(All Rights Reserved)

Some of the outlanders who took to the blanket in the ‘Sixties, men who were “on the run,” or hiding out in the bush, because of disagreement with the Law, became as Maori as the Maoris. Most of them were deserters from the Army, and I could hardly blame them, after hearing their stories of the intolerable bullying ways of the Regular officers and N.C.O.'s in “Mrs. Victoria's wars,” as Kipling called them. Once they ran from camp or barracks, they were men of the Maori kainga and the bush for life. Two in particular whom I knew were Maori in all but colour in their old age. White men who ran from the British colours always found a welcome just across the frontier. At any rate they were spared bullet or tomahawk, but they did not take a chief's status, as some of them probably expected. They shared the communal life of the tribe that adopted them, none went hungry or lacked shelter. They were supplied with wives by the chief of the tribe or hapu if some women did not take a fancy to them at first sight. But their position usually was little better than that of a taurekareka (slave) or pononga (servant), or herehere (prisoner).