANGIHIWINUI) 211
THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA 218, 219
A HAUHAU SCOUT 235
A CONSTABULARY OFFICER IN BUSH-FIGHTING COSTUME 279
KIMBLE BENT, THE PAKEHA-MAORI 325
THE ADVENTURES OF
KIMBLE BENT
CHAPTER I
THE DESERTER
On the banks of the Tangahoé--The runaway soldier--A Maori
scout--Off to the rebel camp.
On the banks of one of the many swift rivers that roll down to the
Tasman Sea through the Taranaki Plains a young man in the blue undress
uniform of a private soldier sat smoking his pipe. He was dripping with
water, and a little pool had collected where he crouched in the fern,
a few feet from the bank of the stream. He had plainly just emerged
from the river. His clothes were torn, and he was capless. He was a man
of about the middle size, spare of build, with sharp dark eyes and a
bronzed complexion that told of past life under a tropic sun.
Less than an hour previously he had left his comrades' camp, the tented
lines of Her Majesty's 57th Regiment, on the ferny flats of Manawapou.
Left unofficially, and without his arms, strolling down towards the
Tangahoé River as if for a bathe. A "shut-eye" sentry was on duty that
morning; and the deserter's tent-mates, too, were sympathetically
blind to his departure. The Tangahoé was the border-line between the
country covered by the British rifles and the unconquerable bush of the
Maori rebels. Towards this rubicon he made his way through the thick,
high fern, which soon concealed him from view. He attempted to ford
the rapid, muddy river, but it was up to his waist, and almost swept
him off his feet. Struggling ashore again, he took to the fern and
travelled slowly and with great toil through it, keeping parallel with
the course of the Tangahoé, and heading down stream. He forced his way
through the thick fern "like a wild pig," to use his own simile. In
this way he travelled something over a mile down the river, and then
once more attempted to ford across, but it was too deep and swift. He
crawled back up the bank again, and quite exhausted, with scratched
hands and face and gaping half-buttonless clothes, he sat down to
recover his breath and strength. His heart was thumping fearfully with
his frantic exertions in the closely matted, entangling fern, and it
was some minutes before he could command his trembling fingers to fill
and light his pipe.
After the soldier had sat and smoked a while he rose, and making his
way to a slight elevation on the banks where he could see over the top
of the coarse _rarauhe_ fern, in some places ten feet high, he looked
around him. Directly across the river the bush began, the seemingly
impenetrable forest solemn and dark, pregnant with danger and mystery.
Turning in the other direction, and facing the north-west, he could
just discern in the distance the tops of a number of bell-tents--the
camp he had left behind him. And as he looked his last on the tents
of his comrades and his tyrants, he heard the sweet notes of a bugle
sounding a call. The midwinter air was very clear and still. It was the
midday mess call--"Come-to-the-cookhouse-door."
"No more cookhouse-door now, that's a moral," said the soldier aloud.
"Pork and potatoes for you, me boy--or else a crack on the head with a
tomahawk."
Beyond the tents, another tent-shaped object took the soldier's eye.
It was a lofty snowy mountain, glittering in the midday sun. It was
far away in the nor'-west, so far that its base was hidden by the
intervening bush, and only the white symmetrical upper part of the
vast cone, a wedge of white culminating in as perfect an apex as any
bell-tent, was visible to the eye from this part of the great plains.
It was the peak of Taranaki mountain, which the white man calls Mount
Egmont.
Satisfying himself that there was no one in sight and that he was
not followed, the soldier squatted down again and smoked his pipe
meditatively.
Suddenly he started up and listened intently. He heard something, and
any noise meant danger. The sound was the trotting of a horse.
Scrambling through the fern a little space back from the bank, he found
that a narrow track wound through the tangle of tall brown bracken.
Peering out from his shelter place he saw--first, the glitter of the
muzzle of a long rifle above the fern; then, next moment round a turn
in the path came a mounted man, a Maori. He was a tall, black-bearded
fellow, wearing a European shirt and trousers, but bare as to feet.
Each stirrup-iron was thrust between the big toe and the next one, as
was the universal Maori mode when riding bare-footed. In his right hand
he held an Enfield rifle, of the pattern used by the white troops in
those days; the butt rested on his thigh, cavalryman fashion. Round his
shoulders hung a leather cartouche-box; there was another buckled round
his waist, from which there hung also a revolver in its case. A Hauhau
scout, evidently, venturing rather daringly close to the British camp.
The white man hesitated only a moment. Then he boldly stepped out on
to the track, directly in front of the startled Maori, who pulled his
shaggy pony up sharp, and instantly presented his gun at the white man.
Seeing the next moment, however, that the white man was unarmed and
alone, the Maori brought his rifle-butt down on his leg again, and
stared with wonder at the forlorn-looking white soldier before him.
"Here, you _pakeha_!" he cried, in mixed English and Maori; "go back,
quick! _Haere atu, haere atu!_ Go 'way back to t'e soldiers. I shoot
you suppose you no go! _Hoki atu!_"
"Shoot away!" returned the white man. "I won't go back. I'm running
away from the soldiers. I want to go to the Maoris. Take me with you!"
"_You tangata kuwaré_!" the Maori said. "You _pakeha_ fool, go back!
T'e Maori kill you, my word! You look out."
"I don't care if they do," replied the soldier. "I tell you, I want to
live with the Hauhaus."
"_E pai ana!_" ("It is well"), said the scout. "All right, you come
along. But you look out for my tribe--they kill you."
"I'm not frightened of your tribe," said the soldier.
"What your name, _pakeha_?" was the next question.
"Kimble Bent," answered the _pakeha_.
The Maori attempted the pronunciation of the name, but the nearest he
could get to it was "Kimara Peneti."
"Too hard a name for t'e Maori," he said. "_Taihoa_; we give you more
better name--good Maori name. If"--he qualified it--"my tribe don't
kill you."
Then the swarthy warrior dismounted and ordered the _pakeha_ to get
into the saddle; he saw that his prisoner was dead-tired. He turned
the horse's head back towards the Maori country, and the strangely-met
pair struck down along the banks of the Tangahoé, the Maori striding in
front.
For about three miles the track wound down through the fern and flax,
parallel with the course of the river. Then the travellers came to a
ford. They crossed safely, and clambering up the steep muddy bank on
the other side, they marched on towards the blue hills of the rebel
country.
CHAPTER II
KIMBLE BENT, SAILOR AND SOLDIER
Kimble Bent's early life--An Indian mother--Service in
the American Navy--Departure for England--"Taking the
Shilling"--British Army life--The flight to America--A sinking
ship--Rescue, and landing in Glasgow--Back to the Army
again--Soldiering in India--The 57th ordered to New Zealand--The
Taranaki Campaign--A court-martial--At the triangles.
While the runaway soldier is riding on to the camp of the brown
warriors of the bush--a journey which is to be the beginning of a wild
and savage life leading him for many a day, like Thoreau's Indian
fighter, on dim forest trails "with an uneasy scalp"--there is time to
learn something of his previous history and adventures.
Perhaps the impulse that led to his passionate revolt against
civilisation and rigid army discipline came from his American Indian
blood.
Kimble Bent's mother was a half-caste Red Indian girl, of the Musqua
tribe, whose villages stood on the banks of the St. Croix River, State
of Maine, U.S.A. Her English name before marriage was Eliza Senter.
She became the wife of a shipbuilder in the town of Eastport, Maine;
his name was Waterman Bent; he worked at first for Caleb Houston,
shipbuilder, but afterwards had a yard of his own. This couple had
seven children, two sons and five daughters; one of these sons was
Kimble Bent. He was born in Eastport on August 24, 1837.
The roving wayward element in young Kimble Bent's blood soon made
itself manifest. When he was about seventeen, he ran away from home
and went to sea. He shipped on a United States man-of-war, the
training frigate _Martin_, and spent three years aboard her, cruising
along the Atlantic Coast. He quickly became a smart young sailor and
gunner, and from the rank of seaman he graduated to deckman, a sort
of quartermaster. It was part of his duty during the last year of his
service to instruct the boys who came aboard as recruits in the working
of the muzzle-loading 6-pounder and 8-pounder guns.
Paid off from his frigate at the end of his three years, Bent returned
to his people as unexpectedly as he had left them. But he didn't stay
in Eastport long. The prosaic life of the old town was no more to his
liking than when first he had run away to follow a sailor's life; so
he soon took to the seas again. He gathered together what money he
could--a considerable sum, he says, for his father was indulgent--and
took ship across the Atlantic, in his head some such unexpressed
sentiment as Robert Louis Stevenson long afterwards put into verse in
his "Songs of Travel":
"The untented Kosmos my abode
I go, a wilful stranger,
My mistress still the open road
And the bright eyes of Danger."
But no man-of-war life for him. He booked his passage in a barque
sailing for Liverpool, resolved to see something of life in the Old
World.
When he landed in the big city he "made himself flash," to use his own
expression, and went the pace with a few like-minded young fellows,
and one way and another his stock of cash soon vanished, and he found
himself stranded, friendless, and alone--his companions of the "flush"
times had no more use for him. One day, as he wandered disconsolate
along the streets, his eye was taken by the scarlet tunic and lively
bearing of a smart recruiting-sergeant, and on the impulse of the
moment he took the Queen's shilling and was enlisted in Her Majesty's
57th Regiment of Foot. This was in the year 1859.
The young Eastport sailor soon bitterly regretted the day that his eye
was dazzled by the Queen's scarlet. The British Army was less to his
taste than life in Uncle Sam's Navy. He was sent to Cork with a draft
of two hundred other recruits, and the interminable drill soon gave him
an intense disgust for the routine of barrack-yard instruction. Four
months of recruit-drill--then one day Private Bent took a stroll down
the Cork wharves and cast his eyes round for a likely craft in which to
give the army, drill-sergeants, and all the slip.
A Boston barque, the _Maria_, happened to be lying at one of the tees,
and her skipper, one Captain Cann, Bent, to his joy, found to be an old
acquaintance. He unfolded his dejected tale, and the sailor at once
offered his assistance in rescuing a fellow-countryman from John Bull's
grip. That evening Bent stole away quietly from the barracks, boarded
the barque, and was stowed away safely below in the dunnage-hole. He
did not show his nose above hatches for two days; the barque by that
time had left the harbour on her return voyage to Boston, and the
deserter was able to appear on deck, a free man.
But not for long. Bent's misfortunes were only beginning. When about
three hundred miles off the land a furious easterly gale began to
blow, and the old barkey sprang a leak. Hove-to in the storm, all the
crew could do was to stand to the pumps. The huge Atlantic seas came
thundering on deck, and more than once washed the men away from the
pumps. For six days and six nights they wallowed in the deep, all
hands, sailors and passengers, taking turns at the pumps, working for
their lives.
All those terrible days of storm and fear the _Maria's_ hands had
nothing to eat but hard biscuits soaked with salt water. There was no
place to cook and no means of cooking, for the galley with all its
contents had been washed overboard. While the crew laboured at the
pumps, the captain tried to cheer them up and put a little life into
their weary bodies and despairing hearts by playing lively airs on his
concertina and singing sailors' chanteys.
"One day," says Bent, "a German brig hove in sight and spoke us. Seeing
our signal of distress she asked the name of our barque and the number
of the crew. We signalled our reply, and she answered that she could
not help us, there was too much sea. Then she squared away and left us.
All this time we were labouring at the pumps to keep the old barque
afloat. Next day another brig, a Boston vessel deep-loaded, from the
West Indies, hailed us and stood by, signalling to us to launch our
boats. This we did, after hard and dangerous work, and managed to reach
the brig's side, where all the sixteen of us were hauled on board
safely. About two hours after we left our ship we saw her go down."
To Bent's intense disappointment he found that the brig that had
rescued him was bound for the wrong side of the Atlantic. She landed
the shipwrecked mariners at Glasgow. Bent was walking about the streets
one day, wondering however he was going to get a passage home, for
he had no money, when he was arrested as a deserter--recognised by
the description which had been posted in every barrack-room and every
police-station. He was taken to the military barracks, and then
sent under guard to Ireland and down to Cork, where he was tried by
court-martial, and sentenced to eighty-four days in prison. When he had
served his term he was shipped off to India with his regiment, landing
at Bombay, and for some time did garrison duty at Poona.
The 57th spent two years in India, only just recovering from the
terrible throes of the Mutiny. Then news came of a serious war with
a wild native race in a distant country called New Zealand, far away
down in the Southern Ocean, and the regiment was ordered to hold itself
in readiness to go route-marching to Bombay, thence to sea. Marching
orders soon followed, and the headquarters of the regiment sailed for
Auckland; the company in which Bent was a private (No. 8 Company) was
one of those left behind to look after the women and children of the
regiment. Orders for them also quickly came, and they took the road for
Bombay.
The journey from Poona to Bombay took four days, or rather nights, for
all the marching was done by night. Part of the way was through a dense
jungle in which man-eating tigers swarmed. The troops marched through
this jungle by torchlight, winding along a narrow track through the
densely-matted vegetation. The growling of the tigers was heard all
round at night, but the blazing torches kept them away.
Embarked in a troopship at Bombay, Bent and his fellow-soldiers sailed
not unwillingly for a land spoken of by report as a country which,
though wild and new, was a pleasanter place to live in than scorching
sun-baked India.
After a voyage of eighty-nine days, the troopship anchored in Auckland
Harbour, and her soldiers spent their first week on New Zealand soil
in the old Albert Barracks, where the bright flower-gardens and
tree-groves of a beautiful park now crown the hill that in those
troubled days was girt with a massive crenellated wall, and was alive
with all the martial turmoil of campaigning-time. Then the new arrivals
were sent down to Taranaki by sea to join the headquarters of the 57th,
and went into new barrack life on Marsland Hill, New Plymouth.
Kimble Bent's longing for a free independent life became stronger than
ever in this new country. He would gladly have exchanged camp-life
for even the perilous occupation of a frontier settler, so that he
were free. The parade ground was a purgatory, and the restraint of
discipline and the ramrod-and-pipeclay system of soldiering were
irksome beyond words. He was sick to death of being ordered about by
sergeants and corporals. Fighting would have been a relief, but there
was none yet. He endeavoured to get his discharge from the regiment,
but without success; and his impatience of discipline led him into
various more or less serious conflicts with the regimental authorities.
* * * * *
So opened Kimble Bent's life in the new land, the land in which he was
to roam the forests an outlaw for more than a decade.
In those war-days of 1860-70 dense forests covered the wide plains
of this Taranaki province, where now most of the dark old woods have
been hewn away, and have given place to the pastures and homesteads
of dairy farmers. It was a wild but beautiful land. The coast curved
out and round in a great sweeping semicircle from Waitara in the north
to Wanganui in the south; the intervening region of forest, hill,
and plain was the theatre of war. High and central, Taranaki's great
mountain-cone, which the _pakeha_ calls Egmont, swelled to a height
of over 8,000 feet, its base hidden in the forests, its snowy peak
glittering far above the broad soft swathes of clouds, the sailor's
landmark a hundred miles out at sea. Remote from all other high
mountains it soared aloft--"lonely as God and white as a winter morn,"
as Joaquin Miller wrote of his beloved Mount Shasta. On all sides
Taranaki--the holy mountain of the Maoris--sloped evenly and gently
to the plains, and from its recesses sprang the head waters of many
a beautiful river. The mountain, huge yet exquisitely symmetrical,
was revered by the old-school Taranaki Maori as the mighty symbol of
his nationality, and regarded as being in some mystic fashion the
source of his tribal _mana_. Under the shadow of Taranaki began the
Ten Years' War; here the Hauhau fanaticism took its mad rise in 1864.
From Taranaki's foot set out the Hauhau apostles, preaching a strange
jumble of Scriptural expressions and pagan Maori concepts, promising
their converts that no _pakeha_ bullet should harm them if they but
repeated their magic incantations; and brandishing before the ranks of
their devotees the dried and smoked heads of slain white soldiers.
The relapse into barbarism was more marked in Taranaki than anywhere
else, and even to this day the hatred of the white man lingers there,
amongst the remnants of the old Hauhau stock. Te Whiti, the Prophet
of Parihaka, until his death in 1907, held his court under the shadow
of lofty Taranaki, and preached his old mysticism fortified by the
towering presence of his mountain-god, cold and immutable, and all
unmindful of the _pakeha's_ march through the plains below.
[Illustration: MOUNT EGMONT, TARANAKI.]
* * * * *
In March, 1864, the 57th were ordered from New Plymouth to Manawapou
(not far from the present town of Hawera), near the Tangahoé River.
The fanatic Hauhau faith had just been born amongst the Maoris, whose
palisaded _pas_ dotted the outskirts of the great forests on the
farther side of the Tangahoé, and whose war-songs could sometimes be
heard from the white soldiers' camp. At Manawapou the regiment went
under canvas, and now began the regular round of sentry-go and outpost
duty, and all the preparations for an advance on the rebel positions.
[Illustration: A TARANAKI FRONTIER FORT.
(_Sketch by Mr. S. Percy Smith, 1865._)]
Meantime there was fighting in the northern and western parts of the
Taranaki province, between the 57th camp and New Plymouth. There was
the disastrous affair at Te Ahuahu, where Captain Lloyd and several
soldiers were killed; their heads were cut off and smoke-dried by the
Hauhau savages, and were carried away to distant tribes by Kereopa,
Patara, and other rebel emissaries, the Hauhau recruiting officers.
Another momentous affair which happened soon after the 57th took post
at Manawapou was the desperate assault on the British redoubt at Sentry
Hill (Te Morere). A large force of Hauhau warriors, deluded by their
prophet Hepanaia into believing that his incantations rendered them
invulnerable to the white man's bullets, rushed against the redoubt
in open daylight one morning, but were beaten off, leaving some fifty
of their number lying dead in front of the fort. It was in this
engagement that Titokowaru--who was afterwards Kimble Bent's chief and
master--lost one of his eyes through a bullet wound.
* * * * *
Kimble Bent's final revolt against constituted authority came one wet,
cold day in the Manawapou camp in April 1864. It was pouring with rain,
but a corporal, one who took a vindictive sort of pleasure in asserting
his authority over those privates whom he happened to dislike, ordered
Bent to go out and cut some firewood in the bush. Irritated by the
manner in which the order was given, the young "Down-Easter" was
foolish enough to argue with his enemy the corporal.
"Look here," he said, "this is no day to send a man out cutting wood.
The officers can stay in their tents laughing at us fellows out in the
rain. We're treated like a set of blessed dogs."
"Oh, you won't go, won't you?" sneered the corporal, rejoicing at
having irritated the soldier into insubordination.
"No, I won't go," said Bent defiantly; "so you can do what you like
about it."
The corporal reported Bent to his immediate superiors, and the soldier
was arrested and lodged in the guard-tent. Next morning he was brought
before a court-martial and tried for disobedience of orders. Major
Haszard was the president of the court. With him sat Captain Clark,
Lieutenant Brown, and Ensign Parker. Bent knew it was useless to
attempt a defence, for his offence was an inexcusable breach of
discipline. He was found guilty, and the sentence of the court was that
he should receive fifty lashes, and serve two years in gaol.
The triangles were then a familiar institution in every military camp
in the Waikato and in Taranaki; for those were flogging days, when
even slight breaches of military rules brought down the lash upon the
soldier's back.
One of the regimental surgeons, Dr. Andrews, examined Bent, as was the
practice before flogging was inflicted, and he reported that in his
opinion the young soldier was not constitutionally fit to endure the
fifty lashes ordered.
Soon after Bent had been taken to his tent under guard, one of the
officers of the court-martial came in to see him. This was Captain
Clark, a fine jovial young Canadian-born soldier, who had rather a
liking for the unfortunate man from his end of the world.
"Cheer up, Bent," he said; "you'll only get twenty-five--the sentence
is reduced. And put that in your mouth when you go to the triangles,"
and he threw down a sixpence. Then, when the guard-tent corporal
was not looking, the kindly officer took a flask of rum from his
breast-pocket, laid it on the tent floor, and walked away to his
quarters.
When Bent was called out for punishment, he quickly drank off the rum,
and put the sixpence in his mouth. He knew the old soldier's recipe for
a "stiff upper lip" in the agony of flogging--"bite on the bullet." The
sixpence would serve him as well. It would keep his teeth from biting
through his tongue in the throes of that horrible punishment.
