“No Trespassing.”

The killing of the white man, William Moffatt, in 1880, was an incident of a different character.

This episode is described in one of the frontier stories in “Tales of the Maori Bush.” Moffatt's expedition, his return to Taumarunui after repeated warnings to keep out, was a deliberate infringement of the Kingites' announced policy of an inviolate frontier against white interlopers. The Rohepotae was forbidden land to such adventurers as Moffatt; the aukati of protection extended from the Puniu River on the north to Utapu, on the Upper Wanganui River, the southern boundary, and from Lake Taupo westward to the coast. Wahanui, Taonui and Rewi Maniapoto sent forth the instructions, in accordance with the principles of the Maori national party. There is a long and curious history in the story of the sacred taiaha, the ancestral weapon called Matua-kore, which Wahanui and his fellow-chiefs sent to Ngatai at Taumarunui as a symbol of execution of the Kingite sentence upon white trespassers; but that tale may be narrated another time.