TUTANGÉ WAIONUI, A HAUHAU WARRIOR.This photo, taken in 1908, shows Tutangé—who was one of Titokowaru's best fighting men—stripped and armed for the war-path as he was in 1868.
TUTANGÉ WAIONUI, A HAUHAU WARRIOR.This photo, taken in 1908, shows Tutangé—who was one of Titokowaru's best fighting men—stripped and armed for the war-path as he was in 1868.
"My father's sister," says he, "called me to her, together with certain other young men who were ofrangatirarank, and who had not yet fought the white man. She was a chieftainess, by name Tāngamoko; she was ofarikibirth in the Ngati-Ruanui tribe, and being possessed ofmana-tapuand of a knowledge of charms and incantations, she was as a priestess amongst the people. She called us to her, and told us that she was about to make ustamariki tapu, that is, sacred children, for the coming battle. She girded us each with a fine waist-garment, thekorowai, made of soft dressed and closely woven white flax, with short black thrums, or cords, hanging down it. These flax vestures, falling from our waists to our knees, she had made herself. Theywere the garments of war; she hadkarakia'd over them and charmed them so that the bullets of the enemy should not touch them, and so that we, their wearers, might conquer in the fight. And very proud and confidenttamariki tapuwe were now, parading thepain our bullet-proofkorowai, and dancing our weapons in the air as we leaped with our elders in thehakaand roared out the great chorus of the war-song beginning, 'Kia kutia—au—au!' and that other one which our fathers had chanted when first they set up the Maori Land League, 'E kore Taranaki e makere atu!' ('Taranaki will not be cast away from us!')
"One of the songs which we chanted as we wildly danced was this:
"'Whakarongo ai auKi te koroki manuWhakaorooro ana i te ngahere.I na-wa e!'('I'm listening for the voices,The singing of the birds,Sounding, echoing in the forest!')
"'Whakarongo ai auKi te koroki manuWhakaorooro ana i te ngahere.I na-wa e!'('I'm listening for the voices,The singing of the birds,Sounding, echoing in the forest!')
"'Whakarongo ai au
Ki te koroki manu
Whakaorooro ana i te ngahere.
I na-wa e!'
('I'm listening for the voices,
The singing of the birds,
Sounding, echoing in the forest!')
The 'singing of the birds' was a figure of speech for the voices of the soldiers on the march.
"Thatmaro-tauawas all the clothing I wore in the fight. Round my brows I bound a handkerchief, which held in place mytiparé rangatira, my chief-like war-feathers. My weapons were a double-barrelled gun (tupara), and a short-handled tomahawk,which I carried stuck in my belt. Round me I had strapped a cartridge-holder.E tama!Now I was ready for my first battle."
Meanwhile, what of thepakeha-Maori in this nest of Hauhaus?
That morning, after he had supplied the men with ammunition, he sat on themaraewatching the war-dances. The morning went, but there was no sign from the outlying Hauhau piquets. Most of the women and children had been sent away into the bush at the rear of thepain charge of the old chief Te Waka-tākere-nui, in anticipation of the predicted attack. Thepakeha-Maori was also a non-combatant, but he remained in thepawith Titokowaru until the firing began. There were not more than sixty fighting-men in Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu, but nearly all of these were tried and experienced warriors, and even those who, like young Tutangé, were still to be blooded, were more than a match for the average white soldier in bush-warfare.
It was well on in the afternoon before the first shots were heard. The Maoris had expected attack from the seaward or Waihi side, but to their surprise the sound of the firing came from inland, indicating that the troops had worked round to the rear of "The Beak-of-the-Bird." The Maori advance-guard of Colonel McDonnell's column had encountered the Hauhaus in the bush and fired into them.
When the first sharp rifle-cracks echoed through the forest, Titokowaru went up to hispakeha, with a flax kit in his hand.
"Friend," said the stern old captain, "take thiskétéof mine in your charge. It contains some of mytaputreasures; take great care of it, for I may not see you again; I may fall with my tribe. Take it and leave thepa, and join Te Waka-tākere-nui if you can find his camp in the forest."
