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NEW ZEALAND WARS
VOLUME I: 1845-64
First published 1922
Reprinted without amendment 1955
THE PIONEERS
I
THE INCREASING INTEREST in the study of New Zealand's past emphasizes the need for a history of the wars with the Maoris since the establishment of British sovereignty and of the era of pioneering settlement and adventure, which was practically conterminous with those campaigns. Although there is in existence a considerable body of war-time literature written by participants in the conflicts, it is not possible to gather in any of the works on the subject a connected account of the successive outbreaks and campaigns which troubled the colony from 1845 to the beginning of 1872. Most of the printed narratives deal chiefly with events which came within the soldier-writers' own experiences, and other contributions to the story of the campaigns are scarcely written in the impartial spirit of the historian. Some of the earlier works, and even the blue-books, contain many statements which careful inquiries and a better understanding of the Maori side of the struggle have now demolished. Most of the useful books, moreover, are out of print, and the student who wishes to make a complete survey of the field of contact between pakeha and Maori is compelled to work through many volumes, pamphlets, and newspaper-files in the public libraries. The fragmentary and scattered nature of our war-time literature therefore necessitates this endeavour to provide a standard history in convenient compass.
The present is probably the most favourable moment for the historian of New Zealand's wars and the adventure-teeming life of the pioneer colonists. A sufficient time has elapsed for the episodes of our nation-making to be viewed in their correct perspective; there is a very large amount of printed matter and manuscript at the writer's hand; and at the same time there are still with us many eye-witnesses of some of the most important events in New Zealand's histroy. Oral witness has its historical value, as
The foundation for this work of history-gathering was laid, unconsciously enough, in the writer's boyhood on a farthest-out farm on the King Country frontier. Since those youthful days on the battlefield of Orakau, where the shawl-kilted tattooed Maoris who had fought in the wars were familiar figures, and when the pakeha stalwarts who had carried rifle on many a bush war-path garrisoned the blockhouses and redoubts which still studded the Waikato border, the task of collecting the tales of old has been an often-renewed pleasure.
In the course of writing this History it was necessary to examine a very large amount of material in book form, in official documents, and in newspaper-files. It was necessary also to explore battlefields and sites of fortifications throughout the North Island. Veterans of the wars, European and Maori, were sought out, sometimes in the most remote places, and the field notes made on the scenes of engagements and sieges were often enhanced in value by the presence of soldiers, settlers, or natives who had fought there and who were able to describe the actions on the spot.
I take pleasure in recording here the names of those who gave valuable co-operation in this work. The History is due largely to the initiative of Auckland Star and principal author of Brett's “Early History of New Zealand,” and also to the hearty assistance of the late
The following colonial soldiers, some of whom have since passed away, also assisted with narratives, diaries, plans, and other documents:—
The use of many historic pictures not hitherto published was given by Mr. Justice Chapman and
The late
I desire also to record the names of my principal Maori authorities, most of them veterans of the wars from 1845 onwards, who at various times gave information:—
Tupotahi;
Kiharoa;
Tauke;
Most of those mentioned were warriors who fought either against or for the Government; in a number of instances they explained on the battle-ground the details of engagements; few of them survive to recall the conditions and events of a life which has vanished for ever.
A great deal of trouble has been taken to obtain original illustrations, and Mr.
To the Hon. the Minister of Internal Affairs, and to the Under-Secretary of that Department, my gratitude is due for the liberal arrangements which made the writing and publication of this work possible.
The principal campaigns and expeditions dealt with in the History are as follows:—
The period covered in the present volume is from the outbreak of Heke's War in 1845 to the end of the Kingite wars in Taranaki, Waikato, and the Bay of Plenty, 1864. The second volume is devoted to the Hauhau campaigns, 1864–72.
THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND is rich beyond that of most young countries in episodes of adventure and romance. Australia's pioneering-work was of a different quality from ours, mainly because the nation-makers of our neighbour encountered no powerful military race of indigenes to dispute the right of way. The student of New Zealand history seeking for foreign parallels and analogies must turn to the story of the white conquest in America for the record of human endeavour that most closely approaches the early annals of these Islands. There certainly is a remarkable similarity, in all but landscape, between the old frontier life in British North America and the United States and the broad features of the violent contact between European and Maori in our country. The New England back-woodsman and the far-out plainsman were faced with many of the life-and-death problems which confronted our New Zealand settlers on the Taranaki and Waikato and East Coast borders. In reading such fascinating books as “The Conspiracy of Pontiac,” “French Pioneers in the New World,” or “The Winning of the West,” the family likeness of the adventures of the pathfinder and the forest fighter to the New Zealand life of the “sixties” is irresistibly forced upon the mind. There was the same dual combat with wild nature and with untamed man; there was the necessity in each land for soldierly skill; the same display of all grades of human courage; much of the same tale of raid and foray, siege, trail-hunting, and ambuscade. There was as wide a difference in frontier and forest fighting-ability between the Imperial troops of the “forties” and early “sixties” and the soldier settlers who scoured the bush after
The inevitable shock of battle between the tribesman of Aotearoa and the white man who coveted and needed his surplus lands is a feature of our history which has had no small influence upon our national existence and national type. It coloured our story as no other element could; tragic as it was, it at least redeemed our history from the commonplaces of a sleek commercialism. The white adventurer let go his anchor on these shores with the Briton's characteristic assertion of superiority over the brown races of mankind; the white settler of our beginnings too often exhibited an ignorant contempt for the mat-girt or blanket-swathed aboriginal. The Maori, for his part, swaggering through the settlements with double-barrel gun and tomahawk, ready to fight to the death for a punctilio and avenge in blood some absurd breach of personal tapu, did not trouble to conceal his scorn for the pakeha whose only concern was huckstering and profit-making. Early Governments truckled to savage insolence for the sake of peace; the Maori, sometimes for the same reason, shrugged off the insults and swindlings of the coarser grade of white with a contemptuous “Hei aha!”—“What does it matter!” But it was in the last and unavoidable test, when bayonet met long-handled tomahawk and when British artillery battered Maori stockades, that the two races came to gauge each other's manly calibre, and came, finally, to respect each other for the capital virtues that only trial of war can bring to mutual view. For all the reverses that befell the ill-planned and unskilfully conducted British efforts in the field in the early campaigns, the shrewd Maori soon divested himself of his illusions of military superiority; he came to realize that he had at last met his match, and henceforth his concern was deep lest the incoming shiploads of whites should wipe him off the face of his ancestral lands. On the European's side the conceit which found expression in the declared opinion that a company of British grenadiers could march from end to end of New Zealand and carry all before them was quickly exchanged for an admission that the naked Maori was a better warrior than the heavily armed British soldier, man for man, in the forest environment in which he had been schooled to arms and the trail from his infancy. Each admitted the other's pre-eminence under certain conditions, and each protagonist came to admire the primal quality of valour in his opponent. The Ngapuhi who—to their own amazement—hurled back assaulting columns of the finest British infantry at Ohaeawai had secret tremors at the spectacle of the forlorn hope's desperate courage; well they knew that in the end they could not hope to prevail over men of such mettle. And the soldier who saw women and even children facing death in a beleaguered redoubt of sod walls, choosing to die with their men rather than surrender, first
From the days when venturesome trading brigs and schooners lay at uneasy anchor in New Zealand bays, with boarding nettings triced up and carronades loaded, down to the firing of the last shot against
In examining these tales of other days and in testing the historical knowledge of the average New Zealander the fact is too apparent that the young generation would be the better for a more systematic schooling in the facts of national pioneer life and achievements which are a necessary foundation for the larger patriotism. Yet the passionate affection with which the Maori clung to his tribal lands is a quality which undeniably tinges the mind and outlook of the farm-bred, country-loving, white New Zealander to-day. The native-born has unconsciously assimilated something of the peculiar patriotism that belongs to the soil; the genius loci of the old frontiers has not entirely vanished from the hills and streams. Not only the tribespeople of
Regarding these old wars in the light of the ordeal of battle from which the civilized world has lately emerged, the pakeha-Maori conflicts seem chivalrous tournaments. The formidable character of the country in most of the operations, while it
It is curious to discover in the early records how little the military commanders and officials realized the military quality of the Maori. We find, even before New Zealand became a British colony, the Resident at the Bay of Islands, Mr. Busby, declaring in a letter to the Colonial Secretary of New South Wales urging the despatch of a detachment of soldiers to uphold the authority of the Resident and the Ngapuhi confederation of native chiefs, “With regard to the number of troops which it might be necessary to maintain, it would, I think, require little knowledge of military tactics to satisfy one who has witnessed the warfare of the native that one hundred English soldiers would be an overmatch for the united forces of the whole Islands. But in fact there is little risk of even two tribes uniting to oppose them.” From manuscript letter, 8th June, 1837, in Mr. Busby's letter-book, New Zealand archives.
Equally fatuous was the debate in the Legislative Council at Auckland, in 1842, upon the question of arresting the cannibal chief Taraia for his attack upon the Katikati Maoris at Ongare; it was actually suggested that the old warrior should be served with a summons by a constable in his fortified pa. In 1844, after the tragic blunder of the Wairau, Governor Fitzroy reported of the Wellington and Nelson officials and settlers, “No one appeared disposed to give the natives credit for courage or skill in warfare; no one seemed to doubt but that they would fly before a very small detachment of military; the prevailing feeling appeared to be for a collision.” That collision, when it came in the North, revealed the unsuspected capacity of the natives to meet and defeat—given their own conditions of fighting—the best British troops. While
In
The New-Zealander of the 2nd August, 1845, commenting upon these figures, said that the return showed there were nearly 70,000 natives within three hundred miles of Auckland. “This most important fact,” it added, “should awake vigilance as well as stimulate firmness and decision in the present crisis.”
In 1847 Lieutenant W. Servantes, interpreter to the Forces, estimated the Maoris' numbers at 90,000.
Even taking the lowest estimate, it is apparent that a combined effort by the natives in the “forties” or early “fifties” could have driven the pakeha population into the sea. Had the “Land League” or the Pai-Marire fanaticism been born ten
pakeha-Maoris. Let it not be forgotten that had it not been for the true benevolence, the hospitality, and the continued friendship of such men as Tamati Waka and Patuone, Te Kawau, Te Wherowhero, and
THERE ARE SOME bays in the South Pacific on whose shores wild history has been made—strands saturate with a hundred romantic, adventurous, and tragic memories. Pre-eminently one of these is the beach of Apia, in Samoa; another, steeped almost as deeply in early-days legend and war-time history, is Kororareka, Bay of Islands. From the dawn of civilized enterprise on our coasts we hear of Kororareka and its fleets of whalers at anchor, its Maori “ship-girls,” its gun-play between quarrelsome native hapus, and its all-pervading flavour of licence and lawlessness; this period of pagan freedom followed by an unwilling reformation under the influence of reputable settlers and the British flag, a brief day of importance as the capital of the new-made colony, and the final debacle when the flagstaff on its sentry hill was laid in dust and the blockhouses and grog-shops alike went up in flames. Kororareka—the modern Russell—remains to-day a place apart, curiously little advanced, at any rate in population, by the passage of three-quarters of a century, and shorn of its ancient commercial glory; a sedate, pretty seaside township where the round of life in a delicious climate is seldom disturbed by intrusive shipping. The pervading air, a half-regretful recollection of a red-blooded past, is reminiscent of some of the old gold-digging towns on the coast of Westland.
The old landmarks are readily to be picked out. A modern flagstaff stands on the exact spot on Maiki Hill, 300 feet above us yonder, where manuka and fern as they were in Heke's day, with an immigrant admixture of gorse and sweetbrier. The old English church, with its marks of cannon-shot, still stands in the burying-ground around whose fence Kawiti fought the British bluejackets in 1845.
Let us picture something of the aspect of Kororareka Beach in the war-brewing “forties.” This straggling town, its single street fitting itself closely to the rim of the gravelly beach, is a
pakeha and Maori architecture. One- and two-storied weatherboard stores and publichouses have for close neighbours thatched whares of slab and fern, tree-trunk and raupo. Near the southern end of the beach is a Maori village enclosed by a palisade of split trees and manuka stakes. There is no jetty; the boats of men-o'-war whalers, and trading craft alike are hauled up on the beach. Over in the north cove by Waipara Spring two boats' crews from an American whaleship are towing off a string of water-casks roped together. Out in the bay lie half a dozen deep-sea vessels, most of them New Bedford whale-hunters; nearer the beach sundry fore-and-afters, schooner- or cutter-rigged, swing to an anchor; one or two of these are owned and sailed by Maoris, for the East Coast native is not only a first-rate sailor, but is beginning to taste the pleasures and profits of shipowning. Natives in their blankets and mats lounge on the beach-edge, dozing, smoking, or arguing in the vociferous manner of the Maori. Ngapuhi girls, barefooted and bareheaded, well plumped-out of figure, swing up and down the roadway flaunting the print gowns and the brightly coloured “roundabouts” and the glittering ear-rings bought with the dollars of the sailormen. Some of them are lately from the mission stations, maybe, but the temptations of Kororareka and the whaleships are irresistible. Many a native wears a little metal cross or a crucifix about his neck, or a figure of the Virgin hung by a black ribbon or tape from one ear, balancing a shark's tooth or a greenstone in the other—for the Catholic religion, newly come to the Bay, is highly popular, and Bishop Pompallier numbers his converts by the hundred. Most of the able-bodied men, tall athletes with tattooed faces, are armed. You see a party of young bloods spring ashore from a canoe, in from one of Pomare's, Heke's, or Kawiti's pas up the harbour, and observe that every man has his short-handled tomahawk, brightly polished of blade, thrust through his flax girdle just over the hip or at the small of the back; he would no more stir from home without it than a Far West plainsman of the old days would move abroad without his six-shooter. Many also carry their flint-lock guns, which they call ngutu-parera (“duck-bill”—from the shape of the hammer); and note, too, the new percussion-cap gun, double-barrelled, which the Maori is able to obtain from Sydney trading craft, while his antagonist soon-to-be, the British soldier, must for some years yet be content with the ancient musket.
Whaleship watches on shore leave make lively business in the bar-rooms over their rum and ale. The captains have the parlours, sacred to the quarter-deck, and there they sit over their Scotch whisky or their cognac or squareface exchanging the news of all the seas, and relating their whale-fishing successes and misadventures
Follow the stores-buying captain or chief officer of the “Levi Starbuck” into one of the weatherboard trading-houses, blue with strong tobacco smoke and thick with the tang of tarred rope. This interior is a typical South Sea warehouse; the proprietor is ship-chandler, sea-stock dealer, ironmonger and gunsmith, grog-seller, gunpowder-purveyor, and a dozen other trades. He can provide a ship with anchor and cable, or set the Maoris on the track of Captain Ephraim J. Nye's runaway boat-steerer with admirable despatch; provide a 300-ton barque with a complete new set of sails or sufficient muskets and ammunition to conquer a cannibal island. There are blankets, prints, red sealing-wax, tomahawks, bullet-moulds, iron pots, tobacco by the cask, for the Maori trade; sugar and molasses and rum from the West Indies; salt beef and pork and adamant biscuit for sea-fare; sou'-westers, cutting-in spades, harpoon-line by the hundred fathom, lance-heads, charts, binnacle lanterns, spy-glasses, and boat-compasses; pistols and knuckle-dusters for the afterguard, holystones and squeejees and coal-tar to keep the fists of the 'foremast hands out of mischief.
Now board one of those whaleships lying out yonder at an easy anchor—the ships that made this Bay of Islands famous—and you shall see the most conservative of all craft afloat. While every other phase of sea-life and every other kind of ship has changed out of all likeness to the olden type, the sailing whaler does not alter. Step into the stern-sheets of one of those beautifully modelled carvel-built whaleboats with the tobacco-chewing
In such a craft as this Herman Melville sails sperm-whale chasing at the time of our narrative; it is from just such a barque as the “Charles
If you are privileged to explore the wrinkled canvas-backed charts to look into the captain's log-book you will see curious symbols that belong to the whale-fishing trade alone. The pencilled zigzag lines of the vessel's cruising course across the Pacific are punctuated every here and there with rough drawings of a whale's flukes, or the head of a great sperm bull, or maybe a school of porpoises. Each pictograph tells a tale of oil-getting, or of “drawn irons” and a lost whale; perhaps now and again a boat lost. Each emblem of a “kill” is figured with the numbers of barrels obtained. “Dirty work for clean money”: sperm-oil these years of 1840–50 rises steadily until it is worth a dollar a gallon, and bone from the “right” whale is quoted at £200 per ton in New York.
Observe that all these merchant ships are armed, some with a single iron carronade or a brass gun on each side, some with whole broadsides of four or six guns, 9-pounders and 12-pounders.
Such were some of the distinguishing features of Kororareka Bay in the early years of British sovereignty. The visits of whaleships were all-important, for it was almost solely with them that the business of the white dealers and the Maori barterers lay. In 1845 there were more than six hundred American ships and barques engaged in whale-fishing, and of these a considerable number visited New Zealand annually; and English, French, Sydney, and Hobart whalers also frequented the coast. Mr. John Webster, of Hokianga, related in his reminiscences that when he landed at Russell Town from Sydney on the 1st May, 1841, there were over twenty whaling-ships in the Bay, and the beach was alive with seamen and their officers. It was the season when all the whalers put in for provisions and to fit out for another year's chase of the sperm and the “right” whale. But the number of visitors quickly lessened when the Governor in Council imposed a Customs tariff on the stable articles of trade, thus making the port highly expensive for the whalemen; and, as will be shown, this falling-off in trade created annoyance and resentment in the Maori mind.
The white population of Kororareka in its days of prosperity was about a thousand; by 1845 this number had fallen to some four hundred. In 1842 the town even supported a newspaper, the Bay of Islands Observer, a four-page weekly sold for a shilling. Traders' advertisements in this paper give us an insight into the commercial life of the place, and enable us to picture scenes in the 'longshore stores, with their curious variety of goods stocked for maritime and Maori customers. Thomas Spicer, “Kororareka Beach,” announced that he had for sale such articles as “duck frocks and trousers, muslin dresses, assorted prints, fine Congo tea, fine French capers, iron pots, tobacco, salt, shovels and spades, tomahawks, cartouche-boxes, superfine beaver hats, and crockery.” C.
There was a “Kororareka Observatory.” William Robertson, who owned this establishment advertised repairs to timekeepers, and added: “Commanders of vessels may have their chronometers rated by transit observations and an astronomical clock kept at Greenwich mean time.”
In 1842 the falling-off in maritime trade was already marked; nevertheless, many ship-commanders preferred Kororareka to more populous ports. Small fleets of square-riggers made for the bay in the off-season; for example, in two days (4th and 5th May) in 1842 four American whaleships—the “Triad,” “Caledonia,” “Washington,” and “Fanny”—arrived at Kororareka, bringing in their holds, as the result of their cruises in the Pacific, takes totalling 6,550 barrels of oil and 51,000 lb. of bone. The New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator of September, 1844, said: “The receipts at the Bay of Islands from furnishing supplies to whalers averaged for several years about £45,000 annually, and now this trade is nearly extinct.” Up to the date of Heke's War, however, the number of whaling-vessels using Russell and Wahapu as ports of refitting and refreshing was still considerable. Captain McKeever, of the United States warship “St. Louis,” writing from the Bay of Islands, 13th March, 1845, to the Secretary of the Navy at Washington, said: “Of the high importance of the Bay of Islands to our whalesmen, and of the great value of American interest involved here (there being no less than seventy or eighty of the whalers touching and refitting annually), I presume you are well aware, and I am safe probably in saying that no other port or harbour in the world competes with it in its importance to the American whaling interests.” The Bay of Islands, indeed, was regularly visited for water, wood, and stores, and for the shipping of oil, until, in the final days of the American Civil War, the Confederate commerce-destroying cruiser “ Shenandoah” left a trail of burning New England whaleships across the Pacific; and even in the “nineties” I have seen an occasional whaling-barque, such as the “Gayhead,” of New Bedford, lying at anchor at Russell, boating off her water-casks, as in the early days, from the perennial spring of Waipara.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON described the town on Apia Beach as the seat of the political sickness of Samoa. Cosmopolitan Kororareka was the seat of the troubles of north New Zealand; its flagstaff was the putake o te riri, in Maori phrase—the root and fount of the wars. And
At the same time, there were whites whom Ngapuhi and Te Rarawa and their kin desired strongly to encourage for reasons of self-interest. These were the captains and crews of the whale-ships—the men who were chiefly responsible at once for the material prosperity and the moral deterioration of the northern tribes. The whaleships supplied practically the whole of the trade of the Bay of Islands and Mangonui, as the kauri timber ships did that of Hokianga; and the decrease in this trade directly following the establishment of British sovereignty went far to convince Heke and Pomare, and the many others who lived to a large extent on the profits accruing from the visits of shipping, that the old regime, when every man made his own laws, was preferable to the new order.
pas. Heke was wounded in the neck in this expedition. In 1837 he took a leading part in the fighting against Pomare and Te Mau-Paraoa, whose stockaded pa (destroyed by the British troops in 1845) stood on Otuihu, a prominent place on the cliffs above the entrance to the Waikare and Kawakawa arms of Tokerau, and about six miles from Kororareka Town.
In an interval of peace in the “thirties” young Heke lived at Paihia in the establishment of the Rev.
The portrait of ihu-kaka, or strong hook-nose, that distinguished some great Maori leaders, was prominent and well-shapen; his prominent jaws and chin denoted firmness and resolution. The old Kaikohe natives of to-day speak of Heke's kauae-roa, his long chin, as the salient character of his face. He was tattooed, but not with the full design of moko, such as that borne by his great kinsman and antagonist,
Heke's dissatisfaction with the state of maritime trade after 1840 is scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that in addition to the returns from the sale of food-supplies to the whalemen he had collected a kind of Customs dues from visiting ships. Before the British flag was hoisted he and his cousin Titore divided a levy of £5 on each ship entering the Bay. They collected their dues from the ships outside the anchorage, boarding them in their canoes before Tapeka Point was rounded. Many ships sailed up to the anchorages off Wahapu and Otuihu, in the passage to the Kawakawa and Waikare, and here Pomare collected his toll from each ship, for he was the paramount chief of the inner waters. Pomare also was the principal agent in the disreputable but profitable business of supplying girls as temporary wives to the crews of the whaleships during their stay in port. This was a leading line of Maori traffic with the shipping in unscrupulous old Kororareka and Otuihu, which not even the strong mission influence could extirpate.
In 1841, in a Government Ordinance, Customs duties were set forth in a brief schedule. All spirits, British, paid 4s. per
whiri, or twist tobacco, to purchase a new blanket or a musket, or to lay by a store of lead for moulding into bullets, received the clearest proof that the Treaty which he had signed had not improved his condition of life.
To this concrete evidence of trade depression was added a vague but widely diffused belief that the Treaty of Waitangi was merely a ruse of the pakeha, and that it was the secret intention of the whites, so soon as they became strong enough, to seize upon the lands of the Maori. In 1844 the news reached New Zealand that the House of Commons Committee on New Zealand Affairs had resolved that the Treaty of Waitangi was a part of a series of injudicious proceedings, and that “the acknowledgement by the local authorities of a right of property on the part of the natives of New Zealand in all wild land in these islands, after the sovereignty had been assumed by Her Majesty, was not essential to the true construction of the Treaty, and was an error which had been productive of very injurious consequences.” In other words, the Committee thought the Government should seize upon all native land not actually occupied and devote it to the use of white settlers. This report, the news of French aggression in Tahiti and Raiatea, Fitzroy's vacillating land policy, and simmering resentment over the execution of Maketu in 1842 for the murder of the Robertson family on Motu-arohia Island, all went to fan a war feeling among the Ngapuhi.
It was in 1844 that Heke came to the decision to use the setting-up of the flagstaff and the driving-away of the whalers as a take, or pretext. Shortly, he made a raid upon Kororareka with a strong war-party, on a taua muru, or punitive plundering expedition. This excursion seems to have been devised chiefly with a view to testing the temper of the whites and ascertaining what resistance he was likely to meet with in his campaign against the kara, the colours on Maiki Hill. The taua was by way of retaliation for an insult, serious in Maori eyes, offered by a woman in the township. This woman was Kotiro, a native of Taranaki, who had been led away captive by Ngapuhi fifteen years previously. She had been given to Heke as a slave.
“upoko poaka” (“pig's head”). This was a kanga, or curse, in Maori notion; and the women promptly sent word thereof to Heke. The taua muru was the sequel. Heke began to plunder Lord's store; the trader compromised by offering a cask of twist tobacco as compensation for the insult. This offer being accepted, Lord asked for time to procure a cask of tobacco from the rear of the store; but this time he employed in cutting the cask into halves—it was the only one he had in stock. He then endeavoured to pass the half-cask on to the Maoris as a whole one, whereupon there was a furious uproar. Heke and his men partly looted the store; the woman Kotiro they carried off.
This was on Friday, 5th July, 1844. For the next three days the war-party remained in the town, the young bloods swaggering into stores and private houses alike, seizing whatever they fancied. On the 8th July the flagstaff on Maiki Hill was cut down. (Mr.
Governor Fitzroy's troubles were now approaching their climax. The news of Ngapuhi's deed prompted an urgent appeal to headquarters in Sydney for troops; there were only ninety men, a company of the 80th, in Auckland, and none at the Bay of Islands. In the second week of August the barque “Sydney”arrived at the Bay of Islands from New South Wales with 160 officers and men of the 99th Regiment. On the 24th of the month H.M.S. “Hazard” dropped anchor off Kororareka, bringing from Auckland the Governor; the Government brig “Victoria” arrived in company with the frigate, and the vessels landed a detachment of the 96th under Lieut.-Colonel Hulme; two light guns were also brought ashore. Heke had gone inland, to Kaikohe. The Governor and Hulme were for immediate
This promise was carried out, after Ngapuhi had surrendered a few muskets in token of submission and Heke had offered to erect another mast. Customs duties were abolished throughout the colony, and a property-tax substituted.
In October trouble was renewed at the Bay. Depredations on outlying settlers were begun by the restless young men. On the 10th January, 1845, the flagstaff was cut down a second
There is a curious discrepancy between the original despatches from the Bay of Islands regarding this incident and the correspondence printed in the official publications of the day. Governor Fitzroy, or his Colonial Secretary, appears to have considered it undesirable, for reasons of international policy, to make any public reference to the American share in Heke's rebellion, hence all allusions to the United States Consul and his flag at the Bay are omitted, with the result that a hiatus in one of the blue-book despatches makes it unintelligible. In the Grey Collection of documents in the Auckland Municipal Library there are manuscript copies of a number of letters from Mr. “It is with regret I have to inform Your Excellency that John Heke and his tribe cut down the flagstaff soon after daylight this morning, but without doing any violence to the Europeans or even entering the town. The reason for his again offering this insult seems to be a general dislike to the British Government; and it is worthy of remark that Heke was at the American Consul's yesterday, when the merits of the Treaty of Waitangi, and other political subjects connected with this colony, were discussed, after which he obtained an American ensign, which was hoisted on board his canoe immediately after our flagstaff was destroyed. Under what circumstances this flag was given I am now unable to say, but at this present crisis it looks suspicious, and is at the least very ill-judged. It is reported, but with what truth I cannot affirm, that Heke's ultimate intention is to pull down the gaol and public offices. This bad disposition does not appear to be prevalent amongst the natives generally.” In the printed despatches, however, the words between “British Government” and “Under what circumstances” are omitted; and we are left to conclude that the mutilation, or suppression, was prompted by a desire not to implicate or offend the Americans. In a further letter marked “Private,” dated Russell, 16th January, 1845, Mr. Beckham wrote to the Governor:— “Heke still carries the American ensign in his canoe, and I was sorry to observe it hoisted at the Consul's this morning, as also on board the United States ships, which is quite unusual, except on the arrival or departure of American vessels, which was not the case. This circumstance confirms the suspicions mentioned in my letter of the 10th instant, and I am fearful that these disturbances in opposition to the Government have been fostered by the Americans, and I beg to suggest for Your Excellency's consideration the propriety of causing the Consul's flagstaff to be removed (if practicable), as it now stands in a very conspicuous position.” The manuscripts in the Grey Collection show that on the 24th January Mr. Beckham, under instructions from the Governor, visited Henry Green Smith, of Wahapu, “the person at whose residence the American ensign has been so conspicuously exhibited lately,” and informed him that he (the Magistrate) was directed to prohibit the hoisting of any national flag on shore at the Bay of Islands except that of Great Britain. Apparently Mr. Smith made a pertinent inquiry as to Mr. Beckham's authority, for on the 25th January the Magistrate wrote to him as follows:— “In reply to your letter of this date, referring to my communication on the 24th instant relative to the prohibition of any national flag being hoisted on shore except that of Great Britain, I now do myself the honour to inform you that I did so by the directions of His Excellency the Governor, and to state that the United States flag is included in the interdiction, there being no Consul at this port.”kai-hautu, or fugleman, yelling a battle-song, Heke at the steering-paddle, the American flag over his head.
Excitement and apprehension now possessed the Bay settlements. The “Victoria,” the Government brig, sailed into Kororareka Bay on the 17th January, and landed a small detachment of troops—a subaltern and thirty men of the 96th Regiment—who re-erected the flagstaff. The Rev.
Thoroughly alarmed by this determined resistance to the establishment of British rule, Fitzroy wrote to Sir George Gipps, Governor of New South Wales, making urgent application for further military assistance. He declared that he must prepare for operations “in a woody country, at Whangarei, if not at the Bay of Islands” (there had been robberies with violence at the homes of settlers at Matakana by natives from Whangarei), and he must also take precautions for the safety of Auckland.
In compliance with this request (which did not reach Sydney till the 17th February) two companies of the 58th Regiment, the famous “Black Cuffs,” numbering 207 of all ranks, received orders to embark for Auckland, but by the time they reached the Bay of Islands (28th April, 1845) the flagstaff was down again, Kororareka Town was in ashes, and war had begun.
The opening shots were fired on the 3rd March, 1845, eight days before the final disaster. Heke had given assurances to the friendly chiefs that he would not molest the white settlers, except in retaliation for hostile measures by the Government; but the old warrior Kawiti did not exercise similar forbearance. His Ngati-Hine and allied hapus from the Kawakawa and Waiomio carried out a series of raids on isolated settlers in some of the small bays a few miles from Kororareka. On the 28th February four large war-canoes crowded with armed natives from the Kawakawa swept down the Bay and landed in front of the house occupied by Captain Wright. The marauders plundered and burned the place. Several other houses in the vicinity of the town were similarly looted and destroyed. On the 3rd March a message reached the Police Magistrate that a party of Kawiti's men, who had come down in two canoes, were plundering the house of Benjamin Turner, an old resident; his home was at the Uruti, a deep, narrow bay about two miles in rear of Kororareka. Beckham sent off to H.M.S. “Hazard” (which had arrived from Wellington on the 15th February) for assistance, and the Acting-Commander, Lieutenant Robertson, went ashore with a party of sailors armed with muskets and cutlasses. The force marched overland to Uruti, while the frigate's pinnace, carrying light guns, was sent round the coast for the purpose of cutting off the retreat of Kawiti's canoes. Both arrived too late; Turner's house and wheat-stacks were in ashes. Two horses had been taken away by a native track over the hills to Otuihu, and, with the object of recapturing these as they were being swum across the sea-arm leading to the Kawakawa River and Waikare Inlet, the pinnace, under Lieutenant Morgan, was sent in chase. Pomare's pa at Otuihu was passed, but off Opua it was seen that further pursuit was useless, and the boat put about to return to the ship. A fire was opened on the pinnace from both sides of the channel. The naval lieutenant returned the fire with grape-shot from his boat-guns and musketry. Two slight skirmishes in rear of the town followed during March.
By this time Kororareka had been placed in a condition of defence, though by no means an efficient condition; the chief thing lacking was a competent leader of the military and the white inhabitants. A timber stockade was built around Mr. Polack's house near the northern end of the beach; this was to be the refuge-place for white women and children. A blockhouse was erected on a small hill in the rear of the stockade and the town, close to the track leading to the Maiki flagstaff. Here were mounted three ship's guns. A gun was taken up to the other end of the town, at the entrance to the valley leading through to Mata-uhi Bay, in rear of Kororareka, the most likely avenue of
MIDNIGHT ON MAIKI HILL. A rattle of arms at the blockhouse gateway came sharply through the tenebrous stillness; the guard was relieved—the soldier whose tedious duty was ended retired to his blankets, and the only half-awake relief, with musket and fixed bayonet, began his watch. Here, 300 feet above the sleeping town, the silence was intense; it was a windless night, with raw fog obscuring the gullies and floating upwards in thin wafts. Not a sound but the footfall of the sentry and the “Kou-kou” of the ruru, or night-owl. Those owl-calls were unusually frequent was the thought, perhaps, that crossed the mind of the solitary soldier. Had he possessed the scout instinct he might have noticed that the bird-calls all came from the brushwood on the east and south-east slopes of the range, the aspect towards Oneroa Bay and the lower blockhouse. Owl called to owl, and the regularly repeated cries grew nearer until they formed a semi-cordon of melancholy notes about the flagstaff hill. Then, too, was heard the screech call, plain as spoken words to the Maori; it sounded to him like “Kia toa!” (“Be brave!”)
It was a fatal cordon, for the rurus were the pickets of Heke's war-party announcing their positions to each other and keeping in touch as they crept towards the little fort that guarded their objective, the flagstaff. Two hundred Ngapuhi warriors, under Heke and Pokai, had landed in their canoes at Oneroa, in rear of Kororareka, late at night, and were now working their way up to surprise the hill post at the first streak of dawn. Some of them crept up until they crouched in the scrub a few yards from where the sentry stood. Most of them lay in a wooded gully close to the hilltop. They carried gun and tomahawk, and belts with heavy leather or wooden cartouche-boxes were strapped about them. The tomahawk was the weapon most favoured for such tasks as this: short-handled with wood or whalebone, thrust through the girdle at the hip or at the small of the back, as the olden Scots and the Borderers carried the “lyttel batayle axe” mentioned in Froissart's story of the Battle of Otterburne.
Grey dawn; a damp fog-laden break of day. The ruru calls have ceased; the dark hills are steeped in utter silence. The hidden warriors, gripping their loaded flint-lock and percussion-cap guns, are ready to spring from their cramped couches in the brushwood at the chief's first call. Some of them have cut manuka bushes with their tomahawks; these are to provide a moving cover for themselves as they creep up on the pakehas.
Now the door of the little blockhouse on Maiki hilltop opens; the plank bridge is thrown across the trench, and half a dozen men, all armed, and five of them carrying spades, come out into the misty morning. The youthful officer in charge of the post, Ensign Campbell, takes his men along the hill-slopes to the edge of the range overlooking Oneroa Bay; here they set to work to dig a trench, intended as a protection against any attack from that direction.
Scarcely have the soldiers commenced their spade-work in the dim light than the morning silence is shattered by sudden shots, then rolling volleys. The firing comes from the south end of the town below, apparently from the direction of Mata-uhi Bay. Campbell orders his men back to the blockhouse; and the issue of the morning's work might be very different had he the prudence to remain there with them and make secure his post. But in his curiosity to learn what is going on below he leads eight or nine men out to the brow of the hill overlooking Kororareka, nearly 200 yards from the blockhouse. The rest of the garrison, twenty men, are aroused, and, taking their arms, are putting on their belts outside the ditch facing the town.
Now is Heke's and Pokai's opportunity. Little by little the war-party creeps up, some daring fellows crawling across the open with manuka bushes and branches held in front of them. With a yell from their leaders, they are up and charging into the blockhouse; it is nearly empty of its garrison.
Ensign Campbell is for charging back to the stockade, but the Ngapuhi are too quick for him. They are already in the stockaded enclosure and its trench, and, while some open fire on the soldiers outside, others dash into the blockhouse, killing the four soldiers who remain to defend it. They shoot, too, but unintentionally, a little half-caste girl, the daughter of Tapper the signalman.
The surviving soldiers, confused by the surprise attack, contrive to give the Maoris a volley, but before another round can be fired it is seen that a second party of warriors is doubling up from a gully to cut off the soldiers from the lower blockhouse. Campbell, therefore, in order to escape being nipped between the two bodies, must fall back on the lower blockhouse, having lost his own. This he and his men do, and at their utmost speed;
A story of the fourth flagstaff imparts an element of comedy to the history of blunders and tragedy associated with the Maiki signal-hill. It is said that after the mast had been cut down for the third time and another pole had been procured from the forest the new stick vanished mysteriously one night, to the consternation of the military detachment sent to set it in position. It was discovered that it had been hauled away by an old chief of a neighbouring village, who declared that he had been born underneath it when it was a living tree; he was afraid that trouble or death would befall him if Heke carried out his customary threat and felled the mast. It would be an aitua, or forerunner of disaster, in Maori eyes. The staff having disappeared there was nothing for it but to obtain one to which the exasperating Maori was not likely to lay claim. The Government went to the shipping for its next spar; the officials bought the mizzenmast of a foreign vessel in the harbour, “being morally certain,” says the New Zealand Spectator's narrative (22nd March, 1845), “that no Maori could have been born under it.” This mast, the fifth, stood for nearly two months before Heke's axe laid it low and bereaved Kororareka of a signal-station for eight years.
Meanwhile a battle, attended with more credit for the whites than the inglorious affair on the flagstaff hill, was waged in the town below.
At 4 o'clock that morning (11th March, 1845) a force of forty-five small-arms men, composed of bluejackets and marines from H.M.S. “Hazard,” under the Acting-Commander, David Robertson (who had succeeded Commander Bell, recently drowned), marched from the beach to the heights overlooking Mata-uhi Bay for the purpose of throwing up a breastwork on the face of the hill. They had just reached the spot when the sentry at the one-gun battery on the hill on the opposite or southern side of the little valley which led to Mata-uhi Bay challenged and fired; he had spied a party of Maoris creeping up on his position. This was old Kawiti's division, comprising Ngati-Hine and Roroa men; a leading brave was Pumuka. Kawiti's share of the day's work was to make an attack on the town in order to divert attention from the main task, Heke's assault on the flagstaff.
In the half-light of that hazy morning a hand-to-hand combat was fought around the enclosure of the English church as Robertson and his men fell back towards the town. The Maoris numbered about two hundred. These the forty-five “Hazards” charged. Musket and tupara blazed; British cutlass clashed on Maori long-handled tomahawk. The frigate's men cut their way into Kawiti's party, and steadily forced them back towards Mata-uhi. The gun, served by the sailors, was used at point-blank range against the dark warriors. Captain Robertson, wielding his sword like some hero of old romance, killed Pumuka with
Now the detachment of the 96th Regiment, under Lieutenant E. Barclay, whose quarters were in the barracks between the beach and the lower blockhouse, entered the battle. Barclay had seen the naval force march out towards Mata-uhi, and turned out his men. Their first shots were directed on parties of Maoris who appeared on the hills to the left of the barracks, towards Oneroa Bay. They checked the advance of these musketeers. Then enemy bullets began to drop around the soldiers from the steep hills behind; and, on facing about, it was for the first time seen that the Maoris had captured the flagstaff hill.
A message now arrived from Acting-Lieutenant Morgan informing the 96th officer that a party of the enemy held the ground at the back of the English church, nearly half a mile from the barracks. The military detachment, numbering about thirty, thereupon quickly advanced in skirmishing order, firing as they advanced. Another messenger came from Morgan; the “Hazard's” little force had nearly expended its ammunition, and Lieutenant Barclay turned back towards the beach to join the sailors. The one-gun battery had been abandoned, but not before the gun had been spiked by a gallant seaman, William Lovell, who next moment was shot dead. The sailors retired along the waterfront to Polack's stockade. After engaging scattered parties of natives from the flat, who drew off in the direction of Mata-uhi, the Maoris carrying away their dead and wounded as they retired, the soldiers turned about and marched to the lower blockhouse in rear of the stockade. Ensign Campbell and his dispossessed flagstaff-party were already there checking the advance of the enemy who swarmed along the heights and in the gullies in rear of the town.
The Kapotai Tribe, from the Waikare, the third division of the assailants, were now into the fray, firing at the blockhouse, the barracks, and the stockade from the half-circle of hills that rimmed the town. The troops replied from the blockhouse windows and loopholes and the sloping ground on each side. The ship's guns, on a platform outside, were worked by the volunteer artillerymen—civilians and one or two old soldiers, under Mr. Hector.
Heke on his hilltop station stood fast, watching the combat below; he had taken the key of Kororareka, which was all, indeed, that he had intended or expected.
There was no proper co-ordination of operations in the defence; the naval authority, the military, and the Police Magistrate each gave orders and acted as they thought fit, independently of the others. The “Hazard's” captain being out of action, Lieutenant Phillpotts took command of the ship. He directed the abandoned barracks (behind which some of the enemy were in cover) and the captured signal-station to be shelled. Round shot and grape-shot were thrown at the natives on the hills, and for several hours the hills of the Bay echoed and re-echoed the roar of the frigate's artillery.
It was now between 10 and 11 o'clock in the forenoon. There was a brief lull in the fighting; then, about 11 o'clock, skirmishing again commenced. There were a hundred armed civilians in Polack's stockade—a hastily drilled militia; a party of these men was sent to drive off some Maoris who were firing at the defenders of the lower blockhouse from the hill above the barracks. This was done, and the Maoris contented themselves with sniping from their manuka cover on the heights.
All that Heke wished for had been accomplished; but now a kind of panic seemed to have overtaken some of those in authority. Heke had no intention of attacking the civilian population; he had hoisted a white flag, and sent down under its protection the wife and daughter of the signalman Tapper, who was now employed at the guns of the lower blockhouse. About noon the white women and children, who had all been gathered with their menfolk in Polack's stockade, were sent aboard the ships in harbour—the “Hazard,” the United States warship “St. Louis,” the “Matilda” (English whaleship), the Government brig, and
Lieutenant Phillpotts, the senior combatant officer, after consultation with Mr Beckham, the Magistrate, now determined upon the complete evacuation of the place. He gave orders that the troops and the civilian population should go aboard the ships. All this time the battery on the mound in the rear of the stockade had been steadily held by Hector's civilian gunners and Barclay's redcoats. The round shot probably inflicted little harm upon the Maoris, who swarmed on the scrub-matted slopes of Titore's Mount and the minor hills around, but the gunnery and the small-arms fire at least prevented the Kapotai and their allies from descending into the town. With Mr. Hector were his two plucky sons, young boys, who gallantly carried up ammunition from the stockade under heavy fire. Tapper, the signalman, was wounded while serving one of the guns.
Hector's disgust was extreme when he was informed of the decision arrived at by the senior naval officer and the Magistrate. He went down to the beach and offered to retake the flagstaff hill if he were given fifty volunteers. The request was refused. Lieutenant Barclay also went down for ammunition; when he returned he found that the guns had been spiked—by whose orders was not clear. Nothing could have been finer than Mr. Hector's work as battery commander, and it certainly was not his fault that the post had to be abandoned. A review of the day's fighting and the day's blunders after the brave Robertson's fall at the head of his men prompts the conclusion that had the
pakehas we could find.” Such was the Maori viewpoint.
The heavy day closed with occasional shots from the frigate, little regarded by the Maoris, who were now absorbed in the joy of looting, drinking the grog in the publichouses, seizing blankets, clothes, tobacco, preserved foods, and all the varied stock of the stores. Some employed themselves loading their canoes that had been hastily paddled round from the bay in the rear of the town. The Hectors and a number of other families were in
The Maori casualties of the day were heavier than those of the British, but they weighed lightly against the completeness of the victory. The British lost ten seamen and marines and privates of the 96th killed; in addition two people died from injuries received in the explosion of the magazine. The wounded numbered twenty-three. The Maori division which suffered most was Kawiti's, which in the fight near the church and on the Mata-uhi track lost at least twenty killed, and more than twice as many wounded. The total native losses in the day were reported to Governor Fitzroy as thirty-four killed and sixty-eight wounded. The united forces of the attackers numbered about six hundred. Lieutenant Phillpotts reported them at double that figure.
Some of the more determined spirits went ashore next morning intent on salvage, but the “Hazard” again opened fire on the town. The Maoris continued the work of looting, filling their canoes with goods from the stores; then they set fire to one after another of the buildings. The English and Roman Catholic churches and mission-houses, including Bishop Pompallier's home, were scrupulously protected from harm. By the afternoon all the rest of the town was burning. Fifty thousand pounds' worth of property went up in flames and smoke. Early on the following day (13th March) the fleet of five sailed for Auckland, and as the sorrowful refugees looked back they saw, long after they had rounded Tapeka Point, the black mass of smoke that lay high and unmoving above the bay, the funeral cloud of Kororareka.
FEARS OF INVASION by Ngapuhi seized many of the inhabitants of the young capital when, two days after the sailing of the fleet from the Bay, the five shiploads of refugees landed at Auckland and the distressed people of Kororareka spread their story. A Militia was enrolled, and the Auckland citizen soldiery were drilled daily by instructors from the Regulars. The defences of the town were hastily set in order. Major Bunbury and his company of the 80th had already (1840–41) partly fortified Britomart Point by constructing stone barracks. These barracks formed two sides of a square; one side was loopholed; the buildings were capable of accommodating two hundred men, besides stores. Fort Britomart, as it was now called, had been an ancient pa of the Maoris, a tonguelike promontory, protected on the land side by a broad, deep ditch and parapet. The military utilized part of these defences; a portion of the parapet was thrown down to fill up the ditch at the entrance. On one side of the interior, where of old the warriors had built their low-eaved whares and kept lookout for enemy canoe flotillas, an octagonal loopholed guard-room was erected. A hospital was also built. The 96th and, later, the 58th completed the fortification, and several guns were mounted. The windows of St. Paul's Church, a brick building near by, were planked and loopholed for musketry.
H.M.S. “North Star” (Captain Sir Everard Home), a twenty-six-gun frigate, arrived at Auckland on the 22nd March. She brought from Sydney 162 officers and men of the 58th Regiment. Two days afterwards the schooner “Velocity” arrived from Sydney with fifty-five officers and men of the same regiment, and ordnance stores. In April the barque “Slains Castle” sailed in from Sydney, bringing the remainder of the 58th—more than two hundred rank and file—under Major
After hoisting the British flag on Kororareka Beach, Hulme's force destroyed Pomare's pa at Otuihu, overlooking the channel to Opua and the Waikare. The “North Star” was anchored off Otuihu, and Pomare himself was secured as a prisoner by stratagem. It was then arranged that an expedition should be directed against Heke's stronghold lately built near the shore of Lake Omapere.
The chiefs who with their tribes and hapus definitely ranged themselves upon the side of the Government were pa was destroyed and he himself taken prisoner by Lieut.-Colonel Hulme, did not take any active share in Heke's work. Several chiefs of the Kapotai, Ngati-Wai, Ngati-Hau, Uri-Kapana, and Uri-o-Hau brought their hapus to Heke's assistance.
One of the chiefs at first friendly to the British Government but ultimately found fighting in the cause of Maori independence was Pene Taui, of Waimate and Ohaeawai. A curious story is told of Pene's defection, illustrative of the serious consequences often entailed by trivial incidents among the Maoris. In 1844, when the war feeling was developing throughout the north, Pene Taui was authorized to convene a meeting of Ngapuhi to consider the political situation. The assembled chiefs resolved to plant large quantities of food (potatoes, This incident is narrated in a note sent to me by Captain kumara, taro, and maize) in order to provide for a general gathering of the northern tribes in the Taiamai district, the heart of the Ngapuhi country, embracing the beautiful lands from Waimate to Ohaeawai. The meeting having concluded, Pene Taui sent a messenger to “Koia he kai” (“Plant food”). When the herald delivered this message in public, as was the Maori way, Tamati Waka, resentful of its wording, immediately said, sotto voce but not so low that the messenger could not hear, “Ko ia he kai.” It was a quick play upon Pene's message; the point lay in the accenting of “ia” (“him”) instead of “ko” (“plant”). Waka's utterance meant “Let him
kanga, or curse, likening a high chief to food—cannibal fashion—that he at once made common cause with
H.M.S. “Hazard” having arrived from Auckland, the fleet hove up and sailed across the Bay to Kent's Passage, where the ships anchored under shelter of the island of Moturoa. On the following morning a force of four hundred men, including about a hundred seamen and marines from the frigates, was disembarked on the beach of Onewhero. On that day (3rd May, 1845) was begun the first march inland of British troops in New Zealand.
Imperfectly informed as to the route of march, without transport arrangements, without artillery, inefficiently rationed, and without tents or camp equipage, Hulme set out into an unknown country against an enemy of unknown strength, sustained apparently by the hope of somehow worrying through, or fortified by the popular belief that one British soldier was equal to any half-dozen savages. Neither Hulme nor his officers knew anything of the real strength of Maori fortifications skilfully defended. The report on native strongholds prepared by Lieutenant Bennett of the Royal Engineers in 1843, after a visit to Tauranga, was unknown to them. Fortunate it was for them and their men that the chivalrous enemy laid no ambuscades on the track; the Maori was not so considerate in the wars twenty years later. Doubly fortunate for them was the fact that
The opening blunder was the awkward route taken. Instead of transporting the force by boat up a good tidal river, the Kerikeri, to the mission station at the landing, only fifteen miles from Kororareka, whence a cart-road led to the Waimate, fourteen miles, the commander marched his force along a rough native track south of the river for nine miles, bivouacked in the fern, and broke off to the right next morning, marching through torrents of rain to the Kerikeri mission station. The result was that the five days' biscuit ration and two-thirds of the reserve ammunition were spoiled by the rain.
From Kerikeri the combined naval and military column moved out on the inland trail on the morning of the 6th May. The clay
tapu from armed men and to preserve an attitude of strict neutrality. After passing the Waimate at a distance, the force entered a tract of forest, chiefly puriri; now the troops had their first taste of New Zealand bush work. A detachment of Pioneers of the 50th had been thrown ahead with Waka's natives. With their axes they improved the difficult Maori pad-track, only a few inches wide, for the passage of the main body. Unbridged creeks in flood were waded, small swamps were crossed, hills were breasted, and at last, at sundown, the bugles called a halt, and the weary soldiers and sailors loosened their packs under the stockade of Tamati Waka's fortified camp, a mile from the Omapere Lake.
Heke's pa, named Puketutu, was two miles from Nene's fort, and quite close to Lake Omapere. The fort is usually but erroneously referred to as “Okaihau” by writers on the northern war. Okaihau is about three miles to the west. Half-way between the two pas was the small hill Taumata-Karamu, the scene of many skirmishes between Heke and Nene in April. Now and again a man was killed. By mutual arrangement no ambuscades were laid, and the fighting was only in daylight.
“WE EXPECTED TO make short work of Johnny Heke,” said an old soldier of the 58th describing to me his march to Lake Omapere. But the difficulties of the undertaking so confidently essayed increased as the objective was approached and the military character of the Maori loomed formidably in the British warrior's vision. The unpropitious season heightened the troubles of the commander, whose deficiencies in artillery and commissariat were fatal to any chances of success. The greatest blunder of all, the failure to bring even the lightest of ship's guns, although there was a cart-road for the greater part of the way from Kerikeri to the lake, condemned the expedition to failure. This became fully apparent to the sanguine Hulme on the second day after his arrival on the terrain which Heke had selected as the battle-ground.
The country in which the rival armed bands of Heke and Waka Nene had pitched their fortified camps was an ideal region for military operations. Towards Lake Omapere the land was a gently undulating plain covered with manuka shrubbery, fern, flax, and tutu bushes, and adorned with numerous groves of the hardwood puriri, oak-like in the spread of its branches. To the east lay the plains and hills of Taiamai, the delectable land of the central Ngapuhi tribes. What swamps there existed were not large and could readily be avoided; streams were numerous but small. Many of these little rivers issued from fissures in the volcanic hillside, welling down cold and crystal-clear through the Maori cultivations that alternated with the wilderness of fern and tutu. The landscape was diversified with many a bold volcanic cone. Most conspicuous of these was puriri; to the south-west the Utakura Stream, issuing from the lake, coursed swiftly down to the harbour of Hokianga. Tamati Waka's first palisaded pa, before he shifted to the Ahuahu Hill, was built near Okaihau Forest, in order to check Heke's progress westward to the Hokianga headwaters.
There had been considerable fighting in the month of April between Heke's warriors and the hapus friendly to the whites, extending over this open country between Okaihau and hapu from Waima. All these three forts were close together for mutual support. Two or three white men joined Waka Nene in the field as volunteers. One of these was the afterwards celebrated Judge pakeha in the “thirties” and early “forties.” In his war-paint of red ochre, with bare chest and arms tattooed, his shaggy head decked out with feathers, musket slung across his back, cartouche-box belts buckled around him, a long-handled tomahawk in his hand, he looked the perfect picture of a savage warrior.
The intertribal skirmishing went on until the arrival of the troops on the evening of the 6th May. Heke's pa, Puketutu (sometimes spoken of as “Te Mawhe,” although the hill of that name is some distance to the north-east), was now the immediate objective of attack; hitherto the fighting had been in open country between the opposing camps.
Very little remains to-day to mark Puketutu pa, the scene of the first British attack upon an inland Maori fort; the scene, too, of the first regular British charge with the bayonet against a Maori foe. The main road from the Bay of Islands, via Ohaeawai, to Te Horeke, Hokianga, cuts through the site of the northern part of Heke's pa, about three miles before Okaihau Township is reached. The fortification measured about 120 yards each way; it was a rectangle, with several salients or flanking bastions, of varied outline; from these each side of the pa could be completely enfiladed. There appear to have been three lines of palisading along part of the defences. The stockades were constructed of stout puriri trunks and saplings; the outer posts were from 5 inches to 10 inches in diameter, and carefully loopholed. A high breastwork was thrown up inside the inner fence; the trench from which the earth was dug was about 5 feet in depth; it separated the inner and middle lines of palisade. The foot of the pekerangi, about 15 feet high, was strengthened with a facing of rocks and
pekerangi open for the garrison's fire. Another innovation—used at Ohaeawai also—was the coating of the outer wall with green flax. A large portion of the face of the palisade was reinforced in this way: large quantities of the native harakeke, or flax, were cut and tied in bundles; these bundles were closely and tightly lashed along the face of the timbers just above the roughly piled stone buttress. Thus fastened, the flax formed a padding or fender more than man-high along the stockade, and the smooth, thick leaves so tightly packed prevented any bullets from entering through crevices in the war-fence. The pa, however, was not quite finished when it was attacked, and had it been reconnoitred carefully it would probably have been found comparatively vulnerable in the rear and on the eastern flank.
On the morning of the 8th May Lieut.-Colonel Hulme advanced his force. By 9 a.m. he had placed his redcoat reserve behind a low ridge within 300 yards of Heke's pa, and ordered three parties of assault to take up their positions. The first of these parties consisted of the seamen of the frigates “Hazard” and “North Star,” under the command of Acting-Commander George Johnson, formerly of the “North Star” and at this time in temporary command of the “Hazard” (in place of Captain Robertson, disabled at Kororareka). The second party was the Light Company of the 58th Regiment, under Captain Denny; the third was composed of a detachment of Royal Marines and some men of the 96th Regiment, under Lieutenant and Adjutant McLerie (58th Regiment).
As the troops moved forward with fixed bayonets fire was opened upon them from two faces of the pa. One party, taking the pa in rear, marched between it and the lake, and reached a gentle rise within 200 yards of the fort and just above the lake. The rocket-tube from which so much was expected was now placed in position on the north-west side of the pa, at a distance of about 150 yards. Twelve rockets were fired by Lieutenant Egerton (“North Star”) and his bluejackets without any effect.
Kawiti, who had hastened to Heke's aid with a body of about three hundred men, had halted less than a quarter of a mile from the eastern side of the pa, where he lay in ambush under the brow of a low undulation. An advanced party of his men held a small breastwork. The troops on the hill advanced their right flank and drove the Maoris from the shelter, which was then manned by a detachment of soldiers. About noon Hone Ropiha (pa to the small hill overlooking Omapere, detected Kawiti's war-party lying in ambush within 50 yards of the troops. The soldiers turned and fired a volley, and then charged with the bayonet, inflicting severe loss on Ngati-Hine.
A British ensign was hoisted on a tall flagstaff in the stockade, then up went Heke's red fighting-flag. This colour was hoisted and hauled down several times, evidently as a signal to Kawiti outside the pa.
The meaning was soon made clear. The chorus of a war-song came across the battlefield, accompanied by the clash of firearms and the thud of hundreds of feet. Heke's warriors were stimulating themselves for the charge by a preliminary tutu-ngarahu. Forming up within the walls, unseen by their foes, they leaped into the action of the dance, led by Heke himself, and this was the chant they yelled (as given by the old man Ka eke i te wiwi;Ka eke i te wawa;Ka eke i te papara hu-ai;Rangi-tumu huia.A ha—ha!
This song was used in ancient days before charging up to the assault of an enemy's fortification. Its meaning was: “We'll reach the outer palisade; we'll storm the inner defence; then we'll storm the citadel; ah! then the chiefs will fall before us!”
The war-song was repeated with enormous vigour: “E—e! Ka eke i te wiwi!” Then the warriors chanted all together as they leaped this way and that, with upthrust guns, this centuries-old battle-song:—
U-uhi mai te waero,Ko roto ki taku puta.He puta nui te puta,He puta roa te puta,U—u! Weku, weku!Weku mai te hiore!
And out through an opening in the rear of the stockade charged a hundred and fifty Ngapuhi with double-barrel guns and long-handled tomahawks. Their leader was Haratua, of Pakaraka. Kawiti was ready, and with his whole body, numbering probably three hundred, he joined Heke in an assault upon the British.
Captain Denny, commanding the Light Company of the 58th, who were in skirmishing order on the south-east of the pa and were now cut off from the main body by Heke's kokiri, gave the order to his men to close on the centre; then, “Fix bayonets—Charge!” The British dash was irresistible; the Maoris were
The “Retire” was sounded. Kawiti once more came to the
pa. It could end only in one way when the British got to work with the bayonet in the open field. But even now, though repeatedly driven back, the warriors outside the pa did not entirely relinquish the battle. They skirmished from cover until the soldiers were at last withdrawn by sound of bugle.
It was now 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The skirmishing, alternating with heavy bayonet fighting, had lasted for more than four hours. Firing was maintained from the pa, and replied to by the troops on the western and north-west sides, till about sunset.
In the British retirement to the camp at Tamati Waka's pa the killed were left behind. Heavy rain came on; it was nearly dark by the time the fight ended. The bodies of thirteen soldiers and sailors strewed the ferny levels about the pa and the slopes above the lake; another man, a seaman of the “Hazard,” died later from his wounds. The wounded numbered forty-four; they were carried off by their comrades along the edge of the lake through heavy fire.
Night was now approaching, and when the fatigued, wet, and famishing troops left the field their foes were already at their evening prayers; and the last sound the soldiers and sailors heard as they marched off was a hymn chanted by hundreds of voices rising through the air still pungent with gunpowder smoke. So ended the Battle of Puketutu—a virtual victory for the Maoris, for they retained possession of their pa.
The Maori loss was severe. The exact casualties were not ascertained, but at least thirty must have been killed and many wounded. For weeks after that day's fighting the Ngapuhi women and bush-doctors were busy tending men suffering from severe bayonet and gunshot wounds. A favourite method of treating such injuries was to bathe the wound with the boiled juice of flax-root and then plug it up with a dressing of clay. Such rough-and-ready surgical treatment would probably have killed the average white man, but the Maori usually made a quick recovery. Many of the best warriors of the north fell that day. One who received two bayonet-thrusts but survived to fight again was
Hulme found it impossible to resume hostilities on the following day. His commissariat was exhausted; there were no accommodation and comforts for the wounded; men were falling sick from wet, cold, and want of food; heavy rain soaked the ground, made travelling difficult, and depressed the spirits of all. The
On the day following the fight the Rev. R. Burrows rode in to Puketutu from Waimate—he had viewed the operations the previous day from the mountain Pukenui—and in the drenching rain, at Heke's request, he carried out the duty of collecting and burying the dead soldiers. Heke's men assisted him. Eleven bodies were brought from the spots where they fell, and were buried in the trench which Kawiti's warriors had dug on the eastern slope of the battlefield. The other two soldiers were buried about a third of a mile away, near the shore of the lake and not far from the pa. Hulme returned to Kerikeri and the Bay, and landed his wounded at Auckland on the 14th May.
Major pa of the Kapotai Tribe on one of the head creeks of the Waikare Inlet. He burned the pa while the friendly Maoris, under Tamati Waka, fought the Kapotai in the bush. Hauraki, a young Hokianga chief on Waka's side, brother-in-law to
The site of Puketutu pa is perfectly level land, and is intersected by the main road at three miles from Ohaeawai, where the highway closely approaches the rushy margin of Omapere Lake, here not more than 150 yards distant. When I visited the place (1919) the historic spot might have been passed unnoticed had it not been for the guidance of the old man pa stood.” On the right-hand side of the road we saw the ruined rifle-pits and earth parapets that formed part of the defences of the northern bastion, with scattered stones that once were heaped against the pekerangi to strengthen its face. The large trenches are still 4 to 5 feet deep. The main portion of the trench still traceable is fourteen paces in length, extending at right angles to the road in a northerly direction, and is 5 feet wide; a mound or parapet separates it from two inner pits of lesser size; from the bottom of these trenches to the top of the parapet the height is 6 feet. The stones of the outer work are scattered about in the bottom of the ditches and among the stunted furze. In the fern and grass on the left-hand side of the road, too, we find some of these ancient stones that helped to stop the big-bore round balls of the Tower musket era. In the paddock that gently slopes from the road down to the lake cattle are grazing over the old battle-ground, where there are faint indications of trenches the field, though ploughed over many times, retains the slight undulation that marks the war-ditches dug by Heke's warriors. The hill of Puketutu, from which the pa takes its name, is a gentle rise about half a mile distant, in the direction of Ohaeawai. A little farther to the north-east is Mawhe, a rounded hill, still in part covered with puriri groves; this, too, was a fighting-ground contested by Tamati Waka and Heke.
LIEUT.-COLONEL HULME'S expedition to Omapere was criticized in severe terms by professional men and lay observers alike. These criticisms were directed not so much against the officer commanding or the troops, whose courage and discipline could not have been higher, but against the ill-considered policy which had hurried an imperfectly equipped force into the wilds against an enemy of unknown strength.
It was now approaching midwinter, and the rains which make camp life in the north uncomfortable and reduce the tracks to bogs had set in heavily. The weather would not be favourable for campaigning for several months. Nevertheless, Governor Fitzroy and the military authorities resolved to recommence operations against Heke, fearing that the longer he was left unmolested the stronger would grow his forces.
Heke employed his respite in recruiting his war-parties and gathering in supplies of ammunition and food. He was not, however, left in peace, for the ever-active Waka Nene, with three or four hundred men at his command, was encamped between Okaihau and Ohaeawai, and intermittent fighting occurred early in June. In the heaviest engagement Heke received a severe gunshot wound in the thigh, and was rescued by a party led by the tohunga Te Atua Wera (whose atua, or familiar spirit, was the Nakahi, according to Ngapuhi stories). Each side lost five or six killed in this fight (12th June).
Early in June Fitzroy received reinforcements; the barque “British Sovereign” arrived at Auckland from Sydney with the headquarters of the 99th Regiment, numbering 209 officers and men, under Colonel Despard, who had seen some service in the East Indies. Colonel Despard took charge of all the troops in the colony and organized a new expedition. In the middle of June the transport fleet sailed from the Waitemata for the Bay of Islands. Disembarking at Onewhero Beach, Despard marched his force to Kerikeri mission station; the guns and stores were boated up the Kerikeri River by the “Hazard's” bluejackets. Thence
On the morning of the 23rd June the force marched from Waimate for Ohaeawai, seven miles away. This stage of the march was much impeded by the bad roads (or, rather, bullock-tracks), the unbridged creeks, and a deep swamp.
Waka's advance guard of Hokianga Maoris was the first to come under fire. The Ohaeawai garrison had sent out parties of skirmishers, and firing began when the forces had passed the tino of Taiamai (the remarkable rock from which the district takes its name) about a mile, and were ascending a gentle rise in the direction of Ohaeawai. Despard heard the sound of musketry on his right front, and moved rapidly forward with his advance guard (No. 9 Company of the 58th Regiment, under Lieutenant Balneavis). Some of the friendly natives accompanied the white skirmishers; with them marched manuka, with here and there a native cultivation. A tall stockade came in sight. At about 500 yards from the north face of the Maori fort the bugles sounded the halt. Here, on gently rising ground, within musket-range of the pa, Despard encamped.
Next morning (24th June), after reconnoitring his enemy's position, Despard prepared for a regular siege, and opened fire from his field-pieces. In the meantime we may leave him anxiously scanning the stockade with his spy-glass after each shot, and see for ourselves what manner of fortress this was that the followers of Kawiti and Heke now held in defiance of British musket, bayonet, and artillery.
Ohaeawai pa in its original form was the headquarters of the chief Pene Taui. He strengthened it after the fighting at Kororareka, realizing that his own district might before long become a theatre of war. After the Battle of Puketutu, Kawiti and Heke united with Pene Taui in converting Ohaeawai into a
puriri palisade timbers from the forest and setting them in position. The pa stood on elevated ground, a terrain well adapted for defence, except in one important detail: it was commanded by a conical hill about a third of a mile away on the north-west, a knoll about 300 feet higher than the site of the stockade. This hill, Puketapu, on the northern flank of a wooded range which rose immediately west of Ohaeawai, was partly covered with puriri groves. The ground fell quickly away from the pa on all flanks but the north; the track from Waimate to Kaikohe passed under its eastern front, where the main road runs to-day. The ground sloped very gradually on the north, and it was that side, facing the quarter from which attack was expected, that the garrison made particularly strong. Eastward was the forest. Through the valley which half-encircled the pa hill on the west and north-west sides flowed a small stream, intersecting the Kaikohe track. Beyond this stream on the west swelled the ranges in a cloud of forest. On the partly cleared land to the north, where the British camp was pitched, stood many a large puriri. One of those puriri, still standing, could tell us, had it a tongue like Jason's talking-oak, of Despard's council of war held beneath its boughts, and of the shells and round shot which the guns of 1845 sent over its head. One of those shots fell short—there was many a defective charge—and smashed off the old tree's top branch.
The fort was oblong in form, with salients on each face and at two of the angles (south-east and south-west, giving the garrison an enfilading fire in every direction. The greatest axis was east and west; the distance from the eastern to the western-most palisade was a little over 100 yards. The shortest flank, the western, measured 40 yards; the eastern 43 yards. The original and the newer sections of the pa did not run on a continuous alignment; Kawiti's portion was constructed slightly en echelon, projecting a few yards on the south beyond the eastern division of the pa. The palisades and trench, however, made an uninterrupted defence, and the numerous projections gave an admirably complete flanking fire; therein shone the innate military engineering genius of the Maori. Part of the lines was defended by three lines of stockade timbers; on two faces the palisade was double. The outer wall, the pekerangi, or curtain, was formed of stout timbers, most of them whole trees, sunk deeply in the ground at short intervals, with saplings and split timbers closely set between the larger posts, all bound firmly
torotoro, or bush-vines. The smaller timbers did not quite reach the ground; it was through the spaces left that the defenders fired from their shelter in the trench behind the second palisade. The outer defence was completed by the masking of the timber wall with green flax, as at Puketutu. The stockading was 10 to 15 feet in height; it was covered from a foot above the ground to the height of 8 or 10 feet with a thick mantlet of green flax-leaves tightly bound to the palisades. This padding of harakeke not only afforded considerable protection by deadening the impact of bullets, but masked the real strength of the stockade.
The second line of stockade, the kiri-tangata (“the warrior's skin”), was stronger than even the well-constructed pekerangi; every timber was set in the ground to a depth of about 5 feet, and rose above ground to a height corresponding with that of the outer line. Many of the palisades so planted, set close together, were whole puriri trees a foot or 15 inches in diameter—some were even larger—and some when cut and hauled from the forest must have been quite 20 feet in length. This line of stockade was loopholed; the apertures for the Maori musketry fire were formed by taking a V scarf with the axe out of the two contiguous timbers. These loopholes were on the ground-level; and the Maori musketeer, pointing his gun through the aperture, was thus able to deliver his fire under the foot of the pekerangi without in the least exposing himself. The distance between the two fences was 3 feet. The trench in which the musketeer squatted was 5 to 6 feet deep and 4 or 5 feet wide, with earth banquette on which the defenders stood to fire, and traverses at intervals of about 2 yards, with narrow communicating-trench between each, admitting of only one man passing at a time. The venerable pa in the trench, winding in and out” (“haere kopikopiko ana”).
Within the double stockade and the firing-trench again, on a portion of the front at least, there was a third line of timbers, a palisade about 10 feet high, against the outer side of which the earth thrown from the ditch was heaped. Inside all these defences were the living-quarters of the garrison—the warriors, and the wives and daughters who had come to cook for them and make their cartridges. These quarters were all underground, and were made shell-proof by being covered with heavy timbers, branches of trees, and earth. The roofs of some were built with the slope of the usual low whare, and the soil from the excavations was heaped up against them and over their tops until they seemed mere mounds of earth. These subterranean chambers (ruas, or pits, the Maoris called them) were usually 6 feet deep;
wharepuni, about 30 feet long and 20 feet wide. The garrison were completely sheltered here, as in the trench, until Despard's guns were mounted on the hill to the north-west, and even then few of the Maoris were hit by the plunging fire.
To these skilfully planned defences, evolved out of the Maori's brain, ever resourceful in devices to combat new weapons, there was added a battery of artillery. To be sure, it was a scrap-iron battery: it consisted of four old ship's guns gathered from one quarter and another, but it gave a finishing touch to the fortress. Two of the pieces were iron 9-pounders; the others were smaller iron guns, a 4-pounder and a 2-pounder swivel. The two smaller guns had been brought in bullock-drays by Heke and his friends from the Bay of Islands. One of the weapons had been taken as spoils of war from Kororareka after the fight of the 11th March. One of the 9-pounders had a curious history: it was one of two which the Maoris commandeered from the Waimate mission station. The history goes back to the year 1823, when the ship “Brampton,” which had brought out the Rev.
