(J. C., Photo. at Ruatoki, 1921.)
Te Tupara, Chief of Ruatoki. (Died, 1926).

The peculiar satisfaction that a field-research worker derives from digging up the true stories of old adventure, the real thing from participants in the events narrated, is comparable to the feeling of a successful treasure hunter who finds that he has struck the right spot and the gold's there—the authentic chest with skull and cross-bones. My years of search and enquiry into the frontier history of New Zealand have brought me much treasure of that kind. Its transmutation into a means of livelihood, or part of the means, was another thing. The process of discovery usually cost more than the great game yielded. But the search was the thing, the pleasure of exploration in bush and hill fort, the talks with the grey old people who were the last survivors of the warrior glory of their people. The meagre and unsatifying and usually inaccurate published accounts of Maori war episodes often prompted long trips into remote places to learn the exact facts while yet there was time. More often there was no written record at all. Two things were necessary, indispensable. For one, the ability to speak Maori, and a solid groundwork of historical tribal and military knowledge. Next, a diplomatic approach in the Maori manner, for many rather awkward questions were necessary if one were to get to the bottom of some at first inexplicable happenings. It was always desirable, if possible, to hear the narratives of the past on the actual places where history was made, and from men who had helped to make that bit of history.

A procession of dark old faces passes, men who had followed Te Kooti or fought against him, men still older, deeply tattooed patriarchs whose memories went back to the cannibal age. Two of Hongi's aged warriors even; a number of Hone Heke's. They are all gone, long ago; those meetings in some dimly-lighted thatched whare, or out on the fern-covered mounds and crumbling parapets that were once fields of battle and siege, can never come again. Pakeha friends, too, old officers of the colonial forces, old Forest Rangers; tall, lean veterans of the scouting trails, neighbours on the old King Country frontier, old bushmen and camp-mates. Frontiersmen who had lived years on the edge of adventure. They, too, have gone, but what they knew has not been lost.

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This story, gathered from old campaigners on each side, is an example of the historical episodes which were not chronicled by eyewitnesses or detailed in official despatches. But its chief value lies in the fact that the scenes of action can still be traced exactly. Rauporoa pa, on the green banks of the Whakatane River, three miles in from the harbour and the little town under the cliffs, is one of the very few places in our country where the battlefield and the fortification lines have been saved from ruin.

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The Stronghold of the Friendlies.

The well-preserved earthworks of the Rauporoa pa, the Ngati-Pukeko village and fort besieged by Te Kooti's force in March, 1869, stand on an alluvial plain thickly dotted with cabbage-trees (ti or whanake) of great size. The redoubt is surrounded by Maori and pakeha cultivations; the native villages of the Poroporo and Rewatu are a short distance away, and the Whakatane flows past its rear beneath masses of weeping willows. Within rifle shot page 18 page 19 on the opposite or eastern side of the river are the grass-grown ruins of the Poronu redoubt and the house-site and the spillway of the water-mill, made memorable by the Frenchman Jean Guerren's heroic defence. The

(J.O., photo. at Ruatoki, 1921.)
Te Whiu, the old Urewera Scout.

Rauporoa pa is a rectangular work consisting of an earth parapet and a surrounding trench; the height of the scarp above the bottom of the ditch is still seven to eight feet, and inside the work is four or five feet high; the ditch is four feet wide and about the same depth. The dimensions of the pa are about 120 yards in length (parallel with the course of the Whakatane River, immediately under its rear wall) and 55 yards in width. There are two large salients, which form flanking bastions against enfilading fire, one with 15 yards front on the western flank to the south of the main gateway; the other is an angle near the river. Another flanking work, a bastion eight yards on its longest alignment, is constructed at the opposite (or south) end of the eastern face, and there is a smaller salient near one of the gateways facing the river.

The Old Cabbage-Tree.