The white man took the carefully strapped kit and hurried out of the stockade. Te Waka's camp, he knew, was somewhere away in the rear; the firing was in that direction, and he was in danger of falling into the enemy's hands. However, he struck out into the bush from the rear fence, expecting to steal through the thick timber on the flank of the troops, who, he guessed, were advancing by the track which led in from the east.
He managed to elude his fellow-countrymen as it happened, but it was "touch-and-go" with him. Scarcely had he run out from the stockade and entered the hollow, through which a little creek wound through the bush at the rear of thepa, than the advance-guard of the white column also reached the creek, and crossed it to attack thepa. A heavy fire was at this moment opened on the troops by the Hauhaus, and bullets flew thick around thepakeha-Maori.
Two or three of the Armed Constabulary camealmost upon him just as he mounted the farther bank of the creek, near where a little burial-ground clearing broke the continuity of the thick undergrowth; it was here that the Hauhaus had interred those of their number killed in the previous attack on thepa.
The Colonial soldiers must have mistaken Bent for a Maori, for they immediately fired at him but missed, and next moment he ducked into the jungle, and on all-fours scrambled down into the creek bed, where he followed down the little stream as hard as he could go.
There was small wonder the A.C.'s took Bent for a Maori, for it would have been difficult in the half-light of that bush, at the distance of a few yards, to have detected much resemblance to a white man in the dark, shaggy-headed, bare-footed fellow with an old and dirty blanket strapped around his waist, a ragged jacket about his shoulders, and a red handkerchief tied round his head.
Scrambling along, stooping low to avoid being hit, thepakeha-Maori went down the creek until he came to a large hollowmahoé-tree standing by the side of the watercourse. He squeezed into the hollow trunk of the tree, and there he remained for a few minutes listening to the cracking of the rifles and the loud reports of the Hauhau smooth-bores and the yells of the combatants. Soon the firing came nearer, and bullets began to zip through the leavesand come plunk into themahoé, in whose hollow heart the white man hid.
"The bullets are finding me out," said Bent to himself. "I'm in a fix still; anyhow, here goes," and he cautiously crept out from his place of concealment and took to the jungle-fringed creek again. Following down the creek, crawling, scrambling, running, he presently began to feel his head more secure on his shoulders, for the sound of the firing grew fainter. He left the creek, and, striking through the bush, found a familiar track which led him to the little nook in the forest where old Te Waka and the anxious women and terrified children were camped. There he remained that night.
From Te Waka's people he heard the account of the morning's work. The Government Maori forces, Kepa's men, came upon the camp of refugees and killed two children; one of these, a boy of about nine years of age, was the son of the Hauhau warrior, Kātené Tu-Whakaruru. The other child, a little girl, they most cruelly slew by throwing her up into the air and spitting her on a bayonet as she fell. Another child, a little boy, was captured, but was saved by a Whanganui Maori, who carried him out of the forest on his back. He was a son of Te Karere-o-Mahuru ("The Messenger of Spring"). This boy became a protégé of Sir William Fox, who had him educated, and he is to-day a well-knownand gifted representative Taranaki man; his name is Pokiha (Fox) O-Mahuru. When the camp was surprised a woman ran away into the forest in terror; as she was never again heard of, it is believed that the soldiers shot her.
For the rest of the story of that battle in the bush, from the Maori side, my chief authorities are Tutangé Waionui, who gave me his narrative in 1908, and Whakawhiria, of Taranaki. Of the disaster from the European side there are numerous accounts, no two of which agree. The truth is, it was a lamentably bungled affair, redeemed by numerous acts of personal heroism, and particularly by the gallant rear-guard action fought by a portion of the column under the brave young Captain Roberts during the terrible retreat which followed the repulse of the troops.
The Government force outnumbered the Hauhaus in thepaby more than five to one. Of this, however, McDonnell and his officers and men were ignorant, otherwise there might have been a very different story to tell. In the obscurity of the dense bush, where the savage forest-men were in their familiar haunts, everything was strange and terrible to the recruits, and the imagination magnified the numbers of the foe, who poured bullets from their well-masked fastnesses.