One of the 9-pounders found after the siege stood in a square bastion facing the east, close to the south-east angle of the In comparing the Maori fortresses with the contemporary defensive works of other primitive races we find the closest resemblance to the New Zealand pa. Another was mounted at an angle on the northern front, facing the encampment of the troops. One of the smaller pieces stood in an embrasure on the same front, about 70 feet from the north-west angle. The other gun, so far as can be gathered, was mounted in the small bastion at the south-west angle.pa in the stockades of two far-severed peoples—the Burmese and the Indians of some of the western States in North America. In the first Burmese War (1824) the British soldiers were confronted by immense jungle stockades, built sometimes of very large tree-trunks, and defended also by an abattis of pointed stakes and felled trees. It was found necessary to breach these stockades with artillery. In Catlin's “North American Indians” a Mandan village on the Upper Missouri is described. This fort was built on a precipitous cliff 40 or 50 feet high. The stockade was built of timbers a foot or more in diameter and 18 feet high, set firmly in the ground at a sufficient distance apart to admit of guns being fired between them. “The ditch, unlike that of civilized modes of fortification,” Catlin wrote, “is inside of the picquet, in which the warriors screen their bodies from the view and weapons of their enemies whilst they are reloading and discharging their weapons through the picquets.” Exactly this plan of defence was adopted by the Maoris in the New Zealand wars.
The Maori garrison of the pa was considerably out-numbered by the troops. The strength of the defenders varied from time to time, as men were continually passing between the stockade and Kaikohe, five or six miles in the rear. A strong bodyguard had been sent with the wounded Heke to Tautoro, a safe place of retreat some fourteen miles away, close to the beautiful mountain lake of Tauanui, or Kereru, with its sacred islet. The natives say that when Despard delivered his assault on the 1st July there were not more than a hundred men in the pa. The principal hapus composing the garrison were: Ngati-Rangi, under Pene Taui; Ngati-Tautahi, of Kaikohe, under Tuhirangi (elder brother of Heke); Ngati-Whakaeke, Ngati-te-Rehu, and Ngati-te-Rangi, all Heke's hapus; Ngati-Kawa, of Oromahoe; and Te Uri-Taniwha, of
Picture the interior of Ohaeawai stockade that midwinter of 1845. The northerly gale brings a thin but searching rain; squalls sometimes obscure the battlefield in a driving mist. The troops in their leaky tents and their roughly made manuka shelters are uncomfortably damp; in the securely roofed dugouts within the stockade the Maoris are snug and dry. The floors of the ruas are thickly spread with soft fern and flax mats. In the store-pits are heaps of potatoes and kumara, baskets of dried eels, preserved pigeons, shell-fish from the Kawakawa. In the larger of the semi-subterranean huts are fires burning, fed with manuka branches and heaps of Kapia, or kauri-gum. At some of these fires women and boys are roasting potatoes; at others men are cleaning and polishing their flint-lock muskets and percussion-cap guns. In the safety of the deeper dugouts groups are busy making cartridges, filling the thick paper holders from small kegs of gunpowder; others are melting lead into bullets, using moulds either bought from the trading-houses before the war or looted last March from the stores at Kororareka. There is no lack of powder or of bullets; even after hostilities had begun and after a blockade of the Bay of Islands had been established the Maoris had little difficulty in finding white traders and captains of coasting-vessels or timber-ships (chiefly at Hokianga) ready to supply ammunition at war prices.
Observe these half-stripped fort-builders and gun-fighters of Ngapuhi, the pick of Maori manhood. Tall fellows, with the shoulders and chests of athletes and the straight backs of soldiers; quick darting eyes, always on the alert; clean-shaven faces thickly scrolled with the blue-black tattoo lines of the moko. Some of the veterans have scarcely an inch of skin on cheeks and nose and brow and chin clear of the deeply cut lines of tattoo; their tapu heads are a marvel of savage carving. There are boys here
hakimana, a single-barrel percussion-cap musket; it is his first gun, and he is waiting with mingled impatience and excitement for his share of ammunition that will enable him to take his place in the fire-trenches. (The Maori took to the war-path young; so, indeed, did most people living a primitive or semi-primitive life. In the American backwoods in the old Indian fighting-days the settler's son often was already a veteran at an age when most boys are at school. “A boy of the wilderness,” Sir George Otto Trevelyan wrote in “The American Revolution,” “so soon as he had passed his twelfth birthday, was recognized as part of the garrison of the farm, and was allotted his loophole in the stockade which encircled it.” In
Here is dour old Kawiti, hero of many fights, burning to avenge the death of his son on the battlefield of Puketutu. Here is that most daring of Ngapuhi tomahawk-men, young Ruatara, like his comrade Pokai, showed the warrior spirit to the last. In his old age, at Tautoro, he preserved with pride his armoury of seven guns—of all makes and periods, from flint-locks to modern rifles—which he kept carefully cleaned and polished, always in readiness for use if needed. Like Pokai, too, he took delight in teaching the younger generation the use of arms. In 1901 he was one of the northern chiefs in the great Maori gathering at Rotorua to welcome King George V (then Duke of Cornwall and York). The tall old tattooed warrior made a picturesque figure of the past as bareheaded and barefooted he marched up and laid his most treasured heirloom, a whalebone toas, or braves. And in the trenches also you may see one or two young musketeers whose skin is curiously light in contrast with the dark curves of the tattoo; they are half-castes.hoeroa or broadsword, at Royalty's feet.
The first British battery, protected by a breastwork, was placed about 100 yards in front of Despard's camp, on gently rising ground, and the first gun was fired at 8 a.m. on the 24th June. The fire was kept up from the four guns during the greater part of the day, but with little effect upon the stockade.
New emplacements were made; one battery was not more than 100 yards from the stockade. The guns made no impression on the stockade, and the only casualties were those suffered by the troops. Despard at last wrote to Acting-Captain George Johnson, of H.M.S. “Hazard,” which was anchored in the mouth of the Kerikeri River, requesting him to send up one of his 32-pounders.
Meanwhile some ingenious artilleryman, racking his wits for means of more effective attack, bethought him of the empty shell-cases. Could they be converted into stench bombs or balls, with short time-fuses, and fired from the mortars? Colour-Sergeant R. Hattaway, of the 58th, narrated the incident. Two old soldiers were sent to assist in the manufacture of the balls or shells; the experiment was regarded with high hopes by the artillery officers. “The shells,” wrote Hattaway, “contained some poisonous substance the effect of which was expected to deprive the rebels of all animation, and leave them a prey to the European victors. As day by day passed away and nothing occurred to disturb the natives in their stronghold it was concluded that the project had been a failure.”
This curious experiment, the first and only instance of the use of poison-gas in New Zealand, was attended with no better success than the other means adopted for the capture of the pa. The composition of the “stench-balls” remains a mystery; unknown also is the number of these shells delivered to the Maoris by vertical fire. The expectation was that the mortars, with their 45° angle of fire, would land the poison-shells within the trenches or the dugouts, where their explosion would produce stupefaction as well as consternation. Wherever they exploded, they failed to produce any noticeable ill effect upon the Maoris.
PENE TAUI'S STOCKADE was commanded at a range of less than one-third of a mile by the hill Puketapu, upon which Despard's Maori allies flew the British ensign. A modern field-gun at that distance would quickly have reduced the palisade to splinters. But what little impression was made by gun-fire upon the flax-masked defences was repaired by the garrison each night; and even when the 32-pounder arrived from the frigate “Hazard” its projectiles failed to breach the stockade. On the 30th June the gun was mounted on a platform, with strong timber slides, constructed on the lower slope of Puketapu; two of the smaller guns had been placed higher up. On the forenoon of the 1st July the 32-pounder opened fire obliquely at the front stockade.
Every one was absorbed in watching the effect of the gun-fire. Suddenly there came the noise of musket-fire in the rear, on the summit of pa, advancing under cover of the forest on the right front and flank. The natives shot one soldier, seized the gun, and hauled down Waka's flag, which they carried off. Major Bridge and his 58th charged up and recaptured the hill. A few minutes later Despard's alarm and disgust turned to fury when he saw the captured British ensign run up on the flax-halliards of the Maori flagstaff in the pa, below the rebel flag—a kakahu Maori, as one of my Maori informants describes it—a native garment. Then it was that the Colonel made up his mind to storm the pa that day. He imagined that the few 32 lb. shot—which were soon expended—would so loosen the stockades as to enable the troops to cut and pull them down. Those who ventured to remonstrate were snubbed or insulted. Lieutenant Phillpotts, of the “Hazard,” was roused to such indignation by the Colonel's retort to his protest against a
“Maning, myself, and Nene went to interview Despard. We knew well the strength of the pa and its construction. Maning was the spokesman, and commenced with, ‘Sir, we heard that you intend assaulting the pa, and we have come to say that unless a breach is made it will cause great loss of life and will fail.’
“‘What do you civilians know of the matter?’ replied Despard.
“‘Sir,’ said Maning, ‘we may not know much, but there is one that apparently knows less, and that is yourself.’
“Despard got very angry and threatened to arrest us. Nene now inquired what the chief of the soldiers was saying. Maning told him.
“‘He tangata kuware tenei tangata,’ said Nene.
“‘What does the chief say?’ Despard inquired of his interpreter. (I think Meurant was the interpreter's name.) He scratched his head and said, ‘It is not complimentary.’
“‘But I order you, sir,’ said Despard.
“‘The Chief says you are a very stupid person,’ then replied Meurant.
“It was impossible to make any impression on the man who had so many fine young fellows' lives in his hands, and he was prepared to sacrifice them through mere obstinacy.”
The Colonel ordered a storming-party to parade at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and instructions were issued by his brigade-major (Lieutenant and Adjutant Deering) for the guidance of the officers commanding the various divisions. The troops were ordered to get their dinners. For many of them that meal was their last. Forebodings of disaster possessed some of the more thoughtful, but in spite of the doubtful character of the enterprise there was a distinct element of elation and relief among the rank and file at the prospect of an attack at close quarters. There was also a strong desire among the troops to avenge the death of a young soldier of the 99th who had been caught by the enemy while foraging for potatoes. The men on outpost duty had heard, as they believed, his cries of agony; and a story, palpably absurd, was circulated after the fight that he had been tortured to death by burning with kauri-gum. In their ignorance of Maori ways they credited their foes with the practices of Red Indians on the war-path.
At 3 o'clock the bugles sounded the assembly. Volunteers were called upon for the forlorn hope. The whole of the men of the 58th stepped forward. The right-hand man, front and rear rank, of each section was ordered to the front; a similar procedure was followed in the 99th Regiment. Two assaulting columns were composed of men of the two regiments, with a number of seamen and Pioneers. When the selection had been completed the storming-parties formed up in the little valley on the west and north-west side of the pa, about 100 yards from the stockade. This was the composition of the force: Advance-party, or forlorn hope—Lieutenant Beattie (99th Regiment), two sergeants,
Lieut.-Colonel Hulme was posted in the valley west of the pa with a supporting-party consisting of a hundred men of the two regiments and some naval men. Major bridge's party, in rear of the forlorn hope, took up a position exactly north-west of the nearest angle of the stockade (the Maori's left front); Major Macpherson was posted due north of the same angle, under cover of a grove of puriri trees. The north-west angle of the pa was the principal objective of attack—this despite the fact that it was enfiladed by loopholed bastions on either flank.
There came now an awful interval of waiting. The storming-parties stood ready in their appointed places, while the guns in rear of them threw shot and shell into the stockade. The glinting lines of bayonets caught the fitful sunshine of a wintry afternoon; the campaign-stained red tunics and white cross-belts, too, were brightened by those gleams of gold beneath the drifting clouds. Tattered was many a uniform; coats and trousers torn and roughly patched; some of the men barefooted, some with battered boots tied on their feet with strips of flax-leaves.
Half an hour of such waiting, then out blared the bugle. It was the “Advance.” There was a quick fire of orders from commanders of columns—“Prepare to charge”; “Charge”; and with a “Hurrah!” up the ferny slope dashed the advance-party. Major Macpherson's column quickly followed; then up came Major Bridge's party of bearded campaigners in four ranks, their commander leading, sword in hand.
That charge up the bullet-swept glacis of Ohaeawai was described to me with graphic word and action by the last survivor of the stormers, Lieutenant
“We formed up in close order,” Free said, “elbows touching when we crooked them; four ranks, only the regulation 23 inches
pa, sheltered by the fall of the ground and some tree cover. We got the orders, ‘Prepare to charge’; then ‘Charge.’ Up the rise we went at a steady double, the first two ranks at the charge with the bayonet; the second rank had room to put their bayonets in between the front-rank men; the third and fourth ranks with muskets and fixed bayonets at the slope. We were within 100 yards of the pa when the advance began; when we were within about fifty paces of the stockade-front we cheered and went at it with a rush, our best speed and ‘divil take the hindmost.’ The whole front of the pa flashed fire, and in a moment we were in the one-sided fight—gun-flashes from the foot of the stockade and from loopholes higher up, smoke half-hiding the pa from us, yells and cheers, and men falling all round.
“Not a single Maori could we see. They were all safely hidden in their trenches and pits, poking the muzzles of their guns under the foot of the outer palisade. What could we do?
“We were in front of the stockade, firing through it, thrusting our bayonets in, or trying to pull a part of it down, for, I suppose, not more than two minutes and a half. From the time we got the order to charge until we got back to the hollow again it was only five to seven minutes.
“In our Light Company alone we had twenty-one men shot in the charge. As we rushed at the pa a man was shot in front of me, and another was hit behind me. When the bugle sounded the retreat I picked up a wounded man, and was carrying him off on my back when he was shot dead. Then I picked up a second wounded comrade, a soldier named Smith, and carried him out safely. Our captain, Grant, an officer for whom we had a great liking, was shot dead close to the stockade. Nothing was explained to us before we charged. We just brought our bayonets to the charge when we got the word, and went at it hell-for-leather.”
Free narrated that he and his comrades of the 58th carried their full packs even in the charge—like King George the Third's troops in the first assault on Bunker's Hill.
Some of the garrison, appalled by the valour of the redcoats rushing with their front of steel upon the palisades, took fright and made for the rear of the pa, but the greater number stood fast in their trenches, reserving their fire until the stormers were within 25 or 20 yards. When the few faint-hearts among the Maoris saw that the stockade was impregnable they returned to their posts, and assisted in the final repulse. There were probably not more than a hundred natives in the pa when the assault was delivered.
The Maori enfilading fire completely commanded the angle which was the centre of attack, and many men fell on the western flank, where bullets were poured into them from a small bastion. Those on the northern face became targets for the Maori gun-men in the rectangular salient midway on that flank. In one of these bastions there was a carronade which the Maoris had loaded with a bullock-chain, and this projectile, fired at close quarters, killed or wounded several soldiers. Captain W. E. Grant (58th) fell shot through the head in one of the first volleys. Lieutenant Edward Beattie (96th) was mortally wounded. The
pekerangi, a small portion of which had been loosened by sword-cuts delivered against the torotoro lashings and partly pulled down. There he fell, shot through the body. A young sailor who ran up the solitary ladder which Lieutenant Free mentioned was shot dead and fell inside the stockade. Brevet-Major Macpherson was wounded severely; as he was a very heavy man it was only with difficulty that he was carried off the field. Ensign O'Reilly (99th) received a bullet which shattered his right arm at the elbow. “The soldiers fell on this side and on that,” said the venerable
Through the din of musketry and yelling the notes of a bugle were heard. It was the “Retire.” Major Bridge and many of his men thought the call had been sounded in mistake. However, the retreat was repeated, and the summons was obeyed. The Maoris' independent firing increased, and more were killed and wounded in the withdrawal. In that five minutes nearly forty men had been killed and seventy wounded, some mortally.
One-third of the troops engaged fell before the Maori fire. The large-calibre bullets inflicted smashing wounds; in many cases the combat was at such close quarters that the clothing of the soldiers was scorched by the gunpowder-flash. Not all the wounded were carried off; all the dead were left where they fell.
Many a deed of gallantry and devotion illumined the tragedy of that retreat. Several men returned again and again through a hot fire to carry off wounded comrades. One private of the 58th, Whitethread, rescued in this way at least five men of his own regiment and the 99th; he and another man, J. Pallett, carried Major Macpherson into camp. Two Scots of the 58th lay dead together on the field; the one, McKinnon, was carrying off his dying or dead corporal, Stewart, on his back when he was shot. Corporal Free was another of those who brought away wounded comrades from the bullet-spitting pekerangi.
Now out upon the heels of the rescuers who are heroically bearing off the wounded there charge the victorious Maoris, naked, powder-grimed, yelling, shaking their guns and their long-handled tomahawks. A white-headed tattooed warrior, astonishingly agile in spite of his age, dashes along the palisade front; he is seeking the body of the sailor-chief “Topi.” He bends over Phillpotts's body; with his tomahawk he cuts off a portion of the scalp, and bursts into a pagan chant. It is the incantation of the whangaihau offering the first of the battle-trophies to the supreme war-god of the Maori, Tu-of-the-Angry-Face. And there, amid the bodies of dead and dying whites strewn about the field, the warriors throw themselves into the movements of the tutu-ngarahu. This is the song they shout, with uptossed guns and tomahawks:—
E tama te uaua e,E tama te uaua e,E tama te maroro,Inahoki ra te tohu a te uaua na,Kei taku rin ga e mau ana,Te upoko o te kawau tatakiHi—he—ha!
A moment's breathing space, and then the warriors chant all together this song that reverberates among the hills, the words are those of a mata, or prophecy:—
Ka whawhai, ka whawhai!E he!Ka whawhai, ka whawhai!E ha!Ka whawhai, ki roto ki te awaPuare katoa ake nei.E ka whawhai, ka whawhai!Kihai koe i mau atu ki te kainga ki Oropi,E te ainga mai a Wharewhare.E he!E ha!
And late into the wintry night, while the surgeons in the British camp are dressing wounds and amputating shattered limbs, the choruses of battle-songs and the cries of a tohunga in an ecstatic fit of prophesying are borne across the battlefield. The dispirited soldiers, hearing that eerie sorcerer-voice, imagine it, in their ignorance of the Maori, to be screams of one of their captured comrades under torture by fire.
For the defeat Colonel Despard blamed the seamen from H.M.S. “Hazard” under Lieutenant Phillpotts, and the party of Auckland Militia who accompanied the force as a Pioneer detachment. “The forlorn hope,” he wrote, “had been provided with well-sharpened axes and hatchets for cutting away the torotoro vines which fastened the stockade, as well as with several scaling-
In spite of Despard's excuses for his failure, it is extremely doubtful whether even scaling-ladders, grappling-irons, axes, and other apparatus of attack would have enabled the storming-parties to carry the stockade. Indeed, it was fortunate that the pekerangi so stoutly resisted the assault except at one point, for had the troops succeeded in demolishing it they would have been faced by the inner fence of deeply set puriri timbers, which could not be hauled down. And had they carried this main line of defence there would still have been the trenches and pitted interior of the stockade, subdivided by barriers and thick with underground shelters, from which every white could have been shot down.
Colonel Despard contemplated an immediate retreat upon Waimate, and orders to that end were issued on the morning of the 2nd July, but were countermanded as the result of remonstrances by the friendly chiefs, who condemned the Colonel's proposal to abandon the field leaving the dead unburied, and to destroy surplus stores. The wounded were sent off in carts and litters to Waimate, and the force remained encamped before the pa for another ten days. Additional ammunition had been brought up for the guns, and the 32-pounder and the smaller pieces kept up an intermittent bombardment.
The dead were not buried until the afternoon of the 3rd July, when, through the efforts of Archdeacon
It was the Maori custom to abandon a fighting pa after blood had been spilt within it, and it was not surprising therefore, to the missionaries and other spectators, and to the friendly natives that the stockade was found early on the morning of the 11th July to have been evacuated during the night. Two dead bodies were found; the total Ngapuhi loss was never exactly known, but, so far as can be ascertained, it did not exceed ten killed.
The garrison retired on Kaikohe and Tautoro, to the south. At those places they prepared for further resistance in the event of being followed up; but the exhausted and famished troops were in no condition to renew the campaign immediately, and it was considered advisable to withdraw to the mission station at the Waimate.
The pa was destroyed—a task by no means easy. Some of the posts of puriri defied all efforts to pull them down. One was so large, as pa; it was smashed by a shot from the British cannon, which struck it in the muzzle.) A search was made for the body of Captain Grant, who was known to have been shot close to the palisades. It was exhumed from a light covering of earth, which had been laid over it by the Maoris. mana of the white troops. Ceremonial cannibalism, of which this Ohaeawai incident was the solitary instance in Heke's War, was revived as a sequel to battle in the Hauhau Wars of 1865–69;
On the 14th July the British struck camp and marched to the Waimate, where the troops settled themselves in the quarters they had occupied on the march inland.
The site of the Ohaeawai pa is now occupied by a Maori church and burying-ground. The scene of the battle is five miles from Kaikohe and two miles from the Township of Ohaeawai. A Maori church of old-fashioned design is seen on the left as one travels from Kaikohe; it stands on a gentle rise a short distance west of the main road. The locality is usually called Ngawha, from the hot springs in the neighbourhood, but it is the true Ohaeawai; the European township which has appropriated the name should properly be known as Taiamai. The church occupies the centre of the olden fortification, and a scoria-stone wall, 7 ft. high, encloses the sacred ground. Tukaru Tango and Hohaia Tango, two elderly men of Ngapuhi, with whom I visited the place (March, 1919), said that this fence marked almost exactly the outer line of the stockade. The churchyard is entered between great posts that might well have served as palisade himus. On the east crest is a stone memorial cross bearing this Maori inscription: “Ko te Tohu Tapu tenei o nga Hoia me nga Heremana o te Kuini i hinga i te whawhai ki konei ki Ohaeawai, i te tau o to tatou Ariki 1845. Ko tenei Urupa na nga Maori i whakatakoto i muri iho o te maunga rongo.”
The translation of this legend is: “This is a Sacred Memorial to the Soldiers and Sailors of the Queen who fell in battle here at Ohaeawai in the year of Our Lord 1845. This burying-place was laid out by the Maoris after the making of peace.”
The pa site, viewed from the east and south, is a commanding position; on the north the land is level for some distance and then slopes very gradually. The high range beyond the valley on the west is still well wooded; and in the vicinity of the stockade-site much of the ancient forest vegetation remains, the puriri predominating. About 100 yards to the west of the pa is a hollow through which runs a small stream from the slopes of Puketapu; it was here that the storming-parties formed up.
“Topi,” as the natives called Phillpotts, was the Maorified form of “Toby,” the lieutenant's nickname. On the 17th March, 1919, standing by the grave of the three officers who fell at Ohaeawai, in the churchyard of Waimate, toa (a hero), and very much liked by the Maoris. He ran up to the pekerangi and got inside that outer fence. Horotai was inside the second or main stockade, the kiri-tangata. He thrust the barrel of his gun through a loophole in the kiri-tangata until it touched Topi here”—and Rawiri put his hand on his breast—“then Horotai fired and Topi fell dead.”
FOR THREE MONTHS the sound of the bugle and all the stir of a military camp enlivened the mission station at Waimate. Employment was found for the redcoats in surrounding the buildings with a trench and parapets as a precaution against attack—much to the disgust of the mission people, who lamented to see the neutral station transformed into a fortified encampment. It was not until the middle of October that the troops, after destroying Haratua's pa at Pakaraka, removed to Kororareka, where they awaited the next movement in the campaign.
In October it became known that Lord Stanley, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, had recalled Captain Fitzroy, and that Captain
Governor Grey sent to Auckland for all available forces. Ships-of-war and battalions of soldiers were concentrated in the Bay. The latest addition to the fleet of British ships in New
It had been ascertained that the enemy were gathered to the number of several hundreds in the new pa at Rua-pekapeka, which was reported by the friendly Maoris to be stronger even than Ohaeawai. On the 8th December, 1845, the British advance upon Kawiti's bush fortress began with more than 1,100 rank and file under Colonel Despard, besides friendly Maoris. The route of march was over more difficult country than that traversed by the Ohaeawai expedition. The ships sailed up to the entrance of the Kawakawa River, thence transport was by boat for several
The following troops were engaged in the attack on Ruapekapeka under Lieut.-Colonel Despard:—
Ordnance: Three naval 32-pounders, one 18-pounder, two 12-pounder howitzers, one 6-pounder brass gun, four mortars, and two rocket-tubes.
The modern road from the Township of Kawakawa to Ruapekapeka runs closely parallel to Despard's line of march; in fact, the two routes are identical as the site of Kawiti's stronghold is approached. At the head of boat-navigation on the Kawakawa River a fortified camp was established in the pa of a friendly chief, Tamati Pukututu. Here troops, guns, and stores were landed, and Commander Johnson, of the “North Star,” was given charge of the post with seventy men. Captain Graham, of the frigate “Castor,” was senior naval officer at the seat of war, and his bluejackets and those of the “North Star,” “Racehorse,” and “Elphinstone” were useful in the heavy work of transporting the artillery. The march of the combined naval and military force was a fine feat of pioneering, for it was necessary to make roads, fell bush, roughly bridge streams, and to use block and tackle in hauling the guns over rough ground and up steep hills. The men were compelled to carry, in addition to their arms and equipment, boxes each containing a 24 lb. or 32 lb. shell. The way in places led over fern hills and ridges; in places it plunged into patches of heavy timber.
Before narrating the events of that midsummer of 1845–46, let us view “The Cave of the Bats” as it exists to-day, and observe how the soldierly genius of Ngapuhi selected and fortified a position of strategic value—commanding, remote, and difficult of approach.
Passing a lonely little schoolhouse perched on a hilltop, eleven miles by the present road from Kawakawa, the traveller descends into a gully, with a flat-topped hill, some 800 feet in altitude, above him on his left. It was on this level ridge that the British column in 1845 obtained the first sight of the Ngapuhi stronghold, and here the batteries were planted and began to shell the pa at 1,200 yards—long range for the artillery of those days. Climbing the opposite side of the valley we find ourselves on a level stretch of ground, which the army chroniclers of Heke's day described as a “small plain.” It is of very inconsiderable extent, and falls steeply away on either hand into the valley. Here the final British camp was pitched, and the guns advanced for the bombardment of the hill-fort, at a range of about a quarter of a mile. On this ridge, fringed and dotted with puriri trees, is an isolated farmhouse. Just before it is reached the fern-grown remains of the British entrenchments are passed; the main road, in fact, goes through the centre of the position. Somewhere here, too, are the unmarked graves of the Imperial men who fell in the attack. The exact place is forgotten; maybe one rides over the spot where the bones of the redcoats and bluejackets lie. In the yard under the great twisted puriri, whose boughs trembled before the reverberations of Despard's guns, the farmer's children are
Beyond the farmhouse the road dips into a little hollow, flanked by thick forest on the left and a grass paddock on the right. We halt on the other side of the valley, beneath a grove at the intersection of two roads, and there, before us and above us, in the fork of the roads, is Rua-pekapeka pa—its palisades long demolished except for charred posts here and there, its crumbling parapets clothed with fern and flax and koromiko. This spot is very nearly 1,000 feet above sea-level; it is the northern face of the Tapuaeharuru (“Rumbling Footsteps”) Range. On either hand the ground slants steeply down into forested depths; this narrow neck on which we stand was the only rou-te by which the pa could be approached. Ascending the hillside we soon come to the ruined ramparts. Halfburned puriri logs, almost imperishable, lie about the hillside; there are the stumps of trees felled by the Maoris when clearing the glacis of the pa. Three or four stockade-posts, roughly trimmed puriri trunks, stand on the line of the double stockade; they resist age and weather to-day as they did the British round shot and fire-stick long ago. One of these stockade-posts stands at the lower end of the fort, near the north-west angle. It leans over the track, a tree-trunk of irregular shape, with a rough elbow where the main branch had been lopped off; it stands 12 feet high, and is about 14 inches in diameter in the butt. White and spectral with age, it is still charred in places with the fire of 1846. This part of the work must have presented a formidable face to the attacking force; even now the height from the bottom of the outer ditch to the top of the fern-grown
maioro, or earth wall, at the north-western bastion is 15 feet. On the south side of the pa a post standing 8 feet above the ground, with a diameter of 1 foot by 8 inches, a mossy old puriri trunk, still bears the marks of the axe. A fern-hung pit proves to be one of the Maori wells marked on the British naval officers' plan of the pa drawn in 1846; at its bottom is a pile of posts and battered saplings from the demolished stockade. There is another well on the sketch-plan; this we presently discover inside the pa. From this side, the south and west, the ridge drops quickly to the valley lying 500 or 600 feet below and spreading away into the distances of bush and smoky-blue ranges.
At the rear (the east end) of the pa is another lichen-crusted stockade-post, standing on the edge of the track which trends out through the olden gateway. At another part of the outer entrenchment we find a squared post, mossy with age, lying on the ground; it is between 4 feet and 5 feet in length; its butt is sharpened to a point in order to enable it to be driven into the ground—one of the line of smaller stakes between the whole-tree himu.
The pa slopes to the west and north, inclined towards the ridge by which the troops advanced, and therefore its interior lay exposed to artillery fire from the far side of the little valley intervening between the batteries and the range-face; but the system of shot-proof and bomb-proof ruas, or underground shelters, protected the garrison from the guns of those days. We descend into one of these ruas near the centre of the pa. Its mossy floor is 6 feet below the surface of the ground; it has a narrow entrance or shaft, and then it opens out fanwise underneath into a comparatively wide chamber. The interior is partly blocked up with the fallen debris of seventy-six years, but sufficient of its original shape and dimensions remain to convince us of its convenience and safety in the siege-days, when its top was roofed over with logs and earth, and when subterranean ways connected it with the neighbouring ruasand the main trench. The whole place is pitted with these burrow-like ruas. The parapets and trenches are in the most perfect state of preservation on the western and south-western aspects. Here the trench is 5 feet deep, and from the ditch-bottom to the top of the parapet the height is 8 or 10 feet. The trench system would still conceal a little army.
Due north, blue-shimmering in the haze, is Russell Bay, with the islands of the outer bay sleeping on its breast; beyond again, the ocean. The Maoris from here could see the ships lying at anchor twenty miles away, could mark every daylight movement in their direction, and could even see the flagstaff hill, the root of all these troubles.
The pa was about 100 yards in length and 70 yards in width, with flanking bastions of earthwork and palisade. A plan drawn by the master of H.M.S. “Racehorse” shows that in the small bastion on the east face, the highest part of the pa, a double ditch and an earthed-over bell-shaped shelter separated the two outer rows of palisade (the pekerangi and kiri-tangata) from a high inner stockade. To-day there are indications that on a portion at least of the west end also a row of palisades stood on the inner side of the ditch. The work was much broken into flanks for enfilading-fire, and the trench was cut with traverses protecting the musketeers against a raking fire or a ricochet from a cannon-shot.
The advance from Kororareka occupied the troops from the 8th until the 31st December, by which time the column pitched the last camp and threw up field-works on the level space
pa. The guns were brought up by horses and bullock teams, with the assistance of man-power at many a hill and watercourse. It was the 1st January, 1846, before Kawiti's garrison made any attempt to bar the slow but certain progress of the British troops towards their mountain fort. On that day a small party of the pa defenders made a sortie from the pa and engaged a number of the friendly Maoris in the bush. The chief Wi Repa, one of the best fighters in the native auxiliary force, was severely wounded. The enemy cut off and killed one white man, a volunteer Pioneer from Auckland. On the same day Colonel Despard sent a strong body of infantry into the forest on the narrow plateau that separated him from his antagonists, and this force took up a position on a partly cleared space within a quarter of a mile of the stockade. Here, under cover of the timber which screened the troops from the view of the Maoris, a palisade and earthwork were commenced, and by nightfall the position was ready for a battery. A large body of Maoris sallied out from the pa and made an attempt to turn the flank of the advanced party. They were engaged by Tamati Waka and his brother Wi Waka Turau, Nopera Pana-kareao, and Mohi Tawhai with two hundred men. It was a tree-to-tree fight in which only Maoris could well be engaged. Kawiti's men were driven back with a loss of several men killed and nearly a score wounded. On the Government side five Maoris were wounded.
Another stockade was built considerably in advance and more to the right, facing the south-western angle of the pa. This position was not more than 160 yards from the front of Kawiti's position. An 18-pounder and a 12-pounder howitzer were mounted here. In the larger stockade, about 350 yards from the pa, there were mounted two 32-pounders and four mortars. Despard's main camp on the 5th January was about 750 yards from the pa. Mounted in front of this position, with thick woods in the front and rear, were three guns—a 32-pounder, a 12-pounder howitzer, and a light 6-pounder, besides rocket-tubes.
The Pioneer axemen attacked the heavy timber immediately in front of the advanced gun-positions, and the greater part of the Maori stockade soon lay exposed to cannon-fire. The small battery in the valley below the pa commanded a range along both west and south flanks, and concentrated its fire on the south-west angle.
It was the morning of the 10th January before the grand bombardment began. All the batteries were complete, and
ruas. There were two pieces of artillery in the pa, a 12-pounder carronade and a 4-pounder; one of these Kawiti had placed in position at the east, or rear, end; the other in an emplacement just inside and above the trench on the western face. There were gunners among the Maoris able to lay and fire these pieces, but, as at Ohaeawai, there was a shortage of projectiles. The 12-pounder came to grief early in the bombardment; an 18 lb. shot from the advanced battery in the hollow struck it in the muzzle and smashed it.
The storm of shot and shell, kept up with little intermission all day, soon began to make impression on Kawiti's puriri war-fence. Some of the palisade-posts, nearly 20 feet high and more than 1 foot in thickness, were battered to pieces by the impact of the 32 lb. and 18lb. balls, and some of the less deeply set were knocked out of the ground. By the afternoon a breach had been made in the stockade at the north-western bastion, and at a point midway between that salient and the south-west angle. This face was the lower end of the pa, and the efforts of the artillerists were centred on demolishing the palisade here and widening the breaches sufficiently for a general assault, for which the impatient Despard longed. The Colonel had, indeed, intended launching a storming-party against the pa when the first breach was made, but the Governor, Captain Grey, vetoed the proposal, which would simply have resulted in another Ohaeawai. Mohi Tawhai, too, had entered a protest immediately upon learning of Despard's intention.
Governor Grey was an eye-witness of the whole of the operations; indeed, he was more than a mere spectator, for he sighted one of the guns, and he had reconnoitred the pa under fire more than once. Sergeant Jesse Sage (58th) recounted that the young Governor frequently walked through the bush to a position well within musket-range from the pa; he would take a sergeant or corporal of an advanced picket with him, and, bidding the non-commissioned officer take cover, would stand with his telescope examining the stockade, shots flying around him—“fearlessly doing his duty,” said Sage, “as brave a man as ever walked.”
Nightfall brought no cessation of the cannonade, for each gun was fired every half-hour, and rockets were frequently thrown into the pa, to prevent the garrison from repairing the damage
It was discovered afterwards that the shelling had effectually swept the pa, so much so that some of the projectiles had gone right through several stockade-lines; holes were found ripped in the rear palisades. “We were safe underground when the big guns began to hurl their mata-purepo at us,” says old pa so uncomfortable that the garrison now began to fear that the place could not be defended much longer.
pa on the night before the bombardment, with a body of his tribesmen from Tautoro and Kaikohe. His contingent brought the forces in the Rua-pekapeka up to about five hundred men. That day under the artillery fire convinced him that the pa must be evacuated, and he counselled Kawiti to take to the forest and fight the soldiers there, where they could not haul their heavy guns. But Kawiti determined to fight his fort to the end.
The following morning, 11th January, was Sunday. The artillery fire was continued from all the batteries. There was no answering fire of musketry from the pa loopholes. A dozen Maori scouts, under Wi Waka Turau, worked up to the stockade near the south-west angle and crept in through one of the breaches made by the guns. Wi Waka signalled to his brother, Tamati Waka, who was with Captain Denny and a hundred men of the 58th awaiting the result of the reconnaissance. The troops came up with a rush and were inside the double palisade and trench, and pushing up over the hut-and-fence-cumbered ground towards the higher end, before their presence was detected and the yell of alarm raised, “The soldiers are in the pa.”
The garrison had nearly all left the pa by the hidden ways that morning, and were sheltering behind the rear earthworks and stockade in a dip of the ground—some for sleep undisturbed by rockets and shells, some to cook food, the majority for religious worship. Kawiti himself, sturdy old pagan, remained in his trenched shelter with some of his immediate followers.
The alarm given, the astonished Kawiti and his Maoris gave the troops a volley. Running out to the east end, they joined Heke and his men. A determined effort was made to regain the stronghold, but the stockade now became the troops' defence. Meanwhile Colonel Despard had rushed up strong reinforcements, and presently hundreds of soldiers were within the pa, pouring
pa. A crowd of soldiers and sailors rushed out through the rear gateway and attacked the Maoris on the edge of the bush. A number of the “Castor's” bluejackets dashed into the bush and became easy targets for Kawiti's musketeers, who shot several of them dead. The 58th and 99th, more seasoned to native tactics, took advantage of all the cover that offered, and killed and wounded a number of their foes. The skirmish developed into an ambush, skilfully laid by Kawiti, who directed puriri. “He had been potting away at us from the branches,” said the veteran, “and shot two or three of our men. At last we noticed the bullets striking the ground and raising little showers of dust and twigs, and looking up we discovered the sniper. Several of us had a shot; one of my comrades got him, and he came tumbling to the ground, crashing through the branches and turning round and round as he fell.”
The forest engagement lasted until 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Before that time Kawiti and Heke had determined to withdraw all their people to the inaccessible back country; the fight in the rear of the pa was prolonged in order to give time for the wounded to be carried off. As in old Maori warfare, the picked men, the young toas, such as Ruatara, fought a hard
Thus fell Rua-pekapeka. The British loss was twelve killed—seven of whom were “Castor” men—and thirty wounded, including Mr. Murray, a midshipman of the “North Star.”
Colonel Despard, who had by this time come to admit the Maori's originality and skill in fort-building, declared in his despatches that “the extraordinary strength of this place, particularly in the interior defence, far exceeded any idea that could have been formed of it.” Every hut, he found, was a little fortress in itself, strongly stockaded all round with heavy timbers sunk deeply in the ground and placed close to each other, with a strong earthwork thrown up behind them.
It was apparent that the garrison had been in straits for food-supplies. Little was found in the pa except fern-root.
The troops set fire to the huts and stockading, but the earthworks, and the trench system were of such dimensions that Despard decided to leave them undemolished and march his troops back to the Bay of Islands.
This success ended the Northern War.
Brave old Kawiti, while candidly confessing at a meeting at Pomare's pa that he had had enough of war as waged by his “fighting friends” the British, consoled himself with the knowledge of having acted a valiant part: “Peace, peace—that is all I have to say. I did not commence the war, but I have had the whole brunt of the fighting. Recollect, it is not from fear, for I did not feel fear when the shot and shell were flying around me in the pa.” And there was a very proper warrior pride in Kawiti's declaration to a chief after the meeting: “I am satisfied; I intend making peace, but not from fear. Whatever happens to me hereafter, I have one consolation—I am not in irons, nor am I in Auckland
[atua], and had they nothing but muskets, the same as ourselves, I should be in my pa at the present time.”
At this meeting it was stated by Heke's and Kawiti's Maoris that the casualties on their side since the taking of Kororareka were sixty killed and about eighty wounded.
A Proclamation by the Governor permitting those who had been concerned in the war to return peacefully to their homes was received with relief by Ngapuhi and their allies. Proclamations raised the blockade of the east coast from Whangarei to Mangonui and Doubtless Bay, and also relieved the Bay of Islands district within a circle of sixty miles in any direction from Russell from the operation of martial law, which had existed since the 26th April, 1845. So peace came, a peace unembittered by confiscation of land or by vendettas provocative of future wars.
Heke lost the war, but carried his point. In 1848 he declared that the tupapaku (the corpse) of the flagstaff at Kororareka should not be roused to life, because those who had died in cutting it down could not be restored to the land of the living. This attitude he maintained to the day of his death (1850). While he lived, and while Kawiti lived, the signal-mast was not re-erected on Maiki Hill. This was the chief point in dispute, and tactfully the new Governor did not insist upon the restoration of tupapaku. The Port of Russell carried on without a shipping signal-station until 1853, when
THE NORTH PACIFIED, Governor Grey turned his attention to the Cook Strait settlements, where the position for the last year had verged upon war. The New Zealand Company's loose methods in the purchase of native lands had been followed by the repudiation of bargains, the estrangement of the two races, and the blocking of settlement. But the warriors who insisted upon muskets, gunpowder, and shot as the chief portion of the payment for the land upon which Wellington now stands were not at all dissatisfied in 1840 with the bargain they had made. They had secured arms, without which their tenure of the district in those days of almost constant intertribal jealousy and conflict would have been precarious, and they had given nothing of great value in exchange; for they were mentally resolved, if it had not been openly stated, that they would not suffer their existing cultivations and other grounds valuable as food-producing places, such as the portions of the forest richest in birds—the kaka, pigeon, and tui—to pass away for ever out of their hands.
Colonel Wakefield and his coadjutors in the first work of settlement suffered to a considerable extent from their want of knowledge of Maori laws and customs with respect to land, and also from their inability to make the natives understand the precise tenor of their questions and their documents.
Mr. Spain, the Land Claims Commissioner, in 1845 awarded the New Zealand Company 71,900 acres of land in Wellington and vicinity, excepting the villages and the lands that were actually occupied by the natives and thirty-nine native reserves. At the same time the Commissioner disallowed the Company's claims to the Wairau and Porirua lands, and in the end it was arranged (1847) that the sum of £2,000 should be paid to Ngati-Toa and their kindred for the disputed territory at Porirua, and £3,000 for the Wairau.
There seems to have been considerable uncertainty among settlers and Maoris alike as to the exact situation and boundaries of some of the reserves, more especially those in the Hutt Valley, and to this lack of precise information much of the trouble with the discontented tribes was due. In 1846 we find even the consistently friendly chief
The principal opposition to the white occupation of Hutt lands came in the first case from a chief named Taringa-Kuri (“Dog's Ear”), otherwise known as Kaeaea (“Sparrowhawk”). He derived his first name from his preternatural keenness of hearing; when out scouting, say the Macris, he would put his ear to the ground and detect the approach of an enemy at a great distance. “Dog's Ear” headed the Ngati-Tama Tribe, connected both with Ngati-Awa and with Ngati-Maniapoto. The clan had fought its way down the west coast as allies of Not many of the Ngati-Tama Tribe were engaged in the war in the Hutt Valley. The majority had gone with Pomare Ngatata to the Chatham Islands. Later, a number of Ngati-Tama, as the result of quarrels with Ngati-Mutunga at the Chathams, migrated to the Auckland Islands in a French whaler. To their disgust they found that the climate of the Aucklands was so wet and cold that their potatoes would not grow. They were removed a few years later and returned to the Chatham Islands.
By the end of 1845 the New Zealand Government had the support of five British ships-of-war and nearly a thousand Regular troops. These forces, with the exception of some men of the 58th stationed at the Bay of Islands and two companies left in Auckland as a garrison, and the frigate “Racehorse” and the brig “Osprey,” left at the Bay, were now available for the restoration of order in the Wellington settlements. There was also available a considerable and already fairly well-trained body of Militia, organized under the Militia Ordinance passed at Auckland on the 5th March, 1845. Under this enactment a citizen force was constituted for military service, composed of all able-bodies men between the ages of eighteen and sixty. Militiamen were liable for service within twenty-five miles of the post-offices in their towns, and their period of drill was twenty-eight days in the year. In Wellington the news of the war in the north and the disputes in the Hutt Valley had stimulated a volunteer spirit independently of the conscription measure, and in April, 1845, the daily musters of townsmen for military drill on Thorndon Flat and at Te Aro totalled 220 of all ranks. These drills were held at 5 o'clock in the evening; in addition there was a morning daily drill for the more enthusiastic held alternately on the parade-ground at either end of the town. The Militia drilled with the old Tower flint-lock muskets imported by the New Zealand Company for bartering with Maoris; they were exactly the same make as the guns with which the Company had purchased the Wellington lands from the Ngati-Toa and Ngati-Awa. Later, percussion-cap guns were served out. The uniform was not elaborate or showy, but it was more suitable for campaigning than the tight red tunics, high stocks, and awkward headgear of the Regulars. The oldest surviving pioneer of the Hutt recalled that it consisted
A redoubt was built on Mr. Clifford's property on Thorndon Flat, very close to where the Normal School now stands (Hobson Crescent). It has sometimes been described as a stockade, but it was simply a square earthwork with a surrounding trench. The parapet of sods and earth was reinforced with timbers at intervals inside. All round the parapet were wood-framed loopholes for musket-fire; the timbers forming them not only kept them clear of earth but strengthened the parapet. In 1846, when the troops were on field service, a Militia guard of a sergeant, a corporal, and twelve men did duty daily at the fort.
A more extensive work was that constructed at the southern, or Te Aro, end of the town, as a place of refuge for the citizens. This was a large earthwork forming two sides of a redoubt; the other two sides were left open, but the houses which stood there were capable of defence. A pioneer resident of Wellington, Mr. John Waters, who landed in Port Nicholson in 1841, describes this Te Aro fortification as follows:—
“The earthwork consisted of a ditch and a strong parapet. The trench was 6 feet deep, and the sod wall was about 6 feet high. The area enclosed was the ground between Manners Street and the sea, which then flowed to the ground on which the Town Hall now stands. The longer side of the earth-work was that which ran from Manners Street a short distance westward or inland of what is now Lower Cuba Street. There was an acre of land fronting Manners Street between the Bank of New Zealand (present Te Aro branch) and the angle of the work. The length of this side of the fortification was about 330 feet. The other flank, which was considerably shorter, ran at right angles inland along the north side of Manners Street towards its present intersection with Willis Street. The Wesleyan Chapel in Manners Street was just on the opposite side of the street to the earth-works. The trench and parapet enclosed several large buildings, including Bethune and Hunter's and other brick stores, the bank, and some houses. There was a boatbuilding yard, besides jetties and store buildings, down on the beach inside the wall. I do not recollect any guns in this fortification.
“On the eastern side of Lower Cuba Street, close to what is now Smith's corner, was a stockade enclosure in which the Government commissariat-stores building stood. This stockade was constructed somewhat after the manner of a Maori palisaded
pa. It consisted of large split totara posts sunk in the ground at intervals, the space between them closely fenced with high slabs or pickets with pointed tops, and fastened with horizontal rails inside.”
These defences of 1845 were not the first field-works constructed in Wellington for protection against the Maoris. After the Wairau tragedy in 1843 measures were taken by the New Zealand Company and the townspeople, independently of the Government, to fortify the northern and southern ends of the settlement, and guns were mounted in the works. These were 18-pounders which had originally been mounted on Somes Island, which the New Zealand Company in 1840 regarded as a suitable site for a fort. One of the fortifications of 1843 was in Thorndon; one was a small battery constructed on Clay Point, in the southern part of the settlement. “It was on the seaward extremity of the flat above Pipitea,” says the pioneer settler already quoted, Mr. John Waters, “that the first Thorndon redoubt was built, or rather commenced. I remember that very well, because I saw it being built by the volunteers of the town in 1843, just after the Wairau fight, and, in fact, assisted in the work as a boy. It stood very close to the cliff above Pipitea, between the present steps at the foot of Pipitea Street and the English Church of St. Paul's, but much nearer Pipitea Street than the church. Just below it on the beach-front, now Thorndon Quay, was the police-station, a long whare thatched with raupo. We boys were given a holiday one day to help the men by carrying the sods which had been cut close by to the workers, who placed them in position on the parapet. The earthwork was not completed; the rear was left open. It consisted of three sides of an oblong, the longer side facing the sea, and the flanks extending back a short distance westward. It was not of any great size. The redoubt ditch was about 5 feet in depth and the same in width. We boys used to amuse ourselves by helping to deepen it. The earth parapet was about 6 feet high. The later redoubt was built in a different place altogether, further in on Thorndon, towards what is now Fitzherbert Terrace.” The southern fortification was the battery on Clay Point, Clay Hill, or Flagstaff Hill, as the spot was variously named; after the construction of the work it was named “Waterloo Redoubt.” Clay Point (now demolished) was the abrupt termination of a ridge which trended down to the sea at the place which is now the junction of Lambton Quay and Lower Willis Street. The sea then flowed and ebbed where the Bank of New Zealand now stands, and the cliff jutted out steep-to above the narrow beach, then the only thoroughfare. After Wairau, the townspeople formed a working-party, cut a track to the flat top of the hill, and dragged up three of the New Zealand Company's guns—ship's howitzers (18-pounders) on wooden carriages. The work
The infant Town of Nelson also had its fortification in 1843, when the episode of the Wairau and reports of coming Maori raids stimulated the people to vigorous measures, with the result that the place was provided with the strongest fort south of Auckland. The resident agent of the New Zealand Company, Mr. Fox (afterwards Sir Fort Arthur enclosed the hill forming part of Trafalgar Square. It was built from the design and under the superintendence of Mr. J. S. Spooner. It covers rather more than an acre of ground. It is built in the form of an oblong hexagon, with bastions at each angle. The embankments, or ramparts, and the bastions are of earth, faced with sods, squared and laid in courses. It is surrounded by a moat, 8 feet deep and 12 feet wide, over which is placed a drawbridge at the north end. Inside the rampart is a trench, 5 feet deep, for musketry. On an inner and level elevation, and enclosing the church and Survey Office, is a stockade, 7 feet high, built of 2-inch planking, double, with a space between of 2 inches filled with earth, making it ball-proof, and surmounted with a Nelson Examiner of the 23rd December, 1843:—
cheveaux de frise. It is in the shape of an oblong square, 156 feet by 48 feet, with flanking towers at the corners 10 feet high; pierced throughout with loopholes for rifles and musketry, and ports for the great guns (long 18-pounder carronades).
Nelson was not the only place in the South Island in which it was considered necessary in 1843 to erect fortified posts. The English and French residents of Akaroa resolved that three small blockhouses should be erected as a provision for the safety of the settlers and their families. One of these blockhouses was built at the eastern end of Akaroa Town, near the beach at the mouth of the Oinaka Stream; the Bruce Hotel now occupies the site. Another was placed midway along the bay, on the water-front, near the spot where the police-station now stands. The third was erected in Otakamatua Bay, near the head of the harbour. These buildings were the first posts of the true blockhouse type, with overlapping upper storeys, built in New Zealand.
The settlers of the Hutt Valley acutely realized their defenceless state, and early in the year 1845 they decided to assure some measure of protection by building a stockaded fort in some central position, a garrison station to which they might hurry
pukatea, a light but tough and strong wood; totara and kahikatea pine were mostly used for the blockhouses. The cost of the construction of the fort was set down at £124; this was exclusive of the value of the timber, which was given free by Captain Compton, and voluntary labour by settlers estimated at a value of £54 10s. The stockade was completed in April, 1845, and the Militia company of the Hutt occupied it until a redcoat garrison, a detachment of the 58th Regiment, marched in on the 24th April.
That little fort in the forest-clearing, guarding the Hutt bridge-head, and embodying the spirit of adventure and peril that entered into the life of frontier settlement, was in essentials a replica of the border posts in the American Indian country. It was the first of scores of stockades and blockhouses on the Maori border-line throughout this North Island, the advanced settler's refuge and protection, many of them garrisoned until the early “eighties.” The sketches and descriptions that remain of Fort Richmond, and many a post of military settlers or Armed Constabulary in the later wars, recall like scenes in the American woods pictured for us in Whittier's poem, “The Truce of Piscataqua”:—
Not only the New England and Kentucky stockades but the forts of the Hudson Bay Company, scattered over the northern continent from the Atlantic to Vancouver, were in design the prototypes of our New Zealand stockades. Their walls were built of slabs and solid tree-trunks, as high as 20 feet, with bastioned angles for enfilading-fire. Fort Douglas, which stood on the Red River a hundred years ago, an illustration of which is given in Bryce's work on the history of the Hudson Bay Company, was very similar to Fort Richmond. It had a close-set palisade of slabs and tree-trunks facing the river; at the corners were tower-like timber flanking bastions.
The Karori settlers followed the example of those at the Hutt in the construction of a small fortified post, in order to guard against an attack from Ohariu. This place of defence, built in May and June, 1846, was surrounded by a ditch, and the site chosen for it was on rising ground in the oldest settled part of Karori, a clearing walled in by a dense and lofty forest, 600 feet
This description of the Karori stockade is the first yet published. The details were given chiefly by Mr. George Shotter, one of the earliest settlers at Karori (died 1920).rimu (red-pine) and miro. The logs were split, squared up with the axe, and roughly trimmed into points at the top; these timbers measured 6 or 7 inches in thickness, and when firmly sunk in the ground close alongside each other formed a solid wall 10 feet high. Loopholes for musket-fire were made by cutting away with saw and tomahawk a piece in the sides of a number of the timbers before they were set in the ground; the apertures so formed were shoulder-height from the ground, between 2 and 3 feet apart, and measured about 5 inches in length vertically by 3 inches in width. Between the foot of the stockade and the
rimu, roofed with kahikatea shingles; this house measured about 16 feet by 12 feet, and was divided into two rooms. One of these rooms was for the men of the Militia garrison, and the other for the women and children of the settlement in the event of a Maori attack. In one corner was a fireplace with chimney of clay. The floor was the bare earth. There was a clear space of 10 feet all round between this house and the stockade-wall.
The Karori Militiamen who built the stockade, assisted by a party of bluejackets from H.M.S. “Calliope” and by a detachment of the armed police from Wellington under Mr. A. C. Strode, numbered thirty or forty small farmers, sawyers, and bullock-team drivers. The post was designed chiefly as a protection against possible attack from the natives at Ohariu Bay and the mouth of the Makara Stream, and in the nights of alarm a good lookout was kept in that direction. Some of the settlers worked on their holdings with cartridge-belts over their shoulders and a “Brown Bess” lying close by. However, most of the Ohariu Maoris left by canoe for Porirua and places higher up the coast. There was greater danger from kokiris, or small raiding-parties, of
On a commanding position on the Wellington—Porirua Road a stockade was built on Mr. Johnson's land, Section 11/181, now the heart of the Township of Johnsonville. The stockade was a structure of thick slabs, with slits for musket-fire. There was a small loft, to which access was given by a ladder.
On Sunday, the 20th April, 1845, a report reached Wellington that a strong body of natives “all painted and feathered” had descended on the Lower Hutt Valley, and had given notice of their intention to attack the whites' stockaded pa next day. Major Richmond ordered fifty men of the 58th Regiment to the Hutt. The quickest means of reaching the scene of trouble was
During 1845 two companies of Regulars had been stationed in Wellington. As soon as it was possible to withdraw troops from the Bay of Islands preparations were made for a transfer of the military forces to Wellington, and on the 3rd February, 1846, a body of nearly six hundred men under Lieut-Colonel Hulme embarked at Auckland for the south. The fleet which transported them consisted of the British frigates “Castor” and “Calliope,”
The excitement created by the opportune arrival of so large a body of British soldiers, bringing the total force of redcoats in Wellington up to nearly eight hundred men, was heightened by the novel spectacle of a steam-vessel. H.M.S. “Driver” was the first steamship to visit the port; she was a wonderful craft to many a colonist, and amazing to the Maoris, who congregated to watch the strange pakeha ship, driven by fires in her interior, moving easily and rapidly against wind and tide. The “Driver” was a paddle-steamer of 1,058 tons, with engines of 280 horsepower; she was rigged as a brig. She was armed with six guns. Her crew, under Commander C. O. Hayes, numbered 175 officers and men. The vessel had recently been engaged in the suppression of piracy in the East Indies. Her figurehead attracted much attention: it represented an old-time English mail-coach driver with many-caped greatcoat and whip.
On the 27th February some of the troops marched to the principal village occupied by the Maoris on the
In retaliation for the destruction of their villages and cultivations on the banks of the
The troops remained inactive on the day of the principal raid (1st March), greatly to the indignation of the civilians. Then it became known that the Governor was undecided whether or not to proceed with hostile measures against the natives. He had been advised by the Crown law authority that he was acting illegally in evicting the Maoris, inasmuch as the grants issued by Governor Fitzroy after the purchase of the valley had excepted all native cultivations and homes. The legal adviser, further, was of the opinion that the natives were justified in resisting such eviction by force of arms.
Captain Grey, however, was not long influenced by this opinion. He quickly made up his mind to protect the settlers at all hazards, and on the 3rd March he issued a Proclamation declaring the establishment of martial law in the Wellington District, bounded on the north by a line drawn from Wainui (near Pae-kakariki) on the west coast to Castle Point on the east.
The first shots in the campaign were fired on the morning of Tuesday, the 3rd March, 1846. A party of natives under cover of the bush and felled trees fired on Captain Eyton's company of the 96th, who were stationed some distance in advance of the camp at Boulcott's Farm, two miles above Fort Richmond. Several volleys were fired into the camp. The fire was returned effectively, and the Maoris were obliged to retreat. When the news of the definite outbreak of war reached the Governor in Wellington he ordered H.M.S. “Driver” to weigh anchor and steam to Pito-one with troops. The soldiers embarked were Captain Russell's company of the 58th, twenty men of the 99th, and thirty of the 96th, under Lieutenant Barclay. A party of men of the three regiments was also despatched to the Hutt.
On the 2nd April a Lower Hutt settler named Andrew Gillespie and his young son Andrew were attacked and so terribly tomahawked that they both died. Gillespie was the first settler placed in possession of the land at the Hutt from which the natives had been evicted in the previous month. Te Pau, of Ngati-Rangatahi, was the leader of the raiding-party. The Gillespie tragedy stirred Governor Grey to speedy action. A police party set out for Porirua, as the result of a message received by the Rev. O. Hadfield from Rauparaha, who gave a hint that the slayers might be found
Mr. Kilmister, of Karori Road, Wellington, who arrived from London in the ship “Lady Nugent” in 1841 and landed at Pipitea, gives the following information (1920) regarding the military stockades which in 1846 protected the Wellington-Porirua Road:— “When I was a boy I frequently went out along the Porirua Road with my father, who was engaged in transport work for the troops, and I remember the old stockaded posts very well. First of all, as one went out from Wellington there was a small outpost at Khandallah, not fortified; this was popularly known as ‘Mount Misery,’ and officially as ‘Sentry-box Hill,’ now abbreviated to ‘Box Hill.’ The present road over Box Hill, Khandallah, passing close to the little church, goes almost exactly over the spot where the outpost was quartered. This was a kind of midway lookout place between Wellington and Johnsonville, and was garrisoned by a few men from Johnsonville. At Johnsonville—then known as ‘Johnson's Clearing’—there was a stockade, strongly built of roughly squared timbers. Then there were stockades at intervals down to Porirua Harbour—Middleton's, Leigh's, and Elliott's. Leigh's stockade stood on Tawa Flat. Fort Elliott stood near the head of the harbour. From Porirua there was a ferry service in large boats down the harbour to Fort Paremata. These places of defence along the road between Johnson's and Porirua were built in this way: A trench was dug, and large split trees and small whole trees were set in close together, and the earth firmly filled in round them; this palisade was loopholed for musket-fire.”hapus had built a stockaded and entrenched stronghold at the head of the Paua-taha-nui arm of the Porirua Harbour, five miles from the open sea. Porirua, the Governor perceived, was practically the key of the west coast; a military station there would keep communications open, and would also directly menace
TWO MILES ABOVE the stockade at the Hutt Bridge a pioneer settler, Mr. Boulcott, had hewn a home out of the forest. His clearing bordered the left bank of the river; most of it was in grass; the rough edges of the farm were cumbered with half-burned logs and stumps, and on three sides was heavy timber; the fourth side faced the river and the fringing thickets on the other bank; beyond were the wooded steep hills that hemmed in the Hutt Valley on the west. A rough and narrow bush road, “corduroyed” with fern-tree trunks in the marshy portions, wound through the forest from the bridge at the fort; it was little more than a track, and in many places the branches of the rimu and rata met overhead and kept the road in dampness and shadow. Here and there were settlers' clearings, with houses of sawn timber and shingled roofs, or of slabs and nikau palm or raupo reed thatch; crops of wheat, oats, and potatoes were grown in these oases in the desert of bush. Where rows of shops, cottages, and bungalows, with beautiful orchards and gardens, cover the floor of the Hutt Valley to-day, there were but these roughly trimmed forest homes.
The most advanced post of the Regular troops in May, 1846, was on Boulcott's Farm, where fifty men of the 58th Regiment were stationed under Lieutenant
During the week preceding this attack a general opinion was entertained at the Hutt that some sudden movement was contemplated by The Hon. Dr. Pomare, M.P., narrates an incident illustrative of the insurgents' strategy. His informant was old Tungia, of Ngati-Toa. A day or two before the attack on Boulcott's Farm either “Kei Heretaunga te huaki ai; kia mohio; huihuia atu nga pakeha” (“At Heretaunga the assault will be made. Be wary; concentrate the white men”). As if that were not enough, a chief of the Pipitea pa, Wellington, called on Major Richmond on Friday, the 15th May (the day before the attack), to warn him of the danger and to offer the assistance of his people. But no extra precautions were taken. Maori and settler alike knew that
The fog of early morning enveloped bush and clearing that dawn of Saturday, 16th May; a white band of denser vapour coiling down the valley above the tree-tops showed the course of the silent river. The sentry near the river-bank, in front of the inlying picket's tent, shivered with the chilly touch of the hour that precedes daybreak. As he turned to pace his beat, with musket and fixed bayonet at the slope, his glance feel upon some low bushes seen obscurely through the curling mist a few yards to his front. They seemed nearer, he thought, than they had been
A volley was delivered from fifty Maori guns. The Maoris fired low, to rake the floor of the tents. A second volley; another from a different flank; then on came the enemy with the tomahawk. Not a soldier of the picket escaped. Those who were not killed by the volley fell to the short-handled patiti. In and about the picket tent four soldiers lay dead. One of these was William Allen, whose name will be remembered so long as the story of Boulcott's Farm is told. Allen was a tall, young soldier; he was bugler to his company. When the sentry's shot was heard he leaped up, seized his bugle, and, running outside the tent, he put the bugle to his lips to blow the alarm. In the act of sounding the call he was attacked by a Maori, who tomahawked him in the right shoulder, nearly severing his arm, and felled him to the ground. Struggling to rise, the brave lad seized the bugle with his left hand and again attempted to warn his comrades, but a second blow with the tomahawk, this time in the head, killed him. The bugler's call was not needed, however, for the whole camp had been awakened by the sentry's shot and the answering volleys.
The garrison of Boulcott's, now reduced to forty-four or forty-five men, was confronted by quite two hundred warriors—
The Maoris evidently had calculated on completely surprising the troops; but what they did not accurately estimate was the steadiness of disciplined Regular troops. Lieutenant Page, having hacked and shot his way to the stockade, assembled his men, and, leaving a small party to hold the fort, came out into the open
A little later that morning
But Cudby did not turn his team. “I dursen't go back,” he cried in his broad English dialect, “I dursen't go back; I've got the rations to deliver.”
The two carters whipped up their horse and hurried on toward Fort Richmond, while Cudby, in fear every moment of receiving a volley from ambush in the dark timber that almost overhung him, but resolved to fulfil his duty, drove on to Boulcott's. When he arrived at the camp he saw laid out in the barn six dead bodies, the soldiers who had fallen; one of them was Bugler Allen, whom
Meanwhile bodies of troops despatched by Major Last—who had been informed of the attack by messenger from the front—were on the march out from Thorndon barracks and the Hutt stockade to reinforce the camp. These troops reinforcing Page drove the Maoris into the bush and silenced them.
Six whites lay dead, and four were severely wounded. Two of the wounded, Sergeant E. Ingram and a civilian named Thomas Hoseman, an employee of Mr Boulcott, died some days later. The losses of the Maoris were not accurately known, for all who fell were carried off, but two were seen shot dead, and ten or more were wounded, some of them severely.
Now the authorities, civil and military, were compelled by the pressure of public opinion to accept hapus at Pito-one, and the men at the town pas were also given muskets. Mr. David Scott, a colonist who understood the Maoris and their ways, was appointed to act as the European staff officer of the native contingent, co-operating with the chiefs kainga.
The olden battle-ground is now the golfers' links. Boulcott's homestead of 1846 (Section 46/111) was close to the spot where the Lower Hutt Golf Club's house now stands. The frequent floods and the repeated changes of the river's course have considerably altered the original contour of the place, and the actual site of the stockade has been transformed to a gorse-covered waste of gravel.
The citizens appealed for arms. Muskets, accoutrements, and ammunition were served out to a large number of men, who were sworn in as Volunteers. The residents of Te Aro formed a Volunteer Corps a hundred and fifty strong, under Mr. Edward Daniell as captain, Mr. Kenneth Bethune as lieutenant, and Mr. G. D. Monteith as ensign. Nightly patrols were established to guard against an expected attack on the town, and strong lines of pickets of the Regulars, Volunteers, and Militia encircled the
On the 15th June the Maoris killed with the tomahawk another settler, Richard Rush, near the present Lower Hutt Railway-station.
On the 16th June a composite force marched out from Boulcott's Farm on a reconnaissance towards the Taita district and the stretch of the
Lieutenant Herbert was wounded. Half-way to the stockade the force was met by a relieving body headed by the subaltern in charge of the post and by
In the meantime the Hutt Militiamen stationed at the Taita post—a small blockhouse surrounded by a stockade—had heard the sound of the battle in the bush, and had engaged in a brisk little skirmish of their own. Ensign White left the stockade with a sergeant and twelve men; and advanced in the direction of the firing. The little party of Militia came under fire very soon after they had entered the bush. They replied to the Maoris with coolness and skill, taking cover behind trees and fallen timber, and continued the engagement for more than an hour. At last, realizing that his detachment was in danger of being outflanked and surrounded by a superior force of the enemy—many of whom were armed with double-barrel guns—Mr. White withdrew to the stockade.
Mr. Peter Speedy, of Belmont, Lower Hutt, who was born in Wellington in 1842, informs me that the Belmont Creek, which runs out through his property, was an old war-track of the Maoris between the Heretaunga and the Porirua districts. The trail led up the rocky bed of the creek for about half a mile to a place where the stream forked; thence there was an ascent up a steep and narrow forested spur. The natives had cleared a part of this ridge, which was only a few yards wide, and when Speedy was bushfelling there many years after the war he found the remains of huts which had been roofed with totara bark, also stones used in the earth-ovens, a rusted bayonet, a musket-barrel, and other relics of 1846. The lofty ridge was an excellent position for defence, and it had evidently been used as a temporary pa in the war-days. The ground falls precipitously away for several hundreds of feet on either side into the canyon-like valleys. It was no doubt by this route that the war-party descended on Boulcott's Farm in May, 1846; and it was this track also that the Militia and friendly natives took in the march to Paua-taha-nui. The track entered the gorge very close to the spot where the Belmont Railway-station now stands. The Maori name of the range in rear of Belmont is Te Raho-o-te-Kapowai.
Another Porirua war-track ascended the hills on the west side of the Hutt about a mile lower down the valley, not far from the present railway-station of Melling; it trended across the hills on the northern side of the peak called Pokai-mangumangu. When the Hon. Dr.
TO THE RELIEF alike of Wellington townsmen, outlying settlers, and Ngati-Awa friendlies, Governor Grey returned to Port Nicholson from Auckland on the 1st July in H.M.S. “Driver,” and immediately infused energy into the lagging campaign against pa, although apparently not formidable in construction, was strategically strong in situation, being at the extreme head of Paua-taha-nui Inlet, partly surrounded by water, swamp, and bush, and difficult of approach either by land or by sea. This expedition (10th May) was a lively morning's adventure, in which McKillop and his comrades narrowly escaped being cut off.
McKillop's patrol would have been outmatched in a contest with the war-canoes which made a barbaric parade on the lake-like waters of Paua-taha-nui. A naval boat several times ventured up near the head of the arm, and on two occasions was compelled to retreat before these craft packed with Maoris. Two or three of the largest canoes were each manned by about fifty
On the morning of the 17th July the young naval officer, scanning the wooded coasts and the placid waters of the sea-lake, observed a large number of dark figures on the cleared part of a long point of hilly land which formed the largest promontory on the southern side of the Paua-taha-nui, and distant a little over a mile from Paremata camp. Through the narrow sea-passage where the railway-bridge now crosses the water near the Paremata fishing village McKillop followed the main channel of the tidal basin north-eastward until he was abreast of the promontory (to-day known as Long Point). Nothing was stirring on shore; every figure had vanished; but the officer ordered his crew to pull close in to the shore, and when within a few yards of the rocks fired a charge of canister into the manuka and small ngaio trees. Yells of mingled pain, fright, and rage arose, and from the bushes leaped a horde of shaggy-headed figures with flashing gun-barrels. It was only for a few seconds that their dusky faces were seen; they quickly took cover and opened a hot fire on the bluejackets. The gunners again raked the foliage with canister, and this fire brought out the Maoris. Firing as they came, they rushed into the open, and, seeing that the boat was within a few yards of the shore, many of them dashed into the shallow water on the edge of the main creek, attempting to board the boat. The men's beds and blankets had been lashed up in their hammocks and fastened round the top-sides and gun-wale of the boat, forming a bullet-proof inner breastwork. The encounter was at such close quarters that it was almost impossible for the warriors to miss. Nearly every bullet struck the boat, and although she was coppered almost up to the gunwale many balls passed through, to be stopped by the sailors' bedding parapet.
The Maoris, it was now seen, were led by
The crew completed their victory by firing several 12 lb. solid shot into the bushes where the Maoris had taken cover, and returned to Paremata.
By Proclamation dated 18th June, signed by Captain pakeha despatch-bearer joined them and marched with them, telling the leader Maketu that he was anxious to reach Wellington as soon as possible, as there was a box of goods awaiting him there from his father in England. After a series of adventures Deighton reached Wellington just in time to catch Governor Grey as he was about to leave for Auckland, and delivered to him not only the Wanganui despatch but also a letter to Rauparaha which Maketu had confidingly entrusted to him. He had left the Maoris at Rangitikei.
Grey acted quickly after assuring himself of Rauparaha's duplicity. He ordered a force of troops and armed police aboard the warship “Driver,” with some bluejackets from the “Calliope.” The “Driver” next morning anchored off Waikanae, in the strait between Kapiti Island and the long beach where the Waikanae River issues from its sand dunes. Here Captain Grey went ashore and visited the Ngati-Awa Tribe; they were gathered in their pa, under taua along the beach through Ngati-Awa territory they would intercept and attack him, but told Grey that they could not take the tribe into the bush if the expedition left the coast route and travelled through the ranges to the head of Paua-taha-nui or the Hutt. With this attitude the Governor was satisfied; he satisfied himself also, from what he heard at Waikanae, that Rauparaha was playing the Government false. This fully decided him in his decision to strike swiftly. Rowing off again to the “Driver,” Grey requested the commander to get under way and steam down past Porirua, as if going to Wellington, and then return after dark and anchor off the entrance to the harbour. This stratagem lulled any suspicions the Ngati-Toa and their wary chief might have entertained when they observed the warship on the coast.
The Ngati-Toa village of Taupo, where wahi-tapu, or holy place of the pa; it remains the only bit of Taupo held inviolate by the modern remnant of Ngati-Toa. The British military encampment on the Paremata sandy flat in the inner bay was about three-quarters of a mile distant from the pa.