A bugle sounded the "Fall in." No. 8 Company was paraded in review
order on the drill ground to "witness punishment." Bent was marched
down to the square; he was stripped to the waist and tied to the
triangles. The big drummer of the Company stepped to the front; he was
the flagellant. Bent bit on his substitute for a bullet as the cat
swished through the air and fell like a red-hot knife on his quivering
back. Again and again came the frightful cuts, criss-cross upon his
back and shoulders, till the tale of twenty-five was complete. Then
the prisoner was cast loose, swearing in his pain and passion to have
the drummer's life. A blanket was thrown across his raw and bleeding
shoulders, and he was marched back to the guard-tent, where the surgeon
prescribed for him in rough-and-ready fashion; then to prison--he
refused to go into the camp hospital.
Bent served some months in Wellington Prison, doing cook-house work, in
expiation of his offence against military discipline. Then he was sent
back to his hated regiment. The shame of that morning at the triangles,
with his comrades paraded to witness his disgrace and agony, was burned
into him for ever. He grew morose and desperate. At last he resolved
to desert to the enemy. He confided his resolve to his tent-mates, and
they, knowing that other soldiers had deserted to the Maoris and had
not been killed, did not attempt to dissuade him. "I can't be worse off
with the Maoris than I am here," he told them; "if they do tomahawk me,
it will end all my troubles. I don't very much care."
So he bided his time for a favourable opportunity to steal from the
camp; and soon his chance came. It was on June 12, 1865, that he broke
camp and fell in with the Hauhau scout on the banks of the Tangahoé.
CHAPTER III
THE CAMP OF THE HAUHAUS
In the Maori country--Arrival at a Hauhau _Pa_--Maori village
scenes--The ceremonies round the sacred flagstaff--"_Riré, riré,
hau!_"--The man with the tomahawk--A white slave--The painted
warriors of Keteonetea--The blazing oven.
The saturnine Hauhau spoke little to the white man during that journey
to the rebel camp. He stalked silently on in front, his rifle over
his shoulder, turning quickly now and again to assure himself that
the soldier was still following him. Presently they forded another
stream, which Bent afterwards came to know as the Ingahape, and passed
through a deserted settlement, with its tumble-down dwellings of
_raupo_ reeds, and its old potato-gardens. A few minutes later they
came in sight of their destination, the Ohangai _pa_. A high stockade
of tree-trunks sunk in the ground, some of the upper ends hewn into
sharp points, others with round knobby tops that suggested impaled
human heads, surrounded a populous village of thatched huts. Just
beyond it was the bush, stretching away as far as the eye could carry.
It was a secluded, pretty scene, that village with its neat enclosure,
its rows of snug _wharés_ which could be seen through the gateway and
the openings in the palisade, and its squares of maize and potato
cultivations, sheltered by the friendly belt of dark green forest.
Some little, nearly naked children were playing about on the open space
in front of the palisades. When they suddenly beheld a white man riding
along towards them, with a Maori walking by his stirrup, they stared
wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and then rushed helter-skelter into the
_pa_, calling out at the top of their voices, "_He pakeha, he pakeha!_"
What a commotion that cry of "_Pakeha_" aroused in the slumbering _pa_!
Men leaped from the flax _whariki_ (mats), where they had been drowsing
away the afternoon awaiting the opening of the steam ovens, and poured
out of the narrow gateway armed with their guns and tomahawks. When
they saw that the European was a harmless, unarmed individual, and that
he was apparently the prisoner of one of their own people, the clamour
died away, and they escorted the soldier and his captor into the _pa_.
Bent quickly perceived that his companion was a man of some importance,
from the peremptory orders he issued and the alacrity with which they
were obeyed. The scout was, in fact, the chief Tito te Hanataua, a
_rangatira_ of high standing in the Ngati-Ruanui tribe, and one of the
Hauhaus' best fighting-leaders.
It was a wild scene that met the young soldier's gaze when he entered
the stockade, and his heart sank before the savagely hostile gaze
of a crowd of armed, half-stripped warriors, the black-bearded and
shaggy-headed men of the bush, and their scarcely less savage-looking
women.
A strange ceremony began.
In the centre of the village square or _marae_ stood a rough-hewn
pole or flagstaff, about fifteen feet high, on which flew one or two
coloured flags. This was the _Niu_, the sacred staff which the Hauhau
prophet Te Ua had commanded his followers to erect as a pole of worship
in each of their villages. [The _Niu_ was in more ancient times the
name of a peculiar ceremony of divination often resorted to by the
_tohungas_ or priests; it is perhaps worth noting, too, that in the
Islands of Polynesia, the traditional Maori Hawaiki, it is the general
name for the coco-nut-tree.] All the inhabitants of the village--men,
women, and children--formed up, and began to march round and round
the _Niu_, with a priest in their midst, rushing frantically to and
fro, and brandishing a Maori weapon as he yelled a ferocious-sounding
chant. The people, too, lifted up their voices as they marched, and,
after listening a while, Bent found to his astonishment that part of
what they were chanting in a singular wild cadence were these words in
"pidgin" English: "Big river, long river, big mountain, long mountain,
bush, big bush, long bush," and so on, ending with a loudly chanted
cry, "_Riré, riré, hau!_" This meaningless gibberish formed part of the
incantations solemnly taught to the Hauhaus by Te Ua, who professed to
have the "gift of tongues" of which the _pakeha's_ New Testament spoke;
his disciples fondly believed that they were endowed by their prophet's
"angel" with wonderful linguistic powers.
The singular march suddenly ceased, at an order from the shawl-kilted
_tohunga_ in the centre, and then the people filed into the village
meeting-house, a large _raupo_-reed-built structure, taking Bent
with them. He was motioned to a seat beside a Maori, whose name, he
afterwards found, was Hori Kerei (George Grey), and who could speak
English fairly well.
Sitting opposite Bent was a white-bearded old fighting-man, a
dour-faced savage, his brown face deeply scored with the marks of
blue-black tattoo; his sole attire was a blanket; in his right hand,
and partly concealed by the blanket, he held a tomahawk. His hand
twitched now and then, as if he were about to flash out the tomahawk
and use it on the _pakeha_, from whose face he never withdrew his
fierce old eyes. He was the chief, Te Rangi-tutaki.
A long talk began. Hori Kerei interpreted. The Maoris asked Bent why
he had come to them, why had he run away from his own people. The
deserter frankly told them that he was tired of being a soldier, that
he had been ill-treated and imprisoned, and that he came to them for
protection.
"_Pakeha_," said Kerei, "they want to know if you will ever leave the
Maori and go back to the soldiers."
"No," said Bent; "tell them I'll never run away from the Hauhaus. I
want to live with them always; I don't ever want to see a white man
again!"
"_Kapai!_" said Grey good-humouredly. "That the talk! All right, I tell
them true."
When Kerei had interpreted the white man's reply, the old man with the
tomahawk leaned over and said, very earnestly, tapping the blade of the
weapon with his left hand as he spoke:
"_Whakarongo mai!_ Listen, _pakeha_! You see this _patiti_ in my hand?
Yes. If you had not at once replied that you would never return to the
white soldiers I would have killed you. I would have sunk this into
your skull!"
After this brief speech, delivered with a fierceness of mien and
glitter of eye that made the refugee tremble in spite of his efforts to
appear calm, the old barbarian shook hands with him.
Then Tito te Hanataua--the man who had brought the soldier to the
_pa_--rose and said:
"O my tribe, listen to me! Take good care of the _pakeha_, and harm him
not, because our prophet has told us that if any white men come to us
as this man has done, and leave their own tribe for ours, we must not
injure them, but must keep them with us and protect them."
Tito's word assured Bent's safety, and the tone of the people changed
to one of friendliness; many of them shook hands with the lonely white
man. The women cooked some pork and potatoes for him in an earth-oven,
and he was given to eat, and received into the tribe. Henceforth he was
as a Maori.
Now began for the runaway an even harder life than that which he had
endured in the army. He found that he was virtually a slave amongst
the Maoris. He had had fond imaginings of the easy time he would enjoy
in the heart of Maoridom, but to quote from his own lips, "they made
me work like a blessed dog." Soon after his arrival in the _pa_ a
party of men was sent off to Taiporohenui--a celebrated old village
and meeting-place near the present town of Hawera--and he was ordered
to go with them, and was set to work felling bush, clearing and
digging, gathering firewood, and hauling water for the camp. Tito was
his master--not only his master, but in hard fact his owner, with
power of life and death over him. Bent divined the Maori nature too
well to refuse "fatigue duty," as he had done in the Manawapou camp.
There would have been no court-martial in Taiporohenui--just a crack
on the head with a tomahawk. So he bent his back to the burdens with
what cheerfulness he might, and was thankful for the good things Tito
provided, though they took no more elaborate form than a blanket and a
flax mat for a bed, and two square meals a day of pork and potatoes.
Tito was, says Bent, a man of about forty-five years of age, a stern,
but not unkindly owner, with a pretty young wife of seventeen or
eighteen, whose big, dark eyes were often turned with an expression of
pity on the unfortunate renegade _pakeha_.
The people watched the white man closely, thinking no doubt that as
he was being worked so hard he might be tempted to run away if he got
the chance. And whenever he went out of doors the old man who had sat
opposite him in the meeting-house on the day of his first arrival
followed him about, never speaking a word, with his tomahawk in his
hand.
The news that a white soldier had run away to the Hauhaus soon spread
amongst the Ngati-Ruanui. One day a messenger from the large village of
Keteonetea came to Taiporohenui and announced that he had been sent to
fetch the strange _pakeha_ to that settlement.
"What do they want with me?" asked Bent, when Tito told him that the
envoy was waiting for him.
"They want to see the colour of your skin," replied Tito.
Bent, in alarm, begged Tito not to send him to Keteonetea, for he
greatly feared that he would be killed.
Tito reassured his white man, telling him that the Keteonetea people
were his relatives, and that he was not to be alarmed at their
demeanour, because they would not harm him.
The messenger and his white charge tramped away through the bush to
the village, a lonely little spot hemmed in by the dense forests--long
since hewn away and replaced by grassy fields and dairy farms. A
palisade surrounded the _kainga_; within were clusters of large
well-built reed _wharés_, and the inevitable _Niu_ pole stood in the
middle of the _marae_.
Bent found a large number of Maoris, about three hundred, assembled on
the _marae_, the village parade ground. The scene still lives vividly
in his memory--an even wilder, more savage spectacle than that of his
first day at Tito's _pa_. The men's faces were painted red, in token of
war--red smudges of ochre on their cheeks and red lines drawn across
their brows; they wore feathers in their hair, their only clothes were
flax mats. The lone _pakeha_ might well have imagined himself back
in the days of ancient Maoridom, before missionaries or traders had
changed the barbaric simplicity of the aboriginal life. The only modern
note was the firearms of the warriors; all the men carried guns (most
of them double-barrelled shot-guns, and a few rifles and carbines),
and wore tomahawks stuck in their broad-plaited flax belts. Most of
the women were as primitive in their garb as the men; their clothing
consisted chiefly of flaxen cloaks; a few wore shawls and blankets.
"The people looked at me very fiercely as I came into the _marae_,"
says Bent, "and I felt my heart sinking low, in spite of Tito's
assurance." They put him into a _raupo_ hut by himself, and fastened
the door--a proceeding that did not at all tend to elevate his spirits.
The ex-soldier was left to himself in the dark _wharé_ for quite a
couple of hours. He could hear the people gathered on the village
square discussing him excitedly; one orator after another declaiming
with frantic energy. At length a Maori unfastened the door of the
_wharé_, and, taking Bent by the hand, led him out on to the _marae_.
The native could speak English; Bent afterwards found that he had been
an old whaler, and had lived amongst white people for many years;
his name was Kere (Kelly). He told the _pakeha_, with some show of
kindness, that he must not be frightened, that no one would harm him,
but he must go to the sacred _Niu_ and promise that he would never
return to the _pakehas_.
The first thing that met Bent's eyes on stepping out through the low
doorway of the _wharé_ was a great fire blazing in the centre of the
_marae_, surrounded by a ring of short stakes. Accustomed as he was by
this time to sights of terror, this struck a fresh note of alarm.
"Good Lord!" he said to himself, "are they going to burn me alive?"
"Friend," he said to Kere, "tell me, what's that fire for?"
The Maori explained that it was an _ahi tapu_, a sacred fire, used in
the Hauhau war-rites.
Bent was very doubtful. "I'm afraid," said he to his companion, "that
it's for me! Are they going to throw me into it? I've heard they do
such things."
"No, no, _pakeha_! It's all right. You'll be safe. But remember, do as
the _tohunga_ tells you, and promise him you'll never go back to the
_pakeha_ soldiers, or you'll die!"
The Maori led the white man up to the foot of the _Niu_ pole, a tall
ricker, with rough crosstrees and with flag halliards of flax rope.
Bent was told to sit down at the foot of the pole. The people all
gathered around in a ring.
A tall old warrior stood in the middle of the ring, facing Bent--the
prophet of the _Niu_. He was naked from the waist up; his face was
completely covered with tattooing. He was a _tohunga_, or priest, Bent
afterwards discovered; by name Tu-ahi-pa, or Tautahi-ariki, a man held
in much awe by the people as a worker of _makutu_ (witchcraft).
For a long time the old wizard closely eyed the pale-faced stranger
before him. Then he said, through the interpreter, Kere:
"You behold this ring of people, the people of Keteonetea?"
"Yes," said Bent.
"I ask you this, will you return to your people or remain with us?"
"I will never return to the _pakehas_," Bent replied; "I want to live
with the Maoris and to make them my people."
"Good!" exclaimed the Hauhau priest. "Now, turn your eyes upon yon
fire, burning there upon the _marae_. Well, if you had not promised to
become a Maori and live with us, the tribe would have thrown you into
that blazing oven. It is well that you have spoken as you have."
This, to Bent's great relief, ended the ordeal. The Hauhaus, at a cry
from the priest, began their mad march round the _Niu_--men, women, and
children--chanting as they went their savage psalms, rolling their
eyes and lifting their arms high in the air as every now and again they
cried their wild refrain, "_Riré, riré, hau!_"--the last word literally
barked out from the hundreds of throats.
When the Hauhau ceremony was at an end, a young woman who had joined
in the march round the _Niu_ came to Bent, took him away to a hut and
gave him a meal of pork and potatoes, and then led him to her father's
house. The father was the principal chief of the _kainga_, and, as it
turned out, cousin to Bent's _rangatira_ Tito.
Here the white man spent the night, the chief's daughter lying across
the entrance just inside the doorway, for fear--as the chief told
him--that some young desperado might take it into his head to earn a
little notoriety by tomahawking the pale-face. Outside, the Maoris
were gathered on the _marae_, by the light of great fires, the chiefs
making speeches and _taki_-ing up and down in excited fashion, weapon
in hand; now and again the fanatic crowd would burst into a loud Hauhau
chant that echoed long amidst the black encircling forest. So the wild
_korero_ went on, far into the night.
CHAPTER IV
IN THE OTAPAWA STOCKADE
The return from Keteonetea--The hill-fort at Otapawa--A _korero_
with the Hauhaus--Bent's one-eyed wife--"The wooing o' 't"--Bent
is christened "Ringiringi."
Morning came at last, but the solitary white man in this nest of
savages had hardly closed his eyes. More than once he fancied some
one was trying the low door of the _wharé_, and he looked round the
dimly-lighted hut--a small fire was kept burning in the centre of the
floor--in search of a weapon, but found none. Bent lay there, listening
intently, and longing with an inexpressibly bitter longing for the old
camp-life, hard though it was, and for the sound of a white comrade's
voice. It had not always been "pack-drill and C.B." in his army life,
in spite of the tyrant sergeants. But now it was the bush and the
_wharé_ for the rest of his days--or, in other words, for just so long
a period as he might be able to save his head from the tomahawk.
Daybreak--and no sooner was it light than the Hauhaus began to
gather round the _pakeha's_ hut, while the women were lighting the
_hangis_--the earth steam-ovens--for the first meal of the day. "Come
out to us!" they yelled; "come out, _pakeha_!" They ran to and fro in
front of the _wharé_, and raised barking cries that sounded fearfully
menacing to the _pakeha_ sitting on his low mat-bed, and feeling not in
the least disposed to respond to the invitation to come outside and be
killed.
But the old chief speedily ended the uproar by opening the sliding door
and shouting angrily:
"_Haere atu! Haere atu!_" an imperative phrase that the deserter had
already learned to recognise as one that could be exactly translated
"Clear out!"
Thereafter there was comparative peace. The white man was under the
protection of the chief, and was allowed to wander round the village
pretty much as he chose; but he was warned not to go far, or some
warrior might take a fancy to his head.
Four or five days passed without incident, and then a horse was brought
up for Bent, and he returned to Tito's _kainga_, escorted by the
chief's daughter and ten armed men, all mounted. Tito seemed relieved
to have his _pakeha_ back again in safety, and after feasting the Maori
guard on the best the village women could lay on the dinner-mats, he
sent them back to Keteonetea loaded with new clothes and baskets of
_kumara_ (sweet potato) and _taro_--another tropic root-food brought
from Polynesia by the ancestors of the Maori, but now no longer grown
by the Taranaki people.
Soon Bent was on the tramp again. His chief, Tito, set off one morning,
taking his white man with him, for a fortified village called Otapawa,
where the Hauhaus were preparing to offer a strong resistance to the
British troops. Otapawa was about four miles away by a narrow and
winding forest track. A small river, the Mangemange, had to be forded
on the way, and here Bent had a taste of some of the minor adventures
of the bush. Bent being a rather small man and Tito a big, powerful
fellow, the Maori good-naturedly took his _pakeha_ on his back to
_pikau_ him across the stream. Bent was rather heavier than Tito had
imagined, and after balancing to and fro precariously on a slippery
place in the deepest part of the ford, the Maori's feet suddenly went
from under him, and he and his protégé were capsized in the middle of
the creek. Tito, however, kept a tight grip of the white man, and,
though the stream was running swiftly, they managed to struggle out to
the opposite bank in safety, and after drying their clothes as well as
they could continued their bush journey.
About midday the Hauhau chief and his companion emerged from the
solitudes of the forest to find themselves in the Otapawa clearing.
A hill about three hundred feet high rose like an island from the
great _rimu_ and _rata_ woods that compassed it on every side; at the
back ran the Tangahoé River. At the foot of the hill there was some
cultivation; a steep winding path led to the top; here were a ditch
and a bristling double stockade of tall tree-trunks set solidly in the
ground, connected by cross-rails lashed with forest vines; within was
the Hauhau village. The only access to the interior of the stockade was
through a low and narrow gateway, painted red.
A shawl-clad figure with a gun rose from a squatting position just
outside the _pa_ gate as the two travellers walked out from the
shade of the forest and began the ascent of the mound. A loud cry of
astonishment and warning brought out the villagers, one after the
other, bobbing their heads as they ran through the gateway. Then the
shout was raised, as they recognised Bent's companion:
"_Aue!_ Here comes Tito with a _pakeha_! A _pakeha_!"
Waving shawls and blankets and weapons, the people cried their
greetings to the chief, and the white man and his protector walked in
between two lines of wondering men and women and children, who pressed
in close behind the new-comers as they passed into the palisaded _pa_.
A long, low-eaved, thatched house stood near the middle of the _pa_,
somewhat apart from the smaller _wharés_. Into this building Tito and
Bent were taken, and finely woven flax mats, patterned in black and
white, were spread out for them. Tito rose and addressed the crowd.
He explained, with a good deal of pride, as Bent imagined, how he had
become possessed of a live white man--a somewhat unusual acquisition
amongst the Maoris in that unrestful period, for the impatient Hauhau
was, as a rule, too fond of trying his new tomahawk on a _pakeha_
skull to keep a prisoner long. The _korero_ over, food was brought in
in freshly plaited baskets of green flax--boiled pork, dried shark (a
present from a seaside tribe), boiled _taro_ and _kumara_--quite a
bountiful meal for a war-time bush camp.
Up to this time the deserter's adventures had been, if not exactly
tragic, at least of a severely unpleasant turn. Now, however, they took
a humorous twist--humorous from an onlooker's view, though to the white
man himself it seemed rather the final pannikinful in the bucket of his
misfortunes.
A woman was brought into the _wharé_. She walked over and seated
herself on the flax _whariki_ by Bent's side.