The palisade which once surrounded the enclosure has long disappeared. Timber stumps and butts visible in the high earth wall and on the edges of the ditch are the remains of a heavy growth of manuka timber, cleared away by the Maori owners of the pa reserve. The parapets, however, remained in an almost perfect condition when I searched out the place, and made the sketch here reproduced of an enormous old ti tree, sturdy veteran of many branches, growing in the main gateway, facing west. Te More Takuira, the head man of Raupo-roa told me, as we sat on the edge of the trench, it was originally one of the stakes of the fence, a young tree cut down, sharpened at the butt and driven into the ground. It took root and flourished to become the solitary remnant of the tall stockade in which it was planted seventy years ago.

The ground on the west face of the work is thickly covered with the depressions indicating kumara and potato pits, the food stores of the garrison. On the south, the narrow side, about thirty yards from the gateway, there is a shallow uneven trench, running across the face of the pa and nearing it as it approaches the river. This was where the Hauhaus dug themselves in after the failure of their first effort against the fort. In the rear wall there are two openings, gateways which gave access to the river. Within the walls the parapet is three to five feet above the general level of the ground of the ditch, so well preserved by its olden growth of manuka and fern, and now securely protected from cattle by a barbed-wire fence, is above four feet in width and of equal depth.

The Hauhaus' Attack.

This was the tribal stronghold and gathering place of the Ngati-Pukeko, a tribe friendly to the Government, against which Te Kooti launched a column of three to four hundred warriors, East Coast men of various tribes—many of them escapees from exile in Chatham Island—reinforced by Urewera and Taupo parties. While one portion of the raiding force, a kokiri under Wirihana Koikoi, was detailed to storm the Poronu redoubt and the tribe's small flour-mill, the main body advanced against the south face of the pa. They came forward in a solid body of bare-legged men, treading the ground with a heavy resounding tramp, their rifles, carbines and double-barrel guns held at the ready. Their threatening march gave the obvious lie to a white flag, borne by one of their front rank men. Some of the people in the pa, however, were so credulous, or so anxious to avoid fighting—the pacifists of Ngati-Pukeko—that they tried to open the gates and admit the enemy, who, once within, would begin slaughtering the garrison. One of these who reposed faith in Te Kooti's flag was an old lay-reader of the church, Ihaia te Ahu. He cried out, “It is peace, peace—there's the white flag!” Another man deceived by the long streamer of white was Hori, one of the chiefs of the pa. He was actually pushing open the solid sliding door, fastened by wooden pegs, which formed the gate on the south side, and the advance files of the enemy were almost within the defences, their guns at the present, when another chief, Tamihana Te Tahawera, saved the situation. He ran to close the door, and was struggling with foolish old Hori, when a young Urewera man, Meihaka Toko-pounamu, fired at him at a range of a few paces. The bullet missed Tahawera and struck the unfortunate Hori, who fell dead just inside the gateway.

The door was made fast, and the baffled Hauhaus retired under fire to dig themselves in. Meihaka's shot was quickly returned by Hirini Manuao, in the pa trench. His bullet broke the staff from which the white flag was floating.

Now the angry Hauhaus found themselves under heavy fire from the whole south face of the pa and the flanking bastion on the west side. The terrain was level and devoid of cover; the plain was covered to the river bank with the Ngati-Pukeko cultivations of corn, potatoes, kumara and taro.

The Hauhaus scooped out a rifle trench behind a whare outside the pa, and secured a little head cover. They then extended the trench eastward towards the river bank, and working nearer the pa as they drove it toward the Whakatane.

(J. C., sketch in 1921.)
The old ti tree at Rauporoa pa, Whakatane.

page 20

A Brave Powder-carrier.

The attack now steadied down into a regular siege, but the Hauhaus curiously did not push their attack on any but the south face of the pa. Sheltered in their trench and shallow rifle pits, they maintained a heavy fire on the Ngati-Pukeko defenders, which those warriors as hotly returned. There were a number of women in the pa, but it was not strongly garrisoned, since most of the men were away on the coast sandhills, with Hori Kawakura, a capable leader, when the attack was delivered. When the alarm was raised in Whakatane by refugees from Rauporoa, Hori hurried up to the besieged pa, and entered it under fire, with his party of about twenty men. As ammunition was running short, he came out again at great risk, with a few men, and took back a supply of powder and bullets. This fine deed was performed under heavy fire.