In spite of the naval patrol on the waters of the inner harbour the hostile Maoris maintained their communication with Rauparaha and his people at Taupo, either by canoe at night or by the bush tracks on the northern side of the Paua-taha-nui arm. Gunpowder and other supplies for pa about a week before the “Driver” made her surprise visit. He spent a night in Rauparaha's house. In the morning his mind was filled with forebodings. He said to his kinsman, “O Rau, last night I dreamed a dream, a dream of evil to come. It will be well if you come away with me. Leave this place; it is full of danger.”
He strongly counselled Rauparaha to leave the sea-coast and go with him to Paua-taha-nui, where he would be safe. But Rauparaha, although uneasy, declined to leave Taupo. His wife Te Akau was ill and unable to travel. Te Akau was his chief wife; she had come down the west coast with him from Kawhia in the great migration of Ngati-Toa a quarter of a century previously, and he was not willing to leave her now, when she was unable to move. Despite his nephew's premonition and warning, therefore, he decided to remain at Taupo for the present. pa at the head of the harbour.
It was towards midnight on the 22nd July that the “Driver” with her force of special-service men anchored off the bay. The Governor and Captain Stanley sent for Mr. McKillop, the midshipman of the “Calliope” who had distinguished himself on the Paua-taha-nui patrol. To the young officer the Governor unfolded his scheme.
With the first glimmering of day McKillop and his boat's crew landed on the rocks about a quarter of a mile eastward of the pa. The other boats were busily employed landing the two hundred redcoats and bluejackets and the police.
“If the natives come out of their pa take no notice of them, but follow me silently,” said the interpreter to McKillop; “I know where the old man's house is.” Wading the small stream near the pa, the little party ran as quietly as they could up to the middle of the village, and Deighton pointed out Rauparaha's
whare. It was now fully daylight. The arresting-party hastened on to the chief's house, and there they came upon Rauparaha; the suspicious old warrior had just crawled out through the low doorway into the thatched porch. His wife Te Akau was by his side; she called the customary greeting, “Haere mai, haere mai!” Deighton informed Rauparaha that the force had come by the Governor's order to take him on board the man-of-war to be tried for having given the arms, ammunition, and provisions with which he had been supplied by the Government to
The interpreter had scarcely spoken the words before the old savage, who was seated immediately in front of the low doorway, threw himself back with an extraordinarily active movement for a man of his age, and in an instant seized a taiaha, with which he made a blow at his wife's head, realizing that she had been the indirect cause of his arrest. McKillop, who had been standing on the alert within arm's reach of Rauparaha, jumped forward and warded off the blow with his pistol. At the top of his voice the chief shouted, “Ngati-Toa e! Ngati-Toa e!” It was a call to his tribe for rescue. Out from the whares rushed the Maoris, but their chieftain was already in the grip of the sailormen. McKillop had him by the throat, while his four men secured him by the legs and arms, and held him in spite of his desperate struggles and the fact that his naked body was as slippery as an eel's, coated with a mixture of kokowai, or red ochre and shark-oil. The coxswain of McKillop's boat, an old sailor named Bob Brenchley, was the first of the men to grip an arm of the prisoner. Rauparaha savagely fixed his teeth in Brenchley's bare arm. The bluejacket laughingly shook his arm free, and with his open hand lightly smacked Rauparaha's face, explaining, “Why, ye damned old cannibal, d'ye want to eat a fellow up alive?” Rauparaha, in spite of his struggles, was carried down to McKillop's pinnace, which had been rowed along to the beach in front of the pa. The village was by this time surrounded by the force from the “Driver,” and any attempts at rescue were useless. Captain Stanley, of the “Calliope,” who had just come ashore from the “Driver,” called out, “Here, you, Mr. Deighton, it was you who discovered the old devil's treachery; you shall, if you like, have the honour of taking him off.”
The interpreter thanked the naval captain, and jumped into the boat. Mr. McKillop remained ashore to complete his work, and the captive was quickly rowed off to the war-steamer. As the crew pulled out they passed Motuhara, a small beach settlement where some of the Ngati-Toa lived. Rauparaha again lifted up his voice in a cry to his tribe for rescue: “Ngati-Toa e! Ngati-Toa e!” The interpreter told the chief that if a canoe
Major Durie and his police had little trouble in arresting the minor chiefs Wiremu te Kanae, Hohepa Tamaihengia, and two or
whare in Taupo and in the villages out west-ward of the point, Motuhara and Hongoeka, was searched for guns and ammunition. Over thirty muskets, many tomahawks, a quantity of ball cartridge, eight casks and kegs of gunpowder, cartouche-boxes, and a small 4-pounder cannon were seized.
While the sailors and police were transferring the captured arms to the boats the word came that a large party of pa having reached the stronghold at Paua-taha-nui. McKillop and his bluejackets were quickly aboard their gunboat and pulling up towards Paua-taha-nui to meet the Maoris. There were fifty men in a war-canoe paddling down the arm, but they put about and retreated at their utmost speed. The naval boat rowed up in pursuit until the shallows at the harbour-head were reached, opening fire with the bow carronade. The Maoris were chased back into their pa with McKillop's round shot flying about them; then five or six shots were fired into the stockade on the hill where the midshipman had enjoyed his morning's reconnaissance some weeks previously.
A few hours later Wellington was astonished by the news of the Governor's well-planned coup. The chiefs were transferred to the “Calliope,” and in that frigate they were detained as prisoners of war. No charge was formulated against them, but it was undesirable that they should be at large, and the cause of peace was certainly advanced by their capture. Kei mea mai te tangata tenei au te noho pouri nei ia au e noho taurekareka atu nei i runga i taku kaipuke manuao nei i a ‘Karaipi’; kaore rawa aku pouri, kaore au e mohio ana e noho taurekareka ana au. Ki taku whakaaro e noho rangatira
ana au, he whare rangatira i a aku korero e korero atu.” (“Let not men think that I abide in grief as I now remain in slavery aboard my warship the ‘Calliope’; no, it is not so. I know not any grief, though I so remain a prisoner. In my mind I am abiding here as a chief, and my abode is an abode of a chief.”)
The son in his manuscript likens these words to those of the Apostle Paul, who declared that his prison-house was a royal dwelling. A pakeha poet had expressed very much the same sentiment when he wrote, long before Rauparaha's day—
The incident of (moemoea) and his warning to Rauparaha, and the old chief's attack upon his wife, was related to me by the nearest surviving relative of
After the war a block of land on the coast at Hongoeka, near Plimmerton, was made over by pa at Paua-taha-nui. These Ngati-Mutunga, some of them old men, made up small casks of powder in flax-basket pikaus or back-loads, and transported them through the forests and ranges of Pukerua and along the northern shore of the bay.
A TRAVELLER TAKING the main road north from Wellington City and driving round the head of the Paua-taha-nui Inlet will pass within a few yards of the spot where pakeha boats lay long ago has become a sheep-paddock. A little stream comes down from the hills around the eastern and southern foot of the mound, and joins the sea 200 yards below the place where our main road crosses on a wooden bridge. The hill is small-wooded like a park; white grave-stones gleam among the shrubs and trees on its seaward face. It is a slumberous pretty spot—
Transformed as the place is by the lapse of nearly three-quarters of a century, one still may reconstruct in imagination the hilltop as it was in pa. The grass- and shrub-grown scarps in the English churchyard appear to mark the line of olden ditch-work on the south and south-west faces of the pa. In the paddock in rear of the church there are shallow trench and potato-pit excavations and levelled spaces indicating the sites of houses.
whares with underground communication. The outer stockade was a weak curtain, but the inner palisades were heavy timbers up to 10 inches or a foot in thickness and about 15 feet high. The fort was about eighty paces in length and half that in width; there were flanking defences, and there were intricate interior passage-ways, some on the surface fenced with manuka stakes, so narrow that only one man could pass at a time, and some underground. Shell-proof shelters covered with slabs and tree-trunks and earth were connected with the main trench by covered ways, and the main trench itself was cut with traverses protective against an enfilading fire down the ditch. The rear, as usual in Maori pas, was the weakest in defence; but the problem would have been to reach this part, naturally guarded as it was by water, swamp, and bush.
Captain Grey decided to approach the pa from the rear. He ordered a body of Militia, police, and Ngati-Awa friendlies to march across the hills from the Hutt and endeavour to carry
pa, and the incident was seen by some women from the hill stockade, which was now visible. Screaming out an alarm, they ran off to the pa. The main body and the Militia and police now came doubling up, and the whole force moved quickly forward. The pa had just been evacuated when the force rushed it.
The next stage in the history of Paua-taha-nui pa was its conversion into an Imperial military post. It was garrisoned by detachments of Regular regiments, and for a considerable period after hostilities had ceased it was occupied as an advanced post covering the construction of the main road northward to
Our illustration showing the Paua-taha-nui post as it was at this period, with the main Maori stockading retained, is from a water-colour drawing by Lieut.-Colonel W. A. McCleverty, who was sent to Wellington from Sydney at the end of 1846 as Land Claims Commissioner, and was afterwards given command of the military operations at Wanganui.
The scene of hostilities now shifted northward. whares the Militia
The Maori party in the advance continued the march early next day (4th August), leaving the rest of the expedition to await their report. The natives wore blue-serge blouses, with “V.R.” in large white letters front and back, a precaution necessary in bush warfare, where it was otherwise difficult to distinguish between friendly and hostile Maoris. The Maori scouts followed the trail until they found that the enemy's position was on the summit of the high steep range to the right (east) of the narrow gorge, where the flooded Horokiri came pouring down into the valley.
Early on the 6th August Major Last gave orders for the advance up this range to the east of the gorge. The white force was in two divisions. The first consisted of seven officers and 127 rank and file of the seamen from the “Calliope,” the Regular soldiers, the Militia, and the armed police, under Major Arney (58th). The second division, of five officers and 117 men of similar detail, was under the command of Captain Armstrong (99th). The Maori allies under their white officers and tribal chiefs led the way, feeling for the enemy; then came a detachment of Pioneers with axes and other tools to cut a way through the bush. These Pioneers were troops who had been employed on the Porirua roadworks; they were under the command of Lieutenant Elliott (99th). The troops began to advance at 9 a.m., and struggled up through the wet bush that choked the mountain-side. The steep lower slopes surmounted, the column worked up along a narrow ridge, which proved to be that selected by
The friendly natives now reported that parepare, or breastwork of tree-trunks and earth; in front of this a fairly clear glacis had been made by felling the bush for a short distance, so that no sheltered frontal attack could be made. Major Last, after reconnoitring the place, came to the conclusion that the fortification was “very strong,” composed, as he believed, of logs of timber placed horizontally one over another, with loopholes for musketry fire. In reality the breastwork was not a formidable affair, but the enemy held a naturally very strong position, only assailable with success by turning the flanks, an operation for which the Regular troops could not be used in such country.
A party of about twenty, consisting of soldiers, bluejackets, and Militia, under Lieutenant pa, and under a breastwork thrown up at this spot by the Pioneers.
For several hours an irregular but heavy fire was maintained by the troops and their native allies, and some thousands of rounds were expended for very little result. Firing lasted until about dark, when Major Last, fearing that the enemy would attack the troops in this position, very unfavourable for defence against a night raid, marched the greater number of the soldiers down the hill to the camp on the flat. The bluejackets meanwhile were despatched back through the bush to their boats at Paua-taha-nui, with orders to go to the Paremata fort and bring up two mortars.
McKillop and his sailors, with a number of Royal Artillery men, returned on the following day (7th August), bringing two small mortars and ammunition. It was a wearisome march from the Paua-taha-nui to the camp at the foot of the range, for everything had to be carried on the back over the narrow and slippery bush trail. The pieces were mounted on a terrace close to the
pa. The artillerymen soon found the range, and many shells fell in and around the rebel position.
Major Last by this time had come to the conclusion that it was not desirable either to advance his Regulars farther or to remain in his present camp. On the 10th August the troops were marched
The scene of the engagement of the 6th August, 1846, is the summit of a steep and lofty range on Mr. N. Abbott's sheep-run at Horokiri. Mr. Abbott's homestead, near the foot of the range and just at the entrance of the Horokiri Gorge (through which the main north road runs to Pae-kakariki), is on or very close to the site of the main camp of the troops, under Major Last, on their expedition to parepare, or breastworks of earth and logs. Fire-charred logs lie about the hillside, and the slopes are black-pencilled with the stumps of the wheki, a fern-tree whose butt is as hard as ironbark and almost indestructible. It was this fern-tree that the Maoris largely used in building up their parepare of horizontal timbers. In a slight dip in the ridge a line of depression in the turf running partly across the narrow saddle is readily recognized as the trench cut by the Government forces on the 6th August, after the encounter in which Lieutenant Blackburn was killed. The spot is about 100 yards below the fortified summit of the ridge. A few yards onward the ridge rises into a small knoll; passing over this there is a rather steep ascent to the crest of Battle Hill, as the site of
pa is locally called. The advance is not in a direct line; the sharp main spur, running roughly north and south, now twists to the north-east, until the narrow crest of the range is reached, when it again trends due northward. From east to west the top of the hill is only ten paces in width, and forty paces on its greater axis north and south. The face of the Maori breastwork was immediately on the south end of the crest, completely commanding the troops' line of approach from the south and south-west. All traces of logwork have long since disappeared, but the trench and the shelter-pit dug immediately in rear of the parepare are readily traced. The ruined trench, after the lapse of three-quarters of a century, is still about 3 feet deep, and its ditch-like terminal on the verge of the precipitous slope on the south-east side is well marked. The trench extends across the ridge a distance of 26 paces; it is roughly zigzag in outline, and about its centre there is an advanced rifle-pit; the breastwork in front of this would have formed a bastion for enfilading the front of the work on right and left. Four paces in rear of the line of trench, at the north end, there is a grassy rua, a pit 9 feet long and 3 feet deep, occupying half the width of the ridge-crown. It was originally roofed over with earth and timber as a shell-proof shelter.
The Regular troops and the Militia having been withdrawn from the field, the operations in the forest chase were left entirely to the Ngati-Awa allies, with their white officers, and the Ngati-Toa, under Rawiri Puaha. The scene of the pursuit was the roughest imaginable terrain for campaigning.
There was one sharp skirmish in the pursuit; this was on the
pa was named Poroutawhao; the site is now a native farm, between Levin and Foxton. The low hill upon which the palisaded stronghold was built was all but surrounded by miles of deep flax-swamps, threaded with slow-running watercourses, and dotted with lagoons swarming with wild ducks. Here, like Hereward the Wake on the mound that was his last stand amidst the fens of Ely,
pa in Poroutawhao. So passed a type of the old pagan order, a true irreconcilable, averse to anything of the white man's but his weapons of war. He was seldom seen in any dress but the picturesque native garments of flax; and a commanding figure he was, tomahawk in hand, standing 2 inches over 6 feet, draped in a finely woven and beautifully patterned parawai or kaitaka cloak.
THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY'S settlement at Wanganui—or Petre, as it was officially named in compliment to Lord Petre, one of the directors of the Company—was the most unfortunate of all the colonies planted by the Wakefields. The first settlers under the Company took up their land there in 1841, but the natives very soon disputed their title to many of the sections, declaring that they had never sold the land. “Our case is indeed a hard one,” Dr. Wilson, of Wanganui, wrote in his diary in 1846. “Up to the commencement of our present war state we had waited more than six years for the proprietorship of land here which we paid for in London upwards of seven years ago; but that promised land has never yet been delivered up to us.” When some of the unfortunate settlers, despairing of ever being established in secure occupation of their farm sections outside the Town of Wanganui, applied to the Company for land elsewhere in New Zealand they were informed that only in the Wanganui district had they a claim for land. Those who left Wanganui were compelled to purchase afresh elsewhere, and those who remained presently found themselves compelled to arm for defence against the Maoris with whom they had hoped to live in neighbourly peace. The Company blamed the Government for preventing selection according to the conditions of sale, but Governor Hobson declared that nothing contained in the agreement between the Government and the Company had any such reference to their engagements with private parties, and held that the Company was bound to fulfil the conditions it had entered into for the disposal of their lands. Neither Hobson nor Fitzroy, however, was able to improve the unhappy position. Not until a campaign had been fought and Wanganui relieved from a state of siege, and the troubles adjusted by Governor Grey and Mr. (afterwards Sir Donald) McLean, was the peaceful progress of the district assured.
In 1845 there were not many more than two hundred Europeans in Wanganui; there were about sixty houses. This little outpost of colonization was practically surrounded by Maoris.
kumara, vegetable marrows, and pumpkins for sale by barter. Governor Grey in 1846 investigated the condition of the settlement, and made arrangements for the completion of the purchase of 40,000 acres. Major Richmond, the Superintendent of the Southern District, was deputed to settle the details. It was not until 1848, however, that the sale was finally closed. The area of purchase was increased to 80,000 acres, extending to the Kai-iwi River.
In December of 1846 the frigate “Calliope” and the Government brig “Victoria” brought up from Wellington and landed at Wanganui 180 men of the 58th Regiment, under Captain Laye and Lieutenant Balneavis, four Royal Artillery men with two 12-pounder guns, Lieutenant (afterwards Captain) T. B. Collinson, R.E., and Mr. Tyrone Power, D.A.C.G. These troops set about the work of fortifying the town. The warship also brought up the small gunboat which had been used in the Porirua patrols. Lieutenant Holmes, R.N., was detailed to command the gunboat-crew; with him was a young midshipman of the “Calliope.” On the 16th April, 1847, a minor chief of the Wanganui people, by name Ngarangi, went to the midshipman's quarters to receive payment for some work done. The juvenile officer, by way of a joke, presented a pistol at him; the charge exploded, and Ngarangi received a wound in the head. He was well tended, and soon began to recover. He told his people that the wound was accidental; nevertheless a small party determined to exact utu for the blood-letting, and so precipitate war. Six of them attacked the home of Mr.
The natives attached to the Europeans by ties of friendship or by the teachings of their missionary,
The fortification which came to be called the Rutland Stockade was constructed on a sandy hill about 70 feet above the level of the river, near the northern end of the then small settlement of Wanganui. This height, the most commanding ground in the town, was known to the Maoris as Puke-namu (Sandfly Hill). It was the terminal of a gentle ridge which extended westward to the long hill whose forested slopes were given the name of St. John's Wood. The space enclosed by the stockade on the level summit of the hill measured 60 yards by 30 yards. The palisading consisted of rough timbers and whole trees, 9 inches or more in thickness, set closely together, sunk 3 or 4 feet in the sandy soil, and standing 8 feet high above ground. The tops of the logs were pointed; this shed the water off and prevented decay. These uprights were braced by two inner horizontal rails, and loopholes for musket-fire were cut in the stockade all round. The two 12-pounder guns landed by the “Calliope” were mounted in the stockade, one at each end. Within the enclosure were built two strong wooden blockhouses, the first blockhouses with overhanging upper storeys built in the North Island. Upon the plan of these structures were modelled most of the frontier
This well-planned and solidly constructed fort, frowning over the little town and inspiring confidence in the settlers, cost between £3,000 and £4,000. For many a year it stood there on Puke-namu Hill, garrisoned by Imperial soldiers until well on toward the end of the “sixties,” and was afterwards used by the Armed Constabulary. When the 57th Regiment arrived the original palisading was replaced by sawn timbers. So well-built were the stockade and the blockhouses that they would have stood to this day, a memorial to the troubled days of Wanganui's infancy, had not an unsentimental municipality demolished them in the “eighties,” greatly to the disgust of patriotic colonists.
On a smaller mound, Patu-puhou (or Patu-puwhao), south-ward of Puke-namu, the military erected another fortification, a stout stockade enclosing barracks. This post was named the York Stockade. The business heart of modern Wanganui occupies the space between these two fortress hills, now converted into public parks.
In May H.M.S. “Inflexible,” a paddle-steamer like the “Driver,” landed at Wanganui the Grenadier Company of the 65th Regiment, a hundred strong, from Auckland. This reinforcement brought the garrison up to a strength sufficient to hold their positions, but insufficient to make any active aggressive move.
In the meantime the natives from many of the up-river settlements, from Tunuhaere as far up as Taumarunui, had united in a strong expedition against the white settlement, and came sweeping down the river in their war-canoes, chanting their paddling time-songs and their war-cries, gathering in fresh parties
taua halted a few miles above the town its strength was five or six hundred, armed with muskets or double-barrel guns and well provided with ammunition. The principal chiefs were
Captain Laye, fearing a night attack on the town, advised all the residents to leave their homes each night and spend the hours of darkness in the partly fortified houses of three of the principal settlers, named Rees, Nixon, and Smith. This practice was observed throughout the investment of the town by the natives.
Next day (19th May) an attack in some force was delivered against the town. The armed Maoris first appeared from the seaward and western sides of the town, and as there were others on the north the settlement was practically invested on all sides but the river. The besiegers were extended in parties along the sandhills, and a large number took up a position on the southern side of Patu-puhou Hill. When the action began a party of fifteen armed civilians held the crown of this hill, but they were soon ordered to retire, and the enemy, sheltered by the ridge from the fire of the Puke-namu stockade, plundered the houses of several residents in the southern part of the town. The houses raided and sacked were those of Messrs. Allison, Campbell, Churton, Deighton, Day, Small, and Wilson. Some of these dwellings, near the riverside, were within short musket-range of the lower stockade (which enclosed the Commercial Hotel on the flat), and the troops in that post, numbering about sixty, opened fire on the raiders. The soldiers were not permitted to leave either of the stockades. Lieutenant Holmes brought his gunboat down the river from her usual anchorage under Shakespeare Cliff and fired several rounds of canister from the bow gun. The chief Maketu—he who had headed the reinforcements for
Some arrangements were made by Captain Laye and Lieutenant Holmes for the better defence of the place; a small howitzer was brought down from the Rutland Stockade to the lower fortified post, and the carronade mounted in the gunboat was hoisted on to the deck of the topsail schooner “Governor Grey,” where it would be of greater use, and would enable the naval officer in command to protect vessels and troops arriving.
Governor Grey landed from H.M.S. “Inflexible” on the 24th May; with him came the old hero of the northern war, Tamati
rangatiras accompanied Captain Grey to the friendlies' village at Putiki, where Waka endeavoured to stimulate the missionary party to a decided course of action against the hostiles. Next day the Governor, with over three hundred soldiers (58th and 65th) and a number of armed settlers, made a reconnaissance in force of the ground occupied by the enemy; the limit of the march was a point about three miles above the town. Simultaneously the gun-schooner and two armed boats went up the river covering the military's right flank. A few rockets were thrown in among distant groups of Maoris.
June of 1847 was a month of harassing blockade for the whites cooped up in the narrow limits of Wanganui Town, unable to venture in safety beyond musket-shot of the stockades. One or two skirmishes enlivened the futile weeks. Reinforcements under Lieut.-Colonel McCleverty having arrived from Wellington by the war-steamer “Inflexible” and the frigate “Calliope,” further reconnaissances in force were made up the valley of the Wanganui. The natives' position was six or seven miles above the town; they had fortified temporary pas, and immediately in their rear was the forest, where they could not be followed with any chance of success for British arms. The extremely cautious tactics of the British commander excited the impatience of the civilians, who candidly criticized the careful defensive attitude maintained by the troops. There were between five and six hundred soldiers in the garrison, now outnumbering the Maoris, but their commander, McCleverty, had no intention of attempting any bold movement. The only enterprise displayed was on the part of the armed settlers, who now and then scouted out in small parties to the abandoned farms and drove in such cattle as had not been killed by the raiders.
Even the enemy by this time had been dissatisfied with this inconclusive kind of warfare. The soldiers would not come out and attack them on the ground that suited the native manner of fighting, and they could not touch the soldiers in the stockades. The potato-planting season was approaching, and it would soon be necessary for the warriors to return to their homes up the river and attend to their crops. Before they took to their canoes, however, they resolved to make an attack upon the town with their full force and endeavour to draw the troops out from the forts. This decision produced the most important action in the tedious campaign.
On the 20th July the Maoris, numbering about four hundred, appeared on the low hills inland of the town, moving down towards it in skirmishing order. The larger number occupied the
raupo swamp then stretched along the eastern foot of the ridge; this marsh contained a lagoon. The only convenient approach from the town was along a narrow strip of low ground, with the pools and bogs of the swamp on either side. Two daring fellows of the enemy ope, skirmishing close up to the town and attempting to cut off a settler who was driving in his cattle, provoked Lieut.-Colonel McCleverty into action. He despatched two detachments of troops from the stockades in pursuit; these parties were under Lieutenant Pedder (58th) and Ensign Thelwall (65th); after them was sent a reinforcement from
The first parties were soon in action, and reinforcements were despatched from the stockades, until at last four hundred soldiers were engaged in the skirmishing. In the meantime Lieutenant Holmes and Midshipman Carnegie, of the “Calliope,” manned the river gunboat, and with the 12-pounder carronade and muskets checked a party of Maoris advancing along the right bank of the Wanganui. The Royal Artillery detachment, under Captain Henderson, advanced towards the edge of the swamp with two field-guns, a brass 3-pounder and a 45⅖-inch howitzer, and opened fire. The Colonel now shifted his guns with a view to drawing the enemy down into the open, and the troops in the advance began to retire across the swamp. The Maoris leaped from their cover and followed closely on the troops, some firing, some dashing in with their long-handled tomahawks. The line of withdrawal was along the natural causeway through the swamp. The little rearguard faced about when the foremost of the enemy were within about 15 yards and charged. Several Maoris were bayoneted in the mêlée. Other detachments coming to the help of the rearguard, the further advance of the Maoris was stopped, and the main body of the enemy reoccupied the trenches and breastworks and the slopes of the hill south of the gully. From these positions they continued to fire on the troops so long as the latter were within range. So indecisively ended the day's engagement. The Maoris held their position under musketry and field-gun fire, but they had had a taste of the British bayonet. Two British soldiers were killed, and one died of his wounds. Ten soldiers and one Ngati-Toa Maori were wounded. Of the enemy three were killed and ten or a dozen wounded. The natives carried off and buried the body of one of the soldiers—Private Weller, of the 58th—who was killed in the bayonet charge.
The scene of this action, known in local history as the Battle of St. John's Wood, has been transformed completely. The olden lagoons and rushy swamps have long been drained, ploughed, and planted; part of the battle-ground is now occupied by the buildings of the Wanganui Collegiate School and beautiful homes and gardens. But the contour of the ridge is unaltered, and the gap separating the southernmost hill from the once-wooded land to the right, as one views it from the College grounds, is easily recognized to-day as the pass each side of which was trenched and rifle-pitted.
The 23rd July saw the Maoris' final appearance in force before the town. Some occupied the heights above St. John's Bush and
Early in 1848 the Governor concluded an amicable arrangement with the lately hostile chiefs. Their rebellion was condoned on condition that the stock driven off from the settlers' farms was restored. A few cattle were returned; the rest had gone into the rebels' stomachs. The settlers whose cattle had disappeared were ordered — with an unconscious humour which did not appeal to the unfortunate farmers—to pay 1s. 6d. per head to the natives who drove back any of their stock and delivered them in the town. The peace now established on the Wanganui River remained unbroken until the first Hauhau War 1864–65.
LAND DISPUTES TROUBLED the Settlement of New Plymouth almost from the day of its foundation. Commissioner Spain, who in 1844 investigated the New Zealand Company's claims, awarded 60,000 acres to the Company on payment of £200; but Governor Fitzroy set aside this award, considering that it would be an injustice to a very large number of Te Atiawa (Ngati-Awa) who were absent at the time their land was said to have been sold. Later, various blocks of land were purchased to satisfy the demands of the settlers. The principal transactions of this nature were carried out by Mr. F. pakeha. This post, a puriri spar about 30 feet high, was named by the Maoris “ Poututaki,” and came to be known by the Europeans as the “Fitzroy pole” from its proximity to the Fitzroy Village, now a suburb of New Plymouth. It had two life-sized figures in bold relief, representing the pakeha cowering beneath a Maori warrior; the native figure was intended as a presentment of a chief of Puketapu, one Parata te Huia. The post was intended to mark
pakeha, according to the Maoris, was to own any land between that spot and the Auckland District. It was 1853 before the natives would permit settlements on the Bell Block. The return to Waitara from Waikanae in 1848 of the greater part of the Atiawa (or Ngati-Awa) Tribe further complicated the progress of the white settlement in Taranaki. These people, sections of whom had sold much of the land about Wellington to the New Zealand Company—they had conquered those lands from the original holders—conceived a desire to return to their ancestral homes on the Waitara, and, in spite of the opposition and even threats of Governor Grey, carried out their undertaking successfully. Grey eventually withdrew his opposition in consideration of the help afforded to the Government by the Atiawa at Waikanae and Wellington in crushing
pakeha settlers, who presently moved the authorities to extend their purchases towards the Waitara.
In the meantime the growing native jealousy of the “If Englishmen could occasionally be brought to face the fact that since the institution of their nationality and language no permanent English community has ever passed under a foreign yoke, they would be better able to understand how impossible it is for a dominant race to do complete justice to a subject people, and how hollow is the pretence that impartial justice is rendered to such people. The strong natural sense of justice which animates Englishmen, and their intense respect for the rights of property, have doubtless helped to a vast degree to counteract the evils of domination and disparity; but if we could view the question from a national Maori point of view we should find much to approve of in the principle of the League.”—Mr. Justice Chapman, in his “History of New Zealand” (Dunedin).pakeha took formidable form in a combination to prevent further land-sales. This powerful movement, to which was conjoined an effort to found a Maori kingdom, was initiated shortly after New Zealand received its Constitution Act bestowing representative government upon the colony. The connection between these most important political developments may be rather difficult to trace exactly, but the coincidence is certainly remarkable. The Maori
The anti-pakeha crusade was given its first expression in a great conference of the west-coast tribes held in 1854 at Manawa-pou, a large settlement of the Ngati-Ruanui, at the mouth of the Ingahape River, on the South Taranaki coast. The site of this celebrated meeting is still plainly to be traced, although it is now part of the farm of a white settler. Manawa-pou is a beautiful terrace overlooking the sea, on the south side of the mouth of the Ingahape River, where the stream comes curving out of a deep grassy valley. On the hill 300 feet above are the earthworks of the Imperial redoubt of Manawa-pou, dating back to General Cameron's campaign. Here in the “fifties” was the home of a section of the Ngati-Ruanui, notable for the large stature of its men. The tribe built an unusually large meeting-house for the gathering; it was 120 feet long and 35 feet wide. “Taiporohenui,” the name given to the assembly-house, was orginally that of a sacred house of instruction in Hawaiki, according to Taranaki tradition. A great patriotic song was chanted by the people at the opening of “Taiporohenui.” It began:—
E kore Taranaki e makere atu!E kore Taranaki e makere atu!Kei marea mai—kei marea mai!Tika tonu mai ki a Piata-kai-manawa,I Piata-kai-manawa.Ka turuKo te whakamutunga,E kapa-ti, kapa-ti!E—i—e!
In this chant the spirit of determination to hold fast to the ancestral land was made manifest—“Taranaki shall not be lost, shall not be abandoned to the stranger.” The conference
runanga (councils). At this meeting, too, the idea of a Maori king for the Maori people was discussed and fervently approved.
The differences between the adherents of the Land League and those who wished to sell developed into murderous intertribal feuds. On the 3rd August, 1854, Rawiri Waiaua, who offered the Government a disputed area at Taruru-tangi, in the Puketapu Block, was fatally shot, with several of his followers, by Katatore and a party of twenty-eight men representing the non-sellers. The Government professed itself powerless to interfere. The quarrelling factions fortified themselves in their pas, and an intermittent skirmishing warfare prevailed for many months. The rival parties often selected the vicinity of the white settlements for their guerilla warfare. The Administration was appealed to for troops for the protection of New Plymouth, and on the 19th August, 1855, the first British garrison of the province arrived. This was a portion of the 58th Regiment, numbering about 270 men and officers, under Captain Seymour, with some Royal Artillery men and several field-guns, and some sappers and miners. In September the force was increased by the arrival from Wellington of some two hundred of the 65th Regiment.
The native-land vendetta was resumed in August, 1857, when pa, which was sacked and burned. All north Taranaki, or at any rate the native portion of the population, was almost continually under arms.
The period 1858–59 was one of continual internecine strife in the district between the Bell Block and the Waitara. Ihaia's pa, Ika-moana, near Puketapu, was evacuated and destroyed in February, 1858. Ihaia and his party, the land-sellers, were then besieged at the Karaka, on the Waitara. On the 10th March, 1858, Mr. S. Percy Smith (afterwards Surveyor-General) rode down to the Waitara with Mr. Parris, Civil Commissioner, who was in charge of native affairs in Taranaki, and made sketches under fire of the pas occupied by Ihaia and
The following description of the fighting at the Bell Block arising out of the Puketapu feud over the sale of lands to the
“Some curious incidents occurred in the native war waged over the newly made farms of the settlers from Devon and Cornwall. As a boy living in one of the Taranaki frontier posts, I heard the story of those stirring times recounted by my father. The opposing tribes fought back and forth with varying fortune over the undulating country of the Waiwhakaiho River, and out on to what was later known as the Bell Block. The settlers in 1857–58 were witnesses of many thrilling incidents, and it was a frequent occurrence to have to stop work in the middle of a fencing or ploughing job and retire to the security of the farmhouse while a fierce skirmish took place in which numerous casualties occurred on both sides. Though bullets were flying in all directions, the white settlers were never molested, and their stock also was under strict tapu, and was not interfered with. An episode typical of those thrilling days was described by a Devonshire settler who in the midst of ploughing operations suddenly found himself in a Maori battle. The opposing war-parties had skirmished up towards one another through the high fern surrounding the little farm, and finished up with a charge and close hand-to-hand fighting with tomahawk and mere over the newly ploughed ground. For a moment the settler thought that his end had come, but the brown warriors took no notice of his presence, and as the battle passed on he found himself still standing, hand on plough, gazing in bewilderment at several stark figures that lay sprawled in the attitude of sudden death amid the newly turned furrows. As night fell groups of warriors, many of whom bore fresh wounds from musket-ball or blow of tomahawk, gathered round the nearest farmhouse and deposited their guns with the white settlers, telling them that they would call for them on the morrow, when fighting was resumed in the same manner.
“In another case a settler received a message from each of the opposing forces to the effect that a fight would take place on his farm in the morning, and that it would be well for him to remain in his house until the tide of war had passed by. Taking due heed of this warning, the settler was witness on the following morning of a battle in his pastures. Many bullets struck the house, and one random shot killed a sheep; otherwise no damage was done to his property. The nervous tension brought on by these conditions of life proved too much for several of the settlers, who finally left the district in search of more peaceful surroundings.”
IT WAS Tamehana te Rauparaha, the son of the great Ngati-Toa conquistador, who first suggested the establishment of a king or high chief for the union of Maori tribes. Tamehana had made a voyage to England, and, being an exceedingly shrewd and observant man, he returned with many ideas for the betterment of his countrymen. The principal reform he felt impelled to propose was the setting-up of a king under whose control the people should live in harmony with each other and with their pakeha neighbours. His kinsman Matene te Whiwhi, of Otaki, seized upon the notion with patriotic enthusiasm, and travelled among the tribes advocating union and the election of some high rangatira as head of the Maori nation.
The members of the confederation of the anti-land-selling chiefs and people found considerable difficulty in the selection of a head for the union of the tribes. Many men of high pedigree were approached, but one after another declined the troublesome office of king. One of the chiefs whom Matene te Whiwhi and his fellow-leaguers urged to accept the kingship was Whitikau, of the Nga-Rauru Tribe, Waitotara. He refused; so did
The Waikato tribes held a very large meeting in 1857 at Paetai, on the Waikato River, at which the question was debated by delegates from all the tribes of the confederation, as well as others outside the league. The Arawa people of Rotorua and Maketu were represented at this gathering by Temuera te Amohau. Eloquent efforts were made to induce the Arawa to join the Kingites. Temuera refused, saying, “One of our chiefs, Timoti, was the only man of the Arawa people who signed the Treaty of Waitangi, but we shall not depart from the pledge he then gave. We will not join the king tribes. My king is Queen Victoria.” (“Taku kingi ko Kuini Wikitoria.”)
Temuera was taunted by some of the Waikato chiefs with the defeat Te Waharoa had inflicted on the Arawa twenty years
(“Ka tu a te Arawa hai toka tu moana, e pakaru ai nga ngaru o to Kingitanga.”) Temuera concluded by telling the Waikato that if they wished to set up a Maori king they should apply to the highest chief in New Zealand, Te Kani-a-Takirau, of the East Cape.
This suggestion is said to have led to an offer to the chief named to become king of the federated tribes, but here again the leaguers met with a refusal. Te Kani, in any case, was not a suitable selection. He was a very high-born rangatira, but a man of no force of character, and his territory was remote from the chief seats of agitation.
A conference was also held in 1857 at Pukawa, Lake Taupo, and was attended by chiefs from all over the Island. The chiefs finally selected
The late mana and bestowed it upon
“marae, the meeting-ground, at Pukawa. At the masthead he hoisted a national flag; the pattern was that of the flag given by King William IV of England to the northern Maori tribes at the Bay of Islands some years before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Beneath this flag at intervals down the mast he had long ropes of plaited flax attached. The flagstaff symbolized Tongariro, the sacred mountain of our tribe. The Maoris were assembled in divisions grouped around the foot. manuka peg, which he drove into the ground in front of his
“The great mountains of the South Island also were named. Each had its symbolic rope—Tapuae-nuku and Kaikoura, and the greatest of all, Aorangi. Those were for the Ngai-Tahu Tribe, whose representative at the meeting was Taiaroa. Returning to the North Island mountains, our ariki took in turn the ropes emblematic of the west coast and the Waikato, and called upon the chiefs from those parts to secure them to the soil. These mountains were Para-te-tai-tonga (the southern peak of Ruapehu), for the Whanganui tribes; Taranaki (Mount Egmont), for Taranaki, Te Atiawa, and Ngati-Ruanui tribes; Pirongia and Taupiri, for the Waikato clans; Kakepuku, for the Ngati-Maniapoto; Rangitoto, for Ngati-Matakore and Ngati-Whakatere; Whare-puhunga, for Ngati-Raukawa; Maunga-tautari, for Ngati-Haua and Ngati-Koroki; Maunganui (at Tauranga), for Ngai-te-Rangi; Te Aroha, for Ngati-Tama-te-ra; and finally Moehau (Cape Colville Range), for the Ngati-Maru Tribe.
“Each of the ropes representing these sacred mountains of the tribes was hauled taut and staked down. So in the middle stood Tongariro, the central mountain, supported and stayed by all these tribal cords, which joined the soil of New Zealand to the central authority. Above floated the flag, emblem of Maori nationality. Thus was the union of the tribes demonstrated so that all might see, and then did mana-tapu of the soil and acclaim him as the king of the native tribes of New Zealand.”
While the scheme for a king for the Maori people originated with the two chiefs of the Ngati-Toa at Otaki, it was not long before the leading rangatira of the Ngati-Haua, in the Waikato-Waihou country, emerged as the great advocate of the doctrine of Maori self-government. pakeha Administration read pathetically. With all the powers of a well-balanced brain he contended for the right of the Maoris to administer their own affairs within their own boundaries. He quoted the sales of native land for very small prices, only to be cut up and sold for much greater sums. “Have we not better right to this advanced price than the pakeha?” The land, always the land, was the theme of his earnest argument. “Surely that it is unoccupied now is no reason why it should always remain so. I hope the day will come when our descendants will not have more than they really require. As to a king, why should not every race have a king of its own? Is not the Queen (English), Nicholas (Russian), Bonaparte (French), Pomare (Tahitian), each for his own people? If all the countries were united the aloofness of the Maori might be reprehensible, but they are not.”
“My friends,” he wrote, “do you grudge us a king, as if it were a name greater than that of God? If it were so that God forbade us, then we would give it up; but he forbids not, and while only our fellow-men are angry we will not relinquish it.” In another letter to the Government he defined the reasons for the appointment of a Maori king: “to put an end to land feuds, to put down troubles, to hold the land of the slaves, and to judge the offences of the chiefs.” And this desire for a high chief for the Maori was not inconsistent with loyalty to the accepted principle of British eminent domain. He had seen the evils of disunion among the tribes, the failure of the white Government to stop bloodshed over land disputes. His ideal was peaceful union and civilization for the Maori, under the benevolent control of Christianized chiefs. “Te Whakapono, te Aroha, me te Ture” (“Religion, Love, and the Law”) was the watchword of his political faith. But the altruistic king-maker was in advance of his contemporaries in the colony, Maori and pakeha. Had Sir
THE COMPLICATED HISTORY of the Waitara purchase may be reduced to a simple summary. Teira, a minor chief of the Atiawa, living with his fellow-tribesmen on the ancestral lands on the Waitara, was persuaded to offer 600 acres of the land to the Government, at a price of £1 per acre. This block was on the left side of the Waitara, near the mouth, and included the ground on which the present Town of Waitara stands. A number of Teira's people supported him, but the majority of the Atiawa, headed by
As was often the case in native disputes, a quarrel over a woman was one of the roots of dissension. The following is a statement by a Kingite survivor of the wars:—
“Our troubles which led to war began when our people lived in their pa called Karaponia (California), on the left (west) side of the Waitara River, at the mouth. A woman, Hariata, was the cause. She was the wife of Ihaia te Kiri-kumara, and because of her unfaithfulness Ihaia had her seducer, Rimene, killed. The man's body was buried in the pa. Because of the wrong done to him Ihaia sought for further revenge and sought compensation in land. The tribe would not agree to this, inasmuch as the offence had already been paid for sufficiently by the death of the man Rimene. Ihaia, however, would not listen to this agreement, and he joined with Teira and sold some of the land of Te Rangitaake to the Government in order to obtain compensation for the adultery of his wife. Hence this haka song of the Atiawa:—
E Mau na wa!”
The case for the European settlers of Taranaki lay in the necessity for obtaining more land for the extension of the settlements. With thousands upon thousands of acres of beautiful and fertile but unused territory around them, it was very natural that they should urge the Administration to purchase new blocks for farms. Immigration was increasing, and the large families of the original settlers made obvious the need for more land. The vigorous men of Cornwall and Devon, who formed the larger proportion of the settlement-founders, were not disposed to permit a few hundreds of natives to bar the way to the good acres lying waste under fern and tutu. Hemmed in as they were between the mountains and the sea and between the domains of the Maori tribes, they were impatient for expansion of their landed possessions. The Maori, on the other hand, had become very uneasy at the steady incoming of immigrant ships, and feared that the pakeha, with whom at one time he would have been content to live in friendship, would presently outnumber and overrun the native people. Wise statesmanship might have averted a clash, but, unfortunately, the one man who could have devised a method of conciliating the antagonistic factions was absent from the colony.
Thoughtful men such as See Appendices for Sir whakahe, and means putting the other in the wrong. There appears little reason to doubt,” Shortland concluded (p. 104), “that Teira's proposal to sell Waitara was prompted by a vindictive feeling towards Wi Kingi, for he knew well that by such mode of proceeding he would embroil those who would not consent with their European neighbours. At the same time it is a rather mortifying reflection that the astute policy of a Maori chief should have prevailed to drag the colony and Her Majesty's Government into a long and expensive war to avenge his own private quarrel.”
THE COMPLETION of the Waitara purchase, in spite of
New Plymouth in 1860 had a white population of about two thousand five hundred, of whom between five and six hundred were men and youths of fighting-age. They could have claimed, as Nelson wrote of his “Agamemnons” in 1794, “We are few, but the right sort.” Nearly twenty years of Taranaki life had developed many a settler into an expert bushman, familiar with the forest tracks, and fairly well able to meet the Maori on level terms. Such families as the Atkinsons, the Smiths and Hursthouses, the Bayleys, Messengers, and Northcrofts produced ideal frontiersmen, schooled in the rough work of settlement, trained
Shortly after the war began the effective garrison of New Plymouth and its outposts numbered about twelve hundred men, of whom the 65th Regiment made up about half. Marsland Hill, the ancient Maori pa Pukaka, was an excellent headquarters site and place of refuge in case of emergency. It overlooked the town and the country for many miles, and its position just in the rear of the central settlement made it a suitable citadel. As the war went on and the out-settlers were driven in, and New Plymouth was reduced practically to a state of siege, it was deemed necessary to constrict the occupied area and to entrench the town. The accompanying plan shows the line of ditch and parapet, roughly triangular in figure. The sea-beach formed the base, and Marsland Hill citadel the apex; one said of the triangle was along the line of Liardet Street and the other along Queen Street. There were gates on the Devon Road line where this entrenchment intersected it. There were several outposts, some of which were earthwork redoubts, others timber blockhouses. The British warships sent to the aid of Taranaki, besides the “Niger,” were the “Iris,” a 26-gun sailing-frigate, the “Cordelia,” and the “Pelorus,” both steam-corvettes; and later in the year the Victorian Government's fine barque-rigged war-steamer “Victoria” arrived from Melbourne, having generously been lent for the assistance of the colonists.
New Plymouth Town, crowded to excess, was now lively with all the business of preparation for war. Governor Gore Browne came down from Auckland. With him in the “Airedale” came Colonel Gold, who took over the Taranaki command until Major-General Pratt arrived. The garrison was reinforced at the same time by the headquarters and three companies of the 65th, a splendid regiment of stalwart bearded men, mostly Irishmen, young in years, but already veterans in service. H.M.S. “Niger,” a barque-rigged screw-corvette under the command of Captain Cracroft, arrived on the same day (1st March), bringing a very able young Royal Artillery officer, Lieutenant MacNaghten, and some gunners. The “Niger” had a few Auckland lads in her crew; they had joined her in January. Her armament consisted of twelve 32-pounder broadside guns, ten of which were slide-guns with elevating-screws; the two after-guns were the old Nelson type. Mounted forward was a 68-pounder gun (95 cwt.) working on brass slides; it could fire either to port or to starboard, and was a first-class gun for those times. The “Niger” also carried a 12-pounder brass field-piece for Naval Brigade work ashore.
On the 5th March Colonel Gold moved upon the Waitara with a force of four hundred officers and men of the 65th Regiment, some artillery, and the newly formed Mounted Rifles (Captain Des Veaux), and a long baggage-train of wagons and carts. Camp was pitched on the disputed land, on ground overlooking the mouth of the Waitara. Here a large redoubt was built, and it became the main camp for operations which lasted just twelve months.
The Maori forces opposed to the troops were not numerous until the war had been some time in progress, when many fighting-men of Ngati-Maniapoto, Waikato, Ngati-Haua, and the south
The first shot was fired on the 17th March, 1860. pa Te Kohia, more generally known as the L pa from its shape, was 110 feet in length and 33 feet in width on each of its two arms, and within the double row of palisading was a series of rifle trenches and pits, most of which were roofed over with timbers, fern, and earth. The place was well provisioned with potatoes, maize, fish, and fruit. The garrison consisted of about a hundred men of Te Atiawa. Early in the afternoon of the 17th Colonel Gold attacked the pa with a force composed of three companies of the 65th Regiment and a few sailors from H.M.S. “Niger” (which had anchored off the mouth of the river) with a rocket-tube, twenty of the Royal Artillery with a 12-pounder and two 24-pounder field-guns, ten sappers and miners, and twenty of the Volunteer cavalry.
The artillery and the rocket-tube first opened fire at a range of 750 yards, and later were moved to within 400 yards of the pa. The guns made better practice at the reduced range, and many shells burst in the fortification. As the artillery range was shortened the hidden Maori musketeers opened a sharp fire, which was replied to by the infantry skirmishers. The Maori fire presently ceasing, some of the Volunteer cavalry rode up very close to the pa and fired their revolvers off, and two of them seized and carried away the war-flag (a red colour, bearing the name “Waitaha”); the staff had broken and was hanging down outside the stockade. A sudden volley from the pa mortally wounded a young cavalryman named J. Sarten, and he dropped from his horse, the first man to fall in the Taranaki War. A sailor of the
The troops spent the night entrenched behind a low breastwork in the form of a half-moon, with the guns and wagons in the rear. A fire was kept up by the Maoris for some time after dark. Their palisading had been battered considerably by the shells and solid shot, and, recognizing that they could not hope to hold the position much longer, they prudently evacuated it before daylight on the morning of the 13th.
At dawn the guns moved up close and again opened fire, and a breach was made at the south end of the stockade, through which Lieutenant MacNaghten, R.A., and some of his gunners and a portion of the 65th rushed, only to find the place empty. It is said that MacNaghten had informed Gold on the previous evening that a practicable breach had been made, but although the 65th soldiers were greatly excited and eager to rush the pa the cautious commander would not give the word to assault. The British casualties were slight; besides Sarten, a soldier of the 65th was mortally wounded, and a cavalryman and an infantryman were each wounded, but not severely. The Maori losses were about the same as those of the attackers.
The next encounter was a much sharper affair—the engagement at Waireka, in which for the first time in New Zealand Volunteers bore the most conspicuous part. By this time the stout-hearted settlers of Omata and the Bell Block had constructed substantial little forts on commanding hills in their districts, and these two outposts, one on either side of New Plymouth, were held continuously throughout the war, even when New Plymouth was closely hemmed in by the Maoris. They were not of the uniform type: each owed its design to the sound sense and native military instinct of the local farmers.
The Bell Block stockade was built on a grassy hill, flat on top, with a rather steep face towards the principal part of the settlement. Traces of the olden trenches are still to be seen on this hill, which is close to the seaward side of the Devon Line, as the main road to Waitara is known, four miles and a half from New Plymouth. Below, on the flat near where the dairy factory now stands, is the spot where Katatore, the leader of the anti-land-sellers, was ambushed and shot in 1857. The settlers of the district, numbering about seventy men, held a meeting, when martial law was proclaimed, and appointed a committee to design a suitable place of defence to enable them to hold fast to their lands. Every able-bodied man was speedily at work felling, splitting, and carting timber, and soon a hundred bullock-cart loads of timber were on the spot selected for the post. The Imperial military authorities in New Plymouth, with an ineptitude unfortunately
The Omata stockade, three miles and a half south of New Plymouth, was built early in 1860 entirely by the settlers of the district without any assistance from the Imperial troops. Travelling along the south road through a beautiful and closely settled farming district, with Taranaki's snow peak soaring aloft on the left and the green valleys dipping to the blue ocean on the right, we pass on the inland side, just above the road, a symmetrical grassy mound, about 60 feet high, and perfectly rounded as though artificially formed, with a ring of trench indenting its summit. This is the Omata fort hill, once known among the Maoris as Ngaturi. It was the site of an ancient pa. The entrenched crown of the mound measures 25 paces by 13 paces; the ditch which encloses it is about 10 feet wide, and 12 feet deep from the top of the parapet. The stockade which surmounted the hill—all traces of the timber-work have long since disappeared—owed its construction in the first place to two settlers of the district, Mr. T. Good and Mr. G. R. Burton, both of whom received commissions in the Militia. Mr. Good, the first planner of the stockade, was often seen working alone upon the fortification before others took up the task, but sixty or seventy settlers, the pioneers of Omata, joined in and toiled vigorously to provide themselves with a place of refuge and a fort to command the settlements.
This Omata post was so skilfully designed, so serviceable, and withal so picturesque a little fort, set sentrywise there on its round hill, that it is worthy of a detailed description. The figure of the post was oblong. The stockade was constructed of
Mr. G. R. Burton, who designed the interior arrangements, was Captain in the Militia, and he received high praise for his amateur military engineering-work from so competent an authority as Colonel (afterwards Major-General) Sir
Proclamations under Martial Law, New Plymouth
THE GULLY-RIVEN littoral of Waireka, five miles south-west of New Plymouth, was the theatre of an engagement (28th March, 1860) which proved the fighting-capacity of Taranaki's newly trained Volunteers and Militia, and saved the town from direct attack by the united strength of the southern tribes. The encounter was doubly memorable because it was the first occasion on which a British Volunteer corps engaged an enemy on the battlefield.
The British move upon the Waitara was quickly followed by the decision of Taranaki, Ngati-Ruanui, and Nga-Rauru, the three principal tribes of the coast curving round from Ngamotu to the Waitotara, to come to Wiremu's Kingi's aid. Ten days after the taking of the L pa five hundred warriors of these people, the best fighting-blood on the whole west coast south of New Plymouth, had arrived within six miles of the town. After ceremonious welcomes at Ratapihipihi and other settlements they gathered in a strongly entrenched and stockaded pa at Kaipopo, the most commanding part of the hills at Waireka. The fortification was alongside the road from Omata, and about a mile and a half south of the stockade commanding that settlement; the surf-beaten shore was less than three-quarters of a mile away. The district was already partially settled by Europeans, and farmhouses were scattered over the much-dissected coastland between the ranges and the sea. Clear streams, rock-bedded, coursed down through the numerous narrow wooded valleys. One of these was the Waireka (“Sweet Water”); it was joined just at the beach by a smaller hill-brook, the Waireka-iti. This broken terrain, with its spurs, knolls, and ravines giving abundance of cover, was an admirable country for the Maori's skirmishing tactics. The natives who composed the fighting force on this side of New Plymouth were chiefly Taranaki, composed of Ngamahanga, Patukai, Ngati-Haumia, Ngarangi, and other hapus, under hapu of the Waimate Plains, arrived just in time for the battle; their principal rangatira was Te Hanataua. The men were armed with double-barrel shot-guns, and were well supplied with powder and lead; several carried rifles.
On the 27th the first blood was shed in the Omata district. Two farmers (S. Shaw and H. Passmore) and a New Plymouth business man (Samuel Ford) were shot and tomahawked by ambush-parties on the roadside near the Primitive Methodist Chapel; next day the bodies of two boys (Pote and Parker), similarly killed, were found. On the morning of the 28th, when New Plymouth was in a state of intense excitement over the news of these murders, the military authorities decided to despatch an expedition to Omata for the purpose of rescuing the Rev. H. H. Brown and his family, and several other settlers who had remained on their farms. The chiefs, however, had made proclamation that Mr. Brown would be protected, and a notice in Maori was posted at Omata declaring that the road to his place and to his neighbours' must not be trodden by war-parties. The minister was tapu because of his sacred office; as for the others enumerated, one settler was Portuguese and one French; the war was only with the British. The force detailed for the expedition consisted of three officers and twenty-five men of the Royal Navy (H.M.S. “Niger”), four officers and eighty-four rank and file of the 65th Regiment, with 103 officers and men of the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers and fifty-six Taranaki Militia. Lieut.-Colonel Murray was in command. Lieutenant Blake was in charge of the bluejackets (who were to be followed, if necessary, by a larger force from the “Niger”). The colonial force was under the command of Captain Charles Brown, who had with him the following officers: Militia—Captain and Adjutant Stapp, Lieutenants McKechney and McKellar, Ensign
The first blunder made by the Imperial officers was the division of this small force despatched into hostile territory. Captain Brown, in command of the settlers, was ordered to march by the sea-coast, keeping along the beach until he reached the rear of the Maori positions at Waireka. The Regulars, under Lieut.-Colonel Murray, marched by the main road for the announced purpose of dislodging a war-party reported to be at the spot known as the “Whalers' Gate,” about three-quarters of a mile on the town side of the Omata stockade. The Volunteers and Militia were expected to recover the out-settlers supposed to be in danger, and to march back by the road, joining Murray at the “Whalers' Gate.” The force was not sent from town until after 1 p.m. (the colonials
Murray did not meet with any opposition at the “Whalers' Gate,” where there was no trace of Maoris. He moved leisurely along the south road until, near the Omata stockade, the sound of rapid firing about two miles off, near the sea, indicated that the civilian force was hotly engaged. He despatched the naval detachment and some of the 65th, under Lieutenant Urquhart, to Brown's assistance, while he took the main body along the road and down a lane which turned off on the right to the sea. Some distance down the lane he turned into a grass paddock, entrenched his men, and opened fire on the Maori skirmishers at long range. He had a rocket-tube, and fired some rockets into a wooded gully
pa and any groups of Maoris observed, and rifle-fire on the native skirmishers over the spurs and in the ravines, until he considered it time to sound the “Retire.”
Meanwhile the Volunteers and the Militia were fighting a desperate battle on the slopes above the beach. Captain Brown, who had not had any previous experience of soldiering, had wisely requested his adjutant, Captain Stapp, to take command, and that veteran of the “Black Cuffs” conducted the afternoon's operations with the coolness characteristic of the well-skilled regular soldier. He had an old comrade with him who put good stiffening into the civilian ranks, Colour-Sergeant (afterwards Lieutenant)
When the Waireka was reached where it runs down on the ironsand beach the advanced guard under Colour-Sergeant Free caught sight of a large number of armed Maoris coming down at a run from their pa on the Kaipopo ridge nearly a mile away. Free fired the first shot in the engagement, and Volunteer pa, and as he was in danger of being outflanked, Captain Stapp ordered a retreat on Mr. John Jury's farmhouse, a small building on a terrace above the beach. Captain Atkinson, on his own suggestion, was sent to an excellent strategic position above the Waireka Stream and on the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea; from here he could command the flanks and rear of Jury's homestead and the mouth of the Waireka. Holding this position until the battle ceased, Atkinson and his men inflicted numerous casualties on
The Maoris were gradually forced back into an upper gully, but, as Captain Brown perceived an attempt on their part, under cover of the high flax-bushes, to cut off the way of retreat to the Omata stockade, he sent Urquhart to hold the commanding ground
Murray, oblivious to everything but the duty of obeying his superior officer's order to be back in New Plymouth by dark,
The settlers were in a serious state, for their ammunition was almost done, and they believed that the Maoris would rush them when night fell. The utmost care was exercised in firing, and Ensign Messenger, at Captain Stapp's request, went round and saw that each man had a cartridge for the expected rush; there would then be only the bayonet.
Suddenly, just at dusk, the distant sound of firing and then loud cheering was heard from the direction of Kaipopo pa. What did it mean? Had Murray returned and attacked the pa after all? Some of the Volunteers went up the spur to see what it was, and found the natives falling back in great haste upon their fort. It was not considered wise, however, to march the force up towards the pa, ammunition being so short, and the wounded needing removal to Omata. The moon was near its setting, and as soon as it was down Captain Stapp gave the order to march, and the little force commenced its return over the hills and gullies, Atkinson's men forming the rearguard with the eight soldiers of the 65th who had remained with the settlers. Bearing their dead and wounded, the two companies retired on the Omata stockade, and half an hour after midnight reached the town, escorted in the last stage of the tramp by a body of soldiers and Volunteers who had gone out to look for them.
Turn now to the Kaipopo pa. The shouting and firing which had puzzled the beleagued force at the Waireka, and the sudden withdrawal of the Maoris, were explained when the Omata stockade was reached. The diversion that saved the settlers from a rush and perhaps annihilation was due to the energy and courage of Captain Peter Cracroft, the commander of H.M.S. “Niger.” At the sound of alarm guns from Marsland Hill, fired early in the afternoon to warn the women and children to take refuge in the fort, Cracroft landed a party of bluejackets and marines with their
pa. Cracroft communicated with Murray, who was on his right and just about to fall back, and, regardless of messages to retire, he proceeded in his direct sailor fashion to attack. It was now about half past five, and nearly dark. After sending some rockets into the Maori position at a range of 700 yards, he rapidly led his men against the pa, turning its right flank, and stormed it most gallantly. The bluejackets did their work in the traditional Navy manner, mostly with the cutlass. Charging up the hill and making little account of the fire from the rifle-pits, they dashed at the stockade with a tremendous cheer. Three flags bearing Maori war-devices were seen waving above the smoke-hazed palisades. “Ten pounds to the man who pulls down those flags!” shouted Cracroft. Yelling, shooting, and slashing, the Navy lads were over the stockade in a few moments, “like a pack of schoolboys,” in the phrase of a survivor of Waireka. The first man in was
“We made good quick work of it,” says a veteran of the “Niger” party (Mr. R. B. Craven, of Parakai, Helensville). “Our loss was light, but we laid out about a hundred of the
Cracroft attributed his small casualties (four men wounded) to the rapidity of the attack and to the semi-darkness, which favoured the small party and spoiled the aim of the pa defenders. Sixteen Maoris were killed in the trenches and several others outside. The majority of the garrison made a quick retreat into the cover of the bush and the ravines below. Such was the dashing Royal Navy way. It might not have been so successful earlier in the day, and it could not have been carried out effectively in the darkness. The attack came just at the right moment, and in the right manner to divert the natives' attention from the settlers' force and upset the usual Maori tactics.
New Plymouth was frantic with mingled excitement and alarm that 28th March. The women and children hurrying to Marsland Hill citadel at the sound of the guns, awaited in intense anxiety the news from the scene of battle, where the settlers and townspeople, young and old, were fighting on the Waireka banks. Like the Maoris, fathers and sons and brothers and cousins fought together that day. Four of the Messengers were on the field, and several Bayleys, and members of many other pioneer Taranaki families. When Lieut.-Colonel Murray returned after nightfall, and it became known that he had left the civilian force fighting against heavy odds, indignation ran high; and on the arrival later of Cracroft's force, with the bluejackets displaying the captured flags but unaccompanied by the Volunteers and Militia, the tension and fears increased. At last, at 11 o'clock at night, a relief force of soldiers and citizens marched out to the rescue under Major Herbert, but they had not gone far down the south road before they met Brown's weary force tramping in. The scenes of rejoicing in the town must have gladdened the hearts of Cracroft and his sailor lads, but for whom it would indeed have been a disastrous night for the settler families of Taranaki.
The European casualties totalled only fourteen killed and wounded. The Maoris lost heavily through the accurate fire of Stapp's and Atkinson's men and the quick attack of Cracroft. Their killed amounted probably to fifty, with as many wounded.
The tribes concerned dispersed southward, removing their casualties in bullock-carts, and the combined movement on New Plymouth was abandoned. The Rev. H. H. Brown and his family and several other settlers came into town safely the day after the fight under Volunteer escort.
The popular opinion of Colonel Gold's methods of command and the failure of Lieut.-Colonel Murray to temper his rigid obedience to orders with some intelligence or initiative was
Colonel “When Colonel Chute came to hold an inquiry into Lieut.-Colonel Murray's action he visited Waireka and stood on the hill studying the lay of the battlefield. I was sent for to give information about the engagement. Chute asked me, ‘Do I understand that that gully down there on your right and that one on your left were filled with Maoris, and that the troops under Colonel Murray were up there on the north side above the Maoris?’ “‘Yes, sir,’ I said, ‘that is so.’ “‘Then,’ said the Colonel, ‘you’ [meaning the troops] ‘ought to have killed every damned one of them!’ “‘That is what I thought, sir,’ I replied. “The Colonel waved me away, saying, ‘That will do, sir.’”
On the day after Waireka the “Niger” flew the three captured Maori flags at her mainmast-head. Next day she steamed down the coast and anchored off the reef-fringed shore at Warea, where there was a large Maori pa occupied by several hundred Maoris. The ship opened fire with shells and rockets, but owing to the long range not much damage was done.
In April considerable British reinforcements and large supplies of warlike stores arrived at New Plymouth from Australia. H.M. steam-corvettes “Cordelia” and “Pelorus,” and the steamers “City of Sydney,” “City of Hobart,” and “Wongawonga,” brought several hundred men of the 13th and 40th Regiments and some Royal Artillery. The warships landed some parties of sailors and marines, and there was now a Naval Brigade of about three hundred men on shore, under command of Commodore Beauchamp-Seymour (afterwards Lord Alcester), of the “Pelorus.” The first Australian warship, the “Victoria,” a beautiful auxiliary-screw barque, lent by the Government of Victoria, arrived soon afterwards and landed sixty men, who helped to garrison Fort Niger, the sailors' redoubt, on a hill which is now a recreation reserve, on the eastern side of the town. Others garrisoned a redoubt erected on the small hill called Mount Eliot, close to the beach and adjoining the signal-staff and surf-boats.
A four-days expedition along the coast southward as far as Warea was the principal military operation during April, 1860. The movement was directed against the Taranaki and Ngati-Ruanui Tribes who had fought at Waireka. The column consisted of 180 Royal Navy seamen and marines, 280 of the 65th, eighty Volunteers and Militia, forty Royal Artillery with two
pas were demolished, wheat-stacks were burned, a flour-mill rendered useless, and cattle and horses looted. On the return journey a force of two hundred men was left in an entrenched position on the Tataraimaka Block as an advanced outpost for the settlements. This force was withdrawn later. It was in retaliation for the destruction of villages and other property on this expedition that the Taranaki Maoris presently devastated the whole of the abandoned pakeha settlements, and systematically pillaged and burned nearly every house outside New Plymouth.
THE WINTER OF 1860 drew on with its heavy rains, which converted the roads and tracks, cut up by the continuous military traffic, into mud-channels, and the difficulties of campaigning were correspondingly increased. The rivers were often in a state of high flood, and the swamps became almost impassable. Under these conditions the Imperial forces fought an action which developed into the most disastrous affair for the British in the first Taranaki War.
Half a mile south-east of Te Kohia (the L pa) the native belligerents constructed two forts close together and supporting each other, on small mounds called Puke-ta-kauere and Onuku-kaitara. Outside these strongholds were numerous rifle-pits and trenches, well masked by the high fern and tutu bushes. The double fortification was on considerably higher ground than the British main camp at Pukekohe, on the Waitara, and its situation was admirably chosen for defence. The spur on which the twin knolls were embossed lay between two small swampy water-courses which joined a short distance to the north-east and ran through a deep morass of flax and toetoe to the Waitara River, half a mile distant from Puke-ta-kauere, the northernmost pa. The forts thus were situated in a kind of V, with the apex towards the river. The ferny plateau south of the swamps and extending to the cliffs of the Waitara offered suitable ground from which a flanking fire could be poured on any attacking-party. The Onuku-kaitara pa was the larger of the two. The other was notable for its strong earthwork defences; it was surrounded with two trenches; the scarp of one of these ditches presented a face nearly 20 feet high. To all intent the places were impregnable to assault. Unfortunately for the British, the commander at the Waitara neglected to have the approach to the pas properly scouted, and lack of knowledge of the ground, conjoined to an ignorance of Maori field-engineering genius and skill in skirmishing tactics, was responsible for a defeat which enormously heartened up the pakeha's antagonists, and deepened the dissatisfaction
pas was carried on in plain view of the soldiers. From the Onuku-kaitara pa flagstaff flew a Maori ensign, white with a black cross. A reconnaissance-party from the camp was fired on. The senior officer, Major
The garrison of the double fort was much better fighting-material than the purely Atiawa force which had built and evacuated Te Kohia at the beginning of the war. Reinforcements of warriors had arrived from the Upper Waikato and the district afterwards known as the King Country, and from the southern parts of the west coast. The tribes which confronted Nelson and his 40th, besides Te Atiawa and Taranaki, were Ngati-Maniapoto and Ngati-Raukawa, Nga-Rauru (Patea and Waitotara), and Whanganui. Waikato as a tribe did not come, but some of their eager young men (such as
runanga (council of chiefs) of Ngati-Maniapoto discussed the question of assisting runanga consisted of tumuaki, or head of the council), his cousins Te runanga met in a large house which bore the famous old Hawaikian name “Hui-te-rangiora.” This house of assembly was destroyed by the troops when Kihikihi was invaded in February, 1864. The conclave of chiefs did not act hastily. Two delegates, runanga to investigate the dispute and its causes. Their inquiries satisfied them that utu for his personal wrongs (the seduction of his wife) by killing the offender, and there was no just cause (take) for parting with tribal lands in order further to involve runanga considered their report, and ‘Ngati-Maniapoto, haere hei kai ma nga manu o te rangi. Ko koe, e Waikato, ko Pekehawani taku rohe, kaua e takahia.’ (‘Ngati-Maniapoto, go you as food for the birds of the air. As for you, Waikato, Pekehawani is my boundary, do not trespass upon it!’)”
Pekehawani, an ancient Hawaikian name, was here used by Potatau as an honorific term for the Puniu River, the boundary between the Waikato and the territory of Ngati-Maniapoto.
It was scarcely daylight on the morning of the 27th June when Major Nelson moved out from Waitara camp to the attack. He was accompanied by Captain Beauchamp-Seymour, commanding the Naval Brigade of H.M.S. “Pelorus.” The force, totalling about three hundred and fifty, was divided into three. The main body, under Nelson, crossed the Devon Road and marched across the fern plain. A detachment of sixty men of the 40th Regiment, under Captain Bowdler, marched to the left, with orders to occupy a mound south-east of the camp, in order to prevent the natives escaping along the left flank of the main body and attacking the camp. If this was not attempted, Bowdler was to double up to the support of his Major. The other division, 125 strong, consisting chiefly of the Grenadier Company of the 40th, under Captain Messenger (a cousin of Ensign pa, and to bar the way to Maori reinforcements. The main body (Naval Brigade numbering sixty-five, Royal Artillery with two 24-pounder howitzers, Royal Engineers, and the Light Company of the 40th) moved in extended order towards the south-west side of the fortifications, and was soon engaged by the Maoris in large force.
The artillery opened fire at 7 a.m. from level ground north-west of Onuku-kaitara, but failed to make a large-enough breach
In this tight corner Major Nelson looked anxiously, but in vain, for expected reinforcements from New Plymouth. He had arranged with Colonel Gold, Officer Commanding, who had left the time of attack to him, that he would signal with ship's rockets on the night before the movement against the pas, Gold undertaking to march at daylight with four hundred men and two guns and take the Maoris on their left flank. Through an artillery non-commissioned officer's default this signal—which would have been seen at the Bell Block stockade and repeated to Marsland Hill—was not sent up. The sergeant forgot to use the rockets, and Gold was unaware of Nelson's attack until the heavy firing was heard in New Plymouth. The force which was then hastily marched to the relief only got as far as the Waiongana. The river was in flood, and, as the firing had ceased, Gold considered there was no need for assistance, and marched his men back to town.
Meanwhile Major Nelson's force and the division under Captain Messenger had desperate work, and the 40th suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of the Maori musketeers. Nelson's regiment and the “Pelorus” men fought well, but they were no match for their active opponents, who came at them with the long-handled tomahawk when the commander began the heavy task of withdrawing his force from the field. It was with great reluctance that he gave the order to sound the “Retire,” but there were many casualties, the obstacles in his front were great, there was
Captain Messenger's division of the 40th, which was given a difficult task, suffered most of all. Messenger, whose subalterns were Lieutenants pa from the rear, Messenger was assailed in great force by Ngati-Maniapoto and Te Atiawa. The high fern and heavy fire caused confusion, and the 40th were soon scattered in groups, fighting a hopeless fight against a skilfully directed enemy. Messenger got some thirty men together and worked his way on in rear of the pas until he passed over the ground from which the main body had retreated, and caught up to Major Nelson, who sent him back to bring in the rest of his men. He found Jackson and many of his party fighting their way out. Lieutenant Brooke had been killed in the deep swamp on the Waitara side of the Maori position. Some accounts say that Brooke surrendered, offering his sword, hilt first, to his captor, but in the heat of the battle it was impossible to spare him. He, like some of his men, was waist-deep in the swamp, which few but the half-stripped Maoris could cross. “We killed them in the swamp,” says a Maori who fought there. “We used chiefly the tomahawk. Such was the slaughter of the soldiers in that swamp that it came to be called by us Te Wai-Kotero [meaning a pool in which maize and potatoes are steeped until they become putrid]; this was because of the many corpses which lay there after the battle.”