The white man turned and looked at her in some surprise. Her vision
still haunts the memory of the old adventurer as that of a particularly
ugly woman. She was not old, probably not above twenty-five, but
she was blind in one eye, her lips were of negroid thickness--such
"blubber" lips as seen here and there among Maori tribes tell their
tale of an ancient Melanesian strain in the blood of the Polynesian
immigrants. She was tattooed on the chin, and there was a deeply
chiselled blue line on the inner cuticle of her lower lip. Her hair
hung round her face in a tangled mop. "Well," said Bent to himself,
"she is no beauty."
The woman spoke some words of greeting to Bent, but he steadily gazed
on the floor and said nothing.
Then a Maori sitting near by, who could speak a little English, said,
"This woman wants to marry you!"
"Oh, Lord!" exclaimed Bent. "What for? I don't want to get married."
An old man, whose name was Peneta, and who was draped from shoulder to
ankles in a red blanket, walked up to the white man and, halting in
front of him, pointed to the one-eyed woman.
"_Pakeha_," he said, with a quiet grimness in his tone, "this is my
niece, Te Rawanga. You must marry her (_me moe korua_). If you refuse,
you will die! That is all."
This was translated to Bent.
Here was a dilemma, indeed! Bent had nothing to say. He looked at the
woman by his side, and she smiled at him as coquettishly as her one
good eye allowed. He looked, and the more he looked the less he liked
her. Then he glanced at the dour old uncle, and cast his helpless eyes
around the crowded meeting-house. The men were glum and scowling;
one or two of the young girls seemed to perceive the humour of the
situation, for they giggled, and then hid their faces in their shawls.
Bent eyed his prospective uncle-in-law again. The old man was
impatient. He said again, "Take my niece as your wife."
"_Ae_," assented the white man, who could see no hope of escape. "I'll
take her."
So the young soldier was mated, to the satisfaction of every one but
himself. "She wasn't my fancy, to put it mildly," he says. "But I
suppose it was her last chance, and the old man would have tomahawked
me if I hadn't taken her."
Mrs. Bent's wedding-furnishings, which she bundled a little later, with
determined air, into the corner of the communal house assigned to the
white man, were spartan and primitive in the extreme.
They consisted solely of a large plaited _whariki_ (sleeping-mat) and
a wooden pillow, which, to the white man, seemed alarmingly like some
weapon of chastisement.
Matrimony amongst the Hauhaus was simplicity itself.
Bent, now fully received into the tribe, had a Maori name given to him.
It was "Ringiringi," a name he bore for two or three years, until the
war-chief Titokowaru rechristened him "Tu-nui-a-moa."
The origin of this name "Ringiringi" may be explained, as an example of
the way in which the Maoris so frequently acquire new names often from
very trivial incidents. It was a contraction of "Te Wai-ringiringi,"
which was one of Tito te Hanataua's nicknames, bestowed upon the chief
about two years previously. A party of Ngati-Maniapoto Maoris from the
King Country were at that time on a visit to Taiporohenui, where a
large war-council of the rebel tribes was held. Tito te Hanataua was
one of the Taranaki orators, and as he _taki_'d up and down, spear
in hand, in the usual energetic manner of the Maori speech-maker,
he spoke so rapidly and fluently that the Kingites dubbed him "Te
Wai-ringiringi," meaning "The Pouring Water," because his words poured
from his lips like water. Tito was rather proud of this nickname, and
his bestowal of it upon Bent was in a sense a mark of favour.
Bent at this time was a thin, rather weak-looking man, and his slimness
was made the subject of a _haka_ chorus amongst the people, a little
song for which his one-eyed wife was responsible. These were the words:
"_Ki te kai, e Ringi,
Kai poroporo te manawa,
Te iti to hopé,
Whakapai Angoré_,"
("Eat away, O Ringi,
Eat your fill of _poroporo_ berries
To make you strong again;
Lest your waist be small and weak,
Eat to become a fine Englishman!")
The _poroporo_ is a forest shrub which bears an abundance of large red
berries, a favourite food of the _tui_ and pigeons, which become very
fat on this rich bird-fare.
The white man, however, as he told his _wahiné_, preferred to leave the
_poroporo_ to the _tuis_, and to fill out his attenuated waist, which
the people looked upon with some amusement, with good Maori pork and
potatoes.
CHAPTER V
TE UA, PRIEST AND PROPHET
Te Ua and his gods--The _Pai mariré_ faith--"Charming" the
British bullets--Bent's interview with the prophet--His life
_tapu_'d--Preparing for battle--Life in the forest _pa_.
About this time Kimble Bent became acquainted with a man whose name has
passed into New Zealand history. This was Te Ua Haumene, the founder
and high-priest and prophet of the Hauhau religion, or, more correctly
speaking, fanaticism. Te Ua came riding into the Otapawa village one
day with a bodyguard of armed men. Bent describes him as a stoutly
built man of between forty and fifty, attired in European clothing,
and carrying a carved _taiaha_--a chief's halbert or broadsword of
hardwood, flattened at one end in a blunt blade, and sharpened at the
other into a tongue-shaped point, and decorated with tufts of red
_kaka_ feathers; in a plaited flax belt round his waist was thrust a
greenstone _mere_.
Te Ua was the man who taught the Taranaki rebels the _karakia_, or
incantations--some of them a curious medley of Maori and English--which
they chanted in their wild marches round the sacred _Niu_ in their
village squares. These incantations and chants he professed to have
heard from supernatural visitants, the spirits who came on the four
winds, and from the angel Gabriel, who spoke in his ear as he lay
asleep in his _raupo_ hut and bade him go abroad and spread a new
religion, which should band together the tribes of the Maori nation.
Many strange tales Bent had heard about the prophet and his wondrous
_mana_. Te Ua had succeeded in imbuing his fanatic disciples with an
unquestioning Moslem-like faith in the potency of the Hauhau cult and
its accompanying charms and magic formulæ. He was the Mahomet of the
Taranaki people, and exercised an influence over the bush-fighters of
Ngati-Ruanui and allied tribes almost as great as that which Te Kooti,
the Chatham Islands escapee, commanded a few years later amongst the
warriors of the East Coast.
The absolute faith the Hauhaus reposed in Te Ua's precepts and his
pretences to supernatural power has parallels in the records of the
Mahdi's wars in the Soudan, and in other campaigns waged under the
banner of Islam, and more recently still in the Zulu rebellion in
Natal. He assured his followers that when they went into battle the
bullets of the white soldiers would be turned aside in their flight if
they but raised their right hands as if warding the ball off, at the
same time repeating the words "_Hapa! Pai mariré!_" ("Pass over me!
Righteousness and peace!") The expression "_Pai mariré_" was adopted
as one of the designations of the Hauhau religion; and the sign of the
upraised hand became the outward sign and symbol of the warrior faith.
To-day, should you visit the large European-built house of the late
Te Whiti, the Prophet of the Mountain, at Parihaka, you will see a
picture of Te Ua on the wall of the speech-hall, his right hand raised
to his shoulder, palm outwards, as if in the act of invoking his gods
to turn the _pakeha_ bullets aside--"_Hapa! Pai mariré!_" And many a
deluded Hauhau fell to the rifles of the white men before the Maori
confidence in the efficacy of the charm was shaken. But Te Ua had a
very good explanation to offer for any casualties--that if the _pakeha_
bullet refused to be waved aside and insisted on entering the body of a
"righteous and peaceful" son of the faith, it was because the stricken
man had lost faith in the _karakia_--the ritual--and, very properly,
suffered for his unbelief.
A sublimely simple explanation, and one that was perfectly satisfactory
to the prophet and every one concerned, except perhaps the Hauhau who
had happened to stop the bullet.
Even when the glacis of the Sentry Hill redoubt was strewn with the
dead bodies of Hepanaia and fifty of his red-painted braves, the best
manhood of Ngati-Ruanui and Nga-Ruahiné--who fell in a mad attack upon
the walled fort in open daylight chanting their "_Hapa! Pai mariré!
Hau!_"--the faith in Te Ua and his charms was but little abated. And,
unlike the Moslem warrior, who fought to the death in the certain
hope of a speedy translation to Paradise, the Maori fanatic expected
no heavenly reward for his faith and his death-despising ferocity.
No _houris_ with welcoming arms; no eternity of fleshly bliss. No,
it was just utter blind bravery, a sheer trust in a mad creed of
Death-to-the-Whites and Maori Land for the Maori Race.
So the visit of the high-priest of Hauhauism was a great event in the
bush _pa_. The prophet was received with a _powhiri_, or chant and
dance of welcome, by the people of the village; then the _tangi_ and
the doleful hum of weeping for the dead. The _tangi_ over, the prophet
addressed his disciples in the meeting-house; and hearing that there
was a white runaway soldier in the _pa_, he sent for Bent.
It was a curious interview. The white man no longer appeared in the
soldier's uniform, which he had worn for some time after deserting,
but had taken to the garb of the savage. He was bare-headed and
bare-footed. His sole garments were a shirt made of pieces of
blanket and a flax mat tied round his waist. He entered the crowded
council-house and stood before the prophet.
[Illustration: PATARA, A HAUHAU PROPHET.]
"_E noho ki raro_" ("Sit down"), said Te Ua, pointing to the floor-mat
in front of him.
By the prophet's side was a flax basket containing some potatoes and
pork, with which he had been breaking his fast after his journey. This
food being appropriated to his use was, of course, _tapu_ in the eyes
of the assemblage. Te Ua took a potato from the basket, broke it into
two pieces, and gave one piece to Bent and told him to eat it; the
other half he ate himself.
"Now," said the prophet, "you are _tapu_--your life is safe; no man may
harm you now that you have eaten of my sacred food. Men of Tangahoé!
This _pakeha_ is my _pakeha_; and if any other white men should come to
us as this man has done, fleeing from their people and forsaking the
_pakeha_ camps for our _pas_, you must protect them, for the gods have
sent them to us."
"You are a Maori now," added Te Ua to Bent, "and you must have a woman
to cook your food for you."
Bent, in his imperfect Maori, informed the prophet that he had already
been supplied with a wife by the Maoris, but, like a prudent man, made
no comment on her imperfections.
"That's all right then," said the prophet. And he gave Bent a large
cloak of dressed flax, called a _tatara_. "Wear this," he said; "it is
a _tapu_ garment and sacred to you; no other man may wear it."
During the next few days, before Te Ua returned to his home at Opunake,
on the coast, Bent had further interviews with the prophet, who treated
him with kindness, and gave him what was to the runaway a very welcome
present--some _pakeha_ tobacco. Though something of a madman, like most
Maori prophets, Te Ua was of more benevolent spirit than his acolytes,
Kereopa and Patara, and their kin, who had been sent to preach the
gospel of _Pai mariré_ to the outer tribes. Had Kereopa, for instance,
come to Otapawa, Bent would, in all probability, have fallen under the
tomahawk as a sacrifice for the savage ritual of the _Niu_, and his
head would have been smoke-dried and carried over forest-trails from
distant tribe to tribe, or stuck up like a scarecrow on a palisade-pole.
Bent learnt a good deal of the personal history of the prophet, and of
his peculiar delusions. Te Ua had fought the white soldiers at Nukumaru
about a year before this, when a force of Hauhaus made a desperate
attack on the camp of two thousand British troops, under General
Cameron, and killed and wounded nearly fifty soldiers before they were
driven off with the loss of about thirty killed.
The outward and visible sign or incarnation (_aria_) of Te Ua's deity
was a _ruru_, or owl. This bird is sacred amongst Taranaki Natives;
they will not kill or harm one; they say it is an _atua_, a god, and
has a hundred eyes.
An incident which Bent relates as occurring in another bush settlement
where he and Te Ua both happened to be staying is illustrative of the
prophet's peculiar respect for his owl-god. Just at dusk, when the
evening meal was over, and the night creatures began their roamings,
an owl flew softly from the trees and settled above the window of the
house in which Te Ua was sitting. "Ha!" said the prophet, when he saw
it; "there is my _atua_." He recited an incantation, calling the _ruru_
by name, and when the _karakia_ was ended the bird as noiselessly flew
back to the forest. Te Ua said nothing more till the next morning, when
he announced that he would leave the place at once, because his owl-god
had appeared to him as a warning to return to his home.
Soon after the wandering prophet rode out of Otapawa, word reached the
_pa_ by a spy who had been in the British camp that the troops under
General Chute were preparing for an advance against the Hauhaus, and
that it was probable the hill stronghold, being so close to the white
men's base of operations, would shortly be attacked.
All was excitement in the _pa_ when this became known. The palisading
of the _pa_ was strengthened with stout timbers from the forest;
trenches and rifle-pits were dug within the walls. The natives worked
away like mad, and Bent with them. He had caught the fever of the
moment, and in all but skin was a Maori. He was not at all happy,
however, at the news that his old regiment, the 57th, was expected to
march on Otapawa, and he heartily wished himself far away from these
scenes of constant commotion and terror. But for the present he was
safer with the Hauhaus than with the men of his own colour and tongue.
Day after day passed, and the Maoris lay behind their strong stockade
waiting for the attack. The underground food-stores were well supplied;
water was carried in in _taha_, or calabashes, made by scooping out the
soft inside of the _hué_ gourd; bullets were cast and cartridges were
made. Then, as no troops appeared, and the scouts who kept constant
watch on the forest outskirts reported that there was no sign of
immediate action on the part of the enemy, the tension of garrison life
relaxed, and the ordinary avocations of the _kainga_ were resumed.
In a clearing hewn and burnt from the heart of the woods were the
cultivation grounds. Here all the able-bodied men of the fort were
set to work, turning up the rich black soil and planting potatoes,
_kumara_, and _taro_. Planting over, the lengthening days were spent
in hunting wild pigs, and in gathering wild honey, which was plentiful
in hollow trees in the forests; or in strolling, pipe in mouth, about
the _pa_; playing draughts (_kaimu_) on the _marae_ in Maori fashion;
singing songs and narrating old stories and legends. Night and morning
there were long Hauhau prayers, led by the priest of the _pa_, old
Tukino, who was one of Te Ua's apostles.
Life in this bush-fort presented to the lonely _pakeha_ a picture of
barbaric simplicity. Few of the people had European clothing; the men's
working garb was just a rough flax mat hanging from the waist to the
knees. They lived on the wild foods of the forest until their crops
were ready for digging; snared _kaka_ (parrots) and the sweet-tongued
_korimako_, or bell-birds; _tui_, or parson-birds, and the swarming
wood-pigeons, and shot or speared the pigs that abounded in the dense
woods. They lived to a large extent, too, on _aruhe_, or fern-root,
which they dug up in the open patches of fern-land; and in the bush
they gathered the berries of the _hinau_-tree, steeped them in water to
rid them of their astringency, dried them in the sun, and then pounded
them into cakes, which made a sustaining if not very palatable food.
Another food-staple was _kaanga-pirau_, or maize steeped in water until
if was quite decayed. "The smell of this Indian corn," says Bent, with
an emphasis begotten of unpleasant memories, "was enough to kill a dog.
Nevertheless, I had to eat it, and in time I got used to it."
"I had at this time," continues the deserter, recounting his wild days
in Otapawa, "no boots, no trousers, no shirt--just Maori flax mats to
cover me, and a mat and blanket for my bed. I had managed to procure
some needles and thread, together with paper and pencil (I kept up a
sort of diary now and then), and one or two other little things which
I kept in a kit, thinking that, though I had nothing to sew with the
needles and thread, and very little to do with the other belongings,
they might come in useful before very long. One of my greatest troubles
was the want of salt; as for bread, I had not tasted any for many
months."
CHAPTER VI
THE STORMING OF OTAPAWA
British forces attack the stockade--The bayonet charge--Flight
of the Hauhaus--Through the forest by torchlight--Doctoring the
wounded--The _Tangi_ by the river.
Summer was on the forest. The beautiful midsummer of Maori Land, with
its soft airs and brilliant sunshine, its blaze of crimson blossom
on the grand old _rata_-trees, and its showering of scented, white,
peach-like flowers on the thickets of ribbon-wood. Birds flooded the
outskirts of the bush with song; the early morning chantings and
pipings and chimings of the _tui_ and the _korimako_ made a feast of
melody to which the brown forest men were in no way deaf, for they
delighted as much as any _pakeha_ in the sights and sounds of the
free, wild places, and the call of the creatures of the bush. "_Te
Waha-o-Tané_," literally "The Voice of the Tree-God"--the Song of
Nature--they called these morning concerts of the birds; it was their
poetic expression in the classic tongue of old Polynesia for the sounds
that betokened the daily awakening to light and life of the deep and
solemn forests of Tane-Mahuta. Pigeons, _ku-ku_-ing to each other, with
blue necks and white breasts gleaming in the sun, went sweeping across
the clearing on softly winnowing wings, and flapped from tree to tree
and shrub to shrub in search of the tenderest leaves, for it was not
yet the season of the choicest bush fruits, the big blue _tawa_ berry,
the sweet yellow _koroi_, and the aromatic _miro_.
Life went easily in the _pa_ when the early harvesting was over. There
was little to do but eat and sleep and lie about in the sun, or join
in the daily prayers and the procession round the _Niu_ pole, where
the brightly coloured war-flags hung.[1] There was abundance of food
in the camp--potatoes, maize, potted birds, pork, and dried fish
sent as presents from the coast tribes. Early morning, and again in
the warm, golden evenings, long, straight columns of pale blue smoke
arose from the cooking-ovens of the village, and mingled with the thin
vapours that crept about the tree-tops; then little clouds of steam
curled up as the women, with lively chatter, uncovered the _hangis_
and arranged the well-cooked food in little round flax baskets, which
they presently carried off, women and girls in a double line, keeping
time with a merry old dance-song--the lilt of the "_tuku-kai_" the
"food-bringing"--as they marched on to the green _marae_ and laid the
steaming meal before their lounging lords.
It was all very pleasant and idyllic from the point of view of the
brown bushmen. But "Ringiringi," the _pakeha_-Maori, though he led by
no means a hard life now that the heaviest work of the year was over,
had an uneasy mind. He was--or had been--a civilised man, and he could
not forget; moreover, he often woke from unpleasant dreams. One was
a vision of a British regiment charging him with fixed bayonets and
pinning him against the palisades of his _pa_. Fervently he hoped that
he would not be in the fort when the troops marched to the assault, and
that the Hauhaus would not compel him to level a _tupara_ against his
one-time comrades, the old "Die-Hards."
This peaceful state of things did not endure for long. In a few
days--it was early in the year 1866--the long-expected attack on
Otapawa was delivered. Before the troops came, however, the prophet of
the _pa_ ordered all the old people and most of the women and children
to retire to the forest in rear of the fort, and told "Ringiringi"
to accompany them. News had just been brought in that the scouts out
in the fern country had noticed signs of an impending movement in the
British camp. The white man and the tribal encumbrances pushed back
into the bush for about three miles, and camped in a quiet little nook
by a creek-side, with high, forested hills towering around. The weather
now became cold and bleak, and there was little food to sustain the
refugees, for the principal stores of _kai_ had been left in the _pa_.
Early one morning the sound of cannon was heard in the distance, then
heavy rifle-volleying, followed by desultory firing.
The Queen's soldiers were storming the fort.
Here I may give a more detailed description of the defences of Otapawa
than has appeared in the preceding pages, to enable the reader to
realise the sort of place the white general was attacking. Curving
round under the rear of the _pa_ and partly protecting it on the
flanks, flowed the Tangahoé River. The hill-top where the _pa_ stood
was flat, and the rear dropped precipitously to the Tangahoé. The only
access to the interior of the stockade was through a low and narrow
gateway. Just within, the entrance was blinded by a short fence, so
that an enemy could not charge straight, even if the gate were open,
but would have to turn first to the left for a short distance and then
to the right, exposed to a fire from between the palisades, before
the open _marae_ was reached. The _pa_ was defended by two rows of
palisading, with a ditch between, and another shallow trench inside the
inner stockade. The outer stockade, the _pekerangi_, was about eight
feet high, and was the lighter fence of the two. The principal timbers
were six or eight inches thick, but the stakes between were smaller
and did not quite reach the ground; they were fastened with bush-vines
and supplejack to the sapling rails that ran along the stockade. The
open spaces at the bottom of the fence were for the defenders in the
outer trench to fire through. The inner fence, the _tuwatawata_,
was a stouter structure, of strong, green tree-trunks set solidly
in the ground, and with openings here and there for rifle-fire. And
finally--an important thing in Maori eyes--there was the "luck-stone"
of the fort, the greenstone _whatu_. This was buried under the foot
of a large stockade post, close to the right-hand corner nearest the
river, as one approached from the _pa_ gate.
