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III. The Cry from Pukékura

But still there were bright sparks of God-lit-fire
Within their breasts. They loved their native vales
With heart and soul.

Thomas Bracken.
(Farewell of the Ngatitoa to Kawhia)

Early the next morning Te Werohia and his men arrived at Hikurangi, and were welcomed to the pa with a full display of ancient ceremony.

Then followed a mighty feasting which lasted until noon, and after that the people gathered in great numbers on the marae and listened with sympathy to the cry from Pukékura. Aué! Their emotion as Te Werohia uttered these final words:

“We love the land won for us by our ancestors. It is our father and our mother. From our youth up we have defended our valley and home against constant raids from the east, but now the hosts of Tuhoe have seized the valley and besieged the pa on the Red Hill.

“So we come to thee, O Ariki, to lean on thee and on thy tauas that have never known defeat. Fail us, and we shall bid farewell to the sun and the light of day. Think of our homes and cultivations lying desolate, and of the remnant of our people hiding in the hills or taken away as captives to the mountains of the Uréwera, should Tuhoe crush us! Untie the fate that now encircles us! Sever the hold of night upon us, O Ariki! Alas! Alas!”

Greatly moved, some of the chiefs and elders of page 33 Hikurangi rose up and spoke in favour of immediate war, but there were others who advised caution and counselled peace. How could Hikurangi send a strong war-party against Tuhoe, said they, and still retain enough men to guard the pa against attack? How could the other branches of Te Arawa be expected to send tauas to distant Pukekura? Why should two sections of the Arawa tribe be endangered? Should not the Arawas near the Uréwera rather give up their valley and seek refuge on Hikurangi? Mawaké-Taupo would provide fresh homes and cultivations for Te Werohia and his people.

Among those who favoured peace was Te Moana the Wise, and his words carried weight. Said he:

“Truly the Maori is swayed by his emotions, even as the raupo blade bends to the breeze. Thus, year after year the din of war re-echoes through the land, and year after year blood's sickening stream flows afresh. When shall we Maoris learn to live in peace? Are we not all of the one race? Do we not all speak the one tongue? Ah me! As well try to sit upon the blow-hole of a whale as seek to keep the tribes from war!

“Yet hear me, O People of Hikurangi! Though the fighting be begun by you, the finishing may have to be left to your children's children. Ye will not crush the fiercely warlike Tuhoe by defeating them among the foothills or out on the plains of Kaingaroa. Their strongholds are on the far-off ranges, deep in the misty mountain-land of the Uréwera. The riven gorges and the rocky precipices are their earthworks. The steep ridges and the dense forests are their palisades. For Te Arawa, the Uréwera is the resting-place of many sons. Enough!”

Said another: “When tangled fern is fired, the fire page 34 does not always remain fixed in the place of firing, for often it burns up the whole countryside. So it is with war.”

Presently, however, a combined attempt was made to force a decision for war upon the people. Said one of the elders, tersely:

“The stone battle-axe withheld means defeat.” A chorus of approval came from the younger warriors at the back.

One of the chiefs rose to his feet and began to stride up and down before Mawaké-Taupo. Suddenly he stopped, and raised his greenstone meré in the air, and cried:

“Te Werohia and his people hold a valley leading out towards the plains that bound the lands of Te Arawa. If then the plug of this valley be withdrawn, the flooding hordes from the Uréwera will break out on to the plains and up into these northern valleys also. They will be like unto the incoming tide on the seashore. They may reach even to the base of Hikurangi. Or they may flood the plains and then sweep round the shores of Taupo. Could Ngatihotu stop them? Is it not common talk among the tribes that the Lake people are a weak people, and that their aged chief has but a daughter left to carry on his name? There is danger for Te Arawa if Tuhoe hold the south. Enough!”

He was supported by someone more influential still. All eyes were turned upon the chief tohunga Taréha as he rose up and spoke:

“Ha! Tuhoe, destroyers of earth's treasures, wasters of mankind unto death! But what is death? The body feeds on food and on war. There is death in each. Go where ye will, death is there. Therefore page 35 it is better far to carry the war into the Uréwera than wait for Tuhoe to sweep over us here. True, that many of our warriors will not return from those distant hills and mountains! Death will claim them. But what is death? What is death to an Arawa? The tribe lives on.”

He had given a lead to his own personal following in the pa, and had somewhat impressed even those who usually opposed him. Now he sat down again, and waited.

Mawaké-Taupo still gave no sign either of approval or disapproval, but his heart hardened towards his chief tohunga. Probably in all that assembly, apart from Taréha himself, the ariki was the only one who remembered that the annual session of the Wharé-wananga had commenced, and that the chief tohunga would have to stay behind and depute some other tohungas to accompany a war-party to the Uréwera.

Moreover, the chief tohunga would be well aware that he, Mawaké-Taupo, would be expected to lead his warriors on so dangerous an expedition. Should anything happen to him, would Taréha seize the chieftainship before the young Manaia was old enough to take his father's place? Yes; almost certainly he would. But what of that?