In small groups or one by one the survivors floundered through the morass and broke their way through the fern, and were picked up by Messenger and Jackson. Others hid in the fern and crawled out cautiously to the camp. There were many desperate hand-to-hand encounters. A curious report, given currency by Major Nelson in his official report, was that a European, supposed to be a military deserter, was shot dead while leading on a party of Maori skirmishers. Four members of the Taranaki Rifles were on the field that day and under a heavy fire. George Hoby
The British casualties were thirty killed and thirty-four wounded, or about 18 per cent. of the force engaged. The heaviest losses fell upon the Grenadier Company of the 40th. The Maori casualties were relatively much lighter. Among the killed were two chiefs of Ngati-Maniapoto, Pahata te Kiore (one of Rewi's first delegates to runanga at Kihikihi. Hapurona directed the skirmishers of his tribe, Te Atiawa.
The defeat at Puke-ta-kauere and the increasing confidence of the Maoris made it dangerous for the hemmed-in citizens of New Plymouth to venture out beyond the precincts of the town. It was now that the central portion of the settlement was entrenched, and it was considered necessary to remove the women and children. A proclamation calling upon the families to prepare for departure by sea was issued by Colonel Gold. Steamers were sent to take the women and children to more peaceful homes until the war was over, and most of them went to Nelson, where they were
During August, 1860, the Taranaki and their southern allies became particularly daring, and numerous skirmishes occurred close to the town. Fort Carrington blockhouse and Fort Niger were fired on, and a lively skirmish occurred on the 20th August within half a mile of the barracks on Marsland Hill. Lieut.-Colonel Murray led out three companies of the 65th and a detachment of “Iris” bluejackets against a body of Maoris estimated at over two hundred. The natives, who left several dead on the field, were driven back into the bush. In a previous skirmish Captain Harry Atkinson, with his Volunteers and Militia, when out on an expedition to bring in settlers' property, fell in with a Maori marauding-party, whom, after a sharp engagement in the open, he followed into the bush, inflicting loss on them. In August two naval 32-pounders were emplaced on the end of the spur in the rear of Marsland Hill fort, in order to sweep the ground to the south of the town.
By night the blaze of fires, and by day columns of dark smoke, announced the destruction of many a settler's deserted home. The Village of Henui, only a mile from the town, was burned. The Maoris, however, invariably respected the churches in the abandoned settlements, and those at Henui, Bell Block, and Omata were found untouched at the end of the war. The town defences were reorganized by Major-General Pratt, and every Volunteer and Militiamen knew his place in the trenches in case of an attack.
The Taranaki Maoris, with some Ngati-Ruanui, laboured with enormous energy at the construction of a system of field-works on the south side of the town. They dug trenches and rifle-pits on the Waireka hills to menace Major Hutchins, who was in charge of a redoubt erected on the site of the Kaipopo pa. Tataraimaka was thick with well-designed entrenchments, representing a great amount of spade-work. There were frequent skirmishes about the Omata and the Waireka; at the latter place the Taranakis were shelled from the redoubt.
On the Waitara Major Nelson was busy. He took a column of the 40th and a Naval Brigade across the river and destroyed the large Atiawa villages Manu-korihi (“The Singing Bird”) and
On the 4th September a large composite force in three divisions, under Major-General Pratt, marched out to Burton's Hill, four miles south of the town, near Waireka. This place had been entrenched by the southern tribes, but was found deserted, the Maoris having gone home to plant their crops. The roughest work was performed by the division of Rifle Volunteers and Militia under Major Herbert; it penetrated into the bush on the march round to the rear of Burton's Hill, and burned the pa at Ratapihipihi on the return journey. The night and day march covered twenty miles under very wintry conditions.
On the 9th September Major-General Pratt, with the largest force yet taken into the field in New Zealand—it numbered fourteen hundred men, including a Naval Brigade, detachments of the 12th, 40th, and 65th Regiments, Rifle Volunteers, and artillery—marched out to Kairau and Huirangi, on the plateau above the left bank of the Waitara. The force burned four entrenched villages and looted many horses and cattle—some of which had, no doubt, previously been looted from the settlers. There was a sharp engagement near a large grove of peach-trees at Huirangi with some of the Atiawa under Hapurona, and the bush and trenches which sheltered the Maori tupara men were raked with grape and canister shot from the field-guns. A stockaded blockhouse was erected at Onuku-kaitara, on the site of the palisaded pa which had been evacuated by the Maoris soon after their victory in June.
On the 19th September a force of six hundred men under Major Hutchins (13th Regiment) marched for the southern settlements, and went as far as the Kaihihi River, where three occupied pas close together were discovered. It was found that twenty-six settlers' homes had been burned on the Tataraimaka Block, and about a hundred in the Omata and Waireka districts. The loss in stock driven off from the Tataraimaka was a hundred head of cattle, between two and three thousand sheep, and many horses.
On the 9th October a composite column numbering over a thousand—bluejackets, Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers, 12th, 40th, and 65th detachments, Volunteers, and Militia—marched from New Plymouth along the south road with the object of reducing the fortifications on the Kaihihi River. Major-General Pratt was in command. The Taranaki Rifles, Mounted Rifles, and Militia numbered 105, and there were 105 friendly natives of Te Atiawa under the charge of Mr. Parris, of the Native Department. After a march of twenty miles across difficult country for the large cart-train which accompained the column, the force entrenched itself on the north side of the Kaihihi River and within three-quarters of a mile of the principal pa, Orongomaihangi. On the 11th October a sap was commenced towards the fortification by Colonel Mould, R.E. (Pratt believed in approaching such positions by means of a sap in order to avoid loss of life, and his extraordinarily long advance upon pa was covered with green flax (as at Ohaeawai in 1845), and the artillery—a naval 68-pounder, two 24-pounder howitzers, and a Coehorn mortar—failed to breach it until next morning (12th October), when a small opening was made. Preparations were being made to blow up part of the stockade with a bag of powder, and an assaulting-party was ready, when the garrison of the fort rushed out at the rear, and the place was taken. The Kaihihi River was crossed, and the Mataiaio pa, a square fort, was rushed by the 65th and found empty. The remaining pa was Puke-kakariki, a fort on the edge of the river-cliff, about 300 yards from the first pa taken; after a short bombardment it was captured without opposition by Captain Stapp's Rifle Volunteers and the friendly natives. All three pas were double-palisaded and well rifle-pitted, with shell-proof dugouts. Ropes of plaited flax hanging from the cliff-top at the first pa taken showed the way by which the Maoris escaped into the bed of the Kaihihi. All three pas were destroyed. Orongomaihangi was a particularly interesting example of Maori military engineering. Its front, with a prominent sharp salient, resembled the figure of a Vauban trace, familiar to students of the science of fortification.
THE UPPER WAIKATO contingent had gone home after Puke-ta-kauere to tell of their victory over the pakeha, exhibit their trophies of battle, and plant their crops. The news of their prowess in the field, and the sight of the soldiers' caps and red coats in which some of them paraded, their newly gotten rifles, bayonets, and cartridge-pouches, aroused at once the admiration and the jealousy of their neighbours. Ngati-Maniapoto's exploits fired all the Waikato tribes with ardour for the field. Ngati-Haua's war-fever could no longer be allayed even by the peace-loving kaingas when Potatau forbade Waikato and Ngati-Haua to cross the Puniu River and released only Ngati-Maniapoto for the war on the Waitara. But now the old king was dead, and his runanga at Ngaruawahia had little control over Ngati-Haua of the plains. Why should Ngati-Maniapoto have all the joy and glory of killing the pakeha? Were not Ngati-Haua the kin of the great Waharoa, the most renowned warrior of the Island? So spake Te Wetini Taiporutu and other fiery blades. In vain tupara and tomahawk. They were the flower of the tribe—tall athletes, fit successors of the invincible warriors whom Waharoa had led against many a stockade. Wetini Taiporutu (“The Surging Sea”) was at their head. The other tribes which swelled the strength of the columns marching southward were Ngati - Raukawa and Ngati - Koroki, and these subtribes of
hapus which mustered at Kihikihi; with him were Epiha Tokohihi, Te Paetai te Mahia, Mokau (of Ngati-Raukawa, at Orakau), and several other chiefs. Rewi was a veteran of the Waitara trail; as a boy of twelve he had marched on his first war expedition in 1832, when a Waikato army made one of its periodical raids on Puke-rangiora. Wetini's war-party marched apart from the others, eager to reach the scene of war and uphold the name of Ngati-Haua. From Mokau Heads they made a forced march along the beach, and, crossing the Waitara, met their allies on the strongly fortified plain at Kairau. Anxious to distinguish themselves in a battle of their own, they stayed not long at the Kairau, where they were joined by other Waikato tribes, but pushed on to Mahoetahi, an old practically unfortified pa on a gentle mound of a hill alongside the Devon Road, two miles and a half from Waitara and seven miles and a half from New Plymouth. Wetini took up this position as a deliberate challenge to the British General. He had sent an invitation to combat quite in the manner of the knights of old. The gage was thrown down in a letter to Mr. Parris, the Assistant Native Secretary in Taranaki: “Come inland and let us meet each other. Fish fight at sea! Come inland and tread on our feet. Make haste! make haste!”
This metaphorical trailing of Ngati-Haua's blanket was taken up by the pakeha with spirited alacrity. It was on the evening of the 5th November that Major-General Pratt was informed that Wetini's contingent had crossed the Waitara, and that possibly next morning they would be in the vicinity of Mahoetahi. It was thought that they were marching on New Plymouth. Their numbers were greatly exaggerated. Pratt immediately issued orders for a British column to march from New Plymouth, and another from Waitara, to meet at Mahoetahi next forenoon, and so take the Maoris between two fires. At dawn of day a young Militia officer, Lieutenant F. Standish, with a friendly Maori chief named Mahau, reconnoitred in the direction of Mahoetahi, and saw the Ngati-Haua and Waikato enter an old village on the hilltop. At 5 o'clock on a beautiful clear morning the General's column left the town. It was composed chiefly of the 65th, 40th, and 12th Regiments, with some Royal Artillery manning two 24-pounder howitzers, a few sappers and miners, and two companies of the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers and Militia, with twenty of the Volunteer cavalry. The total strength of the force was 670; of this force the Volunteers made up about 130. Some friendly Maoris also went out, but took no part in the assault.
Soon after crossing the Mangaoraka the firing commenced, the Maori skirmishers falling back upon the Mahoetahi Hill as the troops advanced. The advance-guard formed a line of skirmishers and moved quickly towards the Maori position, which was visible on the high ground across a narrow swamp directly in front, and just to the left of the main road where it curved inland to avoid the Mahoetahi ridge. Several casualties occurred among the 65th before the swamp was crossed.
The advance-guard halted and lay down on the low ground close to the swamp. “Fix bayonets and prepare to charge” was the next order. Meanwhile the two howitzers, under Captain Strover, R.A., opened fire on the position. The mounted scouts had just reported to the General that the British column from the Waitara was near at hand, moving towards the Maori left rear. The order to cross the swamp was given, and the troops dashed through the muddy water or jumped from tussock to tussock. Re-forming on the other side, they saw before them two low mounds, beyond which was the level top of the Mahoetahi Hill, with no stockade or regular entrenchment showing. The Taranaki Rifles and Militia were to the north-west of the pa (the sea side), with two companies of the 65th, facing the west flank of the hill, and another company continuing the line inland, covering the Maori left front. In the rear of the 65th were the reserves, consisting of the 12th and 40th, under Lieut.-Colonel Carey, Deputy Adjutant-General.
“Charge!” was the next order, and then there was a desperate race for the top of the mound. Volunteers and Militia were determined that no Regulars should deprive them of the honour of being first in the pa. The front line of the 65th received a heavy volley from the hill and was stayed for a moment or two, but the supporting company came up, and the hilltop was gained. The Taranaki men, led on by Major Herbert, sword in hand, were just breasting the upper slope when the Maoris gave them the next volley. But a moment before it was delivered Major Herbert shouted “Down!” and dropped flat on the ground, and every man followed his example on the instant. The bullets went over their heads. Leaping up, the men were into the Maori position, bayonet and bayonet with the big Irishmen of the 65th on their right. No Maori, however brave, could stand in the open before that line of steel. Most of Wetini's men, after the first volley, took cover behind an old parapet, the remains of the ancient fortification which had enclosed the centre of the hilltop, and in a number of excavations, whare sites, besides some dilapidated huts and fern, and masked potato-pits, which made good riflepits.
pa that morning, they had not had time to entrench themselves properly. From such cover as there was Ngati-Haua fired heavily, inflicting several casualties on the 65th and the Volunteers. Charging across the pa, Herbert's settler soldiers received a heavy volley delivered by the Maoris just under the crest on the reverse slope of the hill; but the fire was too high, and there were no casualties. Meanwhile the 65th had cleared the centre of the hill with the bayonet.
The Maoris retreated to the edge of the swamp on the Waitara side, and Regulars and Volunteers and Militia charged down the slope after them. Now came the most desperate work of the day. Ngati-Haua and their kin of Waikato and Maniapoto turned on the troops like lions. When there was no time to reload their tuparas or their rifles they threw down the now-useless weapons and countered bayonet with tomahawk. There were not more than a hundred and fifty Maoris, but, outnumbered as they were, they fought with a splendid heroism. If they were rebels they were glorious rebels. Their one thought now was to hapai-ingoa—to uplift the tribal name and fame.
By this time the column from the Waitara side, commanded by Colonel Mould, R.E., had crossed the Waiongana River, and had deployed into line on the inland side of the pa, and when the Maoris were driven into the swamp they found their right flank assailed by this force. Mould's column consisted of several companies of the 40th under Major Nelson, a company of the 65th, and a party with a 24-pounder howitzer. A few shells were thrown into the Maoris (narrowly missing the troops), and then the Regulars joined in the attack pursuit.
On the fern flat below the swamp many of the Maoris took cover in old potato-pits and fired upon their foes on the other side. But the weight of the combined advance was irresistible. Fighting yard by yard the gallant Ngati-Haua were forced back. At last they turned and fled, leaving more than a score lying dead among the tufts of tussocks and flax and in the reddened pools of water. Rifles, double-barrel guns, and cartridge-belts strewed the ground of the retreat. With the bursting shells of the howitzers and six hundred Enfields and bayonets compelling their flight, they retreated across the Waiongana towards Huirangi. Wetini Taiporutu himself was killed early in the retreat. His chivalrous challenge won him undying fame, but cost Ngati-Haua two score men. The chase across the Waiongana was carried as far as Ngatai-pari-rua and Puke-ta-kauere; thence the pursuers returned to the captured hill and marched back to quarters. Colonel Mould was left at Mahoetahi with a force to hold the hill. The friendly Maoris searched the swamp and the hillside for the slain, and collected thirty-seven slain Maoris, most of whom were buried in
The British casualties were four killed and seventeen wounded. The Rifle Volunteers, who shared the honours of the day with the Regulars, divided with them the losses; two of their number were killed (Privates F. Brown and H. Edgecombe), and four were wounded.
New Plymouth rang with stories of the combat in the swamp. An Irish private of the 65th, the moment after shooting a Maori, brained another with the butt of his rifle. “There was some good bayonet-work at Mahoetahi,” said a veteran of the Taranaki Rifles, Sergeant
Many a village of the Waipa and the Matamata plains resounded with the tangi of grief for the men when the wounded remnant of Wetini's contingent made their painful way home. There were some ghastly wounds among the warriors. The venerable half-caste chief utu for the loss of so many comrades. It was not many weeks after Mahoetahi before Ngati-Maniapoto and Waikato made a most determined attack upon No. 3 Redoubt at Huirangi, and only drew off after losing more than fifty men. The cumulative effect of these disasters was to heighten the war feeling throughout the Waikato and hasten the outbreak in the Auckland Province.
To this day a song of lamentation, composed by a woman named Hokepera for those killed at Mahoetahi, is heard among the people of Ngati-Maniapoto. This Alas! my grief, my woe! Alas, for you, my chieftains, lying in heaps on yonder mound of death! Ah! once I listened to Epiha and his chiefs in council; then I thought their words were laden with goodness and with truth. On the dark hills of Death their plans were brought to naught. Farewell O Tima, overwhelmed in the flood of battle. 'Twas the fatal deed of Ngati-Haua, they who heeded not the wise counsel of Hapurona. What of your words, O Raureti, O Rewi? 'Tis enough that you have borne warriors down to the black night of Death. Ah me! the sorrow of it! The land is swept by war's red tide. Mournfully roll the waters of Puniu; the waters sob as they flow. I heard the thunder's distant mutter,
Thou'rt gone, O Paetai! Thou'rt gone, O Mokau! Swept away are the heroes of Tainui, Te Arawa, Raukawa, Motai. Our foes in multitudes rejoice; the treasure is laid bare and desolate. See now my unprotected breast, naked to the spear of Kiri-kumara. 'Twas he who raised this storm of war. Alas! the evil of it!waiata (chanted to the writer by the two old comrades Kaore taku huhi, taku raru, ki a koutou,E pa ma, e haupu mai ra!Ka hua hoki au ki a Epiha ma e hui nei ki te runanga,He kawe pai i te tika.Kaore he mahi nui i nga maunga a Whiro kua wareware.Haere ra, e Tima, i te riri kaihoro a Ngati-Haua;Kaore i whakaaro ko te kupu pai a Haapurona.Ko te aha, e Rau (Raureti), e Rewi, ma korua nei?Heoi ano ra ma koutou he kawe tangata ki te Po,Aue i te mamae ra—i!Anea kau ana te whenua, tangi kotokoto ai te tai o Puniu.E whakahakiri ana nga tohu o te rangi, e—e.Kanapa kau ana te uira i runga o 'Tautari, te hiwi ki Rangitoto;Ko te tohu o te mate ra—i!Ka riro Paetai, Mokau, Tainui, Te Arawa, Raukawa, Motai—i!E koa ra e rau tangata ka takoto kau to moni!Tenei taku poho e tuwhera kau nei, he wai kokiringa moKiri-kumara, te tangata whakanoho i te riri.Te kino, e—e—i!
The composer of this song of lamentation over the dead refers to the Maori belief that the passing of the spirits of chieftains was accompanied by thunder and lightning, and that the rumble of thunder along certain mountain-peaks was a portent of disaster or death to the people. The downward play of lightning upon sacred mountains was regarded as a sign that death would strike or had stricken members of the tribe. Thus Maunga-tautari was a maunga-hikonga-uria (lightning peak) of the Ngati-Raukawa Tribe; Rangitoto was the lightning mountain of the Ngati-Maniapoto.
Major-General Sir James Alexander narrates this story of Mokau te Matapuna's end: “Mokau, retreating, saw at the edge of it [the swamp] a friend lying mortally wounded. He stopped, and, though the avengers were close behind, he seized the hand of the dying man and stooped to say farewell and to press noses in the native fashion. Raising himself up, he himself was shot through the heart, and fell across the body of his friend. His noble act of friendship had thus a fatal result.”
The site of the Battle of Mahoetahi is easily identified to-day. The main road (Devon Road) from New Plymouth to Waitara cuts through the inland (south-east) end of the pa hill at seven miles and a half from New Plymouth. On the seaward end of the hill, which is about 60 feet high, trending at right angles to the road, there is a wire-fenced enclosure, with numerous large boulders scattered about, and the turf is uneven with the remains of olden trenches, rifle-pits, and sites of dug-in whares. This was the position stormed by the troops. On the slope of the hill facing New Plymouth is a smaller enclosure, with a large timber cross, lichencrusted. This is the sacred spot where nearly forty of the Maori defenders were buried. The inscription on the cross reads:—
“He whakamaharatanga i nga Rangatira toa o Waikato a Wetini Taiporutu ma, i hinga ki konei tata i te Parekura i turia i te 6th Nowema, 1860.”
The meaning of this legend is:—
“In remembrance of the brave chiefs of Waikato, of Wetini Taiporutu and his comrades, who fell close to this spot in the battle fought on the 6th November, 1860.”
On the reverse side of the hill, which presents a steeper slope than the western side, the ground falls to a narrow swamp, the place where so many of the Ngati-Haua made their last stand. The Devon Road intersects this part of the battlefield, and passes on the right the ancient settlement Nga-puke-tu-rua, with its two tree-grown mounds, on one of which a British stockade was built shortly after the engagement at Mahoetahi.
THE DEFEAT AT Mahoetahi, so far from crushing the Maori spirit, hardened up the fighting-fibre of pakeha settlers out seeking cattle or horses were shot and tomahawked within a short distance of New Plymouth during the summer of 1860–61. At this time the garrison of Taranaki had been reduced by several hundreds of Imperial troops, who were considered necessary for the protection of Auckland, owing to an alarm of coming hostilities with Waikato. By December, 1860, the Maori belligerents had constructed a series of field fortifications on the plateau bounding the Waitara River on the south (left bank), and garrisoned these works with considerably over a thousand men. Kairau and Huirangi were the principal defences—skilfully engineered lines of rifle-pits, trenches, and covered ways, their flanks resting on the thickly wooded gullies that dissected the edges of the tableland. These works barred the way inland to the historic hill pa, Puke-rangiora, high above the Waitara. A new system of fortifications on the front of this ancient stronghold was named
Major-General Pratt took the field once more towards the end of December, when he concentrated a force of a thousand strong on the Waitara. Heavy artillery suitable for siege operations had been obtained from Auckland and from several of the ships of war, and with this battering-train Pratt moved from Waitara towards the Kairau forts on the 29th December. The first operation was the reduction of the stockaded trenched pa at Mata-rikoriko (“Winking Eyes”), a short distance inland of Puke-ta-kauere and somewhat nearer the Waitara River. The column numbered nine hundred men of all arms, with four guns. When the force reached the site of the old Kairau
pa (destroyed on the 11th September), about 1,100 yards from Mata-rikoriko, a large redoubt was commenced for the accommodation of five hundred men. This redoubt was intended as a depot for the attack on the pa, and also for a movement against Huirangi. Working-parties of one hundred and fifty men were employed, under a brisk fire nearly all day from well-masked rifle-pits on the edge of a deep wooded gully about 150 yards from the redoubt. The garrison had a sleepless night, for the natives kept up a fire, with little intermission, until daylight next morning. On the 30th December the Royal Engineers and the rest of the working-parties raised and improved the parapets, formed firing-steps, and made barbettes and platforms for the guns. Two 8-inch guns were mounted on the left face of the redoubt, pointing towards Mata-rikoriko. The firing on both sides was exceedingly heavy. It was estimated that the British troops expended 70,000 rounds of rifle ammunition in less than twenty-four hours, besides about 120 rounds of shot and shell. On the morning of the 31st the pa was found to have been evacuated during the night, and it was quickly occupied by two companies of the 65th under Colonel Wyatt. The British lost three killed and twenty wounded. The Maoris, so far as is known, had six killed. A number of the 56th Regiment remained in occupation of Mata-rikoriko.
This episode was soon followed by a general advance upon the Huirangi works and
Colonel Mould's fort-building in the Waitara campaign had begun with the construction of a strong stockade on the ridge on which the Puke-ta-kauere and Onuku-kaitara pas had stood.
pa were levelled, and the ditches were filled in. After Mahoetahi a stockade was built on one of the two knolls at the ancient settlement of Nga-puke-tu-rua (“The Two Hillocks”), 800 yards on the Waitara side of Mahoetahi. Forty men were left here as a garrison. The next post built was a stockade with blockhouses on the site of the captured pa at Mata-rikoriko. This compact little fort (see illustration) was similar in construction and arrangement to that at Onuku-kaitara. It was garrisoned by sixty men, with a howitzer. When the Maori flanking entrenchments outside the pa at Mata-rikoriko were examined by the Engineers it was found that one fire-trench was 178 paces in length, and another 104 paces; others measured 74, 73, and 32 paces.
On the 14th January Major-General Pratt with a force of between six hundred and seven hundred men—12th, 14th, 40th, and 65th detachments, and a Naval Brigade—marched from
On the 18th January the General moved out again to the front with a force a thousand strong, and under an all-day fire from the Maori rifle-pits a third redoubt was begun to cover the British advance towards Huirangi. This field-work, soon to become celebrated for a daring attack made by the Kingites, was built about 400 yards to the left front of No. 2. It consisted when complete of three squares closely placed en echelon; the middle redoubt was 30 yards each way inside the parapet. The parapets of all these works were made with earth and fern in alternate layers, after the Maori manner. Two howitzers were mounted in the main redoubt, and an 8-inch gun on the front face of the right wing. A garrison of about three hundred men, including the headquarters of the 40th Regiment under Colonel Lesile, was placed in No. 3.
While the General was steadily making his way across the Kairau plateau, the Taranaki and Ngati-Ruanui Tribes on the southern section of the coast dug themselves in very strongly on the hills at Waireka, and completely barred the roads by a remarkably skilful system of trenches, rifle-pits, and stockaded pas. Several expeditions from New Plymouth during the summer of 1861 engaged the natives at Waireka Hill, Burton's Hill, and the vicinity of Omata, but without serious casualties on either side. The Rifle Volunteers and Militia, under Herbert, Stapp, and Atkinson, were conspicuously useful in the trying work of patrols and reconnaissances until the end of the war. One affair, though not an official expedition, demonstrated the pluck and coolness of the Volunteers. Fourteen young men, under Sergeant E. Hollis, were gathering peaches one Sunday morning (3rd March, 1861) at Brooklands (now Mr.
IT WAS THE practice of the troops to stand to their arms an hour before daybreak as a precaution against surprise. In the raw and chilly early morning of the 23rd January, 1861, the Regulars in the Kairau and Huirangi redoubts turned out as usual and stood in silence awaiting sunrise. Suddenly a single gunshot came from the fern 100 yards to the right of No. 1 Redoubt. This was a Maori signal-gun. The next instant the fringes of the murky plain were a blaze of fire, and the roar of musketry ran along the fern on the right and left flanks of the British posts. The soldiers replied with their Enfields—though there was nothing but the flashes at which to fire—and the gloomy morning, so quiet a few moments before, was thunderous with the bellow and crackle of musketry. Presently the firing near No. 1 Redoubt and No. 2 Redoubt ceased: it was a Maori feint to divert attention from the real attack. No. 3 (400 yards in advance of No. 2) was the objective, and as the excited soldiers in the rear field-works peered through the darkness they saw the advanced redoubt, which had only been completed by the 40th Regiment the previous evening, all at once encircled by a darting ring of flame that lit up the darkness like a blaze of tropical lightning, followed by an incessant roll of small-arms fire and presently the explosion of hand-grenades.
The garrison of No. 3 Redoubt (the headquarters of the 40th, under Colonel Leslie) had a crowded half-hour of fighting before dawn that morning. While the natives in the rifle-pits and the British trenches that flanked the line of advance were making ready to open their feint attack, a picked party of a hundred and forty warriors—Ngati-Haua, Ngati-Maniapoto, Waikato, and Te Atiawa—crept up to the redoubt, and about half of them silently entered the ditches on the left and right faces of the redoubt—the two unflanked sides. Their leaders were Manga (
The storming-party stealthily began to cut steps with their tomahawks in the earth of the newly scarped parapet. When they were about to attempt the assault a sentry of the 40th fired at a Maori just outside the trench. A return shot killed the soldier, and the next moment the 40th were at grips with their determined foes. The ditch was crowded with Maoris, some firing at the line of heads above them, some furiously springing up the scarp and slashing at the soldiers with their tomahawks. The men fired into the trench as fast as they could load their Enfields, and others threw short-fuse shells into the ditch. Lieutenant Jackson, of the 40th, was leaning over the parapet firing his revolver into the mass of Maoris when he was shot through the forehead. The attackers (including the supports in the fern) and the garrison were nearly equal in numbers.
Although the British musketry and the exploding shells and hand-grenades spread death and wounds among the warriors in the trench, the Maori forlorn hope stuck to their work tenaciously. Again and again those daring spirits essayed to scale the straight-cut scarp, only to be shot down or bayoneted by the soldiers. So the struggle went on until reinforcements came doubling up and cleared the ditch of all but the dead and dying.
A vivid account of the morning's fight is contained in an unpublished manuscript written by Colonel H. Stretton Bates, then a young ensign, who was an eye-witness of the combat. Colonel Bates was in No. 1 Redoubt with his regiment, the 65th—the “Royal Tigers”—nearly all stalwart Irishmen with experience of
Manuscript narrative by the late Colonel H.
“It was evident to us in No. 1 that the surprise had failed, but the defenders of No. 3 were hard pressed. The heavy firing continued, and the cheers of the gallant 40th mingled with the wailing cries of the attackers as they adjured each other to be brave (‘Kia toa’) and to slay the soldiers. But hark to the clear notes of a bugle ringing out in the morning air from the advanced post! We recognize the regimental call of the ‘Royal Tigers,’ followed by the advance. ‘Whew!’ muttered our Colonel Wyatt, ‘the 40th are calling for trumps’; and he ordered two companies of the ‘Tigers’ and one of the 12th, a detachment of which corps was with us in No. 1, to proceed at once to the help of the defenders of No. 3 Redoubt. The great bearded fellows, looking more like bushrangers than soldiers, fell in without a moment's delay, and ere the bugle had sounded a third appeal for help the column of fours was out of the redoubt and, under command of the senior captain, who was destined to receive a brevet majority for his morning's work, was making its way over the plain at a steady double. The remainder of the ‘Tigers,’ leaning over the parapet, watched the drama which was being enacted in front. As the three companies passed No. 2 Redoubt the occupants gave them a loud cheer, and in a few minutes more the advanced redoubt was reached.
“Day was now breaking; the fire was not so continuous as before, and what there was came mostly from the front face. Loud cheers rose from the 40th, and they called out to the reinforcers that the ditch in front of the redoubt was crammed with natives, but that the thickness of the parapet and want of flanking defence prevented their rifles being sufficiently depressed so as to reach the Maoris. There was a hasty consultation, and then the ‘Tigers’ descended into the wide ditch on the right of the work, and the company of the 12th Regiment into the ditch on the left, and both parties made their way towards the front of the redoubt.
“The ditch in front was crowded with the attackers. Poor fellows! they had felt confident of surprising the soldiers, and had evidently come to stay, for they had brought provision of Indian corn with them. Better that they had brought ladders or bundles of faggots to enable them to scale the parapet. One
“Half a dozen guns ring out and down goes our leading man with a bullet through his forehead. A comrade staggers against the counterscarp, for a ball has struck him in the face and carried away part of his upper lip and some of his teeth. But on go the ‘Tigers’ with a wild shout. For a moment the leading files cross bayonet with tomahawk. Ugly wounds are inflicted by the whirling tomahawks and thrusting bayonets, and then the dusky warriors turn and scramble as best they can out of the ditch, endeavouring to gain the shelter of the fern and the forest. The occupants of the redoubt fire one round at the fugitives, and then hold their hand to avoid hitting the ‘Tigers’ and the 12th men, who have scrambled up the counterscarp of the ditch and are now scattered in pursuit of the flying foes. There is no time to reload, and the bayonet does its deadly work. The swifter-footed of the fugitives gain the shelter of the bush, and then the bugles sounding the ‘Recall’ check the pursuit. The repulse is complete.
“The dead and wounded are collected. There are between forty and fifty natives left on the field, and most of the wounds are mortal.
“Amongst the wounded was one youth of striking aspect. His long black hair and regular features would have made him appear effeminate but for the length of limb and splendid muscular development which caught the eye even as he lay on
‘wai’ (water), was trying to make him drink from his canteen, saying, ‘Here, Jack, here's wai for you.’ The soldiers always addressed the Maoris as ‘Jack,’ and the Maoris the soldiers as ‘Tiaki’ also. My knowledge of the language enabled me to recognize that the wounded man was moaning ‘Kia maranga,’ meaning that he desired to be raised up. I noticed the small red mark in his chest which showed that a bullet had probably penetrated a lung, the bleeding from which was choking him. So kneeling down and putting my arms round him I raised him gently and supported him in a sitting position. He smiled and whispered, ‘It is well’; but the blood gushed from his mouth, and he fell heavily back in my arms as I knelt behind him. After a little he rallied, and I heard him panting as in whispers he endeavoured to repeat the Maori rendering of the Lord's Prayer, ‘Murua o matou hara’ (‘Forgive us our trespasses’). So far he got in an agonized and almost inaudible whisper, and then the blood poured from his mouth again; there was a short struggle, and the weight I was supporting became very heavy. Slowly I laid him down, and I am not ashamed to say that my eyes grew dim as I thought how desolate some heart in the far Waikato land would be when the morning's work was known.
“As I turned away I saw sitting near me, propped up with a bundle of rugs and mats, an elderly grey-haired Maori, whose name I afterwards heard was Marakai, or Malachi. (This was a man of Ngati-Mahutu.) He was gravely smoking, and had been watching the poor youth's end. From him I learned the lad's name, and that he was one of the Ngati-Maniapoto Tribe. The name I treasured in my memory, and some two years later, when I had been sent on a political mission to the warlike and resentful Ngati-Maniapoto, I found myself one night at the village from which the dead warrior came, and was able to relate to his mother the particulars of her son's death. Several of my then hearers confessed that they had been of the attacking-party on that 23rd January, and proudly exhibited the scars of bullet-wounds on their bodies. They told me that their original design had been to make a simultaneous attack on all three redoubts.
“Knowing that Marakai was wounded, I inquired if he was in much pain. With a courtly, half-sarcastic smile he inclined his head so as to direct my attention to his knee, which had been frightfully damaged by the explosion of a shell or hand-grenade, quietly remarking, ‘With a wound such as that one must suffer somewhat.’ Poor old fellow! What a noble man he was! A nobleman in fallen circumstances if you like, but
“Leaving the ghastly line of dead or dying Maoris I passed into the redoubt, where in a tent were lying our dead and wounded men. In his own tent was lying poor old Lieutenant Jackson, of the 40th, who had received a bullet through his forehead while leaning over the parapet at the beginning of the attack and firing his revolver at the natives.”
The British losses in the No. 3 Redoubt fight were five killed and eleven wounded. The Maoris lost quite fifty killed outright or mortally wounded. Among the dead were the chiefs Te Retimana and Paora te Uata (Ngati-Raukawa) and Ratima te Paewaka, of Waikato. Thirty-seven double-barrel and single-barrel guns and flint-lock muskets were found on the field, besides some stone meres and many tomahawks.
IN THE BEAUTIFUL midsummer weather the advance upon
The advance was along a plateau of inconsiderable width with a very gentle upward slant inland to karaka and rata trees and other timber. On the left these gullies fell steeply to the Waitara River; on the right they were enclosed by rolling hills, all densely wooded. In the rear was a forest country practically untrodden by Europeans; it was known, however, that in there were large plantations at Mataitawa and other well-sheltered retreats of the Atiawa. Day after day the Maoris in their fern-masked firing-pits on the edges of the plateau made practice with their tupara at the working-parties and the
putatara and the tetere, the warriors' war-horns, and the high, long-drawn chants of the whaka-araara-pa, or sentinel songs. As the summer weeks went on, the troops became impatient for the order to advance at a pace somewhat quicker than Pratt's mile a month. “When are we going to rush the pa?” many a Regular asked, with his eyes lifted to the entrenched positions of his foe. “Look ye here, towney,” a big 65th man was heard to say to his comrade, “two glasses of rum and a shout, and we'd be into them rifle-pits and picking the Maoris out with our bay'nits.”
The work on the long series of saps carried towards Huirangi and manuka gabions used were generally made at the Waitara camp by men of the Naval Brigade, assisted by soldiers, under the direction of Royal Engineers non-commissioned officers.
Another redoubt, called No. 4, was constructed on the 27th and 28th January, 310 yards ahead of the place where the sap was commenced. This was a small square work, measuring 13½ yards each side inside the parapet; it was garrisoned by fifty men.
A fifth redoubt, 24 yards square, was built 200 yards farther on, and 260 yards from the nearest of the Maori rifle-pits. It was garrisoned by a hundred men, with a 24-pounder howitzer.
On the afternoon of the 1st February the Maoris were discovered to have abandoned their position at Huirangi, falling back on the main fortress on the height at pa of Puke-rangiora, several hundreds of feet above the Waitara River. No. 6 Redoubt was built at Huirangi, its front slightly in advance of the abandoned Maori rifle-pits, in the middle of a field of high Scotch thistles; its left-front angle was close to a patch of dense bush extending to the left and front. A portion of this bush was cleared by axemen.
From the end of the double sap at Huirangi a short single sap, 90 yards, was carried on in the direction of
No. 7 Redoubt was now constructed (10th to 12th February), about 1,300 yards ahead of No. 6, and about 800 yards from the front of pa. Its building was carried on on the first day under a sharp fire from a line of Maori rifle-pits in commanding positions, and from the pa itself. This fire was replied to by a line of British skirmishers, supported by four guns and howitzers. Captain Strange (65th Regiment) was mortally wounded. The redoubt was garrisoned by four hundred men, including the headquarters of the 40th Regiment. The front face and part of the left face were surmounted with gabions filled with earth, with sandbag loopholes at intervals to protect the interior from the natives' plunging fire. A man had been killed and an officer and a man wounded within the redoubt. A screen for an 8-inch gun was erected on the left flank of the redoubt; it was 12 yards in length, and was formed of two rows of gabions surmounted by a third row, all filled and backed up with earth from a ditch in the front. A parapet was also thrown up on the right of the redoubt outside as a cover for field-guns.
On the 16th February the sappers were again set to work. A single sap was commenced from the right-front angle of No. 7 Redoubt, being directed to clear the Maoris' rifle-pits close to the precipitous banks of the Waitara. This sap was continued, often under heavy fire, until the 25th; 452 yards had been excavated 5 feet 6 inches wide. The first 62 yards of the sap were without traverses; thenceforward the work was protected with traverses at intervals at from 10 to 12 yards. Meanwhile No. 7 Redoubt was considerably strengthened. The parapets were raised, and the ditch was widened to 9 feet, the earth being laid to form a glacis outside. The sap was now abreast of a hill called by the troops “Burnt Hill,” about 500 yards distant. The Maoris dug rifle-pits on the slope of this hill, and their fire considerably annoyed the working-parties.
On the morning of the 25th February the direction of the sap was changed towards the left of pa, and it was carried on as a double sap. A demi-parallel was commenced on the left, about 40 yards from where the double sap commenced.
The slow but sure approach of the sappers was now seriously disturbing the Maoris, who decided that it was time to interfere more actively than by sniping from distant cover. Accordingly, on the night of the 27th February, when the troops had withdrawn to the redoubts, a large body of natives crept silently out of the pa and vigorously set to work to fill in the trenches. They destroyed the whole of the double sap, the portion of demi-parallel, and more or less filled in nearly 150 yards of the single sap. They carried some of the gabions into the pa, and burned others and removed also the sap-rollers.
Next day, to guard the progress of the sap, another redoubt (No. 8) was constructed; its front face was 34 yards from the end of the single sap. This field-work, the last of the elaborate series, was square, with a side of 16 yards within the parapet. It was occupied nightly by a guard of fifty men.
On the morning of the 1st March the whole of the old double sap was filled in, and the single sap was connected with the ditch of the rear face of No. 8 Redoubt. A new double sap was then commenced from the centre of the front ditch of the redoubt. It was directed to the right (the British left) of the entrance to pa.
By the 3rd March the workers in the sap came under a heavy plunging fire from the front of the pa. A demi-parallel was now thrown out to the left, about 50 yards in front of No. 8 Redoubt, and was continued to the edge of the cliff above the Waitara
Under many interruptions the sap was pushed forward. The ground being commanded from the pa and the rifle-pits, the sap was deepened to 4 feet 6 inches; the traverses were placed from 8 feet to 10 feet apart, and made two gabions in height. The demi-parallel to the river-cliff was connected by an approach with the left-front angle of the redoubt, and about 10 yards of the demi-parallel was made into a battery for howitzers and a mortar. On the afternoon of the 5th March a party of warriors from the pa crept through the bushes on the edge of the precipice to the left and fired a volley into the sap, killing one man and wounding four others. To draw attention from this point of attack the native garrison had commenced a brisk fire from the bush on the right rear of No. 7 Redoubt, and continued it along the whole line of their entrenchments.
As the ground rose towards the pa the traverses were placed 14 yards apart and made one gabion in height, and the trench was excavated to the depth of 3 feet only. Heavy rain for two days interrupted progress, then the work was pushed on again steadily. Slight changes in the contour of the ground involved alterations from time to time in the intervals between the traverses. On the 11th March the sappers were making the traverses 12 yards apart and one gabion in height.
For three days (12th, 13th, and 14th March) hostilities and engineering-work were suspended at the request of
On the 15th March, the truce having expired, the works were recommenced, and a demi-parallel was begun at the left of the sap at 236 yards from No. 8 Redoubt. The object was to drive the natives from their rifle-pits along the precipice to the British left front. This trench was dug about 50 yards in two days, and carried to the verge of the cliff into the rifle-pits, which were evacuated.
Two days were spent by strong working-parties enlarging No. 7 Redoubt and constructing platforms and cover for heavy artillery, which presently opened fire on the pa. The Maoris on the afternoon of the 15th March carried on a very heavy musketry fire all along their front. That night they made an attempt to carry off the sap-roller at the end of the demi-parallel, but their scheme was violently frustrated by the explosion of an 8-inch shell which had been placed behind it, and connected with it and a friction-tube by a lanyard. (The sap-roller was a large cylindrical bundle of manuka-branches and fern, bound round gabions filled with earth, and 6 or 7 feet thick. It was rolled along in front of the advanced sappers for head-cover.)
Two important additions to the Imperial field force arrived in January, 1861—the 14th and 57th Regiments. The 14th came to Auckland from Cork in the auxiliary-screw ship “Robert Lowe” and the ships “Boanerges” and “Savilla.” Their Commander was Colonel (afterwards Major-General) Sir
Between the Maoris and some of the troops fighting at pa, there would come a loud request, “Homai te tupeka,” and when in response a packet of tobacco was thrown over into the Maori trenches, back would come a basket
There was now a heavy siege-train battering away at the Maori defences. The storm of shot and shell compelled the garrison to take to their underground quarters, but even there they were not always safe when the Armstrongs began to play on them. There were in front of pa from No. 7 Redoubt on the 15th March. The precision of the gunnery and the destruction caused by the bursting shells, added to the harassing effect of the night firing of the artillery, convinced Hapurona and his allies that their stronghold was no longer tenable.
On the 17th March the demi-parallel reached a point at a bend in the rifle-pits where a palisade on the cliff-edge barred further passage. Near here Lieutenant MacNaghten, R.A., was shot dead. It was he who had fired the first shot in the Waitara war, exactly a year before his death. Next day the sap, which had been suspended since the 11th, was recommenced, and 27 yards were formed during the day. The last two shells thrown into
The total length of the sap executed in this advance on
The war was terminated by an agreement between Hapurona and the Government,
The net result of the war was the enormous destruction of settlers' property at comparatively small cost to the Taranaki Maoris. More than three-fourths of the farmhouses at Omata, Bell Block, Tataraimaka, and settlements nearer the town had been burned or sacked. The premises of 187 farming families were destroyed, many of them in daylight, and some within rifle-range of the stockades. The total value of homes and stock lost was estimated at £200,000. The blunder of the Waitara purchase had set the province back well-nigh twenty years. The Government made some compensation, but the parliamentary vote for the purpose (£25,000) went only a very small way to satisfy the ruined settlers' claims. Further financial assistance, however, was granted later on.
A considerable portion of the sap towards pa, Puke-rangiora, is still to be seen. The traveller turning up from the New Plymouth-Waitara Road from near Kairau drives along a plain studded with the ruins of British redoubts and Maori entrenchments, and when within about half a mile of pa garrison. Above are the high fern-grown parapets of
Sergeant-Major
BEFORE THE WINTER of 1861 most of the troops in Taranaki were withdrawn to Auckland, Colonel Warre remaining in New Plymouth with his regiment, the 57th. Major-General Pratt left for Melbourne after the arrival of a new Commander-in-Chief, Lieut.-General Sir
An incident of 1862 (1st September) was the wreck at Te Namu, near Cape Egmont, of the steamer “Lord Worsley,” 600 tons, carrying passengers, mails, and gold from Nelson to New Plymouth and Auckland.
Soon after Sir
The first shot in the second Taranaki campaign was fired on the 4th May, 1863. The Taranaki and Ngati-Ruanui planned ambuscades to cut off communications between Tataraimaka and New Plymouth, and warnings of these intended ambush tactics had been sent to the authorities in New Plymouth by friendly natives, but were lightly regarded. Sir
The ambuscade was laid on the coast just beyond the Oakura, at a place where two small streams, the Waimouku and the Wairau, flow down to the shingly beach. (The spot is on the farm of Captain Frank Mace.) Low but thick bush and brushwood grew close to the beach here, and in its cover between the mouths of the two streams, which are not more than 100 yards apart, the
“Mate rawa!” (“He is killed!”) but the officer rose and confronted his enemies again. Thereupon mataika. It was the first man he had helped to slay. He took a watch and chain and a ring from Dr. Hope's body, and two rifles from the dead soldiers.
It was a war custom among the Taranaki Maoris that any plunder or trophies taken from a foe whom a warrior had killed in his first battle—the “first fish”—should not be retained by the slayer, but should be given away to some other person in order to avert ill luck. It was inviting an aitua (a serious misfortune, even death) to keep the first spoils of war. So, on returning to the Maori headquarters, Hori was advised by the chiefs and elders to give away his war-trophies, and so placate the war-god. Hori insisted on wearing the watch and ring, declaring that they were too valuable and fine to be given away because of an old-fashioned superstition.
The ill-gotten ring brought its Sergeant-Major Bezar, who, with a party of men, captured “aitua. Three weeks after the ambuscade at the Wairau a small party of young warriors, of whom “Ki au te tupapaku!” (“Mine is the dead man!”) rushed out, dropping his rifle, and snatched out his short-handled tomahawk to deliver the finishing blow. But the officer was by no means a dead man. Jumping to his feet, he drew his revolver and fired several shots at Hori. One struck the young half-caste in the side. He was not seriously
The war renewed, troops were again moved to Taranaki. The Militia and the Volunteers were once more required for guard and patrol duty around New Plymouth.
At the beginning of June more effective methods of frontier warfare were introduced by the formation of settler and Volunteer corps for the special purpose of following the Maoris into the bush and clearing the country surrounding the town of hostile bands.
Early in June General Cameron moved out against the southern tribes who were resisting the Government's title to the Tataraimaka Block. At St. George's Redoubt, the post which he had established at Tataraimaka, he concentrated a considerable force, having previously arranged that H.M.S. “Eclipse” should co-operate by shelling the Maoris. The Taranaki, Ngati-Ruanui, Nga-Rauru, and Whanganui men had entrenched themselves in a position above a mile beyond St. George's Redoubt and near the mouth of
pa—and by an Armstrong battery posted on the edge of the cliff above the river near the redoubt. After the shelling the 57th carried the position at the point of the bayonet, cleared the rifle-pits and trenches, and pursued the beaten foe inland. Sergeant-Major
“The Taranaki natives' position had not been completed when we attacked it. The place was about fifteen miles from New Plymouth, on the southern side of Tataraimaka and more inland. St. George's Redoubt at Tataraimaka was about a mile away. After leaving the redoubt our force had to cross a river and then advance in single file up a rough ferny ridge; at the top we halted so as to give the men time to come up, and it was a considerable time before we had enough men there to enable us to rush the pa. The distance we had to charge across the open was about 150 yards. In the meantime Ensign Duncan with fifty men of our regiment had been sent on to cut off the Maoris' retreat in the rear. Duncan marched up from the redoubt to within a short distance of the pa, but instead of taking post in the rear, as he should have done, he simply came up along the right flank of the Maoris and rushed in at the front of it as we did. Had he done his duty properly the Maoris would have been surrounded, and probably the war would have ended there.
“The place, properly speaking, was not a pa, as there was no parapet or palisade. It consisted simply of trench-work and rifle-pits. The main trenches, about 4 feet wide or so, roughly formed three sides of a parallelogram, with the longer side on the front which we rushed. Inside the trenches was a series of rifle-pits—three or four of them—and within again were two or three large wharepunis, sunk in the ground after the usual native fashion, with low roofs; they were thatched with raupo.
“We charged in across the trench with the bayonet, and the Maoris were soon bolting out at the rear. The glacis across which we rushed was a potato cultivation; on the south there was a maize-field. I saw one man running down across this field, and I took a shot at him and dropped him. By the time I had loaded again and caught up to my men we were in the pa. The whares were set fire to, or caught fire from the shooting close to the thatch, and as they burned the raupo fell in. There were several men's bodies under the burning debris when the fight was over.
“When the action was over we collected the dead and wounded. Three of our men were killed. The Maoris lost about forty killed. We carried twenty-eight bodies out across the trenches and laid them in a long row in front of the works they had defended. Then General Cameron came up with Sir
“A picture in the Illustrated London News, 1864, is a very inaccurate drawing of the fight. There was no large earthwork as shown in the sketch—only trenches and rifle-pits.
“Ensign Duncan, so far as I know, was never taken to task for his blunder; but there is no doubt that his fifty men could have disposed of the Maoris had they been in their proper position in the rear.
“The surviving Maoris, we heard afterwards, held a meeting at night in the bush, and they all decided to wage war to the uttermost in revenge for their losses that day.”
A number of Upper Wanganui natives were killed in this attack, and these losses accounted in part for the readiness with which the river tribes embraced the Hauhau fanaticism in 1864.
The principal trophy captured on this successful expedition was the large board on which the list of Maori tolls was painted, set up originally by the Kingites near Te Ika-roa-a-Maui, the large assembly-house at Kapoaiaia, near Warea, and afterwards brought to Puke-tehe, in the vicinity of Tataraimaka. The tolls demanded ranged from £500 for a pakeha policeman to 6d. for a Maori pig carried in a cart. The board was put on board H.M.S. “Eclipse” for Auckland.
As the Waikato War had now begun, the Ngati-Maniapoto and other northern fighters who had gone to Taranaki in response to the appeal from the runanga at Mataitawa, when the troops occupied Tataraimaka, returned to defend their own territory, and left the west-coast tribes to continue the hostilities. There was intermittent skirmishing for some months; in these events the Taranaki Rifles Volunteers and the Militia played a conspicuous part. The principal engagement during the latter part of 1863 was an encounter on the 2nd October at Allen's Hill, or Hurford Road, five miles and a half from New Plymouth along the south road. Colonel Warre took out a strong force of the 57th and the settler-soldiers, and there was some brisk fighting on the hill and in the fields around the homestead to the west of it. Captains Atkinson, Webster, and
Now and again the Regular troops, in emulation of Atkinson's active Bush Rangers, essayed to lay ambuscades for the Maoris. An incident of this kind was the ambushing of a small party of natives at the foot of the Patua Range, on which the Kaitake pa was built, by a detachment of the 57th, under Captain
The Tataraimaka Block was once more temporarily abandoned to the Maoris, and the available forces were concentrated on the defences of New Plymouth and its outposts as far as Omata and Poutoko on one hand and the Bell Block on the other. The bush-scouring parties of the Volunteers were now most useful in patrolling the broken forest country in rear of the town, and in blocking communication between the southern tribes and the Atiawa.
An example of the numerous bush skirmishes in which the settlers' corps were engaged in 1863–64 is described by Captain
“Upon my arrival in New Plymouth, a few days after the ambuscade of Lieutenant Tragett and Dr. Hope at the Wairau, I joined the Bush Rangers, a scouting corps, under Captains Atkinson and Webster. Our duties were to patrol on the outskirts of the town, which was now isolated from other parts of the colony, the Maoris having burned down many houses and murdered some settlers. This is how we foiled a Maori ambuscade, through the smoke from the pipes: We had been out all night some distance past the Bell Block, and, not meeting with the enemy, started to return by the edge of the bush, through Street's Clearing, swinging along at ease in single file on the bullock-cart road. I was near the front with Bill Smart and others. The fern was high, but looking over we saw distinctly, at about 250 yards, at the edge of the bush, a small curl of smoke ahead, and upon looking again saw a group of Maoris in their mats leaning upon their guns. Captain Atkinson now got up to us and saw the Maoris, and about fifteen or eighteen of us actually formed up in line, and at the word ‘Fire,’ gave them a volley. We expected to get their killed and wounded, but before we got across the swamp they had dragged those hit or killed into the bush. So we did not venture in after them, being not far from Mataitawa pa. We got many mats with holes through them, and I think, some guns. We now continued our way in the direction of Bell Block, and at a small rise we got a volley from behind logs. Following up the Maori party, we killed two. We now started again for home, in the direction of the Bell Block, and had not gone far when we saw coming towards us two bullock-carts. There was a strong wind blowing
“Just a word for my old comrades, the Taranaki boys. The Maoris had no chance with them, man for man, in the bush. Skirmishing with them under Captain (afterwards Major) Sir Harry Atkinson taught me much about taking cover in bush fighting that served me well in other campaigns during nearly eight years active service in the Maori wars. It is always pleasing to an old soldier to be able to remember with affection his old officer. When spoken to by Sir Harry Atkinson one knew that he was a kind friend as well as a commanding officer.”
South of New Plymouth towards the end of 1863 the chief activity of the Taranaki was the construction of a strongly entrenched position at Kaitake, on a north-western spur of the Patua Range; the pa was on the bold skyline of this ridge as seen from the main road at Oakura. The distance from the Oakura River mouth to the pa was about three miles. The local chief and engineer of this fortification was pas. In December, 1863, Colonel Warre shelled the place with the Armstrong field-guns, but the final operations were deferred until the following year. The Government was now bringing in military settlers, many of them from Victoria, and the force in the province amounted to about two thousand men, including a thousand Regular troops.
Kaitake was stormed and captured by the troops on the 25th March, 1864. A force of 420 of the 57th, 70th, and Volunteers and Militia, with four guns, under Colonel Warre, moved out from New Plymouth to the base of the range. The guns were placed in position about 1,500 yards from the right of the Maori rifle-pits, and made such accurate practice that most of the defenders were
pas, pouring a reverse fire into the trenches behind the line of palisading. The Maoris held these trenches until a portion of the main body had ascended a ridge on their extreme left. Both flanks having been turned, the Maoris retired through the bush in their rear. A redoubt for a hundred men was immediately constructed on the site of the uppermost pa. The enemy's works were gradually destroyed, the bush in the vicinity was cut down, and a practicable road was made to the position. A party of rejoicing settlers, including a lady, drank champagne in the captured stronghold the day after its capture. However, four days after the storming of the position the Maoris laid an ambuscade within 150 yards of the redoubt, and killed one soldier and wounded another.
It is now necessary to break the narrative of events in Taranaki, where the fighting assumed a new phase with the rise of the Pai-marire religion, and turn to the outbreak and progress of the Waikato War, 1863–64.
THIS CHANT, OFTEN heard even at the present day, embodied the passionate sentiment of nationalism and home rule for the Maoris which developed into a war-fever in Waikato. From first to last the wise and patriotic pakeha, and, had he been a younger man, his undoubtedly great influence, born of his warrior reputation and his aristocratic position, probably would have prevented the Waikato throwing themselves into a test of arms with the Government. In the beginning of the King movement, as has already been explained, there was no desire to force a war. The great meetings at which the selection of Potatau as King was confirmed were attended by numerous Europeans. Government officials, missionaries, and traders were alike welcome guests at Ngaruawahia, Rangiaowhia, and the other centres of the home-rulers. The more intelligent of the Maoris saw clearly that
pakeha. But the irritation caused by the inevitable friction over European encroachment, the treatment of the natives by the lower class of whites, the reluctance of the authorities to grant the tribes a reasonable measure of self-government, and, lastly, the sympathy with Taranaki and the bitterness engendered by the loss of so many men in the Waitara campaign, all went to mould the Waikato and their kinsmen into a powerful foe of the Colonial Government.
In the beginning the natural desire of the natives for a better system of government could have been turned to beneficial account by a prescient Administration. At a large meeting at Paetai, near Rangiriri, on the 23rd April, 1857, Potatau, Te Wharepu, and other chiefs asked the Governor, Colonel Gore Browne, for a Magistrate and laws, and runanga or tribal councils. To this request the Government responded by the experimental establishment of civil institutions in the Waikato, under Mr. F. D. Fenton, afterwards Judge of the Native Land Court. The new machinery, however, was not given time to develop into a useful and workable system before Mr. Fenton was recalled, and the field was left free for the exponents of Maori independence to develop their own schemes of government.
An account has been given in a previous chapter of the first meetings in connection with the establishment of the Maori kingdom. The Paetai meeting of 1857 was a highly picturesque gathering. The Lower Waikato people were assembled to meet their guests from up-river, the Ngati-Haua and Ngati-Maniapoto and some of the Waikato hapus, who came sweeping down the river in a grand flotilla of nearly fifty canoes. marae or village campus the flag of the newly selected King; this ensign was white, with a red border and two red crosses, symbolic of Christianity; it bore the words “Potatau Kingi o Niu Tireni.” The speeches breathed intense patriotism. “I love New Zealand,” cried one old blanketed chief. “Let us have order, so that we may increase like the white man. Why should we disappear from the land? Let us have a king, for with a king there will be peace among us. New Zealand is ours—I love it.” Another, Hoani Papita, of the Rangiaowhia people, Ngati-Hinetu and Ngati-Apakura, made an eloquent plea for independence and nationalism. “Fresh water is lost when it mingles with the salt,” he said. “Let us retain our lands and be independent of the pakeha.” And he began the chant which heads this chapter, “Ka ngapu te whenua.” The whole two thousand natives gathered around took up the song and chanted it in a tremendous chorus. That old heart-cry of nationalism still holds power to electrify the Maori.
The formal investiture of Potatau with the dignity of King of the Maori Kotahitanga, or confederation of tribes, took place in 1858 at Ngaruawahia, and was followed by a large gathering at Rangiaowhia, the great granary and orchard of the Upper Waikato, not far from Te Awamutu, where presently Mr. Gorst (afterwards Sir
Governor Browne and his Ministers consistently declined to recognize the Maori King or Maori nationality, but when Sir runanga of chiefs at Ngaruawahia told Mr. Gorst that if some plan of the kind had been carried out five or six years previously there would never have been a Maori King. Still they were willing, if the Governor was willing to let their King and flag stand, to adopt his plans and work with him for the good of all. But the Kingitanga was the stumbling-block. Grey, for all his kindly feeling towards his native friends, would have nothing to do with an alien flag, and he declared at last, at a Waikato meeting, that although he would not fight against the Maori kingdom with the sword, he would “dig around it” until it fell. This ominous figure of speech, combined with the always suspicious presence of a Government agent in the heart of the King's country, and, finally, the commencement of the military road from Drury through the forest to the Waikato River, fostered the Maori disbelief in the friendly intention of the pakeha.
The Kingites' suspicions of the Governor and his Ministers were aggravated by the attempt to establish a Government constabulary station at Te Kohekohe. Grey's plan was to police the Lower Waikato district by this post, which was close to Te Wheoro's
In other words, the Civil Commissioner of Waikato was requested to “plug up” the boundary river between Koia e Te Kohi,Purua i Manga-tawhiri,Kia puta ai ona pokohiwi,Kia whato touE hi na wa!pakeha and Maori lands, and prevent the King's followers passing below its mouth to trade in Auckland, so that presently they would be reduced to a ragged condition for want of European clothing. To this piece of political persiflage the Kingites retorted with a waiata prompted by the Government proposal to establish a police-station at Te Wheoro's village:—
Kuini i Te Kohekohe,Whakaronga mai ra nge,Ka pohutu atu nga papa,Kei Te Ia.Mau na wa!
This threat was soon fulfilled, for a party of King supporters came down the river, took possession of the sawn timber that had been stacked at Kohekohe for the construction of the Government station, threw it into the river, and rafted it down to Te Ia-roa (“The Long Current”), called by the Europeans “Havelock.” There they landed it in front of a trading-store kept by a young Scotsman, Mr.
The eviction of Mr. Gorst from the Waikato was the next step in the Kingites' clearance of all forms of European authority from their land. Mr. Gorst (who had at first thought of entering the Melanesian mission work under
The story of Gorst's little newspaper, Curious histories attach to the printing plants of the The story of the The Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke i te Tuanui, or “The Lonely Lark on the House-top” (there being no sparrows in Maoriland), established by way of a counterblast to the Kingite print Te Hokioi (“The War-bird”), is a pivotal incident in the history of the Waikato. The pungent tone of the Pihoihoi particularly incensed Rewi and his fellow-chiefs, and the runanga at Kihikihi determined to suppress Gorst and his paper. On the 25th March, 1863, when Mr. Gorst was absent at Te Kopua, on the Waipa, Rewi and a war-party of Ngati-Maniapoto, numbering eighty, invaded Te Awamutu. Pihoihoi, were seized. Mr. Gorst was now ordered to leave Te Awamutu. When he refused, Rewi wrote to Governor Grey (then in Taranaki) requesting him to withdraw his official. Pihoihoi Mokemoke i te Tuanui and the Hokioi. The Pihoihoi press and the type, after being seized by the Ngati-Maniapoto at Gorst's station, Te Awamutu, in 1863, were carted up to Kihikihi, the headquarters of the tribe. Several of the young men helped themselves to a little of the type from the cases as curiosities; otherwise there was no interference with the plant. A few days later the press and type were carted to the head of navigation and taken in a canoe down the Waipa and Waikato Rivers to Te Ia-roa (Havelock), at the mouth of the Manga-tawhiri, where they were handed over to Mr. Gazette and other Government work. A legend gained currency that the type of the Pihoihoi was melted down by the Kingites and moulded into bullets to fire at the British soldiers. Mr. Kay's statement and the testimony of the Maoris make it clear that the press was returned almost intact to the Government. The small quantity of type taken by Rewi's young men at Kihikihi would not have made many bullets.Hokioi press is even more interesting. It goes back to the year 1859, when the Austrian frigate “Novara” was in Auckland Harbour on a cruise round the world. Dr. Hochstetter, the geologist of the expedition, was treated with much kindness by the people of Waikato when he made his tour through the interior; and when the “Novara” sailed two chiefs of the King's party, Hemara te Rerehau (Ngati-Maniapoto) and Wiremu Toetoe (Waikato, of Rangiaowhia), were taken round the world in her as guests of the Austrian Government. In Vienna they were introduced to the Emperor Franz Josef, and the Archduke Maximilian entertained them, and on parting asked the Maoris what they would like him to give them as a present. They answered, “A printing-press and type.” These were given them and brought out to New Zealand. The printing-apparatus was taken to Mangere, where King Potatau sometimes lived. One of Mr. New-Zealander printing-office, instructed some of the young Maoris. The plant was taken to Ngaruawahia, and was used there for the printing of the Kingite proclamations and the Hokioi e Rere Atu na, a name which bore reference to a mythological bird of omen, a kind of war-eagle. Hokioi and wrote the Kingite articles, and his brother, Hokioi press and type were taken for safe keeping to Te Kopua, on the Waipa, and there they have remained to the present day. The rusted remains of the press lie on the river-bank; and a settler ploughing his land at Te Kopua has turned up some of the scattered type. The local Maoris turned the old hand-press to account in another way—to press their cakes of torori or home-grown tobacco.Hokioi is the rarest of all New Zealand prints; there are very few copies in existence. One in the writer's possession bears the date Hanueri (January) 13, 1863. It is a four-page paper, single-column, 1 inches by 9 inches.
So abruptly ended the Governor's effort to wean Waikato from the charms of kingism. Rewi was condemned by Wiremu Tame-hana, coup, and Waikato was soon afire with the war-passion. The first shots were fired in less than four months after the raid on Te Awamutu.
The Kingite plan of operations was detailed by Mr. pakeha, according to accounts given by the Maoris, was arranged in 1861, after Governor Gore Browne's threatening Proclamation. The Waikato were to come down in a body to take up a position at Paparata, in the Tirikohua district, making that their headquarters. Thence parties were to occupy Maketu, an old pa east of Drury—there was an ancient track to that spot from Paparata—and Tuhimata, the Pukewhau Hill (now Bombay), overlooking Baird's Farm; also the Razorback
There was an alternative plan, which was favoured by most of the Kingites, and in the end was adopted; it was far more ambitious and daring than the first. The proposal was to execute a grand coup by attacking Auckland by night-time or early in the morning. The Hunua bush was to be the rendezvous of the main body, and a portion of the Kingite army was to cross the Manukau in canoes and approach Auckland by way of the Whau, on the west, while the Ngati-Paoa and other Hauraki coast tribes were to gather at Taupo, on the shore east of the Wairoa. The date fixed for the attack was the 1st September, 1861, when the Town of Auckland was to be set on fire in various places by natives living there for that purpose; in the confusion the war-parties lying in wait were to rush into the capital by land and sea. Certain houses and persons were to be saved; the dwellings would be recognized by a white cross marked on the doors on the night for which the
This was only a part of a general sudden blow against the pakeha race; similar attacks were urged upon the natives in the Wellington District. It was an exceedingly bold and hazardous scheme; nevertheless it would have been attempted had Governor Gore Browne remained in New Zealand. It was only the news that Sir
In 1860 Mr.
The war now waged was very different from pakeha to the sea, as the pakeha Government's object was to teach the Maori his subjection to British authority. The Europeans were not without warning that the sharp and barbarous old Maori methods of warfare were to be revived. tangata ringa-kore) nor property. In August, 1863, he wrote to the Governor cautioning him to bring “to the towns the defenceless, lest they be killed in their farms in the bush.” “But,” he concluded, “you are well acquainted with the customs of the Maori race.” The frontier settlers who remained on their sections did so at their own risk. No chief, not even the King or the kingmaker, could restrain a party of young bloods on the war-path seeking to flesh their tomahawks. They would quote the ancient war-proverb, “He maroro kokoti ihu waka” (“A flying-fish crossing the bow of the canoe”) in allusion to any luckless persons whom a fighting taua might find in its path, and in the stern logic of the
During the Taranaki and Waikato Kingite wars some of the leading natives conducted correspondence on war subjects by means of a cipher code. The following is the key to the cipher, which came into possession of the Governor, Sir
The figure 7 stood for both K and R, but no doubt there was some distinguishing mark or variation for one of the letters.
IN THREE MONTHS after the firing of the first shot in the Waikato War the whole of the able-bodied male population of Auckland between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five was on active service, bearing arms and doing duty as regular soldiers. The same conditions prevailed in Taranaki. The military expenditure of the Government was about £12,000 per month, and was on an increasing scale as the campaign developed. In addition to the equipment and pay of the Volunteers and Militia, a flotilla of armoured river-steamers and small gunboats was provided, and a field battery of six 12-pounder Armstrong guns. All this expense devolved upon the Colonial Government, besides a liability of £40 per head per annum to the Imperial Government on account of the Regular troops employed in the war. These British troops ultimately numbered about ten thousand. In a memorandum by the Defence Minister, Mr.
In addition to these Volunteers and Militia there were colonial permanent forces enrolled for the war, consisting chiefly of regiments of military settlers recruited in Australia in 1863 by Mr.
A highly useful arm of the colonial service was the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry, armed with sword, carbine, and revolver. There were two troops of Nixon's Cavalry, as this corps was locally called, in the Auckland District. There were also troops in Hawke's Bay, at Wellington, and at Wanganui; the total strength of the regiment was 375. In the Imperial Transport Service, receiving colonial pay, there were, when the war was at its height, 1,526 officers and men, with 2,244 draught animals. Captain Jackson's corps of Forest Rangers, numbering sixty, was soon augmented by a second company. Major-General Galloway was appointed to the command of the colonial forces, and gave his services to the colony gratuitously.
The Auckland Militia of the first class, unmarried men of between the ages of sixteen and forty, were first called out for active service on the 23rd June, 1863. There were no conscientious objectors in those days (or if there were they did not raise their voices), and any shirkers were dealt with severely. The first draft was 400 men, some of whom were despatched to the main camp at Otahuhu, and thence in companies to the various outposts as far as Drury. Others were retained for city patrol duty; as the war went on the older and married men relieved them of the town guard work and left the first class available for field service. The citizen recruits, drawn from all classes and occupations, were drilled in the Albert Barracks ground by the Regular Army instructors; morning after morning the drill was continued until the raw material was considered sufficiently advanced in the elements of infantry work to be despatched to Otahuhu. The duties of soldiering fell very severely upon many of the towns-people called upon to make heavy marches and live under rough camp conditions in the depth of winter, and to toil at redoubt-building and trench-digging. The large camp at Otahuhu was rather badly organized in the first hurry of war preparations, and the inferior hutting and feeding of the troops caused much sickness. The pay was half a crown a day with rations; this was increased by a shilling a day at the front.
The citadel of Auckland, Fort Britomart, stood on a commanding promontory, faced with pohutukawa-fringed cliffs 40 feet high. Major Bunbury and other commanders in Auckland had partly fortified the position, which was considerably strengthened by Major-General pa-builder—and pierced with embrasures on the sea faces. On the land face there was a deep ditch in front of the parapet, with a stockade close to the
These defences were not alone intended for defence against Maori attack. There were even in that day fears of a foreign war which would involve the British soldiers; the aggressive
The protection of the South Auckland outlying settlements and of the military road through the forest to the nearest point of the Waikato River necessitated the construction of many fortified posts, most of which were earthwork redoubts, others timber stockades. At Otahuhu, the principal field headquarters, there was a large fortified camp. At Howick, which was considered a vulnerable position owing to its proximity to the Wairoa Ranges, and open as it was to attack by war-canoe crews from the shores of the Thames Gulf, a field-work was erected. A large earthwork redoubt, called “St. John's Redoubt,” after an officer placed in charge of it, was built between Papatoetoe and Papakura. The Village of Papakura was protected by the erection on the Auckland side of the settlement of a small redoubt, which stood near the junction of the Great South Road and the Wairoa Road, and by the fortification of the Presbyterian church at the other side of the village. The redoubt was the camp of the local Volunteers and the Militia and a party of the 65th Regiment. The church was made bullet-proof by packing sand between the outer wall and the lining, a method used in most of the blockhouses built in the Maori campaigns. The walls were loopholed for rifle-fire. A correspondent, describing the remarkable sight of the country churches being stockaded and pierced for rifle-fire, remarked of the Papakura church, loopholed and bastioned, that it was a “visible transubstantiation of a bulwark of faith into a bulwark of earthly strength.”