It was soon after daylight that the _pa_ was attacked. The assailing
British force was assisted by some Colonial troops and a contingent
of "friendly" Maoris, or _Kupapas_, chiefly men from the Wanganui
district, under the afterwards celebrated bush-fighter, Kepa te
Rangihiwinui (Major Kemp). General Chute commanded the operations. An
Armstrong gun was brought to within a short distance of the hill-fort,
and several shells were fired into the stockade. Then the general gave
the order for the assault.
As the storming party of Imperial soldiers, with bayonets fixed,
doubled eagerly up the hill face to the front stockade, the Hauhau
chiefs, Tukino and Tu-ahi-pa, cried to their men, crouching in the
outer trench with levelled guns:
"Sons! Be steady, and wait till they come close up, then let them have
it!"
As the first files of the soldiers dashed up to the stockade,
"_Puhia!_"--"Fire!"--shouted the chiefs, and under the thundering
volley many whites fell. Another volley, and then the soldiers were at
the stockade, firing through the gaps in the obstruction, and slashing
at the ties of the fence. Hand-grenades were carried by some of the
stormers, and one of these bursting in the outer trench wounded fierce
old Tu-ahi-pa, who had just killed a soldier in the act of cutting away
at the _pekerangi_ in an endeavour to force an entrance.
The Maoris did not wait for the bayonet. The wild rush of the maddened
troops was irresistible. Leaving seven of their men killed in the
trenches and about the palisades, the defenders gathered their wounded
and fled. The trenches led to the steep bank overlooking the Tangahoé
River. Down the trenches they ran, and sliding down the bank, they
took to the bush, scrambling up along the river-side as hard as they
could go. Kepa, with his Whanganui friendlies, pursued the flying
Hauhaus and shot two or three.
As Bent had expected, it was his old regiment, the 57th, that stormed
the _pa_. The 57th were led by Lieutenant-Colonels Butler and Haszard,
and were supported by the 14th regiment, who were very jealous of the
famous old "Die-Hards." Eleven whites fell and twenty were wounded. One
of those who received his death-wound was Lieutenant-Colonel Haszard.
It was generally reported afterwards that he was shot by Kimble Bent,
but this was mere camp gossip. Gudgeon's "Reminiscences of the War
in New Zealand," gives currency to the report, but it is strongly
denied, and with every appearance of truth, by Bent. When the _pa_
was attacked he was at least three miles away, on the northern side
of the Mangemange stream. "It is false to say that I killed my old
officer," says he, "or that I ever even fired at him. I never fired a
shot against the whites all the time I was with the Hauhaus." This is
confirmed by the Maoris, who say that Bent was not allowed to handle
a gun in an engagement for fear he might use it against the Hauhaus
themselves.
The refugees in the bush-camp with Bent waited anxiously for news
of the fight. Was it a victory or a defeat? Soon, the first of the
defenders of the _pa_ dropped into camp, blood-stained and angry.
And then, as the afternoon went on, the rest straggled in. Many were
wounded, and seven dead bodies were carried in on hastily made litters
of supplejack vines lashed to poles. Then the full story of the battle
was told.
It was a sad and angry camp, that remote pocket between the hills. Most
of the Hauhaus came in nearly naked, just as they had jumped up when
the first shot was fired in the grey dawn. They were desperately sullen
and grief-stricken over their dead and the loss of their stronghold,
which to them had seemed almost impregnable, for it was the strongest
stockaded position they had yet built. Many a dark look was bent upon
the white man as he sat by one of the fires, not daring to speak a word.
That night the camp was suddenly abandoned by order of the Hauhau
leader, who feared pursuit, not by the Imperial soldiers, who had no
relish for "bush-whacking" at night--or, indeed, at any other time--but
by Kepa's Government warriors, hereditary enemies of the Taranaki men.
Hurriedly packing on their shoulders what few belongings they had
managed to save from the _pa_, they set off in single file through the
thick forest, making for the banks of the Tangahoé River, which they
reached before daylight, and there halted. The wounded who were unable
to walk were carried with difficulty through the tangled bush, where
it was often necessary to cut away at the supplejacks and _aka_ vines,
so intricately interlaced and festooned across their path, before a
passage could be made for the litter-bearers. There was no moon; it was
an intensely dark night, rendered more Cimmerian still by the unbroken
roof of foliage overhead. The Hauhaus made torches of pieces of dry
pinewood, bound together with scraps of flax torn from their scanty
mat garments, and with these they managed to dimly light their way
through the forest--a wild and savage band; the warriors in front and
rear, their cartouche-belts over their naked shoulders, and guns slung
across their backs, or carried in their left hands; in their right they
gripped their tomahawks and slashed away at the twining impediments of
the jungle.
A camp was made near the banks of the Tangahoé,[2] and here, as soon as
it was light, the Hauhaus mustered and reckoned up their losses. There
were about three hundred and fifty of them now in camp--men, women and
children. With wonderful celerity the forest-men cut a little clearing,
and built _wharau_, or rough huts, of saplings, thatched with the long
fronds of the _nikau_ palm and the _mamaku_ tree-fern. Here the wounded
men were attended to as well as the primitive methods of the bush
allowed. Women were sent out to search the river-banks for flax-plants;
the flax-roots were dug up, boiled, and the resultant mucilaginous
juice poured over the gunshot and bayonet wounds. This was the Maoris'
most favoured method of treating injuries of this character, and it
generally bore good results.
"Ringiringi" himself took a hand in the bush-surgery, for he had
watched army surgeons at their work, and the Hauhau wounded, though
most of them preferred their own people's doctoring, were grateful to
the white man for his efforts to ease their sufferings.
A picked band of the fugitives scouted back through the forest and
cautiously reconnoitred their captured fort, which had been set on fire
by the troops, and was now a heap of blackened ruins. The Government
force had by this time passed on to the attack of other _pas_, and the
scouts re-entered their destroyed fortress and searched for their dead.
The scene in the camp by the Tangahoé waters when the war-party
returned from Otapawa was one that "Ringiringi" never forgot. It was
the first great _tangihanga_, or wailing over the dead, that he had
witnessed. The people gathered in the middle of the little clearing,
and for hours the sound of lamentation rang through the forest, often
rising into a wild, heart-breaking shriek as some blanket-draped or
mat-kilted woman, her long hair unbound, and her cheeks streaming with
tears, cried her keening song for her slain. The chiefs _taki_'d up and
down, weapon in hand, and told of the deeds of those who had fallen;
each ended his mournful speech with a chanted dirge. When the song was
a well-known one, the whole tribe would join in and sing the lament
with an intensity of feeling that made their very bodies quiver. It was
the full and unrestrained outpouring of the soul of the savage.
CHAPTER VII
BUSH LIFE WITH THE HAUHAUS
Wild days in the forest--The Hauhau hunters--Maori
wood-craft--Bird-snaring and bird-spearing--The fowlers at Te
Ngaere--The slayer of Broughton--Another runaway soldier, and his
fate--The tomahawking of Humphrey Murphy.
For some weeks the fugitives remained in their well-hidden camp by the
Tangahoé's stream. When the wounded were able to travel, "Ringiringi"
and his Maori companions took them a few miles through the bush to a
place called Rimatoto, the overgrown site of an olden village. All the
able-bodied men of the tribe now set to work to build a new settlement.
Thatched _nikau_-palm houses were quickly run up, and the forest rang
day after day with the axes of the bush-fellers, clearing the ground
for potato-planting.
As it was intended to make this a permanent _kainga_--always providing
Kepa's dusky forest-rangers did not find their way to it in their
scouting expeditions--a large clearing was made. The felled trees
were allowed to lie for about three months until they were dry enough
to be fired; then the potatoes were set in amongst the half-burned
stumps and logs. In the meantime the forest was scoured for food, and
foraging parties were sent out to Turangaréré and other villages on
the outskirts of the forest and returned laden with pork and potatoes,
strapped across their shoulders in the usual Maori _pikau_ fashion.
Four miles away by a rough bush track, a track hardly discernible to
any but a Maori, was the Maha village. There the white man was taken by
his _rangatira_ Tito, after the bush-felling work was over, and three
or four peaceful months were passed, varied only by occasional armed
scouting expeditions to the forest edge, and by long fishing, birding,
and pig-hunting trips into the great wilderness of jungle-matted timber
that hemmed in the lonely village on every side.
Bent had now been a year with the Maoris, and had thoroughly settled
into the native life. He had quickly picked up the language of his
adopted people, and there was nothing of the _pakeha_ about him but the
colour of his skin, and that was browning with constant exposure and
outdoor labour. A waist-shawl or a flax kilt was his single article
of everyday clothing; in cold weather a shoulder-mat or a blanket
was added. In this village of the woods there were few emblems of
civilisation except the weapons of the warriors. Stories of battle and
skirmish now and again reached the bushmen by messengers from the
plains; and the white general's great march through the forest from
Ketemarae by the Whakaahurangi track around the eastern side of Mount
Egmont to Mataitawa and New Plymouth--when the soldiers fell so short
of food that they had to shoot and eat their pack-horses--was discussed
many a night in the village _wharepuni_, the communal council-room and
sleeping-house.
Bent's half-Indian temperament soon adapted itself to this wild life
in the forest. No drill day after day, no parades, no sentry-go, no
buttons to polish, and no uniform to mend--surely this savage life
had its compensations. When the Maoris had urgent and laborious
work on hand they worked like fury, and compelled--with the spur
of a tomahawk--the white man to toil with equal industry, if not
willingness. Fort-building, trench-digging and timber-felling were
undertakings in which the whole strength of the community laboured from
dawn till dark, and the chiefs as hard as the common men and slaves.
It was warrior's work. But there were periods of halcyon, lazy days
in Maoridom, when "Ringiringi" and his ragged comrades of the bush,
their work over, could just "lie around" and smoke and eat, and take
no thought for the morrow so long as they could procure a pipe-full of
strong _torori_ (tobacco) and a square meal of potatoes and pork. Tito
proved a not unkind master, when he found that his white man neither
attempted to escape from the tribe nor shirked the often heavy tasks
imposed upon him.
[Illustration: A BRITISH COLUMN ON THE MARCH.
(_From a water-colour sketch by Major Von Tempsky, 1866._)]
The _paheka_ soon became an adept in the wood-craft of the Maoris. He
accompanied the young men of the tribe on their forest expeditions,
bird-snaring and bird-spearing; these camping-out trips sometimes
lasted for a week or more. Far into the solitudes of the great woods
the little hunting-parties penetrated, always armed, for they never
knew when or where the Government Maori scouts might be encountered.
The days were spent in birding and pig-hunting, and the long nights
by the blazing camp-fire, when the white man learned from his Hauhau
comrades many a wild legend and folk-story, hair-raising tales of
witchcraft, and mournful _tangi_-songs and love-ditties without end.
Powder and shot were too valuable to waste on the birds of the forest
in those days. One of the Maori snaring methods, as practised by
"Ringiringi" and his companions, was to cut out wooden _waka_, or
miniature canoes or troughs, fill them with water, and place them in
some dry spot in the forest where pigeons and _tui_ were plentiful.
Just over these troughs flax-snares were arranged, so that when the
birds, thirsting for water after feasting on the bush-berries, flew
down to drink, and stretched their heads through the running loops,
they were tightly noosed. Other snares were set on the _miro_-trees,
of whose sweet berries the pigeons and _tui_ were particularly fond.
"Ringiringi" quickly learned the art of setting snares of flax or
cabbage-tree leaf with cunning slip-loops in the branches of the
fruit-laden _miro_; in a clump of these pines he sometimes caught in
a single day as many as three hundred or four hundred birds--_kaka_
parrots, _tui_, and pigeon--for the forests were alive with feathered
creatures, and in the autumn time, when the wild fruits were ripe and
abundant, they were to be taken with little trouble; the noisy _kaka_
parrot was the most easily lured of all. The only forest bird that
was not welcomed by the hunters was the owl, or _ruru_; should one
happen to be killed it was never eaten, because in Maori eyes it was an
_atua_, a spirit or the incarnation of a tribal deity.
Bird-spearing was another forest art widely practised in those times.
Long slender limber spears of _tawa_ wood, twelve feet long and more,
were used.
In making the bird-spears, the pole from which each was cut was
scorched with fire till very dry, then it was scraped and scraped
down with _pawa_-shells and scorched again, and once more scraped and
shaped with great care and industry, until it had been reduced to the
size desired and was perfectly smooth. These spears were armed with
barbed tips, often of bone, sometimes of iron. The villagers trailed
the weapons after them as they travelled through the forest, until
they came to some tree where _tui_ and pigeon perched in numbers; then
the spear was slowly and cautiously pushed upwards until close to the
unsuspecting bird, and a sudden, sharp thrust impaled it on the barbed
point.
The _pakeha_ was carefully schooled in the art of using the spear, and
was enjoined, above all, never to strike the pigeon full in the breast,
because the bone would often snap the barb-tip off; it must be speared
in the side. In the late autumn the pigeons were "rolling fat"; and
many hundreds of them were preserved or potted in Maori fashion by the
birding-parties in _taha_, or calabashes (the _hué_ gourd), which were
hermetically sealed with the fat of the cooked birds.
One foraging expedition which Bent accompanied was farther afield than
usual, up northwards to the great Ngaere swamp, a huge morass near
where the present township of Eltham stands, and where dairy cattle now
graze on fields that in those days of '66 were seemingly irreclaimable
bogs and wildernesses; lagoons, where millions of eels crawled,
snake-like, in the ooze, and where countless thousands of wild fowl and
water-birds fished and screamed and squabbled all day long. To the edge
of the great swamp came the food-hunters; they waded across to the two
islets which rose from the middle of the bog--ancient refuge-places
of fugitive tribes--and camped there, catching and smoke-drying huge
quantities of eels for winter food in the home _kainga_, and snaring
many ducks and other birds. In this primeval spot the beautiful
_kotuku_, the white heron so famous in Maori song and proverb--now
never seen in the North Island--then abounded; the white man often
admired this graceful bird as he stood on silent watch on the marge of
some sedgy pool, then, like lightning-flash, darted his long spear-bill
on his prey. The birds were tame, and easily caught, and many were
snared and eaten by the foragers. "Ringiringi" captured some on the
shores of the lagoon by the simple expedient of a bent supplejack and
an arrangement of flax loops, set near the _kotuku's_ daily haunts;
a day seldom passed without a heron being found flapping and choking
tightly noosed in the snares of the fowlers.
One day in the spring of 1866, when Tito and his _hapu_, their
bird-hunting expeditions over for the season, were gathered in their
bush-village Rimatoto, three strange Maoris, fully armed, entered the
settlement. They had travelled overland from the King Country, far to
the north, on a mission from Tawhiao, the Waikato King, who, after
the conquest of the Waikato Valley by the white troops, had taken
refuge with the Ngati-Maniapoto tribe. The envoys had been sent down
to recover some Waikato war-flags which were in the possession of the
Taranaki Hauhaus.
In the crowded _wharepuni_ that night, when the Waikato warriors made
their errand known, one of them caught sight of the white man, sitting
silently in his corner, and asked who he was. When Tito explained, the
visitor asked,
"Why don't you kill him?"
"He is my _pakeha_," said Tito, "and I will protect him, because our
prophet Te Ua has _tapu_'d him, and ordered us not to harm him."
"That is indeed a soft and foolish way to deal with _pakehas_"
exclaimed a fierce-looking young warrior, one of the Waikato trio. "We
don't take any white prisoners in our country. You ought to have his
head stuck on the fence of your _pa_."
Tito laughed. "Ringiringi is going to be useful to us," he said.
"Besides, he is a Maori now."
Next morning Tito despatched the white man and an old Maori named Te
Waka-tapa-ruru through the forest to Te Putahi, a stockaded village
some ten miles away, on the banks of the Whenuakura River, with a
message to the people of that _pa_ requesting them to return the
colours for which the king had sent. This mission accomplished, Bent
stayed a while in Te Putahi, where he was treated with much kindness,
because of his association with Tito.
On the morning after his arrival a man came to his sleeping-hut and,
without saying a word, placed on the mat before him a couple of
blankets and a watch.
The history of the watch was afterwards explained to him by Te
Waka-tapa-ruru. This warrior was a typical old bush-fighter. He had
a very big head; he was tattooed on the cheeks; he was wiry and
wonderfully quick on his legs. He told Bent, with a devilish grin on
his corrugated face, that the watch had belonged to a white man, called
Paratene, whom he--Te Waka--had shot the previous year at Otoia, on the
Patea River. This _pakeha_ was Mr. C. Broughton, a native interpreter
who had been sent on a special Government mission to the Hauhaus, and
was barbarously murdered while in the act of lighting his pipe in the
village _marae_.
Broughton's slayer, despite his repulsive antecedents, became a friend
of Bent's, and they were close comrades until 1869, when the old man
was killed in the act of charging furiously on the Armed Constabulary
at the attack on the Papa-tihakehake stockade.
At Te Putahi "Ringiringi" was astonished to find another white man,
clothed like himself in a blanket. This man walked up and greeted
him, and the _pakeha_-Maori recognised the long-haired, rough-bearded
fellow as an old fellow-soldier. His name was Humphrey Murphy; he, too,
had been a private in the 57th, and had become as dissatisfied with
the life as Bent had done, and deserted to the Hauhaus. Bent sums him
up as "a bad lot." Murphy was an evil-tempered Irishman, faithful to
neither white man nor Maori. He belonged to two chiefs, Te Onekura and
Wharé-matangi, who lived in the _pa_ at Te Putahi.
Murphy, it appeared from his own story, had been taken over as a
_taurekareka_, a slave, by one of the Hauhau chiefs when he deserted,
and had been sent as a food-carrier to Te Putahi by his owner, who
treated his "white trash" with scant consideration. At Te Putahi he had
been taken over by the two local chiefs. The deserter bragged to Bent,
as they sat side by side on the village _marae_, that he would shortly
return to his old Maori "boss," as he called him, and kill him, and
take what money he could find as payment for his enforced labour.
While Murphy was speaking, a young Maori girl sat by quietly listening.
When the runaway soldier rose and walked off to his hut, the girl said:
"Ringi, I heard what that _taurekareka_ white man was saying. I have
learned enough of the _pakeha's_ tongue to know that he is going to
kill his _rangatira_ and steal his money."
"_Kaati!_ Don't say a word about it," cautioned Bent.
But the girl rose up in the meeting-house one night after "Ringiringi"
had departed to his home at Rimatoto, and repeated the threat she had
overheard from Murphy's lips.
That settled the _taurekareka's_ fate. Bent, some time later, inquiring
after Murphy from one of Tito's men who had been on a visit to Te
Putahi, was told that he had been killed. The Hauhaus had a short way
with such as he. He was quietly tomahawked one night as he lay asleep,
and his despised remains dragged out and cast into the Whenuakura River
that ran below the village.
At this time there were at least four white men living with the
Hauhaus in South Taranaki. One came to Rimatoto to see "Ringiringi,"
and remained with him for a week. His name was Jack Hennessy, and he
had, like Bent, deserted from the 57th Regiment. He was in fact the
"shut-eye sentry" who had seen Bent steal off from the Manawapou camp
in 1865. He gave himself up to the white forces some time later, tired
of life with the Hauhaus, and was court-martialled and sent to prison.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HAUHAU COUNCIL-TOWN
Life in Taiporohenui--A great praying-house--The ritual of the
_Niu_--Singular Hauhau chants--"_Matua Pai-mariré_"--Bent's new
owner, and his new wife--The tattooers--Another white renegade
Another summer came, and the crops were gathered in, and the men of
Tito's _hapu_, after nearly a year of comparative peace, wearied
for the war-path again. Rimatoto and other small bush-hamlets were
deserted, and the tribes gathered in, bearing their food supplies to
the Hauhau council-village of Taiporohenui--close to where the town of
Hawera now stands. Taiporohenui was a famous name--a word of _mana_, as
the Maori would say--amongst all the tribes from Whanganui to Waikato.
The name, say the wise men of Taranaki, goes back far beyond the days
of the later Maori migration to New Zealand, in the canoes Aotea,
Tokomaru, Tainui, and other Polynesian Viking ships. It was that of a
great temple in Tahiti, in the tropic isles of the Hawaiikian seas,
countless generations ago. And in this latter-day Taiporohenui the
Maoris, mindful of their ancient traditions, built another temple.