Te Kooti's force possessed superiority not only in numbers but in arms. The Hauhaus had many good rifles and carbines, besides their shot-guns. The defenders of the pa had nothing but muzzle-loading single and double barrel guns, some of them old-fashioned flintlocks. They endeavoured to burn out those of the attackers who were posted behind the whare on the south by tying burning rags to stones and throwing them on to the thatched roof, but the Hauhaus extinguished the fire. Several dead of the attacking party lay between the stockade and this house.

The second Ngati-pukeko man killed was Heremaia Tautari. He was shot while standing on the parapet of the south-east angle, calling out across the river to his children, who were at that moment defending the redoubt at the Poronu flour-mill against the final rush, bidding them retreat to the pa.

Gilbert Mair to the Rescue.

Hori Kawakura's little band of fighting men, now formed the backbone of the defence; but stoutly as they and their fellow-tribesmen fought, their plight appeared hopeless. Their ammunition was failing. For two days and two nights the garrison had steadfastly resisted the overwhelming force of well-armed rebels. It was now the early morning of the third day, and although urgent messages had been sent for help there was no appearance of the reinforcements to avert defeat and massacre.

At this moment Lieutenant Gilbert Mair was coming up at his best speed with a column of 130 Ngati-Rangitihi from Matata. Was he too late? He had ridden through the night from Tauranga, desperately anxious for his Whakatane friends and the gallant Frenchman and his little Maori family at the mill. After crossing the Orini stream, Mair met the first of the whati, the fugitives from Raupo-roa. The pa had fallen, but whether there had been a terrible massacre or not was as yet uncertain.

The first Ngati-Pukeko refugee, Mair met was an old fellow running hard, in great distress. He cried out to Mair: “Kau tahuri te motu nei!” Kau tahuri te motu nei!” (“The island has been overturned!”) Mair's men opened their ranks to let the fugitives through. At a deep raupo swamp south of Te Poroporo settlement, the first of Te Kooti's men came in sight, pursuing the fleeing Ngati-Pukeko. There were about seventy Hauhaus, all mounted, many of them armed with Calisher and Terry carbines.

Mair extended his men, tired after their heavy forced march, and kept Te Kooti's horsemen in check, while the Ngati-Pukeko, the Raupo-roa fighters, turned and assisted the relief force. There was good cover along the edge of the flax and raupo swamp and among the manuka. Mair steadily advanced, skirmishing up the valley until the pa was reached. There it was discovered that there had been no heavy losses except on the side of the Hauhaus. The pa had been captured, but not until nearly all the defenders had made their escape down through the swamps and thickets north of the fort. Only four had been killed in the attack. But the mill-redoubt had been captured; Jean, the Frenchman, lay dead in the gateway.

No memorial marks the place where the brave miller defended his charge to the last. But the parapets of Rauporoa (“The Tall Swamp Reed”) still stand firm—or did when last I rode that way. The tribe proposed, as Te More told me, to restore some of the stockades and the gates, out of the abundance of drift totara timber lying about the Whakatane banks. Such an attempt to renew the defences of the old-time fighting-pa deserves pakeha encouragement.

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It was not so easy to construct the connected account of Rauporoa's siege as the reader possibly would imagine. For the Hauhau side of the story, old warriors who followed Te Kooti were looked up at Ruatoki, Waimana, and Ohiwa, and in Ruatahuna Valley, Urewera country. In particular there were Te Tupara, of Ruatoki, a big soldierly stalwart, who fought for Te Kooti for three years; Netana Whakaari, tall and thin, a keen blade of a veteran, with a face so deeply and blackly tattooed that his glittering eyes looked out as through a dark carved mask. There was Te Whiu, too, the man who two years later ran down and captured Kereopa the Eye-eater, at daylight one morning near Ruatahuna. That was in 1871, when Netana and Te Whiu had both turned to the Government side, by way of variety. Many others had a shot at both sides. The pakeha officers found that an ex-Hauhau bushman made the best Government scout. He knew all the tricks.