At Kirikiri, on the Papakura—Wairoa Road, a redoubt was thrown up on a commanding site two miles from Papakura;
The Wairoa South Settlement (now Clevedon), eight miles from the mouth of the Wairoa River, was defended by the building of a redoubt on the left bank (west side) of the river and a stockade on the opposite side. The redoubt, a square work with flanking bastions, was built on Mr. Thorpe's farm. It was held by Major (afterwards Colonel)
At Drury (the Tauranga of the Maoris), the head of navigation for cutters from Onehunga, there was a large military establishment, and a redoubt was built on the highest part of the settlement. AT Pukekohe East (the present site of Pukekohe Town was then dense bush) the little Presbyterian church was enclosed by a trench and a stockade of logs laid horizontally. At Mauku the English church was stockaded and loopholed. Major Speedy's house, “The Grange,” at Mauku, was loopholed and garrisoned by the settlers for defence; later, a stockade was built at the landing-place. A similar place of defence was provided at the Waiuku Settlement.
In many instances the settlers in the bush districts refused to leave their homes, and remained to brave the dangers of life on a troubled frontier.
From Drury the Great South Road through the forest to Pokeno was safeguarded by redoubts at short intervals. The principal posts were at Sheppard's Bush (Ramarama); Martin's Farm, on the plain a short distance north of Pukewhau Hill (now Bombay); Baird's Hill stockade, at the north end of Williamson's Clearing
At the few settlements on the Coromandel Peninsula there was some danger of attack from the Ngati-Paoa and other Kingite natives. A veteran Forest Ranger, Mr.
At Raglan, on the Whaingaroa Harbour, west coast, there was fear that the small European settlement would be attacked by the Kingites from Kawhia or inland. Many of the settlers sent their families to Onehunga by the trading-vessels, but some of the women and children remained. A place of defence was considered necessary, and Mr. Richard Todd, a Government surveyor (who was shot on Pirongia Mountain by the Kingites in 1870), took charge of the work of fortification, and employed a number of friendly natives in digging a trench around the Courthouse and gaol, and in making rifle-pits to protect the principal houses. The entrenchment defending the Government buildings took in about an acre of ground. The main building was strengthened with thick timbers, and was loopholed. Early in 1864 a redoubt was built at the head of Raglan Harbour by Colonel Waddy's expeditionary force (50th Regiment and three hundred Waikato Militia).
The military road through the forest and over the range from Drury to the Manga-tawhiri River was constructed in 1862 by a body of Imperial troops, the 12th and the 14th Regiments at the Pokeno end, and the 65th and 70th at the Drury end, with some Royal Engineers to direct the details of the work. Lieut.-General Cameron, in execution of Grey's plan for the employment of the troops in this work, fixed his headquarters at Drury Camp. Colonel Sir James Alexander (14th) was in command at Pokeno where the Queen's Redoubt was built. The troops in December, 1861, marched along the Maori track over
ON THE 9TH JULY, 1863, the Government issued an order requiring all natives living in the Manukau district and on the Waikato frontier north of the Manga-tawhiri to take the oath of allegiance to the Queen and to give up their arms, and warning the Maoris that those refusing to range themselves on the side of the British must retire to the Waikato. Those not complying with this instruction were to be ejected from their settlements. This ultimatum was followed by the following Proclamation sent to the Kingites summarizing the reasons which prompted the military measures adopted by the Government:—
CHIEFS OF WAIKATO,—
Europeans living quietly on their own lands in Waikato have been driven away; their property has been plundered; their wives and children have been taken from them. By the instigation of some of you, officers and soldiers were murdered at Taranaki. Others of you have since expressed approval of these murders. Crimes have been committed in other parts of the Island, and the criminals have been rescued or sheltered under the colour of your authority.
You are now assembling in armed bands; you are constantly threatening to come down the river to ravage the Settlement of Auckland and to murder peaceable settlers. Some of you offered a safe passage through your territories to armed parties contemplating such outrages. The well-disposed among you are either unable or unwilling to prevent these evil acts. I am therefore compelled, for the protection of all, to establish posts at several points on the Waikato River, and to take necessary measures for the future security of persons inhabiting that district. The lives and property of all well-disposed people living on the river will be protected, and armed and evil-disposed people will be stopped from passing down the river to rob and murder Europeans.
I now call on all well-disposed natives to aid the Lieutenant-General to establish and maintain these posts, and to preserve peace and order.
Those who remain peaceably at their own villages in Waikato, or move into such districts as may be pointed out by the Government, will be protected in their persons, property, and land.
Those who wage war against Her Majesty, or remain in arms, threatening the lives of Her peaceable subjects, must take the consequences of thier acts, and they must understand that they will forfeit the right to the possession of their lands guaranteed to them by the Treaty of Waitangi,which lands will be occupied by a population capable of protecting for the future the quiet and unoffending from the violence with which they are now so constantly threatened.
Auckland,
G. Grey, Governor.
On the 12th July General Cameron detailed a force from his army encamped at the Queen's Redoubt at Pokeno to make the first advance into the Waikato. The second battalion of the 14th Regiment, under Lieut.-Colonel Austen, crossed the swamp-fringed Manga-tawhiri Stream at the termination of the military road, and took up a position to the left, on the site of an old pa on a hill above the river, a spur of the Koheroa Range. A few days later this body was reinforced by detachments of the 12th and 70th Regiments, and was now five hundred strong. Three field-works were thrown up on the hill.
The process of ejection of those natives who could not bring themselves to abandon their fellow-countrymen was now carried out at the Manukau, Papakura, Patumahoe, Tuakau, and other districts between Auckland and the frontier waters. The principal tribe evicted was Ngati-Pou, who had a settlement on the right (north) bank of the Waikato at Tuakau, with large cultivations of food crops and fruit-groves. In the middle of July Mr. hapus of the Ngati-Tamaoho; another rangatira of Te Akitai was Mohi te Ahi-a-te-ngu. The permanent population of the settlement was small, but some scores of young men from the Auckland side who had decided to join the Kingites had made it their rendezvous, and were believed to be fortifying themselves in the bush. Just above Te Aparangi on the foothills of the ranges is a level-topped hill known as Puke-kiwi-riki, formerly a strongly trenched fort belonging to the Ngati-Tamaoho Tribe. The ancient pa presented a tempting site for a freebooting stronghold. Mr. Bell gave the Akitai and their kin the choice of making a declaration of allegiance to the Queen or of going unmolested to the Waikato. He urged the former course, saying that the Government had no wish to drive them from their land. Mohi spoke in appreciation of Mr. Bell's generosity in going unarmed among the Maoris at such a time to carry a message of peace and good will, and declared that if the Minister had arrived a few days earlier with such an
hapus, who previously had opposed Rewi and his war-party, now felt it their duty to join Waikato.
When the Minister and Mr. Gorst rode back to Drury that afternoon they heard the news of the first blow of the war. A settler named Michael Meredith and his young son had been found tomahawked on their bush farm near Ramarama, about four miles from Drury; they were out fencing when the marauders caught them. Some blamed Ihaka's people, but wrongly; the killing was the deed of a party of young men who sought to distinguish themselves by drawing first blood. A force of Nixon's Cavalry (Otahuhu troop, numbering thirty) and the 65th Regiment (three hundred) invaded Te Aparangi and took prisoner Ihaka and a number of others, chiefly old men and women and children, but the young armed men escaped and joined their relatives at Waikato.
Canoe-paddles dipped and flashed all along the broad Waikato as the Upper Waikato tribes and Ngati-Maniapoto, Ngati-Haua, and Ngati-Raukawa came hurrying down the river, eager to measure their strength with the pakeha. There were men even from Taranaki and the Upper Whanganui among the war-parties. Before the main body of the Kingites had had time to concentrate on the south side of the Manga-tawhiri the first encounter of the war was precipitated by an advance force of Waikato, numbering between two and three hundred, under Te Huirama, a near relative of King Tawhiao. Te Huirama had a fortified position at Te Teoteo, an old Maori pa on a bluff immediately overlooking the Whanga-marino Stream, which joins the Waikato a short distance above the present Township of Mercer. From this point the range of the hills on which Te Teoteo stands trends in a crescent, the northern horn curving in again towards the Waikato at the point where the Manga-tawhiri comes down into the swamps near the main river. Near the tip of the northern horn of the hills was the British advanced camp, under Lieut.-Colonel Austen. Te Huirama and his men hastened to provoke an attack from the British troops, and dug a succession of trenches across the narrow ridge.
The movements of Waikato were observed from the 14th Regiment's camp on the south side of the Manga-tawhiri on the forenoon of the 17th July. Lieut.-Colonel Austen immediately ordered his battalion under arms, and moved out to meet the Maoris, followed by a detachment of the 12th and 70th Regiments. General Cameron, from the Queen's Redoubt, overtook the column on its march to the ranges, over low hills covered with fern and manuka.
The force had advanced in skirmishing order for about two miles when the Maori outposts opened fire. They fell back, taking advantage of the broken ground to continue their firing. From their rifle-pits they opened a heavy fire when the leading troops were well within gunshot, and the young soldiers of the 14th hesitated momentarily after some men had fallen. The gallant General Cameron rushed forward waving his cap, and shouted to the 14th to come on. Cheering, the young battalion now swept forward at the charge, their officers—Captains Strange and Phelps, and Lieutenants Glancy and Armstrong—leading them sword in hand; and the lines of entrenchments were taken at the point of the bayonet. The Maoris, leaving many dead in and around the trenches, retreated south along the fern-hills, fighting as they fell back from one line of defence to the next, until they were driven to the heights above the Maramarua and Whanga-marino. Some escaped down a gully on the east, but lost a number of men to the heavy converging fire from the high ground on either flank. The majority of the survivors made for the south side of the Whanga-marino and thence to Meremere; others took to their canoes in the creek and paddled out into the Waikato River. The creek and the great swamp beyond stayed the further progress of the troops. The British loss was one killed; twelve were wounded, including Colonel Austen. (This officer afterwards was fatally wounded at Rangiriri.) Of the Maoris, the leader, Te Huirama (Ngati-Mahuta), and about thirty others were killed, many of them with the bayonet; a number of wounded were taken away in canoes. Many spades and some double-barrel guns, antiquated flint-lock pieces, and tomahawks were found on the battlefield.
After this sharp bayonet-work a British detachment was sent to hold a position on the south side of the heights commanding the Whanga-marino Stream. The spot selected was the summit of a bluff close to the old Maori pa Te Teoteo, and a short distance east of the junction of the Whanga-marino with the Waikato. (The redoubt-site is almost immediately above the spot where the Great South Road crosses the Whanga-marino about half a mile south of Mercer.) This post was armed with two field-guns, under Lieutenant Pickard, R.A.
The Waikato Maoris, in referring to the engagement on the Koheroa Hills, speak of it as the fight at Te Teoteo.
The second skirmish of the campaign was the first of a series of surprise attacks upon British convoys and pickets along the Great South Road. The fight occurred on the 17th July, the same day as the engagement at Koheroa. A war-party of Ngati-Paoa, under The Martin's Farm ambush was the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment's first taste of Maori warfare. This fine corps served in most of the actions of the Waikato War, and later was transferred to the west coast. The Royal Irish (2nd Battalion) came out from Portsmouth in the ships “Elizabeth Ann Bright” and “Norwood”; it was a new battalion recruited at Inneskillen in the late “fifties.” The “Elizabeth Ann Bright” arrived at Auckland on the 2nd July, 1863, and the “Norwood” on the 2nd August; the strength landed was seven hundred officers and men. The Royal Irish Regiment was the last Imperial corps to leave New Zealand; the main body sailed from Auckland on the 28th February, 1870, leaving between three hundred and four hundred men who had taken their discharges to settle in the country.puriri forest. Much of the beautiful woodland still exists close to the road. A mile and a half to the north was the Sheppard's Bush Redoubt (Ramarama); the nearest redoubt on the south side was the post at Baird's Hill, on the northern slope of Williamson's Clearing (the site is that of the present
The next engagement—Kirikiri (22nd July)—was fought still nearer Auckland. A number of settlers whose farmhouses stood on the fringes of the Hunua forest, from Papakura to Drury, had remained on their holdings, believing that they were unlikely to be attacked by the Kingites. In several instances here, as elsewhere, two or three families from the out-districts had taken up their quarters with friends in the larger houses for mutual protection. One of the pioneer settlers was Mr. Hay, whose home stood close to the Great South Road between Papakura and Drury; the site is very nearly that of the present Opaheke Railway-station. Captain Clare, an Indian Army veteran, had come into Mr. Hay's
The Imperial soldiers found the Militia already in action on the edge of the bush. The united force skirmished with the Kingites in the bush in the direction of the hill Puke-kiwi-riki, above the
On the 10th August a scouting-party of thirty-five men of the Wairoa Rifle Volunteers and No. 4 Company, Auckland Militia, under Lieutenant Steele, discovered the great secret encampment of the Kingites in the Hunua Ranges, which it was believed had been prepared for a war-party essaying an attack upon Auckland from the east. This party, marching from the Wairoa stockade, explored the bush through to Drury. Passing Buckland's Clearing, a tract of open fern land in the bush, the scouts came to another fern opening, and advanced in skirmishing order upon a large encampment intended as the headquarters of a Maori army. This nikau-thatched township consisted of thirty-one whares from 20 feet to over 100 feet long, and capable, in Steele's opinion, of containing about fifteen hundred people. This camp was in the open, where the bush road from Drury emerged from the forest. On the road, and about a mile nearer Drury, they found a few small whares, and again some huts three-quarters of a mile farther on, which appeared to have been used as advance posts.
The Kingite Maoris who gathered in the Hunua and Wairoa Ranges and thence made their forays were chiefly members of the Ngati-Paoa Tribe, from the Hauraki coast villages, under hapu of that tribe, headed by Wi Koka, from the country around the mouth of the Wairoa River; some of the Ngati-Haua, from the Upper Waikato and the Upper Thames Valley; and a number of the Ngai-te-Rangi and Piri-Rakau Tribes, from Tauranga, led by Pa at Tauranga in 1864. With them were some women; one of these was a remarkably gifted and courageous young half-caste woman, Heni te Kiri-karamu—later otherwise known as
Most of the outlying farmers had abandoned their homes and were serving in the district Militia or Volunteers, but the smoke rising from the chimneys in some of the forest-clearings showed that a few stout-hearted settlers had determined to remain on their sections. One was Captain Calvert, whose home was on the Papakura-Wairoa Road, three miles from Papakura and a mile beyond Captain Ring's redoubt at Kirikiri. Early on the 24th July the alarm was raised at Calvert's that a party of armed Maoris was surrounding the house. The captain jumped out of bed, and just as he had snatched up his revolver some of the natives rushed into the kitchen, and one of them fired at the inmates. Calvert and his son Sylvester, a boy of sixteen, fired in return. The lad was mortally wounded. The captain, having emptied his revolver, rushed furiosly at the enemy with his sword. They retreated before the brave old soldier, and fired heavily on the house from a hillock. The firing was heard at the Kirikiri Redoubt, and a party of soldiers drove the Maoris into the forest. Young Calvert was carried to the redoubt, where he died. On the same day Mr.
After the attack on the Imperial convoy at Martin's Farm on the 17th July measures were taken to destroy the cover for the Maori parties in the most dangerous parts of the Great South Road, and the felling of the forest, making clearings a quarter of a mile wide, was begun on both sides of the road in Sheppard's Bush, at Martin's Farm, and along the west slope of Pukewhau Hill and part of the Razorback Range. This work was done chiefly by contract, under the superintendence of Mr. Martin. General Cameron ordered that the bushfellers should in every case be protected by a covering-party. The neglect of this precaution in one instance involved a party in a one-sided skirmish which provided the Maori raiders with a welcome supply of arms. This attack occurred on
On the morning of the 2nd September, 1863, Ensign C. Dawson (2nd Battalion, 18th Royal Irish), subaltern in charge of the Pokeno picket, had a lively skirmish with a large body of Maoris within a short distance of the Queen's Redoubt. The picket, consisting of two sergeants and sixty men of the 18th, left the redoubt at 7 a.m., and marched towards the Pokeno native village (which had been deserted by its owners, the Ngati-Tamaoho, on the outbreak of the war). Near the village the force was fired upon from the rear by a large body of Maoris. Dawson faced his men about and charged with the bayonet. He drove them down a gully towards the swamp and into the bush on the east side of Pokeno. After following the Kingites for about half a mile on the track inland towards Paparoa, he heard yells in the direction of the village in his rear, and returned with his force. He was saluted with a volley from Maori musketeers extended across the clearing, encumbered with logs and felled trees, between him and the settlement, and also was fired upon by some men in the bush on his right, near the hills. The soldiers, taking cover, in skirmishing order, kept up a steady fire and inflicted some casualties; the Maoris were seen carrying off their wounded. At this stage Captain Trench, of the 40th, came up with supports from the redoubt, and the reinforced skirmishers advanced and drove the Maoris out of the kainga and the log clearing into the bush.
A few days later (8th September) some of the Maoris attacked the British redoubt which had been erected on the top of Kakaramea, the northern spur of the Pokeno Ranges, over which the Great South Road was cut, between Williamson's Clearing and Rhodes's Clearing, overlooking Pokeno. This field-work was perched on the narrowest and most commanding part of the ridge which carried the road, but there was a higher hill a short distance to the east. The present road cuts through the western
On the north bank of the Lower Waikato, between the Tuakau Redoubt and the Heads, an army depot had been established as a half-way station for stores shipped up the river to the British field headquarters. This station, named Camerontown, after the General, was in charge of two Europeans, and was guarded also by friendly natives, chiefly Ngati-Whauroa, who had a small pa on a hill, weakly stockaded. Mr.
The heavy firing in the skirmish between the friendly natives and the Kingites at Camerontown was heard at the Alexandra Redoubt, Tuakau, and a party of Maoris came paddling up in great haste to report the death of Mr. Armitage and the burning of the stores. Captain Swift, of the 65th, who was in charge of the detachment at the redoubt, marched at once for Camerontown, with Lieutenant Butler and fifty men, in an attempt to intercept the attacking-party. The senior non-commissioned officer of the detachment was Colour-Sergeant E. McKenna. An
After the tragedy at Camerontown the Ngati-Whauroa, with their chief Hona, who up to this time had nominally been friendly to the Government, turned to the Kingite side and joined their kinsmen in the war.
THE CROSSING OF the Manga-tawhiri River by Cameron's troops was immediately followed by Maori attacks upon some of the venturesome settlers who remained upon their farms on the frontier, and even after the army had advanced up the Waikato its rear was threatened by roving bands of Kingites. The broken forest country of the Hunua and Wairoa Ranges, bordering the left flank of the British advance, was the camping-place and war-ground of these natives, who from the cover of the bush could raid farmhouses and ambush military convoys with little loss to themselves. Neither the Regular soldiers nor the newly-enrolled city Militia were competent at the time to pursue the Maoris in their forests, and it soon became clear to the military heads that a special force was necessary to meet the natives on their own ground and levy guerilla war with the object of clearing the bush on the flanks and safeguarding the army's communications and the out-settlements. Taranaki had set an example in the formation of a corps of Bush Rangers, composed largely of country settlers and their sons. There was equally good material in the Auckland settlements, and there was also at hand a body of gold-diggers at Coromandel ready to turn to new adventures now that the excitement and the profits in the primitive mining of that period were dwindling. The Government, urged by the Press and the public, resolved to form a small corps of picked men, used to the bush and to rough travelling and camp life, to scout the forests and hunt out the parties of marauders.
In the first week of August, 1863, the following attractive invitation to arms appeared for several days in the Southern Cross newspaper, Auckland:—
ACTIVE YOUNG MEN, having some experience of New Zealand Forests, may now confer a benefit upon the Colony, and also ensure a comparatively free and exciting life for themselves, by JOINING a CORPS of FOREST VOLUNTEERS, now being enrolled in this province to act as the Taranaki Volunteers have acted in striking terror into the marauding natives, by operations not in the power of ordinary troops.
By joining the Corps the routine of Militia life may be got rid of and a body of active and pleasant comrades ensured.
Only men of good character wanted.
For further information apply to the office of the Daily Southern Cross, O'Connell Street, Auckland.
This appeal soon filled the ranks of a company of Forest Rangers, sixty strong, under the command of Lieutenant
The Rangers' arms were a breech-loading Calisher and Terry carbine, a five-shot revolver, and, in Von Tempsky's company, a bowie-knife with a blade 10 inches or 12 inches long. Von Tempsky took intense interest in teaching the men the use of the bowie-knife, gripped in the left hand (the right was for the revolver), with the blade along the arm. There was a drill for it—a perfect method of guard and attack in hand-to-hand action. As King Agis answered the Athenians who laughed at the short swords of the Spartans, “We find them long enough to reach our enemies with,” so the Rangers could have said of their bush-knives that they were quite long enough for close quarters. They were more useful than bayonets or cutlasses in the tangled forest. Von Tempsky was a master of the weapon, the use of which he had learned in Spanish America in guerilla warfare. In instructing his men he challenged them to stab him, and demonstrated his perfect ability to defend himself. The knife could also be thrown with deadly effect, being so heavy. When slashing a way through the supplejacks and other undergrowth in the trackless bush it was a first-class tool. Captain Jackson affected to despise the knife as a war-weapon, but one or two of his men adopted it.
Colonel manuka together and practised the fighting drill. At Orakau we found the knife very useful—not for fighting, but for digging in. Our position was on the east side of the pa, a cultivation-ground bordered with low fern—a place very much exposed to the Maoris' fire. We lay down on the edge of this cultivation and went to work as hard as we could with our long knives, each man digging
The men who were provided with these arms were as efficient as the weapons they carried. They were a varied set of adventurers. The bush-trained settlers of Papakura, Hunua, and the Wairoa were the dependable nucleus of the corps, and to their ranks were added sailors, gold-diggers, and others who had seen much of the rough end of life. Von Tempsky, describing (in an unpublished manuscript journal) his company of fifty men at the end of 1863, wrote: “Like Jackson, I had two black men, former men-o'- war's-men; one had also been a prize-fighter. I had men of spendid education, and men as ignorant as the soil on which they trod.” All nationalities were in the ranks—English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish, Germans, and Italians. Some of Von Tempsky's best volunteers had been members of the 1st Waikato Regiment of Militia.
The Rangers' field equipment was simple. On the war-path in the Wairoa and Hunua bush their bed was a bundle of fern, and the forest was their tent. “In our campaigning in the Waikato,” says a survivor of the corps, “we used blue-blanket tents. These were army blankets, with fastenings for use as bivouac shelters; there were two blankets to every four men. Two of the four would carry the blankets when on the march, and the other two would pick up and carry along sticks for tent-poles (unless, of course, they were in the bush). The two blankets joined over a ridge-pole sheltered the four men; at any rate, they kept off the dew.”
An important item of Ranger equipment was the rum-bottle, cased in leather to prevent breakage. Two good tots a day was the allowance. “It was the rum that kept us alive,” says one of Jackson's veterans, ex-Corporal
In the early expeditions the work of the Rangers was carried out in the forest hills of Wairoa, above Papakura and Hunua, and the ranges trending to the Thames Gulf and the Manga-tawhiri headwaters. The Wairoa frequently had to be crossed, and when in flood it was a dangerous river. Most of the Rangers could swim, but there were always several men who had to be helped over by their comrades, in this fashion: Large bundles of dry fern were cut and placed under the non-swimmer's chin and breast as he took the water, and he was hauled across with hastily
Of the Rangers' two commanders, Gustavus Von Tempsky, Captain of No. 2 Company, was by far the more experienced bush fighter. Of aristocratic Polish blood, he began his military life in the Prussian Army in the early “forties,” but quickly sought a career more to his taste. In Central America he commanded at one time an irregular force of Mosquito Coast Indians
Southern Cross newspaper in Auckland as a temporary war correspondent, hoping presently to have an opportunity of getting into action. Lieutenant Jackson he frequently met at the first Forest Rangers' headquarters, the “Travellers' Rest” inn, on the Papakura—Wairoa Road. He accompanied Jackson as correspondent on one of the early expeditions into the Wairoa Ranges; and it was on this excursion, lasting three days, that the young Rangers' officer discovered that the lean, swarthy ex-digger with the very pronounced foreign accent was far better fitted than himself to command a fighting corps. So Von Tempsky soon found himself invited to join the Rangers as subaltern and military adviser, and the Government gave him a commission as ensign. The early prejudice against the roving soldier soon disappeared when his comrades realized his soldierly talent, and when he was commissioned to enlist a company of his own he was able to pick a little body of first-class men from the many recruits offering. The first body of Rangers was disbanded after three months' service, and toward the end of the year 1863 two companies were formed, each of fifty men.
From the hills near the Queen's Redoubt the fortified position of Paparata, on the open country to the east, was plainly visible, a long line of freshly turned yellow clay showing against a prominent fern ridge. This was a Kingite half-way post between the Waikato River and the shores of the Hauraki; from its shelter war-parties could raid in either direction, or could enter the Wairoa Ranges at will. Below was a valley covered with fields of wheat, potatoes, and maize, and with many groves of peach-trees; the Manga-tawhiri, here a clear gravelly stream, flowed through the cultivations. Here and there along the rim of the valley were patches of native forest. The distance from the Queen's Redoubt was about ten miles, but the most convenient approach was from the Koheroa ridge, on the south of the Manga-tawhiri.
General Cameron was anxious, after a futile reconnaissance
The two scouts crossed the open ground in the darkness, and just before daylight found themselves almost within the first line of the Maori entrenchments. They had intended to take cover in a neighbouring belt of bush, but it was fortunate for them that they were unable to do so, for soon after daylight the bush was swarming with Maoris pigeon-shooting. Hidden in high flax-bushes on the edge of the swamp and alongside the track from Paparata to Meremere, they watched their enemies all day through the loopholes of leaves. Once they were all but discovered by a pig-hunting dog. When it began to rain in the afternoon and the Maoris retired to their whares the scouts felt themselves secure; they knew also that the rain would obliterate their footmarks near the hiding-place. It was dark before they ventured to leave their flax-clump, after light-heartedly laying a train of broken biscuits from their nest in the flax to the track, by way of puzzling the Maoris next morning. They returned safely from their perilous mission, and for the information they were able to give the General they were highly complimented. Both soon afterwards received commissions as captain. Von Tempsky fell at Te Ngutu-o-te-manu in 1868. McDonnell lived to receive the decoration of the New Zealand Cross for his scouting-work at Paparata.
The remains of biscuit and some empty meat-tins which the officers left at their hiding-place had a curiously important effect upon the Maoris and the campaign. It came to be known some time afterwards that the natives were so disturbed by this evidence of pakeha scouts in their midst that they concluded their stronghold would soon be untenable, and it was not long before they evacuated it. In December, after the troops under Lieut.-Colonel Carey had built a chain of redoubts across the ridges from the Miranda, Von Tempsky, with his subaltern, Mr. Roberts, and a dozen men, made a reconnaissance of the scene of his scouting exploit. The
Whares with bullet-proof flax mats for roofs were built all along inside the rifle-pits.” On the ridge above was the stockaded and rifle-pitted pa. The whares in the various entrenchments were capable of accommodating nearly a thousand men.
LOOKING DUE EAST from the higher part of Pukekohe Town one will see on the skyline, a mile and a half air-line distant, an isolated dot of white. In the late afternoon the speck of a building becomes a heliograph when the westering sun strikes flashes from its windows across the valley. This is the little Presbyterian church of Pukekohe East, a monument to-day to the pluckiest defence in the South Auckland War of 1863. Stockaded and occupied as a garrison-house by the settlers of the place, it was the scene of an attack by a strong war-party of Kingite Maoris, against whom it was held successfully by only seventeen men until reinforcements arrived.
The Pukekohe East church, two miles from Pukekohe Railway-station by the road, stands in a commanding position on the eastern and highest rim of a saucer-shaped valley, the crater basin of an ancient volcano, about half a mile across at its greatest axis, east and west. The lower lip, facing Pukekohe Town, has been eroded through to the level of the old crater-floor, and a small stream, rising in the bushy slopes below the church and flowing through a swampy valley, issues from this break. The trench, 6 feet wide and 3 or 4 feet deep, which surrounded the church is still plainly to be traced; a regular grassy depression about 1 foot deep remains, and the small flanking bastions are well marked. Splintered bullet-holes can be seen in the building and in a gravestone on the edge of the hill. The church is a plain little building with tiny porch and belfry; it was built in 1862 of totara and rimu. In dimensions it is only 30 feet by 15 feet. Unlike the Mauku Church of St. Bride's, the building itself was not loopholed, but was defended by a surrounding stockade in which openings were cut for rifle-fire.
Pukekohe East was first settled in 1859 by people from Scotland and Cornwall—the families of McDonald, Comrie, Scott, Roose, Robinson, Hawke, Easton, and others. The Comries came from Perthshire. The Roose family, from Cornwall, arrived at
The stockade was built at a distance of 10 feet from the church all round; outside it was the trench, the earth from which was thrown up against the timbers. The stockade consisted of tree-trunks, small logs from the bush, averaging about 6 inches in diameter, and not set upright, as was the usual way, but laid horizontally on one another and spiked to posts. This wall was to have been 7 feet high all round, but it had not been completed when the place was attacked, and was not more than 5 feet high in most places, and gave poor head cover. The stockade was to
On the 31st August Lieutenant Lusk found the stockade in an incomplete state, and made the Volunteers strengthen the foot of the log wall by piling up the earth from the trench. The garrison neglected, however, to clear the bush to a safe distance from the stockade.
Four young men, members of the stockade garrison, Privates rimu logs, they opened fire on the raiders, but found that another small party of natives was in their rear. The four men separated, Scott and Roose keeping together as they ran for the shelter of the bush, and the other two making for the stockade. Hodge and his companion were not pursued far, and they safely reached the post. Scott and Roose raced for the bush in the valley on the west; the Maoris were between them and the stockade. As they were crossing a fence they received a volley at less than 40 yards. Scott happened to turn his head to look behind him, and a bullet grazed his right eyebrow. The Maoris usually fired too high at close range; seven bullet-holes were afterwards found in a tree at that spot, at about 12 feet above the ground. The fugitives ran through one small patch of bush and then took shelter in the main tract of forest, about 60 acres in extent, in the bottom of the valley. The Maoris surrounded this bush and parties of them searched it for the settlers, who kept moving about as they heard the voices of the enemy, creeping up after them so that they could keep within hearing and retreating when they heard their pursuers returning. As night came on the Maoris lit large fires in the fern around the
Between 9 and 10 o'clock on Monday morning, the 14th September, while some of the men were cleaning their rifles and others engaged in the cooking-shed a few yards in front of the stockade gateway, a single shot was fired from the bush on the
puriri forest almost surrounded the stockade; on the side first attacked it was within 40 or 50 yards of the defences; some isolated trees were nearer, and at most parts the bush was not 100 yards away, and logs and stumps gave cover for attackers. The first shot was followed by a charge. In an instant scores of figures leapt out from the trees, fired heavily on the stockade and on the riflemen running for shelter, and rushed down on the log fence, darting from stump to stump, some firing the remaining barrel and reloading, others reserving their fire for close quarters. With the warriors was a woman, armed with a single-barrel gun, a cartridge-belt buckled about her waist. The little clearing, so quiet a few moments before, was filled with the bellowing of heavily loaded tupara and the sharp crack of rifles. High about the other sounds rose the screaming voice of the Maori amazon as she exhorted her warrior comrades, “Riria! Riria!” (“Fight away! Fight away!”)
The defenders of the stockade numbered seventeen. They were Sergeant Perry, Privates
Sergeant Perry's first order to his little force was “Fix bayonets!” He ordered them on no account to fire a volley. The reason was that while the defenders were reloading their muzzle-loading Enfields the Maoris might charge in. Each man ran to a loop-hole, and in a moment the outer wall was bristling with bayonets projecting through the rifle-slits. Independent firing began, and for the next six hours the settlers and their comrades the special constables fought a battle against many times their number of brown skirmishers, who kept up an extraordinarily heavy fire from behind trees, logs, and stumps, and from the tree-tops, and others from the shelter of a house (Easton's), about 100 yards away, above the gully on the defenders' right flank. Every tree along the ragged edge of the bush on the front and the flanks covered its musketeer. Most of the Maoris, after the first rush, took cover on the right front, where some of the ancient puriri survive to-day.
The war-party was estimated by some of the garrison at three
“Our ope which attacked the Europeans at Pukekohe East barracks [i.e., the stockade] consisted of a part of my tribe, Ngati-Maniapoto, some other Upper Waikato people, and the Ngati-Pou, of Lower Waikato. In all we numbered between a hundred and seventy and two hundred. With us was a fighting-woman named Rangi-rumaki; she was an elderly woman, of determined countenance, and perfectly fearless. We came down the Waikato River from Meremere in three war-canoes, and were joined by Ngati-Pou. We landed near Tuakau, and were guided through the bush to Pukekohe by Ngati-Pou, whose land it had been. At Tuakau we had a preliminary skirmish; we gathered in the bush on the ridge near the British pa [the Alexandra Redoubt] and fired heavily on the British soldiers, who replied as heavily. We had plenty of ammunition, and we fired much of it away there. Then we marched inland and north, keeping to the level forest land on the west of the Pokeno and Pukewhau Ranges. We slept one night in the bush on the way; it was a Sunday. At our bivouac that night the chiefs
Soon after the first dash of the Maoris had been stayed, the attackers, as they fell back to take cover, seized the defenders' dinner of meat and potatoes, which was cooking in iron pots in the shed in front of the stockade. It was a perilous enterprise, within a few yards of the log wall, and several warriors fell dead or wounded, but the natives succeeded in carrying off the pots, and feasted on their contents in the gully below the right front of the church.
Hour after hour the firing continued in the smoke-filled clearing. The powder-grimed garrison, with smarting eyes and parched throats, stuck manfully to their posts, firing with care, for their ammunition was running short. It was only the sight of the bayonets projecting from the loopholes that prevented the Maoris from charging over the unfinished stockade. The angle holding
Many Maoris fell; the dead and wounded were swiftly removed by means of supplejacks fastened round the ankles by men who crawled up on their hands and knees; the fallen one would be seen disappearing over the face of the hill into the valley, or hauled by unseen hands into the cover of the bush.
On the south-east face, just on the road-boundary of the church-grounds, not more than 20 yards from the stockade, stood a large puriri tree. Some of the Maoris climbed the tree, and from the cover of the thick flax-like growth of wharawhara, or astelia, in the forks of the main branches, fired over the log wall. One at least of these snipers was shot. Another of the attackers, firing at the garrison from the roof of Easton's house under cover of the wide slab chimney, received a bullet as he incautiously exposed his head and shoulders for a moment, and came tumbling to the ground.
Some of the Maoris came up so close that they threw sticks over the wall and challenged the defenders to come out in the open. One warrior took cover behind a puriri stump just outside the stockade, so close up that he was unable to move to load his gun and had to crouch down low under the loopholes. The woman Rangi-rumaki gave inspiration to the attack with her loud cries of encouragement—“Riria, riria, riria!”—but even her example and her war-shouts could not prevail upon her men to hurl themselves upon the sharp steel that glinted in the rifle-flash from each fire-aperture.
The first reinforcements were joyfully greeted by the outnumbered little garrison about 1 o'clock in the afternoon, when Lieutenant Grierson and thirty-two men of the 70th Regiment arrived from the Ramarama post. Grierson had heard the firing at 10.30 a.m. Skirmishing with the besiegers at the edge of the bush, they advanced at the double across the clearing and joined the defenders in the stockade. It was the salvation of the garrison, whose ammunition-supply was very low; some men had only a round apiece remaining. The strengthened force now was able to keep the Maoris close to their cover.
A detachment of the 1st Waikato Militia, under Captain Moir, with three carts containing ammunition, reached the stockade from Drury in the afternoon, and there was a sharp encounter with the Maoris in the clearing. One of the Militia was shot in the knee and wounded by a tomahawk-cut in the head. About 4 o'clock in the afternoon the sound of British bugles was heard in the bush, and 150 soldiers of the 18th Royal Irish and the 65th charged
A curious incident of this combat was narrated by some of the defenders. A native pigeon, dazed by the firing and the smoke of battle, and frightened out of the bush by the yells and shooting of the Maoris, flew on to the high-pitched roof of the church and remained there for some time, unhurt by the bullets that whistled about it. The beautiful kereru perched in such a precarious sanctuary seemed a harbinger of hope and an omen of success to the hard-pressed settlers. The story is one of those legends of the past of which it is difficult now to obtain confirmation. Captain
“In this encounter,” says wharawhara leaves, so that our enemies should not find them. We had no time to bury them. Of our party from up the river the killed included Te Warena, Wetere Whatahi, Moihi Whiowhio (of the Ngati-Matakore Tribe), and
On the day following the engagement a detachment of Militia, from Drury, arrived to garrison the church and relieve the volunteers and special constables. Sergeant Perry, in recognition of his capable leadership in the defence, was given a commission as ensign in the 2nd Regiment, Waikato Militia.
On a partly wooded upswell of land at Paerata, midway between Pukekohe and Drury by a branch road, stands an old farmhouse of the substantial kind built by the frontier pioneers. “Glenconnel” is painted on the road-gate, but its name in 1863 was Burtt's Farm, a name associated with one of the incidents which proved the spirit of the settlers who remained on their farms after the outbreak of war. The homestead was attacked by a party of Maoris on the 14th September, 1863, the same day as the Battle of Pukekohe East Church Stockade, a few miles away. Burtt's Farm is three miles from Pukekohe by the road which diverges to the eastward of the railway-line at Paerata, then crosses a stream flowing from the Tuhimata hills, and winds up a steep hill, terminating on the westward in a bold bluff like a battleship's ram bow. The southern and south-western sides of the hill are wooded, and many great oak-like puriri shade the approach to the homestead. Sweet-peas and roses climb the front of the dwelling, a comfortable old place, with the high-pitched roof and wide veranda that distinguished the homes of the early days. James Burtt, an Auckland merchant,
kauri and totara and the best rimu were used. There are two bullet-holes, made by large-calibre balls, in the front weatherboards near a window on the veranda, and another hole drilled in 1863 is to be seen in the front of a square, strongly built workshop of pit-sawn timber in rear of the farmhouse; the building is almost hidden in ivy.
On the morning of the 14th September a war-party of about twenty Maoris from the Lower Waikato, chiefly Ngati-Pou, came up through the puriri and rata forest on the south side of the Paerata ridge and surrounded the homestead. The occupants of the place were Mr. Watson, manager for Mr. Burtt, and his family, three sons and two daughters, and two farm workers named Knight and Hugh McLean. The men had rifles, and they were accustomed to take their arms with them when they went to their work about the farm. That morning Watson and one of his sons (Robert) were engaged in putting up a fence some distance from the house, and McLean and the eldest son, John Watson, were ploughing near the bluff on the west, a third of a mile from the house. Mrs. Watson was lying ill in bed in the house. The attack began about 10 o'clock, when shots were fired
In the meantime ten or a dozen Maoris were firing into the
puriri bush. Imagining that they were attacked by a considerable number of pakehas, the Maoris retreated, and the relieving-party met Mr Watson and his man, who had been cut off from the home, and entered the house to find the invalid woman very frightened but unhurt.
A party of troopers (Mounted Artillery), under Lieutenant Rait, presently galloped up from Drury, followed by forty infantry-men; but the Maoris by this time had retreated into the forest. The courage and prompt action of Hamilton and Goulan deserved all the praise bestowed by the military, for they had not hesitated a moment to come to the rescue, against great odds, and by their skill in using the cover around the house they succeeded in concealing the weakness of their party.
Burtt's Farm people were escorted into Drury, Mr. Watson carrying his mortally wounded son. The boy died in the military hospital. After their departure the Maoris returned and sacked the house. A few days later the body of Hugh McLean was found in the swamp, shot through the heart; his rifle had been carried off.
Burtt's Farm now was made the headquarters for a time of a Flying Column (or Movable Column) formed, under the command of Colonel Nixon, for the purpose of scouring the tracks in the bush between the Great South Road and the Waikato River. It was also used by Jackson's Forest Rangers as a convenient field base in scouting-work around the district.
The following account of the attack on Burtt's Farm is contained in a letter (7th May, 1922) from Mr. John Watson, of Riversdale Road, Avondale, Auckland; he was one of the two boys who escaped from the Maoris and ran for help to Drury. Mr. Watson is the last survivor of the family. After confirming the narrative given in this chapter, he wrote:—
“The Paerata farm, belonging to Mr. James Burtt, consisted of 900 acres. The road going over the Paerata Hill cut the farm in two
rata tree growing on the bluff side of the road, towering above the rest of the trees in the clump of bush there; it could be seen for miles around. My father was on Paerata farm in 1859; the rest of us went out in 1861. At that time there was no one living within three miles except Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Samuel Luke. The latter lived down in the valley behind the Paerata farm; he was very fortunate, for he and his wife left for Drury two or three days before the raid in September, 1863. The Maoris camped in his house the night before they attacked us, or the night after.
“As you correctly state, Hugh McLean and I were ploughing on the bluff when the attack was made. The morning was beautifully fine and calm. About 10 o'clock we heard firing in the direction of Pukekohe East Church Stockade. It was not five minutes later when firing commenced at our house. We at once unharnessed our horses and turned them adrift. Then we made for the house as fast as we could run. Instead of keeping the direct road which led through thick scrub and tea-tree we made a half-circle round the bush and came out in the open in front of the house. It was well we did so, for otherwise we would have been tomahawked, as four or five of the Maoris came from the road we always used except this time. When we were about 400 yards from the house we saw five or six natives come up the rise from where we afterwards were told they attacked my father and brother and the man Knight. McLean opened fire on them. He had a rifle. I had nothing unfortunately; I left mine at home that morning. The firing brought out of the scrub the Maoris who were lying in wait for McLean and me, and we had five more on the other side closing in on us like the letter V. Their fire became too hot for us, and we had to retreat. There was no cover for us to take shelter in. I took the road to Drury, and McLean turned to the right, in an easterly direction. There was a redoubt with troops about two miles from Drury that could be seen from our side; it would be between two and three miles across country, more than two miles nearer than Drury, but it was through fern hills and swamps. Undoubtedly it was for this redoubt McLean was making. I preferred to keep the road to Drury; I was afraid of the swamps after winter rains. As we took different directions one half the Maoris followed McLean, the others followed me and kept up a running fire. I had some narrow escapes, but I got out of their range when I was half-way to Drury. McLean, after getting about half-way to the redoubt on the south road, got stuck in a swamp, where he was evidently shot at close quarters.
“Our retreat drew at least ten of the Maoris from the attack on the house, and enabled my father and Knight to join Mr. Hamilton and Alex. Goulan, who stuck to their posts until a detachment of Mounted Artillery arrived. As soon as I arrived at the camp at Drury and reported they were in their saddles and off, but when they got to the farm the Maoris disappeared.
“When my brother—the one who was with my father and the man Knight—was shot by the Maoris he took cover in a thicket of scrub. He was able to tell us before he died that he heard the natives passing quite near him, but they did not find him. That was how he escaped being tomahawked.”
Regarding his sister's share in the events of that perilous morning, Mr. Watson said:—
“There were two girls in the house, my sisters. When the firing commenced, Mary Ann—she was the one that had the most pluck to do anything—rushed out of the house to let a watch-dog off the chain, but the dog was so furious about the firing she could not undo the strap.
IN SEPTEMBER OF 1863 the Koheriki and other parties of Kingites who roamed the ranges of Wairoa South and the Hunua turned their attention to the scattered settlements on the lower part of the river. They pillaged the houses of outlying farmers who had gone into the stockade opposite the Galloway Redoubt or into Papakura, and scouted the edge of the bush awaiting an opportunity to cut off settlers returning to their sections. Major Lyon, a Crimean veteran, was in command of the Militia district, with his quarters in the Galloway Redoubt. To relieve the Militia garrison doing duty in the redoubt, detachments of the Auckland Rifle Volunteers were sent down to the Wairoa in the Government armed steamer “Sandfly.” It was on this service that the city Volunteers first engaged the Maoris; their previous duty had chiefly been in garrison in Auckland, varied by service at Otahuhu and Drury, and an expedition as part of a “Flying Column” with the 70th Regiment, encamped near St. John's Redoubt, Papatoetoe.
On the 15th September some of the garrison when playing cricket, and a fatigue-party getting slabs, near the stockade, were fired on at a distance of about 150 yards, and heavy firing followed. Two days later a detachment of fifty-five men led by Major Lyon marched up the valley towards Otau in pursuit of a large raiding-party which had been plundering settlers' houses on the outskirts of the village. In the skirmish which followed the Volunteers behaved with steadiness and judgment, and inflicted some casualties on the Kingites. Lyon extended his small force across the face of the hill surrounding the native village and kept up a heavy fire, to which the Maoris replied by independent firing as well as by volleys from numbers of men formed into large squares. Each square, having delivered a volley, fell back behind the whares to reload.
Before daylight on the morning following this engagement Major Lyon marched from the Galloway Redoubt with a force composed of fifty men from the Auckland Rifle Volunteers and twenty Wairoa Rifles from the stockade, under Lieutenant Steele,
whares, and in the gray dawn opened a heavy fire on the sleeping camp. It was a complete surprise, for the Maoris had not expected a renewal of the attack so soon. There were between one hundred and fifty and two hundred natives in the settlement. The rudely aroused men, women, and children rushed out in great confusion and took shelter in the bush. A number of them replied to the Volunteers' fire, but the whole body soon retreated into the ranges.
Among the Maoris was the young half-caste woman Heni te Kiri-karamu, who had gone on the war-path to share the fortunes of her brother Neri (Hone te Waha-huka), of the Koheriki. Describing the surprise attack Heni said, “We had intended to march down and attack the pa of the soldiers on the Wairoa, but they forestalled our plan. We camped in some deserted whares near the river-bank, and did not expect an early-morning visit, so there was a panic when we were awakened at daybreak by a terrific volley fired into our huts. The troops had lined up on the opposite side of the Wairoa, and at short range volleyed at us; it was a wonder that any of us escaped. Instead of making a stand we retreated rapidly into the forest. I carried my baby on
whare and in running out of it the chief Titipa, from Tauranga, was shot dead just in front of me. Another man from Tauranga named Tipene was killed, and many were wounded. The Tamehana boys, of Ngati-Haua, were both there.”
As the river was still flooded, the European force could not cross to follow up the Maoris, so Major Lyon marched his men back to the redoubt. Later on in the day twenty men of the 18th Regiment, under Lieutenant Russell, were despatched to occupy the position in front of the Maori camp which had been held in the morning, while the commanding officer, with seventy-five of all ranks, marched by a track on the other side of the river to take the settlement in the rear. The troops found, however, that the natives had evacuated the place.
In these skirmishes the Maoris lost eight men killed.
On the 13th October a party of the Koheriki retaliated with an attack on unarmed Europeans within a short distance of the Galloway Redoubt. An elderly man named Job Hamlin was killed, and his companion, a boy named Joseph Wallis, about thirteen years of age, was terribly tomahawked, but by a miracle survived his wounds. Joseph Wallis's people were shifting their property to town from their farmhouse near the Wairoa Road, for fear of the Maoris, and Job Hamlin was employed in carting the goods, which were loaded into a bullock-dray. The boy was riding on horseback, and Hamlin was driving the team. Suddenly
On the 15th October an old soldier named Fahey and his wife, who were settled on a small bush farm near Ramarama, were out milking their cows when they were surprised by some of the Koheriki and shot and tomahawked. Mrs. Fahey was dead when found, and her husband died soon afterwards.
A party of twenty Koheriki natives on the 26th October raided Kennedy's Farm at Mangemangeroa, a few miles beyond Howick in the direction of Maraetai. Mr. Trust, who was in charge of the farm, was away in Auckland at the time, but there were three of his sons in occupation, besides two men, Courtenay and Lord. Ambrose Trust was the eldest son; the others, Richard and Nicholas Trust, were nine and twelve years of age. Lord, who was a workman on the place, was leaving the farmhouse at about 7 o'clock to go to his house when he saw a number of armed Maoris crouching in a ditch near the house. Lord and Courtenay escaped, but the latter was wounded. The Maoris fired through the front window. Ambrose Trust, taking his little brothers by the hand, ran out at the back and hurried in the direction of the nearest neighbours. The Maoris gave chase and shot down the two small boys. Ambrose, wounded in the shoulder, with difficulty escaped. The boys were tomahawked.
Major Peacocke, in command of the redoubt at Howick, started in pursuit of the Koheriki with some Militia, and a detachment of the Defence Force Cavalry and Otahuhu Volunteers, numbering fifty, took up quarters at Kennedy's Farm. Peacocke followed the track of the Maoris for some miles, but they had made off in the direction of the Hunua Ranges. H.M.S. “Miranda” steamed down the gulf in the afternoon with a force of a hundred Auckland Naval Volunteers and the same number of Rifle Volunteers, under Major de Quincey, and anchored off Mangemangeroa, but the raiders by that time had crossed the line of posts between Wairoa and Papakura, and there was therefore no chance of cutting them off.
Some weeks after these events at the Wairoa the Forest Rangers made a successful surprise attack on a camp of the Koheriki hapu in the heart of the ranges. By this time (14th December) the Rangers had been reorganized, and two companies were formed, one under Jackson and the other under Von Tempsky. Jackson's No. 1 Company had the skirmish all to themselves; Von Tempsky, to his great disappointment, missed the opportunity, although he had observed the native tracks, by following a trail which led him towards Paparata. Jackson, setting out from the Papakura Camp with Lieutenant Westrupp and twenty-five men, marched to Buckland's Clearing in the Hunua Ranges, and descended into the densely wooded upper valley of the Wairoa River. Maori tracks were found leading toward the source of the Wairoa, and a lately deserted camp was passed. The trail led across the head of the Wairoa and for several miles beyond into the terra incognita towards the river-sources near the higher parts of the Kohukohunui Range. The trail at last was lost, but smoke was seen rising from a distant gorge in the forest, and as the Rangers scouted in that direction they heard a cow-bell ringing irregularly, as if a child were playing with it. The sound guided them toward a secluded camp by the side of a creek. Ensign Westrupp with six or eight men cautiously advanced down the rocky stream. A coloured man, George Ward, who was the first to emerge from the bush, found a Maori bathing; the astonished Maori, thinking Ward possibly a friend, beckoned to him to approach, but the Ranger shot him dead. Westrupp dashed into the camp, followed by the rest of
pakehas a final shot. A tin box containing three flags was captured by Corporal
“Shortly before this,” narrated Heni te Kiri-karamu, “it had been decided that we should make for the Waikato, and we were to travel south through the bush by way of Paparata. In our party was an old tohunga, a man named matakite, or second sight. As the result of some vision or foreboding—a warning from his personal god, Tu-Panapana—Timoti advised us not to follow the track which ran straight toward Paparata, but so disperse into small parties and make our way through the bush to the common meeting-place, so as to throw the troops off our trail. A number of our people, however, did not accept the seer's advice, and continued on the well-marked track, while the rest of us, with Timoti, split up into small sections and struck into the trackless parts of the forest for a rendezvous to the southward. The consequence was that we escaped, while those who disregarded the old seer's counsel fell in with the Forest Rangers and had several men killed and wounded. It was on a Saturday that we parted company; the fight took place next day. The survivors of this skirmish joined us in the forest near the headwaters of the Manga-tawhiri River.”
This surprise attack in the forest took place deep in the ranges near the sources of the Wairoa and the Manga-tawhiri. It is sometimes described as having occurred at Paparata, but this is an error; the spot was nearer Ararimu, in the Upper Wairoa district.
“One of the Maoris in the camp,” said Heni, “was a man named Te Pae-tui. He was terribly wounded, shot through both hips. His elder brother, Te Tapuke, seeing him fall, ran back to his assistance, and stood by him reloading his double-barrel gun, determined to defend his brother to the death. Te Tapuke a few
The following is the roll of Jackson's Forest Rangers engaged in the fight in the Wairoa Ranges, 14th December, 1863:
THE MAUKU AND Patumahoe districts, contiguous to Pukekohe and extending to the southern tidal waters of the Manukau Harbour, are attractive to-day with the twin charms of natural landscape beauty and the improvements made by the farmers' hands during more than sixty years of settlement. Even before the Waikato War the Mauku, first settled in 1856, was a fairly-well-peopled locality, when the site of the present Town of Pukekohe was still a forest of puriri and rimu. The branch railway-line from Pukekohe to Waiuku passes within a short distance of the pretty, antique-featured building upon which the war-history of Mauku is centred. The Church of St. Bride's is of an eye-pleasing design that belongs to many of the churches planted by the pioneers, whose first care, after establishing their homes, was to set up a place of worship in their midst. Built of totara, its shingled roof dark with age, its spire lifting above the tree-tops, it stands picture-like on a green knoll in the midst of its little churchyard. Walk round its walls and count the rifle loopholes in its sides—narrow slits that remined one that the place was once a fort as well as a church. There are fifty-four of those rifle-slits, now neatly plugged with timber or covered with tin and painted over. The cruciform design of the building exactly lent itself to fortification, and gave the defenders the necessary flanking bastions. When the Mauku men erected their stockade of split logs, small whole tree-trunks and heavy slabs, 10 feet high, they planted the timbers alongside one another close up against the walls of the buildings. The openings for rifle-fire were cut through walls and stockade; the garrison therefore could point their long Enfields through the double defence. These loopholes, at regular intervals all round the church, at about 5 feet from the floor, are 9 inches in length vertically by about 3 inches in width; the cuts in the palisade were necessarily a little wider to give the rifles play.
At the tidal river-landing, about a mile distant to the west, stood the Mauku stockade, a small iron-roofed structure defended
The first alarm of a racial war occurred in October, 1860, when a Maori of the Ngati-Tamaoho Tribe named Eriata was found shot dead in the bush at Patumahoe. The natives imagined he had been murdered by a European, and a war-party of Waikato and Ngati-Haua came down in canoes to Te Purapura to investigate the matter. pakeha had killed the Maori they would begin a war. Possibly war would have been precipitated but for the intervention of taua and persuaded the force to return. Mr.
It was Mr. Daniel H. Lusk (afterwards Major Lusk), a surveyor by profession—he had helped to lay out the City of Christchurch in 1851—and owner of a bush farm in the district, who was chiefly instrumental in forming the Forest Rifle Volunteers. Mr. Lusk had been in New Zealand since 1849; he was a frontiersman of the best kind, energetic and observant, used to the bush, and endowed with a natural gift of leadership. To him more than to any other settler-soldier the credit was due of placing the district west of the Great South Road in a state of defence. He had organized local Volunteer crops during the first Taranaki War. When that campaign ended in returned to store. However, Mr. Lusk was firmly of opinion 1861 many settlers imagined that fighting had definitely ceased in New Zealand, and most of the rifles at the Mauku were that there would be war in the Auckland District, and early in 1863 he was the principal means of forming three companies of Forest Rifles—one at Mauku, one at Waiuku, and one at Pukekohe East.
The first skirmish in which the Forest Rifles were engaged was fought on the 8th September—the morning after the encounter near Camerontown in which Captain Swift, of the 65th, was killed. Early that morning, a small body of colonial troops, consisting of about thirty-five of the Forest Rangers, under Lieutenant Jackson and Ensigns Von Tempsky and J. C. Hay, and fifteen of the Mauku Company of Forest Rifles, under Lieutenant Lusk, started out from the Mauku stockade on a bush-scouting expedition in search of Maoris. They began by reconnoitring the forest and the bush-clearings in the direction of Patumahoe and Pukekohe. They reached the
hapus, who, after deserting their settlements, were prowling about the bush, plundering the outlying homesteads. The European force suffered no casualties, although several of the men had received bullets through cap or clothes.
It was the maiden fight of the Rangers and Mauku Rifles. The guerilla veteran Von Tempsky in his journal gave high praise to some of the settler-soldiers. Lusk he described as “a man of consummate judgment about Maori warfare.” In the height of the skirmish he found time to admire the sang froid of the Mauku men: “There are some cool hands amongst those Mauku Rifles. There are big Wheeler and little Wheeler, and Kelahan, watching the Maoris like cats; they have holes through their coats, but none through their skins as yet. Lusk is cool and collected, keeping the men together.” The best marksmen were Jackson and Hay, both crack shots.
This was one of the first fights in the war conducted after the traditional manner of North American Indian warfare, skirmishing from tree to tree. For some time after this skirmish the Forest Rangers remained at Mauku, making the fortified church their headquarters and scouring the bush. The skirmish in Hill's Clearing, near Patumahoe, west of Pukekohe, was fought on a level tract of country traversed by the present road from Pukekohe. The scene of the principal fighting, as nearly as can be located now, is on the right-hand side (north) of the main road from Pukekohe to Mauku and Waiuku, after passing the turn-off to Patumahoe at Union Corner, three miles from Pukekohe and the same distance from Mauku. Soon after passing Union Corner (Steinson's) the traveller will notice on the right a very large Major Von Tempsky's MS. narrative of this skirmish is given in the Appendices.puriri stump, forming part of the post-and-rail fence dividing the road from the fields: this stump indicates the scene of some of the skirmishing in the edge of the bush. There are still remnants of the olden puriri forest on both sides of the road.
Less than a mile south of the Mauku church and village is a gently rounded hill of red volcanic tufa, crowned by a farm-homestead and crossed by a road. In 1863 this hill, known as the Titi, was a partly cleared farm belonging to Mr. Wheeler. Beyond, on the southern side, the land slopes deeply to a valley, on the farther side of which, nearly a mile distant, are the heights known as the Bald Hills. The distance of the Titi from the nearest part of the Waikato River is about six miles; the intervening country in the war-days was mostly dense forest, threaded by one or two narrow tracks—old Maori fighting-trails.
Early on the morning of the 23rd October, 1863, the sound of heavy firing in the direction of the Bald Hills was heard by the little garrison of Forest Rifles and Militia at the Mauku church stockade and the lower stockade near the landing.
Lieutenant Lusk, considering his force of about fifty was strong enough to drive back the Maoris and enable him to return, now boldly attacked, and before the steady advance with fixed bayonets the raiders fell back through a strip of Wheeler's felled but unburned bush to the open ground. The Maoris, however, skirmished rapidly through the standing puriri and rata forest on Lusk's left flank, and as they greatly outnumbered the riflemen it was necessary to retire in order to avoid being outflanked and surrounded. The Kingites were endeavouring to cut the little force off from the church stockade, and Lusk had need of all his bush-fighting skill to counter their tactics. When recrossing this ragged strip of felled timber, taking advantage of every bit of cover and fighting from behind logs and stumps as they fell back, the Volunteers and Militiamen were charged fiercely by the warriors in their full strength, about a hundred and fifty.
Now came a desperate close-quarters battle, lasting ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. At very short range—Lieutenant Lusk afterwards stated it at 20 yards—the opposing forces poured bullets into each other as fast as they could load and fire. Every log and every stump and pile of branches was contested. In the centre, facing the Maoris' front, the gallant Perceval recklessly exposed himself, and it was with difficulty that the Mellsop brothers, three young settlers, prevented him from charging at the enemy. Twice they saved his life by pulling him under cover. At last, after shooting several of his nearest opponents, he was shot himself, and fell dead in front of his men. Lieutenant Norman was also shot dead, and several other men fell. Some of the Maoris, throwing down their guns, charged upon the bayonets with their long-handled tomahawks. Lusk, finding himself outflanked on both sides, ordered his men to take cover in the bush on the right. In this movement the troops had to run the gauntlet of a heavy cross-fire, and man after man was hit. One of the Forest Rifles, Private Worthington, was tomahawked as he was reloading his rifle; another man was killed with the tomahawk while he was in the act of recovering his bayonet which he had driven through a Maori's body. One of the wounded, Johnstone, was assisted by two comrades into the bush, and as he could not walk he was concealed in a hollow rata tree, where he huddled until the relief force rescued him on the following day.
Under cover of the bush Lusk's force had a short breathing-space, and their accurate shooting soon cleared the smoky clearing of the Maoris, but it was impossible to venture into the open space to carry off the eight dead who lay there. The officer in command re-formed his men and retired in good order upon the church stockade, keeping carefully to the timber cover most of the way. This rearguard action, firing by sections as the
Lusk and his comrades during the fight had cast many an anxious glance towards the village in the direction of the church stockade, hoping for the reinforcements from Drury. But when the long-awaited troops at last arrived all was over, and the battle-grimed Volunteers and Militia were back in their quarters.
Early next morning firing was heard in the direction of the Bald Hills, and some natives were seen there, but when a force of about two hundred men advanced to the Titi Farm the Kingites had disappeared. It was learned afterwards that these Maoris were some who had met the returning war-party on the Waikato River, and, on hearing that they had not fired a volley over the battle-ground after the battle by way of claiming the victory, had marched in themselves and fired off their guns near the spot. The troops found the bodies of the slain men all tomahawked and stripped of arms and equipment and part of their clothes, laid out side by side on the grass in the clearing. A pole on which a white haversack had been tied indicated the place. The bodies, with the exception of Worthington's, which was buried at Mauku, were sent in to Drury for burial. A force was sent through the bush to Purapura, following the trail of the
kauhoa or rough bush-stretchers for carrying the dead and wounded were found. It was estimated that the natives had lost between twenty and thirty killed, besides many wounded. The “Flying Column” had in the meantime marched across country via Tuakau to intercept some of the raiders, but they only reached Rangipokia, near Purapura, in time to open fire on the last of the canoes crossing the river. The Maoris returned to Pukekawa, the field headquarters of Ngati-Maniapoto.
This curious story with reference to Lieutenant Norman was related to me by Major
Lieutenant Norman, who had just returned from Drury with the pay for the Mauku Forest Rifles and Militia garrison, had about £200 in his possession, mostly in bank-notes. He was shot through the chest and killed; the fatal shot was fired at such close range that his clothes were forced into the wound. When the body was searched next day the money could not be found. Its disappearance remained a mystery to Lusk for nearly fifty years. Then a half-caste member of the Ngati-Maniapoto Tribe told him that some years after the war a Maori brought him one day a bundle which proved to be a large roll of bank-notes stuck together with earth and blood. With much care the notes were separated and dried, and in the end the Maoris succeeded in passing them at the banks. This bundle, the natives said, formed part of the loot brought by Ngati-Maniapoto from the Titi fight in 1863. Without a doubt it was the missing pay for the Mauku men, and the blood which caked the notes together was Norman's life-blood.
The Maoris took a prisoner, a Portuguese named Antonio Arouge, in the employ of the Crispe family. He was captured by the cattle-shooting party and tied to a tree. After the fight he was taken into the Waikato, and remained a prisoner for some months, when he was allowed to return to the Europeans. It was, no doubt, his swarthy skin that saved him.
Many stories were told of the brave conduct and accurate shooting of the Volunteers and Militia. There were also a few good shots among the natives. Just before Lusk advanced from the church stockade to Perceval's relief he saw, through his field-glasses, a Maori marksman in a conspicuous dress taking deliberate sniping shots from the cover of a log. Although the sniper was quite 1,000 yards away he put a bullet through the soft-felt hat of Tom Harden, a Volunteer a few feet away from Lusk, and sent two or three other bullets remarkably close to him. The Maori was evidently using a captured British rifle. Lusk was a good rifle-shot, and, sighting for 1,000 yards, his first shot made the Maori sniper leap back hurriedly for cover. In the skirmish which followed as the force advanced Tom Harden had the satisfaction of taking compensation for his damaged hat by killing the native marksman.
Lusk in his report gave praise to Sergeant Harry W. Hill and Private John Wheeler, of the Forest Rifles, who distinguished themselves by their determined gallantry. Another settler who behaved with special courage was Felix McGuire, afterwards a member of the House of Representatives.
Major Lusk narrated this incident which immediately preceded the outbreak of the war:—
The Ngati-Pou and Ngati-Tamaoho Tribes, of Waikato and Patumahoe, had, it is believed, fixed a day for a general attack on the settlers.
pakeha residents were loyally celebrating the marriage of the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII) and the Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The frontier settlers kindled bonfires at dark that night on prominent hills, and those of the Mauku, including Lusk and some neighbours, lit theirs on the Bald Hill, where it was visible for many miles around and as far as the Waikato River. The Maoris, it was said, were about to start out on their raid, anticipating the British declaration of war, but the unexpected glare of the bonfires alarmed them into the belief that their plans had been discovered, and that the fire was a signal for a general attack on the Kingites. Lusk and several fellow-settlers were returning from the bonfire hill late at night, when they met a party of about fifteen Maoris, some of them armed, who had evidently been to Lusk's house. He demanded their business there. They replied that they had been alarmed by the bonfires and inquired if they were a signal for an attack upon the natives. Shortly after this incident Major Speedy (a retired Imperial officer), who was Resident Magistrate and Native Agent for the Mauku, Waiuku, and Pukekohe districts, was directed to read the Governor's Proclamation to the natives requiring them either to take the oath of allegiance to the Queen and to deliver up their arms or to retire into the Kingite country, so that the Government might be able to discover who were their friends. As it was evident that the Maoris would not willingly give up their arms and leave their land, Major Speedy instructed Lieutenant Lusk to organize all the able-bodied settlers of the districts into three rifle volunteer companies, which came to be known as the Forest Rifles.
Mrs. Jerram (Remuera, Auckland), a daughter of the late Major Speedy, of Mauku, says that the family's home at “The Grange,” near the Mauku landing, was loopholed and garrisoned by the settlers for defence against the natives in 1863. This was before the stockade was built at the landing-place. Mrs. Jerram and Mrs.
Tohikuri, of the Ngati-Tamaoho Tribe, Pukekohe, gives the following explanation of the place-name Patumahoe, that of the gently rounded hill near the battlefield of Hill's Clearing:—
The chief Huritini, of the Ngaiwi or Waiohua Tribe, of the Tamaki district, came to these parts to make war upon Hiku-rere-roa and Te Ranga-rua, the leaders of the Ngati-Tamaoho Tribe, six generations ago. The pa of Ngati-Tamaoho was on the Titi Hill. The battle began on the western side of the present Mauku Railway-station, near the church. Huritini was killed with a blow delivered with a mahoe stake or part of a sapling snatched up hurriedly from the ground by a Ngati-Tamaoho chief who had dropped his weapon; and the Ngaiwi men were defeated and driven from the district. Hence the name: Patu, to strike or kill; mahoe, the whitewood tree ( Melicytus ramiflorus).
Tohikuri is a direct descendant of Ranga-rua.
IT WAS NECESSARY to organize a small fleet of protected vessels for the Waikato River in order to carry the war into the Kingite territory. The first craft procured was the little paddle-steamer “Avon,” of 40 tons, 60 feet in length, and drawing 3 feet of water. She had been trading out of Lyttelton before the purchase by the Government. She was brought up to the Manukau, and at Onehunga was armoured for the river campaign. She was armed with a 12-pounder Armstrong in the bows. The work of making the hull bullet-proof was carried out by the engineer, Mr. George Ellis (now of Auckland), who states that the “Avon” was converted into an armoured steamer by having iron plates bolted inside her bulwarks. These plates were ¼ inch thick and measured 6 feet by 3 feet. The wheel was enclosed by an iron house of similar-sized plates, with loop-holes. “I put the same thickness of iron protection on some smaller craft,” said Mr. Ellis. “These were armed barges for towing troops. The gunboat-barges were each 30 feet to 35 feet in length; they had been open fore-decked cutters in Auckland Harbour, and were taken over on trucks to Onehunga. I armoured them with lengths of bar iron, ¼ inch thick and 3 or 4 inches in width, along the outside of the hull from the gunwale to the water-line. In the bows of each boat was a gun-platform for a 12-pounder. The troops were put into these barges, which were towed up by the steamers. The bulwarks protected the soldiers quite well, but the barges were never attacked. There was another vessel, the ‘Gymnotus,’ but she was not armoured. She was a curious-looking craft like a long narrow canoe, and had been built for ferry service on Auckland Harbour. She was the first screw steamer on the Waikato, and was employed in carrying stores up the river.”
The paddle-wheeler “Avon” was the first steam-vessel to float on the waters of the Waikato. She was towed to Waikato Heads on the 25th July, 1863, by H.M.S. “Eclipse,” and Captain Mayne, the commander of that ship, took her inside the Heads
On the 7th August Captain Sullivan (H.M.S. “Harrier”), senior naval officer in New Zealand, took the vessel on a reconnaissance up the river, and near Meremere she became a target for Maori bullets for the first time. A volley from some Maoris under cover on the river-bank was replied to with the 12-pounder Armstrong. On several occasions later in the campaign the “Avon” was under fire. This little pioneer of steam traffic on the Waikato proved an exceedingly useful vessel. When the army reached the Waipa Plains she carried stores up as far as Te Rore, on the Waipu; it was near there that Lieutenant Mitchell, R.N., of H.M.S. “Esk,” was killed on board her (February, 1864) by a volley from the east bank of the river. Lieutenant F.J. Easther, R.N., was in command of the “Avon.” Mr. George Ellis, of Auckland, who was engineer of the “Avon,” says:— “Lieutenant Mitchell's death occurred in this way: We carried out rather dangerous work in the later stages of the war when running up and down the Waipa River. Sometimes we took shots at anything that offered on the banks, and even landed to go pig-hunting. One very warm summer day, when steaming up the Waipa near Whatawhata, Mr. Mitchell remarked that it was too hot to remain in the iron wheel-house and that he would go outside; he declared that he would not be shot that day. He walked out on to the open part of the bridge-deck, and Lieutenant Easther (in command) and Midshipman Foljambe (father of the present Lord Liverpool) followed him. They had not been long there before a sudden volley was fired from the scrub-covered bank of the river—the east or proper right bank. The three officers were close together, with Mr. Mitchell in the middle, and, curiously, it was only the man in the middle who was hit. The volley was fired at an oblique angle. Mr. Mitchell was shot right through the breast, and died next day. We never saw a Maori, so thick was the cover on the bank.” The “Avon,” besides plying on the Waipa, made a number of trips from Ngaruawahia to General Cameron's advanced camp at Pukerimu. This perilous passage through the hostile country was generally made at night. The “Avon” was never fired at on this part of the Waikato—usually called the Horotiu above Ngaruawahia—but there were anxious moments when she was passing through the narrows, where the high banks closely approach each other, above the present town of Hamilton.
The second steam-vessel of war placed on the Waikato was the “Pioneer”—a name that more properly might have been
The “Pioneer,” rigged for the voyage as a three-masted fore-and-aft schooner, left Sydney for the Manukau on the 22nd September, 1863, in tow of H.M.S. “Eclipse,” and, after a stormy voyage, reached Onehunga on the 3rd October. She was taken into the Waikato later in the month, after undergoing a few alterations, and until the end of the war was actively engaged in reconnaissances and conveyance of troops and supplies.