This Hauhau praying-house and council-hall, constructed of hewn
timber with _raupo_-reed walls and _nikau_-thatch roof, is described
by Bent as the largest building of native construction that he had
seen. It was about one hundred and twenty feet in length, and was
of such exceptional size that the ridge-pole was supported by four
_poutoko-manawa_, or pillars, instead of one or two, as in the ordinary
Maori meeting-house; there were five fires burning in it at night, in
the stone fireplaces down its long central aisle; on either side were
the mat-covered resting-places of the people. The timbers of the house
were of the durable _totara_ pine. The inside was lined with beautiful
_tukutuku_ work, of _kakaho_ reeds and thin wooden lathes artfully
fastened with _kiekie_ fibre, arranged in many handsome geometrical
patterns. Beneath the first large _poutoko-manawa_ in the house was
buried a large piece of greenstone in the rough, the _whatu_, or
"luck-stone," of the sacred house. It was the Maori custom when the
centre-pole of a large meeting-house or the first big palisade-post of
a fort was set in position, to place a piece of greenstone, often in
the form of an ornament, such as an ear-drop or a carved _tiki_, at its
foot.[3]
In front of the great house on the _marae_, or village square, stood
the sacred _Niu_-pole, a _totara_ pine flagstaff, nearly fifty feet
in height, with a yard about fourteen feet long; the staff was stayed
like the mast of a ship. The war-flags of the Hauhaus were flown from
the _Niu_, and the people daily marched around its foot in their
"_Pai-mariré_" procession, intoning the chants their prophet had taught
them. This _Niu_ was one of the first worship-poles planted in Taranaki
by the Hauhau prophet's command, and it was the centre of many a wild
fanatic gathering. At its foot there was planted a large piece of
unworked greenstone--as was done when the first house-pillar was set
up--as the _whatu_ of the sacred pole; this block of _pounamu_ is still
there, says Bent.
Round this staff of worship, where the bright war-flags hung, the
people marched daily in their strange procession, chanting their wild
psalms. Tito te Hanataua was one of the priests of the _Niu_, and he
led his tribe in the services after the Hauhau religion.
Some of the chants were amazing mixtures of English and Maori; some
were all pidgin-English, softened by the melodious Maori tongue. Here
is a specimen of the daily chants, intoned by all the people as they
marched round and round the holy pole. The priest shouted, "_Porini,
hoia!_" ("Fall in, soldiers!"); then "_Teihana!_" ("Attention!"), and
they stood waiting. Then they chanted, as they got the order to march:
_Translation._
_Kira_ Kill
_Wana_ One
_Tu_ Two
_Tiri_ Three
_Wha_-- Four--
_Teihana!_ Attention!
Round the sacred flagstaff they went--men, women, and
children--chanting:
_Rewa_ River
_Piki rewa_ Big river
_Rongo rewa_ Long river
_Tone_ Stone
_Piki tone_-- Big stone--
_Teihana!_ Attention!
_Rori_ Road
_Piki rori_ Big road
_Rongo rori_ Long road
_Puihi_ Bush
_Piki puihi_-- Big bush--
_Teihana!_ Attention!
_Rongo puihi_ Long bush
_Rongo tone_ Long stone
_Hira_ Hill
_Piki hira_ Big hill
_Rongo hira_-- Long hill--
_Teihana!_ Attention!
_Mauteni_ Mountain
_Piki mauteni_ Big mountain
_Rongo mauteni_ Long mountain
_Piki niu_ Big staff
_Rongo niu_-- Long staff--
_Teihana!_ Attention!
_Nota_ North
_No te pihi_ North by East
_No te hihi_ N. Nor'-east
_Norito mino_ N.E. by North
_Noriti_ North-east
_Koroni_-- Colony--
_Teihana!_ Attention!
_Hai!_ Hi!
_Kamu te ti_ Come to tea
_Oro te mene_ All the men
_Rauna_ Round
_Te Niu_-- The _Niu_--
_Teihana!_ Attention!
_Hema_ Shem
_Rurawini_ Rule the wind
_Tu mate wini_ Too much wind
_Kamu te ti_-- Come to tea--
_Teihana!_ Attention!
And so on, a marvellous farrago of Maorified English words and phrases.
It was Te Ua's "gift of tongues," they imagined, that had descended
upon them.
Night and morning, too, the sound of Hauhau prayers rose from the great
camp. Here is one, the "Morning Song" ("_Waiata mo te Ata_"), in
imitation of the English Prayer-book:
_Translation._
_Koti te Pata, mai mariré_; God the Father, have mercy on me;
_Koti te Pata, mai mariré_; God the Father, have mercy on me;
_Koti te Pata, mai mariré_; God the Father, have mercy on me;
_To riré, riré!_ Have mercy, mercy (or peace, peace)!
_Koti te Tana, mai mariré_; God the Son, have mercy on me;
_Koti te Tana, mai mariré_; God the Son, have mercy on me;
_Koti te Tana, mai mariré_; God the Son, have mercy on me;
_To riré, riré!_ Have mercy, mercy!
_Koti te Orikoti, mai mariré_; God the Holy Ghost, have mercy on me;
_Koti te Orikoti, mai mariré_; God the Holy Ghost, have mercy on me;
_Koti te Orikoti, mai mariré_; God the Holy Ghost, have mercy on me;
_To riré, riré!_ Have mercy, mercy!
_To mai Niu Kororia, mai My glorious _Niu_, have mercy
mariré_; on me;
_To mai Niu Kororia, mai My glorious _Niu_, have mercy
mariré_; on me;
_To mai Niu Kororia, mai My glorious _Niu_, have mercy
mariré_; on me;
_To riré, riré!_ Have mercy, mercy!
The more warlike chants ended in a loudly barked "_Hau!_" the watchword
and holy war-cry of the rebel bushmen. Very wild they were, these
savage hymns, haunting in rhythm, and stirring the people to a frenzy
of fanatic fire.
Kimble Bent joined in these Hauhau war-rites like any Maori, and
marched, chanting with his wild comrades, round and round the _Niu_.
Several skirmishes between the whites and Maoris occurred in the
winter and early spring of 1866, and one of these had some concern
for the exile. About three miles away from Taiporohenui was a village
called Pokaikai, to which "Ringiringi" was sent awhile by his chief.
While he was there the prophet Te Ua arrived. He dreamed a dream, one
of bad omen, and he straightway counselled "Ringiringi" to return at
once to Taiporohenui. "Ringi" obeyed. Three days, or, rather, three
nights afterwards, a force of colonial soldiers under Colonel McDonnell
unexpectedly attacked Pokaikai and rushed the village, killing several
Hauhaus. In some way the Forest Rangers under McDonnell had heard
that the deserter Kimble Bent was in Pokaikai, and they were eager to
capture or shoot him. Some of them surrounded one of the _wharés_ in
which they imagined Bent was sleeping. A young volunteer named Spain
had just previously, unnoticed by them, gone into the _wharé_ to bring
out a dead Hauhau, and while he was there the Rangers--hearing some one
say there was a white man within--fired a volley into the hut, which
unfortunately mortally wounded Spain. This young soldier was the
only _pakeha_ killed in the fight.
[Illustration: THE SCOUT.
Tu-Mahuki, a friendly Maori of the Whanganui tribe who served on the
British side in the Maori War, with his wife Takiora.
(_From a sketch by Major von Tempsky, 1866._)]
When "Ringiringi" heard of the Pokaikai affair from the fugitives who
fled through the bush to Taiporohenui, he felt that the Hauhau prophet
had indeed been his good angel, for it was only Te Ua's injunction to
return to the main Hauhau camp that had saved him from the vengeful
bullets of his fellow-whites. And thenceforward the white man was a
dreamer of many a strange dream, and he came to believe almost as
implicitly as the forest-men themselves in the omens that lay in the
visions of the night, and in warning voices from the spirit-world.
About this time "Ringiringi" changed hands, much as if he were a fat
porker or a keg of powder or any other article of Maori barter. Rupé
("Wood-pigeon"), a chief of Taiporohenui, made request of Tito--to
whom he was related--for his _pakeha mokai_, his tame white man. He
had never owned a _pakeha_, he explained, and would like one all to
himself, and he knew that "Ringiringi" would be a handy man to have
around, to keep his armoury of guns, of miscellaneous makes and dates,
in repair, and to make cartridges for him. So "Ringiringi" was passed
over to his new owner, whom he served, with the exception of some short
intervals in the war-time and in the period of exile on the Upper
Waitara, until 1878.
Soon after "Ringiringi" had become one of Rupé's household, his chief's
son, a young lad named Kuku (another name for the wood-pigeon), fell
seriously ill. The white man doctored and carefully nursed the boy, and
under his treatment he recovered. Rupé's gratitude to his _mokai_ took
a chieftain-like form. As payment, or _utu_, for curing his son, he led
up his daughter, a young girl of fifteen or sixteen, and presented her
to "Ringiringi" as his wife.
"Indeed, she was a pretty girl," says the old _pakeha_-Maori, recalling
the dead past. "I'll never forget her. She had handsome features,
almost European, though she was of pure Maori blood. Her lips were
small, her hair was wavy and curly, instead of hanging in a straight,
black mat, and she had what was very strange in a Maori, blue eyes--the
first blue-eyed native I have ever seen. She was a very gentle
girl--she never _kanga_'d or said unpleasant things about others, never
quarrelled with the other women. She did not smoke either, which was
unusual. Her chin was tattooed, but not too thickly or deeply. She had,
too, the _rapé_ and _tiki-hopé_ patterns engraved on her body, the hip,
and thigh, tattooing which was in fashion in those days, and which the
girls and women were proud of displaying when they went out to bathe."
With this agreeable young wife, whose name was Rihi, or Te
Hau-roroi-ua, Bent lived for nearly three years. She bore one child,
which died, and soon after she, too, died, to the _pakeha_-Maori's
great sorrow. His one-eyed wife, the lady of Otapawa, had left her
unwilling husband some months before he took Rihi in Maori marriage.
Amongst the primitive arts of the Maori with which "Ringiringi" became
familiar about this time was that of _moko_, or tattooing. The _kauae_
tattooing--on chin and lips--was still universal amongst the native
women, though few of the men now submitted their faces to the chisel
or the needle of the tattooing artist. A popular form of tattooing
amongst both sexes was that technically known as _tiki-hopé_, the
scroll-patterns on the thighs and other parts of the body usually
concealed by the waist-shawl. The white man saw numbers of women as
well as men decorated in this fantastic fashion. In fact, he was
so thoroughly Maori by this time that he was about to undergo the
operation himself, in the winter of 1867, when living at the village
Te Paka, near the old fort Otapawa. He had the _ngarahu_, or _kapara_,
the blue-black pigment, ready for the dusky engraver, and would shortly
have been made pretty for life in Maori eyes had not the tattooing been
peremptorily forbidden.
"I wanted my face tattooed," says Bent, "for I was as wild as any
Maori then. I intended to have the curves called _tiwhana_, or arches,
tattooed on my forehead, over the eyes, and the _kawekawe_ lines on
the cheeks, extending to the corners of the mouth. What a curiosity I
would have been, though, when I came out of the bush! I would have been
able to earn my living in my old age, going on exhibition, like the
bearded lady in the circus!"
It was Te Ua the prophet who forbade the tattooing. He happened to be
in residence at Te Paka just then, and he reminded "Ringiringi" that
he had _tapu_'d him, and explained that to _moko_ his skin would be a
violation of that particular brand of _tapu_. To the white man this was
not quite clear; nevertheless, he agreed to obey the prophet's Mosaic
command "to make no cuttings" in his flesh, and remained a plain,
undecorated _pakeha_.
However, he acquired some skill himself with the tattooing instruments,
and exercised it in printing names and sundry devices on the persons
of the villagers. He learned, too, how to manufacture the indelible
_ngarahu_, or _kapara_, pigment. In making this tattooing-ink the soot
from fires of white-pine (_kahikatea_) wood was used. A cave-like hole
was dug in the side of a bank, with an opening resembling a chimney
in the top. A large fire was kindled in the cave, or _rua_, and for
several days was constantly fed with the resinous timber of the
_kahikatea_. Above the earth-chimney were arranged a number of twigs
of the _karamu_ shrub (a coprosma), with the bark stripped off, set up
in the shape of a tent, and covered with a layer of leaves. The dense
smoke from the fire deposited a thick soot on the _karamu_ sticks. For
some days the fire was kept up; then the twigs were removed, and the
soot scraped off into wooden receptacles. It was mixed with water, and
worked into little round balls. The soot-balls were then placed on a
layer of _poroporo_ leaves in an _umu_, or earth-oven, and steamed for
about three hours, when they were taken out and set to dry. In later
times, after the war, Bent often employed himself in the manufacture of
this tattoo-dye; and was, he says, accustomed to receive ten shillings
for a ball of _ngarahu_ the size of a peach.
To Te Paka village there came one day another renegade white man, an
Irish soldier named Charles Kane, or King. He had been a private in
the second battalion of the 18th Royal Irish Regiment, and had, like
Bent, revolted against army discipline, and deserted to the Hauhaus.
The Maoris had christened him "Kingi." He lived in Bent's _wharé_ in Te
Paka for some time. He was exceedingly bitter against his old officers,
and, in fact, against his fellow-whites in general; so much so, that he
boasted of his intention to fight against them, and, as will be seen
later, actually did so in the attack on the Turuturu-mokai redoubt.
Like most of the soldiers who traitorously deserted their colours in
those war-days, he fell at last a victim to the tomahawks of his Hauhau
companions.
CHAPTER IX
A FOREST ADVENTURE
The two eel-fishers--Bivouac in the bush--A murderous attack--The
Waikato's tomahawk--"Ringiringi's" escape.
Far away to the east and north of the great Hauhau council-camp
stretched the forest, clothing hill and valley with one endless wavy
garment of unvarying green. For weeks one might tramp through these
vast, jungly woods and not see or hear sign of man, or of any living
thing but the twittering birds in the tree-tops and a stray wild pig
rooting in the soft, fern-matted earth or scampering away through the
thickets. The free, unspoiled wilderness of Tane-Mahuta.
Climbing to the wooded crest of some of the steep little hills that
rose from the gently undulating plain, one might here and there,
through the gaps between the towering tiers of foliage, catch
narrow glimpses of the surrounding country; and perhaps far away to
the nor'-west see between the branches, set like a picture in its
forest-frame, the pure white snow-cone of tent-shaped Taranaki.
Deep in these bush solitudes one day, when the spring had come,
the voice of man broke upon the silences. The wild boar stopped his
root-foraging to listen, and then turned and crashed off through the
supplejacks. A band of brown men, some clad in nondescript articles
of European clothing, some wearing only a shoulder-cape of flax and a
shawl or blanket-kilt, wound in single file through the bush, striking
due east. There were fourteen or fifteen of them. Most of them carried
weapons--double-barrelled guns and short-handled tomahawks, stuck in
the waist-belt of flax; all had large flax baskets, some containing
gourd-calabashes, strapped across their backs. Some sang little lilts
of Maori song, and some called now and then to the others, or mimicked
the _tui_ and the _kaka_ parrot that cried above them in the trees.
Mid-line in the file was a fairer-skinned young forester, bare-footed
like the rest, clad only in a "home-made" shirt that seemed to have
been cut out of a blanket and a coloured shawl strapped round his
waist. He had a thick beard, and his hair was so long that it would
have fallen down over his shoulders had it not been caught at the back
of his neck and tied with a piece of flax. This was "Ringiringi," the
_pakeha_-Maori, wearing as little clothing as his Hauhau companions,
and to all appearance as seasoned a bushman as they, as he bent along
the jungly way with the easy, noiseless jog of the Maori scout.
This party had been despatched from Taiporohenui by Rupé, to work
inland through the bush to the upper waters of the Patea River, and
scour the country for food supplies for the assembled tribes. They
were ordered to bring home wild pork and wild honey, and to catch as
many eels as they could carry. They travelled far into the heart of
the bush, and then divided into small parties of twos and threes for
eel-catching in the creeks.
The white man's companion on the eel-fishing excursion was an old Maori
from the "King" Country, a Ngati-Maniapoto man, who had joined the
Taranaki Hauhaus; he was a short but strongly built fellow, with a big
head and of dark and sullen visage, made more forbidding still by the
blue-black tattoo with which cheeks and brow and nose were scrolled
and lined. The couple, leaving the others after arranging a general
rendezvous for the following day, selected a small creek, winding in a
slow, brown current beneath the roof of verdure which the outstretching
branches of the _rata_ and the pines nearly everywhere held over it. It
was a tributary of the Upper Patea above Rukumoana. They fished with
short rods and flax lines, with worms for bait, and by the evening had
caught between them about sixty good-sized eels.
The eel-fishers bivouacked where the twilight found them, in a tiny
nook near Orangimura, where there was just room to build their
camp-fire and spread their bush-couches of fresh-pulled tree-fern
fronds, between the buttressed _ratas_ and the creek-side.
"Ringiringi" had a little cold food in his _pikau_ kit, potatoes and
_kopaki_ corn; that is, maize in the sheath. He was about to grill some
of the fat eels on the fire when his Maori companion stopped him.
"_E tama!_" he said. "Don't you know it is unlucky to cook the _tuna_
in the night-time? Do not touch those eels until the morning; should
you disobey, it will surely bring heavy rain."
The superstitious old warrior was so insistent that "Ringiringi," to
please him, agreed to his wishes; he contented himself with the little
he had in his kit, and then, filling his pipe with _torori_ tobacco,
lit it, and smoked as he lay beside the camp-fire. His Maori mate
squatted smoking on the other side.
The warmth of the fire, and the low, murmurous singing of the little
river--the _wawara-wai_, the babble of the waters, in the musical
Maori tongue--pleasantly lulled the tired _pakeha_. He lay there,
with his scanty bush-ranging garments wrapped about him, listening,
half-asleep, to the lazy run of the creek, and to the songs that
his savage old companion recited to himself in a monotonous chant.
War-songs of Waikato, songs that he and his Kingite comrades had
shouted in many an armed camp before the white man drove them out
beyond the _Aukati_ line, the frontier of the Waikato. In one of these
chants the eel-fisher's voice was lifted in a quick burst of passionate
remembrance--a defiant _haka_-song the Hauhaus of Taranaki, too, had
adopted as a composition exactly expressing their opinion of _pakehas_
in general, and of the _pakeha_ Governor in particular. It likened
Governor Grey to a bush-bullock devouring the tender leaves of the
_raurekau_ shrub--a Maori simile for the land-hunger of the whites:
"_A he kau ra.
He kau ra!
U----u!
He kau kawana koe
Kia miti mai
Te raurekau.
A he kau ra,
He kau ra!
A----u----u!_"
("Ha! A beast art thou,
A beast that bellows--
Ooh----ooh!
A beast art thou, O Governor,
That lickest in
The leaves of the _raurekau_.
Ho! A beast, indeed,
A beast art thou!
Oo----oo----ooh!")
The old Hauhau, warming to the _haka_, almost yelled the virulent
words. The chant broke the white man's drowsing, and he sat up and
listened as his companion repeated the vigorous dance-song.
"Well, _pakeha_!" he said; "that is our Waikato _ngeri_, our war-cry.
That is what we think of the Governor--and of all _pakehas_! I hate all
white men! They are thieves and pigs. I could cook and eat them all!
All, every one! I would not leave a white-skin alive in this island!
They are slaves, _taurekarekas_--like you! Now go to sleep, for we must
rise when the _kaka_ cries."
And the old man curled up by the fire, while "Ringiringi" found
uncomfortable reflection in the fact that he was here alone, far in the
heart of the forest, with a murderous old savage who was armed with a
war-tomahawk, while he, the weaker man, though the younger, had nothing
with which to defend himself. But by this time he was familiar with the
face of danger, and worked and slept in the midst of alarms; so simply
remarking to the Maori, "Friend, I am sleepy," and throwing some fresh
fuel on the fire, he lay down again on his ferny _whariki_.
However, he had his suspicions of the old savage, and presently he
glimpsed the Maori eyeing him dangerously through his narrowed lids and
handling his tomahawk restlessly. When he lay down to rest, the white
man had drawn his blanket partly over his face, as if he were asleep,
but he kept one eye lifting. Once the Maori half rose and looked
cunningly over at his companion, with his hand on his war-axe, then he
sank down again.
The little dark brook went singing on beneath the forest; the fire
gradually burned lower and lower as the night wore on; the morepork now
and then cried his sharp complaint of "_Kou-kou!_" from the shadows.