Yet many of the whites were old and seasonedbushmen, who had served in the Forest Rangers and other corps; they had carried their carbines on many a dangerous forest trail, and fought the Hauhaus again and again, and they were led by officers of ability, coolness, and bravery. Under McDonnell there was, for one, that soldier of fortune, Major Gustavus von Tempsky, most picturesque of guerilla fighters, the central figure in many stories of daring and adventure, the adored of his bush-whackers and the terror of the Maoris.
MAJOR VON TEMPSKY(From a photo, 1865.)
MAJOR VON TEMPSKY(From a photo, 1865.)
"Wawahi-waka," the Waikato Maoris called him—"The Splitter-of-Canoes"—because of his exploits in war. "Manu-rau"—"Hundred Birds"—was the name by which he was known amongst the Taranaki Hauhaus. The name had been given him because of his activity in rushing from place to place, fighting here and fighting there, as swiftly as the forest-birds that flitted from tree to tree. Every Maori knew of "Manu-rau," and many of those in arms had been chased by him at one time or another during the three years of war since he led his Forest Rangers to the assault at Otapawa stockade.
Von Tempsky was of aristocratic Polish blood. He had begun soldiering life as a Prussian chasseur, had served under the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian in Mexico, and fought in several little wars in Central America; had been a gold-digger on the great tented fields of Victoria and the Hauraki;he was a clever artist in water-colours and a good miniature painter, and he had written a book of travels in Mexico, "Mitla," illustrated with his own sketches. In the Waikato War he and Captain William Jackson had led their Forest Rangers in several sharp skirmishes, and in Taranaki he was in the thick of the bush-fighting, and had tramped with his veterans through the forest in General Chute's great march from Ketemarae northwards to Mataitawa and New Plymouth, round the back of the Mountain.[7]
He was a good shot, a finished swordsman, and could throw a bowie-knife with deadly accuracy. It was in Mexico that he learned the use of the knife, and he never tired of impressing on his men its advantages in bush fighting.
Swarthy of visage, with long, black, curling hair, upon which a forage cap was cocked at a defiant angle, his grey flannel shirt carelessly open at the neck, his trousers tucked into long boots that came nearly up to his knees, a bowie-knife in a sheath and a revolver at his belt, a naked sword, long and curved, in his hand—this was von Tempsky on the war-path, a picturesquely brigand-like figure, upon whom the soldiers' eyes rested with wonder and a good deal of admiration.
Of that disastrous attack on "The Beak-of-the-Bird"stockade many accounts have been given, but the many discrepancies in detail that an examination of each account reveals are hardly to be wondered at, considering the confusion and misunderstandings that arose and that largely wrought the defeat of Colonel McDonnell's column. The dense and roadless forest, with its intricacies of undergrowth and interlacings of supplejack, and the inequalities of the ground made it difficult for the Colonial soldiers to keep in touch with each other, and the extraordinary activity and mobility of their savage assailants, who were perfectly at home in their jungly woods, more than compensated for the difference in numbers. The forest trees were the Hauhau redoubts. Amongst these trees, their naked brown skins nearly blending in colour with the trunks, they were almost invisible, and in most cases only the puffs of smoke, or brown arms moving up and down using the ramrods, indicated their lurking places. They darted from one cover to another with the quickness of monkeys, and though their weapons were mostly muzzle-loading smooth-bores, they managed to fire and reload with astonishing celerity. Too many of McDonnell's force were newly joined, raw young fellows, who now for the first time met the Maori warrior in the bush, and the hidden foe, with their merciless fire and their terrible yells of hate and defiance, struck terror to many a recruit's heart.