Resolutely Mawaké-Taupo thrust the unpleasant thought from his mind. A chief, and especially an ariki, must think only of the welfare of his tribe. And in this case the welfare of Te Arawa demanded that a blow should be struck at Tuhoe swiftly. On no account must Tuhoe be allowed a footing in the south. But where should the blow be made to fall? That was the question.

The astute Te Werohia had been watching with keen page 36 eyes the effect of the various speeches upon the elders, and upon Mawaké-Taupo. He had seen that the elders were divided and undecided, and that even the warriors were not all for immediate war. The ariki would dominate the assembly, and now he seemed about to end the matter and to give his decision as the mouthpiece of the tribe.

Instinct warned Te Werohia that he had lost. He sensed the decision of Mawaké-Taupo to strike at Tuhoe from the proper quarter, the north, rather than waste the strength of the tribe in an effort to save the Red Hill of Pukékura by an attack from the west. In that case the end for Pukékura had come. Desperately Te Werohia strove to think of some final appeal that might touch the heart, if not the mind, of the Great One before him.

Ah! He had it!

“O Mawaké-Taupo! Before thou dost utter the final word, hear me as I recite a tale! Away up in the Uréwera, at the head of a great gorge known to thee, is a strong pa, the Pari-maté Pa of Tuhoe, and in that pa is the Arawa chief Manawa-roa held captive. Six winters have passed since he and some of his people were captured by Tuhoe in a raid upon our valley, yet still does he remain a captive.

“He grows old and weary, and soon he will take the path to Te Rerenga-Wairua and the spirit-world, but he longs to see again the Red Hill and the smiling valley where he was born. Hear now his request to his captors:

“‘Conduct me to a mountain looking out towards my home, that I may greet it ere I wrap around me the old used cloak of Death!’

“But they would not. They taunted him. ‘To page 37 what purpose?’ they said. ‘Even now the heel of Tuhoe is raised to crush the life out of all in thy valley.’

“But that night one of the younger captives escaped, and this was the message he brought back from the aged one:

“Tukuna mai he kapunga onéoné kia au hei tangi.

Send me a handful of soil that I may weep over it.

“Enough!”

A moaning sound swept over the whole assembly. Not one there but saw with the mind's eye the pathetic figure of an old chief dying in an alien pa. The aged women at the back gave way to the heart-rending wail of the tangi.

Even Mawaké-Taupo himself was moved, and he drew his dogskin cape up over his brow to hide his emotion. Thus he sat for a long space of time, then fiercely he sprang to his feet, and cried:

“Hear me, O people of Te Arawa, as I speak the thoughts of all on Hikurangi!

“As to the aged one held captive by Tuhoe, he shall receive a handful of soil from the choicest spot in front of his old home.

“As to the people of Te Werohia, they are my kinsmen, and while I live nothing shall fall on them but the rain from heaven.

“And as to the enemy in the Uréwera, it is true that they outnumber Te Arawa by many thousands. Yes,” he cried, as he took up a handful of sand from a heap near by, “there is a man there for every grain here.” Then, pausing as he threw the sand away, he turned savagely towards his warriors with a terse “Hei aha? What does it matter? “

The response of the warriors was immediate and overwhelming. Worked up already to a high pitch page 38 of excitement, the final words of their chief were a challenge to them to show that mere numbers were of no account.

In an instant they had plunged into the ecstasy of the war-dance. With muscles and fingers aquiver, and with violently stamping feet, they waited while a savage leader uttered his diabolical preliminary yells. Then, as one man, they leaped into the air, came down with a thud that shook the hill, and gave forth from six hundred throats the maddening roar of the war-song.

Ha! As the warriors leaped and stamped with wonderful precision and uniformity of movement, the ground trembled continuously as though moved by an earthquake, while the simultaneous crash of open hands upon bare thighs, the menacing gestures of the frantic warriors, the fiercely distorted faces with backward rolling eyes and protruding tongues, the high-pitched and piercing yells of the leaders and the deafening roar of the chorus, were all combined in the awe-inspiring peruperu by which the Maori from very ancient days has worked himself up for battle, and with which he has put fear into the hearts of his enemies.

At the height of the uproar Mawaké-Taupo held up the weapon Pahikauré, and what had seemed to be an ungovernable frenzy ended instantly. Then came the final words of the ariki:

“The kumara is planted and it is a long time before the crop is ripe and ready for the store-house. But the thoughts of men are planted, and lo!—the crop is ripe at once. Mawaké-Taupo himself will harvest the crop which grows on the red field of war.

“Now hearken! Three hundred and forty warriors depart from Hikurangi on the second day from now.

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The rest shall stay to guard the pa and shall retire to the inner palisades in case of danger. Messages shall be sent at once to all the other branches of Te Arawa. They will be invited in the name of Mawaké-Taupo to send tauas to threaten Tuhoe from the north, and to keep Tuhoe from sending forces to oppose us in the west, for, with winter approaching, we must make this war short and sharp.

“As to the war-parties of Tuhoe on the Plains of Kaingaroa, we will fight them on our way to Pukékura, for we cannot let them stay near Taupo Lake.

“Now let the chiefs and the elders and Te Werohia come with me to the meeting-house, for there is much to arrange! To-night, I would speak to Taréha alone in my wharé. Enough!”