The two fishers lay silent; to all appearance both were asleep. But in
the Maori's heart was black, treacherous murder.
_Utu_--payment, satisfaction, revenge--summed up in a word the darker
side of the Maori character.
The lone _pakeha's_ head would be indeed a trophy to bear back through
the wilderness to his tribe. He would be a hero; he could brag to the
end of his days how he slew a white soldier in single combat, and none
could contradict him. He saw himself already _taki_-ing and prancing up
and down the home _marae_ before his admiring clan, the _pakeha's_ head
in his hand, his tomahawk--the victor's tomahawk!--flashing in air.
Ah! That, indeed, would be _utu_--though long-deferred _utu_--for his
kinsmen who fell to the _pakeha_ bullets at Rangiriri and Orakau!
It must have been nearly midnight, and "Ringiringi" was half-asleep
with fatigue, in spite of his fears, when suddenly all his senses
were awakened. Through his half closed eyelids he saw the Maori rise,
tomahawk in hand; he rose from his blanket noiselessly, then cautiously
stretched one foot across a _tawa_ log that lay on the fire, with its
end projecting. His eyes blazed, his face was frightful, with intent to
murder plain upon it in the firelight.
He was just in the act of stepping over the log, with his little axe
upraised, when the white man suddenly threw off his blanket and leaped
for the savage.
The old fellow flew at him with his upraised tomahawk glittering in the
little light that the bivouac-fire yet threw out.
But "Ringiringi" was too quick for him. He ducked dexterously, and
caught the Maori by the ankle, and, with a lightning twist that he had
learned from his Taranaki people, threw him to the ground.
The murderer-in-intent fell on his back and almost on the fire, and the
tomahawk dropped from his hand.
"Ringiringi" pounced on the furious old savage as he fell, and with a
knee on his bare chest, and one hand on his throat, reached out with
the free hand for the tomahawk, which lay just within his grasp.
The Maori would have continued the struggle, and in the
rough-and-tumble would probably have got the better of the white man,
had not "Ringiringi," now roused to murderous mood himself, threatened
to split his head in two if he moved, and emphasised his words by
bringing the weapon down until the blade was within an inch of the old
fellow's ugly, tattooed nose.
The Maori sulkily promising to lie quietly in his sleeping-place for
the rest of the night, the _pakeha_ relinquished his grip of the old
man and backed to his own side of the bivouac. He fed the fire with
dry branches of pine, and presently the little glade was a blaze of
light again, and the black tree-shadows danced like forest-ghosts to
the rising and falling of the flames.
The old Maori pulled his blanket over his face and pretended to go to
sleep, but "Ringiringi" did not take his eyes off him the rest of that
night. He sat by the fire till daylight, the captured tomahawk between
his knees.
In the morning the two enemies silently packed their takes of eels in
their kits, and slung them on their backs by flax-leaf straps, for the
home-journey.
The little river had to be forded. It was about knee-deep. The Maori
hung back, waiting for Bent to cross first; but the white man knew that
if he did so his enemy would spring upon him or trip him up and try to
drown him in the creek.
"Now, you go first," ordered Bent, when he had settled his _pikau_ on
his shoulders and stood, tomahawk in hand, facing the Maori, "and walk
in front of me all the way home, or I'll kill you!"
So the old fellow sulkily stepped into the stream and waded across,
Bent following him, and in this order they travelled.
So they made their way homewards, striking west through the pathless
forest, wading watercourses and climbing and descending hills, until
they emerged on the fern country. "Ringiringi," immensely relieved,
and weary beyond words, reported himself to his chief.
Rupé was furiously angry when he heard the story of the Waikato's
attack on his _pakeha_.
"The _kohuru_!" he cried, as he leaped to his feet. "The murderer! I
shall slay him this instant, on the _marae_, though all Waikato come
down to avenge him!" And seizing an axe from the wall, he ran out in
chase of "Ringiringi's" night antagonist.
The old fellow, when the chief rushed out at him like a madman, turned
and fled from the village, and ran for his life until he disappeared in
the shelter of the bush. Rupé did not pursue him far; his fit of anger
was soon spent, and he returned to his _wharé_, and made his white man
relate again, with Maori wealth of detail, the story of the eel-fishing
bivouac.
"Ringiringi's" would-be slayer was never heard of again; at any rate,
he did not venture back to the camp of the Hauhaus; and whether he ever
succeeded in taking a _pakeha_ head in settlement of his _utu_ bill no
man knows.
CHAPTER X
THE WAR-CHIEF AND HIS GODS
The war-chief Titokowaru--Ancient ceremonies and religion
revived--Uenuku, the god of battle--Titokowaru's _mana-tapu_--Bent
makes cartridges for the Hauhaus--A novel weapon.
The year 1867 was one of little activity amongst the Hauhaus with whom
"Ringiringi" lived, except in respect of their interminable meetings
and _Niu_-parades and prophesyings. Hostilities had been suspended by
both sides for the time, but the temporary peace was only the prelude
to the fiercest fighting of the Ten-Years' War.
The white man worked for his master Rupé all that year, digging and
planting, carrying wood and water, and performing, in fact, the duties
of a household slave. But it was a slavery that had its privileges and
its compensations, and there were long days of abundant food and little
work, in the intervals between the seasons of communal labour in the
potato-fields and the periodical birding and eeling and pig-hunting
expeditions.
It was while living at Te Paka that "Ringiringi" became well
acquainted with the celebrated Titokowaru, the great war-chief of
the Hauhaus. Titoko, as his name was usually abbreviated, came riding
into the little bush-village one day at the head of an armed band of
Ngati-Ruanui and Nga-Ruahiné men, and held a meeting in the _marae_,
urging the people to renew the war. He was travelling from village
to village, haranguing the Hauhaus, and explaining his new plan of
campaign, which briefly was to make surprise attacks on small isolated
redoubts garrisoned by the white soldiers, and to lay ambuscades.
He declared, too, that his tactics would be, not to build any more
stockaded forts in positions where the Europeans could easily reach
them, but to entice the troops into the midst of the forest, where the
Maori warrior would have the advantage. This scheme met with general
approval, and the tribespeople signified their intention of joining
Titoko and fighting his battles for him whenever he gave the word to
begin.
Titokowaru was the most brainy, as well as the most ferocious, of the
Taranaki chiefs who led the Hauhaus against the whites. It was his
strategy that was responsible for the most serious defeats inflicted
on the Government forces in the war of 1868-9. In appearance he was a
stern, commanding man, with a countenance disfigured by the loss of
an eye--reminder of the Battle of Sentry Hill. He was not tattooed.
"When roused," says Bent, "he had a voice like a roaring lion." In his
attire he was often quaintly _pakeha_, for he frequently appeared in
a black "hard-hitter" hat and a full suit of European clothing. He
carried no weapon but his sacred _taiaha_, his tongue-pointed staff of
hardwood, ornamented with a plume of red _kaka_ feathers.
The war-chief revived many a half-forgotten savage practice in the
campaign that followed. Besides being a Hauhau "prophet," he was a
_tohunga_, or priest, of the ancient Maori religion.
Before despatching a war-party he invariably recited the customary
spells (_karakia_) to ensure their success, and the worship, or rather
placation and invocation of Uenuku, the war-god, was resuscitated in
every armed camp and on every battle-field.
Titoko possessed, in a strong degree, what the Maoris termed
_mana-tapu_--personal _tapu_, or sacred prestige, heritage from his
priestly forefathers of Ariki rank. His body was sacred in Maori eyes,
and he was accredited with many a singular supernatural attribute:
"Even the winds of heaven are his," said the Hauhaus. When the
_whakarua_, the north-east breeze, blew, it was a fitting time for the
war-parties to set out, for the _whakarua_ was the breath of Uenuku,
Titoko's deity, and his familiar spirit, and it was an omen of success
in battle.
Bent gives some curious instances of Titokowaru's _mana-tapu_. Once,
when the white man was travelling through the forest with Titoko and
his band of Hauhaus, the chief's shoulder accidentally struck against a
flax kit containing some cooked potatoes which an old man was carrying
on his back. Titoko immediately ordered the man to throw the potatoes
and basket away, for the food had become infected, through contact with
the priest, with the mysterious and deadly microbe of the _tapu_, and
consequently unfit to be eaten. So the old fellow had to cast his day's
rations into the bushes and go fasting.
Titokowaru would suffer no rivals in the _pa_. Now and then it happened
during the war-days that some budding _tohunga_ would arise and
prophesy things, in bold opposition to the chief, and announce that his
familiar spirit, or his ancestral gods, had conferred priestly powers
upon him. Titoko had "a short way with dissenters." His usual and most
effective method of silencing the pretender was to take a basket of
potatoes in his hand and seek out his rival.
"What," he would say, "have you then an _atua_, a god of your own?"
Should the Hauhau be so imprudent as to answer "Yes," Titoko would
lift his potato-kit and set it on his rival's head. "That for your
_atua_!" It was enough. The other's _tapu_--if he ever had any--would
be immediately destroyed by such an act, for the head of man must
not be touched by food, and any self-respecting _atua_ would desert
a _tapu_-less Maori without delay. But no man dared, by way of
retaliation, to try the potato-basket trick on Titokowaru.
"Ringiringi" had now been nearly three years with the Maoris, and spoke
their language well. "I lived exactly like a Maori," he says; "worked
like a nigger, and always went about bare-footed. They would not give
me a gun, nor did they make me fight--for Titokowaru made me _tapu_,
and would not permit me to go out on the war-path--but I had to make
cartridges for them. They managed to get plenty of gunpowder; I have
often seen it brought in in casks and in 25 lb. weights. They got a
good deal of it from the neutral and so-called 'friendly' tribes,
who procured it from the _pakehas_. The Puketapu tribe, and some of
the Whanganuis, helped us in this way. I know there was a white man,
Moffatt, living on the Upper Wanganui River, who made a coarse powder
for the Hauhaus there, but I don't think any of it came our way. I had
a wooden cartridge-filler, and we always had plenty of old newspapers
to make the cartridge-cases. Bullets were plentiful, too, as a rule;
but sometimes in the bush, when the Hauhaus ran short, they would use
old iron, stones, and even pieces of hard wood. I have sometimes loaded
my cartridges with bits of supplejack, cut to size, when I had no lead
bullets."
In those bush-whacking days the Hauhaus made use of some remarkable
devices against their enemies. One of these Maori engines of war was
called a _tawhiti_, or trap. It was a sapling of some tough and
elastic timber, _matipo_ for choice. When a suitable one, about ten
feet long or so, was found growing in a likely position outside a _pa_
or alongside a bush-track by which the enemy were expected, it would
be stripped of its branches, and bent down and back without breaking
it, until it was lying in as near as possible a horizontal position,
so that it would sweep the road. The end was fastened with flax in
such a way that any unsuspecting person marching along the track or
approaching the village and touching the trap, would cause the flax to
slip, and release the _tawhiti_. The tree in its rebound could inflict
a terrible blow.
In 1866 Bent saw ten or twelve of these _tawhiti_ set on the tracks
just outside Te Popoia, a small _pa_ near Keteonetea. The place was
attacked by the Government forces in the night, and in the darkness
several of the _Kupapas_, or Government Maoris, who formed the advance
guard, were injured by the unexpected release and rebound of these
savage traps.[4]
CHAPTER XI
"THE BEAK-OF-THE-BIRD"
The stockade at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu--In the _Wharé-kura_--Singular
Hauhau war-rites--The "Twelve Apostles"--The enchanted
_taiaha_--The heart of the _pakeha_: a human burnt-offering--An
ambuscade and a cannibal feast.
Early in 1868 "Ringiringi" and his Hauhau comrades took up their
quarters in the stockaded village of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu ("The
Beak-of-the-Bird"), soon to be the scene of the sharpest action of the
war. This settlement was deep in the _rata_ forest, about ten miles
from where the town of Hawera now stands, in the direction of Mount
Egmont. Out on the fern-lands on the edge of the bush were the European
redoubts of Waihi and Turuturu-Mokai; the smaller of these, Turuturu,
was singled out by Titokowaru as a position which could apparently be
easily stormed; he therefore laid his plans to attack it, and gathered
in his best fighting-men in the forest-fort.
Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu was now the headquarters of the Ngati-Ruanui and
Nga-Ruahiné belligerents, and all hands were set to work to fortify the
village and to gather in food-supplies for the _hapus_ who crowded the
"Bird's-Beak" _pa_. The front of the village faced a cleared stretch
of fern-land, but the forest surrounded it on the other sides; at the
rear ran a little creek. There were no trenches or earth-parapets;
the principal defences were stout palisades, solid tree-trunks and
split timber, eight to ten feet high, sunk firmly in the ground,
and connected by cross-ties of saplings, fastened to the posts with
forest vines. Close to the palisades were some great _rata_-trees,
very ancient and hollow; several of these the Hauhaus converted into
miniature redoubts. Some of the hollow trees were cunningly loopholed
for rifle-fire, and within them stagings were made for the musketeers;
rough stages, too, were constructed up among the _rata_ branches, where
the dense foliage and the interlacing boughs formed a perfect shelter
for the brown-skinned snipers. One of the tree-platforms, just inside
the _pa_ walls, was used as a _taumaihi_, or look-out tower.
At one end of the village was the large Hauhau meeting-hall and
praying-house called _Wharé-kura_ ("House of Learning," or "Red-painted
House"), after the olden Maori sacred lodges of priestly instruction.
This building, built of sawn timber in semi-European style, was about
seventy feet in length. It was erected by Titokowaru's working-party in
six days--in obedience to the Scriptural command "Six days shalt thou
labour"; they finished it on the sixth day, and religiously rested
on the seventh--and for many days thereafter. The _Wharé-kura_ was
consecrated by Titokowaru in the ancient heathen fashion; it was the
temple of the Hauhau ritual, and here the high chief assembled his men
when he wished to select war-parties for assaults and ambuscades. At
the rear end of the great house was his sacred seat and sleeping-place,
laid with finely woven flax mats and hedged by the invisible but potent
barriers of _tapu_.
As often happened in Maori warfare, the first intimation the Hauhaus
gave of their intention to renew the fighting was the murder of two or
three incautious _pakehas_ on the frontier.
Titokowaru's war-parties despatched on special missions usually
numbered sixty men. Though consisting of this number they were termed
the _Tekau-ma-rua_, or "The Twelve."
This term, though applied to the whole war-party, really belonged to
the first twelve men, the advance-guard, who were usually the most
daring and active warriors of all, but who had been selected in a
peculiar manner which will be described. These twelve were _tapu_, and
were all _tino toa_--tried and practised fighting-men. They numbered
twelve because of the mystic force or prestige supposed to attach
to that number. Titokowaru and all his Hauhaus were students of the
_pakeha_ Scriptures--Titokowaru when a young man had been a pupil in
a mission school--and "The Twelve" were so named and numbered for
several reasons: one was that there were twelve Apostles in the Bible;
and another that there were the twelve sons of Jacob; then, also,
there were twelve months in the year. Clearly to the Maori mind there
was much virtue in twelve. In Maori belief none of the _Tekau-ma-rua_
proper could be touched by a bullet in a fight if they but obeyed the
instructions of Titokowaru.
Singular heathen ceremonies were practised in the selection of these
war-parties. The spirit of ancient Maoridom was but slightly leavened
by _pakeha_ innovations and missionary teachings; and the savage gods
of old New Zealand took fresh grip on the hearts of these never-tamed
forest-men.
"Ringiringi" on several occasions witnessed the rites of the
_Wharé-kura_ what time the one-eyed general picked out the soldiers of
the _Tekau-ma-rua_.
On the day before an armed expedition was to set forth from "The
Beak-of-the-Bird," Titokowaru summoned the people by walking up and
down outside his great _wharé_ chanting a song which began:
"_Tenei hoki au
Ki te Ngutu-o-te-Manu._"
("Here am I
In the Beak of the Bird.")
Then the people would all file into the sacred house and seat
themselves on the mat-covered floor, the fighting-men of the _pa_ in
front. The war-chief took his seat cross-legged on his sacred mat that
was spread on an elevated stage at the rear of the _Wharé-kura_, with a
short rail in front; this dais was _tapu_ to him. The men all chanted
together a wild _haka_ song, and then sat silent as death, waiting the
will of Titoko's war-god and the divination-by-_taiaha_.
The chief stood, grim and stern, facing his people, his sacred carved
hardwood _taiaha_, called "Te Porohanga," in his hand. His wild eyes
glittered as he recited in quick, sharp tones his invocation of
the war-god Uenuku and the battle-spirit breathed on the wings of
the _whakarua_ breeze. Then, balancing his long plumed weapon in a
horizontal position on his thumb and forefinger, the tongue-shaped
point directed at the warriors, he stood stiff and motionless as in a
trance. He was awaiting the message of his _atua_, the guiding-breath
of Uenuku.
Suddenly, apparently of its own volition, and without any visible
movement or effort on the part of the chief, the weapon would move. It
would slowly, slowly turn--watched with intense, breathless earnestness
by hundreds of fanatic eyes--until its tongue pointed so as to indicate
some particular man. Ha! 'Twas the breath of Uenuku, deity of blood and
fire, that gave it its impulse; Titoko was but the medium of the gods!
[Illustration: THE AMBUSCADE.
(_From a sketch by Major von Tempsky in Taranaki_, 1866.)]
The warrior indicated would be questioned by the war-chief, and asked
whether his "heart was strong" within him. If his answer were deemed
satisfactory, he would be told off as one of the _Tekau-ma-rua_, the
sanctified advance-guard.
Again and again this strange method of divination was repeated,
the balanced weapon indicating--to the perfect satisfaction of the
superstitious Hauhaus--the men whom the Maori war-god desired as the
instruments of vengeance on the whites. Name after name the priest and
chief pronounced, as his _taiaha_ pointed along the squatting ranks,
until the tale of bare-legged warriors was complete.
Then, when the _taua_, or war-party, had filled their cartridge-belts
and seen to their weapons, there was a ceremony of a livelier sort. The
women and girls of the _pa_ attired themselves in their waist _piupiu_
of coloured flax, decked their hair with feathers, dabbed ochre-paint
on their cheeks, and lined up on the _marae_ for the _poi_-dance, to
send the warriors off "in good heart," as the Maori has it. _Hakas_,
too, were danced by the men and boys of the village, and the merry
_poi_-songs and the loudly yelled war-chants put a brisker jig into the
feet of the brown soldiers as they marched out of the settlement and
struck into the forest, hunting for _pakehas_.
As the men of the _Tekau-ma-rua_ left the stockade, Titokowaru himself
would loudly farewell them, shouting in his terrible gruff voice the
ferocious injunction:
"_Patua, kainga! Patua, kainga! E kai mau! Kaua e tukua kia haere! Kia
mau ki tou ringa._" ("Kill them! Eat them! Kill them! Eat them! Let
them not escape! Hold them fast in your hands.")
Should the _Tekau-ma-rua_ meet with success in their murderous raids,
it was usual for the leader of the party to chant in a loud voice, as
the home-palisades were neared, a song beginning, "_Tenei te mea kei
te mou ki toku ringa_," meaning that he had in his hand a portion of
the flesh of a slain _pakeha_. This was called the _mawé_; it was an
offering to the god of war. The _mawé_ was almost invariably a human
heart, torn from the body of the first man of the enemy killed in the
fight.
On two or three occasions Kimble Bent witnessed the ceremony of the
offering of the _mawé_, the ancient rite of the _Whangai-hau_. The
heart (_manawa_) or other piece of human flesh, was brought into the
_marae_ and given to a man named Tihirua, who was the priest of the
burnt sacrifice. He was a young man about twenty-five years of age,
belonging to the Ngati-Maru tribe, of the Upper Waitara. "He would
take the heart in his hand," says Bent, "and strike a match, or take a
firestick and singe the flesh. When it was slightly scorched he would
throw it away; it was _tapu_ to Uenuku. This was an ancient war-custom
of the Maoris; Titokowaru adopted it because he believed it would cause
the _pakehas_ to lose strength and courage, and become unnerved in
time of battle. After the fight at Papa-tihakehake, in 1868, I saw this
man Tihirua cut a white man's body open outside the _marae_, tear out
the bleeding heart, hold lighted matches underneath it until it was
singed, and then throw it away."[5]
A more frightful scene still that the sun looked down upon in that
forest den was a cannibal feast. On June 12, 1868, a party of about
fifteen Hauhaus from the _pa_, prowling out in the direction of the
Waihi redoubt, cut off and shot and tomahawked a trooper of the
Armed Constabulary, a man named Smith, who had incautiously ventured
out to look for his horse beyond rifle-range of the redoubt. An
Armed Constabulary officer, who happened to be walking across the
parade ground at the time, heard and saw the firing, and with his
field-glasses distinctly saw the flashing of the tomahawks as the
Hauhaus cut the man to pieces. An armed party was immediately sent
out at the double, but all they found when they reached the spot
was half the body! The legs and hips were lying on the trampled and
blood-drenched ground amongst the fern; the head and the upper part
of the body down to the waist had been carried off by the savages,
who had vanished into the forest as quickly as they had come. The
remains of the poor trooper were cooked and eaten by the people in Te
Ngutu-o-te-Manu, after the heart had been offered to Titokowaru's god
of war by the young priest Tihirua.