The four small armoured barges, or gunboats, mentioned by Mr. Ellis were taken into the Waikato about the same time, and each of them was placed under the command of a junior naval officer. Midshipman Foljambe (father of Lord Liverpool, recently Governor of New Zealand) was in charge of one of these boats, which he called the “Midge” it was manned by
Later in the war two stern-wheel iron gunboats, called the “Koheroa” and the “Rangiriri” were procured in Sydney, and were brought over in sections and put together at the Government's dockyard and stores depot at Putataka, Port Waikato. The high bulwarks of each steamer were pierced for rifle-fire, and there was a gun-position on the lower deck amidships. The “Koheroa” on one occasion towards the close of the campaign went up the Waikato River as far as a point near the present town of Cambridge.
Without this river flotilla General Cameron could not have carried on the Waikato campaign. The gunboats and the troops they carried enabled him to outflank the Maori positions at Meremere and Rangiriri, to capture Ngaruawahia unopposed, and to
Some small vessels were necessary for despatch and patrol work on the coast. The Colonial Government bought the s.s. “Tasmanian Maid,” 90 tons, renamed her the “Sandfly,” and armed her. Under the command of Captain Hannibal Marks, the “Sandfly” carried out useful work as a gunboat and despatch-vessel on the east coast, particularly in the Hauraki Gulf and in the coast operations near Maketu (1864). The “Sandfly” was protected against a sudden attack by canoe-crews by an arrangement of galvanized wire stretched between stanchions fitted on the bulwarks, thus forming a strong boarding netting. As a further defence, canvas mattress-cases stuffed with flax were provided, to be placed against the wire netting as a bullet-
Other vessels used on the Hauraki Gulf patrol were the s.s. “Auckland,” which carried two 12-pounder guns, and the cutter “Midnight,” 33 tons, armed with a 4-pounder gun and manned by a crew of fifteen Auckland Naval Volunteers.
The Naval Brigade, made up from the crews of the several naval ships in New Zealand waters, was a highly useful reinforcement to the land army. In October of 1863 there were five ships of the Australasian Squadron, all with steam-power, lying in the Auckland and Manukau Harbours. The flagship was the steam-frigate “Curacoa” (Commodore Pa in 1864.
The two remaining ships, “Harrier” (700 tons) and “Eclipse” (750 tons), were the guardians of the Manukau waters.
MAORI ARTILLERY, EMPLACED on the long narrow ridge of Meremere, saluted the first steam-craft that came paddling up the Waikato. The roar of these Kingite-manned guns—old ship's pieces conveyed with great labour from the west coast and loaded with a strange variety of projectiles—gave a deeper note of determination to the struggle for independence. Every tribe acknowledging the authority of the Maori King sent its warriors to garrison Meremere. At one period of its occupation there were more than a thousand men there, from the tribes of Waikato, from Ngati-Maniapoto, Ngati-Haua, Ngati-Koroki, Ngati-Raukawa, Ngati-Tuwharetoa, and even from Taranaki and the Upper Wanganui. Inland again, in the direction of the Wairoa and the Hauraki, was the Paparata series of entrenchments, designed to bar the British advance on the eastern side, and to keep communication open with the Thames Gulf and the Wairoa Ranges. On the other side of the Lower Waikato, in the elbow of the river, was Pukekawa, the advanced field base of Ngati-Maniapoto; from its domed crown they could overlook the river and the movements of the troops from Whangamarino down to Tuakau and Camerontown. Meremere held the centre; it was the key of the Waikato, and had the Kingites been armed on equal terms with the British they might, for all their inferior numbers, have swept the river clear, and maintained indefinitely the independence of the interior.
The Great South Road, which skirts the proper right bank of the Waikato south of Mercer, cuts through the site of the Meremere fortifications of 1863. The principal remains of the Maori works extend obliquely along a ridge—now a dairy farm—rising in places in irregular terraces parallel with the river, on the southern side of the Whangamarino flax swamp. A system of marshes, converted into lagoons in time of flood, bounds the long Meremere ridge, or succession of ridges, on the east, and when the Waikato ran high the Maori position was practically an island. At its greatest elevation it was about 130 feet above
whares are traceable in the uneven turf of the paddock. On the opposite side of the road (east), about 150 yards from the highway and on the crest of the ridge, are the well-preserved remains of the British redoubt constructed upon the site of the Maori tihi or citadel. This field-work, cut in a stiff clay, retains its original proportions well; the trench shows 15 feet scarp at the highest point, with a counterscarp of about 6 feet.
The Maori artillery in the Meremere works consisted of three ship's guns, which the natives regarded with great pride; they expected with them to prevent any Tohikuri, of Ngati-Tamaoho, gives the following names of the largest war-canoes manned by the Waikato tribes during the river war of 1863: Maramarua, Tawhitinui, Te Marei, Te Aparangi, Te Ata-i-rehia, Te Winika, Tahere-tikitiki, Ngapuhoro, and Te Toki-a-Tapiri. The last-named was among the canoes belonging to the Ngati-te-Ata seized by the Naval Volunteers in the Manukau creeks; it is now in the Auckland Museum.pakeha vessel running the blockade of the Waikato. paoro weeti (pound weights) taken from the traders' stores. Panapana afterwards was taken prisoner at Rangiriri, and was one of those who escaped from Kawau Island in 1864. Tai-whakaea te Retimana was one of the gunners; he had worked as assistant to a blacksmith. Later
pa, in the Upper Waikato.
The first line of defence began at a palisading close to a belt of bush on the Maoris' extreme right, on the edge of the Whangamarino Swamp and close to the river. In front of the landing two ship's guns were in place; one of these was a small swivel 6-pounder. There were two embrasures in a kind of chamber cut in the clay bank; these openings covered the approach up or down the river, and the gun was shifted from one embrasure to the other with rope tackle. In rear of the battery were eleven tiers of traversed pits, covering the landing. A covered way led from the first gun to the second, which was mounted on a rough carriage with wooden wheels. The next system of entrenchments consisted of lines of rifle-pits, extending for several chains along the face of the ridge. Here a 24-pounder gun was emplaced. Beyond these pits, and on the summit of the hill, was the trenched pa, 28 yards by 20 yards, lightly palisaded.
On the 6th August the “Avon,” commanded by Captain Hunt, when steaming up the river eight miles above Te Ia-roa, was fired on from the left bank. The Maori bullets flattened harmlessly on her plates. The steamer fired six rounds from her Armstrong gun, besides three war-rockets, and inflicted some casualties. On the 12th August the “Avon,” with General Cameron on board, made a reconnaissance of Meremere. Anchoring within 1,000 yards of the pa, she sent some shells and rockets into the Kingite rifle-pits. The Maoris had begun their fire on
On the 29th and 30th October the gunboat “Pioneer” made reconnaissances of the Meremere position. General Cameron and his staff were on board. The gunboat was fired on heavily by the Maoris, who used their cannon as well as small-arms, but the fire was not effective. Most of the shots fell short, but on the 30th a 7 lb. steelyard weight fired from the upper gun, a 24-pounder, penetrated the upper works of the gunboat and lodged in a cask of beef. Fragments of iron used as projectiles rattled against the plating and the cupolas, but did no damage. On the first day's reconnaissance the “Pioneer” replied to the Maoris' cannonade with her gun, and the 40-pounder Armstrongs in the Whangamarino redoubt also sent several shells into the Meremere entrenchments.
After the reconnaissance in the “Pioneer” on the 30th October General Cameron returned to the Queen's Redoubt, and orders were given for the embarkation of a column of six hundred men, consisting of detachments of the 40th and 65th Regiments, and two gun detachments of the Royal Artillery. These marched to the naval camp on the Manga-tawhiri, and were taken off to the “Pioneer” as she lay at her moorings in the Waikato near the Bluff. The expedition before daybreak on the 31st October had passed the enemy's position at Meremere, fired upon by the upper and lower battery and rifle-pits as she steamed up the flooded river. Without returning the fire, the “Pioneer,” accompanied by the “Avon,” and having in tow several of the small gunboats, steamed for about eight miles above Meremere, and the force was landed. An entrenchment was thrown up on the high ground on the right bank and on the track from the landing to Rangiriri and Meremere. Three guns were got into position early in the day. One of the small gunboats was left in the river to cut off the Maoris' communication from the interior by water, and the “Pioneer” and “Avon” returned, towing the remaining gunboats.
The Maoris realized the importance of this move, and attempted to dislodge the British force by an attack on the
On the 16th November a force of about nine hundred men, under Lieut.-Colonel Carey, embarked at Auckland for the Thames Gulf. The object of the expedition was to occupy the principal Maori settlements on the western shore of the gulf, whence men and supplies had been sent to the Waikato, and to establish a line of forts across country from the sea to the Queen's Redoubt. The Kingite position at Paparata still threatened the rear of Cameron's army, and raiding-parties were able to cross the frontier at will and rove the Wairoa Ranges. Carey's expeditionary force consisted of two companies of the Auckland Coastguards (Naval Volunteers; Captain William C. Daldy), sixty of the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry (Captain Walmsley), detachments of the 12th and 70th Regiments, and the 1st Regiment of Waikato Militia. The warships “Miranda” and “Esk” headed the fleet of transports, which included the Government gunboat “Sandfly,” the steamers “Corio” and “Alexandra,” the brigantine “Jessie,” and seven or eight cutters. The Cavalrymen and their horses were taken down in the “Corio” and “Alexandra.”
For eight days the vessels lay at anchor in Waiheke Passage, weather - bound. At last the fleet brought up off Wakatiwai, north of the Pukorokoro, a small stream which flows out into the mangrove-fringed gulf near the spot now known as Miranda. The Coastguards were boated ashore at Wakatiwai, and, cutting their way through bush and scrub, they reached the main ridge
pohutukawa trees. (The “Miranda” and “Sandfly” had reconnoitred Pukorokoro a fortnight previously, when three of the native villages were shelled.) The Coastguards, hurrying along the ridge, were just in time to see the Kingites retreating quickly across the creek in the direction of Waitakaruru and the Piako Swamp. The officer commanding the Coastguards (who had by this time been joined by the rest of the military force) obtained permission to lead the attack on the native village at Pukorokoro, which stood a short distance south of the stream. Doubling up past the Regulars and Militia, the bluejackets took the lead and crossed the creek. The Maoris made no stand, but quickly retreated along the narrow level
On the bluff above the creek-mouth the troops built a redoubt for 120 men. It was named the Miranda, after the warship. Working detachments were sent out later along a route westward selected for a line of posts to the Waikato, and two redoubts, named the Esk and the Surrey, were constructed along the Miranda—Manga-tawhiri line, linking up with the Queen's Redoubt.
The Auckland Coastguards—later known as the Auckland Naval Artillery—who took a prominent part in the Miranda expedition, performed very useful service during the year in scouring the shores of Manukau Harbour and the Hauraki, and (in conjunction with the Onehunga Naval Volunteers) in seizing the flotilla of Maori war-canoes in the South Manukau creeks.
Lieut.-Colonel Henry Parker, of Devonport, who served for nine months as a seaman in the Auckland Coastguards, narrating the services of the corps (1918), stated that the first call to war came on the 18th July, 1863. The corps had a flagstaff near Government House, overlooking the town and harbour, and a gun was mounted there. The signal went up to muster, and at 2 p.m. the company fell in at Princes Street fully armed and accoutred, under Lieutenants Guilding and Stevenson. On reaching the rendezvous the Navals found that sixty armed friendly Maoris were to accompany them to the Manukau. They objected to march with the natives unless the latter were disarmed, as they did not trust them. The Defence Minister, after a conference with his officers, had the rifles and ammunition taken from the Maoris. The Volunteers marched out to Onehunga, and on reaching the Manukau were embarked in cutters. With the flood tide the flotilla stood up the south bay, and at 2 o'clock next morning the force landed at a point on the left-hand side of the tidal river, sailing up. Here there was a settlement of Kingite Maoris (Ngati-te-Ata) who were in possession of many large canoes; these canoes, it was believed, were to be used to transport war-parties of Kingites across the Manukau to Blockhouse Bay for an attack upon Auckland. Immediately the Maoris in the fenced village of raupo huts observed the presence of an enemy in the channel they opened fire on the troops. In the meantime a considerable number of the men had landed and gained the shelter of the cliff. The company advanced, and when the natives discovered the landing-party they retreated. The Volunteers suffered only one casualty—Seaman Thomas Barron (afterwards a well-known Auckland oarsman), who was hit in
kumara and other stores, the men endeavoured to set fire to the timber palisading around the pa, but it would not burn. The Navals explored the Papakura Creek, where H.M.S. “Harrier” was lying, and searched all the native villages. One of the main objects of the expedition, the capture of the enemy's means of transport across the Manukau, was successfully accomplished. Twenty-one large canoes were secured; these wakas were capable of carrying from thirty to fifty men each. The force also found an historic craft, the war-canoe “Toki-a-Tapiri” (“Tapiri's Axe”)—which now reposes in the Auckland Museum. The “Axe” could carry quite a hundred warriors. At Onehunga the canoes were handed over to the troops. Most of them were broken up and used for firewood or otherwise destroyed. The contingent then marched back to Auckland, after an absence of a week.
The Auckland Coastguards' next warlike mission was a minor expedition to carry despatches. Ten of the volunteer bluejackets, under Chief Petty Officer (afterwards Captain) hapu on the Wairoa River; this was Hori te Whetuki, of the Koheriki Tribe. The detachment embarked in the gun-schooner “Caroline,” Captain Hannibal Marks. Arriving off the mouth of the Wairoa in the early morning, the schooner anchored, and the boat's crew was ordered away to carry the despatches up the river. Chief Petty Officer Daldy and four men formed the crew, Daldy steering; one of the oarsmen was Seaman Parker. The bluejackets had pulled about two miles up the river when they were fired on by a party of natives in the bush on the bank. In the bottom of the boat, under the thwarts, were loaded Enfield rifles, but as the crew was so small it was deemed advisable not to return the fire. Not a Maori could be seen—only the smoke that hung about the edge of the bush. This hostile reception compelled the despatch-carriers to return to the schooner. They pulled down the river and out to the “Caroline,” and a few hours later were back in Auckland.
Three days later the Coastguards received orders to go to the Wairoa again. The Government had chartered the steamer “Auckland,” and Nos. 1 and 2 Companies (the second company had just been formed), totalling about two hundred men, were ordered aboard, and all preparations were made for fighting. The steamer anchored off Ponui (Chamberlin's Island), several miles off the mouth of the Wairoa, and all the boats were put into the water. The force rowed ashore, but not a Maori was found; all the coast settlements were deserted. The expedition, finding
A week later the Coastguards were ordered out to the military camp at Drury. For several weeks the Volunteers were employed on convoy duty in the district between Drury, Mauku, and the Queen's Redoubt. On one occasion, the day after the fight at the Titi Farm, Mauku, a convoy of the Coastguards was ordered to take stores of food up to the soldiers at the Mauku stockades. The convoy had covered about half the distance, over a very bad road cut through the dense forest, when the bullock-drays became bogged. Some Maoris had taken post in a wooded gully flanking the road. By this time it was dark, and the Maori fires could be seen twinkling through the screen of foliage. The enemy opened fire on the convoy. The fire was effectively returned, the natives were driven off, and the convoy delivered the stores at Mauku and returned to Drury without further molestation.
This convoy duty and working cargo on the Drury tidal landing from the small craft that plied from Onehunga were arduous, but were cheerfully undertaken by the Coastguards. They openly rebelled, however, against an order to build a redoubt. Captain Daldy paraded the corps one day, and informed them that orders had been given by the Imperial officers to turn to and build an earthwork for the troops. This order met with very strenuous objections from the men, who protested that they had come to fight and not to build redoubts for the Regulars. They considered that as there were then some thousands of soldiers at Drury the troops could set to at their own fortifications. The protest held good. The officer in command rescinded his order, and the Coastguards presently received orders to return to Auckland.
In the town the Coastguards were continuously engaged in garrison duty; the pay was two guineas per week.
Later in the year (November) an expedition of Onehunga Navals and Rifle Volunteers, under Captain Purnell, scoured the southern and western shores of the Manukau in the s.s. “Lady Barkly,” and brought in canoes overlooked by the first expedition. The “Toki-a-Tapiri,” which had not been removed by the force in July—only the stern portion of the hull had been taken—was brought up to Onehunga. At Waiuku it was learned that a party of Maoris had cut down the signal-mast at the South Manukau Head, and had taken away two boats. The shore was searched, but the raiders had disappeared. A few days later there was another expedition in the steamer, this time to Awhitu, where it was reported that Kingite Maoris had appeared in force. The Navals landed, and in skirmishing order rushed the kainga, but the Maoris took to the bush, where it was not practicable to follow them.
FIFTY-SIX MILES SOUTH of Auckland the Main Trunk trains pass the station of Rangiriri. Nothing is to be seen there of the battle-ground of the 20th November, 1863—the view is of swamps and lagoons and a forest of weeping-willows bordering the Waikato River—but from the line a little distance north of the station one may see, a mile away, the hill where the engagement was fought. Westward of the railway is the still, sedge-bordered Lake Kopuwera, now a bird sanctuary, alive with wild duck and swans and wading-birds. This lagoon extends to the eastern base of a ridge marked by a dark plantation of pines: that is the spot where the Maoris of Waikato built their redoubt and dug out their rifle-pits and trenches to resist General Cameron. On the west side sweeps the Waikato River, here a full third of a mile wide. The Great South Road, running west of the railway, traverses the battlefield. Half a mile before reaching Rangiriri Township going south from Auckland the traveller motors or rides over the actual site of the entrenchments. The central redoubt of Rangiriri was just on the western side of the present road. The trenches and rifle-pits extended down the slopes on either side of the Waikato on the west and to the small lake on the east. The long double trench and parapet on the north (or front) face of the position can still be traced from the hilltop; it is about three-quarters of a mile in length, stretching from water to water. The redoubt in the centre of the works, the apex of the ridge, is indicated by a ditch still about 6 feet deep, with a parapet extending westward over the crown of the hill.
In the rear of the left centre of the main line and at right angles to it there was a line of trenches and rifle-pits parallel to the Waikato River, designed to resist troops landing from the war-steamers. In rear again and some distance from the pa there was a separate earthwork on the spur, the southern terminal of the ridge. This work General Cameron had observed on a reconnaissance, and arranged to attack it by landing a force from the steamers simultaneously with the land attack on front of the
General Cameron, after reconnoitring Rangiriri on the 18th November in the “Pioneer,” moved against the Kingite stronghold on the 20th. The whole of the river fleet was engaged in taking up sailors and soldiers from the Manga-tawhiri, while the troops encamped at Meremere and Takapau marched up along the right bank of the river. The “Pioneer” and “Avon” brought up the headquarters of the 40th Regiment, about 320 strong. In tow of the steamers were the four armoured gunboats filled with men. Commodore Sir
The attack began with an artillery bombardment at a range of about 700 yards. The three Armstrong guns shelled the Maori works for nearly two hours; a fire was also directed on the pa from the gunboats. The solid earthworks suffered very little from the shelling, but many casualties were inflicted on the Maoris crowded in their trenches and pits. The heaviest gun employed was a 12-pounder Armstrong. Then General Cameron, concluding that this artillery preparation was sufficient, ordered an assault of the the Kingite trenches. For this task the 65th Regiment was detailed. The leading company, under Lieutenant Toker, carried scaling-ladders and planks; with the stormers was a small detachment of the Royal Engineers, under Captain Brooke. Three companies of the 65th followed, with the 14th in support. The storming-party, with fixed bayonets at the charge, swept gallantly up the manuka-grown slope of the hill, and quickly forced the defenders out of the first line of entrenchments, but lost several men. A bullet smashed Captain Gresson's right arm.
The Kingite warriors fell back to defend the second line of rifle-pits, and for a few minutes held the position with great
The long lines of outer works were now in the British hands, and the greater number of the defenders crowded into the central redoubt, a rectangular citadel of high and broad parapet surrounded by an unusually wide ditch. The scarp of the earthworks was 17 or 18 feet in height from the bottom of the trench. From the rough banquette inside the rampart the defenders, resting their guns on the top, fired heavily on the troops. Many of the Maoris, however, were unable to reach this redoubt on the hilltop. When the outer trenches were stormed the musketeers on the Maori right flank ran for the lagoon and the swamps in the rear, but were fired on hotly by detachments of the 65th, which pursued them. Some of these were hit and wounded in swimming away, and most of the other fugitives lost their guns.
The 40th Regiment, late in the afternoon, succeeded in landing from the steamers where the present township of Rangiriri stands, in rear of the pa, and attacked and captured a series of entrenchments on a spur above. The defenders of this outwork fled across the swamps and made for Lake Waikare, which they crossed in canoes. A portion of the 65th Regiment now worked round to the Maoris' left rear, crossing the deserted double trench and parapet which extended from the crown of the ridge to the Waikato River. By this time an attempt by the main body of the 65th and the 14th to storm the central redoubt failed, because the ladders brought were too short to
The Maoris in the main work were now fighting with desperate determination, firing at close range as quickly as they could load their guns. There were women among them; after the battle a beautiful girl was found lying dead on the hilltop, killed by a fragment of shell.
Late in the afternoon General Cameron issued the most extraordinary order of the day. A detachment of the Royal Artillery, armed with revolvers and swords, was to storm the redoubt. Captain Mercer led thirty-six of his men to the assault. Leaping into the wide trenches, they attempted to gain the top of the parapet, but only one or two succeeded in planting foot upon it. Sergeant-Major Hamilton reached the top and fired his revolver into the Maoris, but was forced back with a severe gunshot wound in the right arm. Captain Mercer fell, mortally wounded, outside the trench; he was shot through the mouth.
This repulse only strengthened Cameron's stubborn resolution to take the redoubt, and another assault was ordered. This time the Royal Navy men were selected for the forlorn hope. Captain Mayne, of H.M.S. “Eclipse,” was directed to make a frontal attack with ninety sailors of the Naval Brigade, consisting of portions of the crews of the “Eclipse,” “Curaçoa,” and “Miranda.” The bluejackets, with rifle and cutlass, dashed at the works and endeavoured to swarm up the straight-scarped parapet, but once more the stormers were thrown back, and dead and dying men strewed the ditch and the ground in front of it. A few reached the top of the parapet. Midshipman Watkins was one of them; he fell back into the trench with a bullet through his head. Commander Mayne was severely wounded in the left hip; Lieutenant Downes, of H.M.S. “Miranda,” was shot through the left shoulder; and two officers of the “Curaçoa” suffered bad wounds, Lieutenant Alexander in the right shoulder and Lieutenant C. F. Hotham (afterwards Admiral) in the right leg.
When this attack failed a party of seamen, under Commander Phillimore, of the “Curaçoa,” charged up to the ditch and threw hand-grenades over into the redoubt, but this attempt did not alter the position. In the Naval Brigade was Midshipman C. G. Foljambe (“Curaçoa”), afterwards Earl of Liverpool and father of a recent Governor of New Zealand. He and his comrades made several attempts to scale the parapet, but the task was hopeless.
It was now almost night, and the General was compelled by the darkness to cease the waste of brave men's lives. The pa was surrounded by the troops in readiness to renew the combat
The British casualties in this second Ohaeawai totalled 128. Of this number two officers were killed outright (Mr. Watkins, R.N., and Lieutenant Murphy, 14th Regiment), four died from their wounds (Lieut.-Colonel Austen, 14th, Captain Mercer, R.A., Captain Phelps, 14th, and Ensign Ducrow, 40th), and nine others were wounded. Forty-one men were killed or died of wounds, and seventy-two were wounded. The Maori losses were greater; thirty-six dead were buried after the capture of the pa on the following day, and many were shot or wounded in escaping across the flooded lagoons.
Before daybreak next morning (21st November) the men of the Royal Engineers, under Colonel Mould and Captain Brooke, made an attempt to mine the main pa, and a gallery was run in under an angle of the parapet for the purpose of blowing it up and making a breach. It was found, however, that the fuses had been mislaid on board the “Pioneer.” Picks and shovels were afterwards used to bring the parapet down, but shortly after daybreak the Maoris ceased firing and hoisted a white flag in token of surrender.
One of the staff interpreters, Mr. Gundry, was sent forward, and after some discussion the principal chiefs, headed by Tioriori, of the Ngati-Koroki (a section of Ngati-Haua), agreed to submit unconditionally. The gallant Tioriori had sustained three wounds when chivalrously attempting to remove a wounded officer out of the line of fire. The defenders surrendered to the number of 183, and gave up 175 stand of arms of varied makes, chiefly double-barrel shot-guns. The troops entered the redoubt—a pitiful scene after the battle—and the prisoners of war were escorted to the native church near the river; they were afterwards taken down the Waikato in the “Pioneer,” and marched from the Manga-tawhiri to Auckland.
Soon after the surrender of the pa a large force of Maoris was seen near Paetai, on the south side of the Rangiriri Stream. An interpreter found that they were a body of reinforcements, under mere to the General as a token of peace. His men, however, were strongly opposed to giving up themselves or their arms, and Tamehana accordingly retired with them to Ngaruawahia.
Many prominent Kingite chiefs were captured when Rangiriri surrendered, besides Tioriori. The Maori of highest rank was Ta Kerei (“Sir Grey”) te Rau-angaanga, a near relative of the Maori King. Others who surrendered were Wiremu Kumete (Whitiora), Tarahawaiki, Te Kihirini, Te Aho, Tapihana (of Kawhia), Wini Kerei, and Maihi Katipa. Te Wharepu, the principal engineer in the construction of the pa, escaped badly wounded. Among the men of importance killed were Te Tutere, of Ngati-Haua, and Amukete Ta Kerei, son of Ta Kerei te Rau-angaanga. The total Maori loss in killed was between forty and fifty.
A veteran of the Ngati-Tamaoho Tribe says that the principal reason for the surrender of Rangiriri on the second day was the fact that all the ammunition was expended. “The highest chief who remained in the pa, Ta Kerei te Rau-angaanga, spoke to the interpreter sent forward by the General and said, ‘Kaore e mau te rongo’ (‘Peace shall not be made’). In response to the summons to surrender he declared, ‘We will fight on.’ Then he made the request, ‘Ho mai he paura’ (‘Give us some gunpowder’). He thought it would be fair play if the soldiers gave the Maoris some powder to continue the fight. But the interpreter said, ‘No.’ Ta Kerei and his people therefore decided to surrender.”
The same authority says, “
On the night of the 11th September, 1864, the Waikato prisoners of war taken at Rangiriri escaped from Kawau Island to the mainland. The escape was planned chiefly by Tapihana, of Kawhia; other leading men in the party were Wi Karamoa (the Waikato lay reader, who was the only man to surrender at Orakau) and Wiremu Kumete te Whitiora, of Ngati-Mahuta. Tioriori and Ta Kerei had been released. The prisoners, after a confinement of many months in the hulk “Marion” in Auckland Harbour, under a guard of fifty Militia (Captain Krippner), had been removed to the Kawau, but no charge was laid against them, nor were they tried by any tribunal. This uncertainty and their home-sickness were quickened by wild reports that they were to be taken out to sea in a vessel and sunk by gun-fire—a story which had gained currency owing to a warship having carried out target practice off the island. Their quarters were near the old copper-workings on the Kawau. They were allowed the use of boats for fishing, but the oars and rowlocks were locked up at night. To the number of nearly two hundred they crowded into the boats, taking all the craft on the island, and worked their way across to the nearest point of the mainland with their spades and shovels and pieces of board which they had shaped into paddles. The fugitives landed at Waikauri, and ascended the mountain Otamahua, overlooking Omaha and Matakana. There they entrenched themselves on a narrow ridge commanding a view over the surrounding country for many miles. Their nikau-hut camp, partly fenced and ditched around, was about 150 yards in length by 15 to 20 yards in width; on either side were precipices, and the only approach was up a steep spur. Here they watched for pursuers, and were visited by many of the neighbouring Ngapuhi people, who supplied them with food. They were visited also by Government agents and their late keeper, who tried to coax them back to their prison island; but Wiremu Kumete asked sardonically, “How many birds, having escaped from the snare, return to it?” The Government wisely left them alone, and they presently made their way across to the Kaipara, and thence to West Waikato.
There had been some discussion between the Governor and his Ministers with regard to the treatment of the prisoners from Rangiriri, and some ill-natured critics even professed to believe that Sir ka kino! Hori Grey,pa
THE TRUMPET-CALL of “Boot and saddle” in the cavalry and mounted artillery camps, and the infantry “Assembly” bugle, set all hearts bounding when the news came that Cameron's march for the Upper Waikato had begun. Already large infantry detachments had gone forward from the advanced camp at Rangiriri to Ngaruawahia, where the British flag was hoisted on the 8th December, and the main army was now to be transported into the heart of the Maori country. Horse, foot, and guns streamed southward in the beautiful midsummer weather; in their train came an endless procession of munitions and stores in transport-carts. The river was alive with the steam flotilla and the boats and canoes of the transport service. Bend after bend of the broad Waikato was invaded by the steadily churning gunboat - paddles and the flashing oars of the heavy boats manned by the newly organized Water Transport Corps. The time-songs of Te Wheoro's and Kukutai's friendlies rang like war-cries along the Waikato as they came sweeping up in their long canoes, carrying thirty or forty men apiece, and loaded, like the boats, with commissariat stores. Then, too, one would hear English sea-songs strangely far inland, for most of the pakeha Water Transport Corps were sailors, and they chantied as they stretched out on their oars that they would “go no more a-roving,” and at their camp - fires they raised the old choruses of “Good-bye, fare you well,” and “Rio Grande.” And many a man of Jackson's and Von Tempsky's Forest Rangers—now two independent companies—swinging light-heartedly along the bank, joined in the chanties, for a large proportion of the blue-shirted carbineers had at one time or another followed the sea.
Crying their farewells to their old homes and chanting the ancient tangi laments over sacred Taupiri, their mountain necropolis, the Kingites abandoned their hold on mid-Waikato and drew off to the open delta that lay between the Horotiu and the Waipa. They realized now that the pakeha would not be
The Maoris had made some preparation for the defence of Ngaruawahia. When, on the 8th December, General Cameron's advanced force occupied the abandoned Kingite capital and hoisted the British colours on Tawhiao's flagstaff it was found that some trenches and rifle-pits had been dug on the point of land at the junction of the Horotiu and the Waipa, and a partly constructed earthwork pa 300 yards square, overlooked the mouth of the Waipa, about 200 yards up the bank of that river. A suggestion had also been made to bar the progress of the troops at Taupiri, where the opposing lofty ranges made a grand natural gateway, forested Taupiri on the east side and a spur of the Hakarimata Mountain on the west. But without artillery the defence of these points was hopeless against Cameron's armoured gunboats.
The small steam fleet on the Waikato was now busy transporting troops from a point near Rangiriri to Ngaruawahia, and by the end of 1863, there were nearly three thousand soldiers, Imperial and colonial, assembled at the apex of the Waikato-
Describing the advance on the Kingites' new positions, Von Tempsky wrote in his journal:— “On the 27th of January, 1864, the two columns from Tuhikaramea and Whatawhata started on the main road for Pikopiko. For miles and miles now there was an unbroken stream of soldiers, bullock-drays, artillery, packhorses, and orderlies meandering over the plains and fern ridges of the sacred Maori delta. Yellow clouds of dust hovered along our road, to the great disparagement of our faces, sight, and clear speech. We had the special honour to escort on the first day some Armstrong guns dragged by bullocks. On a low backed ridge of considerable width, near a deserted village, the army encamped under their blanket tents. I saw Jackson's blue - blanket tents in the Tuhikaramea column. We had discarded even that trouble and slept in the fern, in line of battle, at the most exposed flank, opposite the bush. “On the following morning we sighted Pikopiko, and one's heart began to beat as soon as the General began to mass his troops in columns before the Maori stronghold. There it lay, no despicable object even in the eyes of the greatest ignoramus of works of defence. There were the Maoris—at least, their black heads visible on the parapet; here and there sentries walking on the parapet, and again, some fellows dancing on it and waving to us and shouting ‘Come on!’ “For more than an hour we were kept in suspense regarding the intentions of the General. (The loyal chief Wiremu Neera, of Raglan, now made his appearance with a party on horseback.) Our suspense was broken at last by the columns filing away to the west, past Pikopiko, towards the Waipa, and this night we camped unmolested near Te Rore. Our encampment extended nearly a mile from the banks of the Waipa to the hills opposite Paterangi. The headquarters were pitched in a grove of fruit-trees on an eminence isolated by gullies on three sides, and at the foot of it the two companies of Forest Rangers were ordered to pitch their camp. We had also charge of a picket guarding the entrance to a valley on the Waipa where all the commissariat stores and munitions of war were kept. We were, moreover, to be ever ready to move to any one point, be it night or be it day; and we felt proud of this kind of honour, and to the last man in the two companies our alertness was never found deficient. “From our most advanced post, under Colonel Waddy, of the 50th Regiment, you could see the daily life going on at Paterangi. A little battery of Armstrongs kept the alertness of the Maoris somewhat in practice, and from a still more advanced hill a picket amused itself daily by long shots at the Maoris. “I had a great desire to make a sketch of Paterangi,” Von Tempsky continued, “so, getting leave of the General, I took five men with me and started. I had chosen five of my best shots, to keep heads below the parapet while I made my sketch, and I also had chosen them from amongst the new men to see what effect the whistle of a bullet would have upon them. I passed the picket hill, and, leaving my men with Roberts in some fern, I advanced to see how far the Maori sharpshooters would allow me to come. An Enfield bullet striking the ground at my feet soon convinced me that I was far enough. On returning to my men I told them to commence whenever they saw a shot. I also began my sketch. It was not long, however, before another Enfield bullet struck within a foot at my right. I shifted to the left. Another one checked as closely as before my shifting in that direction. However, I persevered with my work, and my men blazed away as happy as larks—till again that same rifle cracked and a bullet struck the ground in front of me. I shifted once more, but got two more close shaves from the same rifle (evidently out of a casemate hole), and having finished my sketch I waved a complimentary adieu to my friend with the Enfield rifle and departed, highly contented with the behaviour of my men and with the acquisition of the sketch, which I had intended for the General.”pa.
“It was little wonder,” says a veteran of Nixon's Cavalry, “that General Cameron declined to assault Paterangi pa. The place was immensely strong. We felt very dubious about it as we watched it week after week and waited for the General's decision. An attempt to storm it would have cost even more
The Paterangi works occupied a bold and commanding site, formidable of front, with a comparatively open rear. The highest central part only was stockaded; the rest of the works consisted of a network of trenches and parapets. The frontal earthworks were unusually solid and broad; and it was on these parapets that the natives, as they saluted the coming of the troops with a great war-dance, gave many of the troops their first view of the Maori forces in large numbers. The hill-crest which formed the front is the western terminal of a long ridge trending east and west, with low and swampy country on three sides of it. It overlooked the whole valley of the upper Waipa, from the mountain-range of Pirongia on the west to Maunga-tautari on the east. The position can readily be identified to-day, and an exploration of the hill and the sloping ground on the south reveals many traces of the works of 1863–64. As in so many battlefields of the Waikato, a road passes through the middle of the works. This is the road connecting Pirongia and Te Rore, on the Waipa, with the Ohaupo—Te Awamutu main road on the east. Paterangi village and churches are one mile east of the pa site, and the township of Pirongia is three miles to the south-west.
Our plan of Paterangi, from a survey made by Captain Brooke, R.E., in 1864, shows how cleverly the Maori engineers entrenched the whole western and south-western faces of the ridge with works completely blocking an advance over the ground between the flanking-swamps. The central works, on the hilltop, consisted of three strong redoubts; the two on the east—separated from the other by the present line of road—were connected with the western hill-crest pa by a line of covered way, about 100 yards in length, a deep ditch with a frontal parapet and a roofing of timber and earth. Close to this trench was a deep well. From the south side another trench with a high rampart curved down the hillside and across the road to a hollow under the slopes. In this depression was a spring of
The general outline of the main redoubt and trenches on the level crest are indicated by slight depressions extending over an area of about 2 acres, and on the eastern side of the road the traces of a pa converted into a British redoubt after the occupation are equally plain in the turf. whare was constructed by Ngati-Maniapoto and occupied by Rewi, Raureti, and their party. This slight hollow, retaining the shape of a house-excavation, is near the southern end of the main works on the hilltop west of the road. About it are the traces of other excavations and of parapets. The roofs of some of the shell-proof ruas (or dug-in shelters) and whares in the pa were so strong, covered with heavy timber and with earth, that drays were driven over them. These drays were used by the Maoris in carting in provisions to the pa from Rangiaowhia, ten miles in the rear.
On the western side the hill of Paterangi falls steeply to a narrow swamp of raupo and manuka, on the opposite side of which the land rises into undulating country about 200 feet below the level of the pa on the crest. The scrub- and fern-covered slopes here and the swampy valley were the favourite lurking-grounds of the Maoris, who were accustomed to skirmish daily with the troops, without much damage to either side. From the large expenditure of ammunition there the natives gave the place the name of “Maumau-paura,” or “Waste of gunpowder.” The advanced British camp, under Colonel Waddy, was on the slightly rising ground to the south of Maumau-paura and about south-west of the pa; the road now passes through the spot, half a mile from the site of the fortification. The Armstrong guns were posted there, and frequently threw shells into Paterangi without inflicting much damage.
pa constructed was Manga-pukatea, intended to block
As in Meremere, the Kingites in Paterangi derived some moral support from the possession of artillery of a kind. They had two cannon—old ship's guns, originally from Kawhia Harbour. A Ngati-Maniapoto veteran, hapu of Ngati-Raukawa. Retimana had been in a blacksmith's employ before the war, and spoke English. The cannon were loaded with heavy charges of powder and crammed with pieces of bullock-chain (tini-kau), steelyard-weights, and scraps of iron. The little gunner had a small fire burning close by, and in this he had an iron heating, ready to fire the guns. He slept by his artillery; he was ever on the alert for the advance of the soldiers. But the troops did not come within range, to Retimana's great disappointment, and so the guns were never fired. They were reserved for the always-expected rush. The two pieces were within a few yards of each other, one on either side of the road. Stout sections of tree-trunks were sunk in the ground, and each gun was made fast to these posts with aka vines, in lieu of rope
Rangiatea pa, a strong fortification, was built in rear (eastward) of Paterangi in order to cover more effectually the sources of food-supply at Rangiaowhia. The pa was on the crown of a narrow ridge of land, and the trenches ran down to a deep swamp on one hand and the swampy border of the Ngaroto lakes—now partly drained—on the other. It was along this ridge, the prolongation of the Paterangi high ground, that the Maori cart-road passed from Rangiaowhia to Paterangi and to the canoe-landing at Te Rore. The present road from Pirongia and Paterangi eastward to the Ohaupo—Te Awamutu main road and Te Rahu passes through the Rangiatea works, long since obliterated by the road and by filling-in and ploughing. The spot is on Mr. W. Taylor's farm, a quarter of a mile west of the junction of the Paterangi, Te Awamutu, and Ohaupo Roads. On Mr. George Finch's farm, along the same road, near the Lake Road Station, are the tree-covered remains of a fort named Tauranga-mirimiri, occupied for a time during the war period 1863–64. The position is on a commanding hill, with the Ngaroto lakes below on the northern side. Near the eminence known as “Green Hill,” overlooking Te Awamutu, there was a Maori settlement named Te Rua-kotare, but this was not occupied as a fortification.
As the expected assault on Paterangi was never delivered, the fighting was mostly long-range sniping, varied by occasional shelling from the British guns; but the period of waiting for action was relieved on the 11th February, 1864, by a sharp skirmish at Waiari, on the Mangapiko River, a mile south of the fortifications. In this encounter five soldiers and forty-one Maoris were killed. The central scene of the engagement is an ancient earthwork fortification of the Ngati-Apakura Tribe, built in a loop of the Mangapiko. The river doubles back on itself here, and across the narrow neck of land on the left bank of the stream are three lines of very high and broad parapet and deep ditches. Covered with thick manuka and fern in 1864, the place is in very much the same jungly condition to-day. Just above the pa the river is very narrow, at one place not more than 15 feet in width, and across this deep run at the time of the fight there lay a precarious Maori bridge, a single tree-trunk, smoothed on the upper surface. A short distance from the old fortress was a large pool which the soldiers in Colonel Waddy's advanced camp used as a bathing-place.
Colonel Waddy's camp, the most advanced British post, was situated on a hill with an abrupt front towards Paterangi, and a gentle slope at the back where the tents of the 40th and 50th were pitched, sheltered from Maori bullets. The native scouts reported that if they worked round to the rear of the hill they would be able to surprise the camp by night from that side. The Paterangi leaders therefore planned an attack to be delivered by about a hundred warriors, who could conceal themselves during the day at the Mangapiko Creek, below the camp. After their first volleys on the camp in the night they were to be supported by large bodies from Paterangi. However, Colonel Waddy had sent that day a large bathing-party of the 40th Regiment to the creek. The Maoris were hidden in the bushes on the south side, close to the water and a short distance from Waiari pa. They could not resist firing on the bathing-party and the small covering detachment of soldiers. The soldiers were soon reinforced by two hundred men of the 40th and 50th from the advanced camp, under Lieut.-Colonel Havelock. With the reinforcements came Captain
Some of the troops crossed the stream and closely engaged the Maoris in the manuka and fern; others fired across the narrow gully of the river. The natives were driven down-stream and took cover in the overgrown ditches of Waiari.
Reinforcements were hurrying down from Paterangi and threatening the British rear and flanks. Von Tempsky and half of the Forest Rangers were in their camp at Te Rore, two miles away, when the firing began, but with their usual eagerness they rushed off at their utmost speed when the news of the fight reached them. Colonel Havelock, carbine in hand, was directing the attack when Von Tempsky and his panting Rangers reached the southern side of the Mangapiko. He requested Von Tempsky to clear out some Maoris who had taken cover in the thicket that filled an olden trench in the rear of the British party,
pa sloped down into the river,” Von Tempsky wrote. “It was densely covered with scrub, as well as the bank of the river. My men bounded down into it like tigers. On our hands and knees we had to creep, revolver in hand, looking for our invisible foes. The thumping of double-barrel guns around us announced soon that we were in the midst of the nest. I had in all about thirty men. Some were stationed on the top of the bank, others in the very river, and the rest crawling through the scrub. There were some strange meetings in that scrub. Muzzle to muzzle, the shot of despair, the repeating cracks of revolvers and carbine thuds, and the brown bodies of Maoris made their appearance gradually, either rolling down the hill or being dragged out of the scrub.”
It was nearly dark by the time the old pa was finally cleared of the Maoris, and the troops returned to camp, skirmishing with large bodies of Maoris under cover of low bush and manuka on the right flank of the route. The Rangers covered the return of the force and remained in action until darkness fell.
Soon after the battle opened at Waiari Captain
The Maoris who fell in this skirmish numbered forty-one. Twenty-eight bodies were counted; others fell in the river. Two wounded prisoners were taken. Many of those engaged were Kawhia men who had only recently arrived at Paterangi. One of their principal chiefs killed was Te Munu Waitai, of Ngati-Hikairo; others were Taati, Ta Keriri, Taare, Te Kariri, and Hone Ropiha (Ngati-Maniapoto). Some of the dead were buried on the north side of the river, and close to their graves the troops, soon after this fight, built a reduobt to guard the crossing at Waiari. The parapets and trench of this redoubt (on Mr. H. Rhodes's farm) are still well preserved, and are marked by a grove of acacia.
THE SUMMER OF 1864 was well advanced before General Cameron found himself able to execute the final strategic movement of the campaign, the outflanking of the Kingites' heavy defences at Paterangi and Rangiatea. Two half-caste guides attached to headquarters, pa Otawhao (in the neighbourhood of the present railway-station at Te Awamutu). kahikatea forest that fringed the Manga-o-Hoi Stream. The ridge of Hairini surmounted,
raupo-bordered waters of a little lagoon, the dam which supplied the power for a flour-mill.
Nixon's cavalry galloped ahead, and the crack of carbines and popping of revolvers, replied to with double-barrel guns, broke the quiet of Rangiaowhia. The main forces of the Kingites
whares extending from the south end of the village to the hill on the north where the Roman Catholic church dominated Rangiaowhia, great quantities of food were laid out—potatoes, kumara, pigs, and fowls—packed ready for carting to Paterangi. The Maoris, recovering from their first astonishment at the attack, took cover in their raupo huts and in one or two houses of sawn timber, and opened fire on the cavalrymen. The Rangers were soon up in the centre of the village, followed by the 65th, and the skirmish spread along the street between the rows of houses. The cavalry gave their attention to some large whares to the south and south-east of the English church; these houses, one of which was the home of the chief Ihaia (“Isaiah”), of Ngati-Apakura, were clustered at a spot called Tau-ki-tua, about the head of a long swampy valley which extended in a northerly direction; a little to the south was Tioriori kainga. Lower down this valley, the Rua-o-Tawhiwhi, was a flour-mill similar to that at Pekapeka-rau. The Forest Rangers found the Roman Catholic church crowning the mound at the north end of the settlement, called Karanga-paihau, crammed with armed Maoris, who showed a white flag, and so were not pressed further. In rear of the church, surrounded by lines of whanake or cabbage-trees (these whanake, now grown to enormous trees, still adorn the old village-site), was the kainga Te Reinga, the headquarters of Hoani Papita (“John the Baptist”) and his people of Ngati-Hinetu. Between the church and this settlement was the house of the priest of the district. The Rangers, fired at here and there from whares—one or two of these snipers were women—hurried down to the right, where heavy firing was now going on. The English church, too, was filled with Maoris, and some shots came from the windows, but the action centred in one of the large houses on the slope above the spring at the head of the little valley. Close by was a house which belonged to a European, a man named Thomas Power, who had a Maori wife. In both of these houses a number of Maoris had taken refuge.
Colonel Nixon's cavalrymen, dismounting, surrounded the whares near the swamp-head (the spot is in the angle formed by the junction of the present Kihikihi—Rangiaowhia main road and the road eastward from Te Awamutu to Puahue and Panehakua). The Colonel sent Lieutenant McDonnell and Ensign raupo walls of the house everywhere; the troops were drawn round the place on three sides. The occupants of the whare, however, had good cover for a time, as the interior was excavated a foot or two below the level of the ground outside, and, crouching on the floor, the Maoris could deliver their fire through holes in the bottom of the walls, as in a shallow rifle-pit. An excited cavalryman, Sergeant McHale, rushed forward eager to storm the whare. He reached the low doorway, and was stooping firing into it with his revolver when he was shot dead and dragged inside. A 65th soldier was also shot dead in front of the house. The Maoris secured McHale's carbine and revolver, with about twenty rounds of carbine ammunition, and, using the captured firearms and their own guns, continued their resistance. Hundreds of shots were poured into the whare, and Colonel Nixon himself fired into it with his
whares were now on fire, either ignited by the firing through the thatch or set on fire by the troopers.
Von Tempsky came running up with his Rangers, and, followed by a dozen of his men, rushed at the doorway of the large whare. Sergeant Carron thrust his head into the low doorway, seeking a target in the gloom of the house, but could see nothing at which to fire. At this moment Corporal Alexander, of the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry, ran up and, crouching at the open door, was about to fire his carbine into the house when he was shot dead. The Rangers dragged the dead corporal away from the door, and Von Tempsky quickly fired the five shots of his revolver into the corner from which he had heard the last report. Then he pulled the body of the 65th soldier away and drew his men off a little distance. One of the Rangers, a young Canadian named John Ballender—a surgeon by profession, and a very brave fellow and a fine shot—fell wounded in the hip; he died from his injury some months later. Four cavalrymen, including Sergeant Hutchinson and Trooper E. Mellon, rushed forward with a stretcher and carried Colonel Nixon out of the line of fire. Then they went back for Trooper Alexander, who was lying outside the door shot through the throat. The shot had been fired at so short a range—only a few feet—that his whiskers were burned by the powder-flash.
The garrison whare was now on fire, like the neighbouring huts. A veteran of the cavalry says that one of the troopers had run round to the rear of the hut and set it alight; but an old Forest Ranger considers that the thatch may have been ignited by the firing. “We put the muzzles of our carbines close to the raupo walls,” he says, “and fired through the thatch. The Maoris inside were doing the same, and naturally the inflammable walls would soon catch fire from the flash and the burning wadding.”
The flames at last drove one of the occupants out. A tall old man, clothed in a white blanket, which he was holding about his head, emerged from the doorway of the burning house. His upstretched arms showed that he had no weapon. He advanced towards the crescent of troops in surrender, facing a hundred levelled rifles. “Spare him, spare him!” shouted the nearest officers. But next moment there was a thunder of shots. Staggering from the bullets, the old hero recovered his poise for an instant, stood still with an expression of calm, sad dignity,
No more Maoris surrendered after that sacrifice. The house was now wrapped in flames. A man stepped out of the pit of death, stood in front of the doorway, and fired his last shots from his double-barrel gun. A volley from the soldiers, and he fell dead. Yet another appeared from the doorway and was shot dead while aiming at his foes. The burning house crashed and fell inward. When the troops were able to approach it they found in the smoking ruins the charred bodies of Sergeant McHale and seven Maoris. The brave little garrison had numbered ten, opposed to some hundreds of the invaders, and the taking of the raupo hut cost, besides, three whites shot dead and two mortally wounded.
None of the other Mr. “The Natives took cover in the Roman Catholic church after most of the “A great deal of wild talk arose as to the burning of the Maori whares was defended in this determined manner. About a dozen houses were burned down; some of their occupants had dispersed to the northward, making across the slopes for the Catholic church on the hill; others took refuge in the swamp or fled eastward into the bush. At the Catholic churchwhares on the lower ground had been cleared of them; the huts were nearly all set on fire by natives firing through the raupo walls at the troops. The church was held by them for only a brief period; they retreated quickly before the advancing Forest Rangers and troops. The Rev. Father Vinay, who resided at the church for many years after the war, cleverly effaced and closed up the bullet-holes left in the building during the skirmish, and yet these were long visible upon close inspection. The temporary stand made by the natives in the church formed the closing scene of that morning's encounter.whares designedly, but the firing of Maori guns and of soldiers' rifles at close range into dry raupo whares is a sufficient explanation.”
Twelve Maoris, including the chiefs Hoani and Ihaia, were killed in the morning's encounter, and above thirty prisoners, some wounded, were taken.
The news of the General's surprise expedition and the attack on Rangiaowhia brought the main body of the Waikato and their allies pouring eastward into the invaded village, and a few hours after the fight the leaders were hastily planning the fortifications for the defence of their supply headquarters. They realized now that Paterangi, Pikopiko, and Rangiatea represented so much heavy labour lost as the result of the British turning movement, and those forts were evacuated immediately. A position was selected for an entrenchment to block the road from Te Awamutu to Rangiaowhia. The place chosen was the crest of a ridge at Hairini (“Ireland”), the highest part of the approach to Rangiaowhia from the west. An old line of ditch and bank, fencing in some large cultivations, crossed the crown of the height from north to south. This line the Maoris quickly strengthened on the morning after the invasion of the village, deepening the ditch and converting the bank into a strong parapet, with a stake fence surmounting it. The road was blocked by a rifle-trench with a narrow opening. The entrenchment ran down the hill on the north side—the defenders' right flank—into a deep swamp; on the south side the ditch and bank extended along a slope to the cover of thick bush and manuka, which continued thence steeply down to the kahikatea forest in the swampy valley of the Manga-o-Hoi. The flanks of the Kingites were thus well protected. Members of many Kingite tribes shared in the work of defence. Besides numerous subtribes of Waikato, there were many Ngati-Maniapoto, one of whose chiefs was Wahanui—a gigantic figure of a man, afterwards the most celebrated orator of the King party—some men of Ngai-te-Rangi from Tauranga, and a contingent of nearly a hundred Urewera warriors, under
On the morning of the 22nd February, the day following the attack on Rangiaowhia, an outlying picket on the north side of the Manga-a-Hoi Stream at Te Awamutu was fired upon by a party of Ngati-Maniapoto from the cover of some manuka at Matariki, on the river-bank a short distance above the bridge. The troops in the camp at Te Awamutu had been reinforced by a large body from Te Rore, including the 50th Regiment (under Brevet-Colonel Weare), a detachment of Royal Artillery, and a party of Royal Navy men from the ships at Auckland,
taiaha, yelling defiance at the troops and encouraged his comrades with cries of “Riria, riria! Patua, patua!” (“Fight on, fight on! Strike, kill!”) This was
The Kingite warriors maintained a heavy fire, but their bullets flew too high, and as the fatal line of steel approached they broke into confusion and flight. Some raced down to the left into the shelter of the deep swamp on the north side, and struggled across it in the direction of Rangiaowhia; others fled across
Now came the opportunity for the cavalry. One detachment of the Colonial Defence, under Captain Walmsley, advanced on the right flank, taking the high ground overlooking the Manga-o-Hoi Valley; the other troop, under Captain Pye, galloped up on the left, crossing a maize-field above the swamp, with its patches of kahikatea bush. The trumpet sounded the “Charge,” and the troopers rode into the Maoris with their sabres, cutting down a number as they went over them. Some of the warriors bravely faced the horsemen. Captain Pye's men met a volley. “Our detachment,” says a veteran of this troop, “got in among a party of Maoris who attempted to resist us. I made a cut with my sword at one man, but he jumped aside and I missed him. As I passed ahead I looked round and saw another trooper, Middleton, running his sword through him. Some of the Maoris ran down on the south side of Hairini, where we could not follow them; others retreated across the swamp at Pekapeka-rau, where the Maori dam and flour-mill were.” This was one of the few occasions on which cavalry charges were practicable in the Maori wars. Cavalry were used at Orakau, a few weeks after the Hairini fight; the other principal instances of charges with the sabre occurred at Nukumaru, on the west coast, in 1865, and at Kiorekino, on the Opotiki Flat, in the same year.
The Forest Rangers, under Von Tempsky, meanwhile were firing from a peach-grove on the left upon the Maoris escaping through the swamp, and they, with some of the 50th and the 70th, skirmished up towards Rangiaowhia, where the fighting ended. The village was looted, and the Rangers and many other troops returned to Te Awamutu laden with spoils in the way of food and Maori weapons.
The day's casualties numbered two soldiers killed, one of the Defence Force Cavalry mortally wounded, and fifteen others wounded, including Ensign Doveton, of the 50th. The Maoris lost about a score killed, besides many wounded, some of whom were captured and treated in the field hospital at Te Awamutu. The troops probably would have suffered more severely when doubling along the road to the assault but for the clouds of dust that obscured them.
A British redoubt was built at Rangiaowhia, near the brow of the hill Hikurangi, overlooking the Manga-o-Hoi forest and swamp (the district school now stands close to the spot). The post was garrisoned by a company of the 65th Regiment, under Captain Blewitt. In later years, when the Waikato frontier was threatened by the King Country Hauhaus, a blockhouse was built on the site and held by the armed settlers, some of whom were old Forest Rangers of Jackson's No. 1 Company.
The whole of the mid-Waikato and the fertile plain of the delta between the Waipa and the Horotiu (upper Waikato River) as far south as the Mangapiko River was now under British occupation. General Cameron left detachments to garrison Te Rore, Pikopiko, and Paterangi, and at Kirikiri-roa, on the Horotiu, established a post which became the present Town of Hamilton. The gunboats “Pioneer” and “Koheroa” steamed up the Horotiu for the first time on the 2nd March, 1864, with a detachment of the 65th, and anchored below the deserted native settlement of Kirikiri-roa. Next day the “Koheroa,” under command of an officer of H.M.S. “Eclipse,” ascended the strong river as far as Pukerimu, and the officers and surveyors on board made a rapid reconnaissance of the country. Redoubts were built soon after this at Pukerimu and Kirikiri-roa, and were garrisoned by detachments of the 18th and 70th Regiments; later, the settlements were occupied by men of the Waikato Militia. The Ngati-Haua and their allies, including many Ngai-te-Rangi from Tauranga, had now strongly fortified themselves at Te Tiki-o-te-Ihingarangi, where the Pukekura Range, an out - spur of Maunga-tautari, terminates above the precipitous left bank of the Waikato River. Soon after the first visit to Pukerimu the General advanced with a force of several hundred men from Te Awamutu and skirmished towards the Ngati-Haua positions. After a little firing at comparatively long range the troops retired. The pa was occupied for several weeks, but at last was evacuated before Cameron had made up his mind to attack it. This was the only strong position in the Waikato country remaining to the Kingites in March. There were now nearly five thousand troops, Imperial and colonial, distributed in the occupied territory; the greater number was encamped at Te Awamutu, where the army spent the winter of 1864.
The headquarters of the Ngati-Maniapoto Tribe, the large village of Kihikihi, three miles south-east of Te Awamutu, was invaded on the 23rd February. It was an attractive place in those days, with its clusters of thatched houses spaced over a considerable area of hill and valley, shaded by peach-groves and surrounded by large cultivations of potatoes and maize which extended in the direction of the Puniu River to the south and to the outskirts of the forest and swamps on the east. Here was runanga of chiefs had framed the belligerent policy which precipitated
Numerous scouting expeditions were made from Headquarters at Te Awamutu by the Forest Rangers and by the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry. It was after one of the troopers' rides to the neighbourhood of Kihikihi, where Maoris were again seen to be gathering—one was shot at long range by Lieutenant (afterwards Colonel) McDonnell—that it was decided to build the redoubt just mentioned. An expedition marched before daylight one morning, under Colonel Waddy and Colonel Havelock, with the Forest Rangers, as usual, forming the advanced guard, to pay a surprise visit to Kihikihi, but the natives again retired in time. Von Tempsky went on through some maize-fields and skirmished across a swamp with some of the Maoris, but did not get close to them. That night he took the men into the kahikatea bush and swamp which flanked Kihikihi, in an attempt to reach the Maoris who had retreated into some distant whares on a rise, and after a very rough experience, scrambling through the swamp and jungle in the darkness, reached the whares at daylight and rushed them, but found them empty. Sergeant Carron reported that there were Maoris in the bush which nearly surrounded this settlement, a little distance to the eastward of Kihikihi Village. von Tempsky withdrew his men from the whares, and received a harmless volley from the bush-covered hill. He took up a position within 300 yards of the huts, under cover of logs and fern, and awaited a Maori advance, but the Ngati-Maniapoto party wisely remained in their cover. The Rangers returned to Kihikihi, and from the central hill that afternoon they saw some hundreds of Maoris in the distance driving their cattle and horses into safety southward of the Puniu.
The site of
The redoubt on Rata-tu, the highest part of the Kihikihi ridge, was a military post for about twenty years after its construction. It was occupied as a barracks by the Armed Constabulary, 1870–83, and was an important place in the chain of defences along the frontier against the often-threatened Kingite and Hauhau invasions of the Upper Waikato. The lines of the redoubt can be traced just behind the present police-station in Kihikihi Township.
The head of river navigation for the wheat-growers of Kihikihi, the headquarters of Ngati-Maniapoto, was at Tokatoka, afterwards known as Anderson's Crossing, on the Puniu River, about two miles from the village. Large canoes carrying sixty or seventy men could come up the Puniu River in the old days, before it was blocked with willows, and cargoes of wheat and potatoes loaded there were taken down into the Waipa, and thence into the Waikato for Auckland. A mile north of the Tokatoka landing was the flour-mill of the Kihikihi Maoris; the waterpower was supplied by a small stream which drained the Whakatau-ringaringa swamp on the west and south-west side of the Kihikihi ridge.
THREE MILES TO the east of General Cameron's advanced post at Kihikihi the village of Orakau (“the Place of Trees”) lay among its fruit-groves and its cultivated fields, gently tilted to the quarter of greatest sunshine. This easy northward-looking slant of the country is a topographical feature particularly marked in these parts of the Waipa basin. The contour of Rangiaowhia, Orakau, and the neighbouring terrain of Otautahanga and Parawera is distinguished by a gradual upward slope to the south, and then a sudden break in a descent of a hundred or two hundred feet to the swamps and wooded levels. The Orakau settlement, a collection of thatched hamlets, was spread over half a square mile of the slopes and plain extending from the ridge called Karaponia, on the south, to the edge of the swamps and kahikatea forest through which the Manga-o-Hoi coiled in its sluggish course to join the Mangapiko at Te Awamutu on the west. These swamps and the creek separated the Orakau country from the higher land of Rangiaowhia. To the east the range of Maunga-tautari made a rugged skyline; to the south the blue mountains of Rangitoto marked the source of the Waipa River in the heart of the Ngati-Maniapoto country. The crest of the Orakau ridge broke off abruptly to a manuka swamp; from the northern part of this swamp watercourses drained into the Manga-o-Hoi, and from the southern side of the imperceptible watershed the eel-waters flowed toward the Puniu, a clear stream running over a gravelly bed in a westerly course two miles away.
Orakau was an idyllic home for the Maori. Like Rangiaowhia, it was a garden of fruit and root crops. On its slopes were groves of peaches, almonds, apples, quinces, and cherries; grape-vines climbed the trees and the thatched The name Karaponia (“California”), bestowed upon the hill of the wheat-fields at Orakau, has a curious history. One or two natives of the district who had gone to Auckland in the early “fifties” shipped in a New Zealand vessel bound for San Francisco, where the gold-diggings of the Sacramento had created a demand for wheat, flour, and potatoes from the South Pacific colonies. After trying their luck at the diggings they found their way back to New Zealand, and when they reached their homes narrated their travels to California (Maorified into “Karaponia”). The word appealed to the native ear as a pleasant-sounding name—“raupo houses. Potatoes, kumara, maize, melons, pumpkins, and vegetable-marrows were grown plentifully. Good crops of wheat were grown in the “fifties” and early “sixties” on the northward-
He ingoa rekareka, ingoa ngawari,” says the Maori. So “Karaponia” presently came to be given to the wheat-farm terminating in the ridge on which the British guns were emplaced in 1864.
The people of Orakau were the Ngati-Koura hapu of Waikato, with a section of Ngati-Raukawa. The focus of the settlement was the Maori church, which stood on the crown of a knoll on the west side above a deep but narrow swamp, through which a small watercourse, the Tautoro, flowed toward the Manga-o-Hoi. (On this elevation Mr. W. A. Cowan, father of the present writer, built his homestead a few years after the battle.) Near the church the chief Te Ao-Katoa, of Ngati-Raukawa, lived before the war. He was a tohunga of the ancient Maori school; later he became a war-priest of the Hauhau fanaticism. To the north a short distance along the slopes were the whares and peach-groves of Te Kawakawa; beyond was Te Ngarahu, where under the acacias on the swamp-edge Dr.
Such, before the war, was Orakau, soon to become a place of sadness and glory, the spot where the Kingites made their last hopeless stand for independence, holding heroically to nationalism and a broken cause.
There was a military expedition to Orakau a month before the construction of the pa to which the British troops laid siege. This was on the 29th February, 1864, when Colonel Waddy, of the 50th, led a column out from Te Awamutu, six miles away, with the object of dispersing some Maoris who it was reported were digging rifle-pits. The Forest Rangers were in the advance. A little more than half-way between Kihikihi and Orakau (at a
manuka stuck into the earth. The position was deserted, but a few shots were fired at long range by some Maoris, who fell back on Orakau. The village was abandoned, and the Rangers went through it in skirmishing order. The natives made no stand, but drew off eastward in the direction of Otautahanga, and the troops, after burning some of the whares, returned to Te Awamutu.
After the defeats at Rangiaowhia and Hairini, and the British occupation of Kihikihi, Ngati-Maniapoto with some of the other tribes gathered at Tokanui, below the group of terraced hills now called the “Three Sisters.” Thence they travelled southward to Otewa, on the Waipa, and from there they were called to a conference at Wharepapa, a large village about three miles south of the Puniu. The gathering discussed two questions: (1) Whether or not the war should be renewed; (2) whether a fortified position should be taken up on the northern side of the Puniu River or on the southern side. The decision to continue the war was unanimous. As to the site of the new fighting pa, it was resolved to confine the war, if possible, to the northern side of the Puniu. Rewi made a proposal to consult tohungas, Hakopa and Tapiki, with the contingent. In the contingent were twenty men of the Ngati-Kahungunu Tribe, from the Wairoa, Hawke's Bay, under Te Waru Tamatea. The main body of this force, numbering a hundred, led by Kohea tera maunga e tu mai rara?” (“What is that mountain standing yonder?”) referring to Mount Egmont. The second was the song that began “Puhi kura, puhi kura, puhi kaka” (“Red plumes, red plumes, plumes of the kaka”), his favourite battle-chant. These impassioned war-calls intensely excited the young warriors of Tuhoe, and in spite of the advice of some of the old chiefs they raised a company for the assistance of the Maori King. Two casks of gunpowder were given to Rewi's party. One of these—presented by Harehare, Te Wiremu, and Timoti, of the Ngati-Manawa, at Tauaroa—had been sent from Ohinemuri by the old cannibal warrior Taraia Ngakuti, of Ngati-Tamatera. The tohungas had recited charms over the cask of powder to render the contents doubly efficacious against the pakeha; and it had been given a name, “Hine-ia-Taraua.” Takurua Koro-kai-toke joined Rewi; he was the elder brother of Harehare, the present chief of Ngati-Manawa at Murupara, on the Rangitaiki. He and his wife Rawinia (Lavinia) were both wounded at Orakau. Harehare himself, having no grievance against the Europeans, did not join, saying that he would fight the troops if they invaded the Rangitaiki country, but not otherwise. But Tuhoe and Ngati-Whare entertained no such punctilio; they were eager to make use of their weapons, and would travel far for the pure love of fighting. A small war-party of Tuhoe had already gone to the Waikato. This taua consisted of twenty men from Ruatahuna, led by rau taki-tahi). After Hairini, the Urewera remained at Arohena with Ngati-Raukawa; and the Ngati-te-Kohera section of this tribe was assembled with them at Ara-titaha when Rewi reached that village.
The Urewera chiefs, strongly supported by Ngati-Raukawa, urged that a fort should be built at or near Orakau as a challenge to the troops; and Te Whenuanui chanted a song composed by the chief tohunga of the Urewera, prophesying the defeat of the Europeans and the reconquest of the land by the Maoris. Rewi
tohungas, Hakopa and Tapiki, said, “Let us go on; let us challenge the pakeha to battle. We are bearing heavy burdens [guns and ammunition]; let us use them.” Rewi angrily replied, “If you Tuhoe persist in your desire for battle I alone will be the survivor”; and he chanted this song of warning, foretelling defeat:—
Tokotokona na te hau tawaho,Koi toko atuE kite ai auI Remu waho ra,I kite ai au,I Remutaka ra,I kite ai auMate kuku ki W ai'mata ra e.Tohungia mai e te kokoreke raKatahi nei hoki ka kiteTe karoro o tua wai,Tu awaawa ra.Na te kahore anakeE noho toku whenua kei tua.Tera e whiti ana,E noho ana,Ko te koko koroki ata,“Ki—ki—tau.”
In this chant, a mata or prophecy, Rewi in figurative language endeavoured to dissuade. Tuhoe from again entering the campaign. He sang of the winds of war, of the enemy troops gathering at the seaports, in the south and on the Waitemata, to sweep over the lands of the people; and concluded with an allusion to the koko (tui) singing in the dawn. He was the bird of dawn; by this he meant that he would be the lone survivor of the battle. “But this,” says an Urewera survivor, “did not change our purpose, although Rewi repeated his warning and again declared, ‘If you persist I alone will be the survivor,’ for he had a strong presentiment that we would be defeated.”
Rewi, abandoning his visit to Tamehana, gloomily returned to Waikeria. He had dreamed, he told his people, that he was standing outside the church in Orakau and flying a kite, one of the large bird-shaped kites made of raupo and adorned with feathers. At first it soared strongly upwards to the clouds; then it broke loose and came to the ground in pieces. The shattering of the kite he interpreted as a portent of the utter defeat of the Maoris. But Rewi's recital of his matakite, or vision of omen, did not turn his tribe from their resolve to renew the war; they were burning to join the Urewera and
The war-parties united at Otautahanga, and marched to Orakau, two miles to the west, to select a site for the fort. Near Ara-titaha some of the people had begun to fortify a mound called Puke-kai-kahu, but the majority of the warriors demanded that a position be taken up nearer the British advanced post. One important reason for the selection of Orakau was that it was in a convenient position for the supply of food to the garrison.
Only a few of the Waikato people living at Orakau joined in the forlorn hope of the Kingites. The greater number of Ngati-Maniapoto had gone southward for safety, and did not return in time for Orakau, and the war-party of that tribe consisted chiefly of Rewi's immediate kinsmen, in number about fifty. The backbone of the defence was furnished by the war-loving Urewera and Ngati-te-Kohera.
The ground chosen for the fort was the gentle slope of
Pou-patate, of Te Kopua, who was sent as one of the messengers to assemble the people at Wharepuhunga and other places for the defence of Orakau, states that a proposal was made by some of Ngati-Maniapoto, when the refugees were gathering near the Puniu, to build a fort at Kiharoa. This is on the crown of the high ground just to the north of the three round hills at Tokanui, two miles south of the Puniu River, on the road from Kihikihi to Otorohanga. But by this time the chiefs had decided upon Orakau. Another Maori survivor says that when the warriors gathered at Orakau to select the site of the pa it was seen that the crest of the hill at Karaponia was the most suitable spot, but upon consideration it was disapproved because there was no water there, and Rangataua was chosen because it was close to a water-spring and also was in the middle of the food cultivations.pa, that it should be placed more to the north, on the lower part of the Orakau slopes and close to the kahikatea forest of the Manga-o-Hoi; this bush would afford a way of retreat Others suggested that the site should be near the church at the edge of the hill above the Tautoro swamp on the west; the land here fell rather steeply on the Kihikihi face, and could be entrenched strongly. But these counsels were overruled; and on the crown of the slightly rising ground at Rangataua, about 400 yards from the native church and 250 yards from the southern crest of the Karaponia ridge, the lines of the Orakau entrenchments were drawn.
The main work thrown up by the natives, working in relays because there were not sufficient spades, was oblong in figure, about 80 feet in length by 40 feet in width, with its greatest axis north and south. The design was an earthwork redoubt with external trench and a broad parapet, inside which was another ditch, well traversed against an enfilading fire, and converted into a series of ruas, or burrows, partly covered over for protection from shell-fire. The main parapet was about 6 feet thick; the height from the bottom of the ditch was 6 to 8 feet. In constructing the rampart the builders used alternate layers of earth and armfuls of newly pulled fern; the fern helped to bind the friable soil, and gave the wall an elastic quality which greatly reinforced its resistance to shot and shell. The interior scheme, divided into a number of ruas, also neutralized to some extent the shell-fire; a shell dropped into one of these burrow-like compartments would have a very circumscribed radius of damage. In portions of the earthwork the builders made long horizontal rifle loopholes or embrasures, with sections of board for the upper part and short pieces of timber at the sides.
pa was built in a scattered grove of peach-trees, and the defences were only a few feet above the general level of the ground. Orakau pa, flimsy as it was, proved an unexpectedly difficult problem for the assaulting forces.
In advance of the north-west angle of the redoubt, and connected with it by a short trench, a small outwork was built by the Ngati-te-Kohera and Ngati-Parekawa. This bastion was not completed when the attack began, and the outer trench was not more than 3 feet deep. There was a proposal to strengthen the fortifications by constructing another redoubt on the crest of the ridge at Karaponia—where the British headquarters presently were fixed and where a blockhouse was built during the Hauhau wars—and connecting the two works by a parapet and double trench. This would greatly have increased the defensible value of Orakau, but the swiftness of the British attack prevented any extension of the kind.
While the people were entrenching the position several men were sent, on the suggestion of a prophetess, to procure some otaota (fern, or leaves of shrubs) from the scene of the bloodshed at Rangiaowhia. The otaota was to be used in ceremonies to propitiate the deities and ensure the successful defence of the fort. But the scouts did not reach Rangiaowhia. One of them was shot in an encounter with some troops near the Manga-o-Hoi, and the others returned without the material for the luck-bringing rite.
The builders and defenders of the fort in the peach-groves numbered scarcely more than three hundred; among them were about twenty women and some children. The units were—Urewera, Ngati-Whare, and Ngati-Kahungunu, about 140; Ngati-Raukawa and Ngati-te-Kohera, with a few of Ngati-Tuwharetoa, about 100; Ngati-Maniapoto, 50; Waikato, 20: approximate total, 310. A number of the wives and sisters of Urewera and other warriors shared in the toil and peril of the enterprise, and several of the Orakau families joined the garrison and carried in food-supplies. Ngati-Maniapoto held the south-east angle and the east flank; the Urewera the south-west angle and part of the west flank, facing Kihikihi; the north-west angle and the outwork were defended by Ngati-Raukawa, Ngati-te-Kohera, and some men of Ngati-Tuwharetoa.
One of Rewi's lieutenants, his cousin Te Me mate au ki konei” (“Let me die here”), and he and his son Hone Teri insisted on the pa being built where he halted on Rangataua Hill. They both fell on the last day of the battle. There were lay readers or minita of the Church of England in the garrison—Wi Karamona, of Waikato, was the principal minita—who led in the religious services, but the ancient Maori rites were not neglected. Most of the people, including Rewi himself, while adopting the faith of the missionaries, turned to the old religion in their extremity. When the ancient Celts and Norsemen began to amalgamate, the people are described as having been “Christians in time of peace, but always certain to invoke the aid of Thor when sailing on any dangerous expedition.” There was as curious a mixture of Christian and pagan beliefs in the hearts of the Orakau defenders. The principal tohunga Maori, or men skilled in ceremonies and incantations and arts of divination, were Apiata and Tiniwata te Kohika; and the latter's wife, Ahuriri, was gifted with the powers of matakite, or “second sight,” and of prophecy. There was also an old tohunga named Te Waro, who had fought in the Taranaki Wars. Pou-patate says that Te Waro was the priest of the god Tu-kai-te-uru, whose aria, or visible form, was a fiery glow on the horizon seen on certain occasions.
Not all the garrison were armed with guns. pa, but he had no firearm. mere, taiaha, and tomahawks. We carried our ammunition, roughly made up in paper-cased
hamanu, or cartridge-holders, fastened on leather belts, which we wore either as cross-shoulder belts or buckled around the waist. These hamanu were made out of kahikatea, pukatea, or tawhero wood; they were curved in form so as to sit well to the body, and each was bored with auger-holes for eighteen or twenty cartridges. Many of us wore three hamanu buckled on for the battle. We were, however, short of ammunition; most of our powder and lead had been left in our deserted villages, and the troops were in occupation before we could obtain it.” Before the attack a man was sent to Kihikihi to recover a bag of bullets left there, but he found a sentry walking up and down on the very place where it had been buried. Pou-patate was armed with a Minie rifle; it was one of fifteen captured rifles which had been brought from Taranaki by the victors of Puke-ta-kauere in 1860.
As for food, there was little in the pa when the attack began, but under cover of night and the bushes some of the young men stole out during the siege and brought in kits of maize, potatoes, pumpkins, and kamokamo, or vegetable marrows. The water-supply on the east side was cut off early in the battle, and all the defenders then had to quench their thirst were raw potatoes and kamokamo. The women, who worked under fire like the men, ground flour from wheat in small steel hand-mills (such as were in general use in the country at that period), and baked bread at the beginning of the siege. Potatoes also were cooked in the excavations on the inner side of the main parapet, but the people were unable to swallow this food when the water-supply in calabashes (kiaka) was exhausted.
On the morning of Wednesday, the 30th March, two surveyors, Mr. Gundry and Mr. G. T. Wilkinson, from the eastern hill of Kihikihi observed through a theodolite telescope a large number of natives at Orakau working at entrenchments. Lieutenant Lusk, of the Mauku Forest Rifles, attached to the Transport Corps, also reported the presence of Maoris at Orakau. The news was sent to headquarters, and Brigadier-General Carey, who was then in command—General Cameron was at Pukerimu—at once organized an expedition. Three columns were despatched, with the object of surprising and surrounding the Maoris. No. 1 column, starting from Te Awamutu about midnight, was to take the natives in the rear; it consisted of about half of Von Tempsky's company of Forest Rangers as the advance guard, and detachments of the 40th and 65th Regiments, the whole numbering about three hundred men, and commanded by Major Blyth, of the 40th. This force marched to the west of Kihikihi, flanking the Whakatau-ringaringa swamp, fording the Puniu, and taking a track along the south side of the river as far as Waikeria, where
Major Blyth's column, after a rough and wet march, came out on the Orakau-Aratitaha track soon after daylight, at a spot near the old pa Otautahanga, and close to where Mr.
The first attack on the pa was delivered early in the morning of the 31st March by the Forest Rangers (the advanced guard of Carey's main body) and 120 men of the 18th Royal Irish, under Captain Ring, supported by a company of the 40th Regiment. The work of the garrison in relays of diggers had gone on continuously for two days and two nights, but the parapets and post-and-rail fence on the east side and the outwork at the north-west angle were still unfinished. Most of the Maoris were outside the fort, and were holding morning prayers when the troops were first seen. “Wi Karamoa, the lay reader, was praying to pakeha,” said Tupotahi, narrating his experiences in the battle, “and the people were bowed with their hands over their eyes, so. I was a little distance away, and happened to look toward the parapet, and saw a Ngati-Raukawa man beckoning to me and pointing. I looked towards Kihikihi, and there I saw in the distance the bayonets and rifles of the soldiers glinting in the morning sunshine. I waited until prayers were over, and then gave the alarm. Then, too, Aporo, who from his
He whakaariki! He whakaariki—e! (A war-party, a war-party!) and each man ran for his gun.”
Now Rewi gave his orders for defence, as the British column came marching in fours along the track past the groves of Te Kawakawa and into the fields of Orakau. The majority of the garrison he had instructed to take post in the outer ditch, leaving about forty, including the older warriors, inside the parapet. He bade the tupara men hold their fire until the soldiers were close up to the post-and-rail fence, and then fire one barrel in a volley, reserving the other barrel for a second volley.
The troops could see little of the defences as they approached through the fern and the fallow cultivations. All that were visible were low parapets of freshly turned soil in a grove of peach-trees, with a post-and-rail fence. The line advanced in skirmishing order on the west and north-west sides of the position, the Forest Rangers on the left of the line. The bugle sounded the “Charge,” and the Royal Irish, led by Captain Ring, and the Rangers, under Lieutenant Roberts, dashed at the apparently weak position. The Maoris held their fire until the attackers were within 50 yards. Then Rewi shouted to the defenders in the outer trench “Puhia!” (“Fire!”). Two hundred guns thundered as a line of flashes and smoke-puffs ran along the front of the works and back again. The tops of the flax-bushes and the fern were mowed off in swathes, and but for the usual Maori fault of too heavy a charge of powder and too high a fire the British losses would have been heavy; as it was the first rush was stopped. Captain Ring fell mortally wounded near the ditch, by Lieutenant Roberts's side, and several others of his regiment were hit. The “Retire” was sounded, and the assaulting column fell back to re-form, and was reinforced by another company of the 40th. But the second bayonet charge was no more successful than the first. Reserving their fire, the garrison waited until the leading files were close to the fence; then Rewi gave the orders, “Puhia, e waho! Puhia, e roto!” (“Fire, the outer line! Fire, the inner line!”) and the volleys swept the glacis. Several men of the 18th and 40th were killed, and Captain Fischer (40th) and some men were wounded. Captain Baker, of the 18th, who was Deputy Adjutant-General, galloped up on Captain Ring's fall, dismounted, and rallied the men of his regiment; but his gallant effort was also repulsed by the heavy fire from the trenches at point-blank range. Lieutenant Roberts and his Rangers advanced to within a few yards of the defenders, who had now all retired behind the parapet, and a few of the men got into the outer ditch, close enough to get a glimpse of the dense row of Maoris lining the earth-wall, with many a long-handled tomahawk gleaming for the
A soldier had fallen just outside the fence. The old warrior-tohunga Te Waro, of Ngati-Paea, seeing the man lying there, pulled out his knife, and called to some of the young men to rush out of the fort and drag the body into the ditch, in order that he might cut out the heart for the rite of the whangai-hau. The heart of the first man killed (the mata-ika) must be offered in burnt sacrifice to Uenuku, the god of battle. But Rewi and his fellow-chiefs and Wi Karamoa, the lay reader, forbade this return to the savage war-rites of old. Te Waro argued that if the heart of the mata-ika were not offered up to Uenuku the garrison would be deserted by the Maori gods. “I care not for your Atua Maori,” said Rewi, “we are fighting under the religion of Christ.”
Finding that the pa was a more formidable place than it appeared at first view, the Brigadier drew off his troops, and, as Major Blyth and Captain Blewitt were now at their appointed posts, he determined to invest the place closely and play upon it with artillery. The two 6-pounder Armstrongs were brought up and emplaced on the highest part of the Karaponia ridge. At a distance of 350 yards the guns began to throw shells into the redoubt, but the shells made very little impression on the earthworks, resilient with their packing of fern.
The Brigadier now decided, upon the suggestion of Lieutenant Hurst, of the 18th, acting engineer officer, to approach the redoubt by sap. A trench was opened on the western side of the pa, in a slight hollow covered by some peach-trees and flax, about 120 yards from the Maori position. The sap was first carried in a northerly direction, crossing the line of the present road, and then continued easterly towards the pa, with many turns and angles, and traversed every few yards. the necessary gabions for head-cover were first ordered up from Te Awamutu, where a supply had been prepared for an impending attack upon pa at Te Tiki o te Ihingarangi, and a party of the 40th Regiment was sent down to the edge of the swamp on the south to cut manuka and make more gabions.
On the east side of the pa the cordon of troops was completed by Von Tempsky and his Forest Rangers, who were stationed under the fall of the ground near the swamp which trended toward the Manga-o-Hoi. Von Tempsky, observing that a large party of Maori reinforcements had appeared in the distance eastward, placed a picket of his men near a sawn-timber house (formerly occupied by a European named Perry) which stood on a hill on the east side of the swamp, commanding a view of the quarter from which the Maori relief was coming.
The Maoris in the pa had early observed the approach of reinforcements, and raised loud shouts in chorus and fired volleys, which brought responsive calls, although the intervening distance was more than a mile. A warrior in the pa, pitching his voice in the high-keyed chant that carries over long distances, called route directions to the advance skirmishers of the relief who had made their way across the swamps. Then the British riflemen and the sap-workers heard the Orakau garrison burst into the stamp and chorus of a war-dance. One of the songs chanted, as Tupotahi narrated, was the Kingite haka composition likening the Government and its land-hunger to a bullock devouring the leaves of the raurekau shrub:—
He kau ra,He kau ra!U—u!He kau Kawana koeKai miti mai te raurekauA he kau ra, he kau ra!U—u—u!raurekau—
The Maori reinforcements (Ngati-Haua, Ngati-Raukawa, and other tribes) who were gathered at Otihi, on the Maunga-tautari side of the Manga-o-Hoi swamp, responded to this bellowing chorus with volleys of musketry and the chanting of war-songs. The Orakau garrison saw them rush together in close column and leap in the action of a peruperu, or battle-dance, with their guns and long-handled tomahawks flashing in the sun as they thrust them above their heads at arm's length. The action and the rhythm told the watchers that the peruperu was the great Taupo war-song “Uhi mai te waero.” Skirmishers from the party of reinforcements soon appeared on the nearer edge of the bush and fired at long range at the Forest Rangers' line, but could not venture across the intervening open ground.
The Forest Rangers had a rather uncomfortable position in their hollow on the eastern flank of the pa, for the soldiers who covered the sap-workers with their rifle-fire dropped many of their bullets into the lines on the other side. Heavy firing continued all the afternoon, and all night long there was an intermittent fire from the Maoris and the troops. The soldiers' investing detachments, lying in the sap-trenches or in shallow
In the pa the sentinels, or kai-whakaaraara-pa, paraded the rampart, chanting their high songs and bidding the garrison be on the alert. The first of these inspiriting watchmen, Aporo, of Ngati-Koura, was shot dead before night. The second was Te Kupenga, of Ngati-Raukawa; but he made a whati, or break, in one of his chants, which was unlucky; and his place
“The second morning of the battle dawned,” narrates Rewi's words translated above were: “pa, and completely concealed the combatants from each other. By this time Tupotahi had discovered that the greater part of our ammunition had been fired away, and that there was no reserve of powder and bullets; also that there was no water, and that the people were eating raw kamokamo and kumara to relieve their thirst. Tupotahi therefore made request of the council of chiefs that the pa should be abandoned, in order to save the lives of the garrison, under cover of the fog. The runanga considered the question, but resolved not to abandon the pa. This was the announcement made by Whakarongo mai te runanga, me nga iwi: Ko te whawhai tenei i whaia mai e tatou, a i oma hoki hei aha? Ki toku mahara hoki, me mate tatou mate ki te pakanga, ora tatou ora ki te marae o te pakanga.”pa—a kokiri, or charge, against the troops on our eastern flank. Every tribe took part in this kokiri, which was directed against the troops who formed a cordon between us and the quarter from which we expected relief. Most of us rushed out on that flank, but on all four sides of the pa warriors leaped outside shooting at the soldiers. The Urewera, Ngati-Maniapoto, Waikato—all sallied out. My father, Raureti, was on top of the parapet, firing. Just before we rushed out many of us formed up on the east side of the works, and there we leaped in the movements of the war-dance and we chanted the war-song of the Ngati-Toa and Ngati-Maniapoto:—
“Awhea to ure ka riri?Awhea to ure ka tora?A ko te tai ka wiwi,A ko te tai ka wawa——”
“But we were too impatient to finish the chant. When we shouted the word. ‘wawa,” with one accord we all dashed out of the pa to meet the soldiers. Whakaekea, whakaekea! (‘Dash upon them, charge upon them!’) Only one man was in high command, and that was Rewi. He carried a famous hardwood taiaha, called ‘Pakapaka-tai-oreore’; it had been taken in battle long ago in the Taupo country; in his belt glistened a whalebone club, a patu-paraoa. I lay down and reloaded after firing off my two barrels as the troops fell back before us, and fired again. In reloading my tupara I did not wait to use the ramrod, but dashed the butt of the gun on the ground to settle the bullets down; this was our way with the muzzle-loader when we were in the thick of a fight. Our charge down the slopes extended as far as from here to yonder fence [about 200 yards]. One of our chiefs, Te Huirama, was shot dead; he fell near the grove of elderberries below the pa, close to where a tall poplar-tree now stands on the right-hand side of the road as you descend the hill eastward. We fell back on the pa as quickly as we could, but some of us were cut off from the work by the lines of soldiers, and had to lie concealed in the fern and creep back under cover of night.
“We were in better spirits after our fight in the open; nevertheless we realized that our position was hopeless, short of food and water, short of lead, and surrounded by soldiers many times outnumbering our garrison, and with big guns throwing shells into our defences.”
Further reinforcements arrived on the second day (1st April), including Jackson's No. 1 Company, Forest Rangers, from Ohaupo. There were now a hundred Rangers with their carbines and five-shot revolvers guarding the east flank.
The sap was pushed on vigorously, in spite of two kokiri, or rushes, made by the warriors, who delivered their fire as they charged into the head of the trench. The Armstrongs threw some shells at the Maori reinforcements near the Manga-o-Hoi. On the hills to the east, in the direction of Owairaka, were some Ngati-Tuwharetoa, from West Taupo, under
The day had been very hot, and the garrison, surrounded by that ring of fire and helpless to stay the steady approach of the sap, were quite without water. Wounded men were lying about the pa tortured with thirst. That night a young warrior, pa he saw a woman creeping down through the fern to the spring to obtain water, and he allowed her to pass, pretending he did not see her.
That evening Tupotahi proposed to Rewi that the garrison should fight their way out of the pa under cover of darkness. Rewi agreed, and suggested that he should speak to the other chiefs in their trenches and obtain their opinions. After dark the chiefs assembled and discussed the question. Rewi declared in favour of evacuating the pa that night.
But the Paerata family and the Urewera chiefs were stubborn in their decision not to retreat but to continue the battle. (“Kaore e pai kia haere, engari me whawhai tonu.”) “E pai ana” (“It is well—so be it”), said Rewi, submitting to the general voice of the council.
The supply of lead was now running very short, although there was some powder in reserve. Rewi instructed his people to reserve their bullets for daylight firing, and to use pieces of wood for the night fighting. The chiefs experimented with the wood of peach and apple trees and manuka, cut up into small pieces, about 2 inches in length. The sections of apple-branches proved the most solid and carried the farthest. That night Ngati-Maniapoto and their allies fired chiefly wooden bullets. Several of the men smashed off the legs of their iron cooking-pots for projectiles; others fired peach-stones. Some of the old smooth-bores began to give way from the heavy powder-charges and the jagged iron bullets, to the rage of their owners, who made shift heroically with their damaged guns. In spite of the poorness of the ammunition, the Maori shooting was accurate enough to make the troops keep close to cover.
AS THE FIRST faint glimmer of coming dawn spread over the battlefield, the chiefs of the beleaguered redoubt held council. Tupotahi, as shrewd a soldier as his cousin Rewi, realized that now or never was the hour to make a dash for liberty, with a fighting chance of escaping in the uncertain light. He proposed to Rewi that the pa should be evacuated at once.
“Let us charge out before it is day,” he said; “if we retreat now we may fight our way through.” Rewi smiled grimly, and bade Tupotahi consult pa. Nor would any of the other tribal leaders agree to the proposal. “We shall remain here,” they declared; “we shall fight on.” But many of Ngati-Maniapoto were of like mind with Tupotahi, and voiced their anger at Raureti's stubbornness. They stood by their chiefs, however, and all prepared to resist to the end
Rewi's first order to his people, as early morning came, was to cook food. They roasted potatoes in the excavations on the inner side of the parapets, but the parched throats refused the food. There was not a drop of water in the redoubt. Rewi went from man to man of his tribe questioning him about the meal, and each one returned the same answer, “I cannot swallow the potatoes.” Rewi returned to his quarters in the centre of the pa. “We shall have to go,” he told his fellow-chiefs, “but we shall not go as Waikato did at Rangiriri [as prisoners]. We shall retreat fighting.” He strapped six cartouche-boxes about him—three in front and three at the back—and took two guns.
The morning grew warm, and the sufferings of the thirst-racked garrison increased. The sappers had been at work all night, and early in the forenoon the trench had reached the post-and-rail fence and was within a few yards of the north-west outwork. Lieut.-Colonel Sir Henry Havelock, D.A.Q.M.G., came in from Pukerimu via Ohaupo, and with him came some of the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry, leading packhorses loaded with hand-grenades. The sap was now close enough to the outwork for the grenades to be thrown over the parapet, and this service was carried out by Sergeant MacKay, R.A., under a
In a short kokiri or rush out of the pa in the morning two old men were killed; one was Te Waro, the warrior-tohunga who had predicted misfortune after the chiefs prevented him from cutting out the heart of the first soldier killed.
At noon General Cameron and his staff arrived from Pukerimu with an escort of the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry. There were now eighteen hundred British and colonial troops surrounding the pa. One of the 6-pounder Armstrong guns was taken into the sap near the head, and opened fire on the outwork, making a breach in the defences. Under the storm of shells, hand-grenades, and rifle-bullets, the garrison now suffered many casualties. Dead and wounded were lying in every trench, but the desperately pressed men and women still held the fort. By noon some of them were quite out of ammunition, but most were reserving one or two cartridges for the last rush. Pou-patate, who was one of the few armed with rifles, was sparing of his ammunition, which could not be replaced. In the first day's fighting, he says, he expended twenty cartridges—a pouchful. On the last day he had ten cartridges left at the close of the fighting; he was reserving them in case the British pursuit was continued. One of the Urewera survivors, Paitini, says that he fired during the siege thirty-six rounds, the contents of two holders, or hamanu. The British, man for man, fired a far greater amount of lead than the Maoris.
The defenders hurriedly buried their dead in shallow graves scooped in the pits and trenches. One man, Matiaha, of Ngati-Tamatea and Ngati-Ruapani (grandfather of Hurae Puketapu, of Waikaremoana), was blown to pieces by the explosion of a shell. The casualties included several of the women.
The first of the hand-grenades ( At Ohaeawai in 1845 many of the shells thrown into Pene Taui's An incident curiously resembling the episode of the hand-grenades at Orakau occurred in 1844 in the French-Tahitian war, when the natives of the Society Islands resisted the aggression of Admiral Du Petit Thouars and Commandant D'Aubigny, and when Queen Pomare took refuge in a mountain-camp on the island of Raiatea. In a fight in rear of the present town of Papeete the natives lost about seventy and the French twenty-five killed. Being in want of gunpowder, and discovering the secret of the explosion of the shells fired by the French artillery, the Tahiti warriors watched for the alighting of the projectiles, when they fearlessly seized them and removed the fuses on the instant before they had time to explode. From each shell or bomb they obtained powder for many musket-charges. The emptied shells they converted into drinking-cups.rakete, or “rockets,” the Maoris call them) thrown into the pa from the head of the sap had long fuses, and some daring fellows snatched out the burning fuses (wiki, or “wicks”) and poured the powder out for their own cartridges. Others they threw back into the sap before they had time to explode, and they burst among the men who had
pa by Colonel Despard's artillery proved harmless, as the fuses were defective and the shells did not explode. A good deal of powder was thereby furnished to the Maoris, who poured the powder out of the shells to make their cartridges.
Early in the afternoon General Cameron, impressed by the Maoris' courage, decided to give the garrison an opportunity of making surrender. The buglers sounded the “Cease fire,” and two interpreters of the staff, Mr.
An account of the interview with the garrison given to the
The Maori accounts differ somewhat from Major Mair's in regard to the answers given by the chiefs. A current version of the defenders' reply to the demand to surrender gives it in these words: “pa:—
“I got up on the edge of the sap and looked through a gap in the gabions made for the field-piece. The outwork in front of me was a sort of double rifle-pit, with the
pa or redoubt behind it. The Maoris were in rows, the nearest row only a few yards away from me. I cannot forget the dust-stained faces, bloodshot eyes, and shaggy heads. The muzzles of their guns rested on the edge of the ditch in front of them. One man aimed steadily at me all the time—his name was Wereta.“Then I said, ‘
E hoa ma, whakarongo! Ko te kupu tenei a te Tienara: ka nui tona miharo ki to koutou maia, kati me mutu te riri, puta mai kia matou, kia ora o koutou tinana.’ (‘Friends, listen! This is the word of the General: Great is his admiration of your bravery. Stop! Let the fighting cease; come out to us that your bodies may be saved’).“I could see the Maoris inclining their heads towards each other in consultation, and in a few minutes came the answer in a clear, firm tone:—
“‘
E hoa, ka whawhai tonu ahau ki a koe, ake, ake!’ (‘Friend, I shall fight against you for ever, for ever!’)Ka whawhai tonu matou, ake, ake, ake!” (“We shall fight on, for ever, and ever, and ever!”) The actual phrase of defiance used by Rewi and repeated by the people, according to Ngati-Maniapoto, was “Kore e mau te rongo—ake, ake!” (“Peace shall never be made—never, never!”)“Then I said, ‘
E pai ana tena mo koutou tangata, engari kahore e tika kia mate nga wahine me nga tamariki. Tukuna mai era’ (‘That is well for you men, but it is not right that the women and children should die. Let them come out’).“Some one asked, ‘
Na te aha koe i mohio he wahine kei konei?’ (‘How did you know there were women here?’)“I answered, ‘
I rongo ahau ki te tangi tupapaku i te po’ (‘I heard the lamentations for the dead in the night’).“There was a short deliberation, and another voice made answer:—
“‘
Ki te mate nga tane, me mate ano nga wahine me nga tamariki’ (‘If the men die, the women and children must die also’).“I knew it was over, for there was no disposition on the part of the Maoris to parley; so I said, ‘
E pai ana, kua mutu te kupu’ (‘It is well; the word is ended’), and dropped quickly into the sap.“Wereta, the man who had been aiming at me, was determined to have the last say in the matter, and he fired at me. His bullet just tipped my right shoulder, cutting my revolver-strap and tearing a hole in my tunic. Wereta did not long survive his treachery, for he was killed by a hand-grenade soon after.
“The people in this outwork were Ngati-te-Kohera, of Taupo, under their chief
Mair reported the interview to General Cameron, who was greatly impressed with the stubborn devotion of the Maoris.
Hokihoki koutou katoa ki Kihikihi, ka hoki matou ki to matou kainga, me waiho atu Orakau nei” (“Let all of you return to Kihikihi, and we will go to our homes and abandon Orakau”). pa. The first message was taken to him by Te Paetai, a man of Ngati-Maniapoto. Rewi himself did not see the interpreter at that time. Some of the chiefs in council proposed to accept the offer of peace, but Rewi and others dissented (they had Rangiriri in their minds), and they proposed that the troops should leave the battlefield, and that the Maoris on their part should evacuate the pa. After discussion it was decided to refuse the General's offer and to continue the defence. Rewi cried, “Kaore e mau te rongo—ake, ake!” (“Peace shall never be made—never, never!”). Raureti returned to the outer parapet, stood up on the firing-step a few yards from Mair, and delivered this decision, and all the people shouted with one voice, “Kaore e mau te rongo—ake, ake, ake!” Rewi came out to the north-west angle when the final decision had been made, and stood in the trench a few yards in rear of Raureti. “As to the reported words, ‘Ka whawhai tonu matou, ake, ake, ake!’” says Te Huia, “I did not hear them uttered.”
That is the version of Ngati-Maniapoto. But a different story is given by some of the Ngati-te-Kohera and Ngati-Tuwharetoa. Moetu te Mahia (died 1921), whose home was at Kauriki, near Manunui, on the Main Trunk Railway, declared that it was Hauraki Tonganui who delivered Rewi's reply to Mr. Mair. Moetu fought at Orakau; he was then about twenty years old. He and Hauraki were both of Ngati-Tuwharetoa and Ngati-te-Kohera, and were first cousins. E hoa, ka whawhai tonu ahau ki a koe, ake, ake!”
The request to send the women and children out of the pa was taken to
“Wereta,” says Te Huia, “was standing beside me in the trench while my father, standing on the earthwork a little above me, was speaking to the General's messenger. He was a tattooed man, of the Ngati-te-Kohera. He loaded his gun in a furious hurry and, resting it on the parapet, aimed at the Neither Mair nor his comrades then knew any of the Maoris; but long after the war the Major, then Judge of the Native Land Court, met the aged Hauraki Tonganui, of Ngati-te-Kohera and Ngati-Tuwharetoa, who reminded him of the day they confronted each other at Orakau. Mair then, after inquiry, came to the conclusion that it was Hauraki who spoke to him from the parapet and delivered the Maori reply to the demand for surrender. No doubt more than one man spoke to Mair. One thing is certain, that Rewi himself did not appear on the ramparts or speak to the interpreter. The following note is made for the guidance of artists who may essay some day to paint the historic scene at Orakau:— Tupotahi described pakeha. As the last words were spoken I saw that Wereta was on the point of firing, and I caught hold of him and tried to pull him back, but he pressed the trigger just as I caught him. His aim, however, was bad through his excitement, or else I diverted it, for the bullet only grazed the pakeha, though the range was so close.” It was Te Huia, therefore, who saved Mair's life that day.rapaki (waist-garment) of white calico, and a piece of red calico worn like a shawl over the left shoulder, where it was tied, and under the right arm. He wore three hamanu, or cartridge-belts—two round the waist and one over the left shoulder. These were leather belts with wooden boxes each bored for about eighteen cartridges; one of these ammunition-holders came across the breast, one was in front of the waist, and one at the back. parawai, a mat of soft flax, about his waist; over that he had a flax piupiu kilt; he also wore a shirt and waistcoat. In his girdle was a whalebone mere, or patu-paraoa.” Many Maoris wore pakeha waistcoats when fighting, for the reason that the pockets were very convenient for holding percussion caps.
Now the firing recommenced hotter than ever. The hand-grenades hurled in from the sap-head killed and wounded many. Te Huia says the casualties through the explosion of these bombs numbered scores. The artillery-fire at short range also inflicted losses, besides battering the works. Two attempts to rush the north-west outwork were made by the Waikato Militia and other men, but were repulsed with loss. It was now 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The sap was within a few feet of the outwork. The end was near.
The story of the last day in Orakau imperishably remains as an inspiration to deeds of courage and fortitude. Nowhere in history did the spirit of pure patriotism blaze up more brightly than in that little earthwork redoubt, torn by gun-fire and strewn with dead and dying. The records of our land are rich in episodes of gallant resistance to overwhelming force, but they hold no parallel to Orakau. Suffering the tortures of thirst, half-blinded with dust and powder-smoke, many bleeding from wounds which there was no time to stanch, ringed by a blaze of rifle-fire, with big-gun shells and grenades exploding among them, the grim band of heroes held their crumbling fort till this hour against six times their number of well-armed, well-fed foes. Now they must retreat, but they would go as free men.
Rewi and the chiefs sent round the word. Those who still had cartridges loaded their guns for the last time; others gripped long-handled tomahawks. The sap had been connected with the trench of the outwork, and Ngati-te-Kohera fell back into the main work. The women and children were placed in the middle of the massed warriors, and with the best men in advance to fight a way through they broke down a part of the earthwork on the south-east angle of the Wi Karamoa was the only man who advocated acceptance of the General's offer. When the council of chiefs resolved to continue the defence of the “At 3.30 the enemy suddenly came out of their entrenchments into the open, and in a silent and compact body moved without precipitation. There was something mysterious in their appearance as they advanced towards the cordon of troops, without fear, without firing a shot, or a single cry being heard even from the women, of whom there were several among them.”—(Journals of Lieut.-Colonel pa and rushed out. Only one unwounded man remained in the pa. This was the lay reader, Wi Karamoa Tumanako, of Ngati-Apakura, who stayed to surrender, holding up a stick with a white cloth.pa he stood up and declared that he would make peace. Rewi and his fellow-chiefs told him that they would not suffer their people to be made prisoners. “Wait until we have left the pa,” said Rewi, “then you can make your own peace.”
“Haere! Haere!” shouted Rewi when he ran out from the pa. It was the Maori “Sauve qui peut.” But the people preserved a solid formation for some distance, going at a steady trot, as a survivor narrates, and there was some firing from both flanks. By this time the soldiers in the sap-head had rushed into the pa, and some were firing at the retreating Maoris from the parapets. The last to leave the fort encountered the bayonet, and the troops on either side closed in towards the natives; but here the hesitation to fire for fear of hitting each other was the salvation of many of the Maoris.
The main body of the fugitives made for the dip in the lower end of the ridge, just to the east of the hill on which the Orakau blockhouse was afterwards built. Here there was a steep fall of 20 or 30 feet to the fern flat at the edge of the manuka swamp. Along the lower face of the ridge there was a scarped bank with a ditch, made by the Maoris to keep the wild pigs out of the cultivations. Immediately below this was a thin cordon of soldiers, men of the 40th Regiment, under Colonel Leslie; others were employed at the edge of the swamp cutting manuka for sap-gabions. Before the leading men had reached the edge of the dip the close body of fugitives had been broken up into groups and the pace became a run.
Yelling and shouting in pursuit came the soldiers, the various corps all mixed up, eager for a final shot at their enemies. Down over the gully-rim poured the fugitives. The surprised 40th were unable to stay the rush, although they shot or bayoneted some of the leaders. A man named Puhipi was killed in penetrating the line, and the foremost men momentarily hesitated; but manuka until night, and then he hobbled along to the Puniu, suffering great pain from his injured knee, and joined the survivors on the south side of the river. As for Rewi, his retreat through the swamp of death was safeguarded by a devoted body-guard consisting of twelve of his kinsmen, including
Pou-patate, describing the flight, gave a dramatic narrative
whi-u! whi-u! about my ears. When we were in the manuka the tops of the bushes were cut off by the bullets, swishing like a storm through the swamp. Yet not one touched me. I saw Hepi Kahotea shot dead there. The soldiers were massed all along the Karaponia ridge, firing down into the manuka and raupo. There were hundreds of rifles blazing into us. Then, on the other side of the swamp were more foot soldiers and some mounted men hurrying round to cut us off.”
Rewi escaped unwounded. He and his tribe suffered less than the Urewera and the Ngati-te-Kohera, whom he had vainly tried to dissuade from the building of the challenge fort at Orakau. Many years after the war, standing on the sacred soil of Orakau pa, he gave a narrative of the siege. His story of the last day and the flight to the Puniu reveals the curious mingling of ancient and modern religious beliefs in the Maori mind, and the reversion to the ancient faith in hours of peril when the soul of man is laid bare.
“When we rushed out of the pa,” said Rewi, “I prayed to God. The words of my prayer were, ‘E Ihowa, tohungia ahau, kaua e whakaekea tenei hara ki runga i a au’ (‘O Lord, save me, and visit not this sin upon me’). Just then I stumbled and fell down, which made me very dark in my heart, for it was an evil omen. I rose and started on again, but had only gone a short distance when I stumbled and fell once more. When I rose the second time I recited this prayer:—
“Wetea mai te whiwhi,Wetea mai te hara,Wetea mai te tawhito,Wetea kia mataratara,Tawhito te rangi, ta taea.”
[In this karakia Rewi besought his Maori gods to remove from him all sins or transgressions of which he or his male relatives might have been guilty.]
“Then I slapped my thighs, and I cried out—
“Tupe runga, tupe raro, tupe haha,Kei kona koe tu mai ai,Ki konei au rere ake ai,Rere huruhuru, rere a newa a te rangi.”
[This karakia was used by the Maoris when after a battle the defeated warriors were being pursued by the victors. A chief singled out one of the enemy for pursuit, and this charm had the effect of causing the pursued one to fall or stop to
Kei kona koe tu mai ai” is “Remain there where you are. I will flee on from here, fly like a bird, rising high towards the heavens.”]
“I went on across the fern slope towards the swamp,” continued Rewi. “I was not yet clear of the soldiers. There were three parties of them. My only weapon was a short-handled tomahawk. I had dropped my two guns when I fell down; my younger brother took them. I called out to some of my people who were a little ahead of me and who had guns, ‘Come here; one of you fire there’; to another, ‘Fire over there’; to one who was standing close to me I said, ‘You fire right in here.’ We descended the hill and jumped down over the bank. We were fired upon here, but although the soldiers were close they did not hit us, as we were over them and they had to fire upwards. At my call one of my companions shot a soldier who had fired at me. The soldiers gave way before us, and we rushed down into the swamp. My comrades kept firing as we went on. The troops were on either side of us, on the high ground, firing across at us as we fled through the “Split up! Open up!” is the meaning of this magic formula, which is used only in the last extremity. In Maori mythology it was the charm uttered by the Arawa hero Hatupatu when making his escape from the clutches of the witch-goddess Kura-ngaituku—“Kura-of-the-claws.” The ogress was about to seize him when he came to a great rock—it is identified to-day with a curious volcanic rock by the roadside at Ngatuku Hill, near Atiamuri—and exclaiming, “manuka. Now I prayed again. I uttered the words, ‘Matiti, matata!’ That was all my prayers.Matiti, matata!” the rock opened to receive him, and closed after him. To the Maori the expression carries the significance of the Christian hymn “Rock of Ages, cleft for me.” Fortunately for Rewi, this “open sesame” proved as successful as in Hatupatu's case; at any rate, he escaped unscathed when his comrades were falling all round him.
“Continuing our retreat through the swamp we overtook an elderly relative of mine named Mau-pakanga. He had two guns. I took one of them. Mau-pakanga soon was shot by some of the soldiers who were firing at us from the hills. Next we overtook Hone Teri. I said to him, ‘Don't run; go easily.’ A short distance farther on a soldier took aim at Hone Teri and shot him dead. I went up to him to take his gun (he was shot in the head, and his gun was lying under him), and cried a farewell to him and his parents. Then we continued our flight to the Puniu River, some of us returning the fire of our pursuers. Raureti and his companions shot two troopers out of their saddles. A soldier on the Ngamako spurs rode in chase of a native named Ngata.
The Forest Rangers and the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry with some of Rait's Royal Artillery troopers had pushed on along the line of steep-faced hills on the south-eastern side of the long swamp in order to cut off the retreat. Von Tempsky was at his post in the valley on the eastern side of the pa when the loud cheering from the hill and the intensified volume of rifle-fire told him that at last the Maoris had broken cover. The pa ridge was thickly veiled in gunpowder-smoke, and the heavy rattle of musketry was uninterrupted. The Rangers, led by Von Tempsky and Lieutenant Roberts, dashed off southward along the Ngamako ridge, crossing small gullies and swamps, and came within shot of the fugitives as their foremost men ascended a sharp spur of fern land called Ti-kiore. The Armstrong gun on the Karaponia ridge threw some shells into the body of fugitives. The cavalry headed the Maori leaders off into the swamps again by a rough cross-country gallop, but as the first of the troopers, Rait's men, to come up with the natives had only revolvers besides their swords, they were compelled to stand off when the fugitives turned on them with their double-barrel guns, killing one or two horses and wounding some men. The Rangers by this time, having taken a short-cut across the broken ground, began to drop Maori after Maori with their accurate carbine-fire. Many warriors were shot down after delivering their last barrel. The troopers were out-distanced by the strong runners of Von Tempsky's and Jackson's corps. “There was Roberts ahead of us all,” wrote Von Tempsky in his journal, “with Thorpe, of Jackson's company, and two or three others, the fleetest of the corps. That day I christened Roberts ‘Deerfoot’ as I panted behind him, bellowing my lungs out in shouting to the men and directing the pursuit.” The Rangers followed their game for several miles; some of them crossed to the south side of the Puniu in the eagerness of the chase. About a hundred men of various regiments who had followed the escaping garrison through the swamp, using their Enfields, joined in the pursuit along the ridges to the Puniu, but they could not keep up with the Rangers, who could load their breech-loading carbines as they ran. It was dusk when the pursuit ended, at the sound of the distant bugles, and the Rangers, on recrossing the Puniu, met Colonel Havelock collecting the troops for the return to camp.
As the straggling pursuers marched back across the broken country they found several of their victims. One mortally wounded Maori, raving with thirst and fear, they tended and carried along till he died. Another was borne campward till he, too, expired from his terrible wounds. Some of the 3rd Waikato Militia were also succouring the wounded, and they and the Rangers carried into Orakau a warrior with a broken thigh.
At the camp-fires were told some of the episodes in the first rushing of the Major Mair said, “There was great indignation in camp at Te Awamutu over the bayoneting of the woman Hine-i-turama, and I went with Lieutenant Albert Jackson, of the 18th Regiment, through the tents of one regiment hoping to detect the men, but I could not identify them.”pa. Dead and wounded lay about the pa. Among the wounded were several women, and even these did not escape the bayonets of the maddened Imperials. The colonial troops behaved better. In the flight to the Puniu a half-caste girl, shot through the arm, was on the point of being bayoneted by a soldier when a Forest Ranger saved her; and Von Tempsky's favourite scout, Sergeant Southee, protected another. In the pa, however, there was a pitiful tragedy. Mr. Mair, rushing in with the stormers, found some Regulars about to bayonet a wounded woman who had scraped away the light layer of earth covering the body of her slain husband for a last look at him, weeping as she brushed the soil from his face. Mair tried to beat the men back with his carbine, and knocked one of them into the ditch; then he turned to attend to the poor woman. She was Hine-i-turama, a high chieftainess of the Arawa people, ninth in direct descent from Hinemoa, and celebrated as a composer of songs; she had been the wife of Hans Tapsel, the trader of Maketu, and on coming to Orakau to visit her daughter, the wife of Dr. Hooper, had been detained by the Kingites, and married another man, Ropata, who fell in the siege. Mr. Mair carried her to an angle, and then went to attend to another wounded woman; but when he returned Hine-i-turama had been bayoneted to death by some brutal soldiers in avengement of fallen comrades.
The splendid devotion and fearlessness displayed by the Maori heroes of that retreat aroused the admiration of their enemies. Colonel Roberts, N.Z.C.—the “Deerfoot” of Von Tempsky's journal—narrates one poignant episode of the Forest Rangers' chase. “Most of the troops,” he says, “abandoned the pursuit at the Puniu River, but several of us Forest Rangers and two or three men of Rait's Artillery crossed the river and went on in chase for a little distance. We caught up on one Maori, who repeatedly turned and deliberately knelt and levelled his single-barrel shot-gun (he was endeavouring to cover the retreat of some
Captain “Well, what happened?” Hitiri was asked. “Oh, nothing happened; but what I was going to tell you was that the Maori's gun was unloaded all the time. He had not a charge left when he knelt down and kept the troops off with his levelled wiwi rushes and scrub, fired, and were reloading as we lay there. The Maori retreated a few yards, then turned and presented his gun at us as before. Several shots were fired at him, but he did not reply. At last one of us shot him dead. We went up to the plucky fellow as he lay there in the rushes, and we found that his gun was empty; he had not a single cartridge left. On the middle fingers of the left hand he wore a little bag which held a few percussion caps. I was terribly grieved—we all were—to think that we had killed so brave a man. Of course we did not know he was pointing an unloaded gun at us; we had to save ourselves from being potted, as we thought. Had he dropped his useless gun, and stood up and shown that he was unarmed and helpless, we would have been only too glad to have spared him. But at that time none of us knew enough Maori to call upon him to surrender.tupara.”
The British casualties in the three days battle were seventeen killed or died from wounds and fifty-two wounded. The dead were buried in the English Mission Churchyard at Te Awamutu.
More than half the gallant Maoris lay dead when the sun went down that night of the 2nd April. Out of a very few more than three hundred, quite one hundred and sixty were killed, and of the survivors at least half were wounded. Of the twenty-six prisoners taken nearly all were wounded, and several died in the field hospital at Te Awamutu. Brigadier-General Carey reported 101 killed, besides eighteen to twenty stated by the Maoris to have been buried in the pa. The total killed was, however, heavier than this estimate. Forty were buried by the soldiers in the
pa (the spot is just within the farm-fence on the north line of the present main road). As many more were buried on the edge of the swamp near the place where the fugitives broke through the lines of the 40th Regiment, and many were laid to rest on the spur on the opposite side of the swamp, near Ngamako, and further along the line of retreat to the Puniu. The dead at the pa were buried in their own trenches on a beautiful sunny morning, and so near the surface that one clenched hand rose above the surface, and a soldier trampled on it to press it under.
Ngati-te-Kohera and the Urewera suffered the heaviest casualties. pa and share the fate of the men—was wounded in four places. She was shot through the body, the
Paitini, describing his experience in the retreat, said: “I fired a shot and brought down a soldier as we descended the steep bank above the Statement by Paitini te Whatu, to the writer, at Omakoi, Urewera country, 23rd January, 1921.manuka swamp. In fact, I dropped down the bank on to the man I shot, and I could not recover my double-barrel gun. A soldier shot me in the left thigh, causing a very bad wound. I managed to reach the cover of the manuka and went slowly along toward the Puniu, bleeding very much and in great pain. Many of our wounded lay out in the swamp all that night and next day. My father was killed in the retreat, outside the pa. He was behind me; I did not see him fall. Our chief pa. Paraki Wereta, now living at Te Umuroa, escaped from Orakau unwounded.”
pora, a thick shaggy shoulder-cape of flax, which he was wearing deflected one or two bullets that struck him. Four of his mother's people, the Patu-heuheu, were killed in the battle; one was his uncle Peita, whose name he took in memory. The old chief Paerau, of Tuhoe, escaped, and, like Peita, became a strong Hauhau partisan.
Ngati-Maniapoto did not suffer so severely as the other clans—at any rate, none of their leading chiefs was killed. Tupotahi had his collar-bone broken by a bullet when he was leaving the pa. The wiry old chief, a small-framed man like Rewi, narrated that the bullet went out at the back of his right shoulder, and the arm hung helpless. He picked up his gun in his felt hand, and ran on after his comrades, supporting his right arm by clenching the fingers between the teeth. At last he had to drop his gun and support his right hand and arm with his left, and so hurried on to the swamp. Men fell all around him, but he was not hit again. Half-dead with pain and loss of blood and tortured with thirst, he lay in the manuka for some time unable to move. At last, when it was dark, he rose and struggled on through the scrub to the Puniu. With many of the other wounded he was taken to the Otewa Village, on the Waipa, where his hurt was tended. Some of the survivors gathered at Korakonui and Wharepapa, a few miles south of the Puniu; others of Ngati-Maniapoto returned to Hangatiki.
The Urewera survivors collected at Ara-titaha and Waotu, and made their way home to their mountains, travelling slowly because of their many wounded. Harehare, of Ngati-Manawa,
wairua—an apparition—which he interpreted as a message from the dead, and he told us that misfortune had befallen our people in the Waikato. A few days later the morehu—the survivors—began to arrive, among them my brother Takurua and his wife, both wounded, and then we found that the Battle of Orakau had been fought just about the time the vision appeared to our old seer.”
The present main road from Kihikihi eastward toward Maunga-tautari passes through the site of Orakau pa. A stone monument on the roadside now marks the spot. The only trace on the roadway of the olden entrenchment is part of a ditch on the southern side of the road-cutting. Just inside the fence of the field on the northern side, where the north-east angle of the pa stood, there is a large mound surrounded by uneven lines of depression, indicating trenches. This is where forty Maoris were buried in the outer trench by the troops. This sacred spot was fenced in over fifty years ago by the then owner of Orakau, Mr. W. A. Cowan, and was planted with blue-gums; but the little cemetery is now part of a paddock, and the fence and the memorial trees have disappeared. Great poplar-trees, planted about the same time, line the southern side of the road. For many years after the war the bullet-riddled peach-trees stood dotted about the battlefield. The outlines of the British sap of 1864 are now indistinguishable except for a few yards in the field on the north side of the road where a slight depression in the turf indicates the olden trench towards the position on the round of the hill. pa. The first trench ran northward, parallel to the west flank, for a few yards and crossed the line of the present road; then the sap was directed toward the north-west angle of the fort and zigzagged (haere ko piko piko ana) easterly, parallel with the road. The sap was traversed every few yards, and was cut with many turns. There were also demi-parallels, occupied by the covering-parties of riflemen. The sap was not very deep, said the old warrior, but the soldiers digging it were sheltered by means of peke oneone (gabions, large wicker baskets made of manuka and filled with earth from the trench) placed along the edge of the ditch for head-cover. At the head of the sap as it went on they rolled along a peke rakau—a sap-roller—made of green manuka tightly bound together, 4 or 5 feet in thickness, for protection from the Maoris' fire. There was a good deal of cover on the ground traversed by the sap—peach-trees and flax and fern.
Among the wounded prisoners taken at Orakau (2nd April, 1864) was a young warrior named Tipene te Waru, whose after-career was rather remarkable. He was taken to the military hospital at Te Awamutu, where his left arm was amputated by Dr. Spenser, and on recovering was sent home to his people at Wairoa, Hawke's Bay. His father, Te Waru Tamatea, of Marumaru, was the leader of the small Ngati-Kahungunu contingent which had joined the Urewera war-party. Tipene took revenge for the loss of his arm by joining the Hauhaus when the Pai-marire war-
“This man, Tipene te Waru, who had lost his left arm from a wound at Orakau, fought against us at Manga-aruhe or Omaru-hakeke on Christmas Day, 1865, and at Te Kopane, near Lake Waikare-moana, on the 18th January, 1866. The elder Te Waru and all his tribe surrendered to us about February, 1866, and after the lands were confiscated they and the Waiau natives were allowed to go back to their settlements at Whataroa and the Waiau Valley (south of the lake), where they remained quietly until after whare given them, but it was prearranged. His brother Reihana or Horotiu [afterwards notorious as hapu then living (about forty people in all) came out of the Urewera country at Horomanga and surrendered to me at Fort Galatea, on the Rangitaiki, on the 9th December, 1870. When I was Resident Magistrate at Opotiki in 1877 Te Waru and the little tribe were living at Waiotahi, where they had been given some land. In that year Tipene te Waru, while out pig-hunting, ran a manuka stake through his right foot, and got in such a bad way that he was sent to the Auckland Hospital. However, he got mokemoke (lonely, home-sick) there, and returned to Opotiki, and at last the leg had to be amputated. Dr. Reed, assisted by Captain Northcroft, N.Z.C., took it off. We got a wooden leg for him from Sydney, and the one-armed and one-legged warrior used to ride all over the country. I think Hemi Raho was allowed to return to Wairoa, but none of the other members of the rebel tribe went back to their old homes, and I paid them a sum of £400 or £500 for all their interests in the Wairoa lands.”
Another wounded prisoner taken at Orakau proved less amenable to the surgeon's skill. This was an old man named Te Wiremu, who had his thigh broken by a bullet from Mr. Mair's carbine. Mair took a friendly interest in Te Wiremu in the hospital at Te Awamutu, but the old warrior was determined to die. “He defied the doctors and hospital attendants to the end,” Mair wrote. “Nor could the chaplains make anything of him. One day he would call himself a ‘missionary,’ and the next he was a ‘Catholic’; indeed, he succeeded in establishing something like a coolness between the worthy representatives of the two denominations. He was buried in Te Awamutu churchyard with the other prisoners who died of wounds. The men of the 65th Regiment, who held the Maori people in great esteem, erected a head-board over the grave, bearing an inscription written by
ALTHOUGH THE Battle of Orakau was the final and decisive blow delivered in General Cameron's Waikato campaign, it did not end the Maoris' preparations for resistance. Ngati-Maniapoto fully expected that the British would follow up their victory, and would invade the country south of the Puniu River. The scattered hapus were collected, and the defence of the territory in the southern part of the Waipa basin was decided upon. The first fortification built was designed to block the advance of troops towards Hangatiki, the home of pa built was Paratui, a hill-fort between the Mangaokewa and Mangapu Streams, a short distance south of Hangatiki; the site is to the west of the Main Trunk Railway. The whole strength of Ngati-Maniapoto was concentrated on the construction of these fortifications, under Rewi, Raureti, Wetini, Paku-kohatu, Te Rangi-ka-haruru (“The Thundering Heavens”), and Hauauru and his brother Patena, the chiefs of the Ngati-Matakore subtribe, both warriors of the old days of intertribal strife.
It was at Ara-titaha, a Ngati-Raukawa settlement on the southern spur of Maunga-tautari, that the last shots of the Waikato War were fired, in a slight skirmish. This was a reconnaissance affair, about three months after Orakau. A Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Father Garavel, arrived at Te
Soon after the capture of Orakau the Ngati-Haua and their allies from Tauranga, who had entrenched themselves at Te Tiki o te Ihingarangi, evacuated their stronghold. The fortification, a pa of ancient days, had been strengthened by deepening the trenches, digging covered ways, and erecting palisades. The main pa stood on the edge of a high cliff overlooking the rapid Waikato, at the foot of the Pukekura Range; in rear was a higher pa of small area. General Cameron had made preparations to shell the place, and had gathered a strong battery at Pukerimu. Tamehana and his people did not wait for the bombardment. They abandoned the place under cover of night, crossing the river in canoes—a dangerous feat, for the current was very swift, and there were rapids just below the crossing-place. Men, women, and children all safely reached the eastern side and marched across the plain to Peria, near Matamata. For some time after the British occupation of Te Tiki o te Ihingarangi a force of Militia garrisoned a redoubt on the site of the upper pa.
Te Awamutu was the winter quarters for the Waikato army of occupation. When the Government fixed the confiscation-lines the Puniu River was made the frontier, and no attempt was made to drive the defeated Kingites farther south. Four thousand regular troops remained at Te Awamutu and the outposts until the end of 1864, and as they were withdrawn the military settlers embodied in the regiments of Waikato Militia took
The New Zealand Settlements Act of 1863, under which the confiscation of native lands was carried out, set forth in the preamble that it was necessary “that some adequate provisions should be made for the permanent protection and security of the well-disposed inhabitants of both races, for the prevention of future insurrection or rebellion, and for the establishment and maintenance of Her Majesty's authority, and of law and order throughout the colony.” The best and most effectual means of attaining those ends would be by the introduction of a sufficient number of settlers able to protect themselves and to preserve the peace of the country. As there were large tracts of land lying unoccupied, useless, and unproductive, which might be made available for the introduction and location of such settlers “with benefit to themselves, and with manifest advantage to the colony,” it was enacted that the Governor in Council might take native land where desirable in order to set apart sites for settlements. The money derived from the sale of land was to be devoted to recouping the expenses of the war, in the construction of public works, the establishment of schools and other institutions, and in promoting immigration for the colonization of the confiscated territory.
An enormous area of the Waikato and neighbouring country was confiscated under this Act. It embraced the whole of the country on the east side of the Waikato-Waipa basin, from the Manga-tawhiri south to the summit of Mount Pirongia, thence along the Puniu River to the Waikeria, and from there across to Pukekura, on the foothills of the Maunga-tautari, thence northward to the Thames Gulf. Portions of this area were afterwards returned to hapus who had not shared in the war, but by far the greater portion was parcelled out for white settlement.
In 1866 Dr. Edward Waddington, who was for many years the Government military surgeon in the Waikato, in a report on the district gave the following statement of the strength of the principal military settlements (number exclusive of officers):—Alexandra (now Pirongia): 2nd Waikato Regiment—675 men, 102 women, 183 children. Cambridge: 3rd Waikato Regiment—843 men, 87 women, 198 children. Hamilton: 4th Waikato Regiment—432 men, 282 women, 751 children.
In addition to these chief settlements there were the Militia township at Kihikihi and the Forest Rangers' allotments already mentioned. In all, the Government introduced about three thousand military settlers into the Upper Waikato country.
THE MAORI KING movement had gained strong support among many of the tribes of the East Coast, along the shore of the Bay of Plenty from Matata to Opotiki, and thence round the East Cape as far as Turanganui (Gisborne) and the Wairoa. By the end of 1863 a formidable crusade in aid of hard-pressed Waikato and their kin was set on foot on the coast, and half a score of tribes joined in a strong contingent of reinforcements. The design was to gather at a point in the Bay of Plenty, and thence march through the Arawa country to the Upper Waikato plains, passing Rotorua on the way. By January of 1864 the plan of campaign was matured, and a war-party which swelled to the proportions of a small army was soon assembled at Matata, the headquarters of the Ngai-te-Rangihouhiri, for the advance upon Waikato, where General Cameron was temporarily blocked by the heavy entrenchments on the Paterangi ridge. It was now that the Arawa people definitely ranged themselves on the side of the Queen as defenders of their territory against the Kingites.
From 1856 to 1863 the majority of the Arawa Tribe were scattered over the North Auckland country digging kauri-gum. By their industry they had acquired a fleet of small cutters and schooners, which were engaged largely in the carrying trade between Auckland and the East Coast ports. In 1863 they had spread up north beyond the Bay of Islands. Then rumours began to reach them of the intention of the East Coast tribes to send a large force through to support the Waikato Kingites. These reports became so alarming and urgent that the Arawa exhumed the bones of their numerous dead in various parts of the gumfields of the north, and setting sail in their small craft early in January, 1864, they arrived at Maketu to defend their ancestral soil. In their eagerness to get into action some of them drove their vessels ashore; others dropped anchor out in the stream at Maketu and hastened ashore without taking time to stow their sails. During the six or seven years' fighting that followed, all the vessels sank at their anchors or rotted on
Now it became known that about seven or eight hundred hostile natives of the Bay of Plenty and the East Cape were on the way to the Rotorua district. By this time the contingent of Ngati-Porou and other Tai-Rawhiti tribes had been swelled by the addition of the Whanau-a-Te Ehutu, Ngai-Tawarere, Te Whanau-a-Apanui, the Whakatohea, Ngati-Awa, Ngati-Pukeko, and other clans, and finally the Ngati-te-Rangihouhiri at Matata. Te Puehu visited the Arawa country as a herald, asking the lakes tribes to permit them to pass through to help Waikato against the whites, but permission was peremptorily refused. Had the Tai-Rawhiti tribes been allowed to pass through to join the King party the addition of several hundreds of well-equipped warriors would obviously have exercised a powerful influence on the fortunes of the campaign, and would at least have prolonged the war. The Arawa found themselves in this position: that, never having expected any war, they had neglected to provide themselves with arms and ammunition and the necessary equipment for a campaign. They had not followed the example of the other tribes, who all eagerly set to work purchasing guns and ammunition on the relaxation of the arms restrictions by Gore Browne in 1857.
When the plight of the Arawa was realized, with the invaders only a few days' march away, several delegates of the tribe were despatched from Rotorua to Maketu, where they interviewed the Civil Commissioner and asked him to supply them with arms to defend their land against the Queen's enemies. The request was declined. Fortunately, Mr. William Mair (the interpreter at Orakau), who had lately been appointed Magistrate at Taupo, arrived at Maketu at this juncture, and, seeing how necessary it was that these people should receive help, he returned to Tauranga and begged the Imperial military officers there to give him the whole of their sporting ammunition for the loyal Maoris. He succeeded in obtaining about three hundredweight of powder, several hundredweight of shot, and a large quantity of percussion caps. He went to the local storekeepers, and they even emptied their chests of tea and gave Mair the lead. At Maketu the timely munitions-supply was given to the Arawa, who took their warlike stores inland to Mourea, the village on the Ohau Stream, which connects Lakes Rotorua and Rotoiti; there all set to work making cartridges.
Meanwhile some Taupo men had arrived under Rawiri Kahia and Hohepa Tamamutu, and this contingent joined Ngati-Whakaue at Ohinemutu. The allied force crossed the lake in a flotilla of large canoes—“Te Arawa,” the largest, could carry
The fighting which followed occurred on the 7th, 8th, and 9th April, 1864. The great war-party of the East Coast tribes emerged from the forest and encamped at Tapuae-haruru (“The Beach of the Resounding Footsteps”), with the forest in their rear and the beautiful wooded range of Matawhaura lifting above them like a wall on their right. The Arawa made the Komuhumuhu
pa, a palisaded village on the south side of the lake, their headquarters, and from there advanced along the shore now traversed by the main road from Rotorua to the eastern lakes and Whakatane. The three days' skirmishing ended in the complete repulse of the invaders. The fighting began at Ngauhu, near Wai-iti. On the second day a hot battle was fought on the Taurua ridge and the lake-edge between Komuhumuhu and Wai-iti. About twenty of the invaders were killed, including the chief Apanui, who fell at Te Tu-arai, the wooded headland near Emery's house at Taurua. The Arawa lost three of their men. The enemy retreated to the sea-coast, announcing that they would next invade Maketu; to which the Arawa chief Te Mapu te Amotu replied, “That is well; we shall finish our battle there.”
The Tai-Rawhiti expedition was reinforced at Otamarakau, the ancient pa of Waitaha, on the sea-coast, by a company of sixty Tuhoe and Ngai-Tama, also by a section of Ngati-Makino and some Ngati-Porou. The large flotilla of war-canoes was drawn up on the beach at the mouth of the Waitahanui Stream, below the massive earthworks of Otamarakau. Towards the end of April they marched on Maketu, and their advance-guard surprised two officers, Major Colvile (43rd Regiment) and Ensign Way (3rd Waikato Militia), who were out duck-shooting in a canoe on the Waihi Lagoon, two miles east of Maketu. The officers had a narrow escape. By this time there was a small body of troops, under Major Colvile, in occupation of Maketu, and Pukemaire, an ancient pa on the hill above Maketu, was converted into a redoubt, in which two field-guns were mounted. Major Drummond Hay and Captain
By this time the main body of the Arawa had arrived from the lakes, and some three hundred of their best men pursued the Tai-Rawhiti along the beach toward Matata, while the “Falcon” and the “Sandfly,” steaming along close to the coast, shelled the retreating force. A heavy shell from the “Falcon” killed several men of the Whakatohea in a group at the mouth of the Waeheke Stream, near Pukehina. At this place the Arawa skirmished with their foes, and drove them toward Otamarakau. Next day the invaders attempted to launch their fleet of about twenty war-canoes lying at the mouth of the Waitahanui. While so engaged the Arawa came upon them, drove them off, and seized the canoes; some of the long waka-taua had broached to in the surf and were smashed.
Next day (28th April) the pursuit was continued along the wide sandy beach called the Kaokaoroa (“Long Rib”), extending from Otamarakau to the mouth of the Awa-a-te-Atua River at Matata. The fight, lasting all day, raged over the sandhills and the kumara and taro plantations between the sea and the high sandstone cliffs. The principal Arawa chiefs engaged, beside the energetic porera bullets—twelve to the pound—fired from the Tower muskets inflicted smashing wounds. The Arawa had not at this time received Enfield rifles.
The spot where the Tai-Rawhiti warriors made their final stand is near Pua-kowhai Stream, about two miles west of Matata. They took cover under the bank of a small water-course trending down through the cultivations of kumara and maize. About four hundred of the enemy resisted the Arawa here, with others in reserve. The Ngati-Awa and Whakatohea fired heavy volleys from their double-barrel guns, but the Arawa, advancing in quick rushes after the volleys, got up within 30 feet of them. Then a daring chief, Paora Pahupahu, armed only with a taiaha, dashed at the enemy's line and cut his way through, followed by the advance-party of his tribe. Meanwhile Tohi te Ururangi, standing on a low sandhill nearer the sea, was directing the movements of his warriors, shouting and pointing with his taiaha, when a volley laid him low. The enemy broke and fled. Most of them retreated along the beach; Hira te
The pursuit ended at Matata. The invaders retreated in canoes to Whakatane along the Orini River, running parallel with the coast and connecting the Awa-a-te-Atua with the Whakatane. The Orini, then a fine deep waterway, is no longer navigable. About half the flotilla of canoes in which the Tai-Rawhiti warriors came had been left at Matata in readiness for return. The Ngati-Rangitihi, the present owners of Matata, give the names of some of the war-canoes: the “Tu-mata-uenga,” a very large waka-taua belonging to Ngati-Porou; the “Uekaha,” “Whanga-paraoa,” “Tararo,” and “Urunga-Kahawai.” All the canoes were decorated in warlike fashion and bore carved figure-heads.
tohunga, Te Kaho (father of Te
At Otaramarae, Lake Rotoiti (6th January, 1919),
“Our first skirmish with the Tai-Rawhiti men was at Ngauhu, just beyond Wai-iti, and close to the lake-beach at Tapuae-haruru, where the track from the coast by way of Rotoma and Rotoehu comes out of the bush. We held the East Coast men there, and at last they retired to
pa on the lake-side at Komuhumuhu. In the skirmishing we cut bunches of fern and stuck them in the ground for cover and fired from behind them. We chiefly had flint-lock guns (ngutu-parera) and not much ammunition.
“Next morning the East Coast tribes came up along the lake-side to attack us at Komuhumuhu. We sallied out and met them at Taurua and fought a battle there. The skirmishers spread out all over the ridge of Taurua above the point where the half-caste Emery's house now stands. We scooped out little hollows—they could hardly be called rifle-pits—for cover on the bare hill; we dug them hurriedly with our tomahawks and hands. In this fighting we lost Mohi and Maaka shot dead, Topia (Mita Taupopoki's elder brother) mortally wounded; others wounded were Piwai te Whare-kohatu (hand smashed), Matua-iti (jaw shot away), and Wi Pori. Several of us held a little parapet on the hill—I and my brothers Te Harete and Te Pere, Mohi, my cousin Te Pokiha and his brother Waata Taranui. Mohi had been standing up and firing at the enemy, and they fired a volley in return. A bullet pierced his brain, and he fell back dead on top of us. Down below us at the edge of the lake (near the present native store at the little jetty) the enemy were held in check by the hapus Ngati-Uenuku-kopako and Ngati-Kereru.
“A section of the rebels nearly succeeded in cutting us off from our pa by working up inland into the bush, and we were compelled to retire along the beach and fall back on Komuhumuhu. Two of our old chiefs, Te Mapu te Amotu and Te Puehu, would not retire although hard pressed, and it was then that the rebels took us in flank. One of our men, Kakahi, was shot through the chest. We only saved ourselves by a rapid retreat to the pa. Some of the Arawa were panic-stricken by the persistence and numbers of the enemy, and ran to the war-canoes at the beach to escape. Then, after some sharp fighting, the foe hoisted a white flag: they had had enough of it. Hakaraia, a chief of Waitaha, came towards us with a flag of truce. The enemy retreated, and we followed them up to the end of the lake at Tapuae-haruru. Te Mapu and Te Porarere (son of Te Puehu) went out and ordered them to leave the Arawa country. Te Mapu told them that they need not rejoice over the fact that they had temporarily driven the Arawa back on Komuhumuhu pa; they must retire to the sea-coast lest worse befall them. ‘E waru nga pu-manawa o te Arawa’ (‘The Arawa have eight breaths, or eight talents’), he concluded. (This proverbial saying, famous among the Arawa, is an expression to denote courage, resolution, and resourcefulness.) The rebels' leader replied, ‘I shall go and shall not return here, but I shall kindle my fires of occupation at Maketu’ (‘Ka ka taku ahi ki runga o Maketu.’). To this Te Mapu returned, “That is well; we shall finish our piece of battle (pito whawhai) at Maketu.'
“This understanding was honourably kept,” said Hohapeta. “The foe retired to the coast at Matata, and there awaited reinforcements for the march on Maketu. As for us, we returned to Mourea, where for the first time the Arawa all assembled and prepared for a campaign, and then we marched on to Maketu to meet the invaders.
“In the Rotoiti fighting we killed about twenty of the invaders. Among them was Apanui, a high chief from the East Coast. He fell at Te Tu-arai, the wooded headland just to the eastward of Emery's house, above the present road and overlooking the lake.”
IN JANUARY, 1864, the Government decided upon the despatch of a military force to Tauranga. The reason which prompted this measure was the knowledge that Tauranga was the route for the Kingites from the East Coast to the Waikato, that the Ngai-te-Rangi and other local tribes were hostile to the Government and had sent men to engage in the South Auckland fighting, that the principal native store of gunpowder was in rear of Tauranga, and that the district was an important source of supply of both food and munitions of war to the people of Waikato. Captain Jenkins, of H.M.S. “Miranda,” was requested to institute a blockade of Tauranga in order to prevent traffic with the tribes of that part of the coast; and a body of troops commanded by Colonel Greer was landed at Te Papa, near the mission station on Tauranga Harbour. Two redoubts were built; one of these, the Monmouth Redoubt, stands on the Taumata-Kahawai cliff on the Tauranga waterfront. When the force was landed most of the Ngai-te-Rangi were away with Tamehana in the pa Te Tiki o te Ihingarangi, on the Upper Waikato, and were awaiting an attack there when the news arrived that their home-country had been invaded. Hurrying back, they began the erection of fortifications to withstand the British. The majority of the Ngai-te-Rangi selected a strong position at Waoku (“The Silent Woods”), on the edge of the great forest which extends from the hinterland of Tauranga towards Rotorua. The site was close to the Waimapu River, and a short distance to the east of the present Rotorua-Tauranga main road on the tableland overlooking the Bay of Plenty. Waoku was an ancient earthwork renovated and palisaded. Other sections of the tribe and the Piri-Rakau (“The People who Cling to the Bush”) took up positions at Kaimai, Poripori, Wairoa, and Tawhiti-nui. The last-named place was a palisaded pa on a steep hill above the track from Te Puna, on the inner part of Tauranga, up to the forest at Whakamarama and Irihanga; the hill is immediately over the right-hand side of the present road going inland. This was
When the main stronghold at Waoku had been completed the chief Rawiri Tuaia (otherwise Puhirake), who afterwards fell at Te Ranga, wrote a letter to the British General at Tauranga, informing him that he and his people had built a pa and had made a road up to it from the harbour—the distance was ten or eleven miles—so that the soldiers would not be too weary to fight (“kei ngenge te hoia”) when they reached it. To this knightly challenge Rawiri, to his disappointment, received no reply. Becoming weary of waiting, Ngai-te-Rangi decided to move nearer to the troops and to take the aggressive. A pa was fortified at Poteriwhi, on the Wairoa, and a letter equivalent to a challenge was also sent from there. The chiefs—among whom was
As there was no sign of the British accepting the challenge to march inland, the Ngati-te-Rangi, after some of their advance skirmishers had exchanged shots with the soldiers near Te Papa, decided to move down closer to the troops. In April, 1864, they
pakeha trespassers. The Church Mission authorities had then arranged with the Maoris that a gateway should be made where the track passed along the spur, so that carts could go in and out, and it was from the circumstance of Rawiri's fort being built at this spot that it came to be called the “Gate Pa.”