Titokowaru, according to Bent, did not eat human flesh himself, but
a boastful letter sent by him a few days later to a philo-_pakeha_
chief at Mawhitiwhiti, seems to indicate that he was a cannibal of the
most ferocious sort, unless, as is quite possible, he was speaking of
his people generally when he used the first person singular. In this
letter, addressed to Puano, and dated "Wharé-kura, June 25, 1868," he
wrote this emphatic warning:
"Cease travelling on the roads, cease entirely travelling on the roads
that lead to Mangamanga (Camp Waihi), lest ye be left upon the roads
as food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the field, or
for me. Because I have eaten the white man; he was cooked like a piece
of beef in the pot. I have begun to eat human flesh, and my throat is
continually open for the flesh of man. _Kua hamama tonu toku korokoro
ki te kai i te tangata._ I shall not die, I shall not die. When death
itself shall be dead, I shall be alive (_Ka mate ano te mate, ka ora
ano ahau_).--From TITOKO."
CHAPTER XII
THE ATTACK ON TURUTURU-MOKAI REDOUBT
Hauwhenua's war-party--A night march--Attack on
Turuturu-Mokai Redoubt--A heroic defence--The heart of the
captain--Touch-and-go--Relief at last.
One biting cold evening in July, 1868, the whole population of the
"Bird's-Beak" _pa_ gathered on the _marae_ to watch the departure of
a fighting-column launched by Titokowaru against the whites. It was a
night fitter for the snug _wharé_ than for the war-path, but the omens
were propitious for the expedition, and the war-god's sacred breeze,
the _whakarua_, breathed of Uenuku, blew across the forest.
The sixty warriors of the _Tekau-ma-rua_ took the trail with the lilt
of the dance-girls' _poi_-chant in their ears, and the war-choruses
yelled by their comrades in the village gritted their battle-spirit.
They were fittingly and thickly _tapu_'d for the night's work,
_karakia_'d over with many hardening and bullet-averting _karakias_,
and thoroughly Hauhau-bedevilled for the fight. Some of the warriors,
belted and painted, carried long Enfield muzzle-loaders, some
double-barrelled guns, some stolen or captured carbines, and a variety
of other firearms. Each rifleman's equipment included a short tomahawk
thrust through his flax girdle; a few--the storming-party--were
armed with long-handled tomahawks, murderously effective weapons in
a hand-to-hand combat. Though a winter's night, most of them were
scantily clad, as befitted a war-party. Some wore shirts and other
part-European dress; some only flax mats and waist-shawls.
Up and down the village square, as the Hauhau captain, Hauwhenua, led
his band out into the forest, strode Titokowaru, in a blaze of fanatic
exaltation, crying his commands to the warriors. Waving his plumed
_taiaha_, he shouted, "Kill them! Eat them! Let them not escape you!"
And as they disappeared in the darkness he returned to his place in
the great council-house, where on his sacred mat he spent the night in
commune with his ancestral spirits and in reciting incantations for the
success of his men-at-arms.
In single file the Hauhau soldiers struck into the black woods. As
they entered the deeper thicknesses of the forest, where not a star
could be seen for the density and unbroken continuity of the roof of
foliage above them, they chanted this brief _karakia_, a charm invoking
supernatural aid to clear their forest-path of obstructions and smooth
their way:
"Wahi taratara e i
Me tuku ki te Ariki
Kia taoro atu e--i,
Nga puke puke i noa."
Away through the bush they tramped, lightening the march with Hauhau
chants, until their objective was neared--the little redoubt of
Turuturu-Mokai.
One word of warning Titokowaru had given the _Tekau-ma-rua_ when he
chose them for this expedition. Kimble Bent, squatting with his fellows
in the big house, had watched the divination-by-_taiaha_ and the
demon-like red tongue of the high priest's sacred weapon turning now to
one silent warrior, now to another. He heard Titokowaru's injunction to
the chosen of the war-god:
"_Kaua e haere ki te kuwaha o te pa; kei reira te raiana e tu ana! Ka
pokanoa koutou, ka ngaua te raiana ia koutou!_" ("Do not charge at the
gate way of the fort; there stands the lion! Should you disregard this
command, the lion will devour you!")
This caution was designed to restrain the more impetuous of the young
warriors, for Titokowaru was a crafty general, and did not believe in
wasting good fighting-men. He had learned by dear experience at Sentry
Hill in 1864 that to dash straight and blindly at the foe, though
valiant enough, was not always sound tactics.
The leader of the _taua_, old Hauwhenua, must have been nearly seventy,
but he was as active and agile and keen-witted as any young man of his
fighting band. He was a product of the ferocious old cannibal times
when every tribe's hand was against its neighbour's, and when year
after year Waikato armies besieged the stockaded holds of Taranaki. In
person he was not the ideal of a Maori warrior, for he was short of
stature, a stoutly built man, with short grey beard and no tattoo-marks
on his face. But he had fought against Maoris and against whites for
many years of his life, and no war-captain surpassed him in the many
stratagems of bush-warfare, and particularly in the artful laying of
ambuscades.
Marching with the savages of the _Tekau-ma-rua_ was the white
man--Charles Kane, or King, called by the Maoris "Kingi," the deserter
from the 18th Royal Irish. He was armed with a gun, intending to assist
his Hauhau friends in their attack on his fellow-whites. Kimble Bent,
it was reported afterwards in the _pakeha_ camps, also accompanied the
warriors, but he denies this, asserting that he did not stir from the
_pa_ all night; this is confirmed by the Maoris. "Kingi," he says, was
a fiercely vindictive man, and swore to have a shot at the white men
from whom he had cut himself off for ever.
Emerging from the forest, the warriors stole quietly down over the
fern-slopes, and crossing the Tawhiti creek, which wound down through
a valley close to the present town of Hawera, they worked round to
the front of the little parapeted fort that stood in a singularly
unstrategic position on a gently rising hillside, close to the
celebrated ancient _pa_, Turuturu-Mokai. Hauwhenua passed round the
word to hide in the fern and remain in cover there as close up to the
redoubt as possible, until he yelled the "_Kokiri!_" cry--the signal
for the charge.
The Turuturu-Mokai redoubt was but a tiny work, so small that the
officer in charge, Captain Ross, had to live in a _raupo_ hut built
outside the walls. The entrenchment, consisting of earth-parapet
and a surrounding trench, was being strengthened by its garrison of
twenty-five Armed Constabulary, and the work was not quite finished
when the Maori attack was delivered.
The night dragged on too slowly for the impatient and shivering
warriors. Some wished to rush the white men's _pa_ at once, but
Hauwhenua and his sub-chiefs forbade it till there was a little more
light. Several of the younger men began to crawl up through the fern
towards the wall of the little fort. The form of a solitary sentry was
seen, pacing up and down outside the walls. He could easily have been
shot, but the Hauhaus waited.
The sentry was relieved at five o'clock in the morning. The new
sentinel was not left in peace very long. Five minutes after he went
on duty, while he was walking smartly up and down to keep warm, he
heard a suspicious rustle in the fern. He stopped and peered into the
dimness. Yes, he couldn't be wrong; those dark forms crawling towards
him through the fern were Maoris! He raised his carbine and fired, then
turned and raced for the redoubt, shouting out, "Stand to your arms,
boys!"
The darkness--it was not yet dawn--was instantly lit up by the blaze
of a return volley, and, with a fearful yell, the host of half-naked
Maoris leaped from the fern and rushed for the redoubt.
The white soldiers, roused by the firing, rushed from their tents and
manned the parapets and angles of the work, so furiously assailed by
the swarming forest-men.
Captain Ross had leaped from his sleeping-place at the first alarm.
He ran out from his _wharé_, armed with his sword and revolver, and
clothed only in his shirt. He just managed to cross the ditch by the
narrow plank-bridge ahead of the enemy, who missed the plank in the
darkness.
The captain quickly called for volunteers to defend the gate.
"I'll make one, sir!" cried Michael Gill, an old Imperial soldier.
"All right, Gill," said the captain; it was pitch dark, but he knew
Gill's voice. "Any more?"
Yes; they rushed for the gate--Henry McLean, George Tuffin, Swords,
Gaynor, and Gill. The others manned the two flanking angles.
Private George Tuffin, one of the garrison--who is still alive, in
Wanganui--was up with the others at the first alarm. He fired his
revolver into the mass of Maoris outside the gateway; then, dropping
the revolver, he got to work with his carbine. He had fired one shot
out of his carbine, and stooped under the shelter of the parapet to
slip in another cartridge. Just as he was rising to fire again he
was struck in the head by a Maori bullet, and fell to the ground
unconscious. He could not have been in that condition very long, for
when he came to, Captain Ross was still alive and fighting to keep the
Maoris out of the gateway.
"Hello, old man!" cried the captain; "are you hit?"
Young Tuffin lay there, unable to reply.
"Where's your rifle?" asked the captain; he was reloading his revolver
while he spoke.
Tuffin pointed to where his gun was lying on the muddy ground beside
him.
"Come on, boys!" yelled the captain; "they're coming in at the gate!"
Those were the last words Tuffin heard his commanding officer utter. A
few moments later, in that fearful confusion of attack and defence in
the darkness, the gallant Ross was struck down, defending the gateway
to the end with his sword.
A Hauhau charged right into the redoubt, and killed the captain with
his long-handled tomahawk. Making a clean cut in his breast, he tore
out the heart, a trophy for the terrible ceremony of the _mawé_
offering. Then he darted back as quickly as he had come, yelling a
frightful cry of triumph. And another heart was torn from a white man's
body even before it had ceased to beat. This was the corpse of Lennon,
the keeper of the store and canteen. He had been killed alongside his
little hut, just outside the redoubt, when the fight began. He was
tomahawked almost to pieces and his heart cut out.
And in the very midst of that battle in the dark the pagan ceremony of
the _whangai-hau_ was performed, the oblation to the god of war. The
priest of the war-party offered up one of the _pakeha_ hearts--some
Maoris say it was Captain Ross's, although Lennon's would really be the
heart of the _mata-ika_, the "first-fish" slain, which was usually the
one offered to the gods. The savage _tohunga_ lit a match (he carried
_pakeha_ matches for this dreadful purpose), and held the bleeding
heart over the flame. Immediately it began to sizzle and smoke, he
cried in an exultant voice, "_Kei au a Tu!_" ("I have _Tu_!"), meaning
that Tu, the supreme god of war, was with him, or on his side. Then
he threw down the burnt sacrifice, and, clutching his long-handled
tomahawk, rushed into the fight again. The captain's heart was
discovered after the fight was over lying on the blood-stained ground
outside the trench.
For two hours it was desperate work. The Hauhaus charged up to the
parapets, and many of them jumped into the ditch, whence they attempted
to swarm over the walls, but were beaten off again and again by the
little garrison. The endeavour to rush in force through the gateway
of the redoubt did not succeed. The impulsive young men, however,
disregarded Titokowaru's warning about the "lion" in the path, and it
was in this tomahawk charge at the fort gate that most of those who
were killed fell.
After the captain's death Gill and McLean took up their posts in one
of the angles, and fought there till daylight. Their Terry carbines
gave them a good deal of trouble. After a few rounds had been fired the
breech-blocks jammed, and were difficult to open and close.
Unfortunately, all hands did not show equal bravery. At least
four--Michael Gill says five--men bolted for the redoubt, some of them
jumping from the parapet, soon after the fight began. Gill called to
them to stop and help to protect the wounded. But they fled and left
their comrades.
One of the pluckiest men in the redoubt was Cosslett Johnston (now of
Hawera), a military settler. Mr. Johnston's intrepid example put fresh
courage into his despairing comrades on that terrible morning. Michael
Gill was an old Imperial soldier; he had served in the 57th Regiment,
the old "Die-Hards"--Kimble Bent's regiment--and his coolness did a lot
to steady his fellow-soldiers. Gill was recommended for the Victoria
Cross for his bravery, but did not get it. He, like his comrades,
certainly deserved that decoration or the New Zealand Cross, but did
not get either.
When the Captain fell, Tuffin crawled, more than half-dazed with his
wound, to one of the angles. There he received four more bullet wounds.
In the angle there were five other men; of these two were killed.
Failing in their first attempt to take the redoubt by assault, some
of the Hauhaus took post on the rising ground a little distance
off, where they could fire into the work, and one after another the
defenders dropped, shot dead or badly wounded. The ditch was full of
Maoris. Only the narrow parapet separated them from the whites, and
they yelled at the defenders and shouted all the English "swear-words"
in their vocabulary. The _pakehas_ "talked back" at them, says one of
the few survivors of the heroic garrison, and cried "Look out! The
cavalry are coming!" but the Hauhaus only laughed and said, "Gammon,
_pakeha_--gammon!" Then, finding that any Maori who showed his head
above the parapets was quickly shot down, they started to dig away
at the wall with their tomahawks, and succeeded in undermining the
parapet in several places. By this time half the garrison had been shot
down. One of the first killed was Corporal Blake, who fell in one of
the angles. Private Shields, the captain's orderly, was killed in one
of the angles; Private George Holden was shot dead behind the parapet;
Gaynor was killed at the gate. Then Sergeant McFadden fell while
bravely helping to hold an angle against the swarming enemy.
Private Alexander Beamish, who fell mortally wounded while helping to
defend an angle of the fort, told his brother, John Beamish (now a
resident of Patea), who was fighting by his side, just before he died,
that he believed it was a white man who shot him. Bent says that the
deserter Kane, while taking part in the attack, was wounded in the
right cheek by a _pakeha_ bullet, and then retired from the fight. John
Beamish was struck by an Enfield bullet and severely wounded about
the time his brother was shot, but though then unable to shoulder his
carbine, he opened packets of ammunition and passed cartridges to Gill,
the only unwounded man in his angle of the redoubt, until the end of
the combat.
Here is John Beamish's story of the fight, as he told it to me some
years back:
"The Maoris surrounded the redoubt and tried again and again to swarm
over the wall, and they kept it up till broad daylight. We could not
see much at first but the flashing of guns all around us. Presently
some of the Maoris set fire to the _wharés_ outside the redoubt. They
were armed with muzzle-loading Enfields and shot-guns, and we could now
and then see the ramrods going up and down as they rammed the charges
home. Then sometimes we would see the flash of a tomahawk and catch a
glimpse of a black head above the parapets. One of our troubles was
that there were no loopholes in the parapets, otherwise we could have
shot many of the Maoris in the ditch. We were exposed to the fire of
the enemy on the rising ground close by, and this was how so many of
the men in our angle were hit.
"Then they started to dig and cut away at the parapets with their
tomahawks. We could plainly hear them at this work, and I heard one
Maori ask another for a match. I suppose he wanted to try and fire our
buildings inside the walls. One after another our men dropped, shot
dead or badly wounded. I had very little hope of ever getting out of
the place alive. But we well knew what our fate would be if the Maoris
once got over the parapets, so we just put our hearts into it and kept
blazing away as fast as we could load. We had breech-loading carbines
which had to be capped. One incident I remember was a black head just
appearing over the parapet in the grey light, then came a body with a
bare arm gripping a long-handled tomahawk. Quietly the Hauhau raised
himself up, and was just in the act of aiming a blow at one of our men
who did not see him when we fired and brought him down.
"My younger brother was fighting not far from me. He fell mortally
wounded, and before he died he told us he believed it was a white
man who shot him. I was wounded about the same time. An Enfield
bullet struck me in the left shoulder. It took me with a tremendous
shock, just as I was stooping down across a dead man to get some dry
ammunition. The bullet slanted down past my shoulder-blade and came
out at the back. This incapacitated me from firing, or, at any rate,
from taking aim, so I had to content myself with passing cartridges
to Michael Gill--one of the men in my angle--who kept steadily firing
away, and with levelling my unloaded carbine as well as I could with
my right hand whenever I saw a head bob up above the parapet. When
the fight ended Gill was the only unwounded man in our angle of the
redoubt; out of the six who manned it when the alarm was given, three
were shot dead and two were wounded. One man, George Tuffin, was
wounded in five places.
"Daylight came, and those of us who could shoulder a carbine were
still firing away and wondering whether help would ever reach us. We
knew they must have heard the firing and seen the flashes of the guns
at Waihi redoubt, only three miles away. Suddenly the Maoris ceased
firing and retired into the bush. Their sentries had given them warning
that troops were coming. As they dropped back we rushed out of the
redoubt and gave them the last shot, and then Von Tempsky and his
A.C.'s arrived at the double, and the fight was over. My wound kept me
in the hospital for five months. The only wonder is that any of us ever
came out of that redoubt alive."
The sun had risen before the fight was over. A few minutes more and the
Hauhaus would have succeeded in undermining the parapets sufficiently
to force an entrance, and the defenders would have fallen to the last
man, and the whole of their arms and the post-supplies have been
carried off to Titokowaru's fort in the forest.
The little redoubt was a frightful sight. Dead and wounded men were
lying all over the place in pools of blood; two of them were shockingly
mutilated with tomahawks. Out of the twenty-one defenders of the
redoubt, ten were killed and five were wounded; only six came through
the fight without a wound.
Hauwhenua withdrew his disappointed _Tekau-ma-rua_, carrying those
of their wounded who were unable to walk, and marched back to
Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu. The "lion" of Titoko's speech, though sore
wounded, had in truth closed his mouth on some of their most daring
braves. Takitaki, a bold, athletic young Hauhau, who was in the
_Tekau-ma-rua_, was one of those who attacked Captain Ross at the
gateway. The Captain shattered Takitaki's left arm with a bullet from
his revolver before he fell.[6]
CHAPTER XIII
THE KILLING OF KANE
Bent and Kane brought before Titokowaru--Kane's flight--Captured
by the Hauhaus--A traitor's end.
When the renegade Charles Kane, or "Kingi," fled from the
Turuturu-Mokai fight after receiving his bullet-wound, he made his way
to the Turangaréré village, and announced that he would not return to
Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu. The Maoris, however, took him back to Te Ngutu,
and he and Kimble Bent were brought before Titokowaru, who was sitting
in the _Wharé-kura_. Bent now appears, from his own account, to have
wearied of his terrible life amongst the Hauhaus.
The war-chief fiercely questioned "Kingi," whom he suspected of an
intention to return to the European camps.
Then turning to "Ringiringi," he said:
"E Ringi, speak! Do you ever think of leaving us and running away to
the _pakehas_?"
Bent confessed that he now desired to return to the men of his own
colour, adding. "But I will never take arms against you."
Titokowaru glared at his white man, then he went to the door of the
council-house and called to the people in the _marae_ to enter.
When they were all in the big _wharé_, Titokowaru ordered them to close
the door and the sliding-window.
In the gloom of the praying-house the people sat in terrible silence,
and the white men trembled for their heads.
Titokowaru, fearfully stern and menacing, addressed the _pakehas_.
"_Whakarongo mai!_ Listen to me. If you persist in saying that you wish
to return to the white men, it will be your death! I will kill you both
with my tomahawk, now, in this house, unless you promise that you will
never leave the Maoris! I will slay you, and your bodies will be cooked
in the _hangi_!"
"Ringiringi," in real fear of his life, made answer that he would
remain with the Hauhaus if Titoko would protect him, for he dreaded
some of the chief's fiercer followers. "Kingi," too, hastened to give
the required promise--a promise which he, unlike his fellow-_pakeha_,
broke at the first opportunity.
When the people had left the _Wharé-kura_, Titoko spoke to "Ringiringi"
in a more friendly and reassuring tone, saying that he wished the
_pakeha_ to remain with him in the _pa_, and that, in order to assure
his life against the wilder spirits in the tribes gathered under his
command, he would _tapu_ him, as Te Ua had done two years before. For
his _tapu_, he explained, was a far more effective and binding one than
that of the Opunake prophet; a spell that no man dared break on pain of
death.
Not many days later the Irish traitor "Kingi" deserted from the _pa_,
taking with him a watch, a revolver, and some clothing which he had
"commandeered" from the natives.
For some little time nothing was heard of him. At length the warriors
of the _Tekau-ma-rua_, while out scouting one day in the direction
of Turangaréré, discovered on the track leading to the settlement a
note addressed to the white soldiers' commander at Waihi, stating that
the writer (Kane) and Bent were at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu, awaiting a
favourable opportunity to tomahawk Titokowaru, cut off his head, and
bring it in to the Government camp. Kane was evidently clearing the
way for his return to civilisation, and this note--which he had left
in a spot where he hoped the white troops would come across it--was
obviously intended to serve as a palliative in some measure of his
military offences.
The deserter's letter was brought to the "Bird's-Beak" _pa_, where it
was translated by an English-speaking Maori. "Ringiringi," questioned,
disclaimed any knowledge of it, and as to the incriminating reference
to himself, he assured Titokowaru that "Kingi" was lying.
Titokowaru immediately despatched the white man and four armed Maoris
after "Kingi." They found him at Te Paka village; he disappeared that
evening, but was later caught by a party of seven Maoris and confined
in a _raupo_ hut at Te Paka.
They killed him there that night.
Bent was lying half-asleep in a _wharé_ in the settlement when the
seven Maoris, who had brought "Kingi" in, entered, in an intensely
excited state, sat down, and asked him if he had heard of the judgment
on his fellow-white. Then one of them said, "Kingi is dead."
Another man, leaning forward until his passionate face almost touched
Bent's, exclaimed:
"Ringi, had you done as Kingi has done, we would not have killed you in
the ordinary way. Your fate would have been burning alive in the oven
on the _marae_!"
Then the seven, after a conversation between themselves in a strange
language the white man could not understand, listen as he would--the
Maoris sometimes improvise a secret tongue, by eliding certain
syllables in words and adding new ones--the executioners rose and left
the _wharé_.
It was not until next day that "Ringiringi" learned the details of the
deserter's end.
"Kingi," after being given a meal, was left alone in his hut, but was
watched through crevices in the wall until he sank to sleep, fatigued
with his enforced tramp. He lay with a blanket partly drawn over
his head. One of the Hauhaus, a man named Patumutu ("The Finishing
Stroke"), stole quietly into the _wharé_, and attempted to deal him a
fatal blow with a sharp bill-hook. The blow, however, only gashed his
nose, and he leaped up and grappled with his assailant.
The Maoris outside, hearing the noise of the scuffle, rushed in. An
old man--Uru-anini of the Puketapu--seized the white man by the leg,
brought him down, and dealt him a terrible blow with an axe as he lay
on the floor.
The other Hauhaus completed the work with their tomahawks, and the dead
body of the renegade Irishman, cut almost to pieces, was dragged out
and thrown into a disused potato-pit on the outskirts of the village.
CHAPTER XIV
ADVENTURES AT TE NGUTU-O-TE-MANU
In the midst of dangers--Bent stalked by Hauhaus--Old Jacob to
the rescue--"Come on if you dare!"--The white man's new Maori
name--Government forces attack and burn Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu--A new
use for hand-grenades.
When Bent returned to the "Bird's-Beak" stockade he found himself in a
position of extreme peril.
The Hauhaus, excited by the news of Kane's treachery and summary
execution, were fiercely hostile in demeanour, and some of the young
bloods came dancing about the white man, as he walked into the
village, with menacing shouts, emphasised by savage thigh-slapping,
_pukana_-ing, and grimacing with out-thrust tongue and rolling eyes,
and similar demonstrations of derision and hatred.
A council of the people was held on the _marae_, and the killing of
Kane was narrated in minutest and barbaric detail. Then several Hauhaus
rose in turn and demanded the death of "Ringiringi," on the principle
that all _pakehas_ were unreliable, and that it was a foolish policy to
keep one in the camp who might sooner or later betray them. "Let us
lead him outside the _pa_ and shoot him," proposed one truculent young
warrior of the _Tekau-ma-rua_.
"_Kaati!_" cried Titokowaru, in his great roaring voice, as he rose
with his spear-staff in his hand. "'Ringiringi' is my _pakeha_. I have
_tapu_'d him, and I have told him that his life is safe. If you want to
shoot him--well, you must kill me first!"
Then, turning to the white man, the war-chief took him by the hand, led
him to his own house, and shut the people out. He told "Ringiringi"
that in the present temper of the tribesmen he had better remain as
much as he could in the _wharé_, and that, at any rate, he must not
venture far from the door unless he, Titoko, were with him or in view.
Some days later, "Ringiringi," imagining from the more settled and
pacific attitude of the Hauhaus that he no longer ran any risk in
taking his walks abroad, wandered a short distance outside the stockade
into the forest, and, seating himself on a fallen tree-trunk, filled
his pipe for a quiet smoke. Suddenly he heard a cough. He looked about
him, but saw no one.
"Who's there?" he called out.
A voice close above him replied, "It is I--Hakopa."
"Ringiringi" looked up quickly, and saw an old tattooed man named
Hakopa (Jacob) te Matauawa, perched on the lowest branch of a
_rata_-tree, with a double-barrelled gun in his hand. Hakopa was a
tall, lean, straight old fellow, a veteran of the ancient fighting
type. Bent had a thorough admiration for him as a man of singular
courage, without the braggadocio of the young _toas_; Hakopa had for
a long time exhibited a kindly leaning towards the white man, and had
been a firm friend of his all through the troubled days in the _pa_.
"Quick, quick!" he said, in a low, cautious voice. "Hide yourself,
Ringi! When you walked out of the _pa_ I heard two men who were
watching you say that they would follow you up and kill you as they
had killed Kingi. They went to their _wharés_ for their weapons, and I
followed you quickly to warn you. I saw you standing there, and climbed
on this branch to see what those men are doing. _E tama!_ Conceal
yourself! They are coming."
The white man hastily selected a hiding-place. He lay down behind a
big log near by, a fallen _pukatea_-tree; the log and the creepers and
ferns that grew about it quite concealed him from the view of any one
approaching from the _pa_.
Hardly had he hidden himself than two villainous-visaged young
Hauhaus walked quickly along the track from the _pa_ gateway. Both
swung tomahawks as they came, and one carried at his girdle a
revolver--trophy taken from some slain white officer.
Seeing Hakopa descending from his tree-perch, they stopped and asked:
"Where is the _pakeha_? Did you see him pass?"
"Why do you ask?" said the old man.
"We have come to kill him," replied one of the men. "Where is he?"
Hakopa instantly put his cocked _tupara_ to his shoulder and levelled
it at the foremost of the Hauhaus, the man with the revolver.
"_Haere atu!_" he said sharply. "Go! Leave this spot at once, or I will
shoot you. 'Ringiringi' is my friend."
The old fellow's determined air quite overawed the _pakeha_-hunters,
and they sulkily and silently returned to the _pa_.
Jacob watched them off, and when the white man had risen from his
hiding-place he escorted him back to the _pa_, walking in front of
him with his gun cocked, on the alert for any attack on his protégé.
He took "Ringiringi" to his house, and then reported the affair to
Titokowaru.
The chief showed genuine anger. He assembled the fighting-men, and
sternly ordered them to molest the white man no more. "If you harm
him," he said, "I shall leave the _pa_ and return to my own village.
Listen! 'Ringiringi' is henceforth my _moko-puna_--my grandchild--and I
now give him another name, the name of one of my ancestors. His name is
now Tu-nui-a-moa."
And behind Titokowaru leaped up old Hakopa, a bright tomahawk in his
hand. Making sharp, quick cuts in the air with his tomahawk, he cried,
as he danced to and fro:
"Yes, and if any one attempts to touch the white man, he will have to
kill me too! Kill me and Titokowaru! Who will dare it? Come on, come
on!"
Thereafter Bent was not molested. He went by his new name, and
"Ringiringi" he was called no more; at any rate, not by Titokowaru's
tribe.
The "Bird's-Beak" soon received its baptism of blood and fire. Colonel
McDonnell, with a force of about three hundred Armed Constabulary and
volunteers, under Majors von Tempsky and Hunter, attacked the _pa_ on
August 21, 1868. The whites charged right into the village under a
heavy fire, and the Maoris fled to the bush, losing several killed.
Bent, fortunately for himself, was not in the _pa_; he had gone over
to the Turangaréré settlement, a few miles away, to procure gunpowder
and paper for the manufacture of cartridges, and most of the other
men were out cattle-shooting in the bush. Titokowaru retired to
his praying-house when the firing began, and sat there muttering
incantations, and it was only with great difficulty that he was
persuaded by his people to leave the _wharé_ and retire. The great
house was set fire to by Colonel McDonnell when the _pa_ was captured,
and the sacred _wharé-kura_, where the high-priest had so often
exhorted his people and with enchanted _taiaha_ told off the warriors
of the _Tekau-ma-rua_, was soon a mass of flames. The Government
troops lost four men killed and eight wounded in the engagement. Most
of these casualties occurred in the march back to Waihi, which became
a heavy rear-guard action, for the main body of the Hauhaus came up in
time to attack the troops briskly as they retired through the thick
bush. Then they drew off and returned to their half-demolished _pa_,
to weep over their dead and the ashes of their great _wharé-kura_ and
rebuild their ruined homes.
The troops had placed a number of hand-grenades, small shells filled
with powder, in the thatch of the _wharés_ when they fired the village;
but some of the houses were not destroyed, and on the return of the
Hauhaus, they found some of these grenades unexploded. The dangerous
shells were given to Bent to handle. He pulled out the fuses--which the
Maoris called _wiki_, or wicks--and emptied the precious powder into
flasks. In this way a sufficient quantity of powder to make eighteen
gun-cartridges was obtained from each hand-grenade.
CHAPTER XV
A BATTLE IN THE FOREST; AND THE DEATH OF VON TEMPSKY
The second fight at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu--Titokowaru's
prophecy--Tutangé and his sacred war-mat--Bent's narrow
escape--Government forces defeated--How von Tempsky fell--A
terrible retreat--Colonial soldiers' gallant rear-guard fight.
Early one warm spring afternoon in 1868, when the vast forest lay
steeped in calm and Taranaki's sentry-peak rose like a great ivory tent
out of the soft blue haze that bathed its spreading base, the sharp,
cracking sound of rifle-shots broke the quiet of the wilderness.
The shots came from the mountain side of "The Beak-of-the-Bird,"
the opposite one to that by which the white troops had advanced the
previous month. Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu was being taken in the rear this
time. Colonel McDonnell had set out from the Waihi Redoubt before
daylight in the morning, with a force of about two hundred and sixty
whites, composed of three divisions of Armed Constabulary (many of
them ex-Forest Rangers), the newly joined Wellington Rifles and
Rangers, and a few veteran volunteers, besides about a hundred
_Kupapas_, the friendly Maoris from the Whanganui and Ngati-Apa tribes
under Kepa te Rangihiwinui. Fording the swift Wai-ngongoro River
(the "Waters-of-Snoring"), the Colonel's force, guided by the woman
Takiora, marched through the native village of Mawhitiwhiti, which was
found deserted, then turned into the dense forest, searching for the
Hauhau stronghold, which was now reported to be at Te Rua-ruru ("The
Owl's Nest"), situated somewhere in the rear of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu.
A disastrous search, for it ended under the palisades of the
"Bird's-Beak," the savage beak that closed savagely on many a gallant
_pakeha_ before the sun went down in the western sea that day.
McDonnell had hoped by his early start to take the Hauhaus by surprise.
But wary old Titokowaru was seldom caught napping.
* * * * *
On the previous night--as the old warrior Tutangé Waionui tells
me--Titokowaru gathered all his men in the big house (_wharé-kura_),
which had now been rebuilt. Then, when the Hauhau prayers and chants
were over, the chief arose and cried:
"_E Koro ma, kia tupato! He po kino te po, he ra kino te ra!_" ("O
friends, be on your guard! This is an evil night--a night of danger,
and the morrow will be a day of danger!")
This oracular warning seemed to the superstitious people to be a
message from the gods, of whom Titokowaru was the living medium. That
night was a night of preparation for battle. Armed men slipped out
along the trail in front of the stockade, and lay in wait for the
expected enemy.
Long the grim old chief sat on his sacred mat that night in the
_wharé-kura_, his enchanted tongue-pointed _taiaha_ lying in front
of him. _Karakia_ after _karakia_ he recited in a low monotone,
incantations and charms, ancient pagan and latter-day Hauhau _karakia_,
for success in the conflict that he felt was to envelop his _pa_ on the
morrow in a ring of smoke and blood.
In his own little thatched _wharé_ that day sat Kimble Bent, the
_pakeha_-Maori. He, too, was busy, squatting there on an old flax
_whariki_ mat. By his side were a keg of gunpowder and a bag of
bullets, and in front of him a pile of old _pakeha_ newspapers and
leaves torn from looted books. He was making cartridges for the
Hauhaus. Round a wooden cartridge-filler he deftly rolled a scrap
of paper, forming a cylinder, which he tied securely with thread or
with fine strips of flax; then, withdrawing the filler, he poured
in the gunpowder. The cartridges loaded, he slipped them into the
cartouche-boxes and holders, a number of which had been brought to the
_wharé_ by the men of the _Tekau-ma-rua_; when the boxes were full,
the remainder of the ammunition he stored carefully in a large flax
basket. Most of the receptacles for the ammunition--_hamanu_ the Maoris
called them--were primitive affairs smacking of the bush. In size and
shape they resembled the ordinary military leather cartouche-boxes,
but they were simply blocks of light wood, generally _pukatea_ timber,
slightly curved in shape so as to sit well on the body when strapped,
and neatly bored with from ten to eighteen holes, each of which held
a cartridge. A flap of leather or skin--in the earlier days it was
often a piece of tattooed human skin--covered the cartridges; and
straps of leather or of dressed and ornamented flax were attached to
the _hamanu_, which were buckled or tied round the waist or over the
shoulders. A well-equipped fighting-man usually wore two _hamanu_, by
belts over the shoulders; and at his girdle he carried his pouches for
bullets and percussion-caps.
Such was the lone white man's occupation in the forest stockade that
day before the looming battle.
* * * * *
Next morning, after the first meal of the day had been set before the
warriors by their women and had been quickly eaten, the war-chief came
out of his house, _taiaha_ in hand, and walked out on to the village
square in front of the sacred praying-house.
"Friends," he cried, as he stood there on the _marae_, "I salute
you! You have eaten and are content; for the proverb says, 'When the
stomach is filled, then man is happy and satisfied' ('_Ka ki te puku,
ka ora te tangata_'). Now, rise up and grasp your weapons, for I wish
to see you dance the _haka_ and the _tutu-waewae_ of war."
When the men were assembled on the parade ground, in their dancing
costume of a scanty waist-mat, Titokowaru cried in a loud voice and
prophesied, saying:
"_Kaore e tu te ra, kaore e titaha te ra, ka tupono tatou kia to tatou
whanaunga_"--of which the meaning is, "The sun will not have reached
its zenith, the sun will not have declined, before we have joined issue
with our relatives"--the white soldiers.
"Then," says Tutangé, "we danced our _haka_ with the fire of coming
battle in our hearts, and we hardened our nerves for the fight. For we
knew that Titoko was a true and powerful prophet (_poropiti whai-mana_,
_tino kaha_), and we believed that that day would see blood shed again
around Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu."
Tutangé Waionui, who was now to distinguish himself as a daring young
warrior, was but a boy. He was not more than fifteen or sixteen years
old, but was a strong, athletic youngster, full of fire and courage,
and as agile as a monkey. He was of the _momo rangatira_, or "blue
blood" of Taranaki, tracing a direct descent through a line of high
chiefs and priests from Turi, the great sailor who navigated his long
mat-winged canoe _Aotea_ to the black iron-sand beach of Taranaki from
the far-distant Hawaiki, the beautiful palm-fringed island of Rangiatea
(Raiatea, as its people call it now) in the Society Group. His father,
the old warrior, Maruera Whakarewataua, had carefully schooled him in
the business of arms, the handling of the spear-tongued _taiaha_, most
beautiful of Maori weapons, the quick and fatal use of the tomahawk,
both the terrible long-handled one and the short hatchet, or _patiti_,
as well as the musket and shot-gun and rifle of the _pakeha_. So here,
now, was young Tutangé on his first war-path.
That morning, when the very air seemed full of rumours of battle and
death, Tutangé was girded with the sacred war-mat, the _maro-taua_.
[Illustration: TUTANGÉ WAIONUI, A HAUHAU WARRIOR.
This photo, taken in 1908, shows Tutangé--who was one of Titokowaru's
best fighting men--stripped and armed for the war-path as he was in
1868.]
"My father's sister," says he, "called me to her, together with certain
other young men who were of _rangatira_ rank, and who had not yet
fought the white man. She was a chieftainess, by name Tāngamoko; she
was of _ariki_ birth in the Ngati-Ruanui tribe, and being possessed of
_mana-tapu_ and of a knowledge of charms and incantations, she was as
a priestess amongst the people. She called us to her, and told us that
she was about to make us _tamariki tapu_, that is, sacred children,
for the coming battle. She girded us each with a fine waist-garment,
the _korowai_, made of soft dressed and closely woven white flax, with
short black thrums, or cords, hanging down it. These flax vestures,
falling from our waists to our knees, she had made herself. They
were the garments of war; she had _karakia_'d over them and charmed
them so that the bullets of the enemy should not touch them, and so
that we, their wearers, might conquer in the fight. And very proud
and confident _tamariki tapu_ we were now, parading the _pa_ in our
bullet-proof _korowai_, and dancing our weapons in the air as we leaped
with our elders in the _haka_ and roared out the great chorus of the
war-song beginning, '_Kia kutia--au--au!_' and that other one which our
fathers had chanted when first they set up the Maori Land League, '_E
kore Taranaki e makere atu!_' ('Taranaki will not be cast away from
us!')
"One of the songs which we chanted as we wildly danced was this:
"'_Whakarongo ai au
Ki te koroki manu
Whakaorooro ana i te ngahere.
I na-wa e!_'
('I'm listening for the voices,
The singing of the birds,
Sounding, echoing in the forest!')
The 'singing of the birds' was a figure of speech for the voices of the
soldiers on the march.
"That _maro-taua_ was all the clothing I wore in the fight.
Round my brows I bound a handkerchief, which held in place my
_tiparé rangatira_, my chief-like war-feathers. My weapons were a
double-barrelled gun (_tupara_), and a short-handled tomahawk, which I
carried stuck in my belt. Round me I had strapped a cartridge-holder.
_E tama!_ Now I was ready for my first battle."
Meanwhile, what of the _pakeha_-Maori in this nest of Hauhaus?
That morning, after he had supplied the men with ammunition, he sat on
the _marae_ watching the war-dances. The morning went, but there was no
sign from the outlying Hauhau piquets. Most of the women and children
had been sent away into the bush at the rear of the _pa_ in charge of
the old chief Te Waka-tākere-nui, in anticipation of the predicted
attack. The _pakeha_-Maori was also a non-combatant, but he remained
in the _pa_ with Titokowaru until the firing began. There were not
more than sixty fighting-men in Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu, but nearly all of
these were tried and experienced warriors, and even those who, like
young Tutangé, were still to be blooded, were more than a match for the
average white soldier in bush-warfare.
It was well on in the afternoon before the first shots were heard. The
Maoris had expected attack from the seaward or Waihi side, but to their
surprise the sound of the firing came from inland, indicating that the
troops had worked round to the rear of "The Beak-of-the-Bird." The
Maori advance-guard of Colonel McDonnell's column had encountered the
Hauhaus in the bush and fired into them.
When the first sharp rifle-cracks echoed through the forest, Titokowaru
went up to his _pakeha_, with a flax kit in his hand.
"Friend," said the stern old captain, "take this _kété_ of mine in your
charge. It contains some of my _tapu_ treasures; take great care of
it, for I may not see you again; I may fall with my tribe. Take it and
leave the _pa_, and join Te Waka-tākere-nui if you can find his camp
in the forest."
The white man took the carefully strapped kit and hurried out of the
stockade. Te Waka's camp, he knew, was somewhere away in the rear; the
firing was in that direction, and he was in danger of falling into
the e
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