The trench and bank of the fence-line were enlarged, and on the summit—where the little memorial church stands to-day, by the roadside—the Ngai-te-Rangi built their redoubt. The land sloped quickly on either side to the swamps that run up from the tidal arms of Tauranga Harbour, the Waimapu and the Waikareao. Timber was scarce there, and so the palisading was of the frailest—manuka stakes, tupakihi, and even korari or flax-sticks, with some posts and rails from a settler's stockyard and fences near the British camp. Trenches were dug and traversed against enfilading fire, underground ruas were made for shelter against shell-fire, and covered ways connected inner and outer trenches and rifle-pits. The main redoubt, in the form of a rough oblong, was on the highest part of the neck of land; on its left flank (the western side) the defences were continued by the construction of a smaller pa, which was not completed when the attack was delivered. The irregular line of fence along the whole front gave a fictitious appearance of strength to the position. The main pa, separated from the lower one by a ditch and parapet, was garrisoned by about two hundred warriors of Ngai-te-Rangi with a few men of the Piri-Rakau and other tribes. The small pa was occupied by the party of Koheriki, under Wi Koka, of Maraetai, who had been in Tawhitinui after leaving the Waikato. With them were about ten men of various tribes, chiefly Piri-Rakau. This wing of the Gate Pa was defended by not more than forty men, besides a brave young half-caste woman, Heni te Kiri-karamu (
Women as well as men toiled in the building of the fort, but the women were sent safely away to the villages in rear, by Rawiri's order, before the fighting began. The only exception made was in the case of Heni te Kiri-karamu. She refused
A demand had been made by Colonel Greer that the Ngai-te-Rangi should cease their hostilities and give up their guns. To this demand Rawiri replied, “E kore au e whakaae kia hoatu aku pu; engari ka aea atu koe a ka parakuhi au ki Te Papa” (“I cannot consent to give up my guns, but if you so wish I shall take breakfast with you in Te Papa”). It was Rawiri's half-jocular way of announcing his intention of attacking the British camp.
The Maoris soon discovered the reason for the apparent reluctance of the British commander to attack. He had been awaiting reinforcements from Auckland. General Cameron arrived at Tauranga on the 21st April in H.M.S. “Esk,” and established his headquarters at Te Papa. H.M.S. “Falcon,” as well as the “Esk,” brought reinforcements, and towards the end of April the General considered he had sufficient forces to march against the fortification challenging his front. On the 27th and 28th April General Cameron moved his troops and guns forward to Pukereia Hill, about 1,200 yards from the pa. On the night of the 28th Colonel Greer, with the 68th Regiment, numbering about seven hundred, moved across the swamp below the pa on the east side, and under cover of the darkness and rain took up a position well in rear of the native lines. A detachment of the Naval Brigade from the warships “Miranda,” “Esk,” and “Falcon,” under Lieutenant Hotham (afterwards Admiral), joined the 68th; and the forces in rear were disposed so as to cut off the Maoris' retreat. In order to divert the natives' attention from the rear a feigned attack had been made on the front on the 28th.
The troops employed in the attack on the following day totalled about 1,650 officers and men, made up of a Naval Brigade of about 420, fifty Royal Artillery, 300 of the 43rd Regiment, and 700 of the 68th, besides 180 of a movable column consisting of detachments of the 12th, 14th, 40th, and 65th Regiments.
Soon after daybreak on the morning of the 29th the guns and mortars assembled at Pukereia opened fire on the entrenchment. The batteries were the heaviest used in the war of 1863–64—extraordinarily heavy, indeed, when the really weak character of the defences is considered. The artillery employed consisted of a 110-pounder Armstrong gun, two 40-pounder and two 6-pounder Armstrongs, two 24-pounder howitzers, two 8-inch mortars, and six Coehorn mortars. The fire was directed chiefly
pa the Kingite flag was displayed on a tall flagstaff. Many shots were directed at it by the gunners, and some of the shells, passing over the fort, fell close to the 68th lines in the rear.
Rawiri strode fearlessly up and down the parapets encouraging his people. “Kia u, kia u,” he cried; “kaore e tae mai te pakeha!” (“Stand fast, stand fast; the white men will not reach us!”) When the big guns opened fire on the pa he called, addressing the artillery, “Tena, tena, e mahi i to mahi!” (“Go on, go on, with your work!”). To his tribesmen he cried reassuringly, in the height of the cannonade, “Ko te manawa-rere, ko te manawa-rere, kia u, kia u!” (Trembling hearts, be firm, be firm!”)
“The very first canon-shot,” narrated the warrior woman, tohunga; he was not joining in the prayers, but was intently watching the big gun. Hori was uttering the final words of the prayer, ‘Kia tau iho ki runga ki a tatou katoa’ (asking that the blessing of Christ might rest upon all of us), when suddenly old Timoti caught hold of my dress and pulled me down into the trench. Next moment the two men with whom I had been standing were killed by the shell from the big gun. Timoti had dragged me down instantly he saw the flash. Our chaplain, Hori, was terribly mutilated; he was unrecognizable. Iraihia te Patu-witi, too, was killed on the instant. But the shell did not burst on striking them. It went right into our hangi, about 10 yards in the rear, and the next moment we saw the potatoes we had scraped flying high in the air, all over the place. We heard the soldiers laughing and cheering at the sight. They had all been watching the effect of the first shot, and when they saw the potatoes flying
“We did not pull trigger for some time after this,” continued Heni. “When some of the infantry had advanced within range we all fired a volley together, at Rawiri's order ‘Puhia.’ I fired several shots. It took some time to load, as the trench was not deep and we had to crouch down to ram home the charge, so that we should not be exposed.”
At 4 o'clock in the afternoon the breach at the left angle of the main work was considered large enough for the entrance of a storming-party, and General Cameron ordered an assault. The storming-party consisted of 150 seamen and marines, under Commander Hay, of H.M.S. “Harrier,” and an equal number of the 43rd Regiment, under Lieut.-Colonel H. G. Booth. The stormers advanced four abreast—two sailors and two soldiers. Major Ryan's movable column was extended close to the front of the pa to keep down the fire from the rifle-pits, with orders to follow the assaulting column. The rest of the Naval Brigade and the 43rd Regiment, totalling about three hundred men, followed as a reserve. At the same time the 68th Regiment, warned by a rocket sent up as a signal for the assault, moved up closer to the rear of the pa and opened up a heavy fire.
The venerable Heni now tells the story of the assault:—
“Some soldiers,” she said, “attempted to storm our wing of the pa, while the bluejackets attacked the central redoubt. Colonel Booth was the officer who commanded the attack on our defences; of course we did not know who it was until long afterwards. The top rail of our fence had been smashed by the shells, and the officer leading came over this, and leaped the trench, sword in hand. He was thrusting at our men with his sword. We all jumped out of our trenches to meet the assault, and then there was a terrible combat hand to hand. Some of our men were firing, some were using their tomahawks, others the butt ends of their guns. My brother and I were side by side. Not many soldiers got into the section of trench where we fought. I did not club my gun, but jumped into the trench again and was loading when the troops were driven out, leaving their leader and several men lying wounded within our lines. The Maoris rushed out of the pa and fired upon the soldiers and bluejackets, who fell back in disorder. Wi Koka, leading us, was using a long-handled tomahawk. The officer, who we afterwards learned was Colonel Booth, was felled by a young man named Piha, one of our Koheriki. When the Colonel fell, 8 or 10 yards in rear of our front trench, Piha stooped down over him and took the sword which the officer
“We had all gone outside the fence in the excitement of the battle, following the retreating soldiers, when we were recalled, and firing began again. I fired several shots after we re-entered the ditch. All this time there was a cloud of gunpowder-smoke over the pa, and a small drizzly rain began to fall. It seemed to be almost dark.”
In the meantime the greater number of the storming-party had rushed cheering into the left angle of the main redoubt, and a desperate combat was waged. Navy cutlass met long-handled tomahawk—tupara was clubbed to counter bayonet and rifle. Skulls were cloven—Maoris were bayoneted—Ngai-te-Rangi tomahawks bit into pakeha limbs. The defenders, forced back by the first rush of the Naval Brigade, were temporarily dispossessed of the greater part of the pa, but at the rear they were driven back again by the heavy fire of the 68th Regiment, a fire which probably was fatal to some of the troops as well as the Maoris themselves.
This was the critical moment that decided the battle. The Maoris, driven back in the rear, met the sailors and soldiers, who were confused by the intricate character of the works with their crooked trenches and roofed - over pits. Many of the officers had been shot down in the first charge, and sailors and soldiers were crowded together, striking at their foes, but hampered by the restricted space and the maze of entrenchment. It was terrible work, but soon over. The stormers fell back in confusion before the bullets and the tomahawks of the garrison. The Naval reserves, under Captain Hamilton, of the “Esk,” made an heroic effort to stay the panic, but the commander was shot on the top of the outer parapet when calling on his men to advance, and the whole force rushed down the glacis.
Commander Hay was mortally wounded, and nearly every other officer fell. Four captains of the 43rd lay close to each other just within the pa. Lieutenant Hill, of H.M.S. “Curaçoa”—the senior officer saved from the wreck of H.M.S. “Orpheus” at the Manukau in 1863—was shot when he had reached the centre of the fort. More than a hundred of the assaulting column were casualties, and the glacis and the interior of the pa were strewn with dead or dying. The Maoris suffered too, but not so severely.
The defenders of Puke-hinahina treated the wounded British with a humanity and chivalry that surprised their foes. With few exceptions, they did not despoil them of anything but
vivandière, was as compassionate as she was brave. It was she who under fire gave water to Colonel Booth, a deed that has wrongly been attributed to a man named Te Ipu. Asked for her narrative of this incident, Heni said:—
“I was in the firing-trench when I heard the wounded officer lying in our lines calling for water. There were other wounded soldiers distressed for want of water. When I heard these cries I could not resist them. The sight of the foe with their life-blood flowing from them seemed to elate some of our warriors, but I felt a great pity for them, and I remembered also a rule that had been made amongst us that if any person asked for any service to be performed the request must not be refused; it would be an It was not until the year 1867, when Heni and her husband were keeping the Travellers' Rest Hotel at maketu, that she learned the identity of the officer to whom she had given water. “Colonel St. John came to the hotel one day,” said Heni, “and asked to see me. Seizing my hand he said, ‘I did not know until lately that it was you who gave water to my dear friend Colonel Booth at the Gate aitua to ignore it—that is, neglect to comply would bring misfortune. So I rose up from the trench, slung my gun, and was about to run back to the cooking-place where we kept our water when my brother asked me where I was going. I told him that I heard the dying men crying for water and I could not disobey the call. He said not a word, but stood with his gun-butt planted on the ground and his hands gripping the muzzle, and watched me earnestly while I ran to fetch the water. I had to go about 10 yards to the rear of the trench, and as our fence was almost demolished I was in view of the troops. I found that a small tin in which I had some water had been capsized, but that there was still the iron nail-can full. It was so heavy that I had to spill about half of it before I could conveniently carry it to the soldiers. I carried it in my arms to where the Colonel was lying.pa.’ Then he told me that Colonel Booth, when dying in the hospital at Te Papa, informed the surgeon, Dr. Manley, that it was a Maori woman who spoke English that gave him water. Long after the war a friend sent me a picture by a New Zealand artist showing a man with a calabash carrying water to Colonel Booth. It amused me, for besides the mistake about the man there was no calabash, but an old iron nail-can.”
Evening had now descended on the battlefield. The Koheriki discovered that Ngai-te-Rangi, after repulsing the bluejackets, had abandoned their pa, having exhausted their ammunition. The left - wing defenders concluded, therefore, that the wisest course for them also was to retire. Their position was a very weak one, and was sure to be stormed next day, as there were so few to hold it, and the artillery had so thoroughly battered the defences. So that night, under cover of the darkness,
pa, and thence dispersed to their various stations along the edge of the forest; and the Koheriki, after many adventures, made their way inland to Poripori.
The British casualties numbered more than one-third of the total force composing the storming-party. Ten officers were killed or died from wounds, and four were wounded; of non-commissioned officers and privates twenty-one were killed and seventy-six wounded; total killed and wounded, 111 officers and men.
The 43rd Regiment lost their colonel, four captains, and one lieutenant killed, and a lieutenant and two ensigns severely wounded. Among the killed were two brothers, Captain and Lieutenant Glover. Nearly all the Naval Brigade officers were killed or wounded. The official return of officers killed and wounded was as follows:—
Naval Brigade: Killed—Captain Hamilton, H.M.S. “Esk”; Lieutenant Hill (late of “Orpheus”), H.M.S. “Curaçoa”; Mr. Watts, gunner H.M.S. “Miranda.” Wounded—Commander Hay (abdomen, mortally), H.M.S. “Harrier”; Lieutenant Hammick (shoulder, severe), H.M.S. “Miranda”; Lieutenant Duff (back, two places, severe), H.M.S. “Esk.”
43rd Regiment: Killed—Captain R. C. Glover (head); Captain C.
A bluejacket named pa.
The Maori losses in killed totalled about twenty-five, including the Ngai-te-Rangi chiefs Te Reweti, Eru Puhirake, Tikitu, Te Kani, Te Rangihau, and Te Wharepouri. Te Moana-nui received three gunshot-wounds. Te Ipu was another warrior badly wounded. Te Reweti received six or seven bullet-wounds and had his legs broken.
During May the troops, with Captain Pye's Colonial Defence Force Cavalry in advance, took possession of the Maoris' abandoned rifle-pits and settlements on the Wairoa Stream. A portion of the British force, with the warships (excepting the “Harrier”) returned to Auckland. The Ngai-te-Rangi meanwhile had received reinforcements from Rotorua, including some of the Ngati-Rangiwewehi, of Puhirua and Awahou villages—a sept of the Arawa who declined to fall in line with the rest of the tribe and espouse the British cause—and also a party of fifty warriors of the Ngati-Hinekura and Ngati-Tamatea-tutahi hapus of Ngati-Pikiao, from Rotoiti. In addition, there was a war-party of Ngati-Porou, chiefly the Whanau-ia-Hinerupe hapu, from Pukemaire, in the Waiapu Valley, East Cape. These determined warriors were headed by Hoera te Mataatai. In June the Kingites resolved to force another trial of strength with the Queen's troops, and a position was taken up on the prolongation of the Puke-hinahina ridge, about three miles inland from the Gate pa. At this place, Te Ranga, the natives entrenched themselves, but were observed by a British reconnoitring-party before they had completed the fortifications. The main track inland to Oropi passed along this long leading ridge—the present road from Tauranga via Pye's pa follows the same route—and Ngai-te-Rangi selected the narrowest part for their entrenchments. On either side of this strategic highway to the interior the ground fell steeply to undulating partly wooded valleys and swamps with watercourses; the descent on the east, the natives' right flank, was very abrupt. Across this narrow neck the Kingites constructed their line of trench, with some flanking rifle-pits on the right front on the edge of the gully. The ridge-top was level of surface. The advance from the coast was along a gentle inclined plane.
On the 21st June a strong reconnoitring column, under Colonel Greer, advancing along the leading ridge from the Gate pa, found the Maoris hard at work on their entrenchments. They were not given time to complete the formidable pa contemplated. Colonel Greer decided to attack at once. He had a force of about six hundred men, composed of detachments of the 43rd Regiment, under Major Synge, the 68th, under Major Shuttleworth, and the 1st Waikato Militia, under Captain Moore. Sending back to the camp for reinforcements and an Armstrong gun, the British commander threw out skirmishers and engaged the native outposts, then opened a heavy fire on the defenders of the trenches. The 43rd and a portion of the 68th were sent out on either side, and kept up a flanking fire.
The British casualties in this short and sharp affair, the final battle of the campaign, were thirteen privates of the 43rd and 68th killed, and six officers and thirty-three non-commissioned officers and privates wounded. The 43rd and their comrades exacted a terrible vengeance for their defeat at the Gate Pa. Quite 120 Maoris were killed, more than half of them with the bayonet; the rest were shot as they fell back gallantly fighting. Rawiri Puhirake, the commander at the Gate Pa, and
Two British soldiers were recommended for the Victoria Cross for their valour in the charge at Te Ranga. One was Captain Smith, of the 43rd, who led the right of the advance and received two wounds; the other was Sergeant Murray, of the 68th, who killed a Maori about to tomahawk a corporal who had just run him through with his bayonet.
A number of the Maori wounded died in hospital at Te Papa. The natives killed on the field were laid out in three long rows—thirty in one row, thirty-three in another, and thirty-four in another. They were buried in the rifle-pits, their self-dug graves. Others were buried where they fell when retreating. Several years later the remains of the gallant patriot Rawiri Puhirake were reinterred in the military cemetery at Tauranga, by the side of his adversary Lieut.-Colonel Booth, killed at the Gate Pa. This tribute to an heroic and knightly foe was a measure of the general admiration exhibited by the British for their Ngai-te-Rangi antagonists. The Tauranga tribes surrendered soon after Te Ranga, and the friendliest relations were established between the fighters of the two races, who esteemed each other for the courage and the humanity which had distinguished the whole conduct of the brief campaign.
Possibly it was the finding of the Maori “order of the day” on Pa. Pa incident attributed to
The present main road from Tauranga to Rotorua cuts through the centre of the Gate Pa works, at a distance of two miles from the town; and the road inland via Pye's Pa—the most direct route to Oropi and Rotorua—also traverses the centre of the entrenchments at Te Ranga. A little memorial church stands by the roadside on the spot once occupied by the trenches of Ngai-te-Rangi at the Gate Pa, but there is nothing to inform the passer-by as to the site of the defences. On the crown of the Puke-hinahina Hill behind the church the lines of the British redoubt erected in 1864 on the remains of the Maori pa are still well marked. The trench and fence on the west side of the road, above the Kopurererua Swamp, indicate the position of the left wing held by the small Koheriki party.
At Te Ranga, alongside the road, there are the remains of the trenches in which more than a hundred Maoris were buried. The road passes through the levelled lines; on each hand, but chiefly on the left, going inland, are the depressions indicating the rifle-pits and ditches of the works. In a paddock on the edge of the sudden descent to the valley, a few yards east of the road, there are trenches overgrown with gorse and fern; these formed the Maori right flank. A Maori monument is to be erected to mark the sacred spot where so many gallant warriors fell.
THE FIRST OCCASION on which British forces came into conflict with Maori warriors (leaving out of consideration pa, on the south side of the Kapuni River, and fired heavily on the Maoris after securing the remaining child, little Jack Guard. A British flag of truce was flying at the time, but the troops got out of hand. After the sharp skirmishing the force escaladed the evacuated hill-fort Waimate, which had been shelled on the 1st October, and also captured the pa Orangi-tuapeka, on the northern side of the Kapuni. On the 11th October both fortified villages were destroyed.
The first British troops stationed in New Zealand were 100 men of the 80th Regiment, under Major Bunbury, who arrived at Auckland from Sydney in 1840.
In 1842, as the result of an outbreak of war between the Ngai-te-Rangi and Arawa Tribes in the Bay of Plenty—an aftermath, by a curious chain of circumstances, of Taraia's cannibal raid on Ongare, Whanake's pa on Katikati Harbour—a military expedition was despatched from Auckland to Tauranga. Two traders' boats had been seized, and as one of these was retained by the Arawa, of Maketu, it was proposed to attack that pa. Major Bunbury took fifty of his men, and was given three guns from H.M.S. “Tortoise,” a store-ship loading kauri spars at the Great Barrier. The Government brig “Victoria” landed the small force at the entrance to Tauranga Harbour, and Bunbury encamped at Hopu-kiore, a short distance east of Mount Maunganui. Several weeks were spent there quietly, and then the expedition was withdrawn, after serving as a kind of buffer between the two tribes, which presently made peace. Lieutenant Bennett, R.E., had shortly before this examined and reported on a number of the Maori fortified positions at and around Tauranga.
The authorities in Kororareka had timely warning of Heke's intended attack, but failed to profit by it. On the evening of the 10th March Mr.
It is said that the principal damage to the smashed carronade (sketch, p. 79) mounted by Kawiti in Rua-pekapeka pa was caused many years after the war by some Europeans who amused themselves by exploding a charge of blasting-powder in it.
In the Land Claims Court held at Wellington in 1842 by Mr. Spain, the Imperial Government's Commissioner, Colonel Wakefield was asked, “Was it explained to the natives before they signed the deed that they were selling their pas, burying-grounds, and cultivated lands contained within the boundaries specified in the deed?”
The answer was: “The expression made use of was that they were selling all the land within those boundaries, but that reserves would be made for them; there was no special mention made as to their pas, burial-grounds, and cultivated lands.”
Mr. Spain, in his report on the Port Nicholson lands (1st March, 1845), criticized the manner in which the deed had been interpreted to the Maoris by
“Listen, natives, all the people of Port Nicholson. This is a paper respecting the purchase of land of yours. This paper has the names of all the places of Port Nicholson. Understand, this is a good book. Listen, the whole of you natives to write your names in this book; and the names of the places are Taraua [continuing on to the other side of Port Nicholson, to the name Parangarahu]. This is a book of the names of the channels and the woods, and the whole of them to write in this book, people and children, the land to ‘Wideawake.’ When people arrive from England it will show you your part, the whole of you.”
Barrett was afterwards asked, “Did you tell the natives who signed the deed that one-tenth of the land described should be reserved for the use of themselves and their families, or simply that the Europeans should have one portion of the land and the natives the other portion?” His answer was, “No, I did not tell them that they would get one-tenth; I said they were to get a certain portion of the land described, without describing what that portion was.”
“It appears to me,” wrote Mr. Spain, “that this interpretation in explanation was not calculated to explain to the natives who were parties to the purchase-deed a correct idea of what lands that instrument purported to convey, or of the nature or extent of the reserves that had been made for their benefit, and this will in a great measure account for the very determined manner in which the natives generally in the district opposed the occupation of the lands by the Europeans, and denied the sale to Colonel Wakefield from the earliest period to the arrival of the settlers.”
The following is an extract from a letter written by Judge
“The attack on the camp at the Hutt produced a good deal of alarm among the settlers, even in the town and elsewhere, and for several days even our quiet neighbourhood [Karori] was agitated. A body of thirty-two Militia was enrolled; twelve armed police were sent up, and other preparations made to prevent surprise and repel attack. This was something, though not so well done as it might have been. Some of the settlers went into town, but we did not see any reason for so doing until 26th May, when I received an especial warning from Moturoa, a friendly chief of the Ngati-Awa, and from Hemi, another of the same tribe, that I had better go into town, as it had certainly been determined in pa to attack Karori. I have since learned that this was true—that it was discussed whether the attacks should be confined to the Hutt or be extended elsewhere, and utu), whereas he has no such claim elsewhere. Rauparaha claimed the merit of this, and I think it not unlikely that he may have used his influence in that direction, but I believe the chief opposition was within the pa Wai-taingi-nui [Paua-taha-nui]. I know for certain that there is an old chief of the Ngati-Toa called Te Ra-ka-herea who joined his relation Rangiheata from what the Natives called whakama—“cause (to be) white,” or shame—that is, because all his relations being with Rangi, he felt whakama at not being with them; but being at the same time not ill-disposed towards the pakehas, he has acted as a bridle on Rangi's angry passions.
“Karori is certainly the least likely place for an attack. It is far from Rangi's pa—the military station is between it and Karori in one direction, and other difficulties intervene; still, I thought a diversion might be made here simultaneously with an attack on the Hutt. Then, all the settlers rely on me, and as I could not be sure that we were secure I could not feel justified in lulling the people into a feeling of security which might be fallacious. I therefore told all the settlers to send the women and children into town, which was done, and we followed in the evening.”
A party of sailors from H.M.S. “Calliope” went out to Karori to protect the property of Judge Chapman and other settlers.
The stone barracks, two-storeyed, at Paremata, near the entrance to Porirua Harbour, were built 1846–47, and were enclosed in a stockade extending to the waterfront. The earthquakes of 1848 and 1855 reduced the building to a ruinous condition. It originally had one or more small cannon mounted for a time on its turrets or flanking works. The remains of the lower walls are to be seen from the railway-line at the Paremata Bridge over the entrance to Paua-taha-nui Inlet.
“Whanganui,” meaning the great bay or estuary, referring to the mouth of the river, is the correct spelling of the name usually now written “Wanganui.” An alternative traditional meaning is “the place of long-waiting,” in allusion to the necessity of waiting for low tide before crossing at the mouth. The “h” has been dropped in common usage, and it has therefore been deemed best to follow in this History the modern spelling in respect of the town and the river. The original form “Whanganui,” however, has been retained when referring to the Maori tribes of the district.
Bishop
“If the central district of the northern Island, including Waikato, Taupo, Rotorua, Opotiki, Waiapu, and Poverty Bay, were formed into one or more provinces, a simple system of elective and representative government, under immediate sanction of the Governor, might probably be brought into operation. The form of government, as in the Swiss cantons, need not be in all parts exactly the same, but might be adapted to the wishes and customs of particular tribes, provided that in all cases two fundamental points were adhered to—that the chief magistrates and councillors should be recommended by the tribe and confirmed by the Governor, and that all regulations made by them should require the Governor's assent. It would probably be found possible to bring these chief magistrates together in a general council, and many regulations made at such a meeting and assented to by the Governor might be held to be binding upon all the tribes. This system ought to rest at first upon voluntary compact, and rather to be offered as a boon than enforced
Selwyn, reviewing this proposal after three years, considered that such a scheme of government might either have absorbed the King movement or have allowed it to remain standing by itself in the midst of other and better systems carried on under the direction of the Government. He thought the Maori could have been moulded easily into any system that would elevate the race and tend to union and social amalgamation with the Europeans. It was most essential that there should be tribunals for land; without them no system of government would be useful.
Sir
“Whilst large bodies of troops were in the country, and before the war commenced, I paid a visit to the Waikato tribes, who I believed were resolved upon a formidable outbreak. The whole of their principal chiefs met me, with the exception of the Maori King, who was ill; and I, to those chiefs, with the full consent of my responsible advisers, offered to constitute all the Waikato and Ngati-Maniapoto country a separate province, which would have the right of electing its own Superintendent, its own Legislature, and of choosing its own Executive Government—and, in fact, would have had practically the same powers and rights as any State of the United States has now. There could hardly have been a more ample and complete recognition of Maori authority, as the Waikato tribes would within their own district—a very large one—have had the exclusive control and management of their own affairs. This offer was, however, after full discussion and consideration, refused, on the ground they would accept no offer that did not involve an absolute recognition of the Maori King and his and their entire independence from the Crown of England—terms which no subject had power to grant, and which could not have been granted without creating worse evils than those which their refusal involved.”
The following is an account from native sources describing the efforts of the Maori King and his and their entire independence from the Crown of the confederation of tribes. It differs in some details from and amplifies the narrative in Chapter XVI; it is interesting also for its picturesque Maori idioms and proverbial expressions.
Tamehana te Rauparaha, after his voyage to England, pondered over the question of the good government of the Maori people, and formed the belief that they would be benefited by the setting-up of a King. He suggested to his cousin, Matene te Whiwhi, that they should search for a King for the tribes. This was in 1851–52. They went to the Whanganui and made their proposal to the chief Te Anaua, but he was unwilling to take the kingship, and said, “Inland yonder is Ruapehu the mountain; there is Turoa the man.” So the delegates went up the river and placed their request before Pehi Turoa, the high chief of the Upper Whanganui tribes. Turoa in his turn indicated the ariki of the Ngati-Tuwharetoa Tribe, of Taupo, by quoting the proverbial saying, “Ko Tongariro te
Maunga, ko Taupo te Moana, ko Te Heuheu te Tangata” (“Tongariro is the Mountain, Taupo is the Sea,
Next the offer was made to
The delegates had also been to Taranaki, and had met with a refusal from Te Hanataua, chief of Ngati-Ruanui. So they were in a dilemma; no one wanted to be king.
At length (1856) a large meeting was held at Taupo, and was attended by representatives of all the tribes. Matene te Whiwhi in an oration unfolded his final proposal in the eloquent and figurative manner of the Maori. “I look far over the sea to the south,” he said, “and what do I see? Mountains covered with snow and ice. I turn and gaze across the land to the east and what do I behold but cabbage-trees? [An allusion to the Kaingaroa Plain.] I turn my eyes to the belly of the Fish of Maui [Taupo]; I see nought but the little kokopu fish and the crayfish that walks backwards (te koura hoki whakamuri). I turn to the west and look over the forests to Taranaki. I see there but broken ropes (taura motumotu). [Meaning, the tribes of that district were suffering from wars and disunion.] I look far northward; I see there a leaking house. Now,” declared Matene, making his point and climax, “I turn my eyes to Waikato. I behold Waikato Taniwha-rau, Waikato of whose river it is said, ‘He piko he taniwha; he piko he taniwha’ (‘Waikato of a hundred dragons; Waikato whose every bend holds a water monster—i.e., a strong and numerous tribe, with many great chiefs’). Yonder is the man who should be King of the Maori people.”
Such was the manner in which Matene directed the attention of the tribes to
At the great ceremonial meeting at Ngaruawahia (1858) for the purpose of installing Potatau as King, Kotahitanga took this form:—
Iwaikau said: “Potatau, this day I create you King of the Maori people. You and Queen Victoria shall be bound together to be one (paiheretia kia kotahi). The religion of Christ shall be the mantle of your protection; the law shall be the whariki mat for your feet, for ever and ever onward” (ake, ake tonu atu).
“Ae,” replied Potatau. “Yes, I agree, for ever and ever onward.” And the aged warrior King continued: “Kotahi te kohao o te ngira e kuhuna ai te miro ma, te miro pango, te miro whero” (“There is but one eye of the needle, through which the white, the black, and the red threads must pass”).
This declaration was succeeded by the anointing after the Scriptural manner. Whakahonare ki te Kingi” (“Do honour to the King”).
This narrative attests the altruistic aims of the kingmakers. They sought a head to bind the tribes together for the national betterment, in amity with the white Queen, and Potatau himself was anxious to continue his long friendship with the pakeha people.
Sir
In further despatches and minutes the Governor said that pa and the homes of two hundred of his people were destroyed by the troops in 1860; the houses and the surrounding cultivations were burned. The Waitara owners thereupon retaliated by burning an exactly corresponding number of European settlers' houses.
“Ought Her Majesty,” Sir
The Governor further showed that the forcible occupation of the Pekapeka Block in 1860 had convinced the Maoris that a new system of obtaining lands was to be established, and that they would all be despoiled like Waitara if they did not make general resistance. They became convinced that their destruction was decided upon, and thus there arose an almost universal belief that the struggle was one for house and home. Hence the wrong done the natives by the seizure of the Waitara land was the cause of other wars.
A hitherto unchronicled incident in the early stages of the Government's quarrel with the Waikato tribes was the despatch of Mr. S. Percy Smith (afterwards Surveyor-General) to the Kaipara district in order to enlist the assistance of the Ngati-Whatua Tribe. Mr. Smith was well acquainted with these people, having been surveying in the Kaipara and Northern Wairoa districts in 1859–60. The following is an extract from his MS. journal of reminiscences (furnished by his son, Mr. M. Crompton Smith, Chief Draughtsman, Survey Department):—
“At the time of my return to town (from survey work at the Kaipara) there was considerable anxiety in Auckland on account of the Waikato tribes, which, it had been reported, were about to make a descent on the
“As soon as I arrived I was seated on a stool in the centre of this square, where the letter from the Government was read and I had to explain the necessity for the Auckland tribes returning at once to assist in the defence of the city. But they did not appear in any hurry, and declared that they could not leave till they had concluded the peace with Nga-Puhi, all of which was very annoying to me, as I had to impress them to make all haste back. Otherwise this great meeting was very interesting to me, for it was held with all the formality of ancient times—long speeches, war-dances, and all kinds of old ceremonies, not the least interesting of which were the hari-tuku-kai, or songs and dances of the women and young men as they advanced into the square, bringing the baskets of food held in their hands above their heads. My tent was pitched in the square, and generally one of the chiefs sat with me to explain the meaning of the various speeches and ceremonies. It was not until the 11th that peace was made and we all left, the Nga-Puhi going up the river, and the rest of us down stream to Tauhara; and a very fine sight it was to see our flotilla of about thirty boats and several fine war-canoes under sail. We were detained there by bad weather until the 18th, for the crossing inside Kaipara Heads is only to be undertaken in fine weather; it is so dangerous a place owing to the heavy seas which get up. It was not till the 20th that we arrived in town, and then most of my relieving force had melted away. Luckily the Waikato tribes had changed their minds and gone home, and so ended my urgent trip to fetch help to Auckland.
“Had the necessity arisen there is no doubt the Ngati-Whatua Tribe would willingly have fought against their old enemies the Waikato. And moreover, this tribe felt a kind of responsibility for the safety of the pakeha, for after a great meeting at Okahu (Orakei, on Auckland Harbour) they had sent an emissary to the Bay of Islands, to Governor Hobson, inviting him to occupy their country on the Isthmus of Auckland, and form his seat of Government there. [This was in the beginning of 1841; the Auckland Settlement had already been established, but the seat of Government was still at the Bay of Islands.] It was not entirely an unselfish offer on their part, for the Tamaki Isthmus had been the constant highway of hostile war-parties both from north and south for ages past, and they thought that if they could get the white man to settle there these hostile incursions would cease, which in fact they did, for ever. In these raids Ngati-Whatua always suffered.”
Just before the British troops crossed the Waikato border river, the Manga-tawhiri (July, 1863), a letter was sent by Taati te Waru and Porokoru Titipa, two of the leading chiefs of Upper Waikato (at Rangiaowhia and Te Awamutu), to the tribes in the southern parts of the Island inviting them to join in the general war against the Europeans. The tribes addressed were Ngati-Kahungunu, Te Atiawa, and Ngati-Raukawa, inhabiting the districts from the Wairarapa and Manawatu to Otaki and Waikanae; the chiefs named included Ngairo, of the Wairarapa, and Wi Tako Ngatata, an erstwhile supporter of the Government, at Waikanae. The letter, which had been discussed at a meeting of the runanga in the Ngati-Maniapoto meeting-house “Hui-te-Rangiora,” at Kihikihi, invited the southern Maoris to consider whether they should not follow Waikato's example and “sweep clean the fronts of your houses”—in other words, rise against the pakeha. The writers quoted Rewi's favourite war-song, which he either chanted or sent in writing on his Kingite recruiting missions, the ancient ngeri beginning “Puhi kura, puhi kura, puhi kaka” (“Red plumes, red plumes, plumes of the kaka”), and ending with an injunction to “grasp firm your weapons—strike.” The “red plumes” were now interpreted as referring to the uniforms of the soldiers.
The call to arms excited sympathy among some of the Ngati-Kahungunu, and a critical situation existed in the Wairarapa until Dr. Featherston, Superintendent of the Province of Wellington, assisted by Major Gorton, commanding the Militia, took measures to arm the white residents. Volunteer Rifle Corps were quickly sworn in at Greytown, Careterton, and Masterton, and stockades were begun at Masterton and Carterton.
It had been reported that the Ngati-Kahungunu intended to march over the Rimutaka Range and attack the Hutt settlements. The prompt defence arrangements overawed the Kingite section of the Wairarapa natives. The Kingites had urged Wi Tako Ngatata, of Waikanae, to attack the settlement at Paua-taha-nui, but he gave information to the Government side, and declined to fall in with the war-party's scheme, although he was a sympathiser with the King movement. A detachment of mounted troops (Colonial Defence Force) was stationed at Paua-taha-nui.
The Upper Hutt had been provided with a fortified post in the beginning of 1861. This was a stockade and ditch, with a two-storeyed timber blockhouse forming one of the angle bastions. The stockade was constructed on McHardy's Clearing, between the present sites of Wallaceville and Trentham. The old blockhouse is still standing; it is loopholed for rifle-fire, and made bullet-proof in the usual way with a filling of gravel between the outside wall and the lining. The blockhouse was garrisoned on occasions in the “sixties” by the Upper Hutt Militia, who were chiefly bushmen and sawmill workers. A similar defensive work was built, at the end of 1860, at the Lower Hutt, near the bridge, but was never required.
hapus, whilst Ngati-Whanaunga were directed by young tapu when he was roughly handled by a native policeman). Warning, however, had reached Governor Grey, and the warriors found themselves faced by the local troops—the 58th Regiment, with four guns, and the Royal New Zealand Fencibles—who lined Constitution Hill and the Parnell slopes commanding the bay, while a British frigate, H.M.S. “Fly,” dropped down the harbour and anchored off Waipapa, with her guns trained on the beached fleet of canoes.
After much angry argument the Maoris obeyed the Governor's ultimatum, and with heavy labour dragged their canoes to the water—it was now low tide—and paddled down the harbour for Orakei and their homes. Their chiefs later made formal submission to the Governor and presented him with several greenstone meres.
Mr.
The corps known as the Royal New Zealand Fencibles, referred to in the foregoing note, was a body of veteran soldiers converted into military settlers, established through Governor Grey's efforts as a protection for the southern frontier of the Auckland Settlement. It consisted of discharged British soldiers, about three-fourths of them pensioners, and all men of approved character and physique. The corps was enrolled in England in 1847. The term of service in New Zealand was to be seven years (most of the soldiers became permanent settlers); the pay was 1s. 3d. per day in addition to any pension; free passages were granted to New Zealand for the soldiers and their wives and families; and on arrival in the colony each Fencible was given possession of a two-roomed cottage and an acre of land, already partly cleared and made ready for cultivation; he also received an advance for furniture and stock. The members of the corps were required to attend six days' drill in the spring and six in the autumn, and to attend church parade every Sunday, fully armed, for inspection. The Commandant (Major Kenny) was paid £300; each officer was given a house and 50 acres of land. The discipline and drill of these old soldiers were excellent. The Fencibles included veterans of the wars in China and Afghanistan and the great battles in India, and several had served in the British Legion enlisted for the Carlist War in Spain in 1836. The settlements in which the pensioners were established were Onehunga, Otahuhu,
The knife with which Von Tempsky's (No. 2) Company of the Forest Rangers was armed, 1863–64 (pages 266–267), was somewhat after the pattern of the bowie-knife of Texan fame. Many stories have been related as to the origin of the knife, and it has often been accredited to Colonel James Bowie, a man of mark on the old Texas and Arkansas frontier, U.S.A. The facts, however, as related recently in the Arkansas Gazette centennial number (quoted in the Adventure Magazine) by the Hon. D. W. Jones, ex-Governor of the State of Arkansas, show that James Bowie was not the inventor, although he was the man who made the weapon famous. The first maker of this kind of knife was
Colonel
Mr. James McDonald, of Fenwick Avenue, Takapuna, Auckland, who as a boy shared in the defence of the Pukekohe East Presbyterian Church stockade against a Waikato war-party, supplies some important additional notes regarding that encounter (14th September 1863). The details are supplementary to the narrative given in this chapter (pages 273–283).
“It was about the middle of July, 1863,” states Mr. McDonald, “that things became very unsettled in Pukekohe and surrounding districts. Following the murder of Meredith and his son near the Great South Road, not far from Drury, a meeting was held at Mr. W. Runciman's house, and it was decided to convey the women and children to Auckland for safety. A deputation was then appointed to wait on the Minister of Defence in Auckland to ask for a fully equipped garrison for Pukekohe. The outcome
“This Pukekohe East stockade, a hurriedly constructed defence, consisted of New Zealand cedar (kohekohe) logs, 10 in. by 11 in., flattened on two sides and let into each other at the ends; these logs were laid horizontally on one another. Perpendicular to the logs were kahikatea slabs 6 in. by 3 in. Immediately outside this stockade was a trench 6 ft. wide and about 4 ft. deep. As an attack was feared, the slabbing was not completed on the southern side, and as a temporary protection wide 1 in. boards were nailed on.
“About six weeks had elapsed since the arrival of the garrison, and although news of Maori raids reached us from time to time no direct attack was made against any of the Pukekohe force until about ten days before the assault on the stockade. On returning to the bush one day after lunch, members of the slab-splitting party, who had a bull-dog with them, surprised some Maori scouts, who fired at the dog. The men reached the stockade safely. The following morning a party of settlers—Scott, Roose, and Hodge—had an exciting encounter with Maoris while looking over the cattle on their farms. They escaped, but Hodge lost his rifle. On the afternoon of the same day Colonel Nixon, of the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry, inspected the stockade, and, being informed of the attack, decided to reinforce the garrison that night. A detachment of the 70th Regiment arrived in the evening, and next morning a party under the command of Sergeant Perry left to search for Hodge's rifle, which was recovered. Perry's party on returning with the rifle reported that there was no sign of Maoris, and the 70th reinforcements left for the Shepherd's Bush Redoubt (Ramarama).
“A little after 8 o'clock on the morning of the 14th September the attention of the men resting outside the stockade was drawn by the intent gaze of some cattle towards the bush. An old bushman, who was talking to me while I was engaged in harnessing a horse, raised his rifle and fired towards the forest. The answer was a shower of bullets, which sent the men hurrying for shelter. It was this man's shot that really started the fight.
“The defenders of the stockade were twenty-three men all told. I was then a lad of fourteen, two years under military age, and I took no active part in the firing, but distributed ammunition among the men. The defenders were placed two at every loophole. Brisk independent firing was carried on for about two hours. Then, fearing a shortage of ammunition, Sergent Perry ordered a volley to be fired, with the idea of impressing the Maoris with the strength of the garrison's resistance. With the exception of one Maori who reached a point about 30 yards from the church, none got nearer the defences than approximately 60 yards. Corporal Donald, the crack shot of the garrison, was appointed to dislodge this sniper, but failed.
“Reference has been made to a young chief whose outstanding bravery and continuous encouragement to his men did much to prolong the battle. His death was the signal for great bewailing among his tribesmen, and this tangi continued for about half a hour, during which time things were much quieter. About 11.30 a.m. the sound of a bugle announcing the arrival of British reinforcements was hailed with cheers by the well-nigh exhausted garrison and loud curses from the natives. When approaching the stockade the leading sergeant was wounded by the Maori sniper at the puriri tree, but before the native warrior could gain the safety of the bush he was shot dead by the wounded man. Things
“About 2.30 o'clock in the afternoon further reinforcements arrived; these were detachments of the 18th (Royal Irish) and 70th Regiments. Between 3 and 4 o'clock a charge led by Captain Saltmarsh, was made down the southern slope of the steep hill below the church, and it was during this charge that most of the British casualties occurred. One Maori seen taking a rifle from a dead soldier was wounded in the chest by the Captain, but not so severely as to hinder him from wounding the Captain in the mouth and throat. Another 70th man came up, killed the Maori, and recovered the rifle—which, however, was stolen from him later.
“In half an hour of this fighting outside the stockade the Maoris were routed. The British losses were three killed and eight wounded. It was not until many years afterwards that a Government native interpreter, Mr. Grace, was able to estimate the native losses. This estimate was twenty-five killed and fifty-six wounded, twenty-five of whom died of wounds; total, fifty dead.
“After the bayonet charge on the south slope the enemy took up quarters for the night in my grandfather's (James McDonald's) house, where sniping took place at 900 yards range. Next day the bodies of five Maoris were buried in the church burying-ground, not on Easton's land, as previously reported. After trying to set fire to my grandfather's house, the Maoris all retreated next day. On the following Saturday the garrison left for Drury, and was discharged. As I was under the military age I did not receive any pay. Sergeant Perry recommended me to the Minister of Defence for the war-medal, but so far I have received nothing.
“The reference made by
“There was no Pukekohe Company of the Forest Rifle Volunteers actually formed until 1869; I joined the company on its formation in that year.”
The venerable Arawa half-caste woman Heni te Kiri-karamu (
“After the surprise and defeat of some of our people by Jackson's Forest Rangers in the Upper Wairoa bush (14th December, 1863) we became very cautious in our movements, and anxious to make our way to the main
“It was now decided that we should break through the chain of troops. Two of our best men were sent out to the open land as scouts, and they let us know the most propitious time for making our dash through and across the river ahead of us (the Mangatangi). There was a log bridge by which we hoped to cross, a place where the river was very deep; it consisted of two or three trees sawn down, squared, and thrown across the river. Our little rearguard—the two men who had gone out scouting, and who were instructed to cut down the bridge after we had passed—had a perilous post, but we were all in a most desperate position. Once we crossed the river, however, we would be safe. We made our escape in the night. The troops lit fires in the fern in order to deter us from passing through, but the smoke from these fires screened us and helped our safe passage. We passed so close to the tents that we could hear some of the soldiers playing an accordion and laughing and talking. [This was near the Surrey Redoubt.] After a very anxious time, during which we kept strict silence, we passed the sentry lines and crossed the river by the log bridge, which our axemen then chopped through. By this time it was daylight, and the white sentinel reported the track of our march. A force was immediately sent in pursuit of us; we could see dust rising and the bayonets shining in the sun. Some of the troops were mounted men. [The troops were Waikato Militia and C.D.F. Cavalry.] Their advance was stopped by the destruction of the bridge, and we were safe away for the Waikato country. We travelled southward a long way inland from the Waikato River, in the direction of the Piako. Soon after crossing the river we had to wade through a deep, boggy swamp, a very exhausting journey. At last we reached solid land on its south side, practically an island, and there we rested for a day or two recruiting our energies and revelling in the abundant supply of food—bush-pigeons, eels, pork, and potatoes.
“After a good rest,” continued Heni, “we embarked in canoes, which we found on the shore of this island in the lagoon; it was the northern part of Lake Waikare. We crossed the lake, and continued our journey to the country of our friends the Ngati-Haua, William Thompson's tribe. We crossed over some low hills into the swampy valley of the Piako, and from there we went on to Matamata, on the Upper Thames, where Te Raihi, the Ngati-Haua Queenite chief, was living. He befriended us, and we had a rest, then he advised us to go on to Peria, close to the river. Peria was a large village, the great gathering-place of many Kingite tribes, from the Waikato valley and the Hauraki to Rotorua and as far away as the East Cape. All were there—Ngati-Haua, Ngati-Raukawa, Ngati-Rangiwewehi,
pa called Te Tiki o te Ihingarangi. It stood on a cliff-top above the Waikato River, on the left or western side of the river, between Pukerimu—then a camp of the soldiers—and the Maunga-tautari Ranges. It was strongly palisaded and trenched. It was an ancient fighting pa, which Waikato had greatly strengthened. When we abandoned it we crossed over to the eastern ranges, and thence to Okauia and Tauranga.”
Lieut.-Colonel Arthur Morrow, V.D. (Staff, retired), supplies the following narrative of the expedition of the Auckland Rifle Volunteers to Wairoa South in 1863:—
“It was on a raw, dreary morning in the early spring of 1863 that the detachments of the Auckland Rifle Volunteers intended to relieve the Militia garrison doing duty in the Galloway Redoubt in the Wairoa district embarked on the Government steamer ‘Sandfly,’ then commanded by Captain Marks. We landed at the farm owned by the late Captain Salmon, and made all possible speed by a bush track to the redoubt. The site on which the camp was situated commanded the bridge and approaches to the river some 300 or 400 yards distant to the east; farther on in that direction, on the other side of the river, was the stockade, a heavily timbered loopholed structure. Near-by was the store and district post-office. The ground on the north and west faces of the redoubt—an earthwork of rectangular shape, with salient angles, and later enclosed with a strong palisade—was covered with dense bush. The parish church stood a quarter of a mile to the north. The ground to the east and south had been cleared of bush and was under grass, whilst that to the south-eastward of the stockade still contained a good deal of standing timber faced by a thorn hedge. We took up the quarters allotted to us within the quadrangle in company with a detachment of the 65th Regiment, under Lieutenant Chevalier, later relieved by a detachment of the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment, under Lieutenant Russell.
“On the afternoon of the 12th September we received the welcome intelligence through a friendly chief (Hori te Whetuki), called by the settlers ‘Long George,’ that the rebels had decided on attacking the camp in three days. On the morning of the 15th, when some of the men were playing cricket across the river, in the temporary company of a fatigue-party—told off to procure some slab timber for use in the redoubt—two shots were fired at them in quick succession from the hedge adjoining the bush, about 150 yards from the stockade. The cricketers and fatigue-party (who were unarmed) ran to the redoubt and stockade, from which the fire was quickly returned. The natives, however, not deeming it prudent to endeavour to carry the works by assault in the face of such a well-sustained rifle-fire, finally retired. The only casualty reported on our side was a slight arm-wound occasioned to Ensign Johnson by a spent ball. A young lad of Mr. Niccol's had a narrow escape, a ball having passed through his cap.
“On the afternoon of the 17th we were again thrown into a state of excitement by the appearance of two travel-stained men of the mounted
“Our firing having been heard at the camp, we soon heard the bugle sounding the ‘Advance’ as a party of men of the 18th Regiment, under Lieutenant Russell, came to our relief. We now gave the natives a parting volley, and returned to camp. On the following morning a party of fifty men from our camp, with twenty Wairoa Rifles from the stockade, under Lieutenant Steele, left at 4 o'clock, arriving within 300 yards of the native village (Otau) shortly before daylight. We fired heavily into the whares, but as the river was still in flood we were unable to approach their position to a close range, and drew off without sustaining any casualties. On our way back to camp we buried the men killed on the previous evening. Later on in the day another expedition was organized, and twenty men of the 18th were despatched to occupy the position in front of the village, whilst Major Lyon, with seventy-five of all ranks, marched by a track on the other side of the river to take the settlement in the rear. We found, however, that the natives had gone. It was unfortunate that this course was not decided upon in the morning attack, when it would have assured success. We made a search through the village and secured much of the goods taken from the settlers (which we were enabled to return). The whares were riddled with bullets, and the profusion of blood-stains, both inside and out, testified to the native losses. We got several guns and tomahawks, and returned to camp.
“Matters now remained quiescent for a little time; then we ascertained that a large native force had assembled in the settlement of Urungaheuheu, some four miles distant across the river from our camp. An expedition was again organized, consisting of the 18th men with as many of the Rifle Volunteers as could be spared—having regard to the efficient protection of the redoubt. We arrived in the settlement early in the forenoon, only to find that the natives had made a hurried departure, leaving an old woman as the sole occupant. After a brief halt we pushed on again in the direction taken by the natives, and discovered that they were erecting a pa some miles distant in the ranges. Not being possessed of artillery or even sufficient supplies for such an expedition, we were obliged to return, picking up some fresh supplies for the camp in the way of pigs and poultry, in addition to which we recovered some watches and other valuables belonging to the settlers, together with guns and tomahawks.
With reference to the late Volunteer
Shortly before the operations at Orakau (1864) some of the Forest Rangers distinguished themselves—though unofficially—by a daring expedition into the Maori country south of the Puniu River. They found camp life under Imperial control very irksome and slow after the freedom they had enjoyed in their active and useful campaigning, and parties of them relieved the comparative monotony by scouting along the frontier, occasionally skirmishing at long range with the Maoris. During March a small party from the two companies, under Lieutenants Roberts and Westrupp (Jackson and Von Tempsky were on leave), made an expedition from Kihikihi into the unknown enemy country across the Puniu. Keeping the Tokanui hills (the “Three Sisters”) on their right, they penetrated a considerable distance to the south-east, and after crossing some streams (the Mangatutu and Waikeria were two of these small rivers) they bivouacked on a wooded hill above the large settlement called Wharepapa, where there was a gathering of fugitives from the occupied country. The smoke was rising from the cooking hangis in the early morning as the Rangers descended the hill. The Maoris abandoned their breakfast and their village when the dreaded “Mirihia” (“Militia,” as they distinguished the carbineers) came doubling down upon them, and retreated so speedily that Roberts and his comrades found it useless to follow them, and contented themselves with the captured pork and potatoes. It was not until long afterwards that Roberts ascertained the name of the village. This is one of the venturesome expeditions of the Rangers which did not figure in despatches. In fact, it was not appreciated by the Imperial officers. When Roberts and Westrupp reported to the officer in command at Kihikihi Redoubt the result of their scouting enterprise he had them and their Rangers transferred to Te Awamutu Camp for their “wholly unauthorized” zeal.
Major Von Tempsky, in his MS. journal (now in the Turnbull Library, Wellington), gave the following animated description of the first skirmish of the Mauku Forest Rifles and the Forest Rangers (8th September, 1863):—
“We mustered about fifty men, including fifteen Mauku Rifles, under Lieutenant Lusk. From the Lower Mauku, where the stockade of the settlement was erected, the houses of the settlers straggle along a wooded ridge running south; at about a mile and a half another ridge joins the former at a right angle, dotted with another set of settlers' houses, amongst them a little church with a white steeple, now made bullet-proof and garrisoned by settlers and Militia. At the eastern end of that settlement the native village of Patumahoe commences; it had been abandoned long ago by the natives who had joined the cause of the fighting tribes. South of this about a mile or two lies the farm of Messrs. Lusk and Hill. We visited the house, and there at last we found fresh tracks. We followed them like sleuthhounds. They led through the corner of a large paddock, then entered the bush by a well-beaten path. We were about a mile from the paddock when we heard three, four, five, six shots fired, evidently in the paddock. We turned and hastened back. It was reported from the rear that Maoris could be heard shouting to one another. Jackson and Lusk decided that the party should divide, a process I did not believe in but had to assent to. One party, under our ensign, Hay, and guided by Mr. Hill, were to look up the Maoris in our rear, as it was thought that there would be found the strongest number of enemies; thirty men, all Forest Rangers, were allotted to that party. The remaining twenty, under Jackson, Lusk, and myself, proceeded towards the paddock.
“Cautiously we sallied from the bush, reconnoitring the paddock. We saw no enemy. At last we saw a beast lying dead, evidently. That sign at least was satisfactory. We rushed up to it, found it warm yet, and with six bullet-holes in it. We looked around; nothing else was visible. The paddock was of great length, about half a mile square, covered with burnt stumps and logs. The settlers set to skinning the beast while it was warm, and I reflected on the probabilities of our case and kept the men from lumping together, as I did not believe in the apparent serenity of the bush.
“We had just scattered a bit when another shot was fired, towards the south-west corner of the paddock. There was no mistake in this; there were the Maoris, and thus they intended to draw us on. We pleased them to a certain extent, but not exactly the way they wanted us to go—across the open paddock right on to the dense bush where the shot was fired. We made for the bush immediately opposite to us and followed its cover along the edge towards the direction of the shot. We knew that at every step now we might come upon the Maoris, and I can assure you we kept a sharp lookout all around us; but we saw nothing; nothing moved except what we moved.
“Thus we marched on. Where the deuce are the Maoris? Down comes a volley with a vengeance. The powder-smoke is blown into our faces; I rub my eyes—I can hardly see for the saltpetre-fumes in them. ‘Give it to them, boys, right and left!’ and away crack our carbines and rifles.
“Jackson has fallen in with a new idea. He has drawn five Rangers into the paddock behind some logs, and shouts to us to come to him. Of course it is a mistake; we remain where we are; but the Rangers commence blazing away, and we might get a friendly bullet by mistake, so we have to form in the paddock also, losing every chance of cutting off the retreat of the Maoris.
“There behind good cover, stumps and logs, a harmless exchange of shots is carried on for a while. Our thirty Rangers appear on our left wing, panting; they have found no Maoris, and, hearing our firing, have joined us.
“I urge a charge. Not yet. Very well. I can see nothing to fire at, so I lie behind my stump and look at Lusk, who is in the same predicament. I have a dog with me who won't go under cover, and gets hit in the head—only a graze though, as I found out afterwards.
“At last, while the fire of our opponents had grown slacker, for very good reasons, a party was sent from our right flank to cut them off. We were to charge when the cheer of this party was heard. We rushed with frantic valour into the bush. The bush was calmer than ever. We traverse and jump from tree to tree. Strange is this bush fighting—mysterious: blue smoke, green leaves, perhaps a black head: cries, defiant, soul-rending, you hear perhaps—yes, you can hear them talking next door to you, coolly familiarly, but you see nothing—nothing tangible to grasp, to wrestle with.
“Our circumventive force still continued cheering in the depths of the wood, so that I began to think they had made a find of some of our game, but there they were dancing around a dozen extempore huts, the Maori encampment, revelling in retaken plunder and eating the Maori dinner cooking on the Maori fire. There was no sign of a body anywhere. Yet there could be no doubt that several of them must have been hit, judging from the painful climax of howls they set up after our first meeting at 20 yards, where several of our men on the left flank must have seen the backs of several Maoris lying behind the stumps. We now know that five were killed, and that one hundred Maoris were opposed to us, mostly Patumahoe natives then engaged in plundering and destroying settlers' property in the neighbourhood. I believe that after our first close encounter no one on our side made any hits excepting perhaps Jackson and Hay, as both of them were crack shots and don't fire at the smoke, as the general run of excited combatants do.
“We returned to Mauku laden with spoil and intoxicated with our victory. The Forest Rangers and Mauku Rifles had fleshed their arms at last, and that is no small matter with young soldiers. In casualties Alfred Speedy, son of Major Speedy, was shot through the cap, W. Worthington through the trousers, and Mr. Wheeler through the coat. This from a volley at 20 or 15 yards. Too much powder, ye Maoris!”
H.M.S. “Orpheus,” a 21-gun steam-corvette, manned by a crew of 256 officers and men, was totally wrecked on the Manukau bar on the 7th February, 1863, when bound to Onehunga from Sydney to take up duty on the New Zealand Station.
The pilot-station at the heads showed the signal to take the bar, and the “Orpheus” came in under steam and sail before a good westerly breeze. The ship was carrying all plain sail, and her starboard foretopmast studding. sail was set. She was drawing 21 feet. She struck heavily on the western end of the middle bank, which afterwards was proved to have shifted three-quarters of a mile from where it was laid down on Drury's chart; the navigation officers of the “Orpheus,” however, had also the “Niger” navigator's sailing-directions. The pilot-station watcher, seeing the ship running into danger, semaphored to her to stand more out to sea, but the warning signal was observed too late.
The ship struck twice, and the engines were ordered full speed astern, but the screw did not work; the way the ship had on sent her firmly into the sand.
The topsails were lowered, and the other sails were clewed up. Great seas were now breaking over the ship, and, after one boat had with difficulty got clear, the crew all took to the yards and rigging. The steamer “Wonga Wonga,” bound south from Onehunga, went to the rescue, and approached the wreck as closely as she could. Some of the bluejackets, sliding down the foretopmast-stay, jumped into the sea and were picked up; others who attempted it were drowned.
The one boat which got clear took the news to the pilot-station, but it was night before the tragic story reached H.M.S. “Harrier,” lying at Onehunga, twenty miles away, and by that time all was over.
The rollers breaking on the bar burst continually over the hull and lower masts. The yards and shrouds were thick with sailors despairingly looking for rescue. About 6 o'clock in the evening Commodore Burnett, who was in the mizzen-rigging, hailed the men, asked them to pray to God, and said he would be the last to leave the ship.
The mainmast was the first to go over the side. As it was falling the men clinging to the yards and rigging gave three heart-rending farewell cheers, which were answered by the men on the other masts, and next moment the gallant sailors were vainly struggling for their lives. The foremast soon followed, and then the mizzenmast gave way and crashed into the surf. The mizzentop fell on Commodore Burnett and partly stunned him, and he was drowned.
Out of the crew of 256 all told, only sixty-nine (including eight officers) were saved.
The bar which proved fatal to the beautiful corvette “Orpheus” and the greater number of her crew is called by the Maoris “Te Kupenga o Tara-mai-nuku” (“Tara's Fishing-net”), a reference to an ancestral chief whose name is associated with several places on the Auckland coast. Another native name for it is “Te Whare o te Atua” (“The Dwelling of the God”). The sandbanks are the northern remnant of a strip of low-lying land called Paorae, which anciently extended outside the present coast-line from the Manukau southward to Waikato Heads.
The following are extracts from a diary kept (1863–64) by Captain James Stichbury, of Ponsonby, Auckland, when a private in the 1st Battalion of Auckland Militia; they are interesting for the glimpses they give of the tribulations and humours of the citizen soldier's life on active service:—
4th July, 1863.—Commenced drill, but being the first time made rather a mess of it. Continued drill every morning until the 9th, when we had a summons for actual service at 2s. 6d. per day. Drill every morning until the 18th, when we marched to Otahuhu in a very hot sun. We all thought it was a tremendous long walk with our sixty rounds of ammunition and rifle. Nothing to eat the first night.
21st July.—At 9 o'clock came off guard. At 10 marched from the camp to our destination, Papatoetoe, to build a redoubt. Reached it at 2 o'clock; took our tent and bread and raw meat with us. As soon as we had got our tents pitched—we had not time to dig the trenches round—it came on to rain. We had nothing to eat this night, for the rain would not let the fires burn; and, what made it worse, we had no blankets for two days after we arrived here. We had to lie on the wet ground with only our greatcoats and no fern. Dreadful night.
22nd July.—Very cold and miserable this morning, having to lie in the wet all night. Rain never ceased all day. Had to build some cookhouses as well as we could. Had no grog to-day, though we were entitled to it as soon as we started from Otahuhu. All the men were half-dead and laid up with the cold. Another night in our wet clothes and no fern.
23rd July.—Got served out to us a blanket and piece of oilskin, which came in very acceptable. Rain left off in the afternoon, which enabled us to get some of our things dry, and got some fern and had a comfortable night's rest.
24th July.—Served out with regimental clothes. They were forage cap with topknot, blue-serge shirt, trousers with red stripe down the side, blucher boots, short leggings; also tin plate, pannikin, knife, fork, spoon, haversack, &c. We get, per day, 1 gill of rum, 1 lb. of meat, 1¼ lb. of bread, ⅙ oz. of tea, ⅙ oz. of coffee, ¼ oz. of sugar, and a grain of pepper and salt.
4th August.—At 9 o'clock fatigue parade. I was told off to work in the trenches. I got my shovel, but I did not do any work until I saw the captain; so I went up to him and told him I could not work in the trenches without my grog, for it is hard work digging on dry bread and hot coffee; besides, the grog is the only thing which keeps us alive this wet weather. [The diarist the previous day had been sentenced to “three days grog stopped” for absence without leave.]
5th August.—We have to get up an hour and a half before daylight. No matter what weather it is, there we have to stand, wet through and frozen with the cold, till we are dismissed. Have to clean our arms and belts. Had breakfast—very nice dry bread, as stale as a brick, and coffee without milk and very little sugar. After breakfast told off to dig in the trenches. Weather showery.
6th August.—We have to furnish our outer guards and picquets. The guard consists of a sergeant, a corporal, and nine men. The picquet consists
7th August.—Soldiering is very nice in dry weather, but in wet, and sleeping on the ground and under canvas, it is dreadful. Half the men in the camp are laid up with cold and rheumatism. I am on guard for four and twenty hours, and have rather a dismal post. We are stationed about half a mile from each other, and have two hours on and four hours off.
8th August.—The men that were confined last night [some of No. 5 Company had been put in the guard-tent for grumbling at their meat] were all let off with a reprimand. At 9 o'clock we were all paraded to have the Articles of War read to us on account of No. 5 Company's goings-on last night. As soon as we were marched into the hollow of the hill, so that we should be out of the wind, it came down to rain in torrents, and there we had to stand until the Colonel had done reading. He did not care, because he had an oilskin coat on, and we were in our blue shirts. After standing there in the rain for about twenty minutes we were dismissed, and away we went into our tents like a lot of drowned rats.
10th August.—At work in the bush to-day, under Lieutenant Tole, cutting trees down to make a new road to the Wairoa.
21st August.—(Papatoetoe.) Fine day. Told off for the trenches again. At a quarter to 9, as soon as we all got into bed nice and snug and the lights were out, two shots were fired by the sentry, and out we all went with only our pouch-belts on and our rifles. The order was given to load. We were all in such a hurry to get loaded that some put three cartridges in at once. Others left their ramrods in their rifles, and some went flying over the redoubt. Young B. and several others ran as hard as they could to Otahuhu, for they thought the Maoris were coming. A great many fired two or three shots each. As soon as it was a little quiet the Colonel and some other officers went to see if there was anybody about, and they found it was the grindstone that we were fighting.
22nd August.—Fine day. Everybody went to look at the poor grindstone, as they thought it would have been shattered to pieces. There was not a mark to be seen, although there were about a hundred shots fired at it. Went into the bush and found some bee-hives in the trees. Got two buckets of honey—quite a treat.
20th October, 1863.—Started from Albert Barracks, Auckland, at 2 p.m. Volunteer band played us as far as Parnell and then dropped off, and we went on. Arrived at Otahuhu Camp at 7 o'clock. Had no blankets, and nothing to eat.
21st October.—Got up at 7, and tried to get some meat for breakfast but could not. Had dry bread and a little drop of milk we managed to buy between us. Formed up at 9 to march to Drury. Very hot on the road, and dust very troublesome. Arrived at the camp at half-past 4 after a march of fifteen miles, with sixty rounds of ammunition, greatcoat, haversack full of different things, and rifle, weighing altogether about 30 lb.
24th October.—(Drury.) They have shifted us from where we first came to, and a dreadful place they have put us. When we were out before we built a splendid redoubt at Papatoetoe, the best and most comfortable in New Zealand. As soon as we got it finished we were sent to Auckland for a little while, and then sent to Drury—but I think a better name for it would be Dreary—to build another redoubt.
29th October.—Escort. Came back from Mauku; very miserable walking over the wet clay and a heavy load to carry, and forced to keep a sharp lookout.
30th October.—Forty men told off on engineers' fatigue to build a redoubt for the Artillery. The men all marched off the parade-ground, and when they got to the redoubt they all sat down and would not work, because this looks as if they bring us out to build redoubts for soldiers. (Saturday afternoon.) Went to the 18th (Royal Irish) camp and saw two men flogged for getting drunk. Sat in the tent singing songs until lights were out.
31st October (Sunday).—Dry bread and coffee for breakfast. Twenty-five men told off to unload cargo-boats of coal and flour. Seven of them [men who would not work] were tried and sentenced to seven days' pack-drill and grog stopped for the same period, and seven men were sent to the stockade at Otahuhu for seven days' hard labour and had their hair cut quite short. That is war-time. We must work on Sunday or go to prison.
1st November.—Warned for escort. After I got my breakfast one hundred men started at 7 from our camp, and some Regulars from the 18th camp. The distance is nine miles. The first redoubt we arrived at was Sheppard's Bush. We were strengthened there by forty men. The second redoubt was Martin's Farm. There we were strengthened by sixty men. Then we marched through the bush to our destination, called Williamson's Clearing Redoubt. Halted here for half an hour until the down convoy came, and off we started for Drury again. Reached our camp about 3 o'clock, very hungry and tired. Warned for commissariat fatigue for to-morrow to unload cargo-boats.
4th November.—(After coming off guard.) Sat in the tent on our pannikins, but could not lie down, for the floor was all in a flood and the rain coming through the tent. Not a wink of sleep all night. Went on my next relief. Thunder and lightning all night.
9th November.—Mud up to our knees and more than that. Have to lie in our tent in a frightful state, not being able to get dry fern, the weather being so unsettled. Went to see three soldiers belonging to the 18th Regiment flogged. In war-time they do not imprison them, because they cannot spare them.
14th November.—Escort started for the front at 7. Came back at 3, one man missing. Sergeant put under arrest for not looking after him and for reporting him present. We expect he straggled away from the main body and the natives have got him. Picquet sent out for him, but they came back without any signs of him.
21st November.—All the soldiers here are warned for the front, and we have to find all the duties until some more soldiers come to help us. The duties take about two hundred men every night. On regimental picquet to-night—that is, to go to the village and pick up the drunken men and bring them to camp.
26th November.—Hospital fatigue. Told off to build a house, but I wanted to get some of my clothes washed so I would not go, and Ensign Hoben put me in the guard-room. I had to remain there until Sunday morning at 11 o'clock. Tried by Captain Britton, and he was going to give me a week in the stockade and to have my hair cut short. Then he asked the officers of my company what sort of character I had, and they gave me a good one, so he only gave me two days' pack-drill and grog stopped. I went as cook and got off.
28th November.—Fine day. A very strong escort up to Williamson's Clearing—about 120 horses, and 112 on the up and down convoy. The down convoy brought three corpses—a midshipman and two officers of the Army, and five wounded men (from Rangiriri).
30th November.—About a hundred Maoris came down from the Queen's Redoubt under an escort of four hundred soldiers; passed through here, and were taken on by a relief to Otahuhu.
2nd December.—No convoy to-day in consequence of the remainder of the Maori prisoners (from Rangiriri) coming down. There are about eighty under a very strong escort.
10th December.—(Orders for Otahuhu.) Got up at daylight, being half past 3. Got everything packed up and breakfast at 7. The dinner was cooked overnight ready for us. Struck the tents at 8. As soon as the bugle sounded down came all of them—all but one—and all the rest began hissing them that stopped in it. There were about thirty tents: all went down in a minute. Got all the tents and different things into the drays and the camp cleared. Then had to sit in the hot sun till the relief came. We waited until 1, and no relief, so we went on, after getting orders not to sing on the road as we did before. The Major [Tighe] is a regular old soldier and very strict. We got grog at 1—two glasses each. Formed up in close column, and then the word was given, “Form fours—Right—Left wheel—Quick march,” and off we went in first-rate style. Very hot on the road. Reached the camp at Otahuhu at 4, like negroes with the dust, after a march of fifteen miles. No tea for us, as the men could not get it till 7. Had some sardines and bread, and went to bed in a hut full of fleas. Being tired, we were glad to sleep anywhere.
4th February, 1864.—(At Otahuhu Camp.) Got up at 5, gave our blankets up, had a wash and our breakfast, then tidied up our things ready for starting. At 9 o'clock we paraded, and shortly afterwards started for Drury. Rather hot and dusty on the road. Stopped at Burton's (Papatoetoe) to have a drink and a piece of lunch for twenty minutes; then we started again, and stopped at two springs, and then at Papakura to have a drink. We were pretty jolly on the road, singing all the way, and one or two of the men had concertinas and played some very lively tunes. On the road we marched too fast for the other companies, so the captain commanding put our company right behind. Then we would not march at all, so we dropped behind a long way, and he made us double. Then we dropped behind again, and when we marched into camp he gave us one hour's drill after walking sixteen miles with a load. We did it, but we all felt it very much. The commanding officer then was Captain Taylor, of No. 1 Company. After we had done drill we gave him three growls.
19th February.—Beautiful morning. At 7 started on convoy to Williamson's Clearing, escorting three Armstrong guns and about sixty carts loaded with ammunition, provisions, and other things. Very hot on the march, and the roads are being fresh metalled, and very miserable to walk on. Got to our destination at 12 and watered the horses, and then met the down convoy, about seventy carts, all empty. The officers would not let one of us ride. We all got into the carts, but were soon turned out again. (At night.) Large fires to be seen in the bush.
23rd February.—Got up at 5, cleaned my rifle and belts, had breakfast, and at 7 started for Williamson's Clearing. The day was beautifully fine, but the sun very hot. We were strengthened at every redoubt on the road, as usual. Got to the redoubt at Williamson's Clearing at 12. Was given charge of a prisoner belonging to the 18th Regiment (for Drury). He had fifty lashes and three months' hard labour.
In the following chronological list of the principal engagements and skirmishes during the period ending with the Kingite wars, 1864, the Maori losses are in many cases only approximate. The natives whenever possible carried off their dead and wounded, and it was difficult to obtain exact information as to their losses. The Maori figures in numerous instances are probably an underestimate; the number of wounded is unknown.
Page 413.—Plan of Waiari, Mangapiko River: It is considered most probable that the bathing-place where the troops were attacked was at the northern end of the Waiari pa peninsula, instead of at the point shown on plan.
A comprehensive index has been compiled by the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, and may be consulted there
R. E. OWEN, GOVERNMENT PRINTER, WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND.—1955