Some of the largerataandpukateatrees growing close to the stockade were hollow, and in several of these the Maoris had cut loopholes, which they used for musketry fire. Some of the trees, too, spat leaden death. Brown figures flitted like forest-demons from cover to cover. At these and at the naked arms and shaggy heads that showed themselves for a moment the coolest and best shots of the Constabulary sent their bullets, and every now and then a Hauhau came crashing to the ground; but for every Maori that was hit five white men fell.
The forest rang with the sharp cracking of the rifles and the bang-banging of the heavily charged muzzle-loaders, and within the stockade the women that remained encouraged their warriors with shrill yells.
"Kill them! Eat them!" they screamed, as they waved their shawls and mats. "Fight on, fight on! Let not one escape!"
White men dropped quickly, wounded or shot dead. McDonnell evidently over-estimated the strength of the enemy, for he concluded that it would be impossible to rush thepaor to hold it if it was successfully rushed, for the enemy were now all round him. Had he only known the real state of affairs, that there were barely sixty armed Hauhaus, of whom only about twenty remained within the stockade, the story of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu wouldhave been far less saddening, at any rate to thepakeha.
McDonnell, considering the position too strong to be carried by assault, determined to strike out to the left through the forest and retire. Von Tempsky and Major Hunter pleaded with him to let them charge the stockade, but the Colonel would not consent, and presently ordered the retreat. Moving off, he sent a message to von Tempsky telling him to collect his men and form a rear-guard. He sent the wounded on with Major Hunter and Captain Newland, and followed with about eighty men, cutting a way through the undergrowth.
Von Tempsky remained, angry and disgusted at being refused permission to storm thepa, but too good a soldier to disobey orders. With him were most of the men of his two Armed Constabulary Divisions, No. 2 and No. 5, with Sub-Inspectors (Captains) Brown and J. M. Roberts, a few Patea Rifle Volunteers under Captain Palmer, the Wellington Rangers under Lieutenants Hastings and Hunter, and about twenty-five Taranaki Volunteers under Lieutenant Rowan.
Sword in hand, von Tempsky moved restlessly to and fro, regardless of the bullets that hummed about him. He ordered those nearest him to take cover but himself remained erect, angrily cutting at the undergrowth with his sword. And there he was when a Hauhau bullet found him.
Now I will let the Maoris tell their story of how von Tempsky and his comrades fell. Tutangé Waionui says:
"When the attack on ourpabegan, two or three of us, including Hotu and Tihirua, climbed up on an old partly hollowrata-tree that grew in a slanting position near the centre of the stockade, in order to see whether it would be a good place from which to fire at thepakehas. A little way up it forked into two large branches, and it was from this fork that we intended to fire. However, we found that it did not suit us, as we could not see anything of the soldiers who were hidden in the thick bush outside the stockade, so we rushed out into the forest, seeking our enemy.
"There were two largerata-trees outside the stockade, but the statement made that von Tempsky was shot from aratais incorrect. I have seen a picture which purports to show him being shot down by a Maori perched in a tree. This is altogether contrary to fact, as I will explain to you.
"When we rushed out to the rear of thepathe soldiers were rapidly approaching the stockade. We crouched down amongst the undergrowth, close to the little creek, and directed our shots at the thicket which grew between thepaand the creek. Some of the soldiers, crossing the creek, were in this part of the bush, and soon I saw Manu-rau (von Tempsky). Heavy firing was going on all this time,and many white men had fallen. Presently many of the soldiers withdrew, carrying their wounded, but Manu-rau remained with his men, his drawn sword in his hand—the long curved sword which had already become famous amongst the Maoris. He came out into clear view of us, within a very short distance of where we were crouching—I should say less than half a chain. I fired with the others. One of our bullets struck him—I have always believed it was mine. One of his fellow-soldiers, who was close by, ran to pick him up, and he too fell, shot by one of my companions. Others ran out to rescue the fallenpakehas, and they were shot down by us and by the other Maoris, until soon there were nine white men lying dead or wounded around Manu-rau.
"When the Government forces had fallen back before akokiri, a charge, led by Kātené Tu-Whakaruru, the Hauhau leader and scout, I ran out to where Manu-rau was lying dying on the ground. He seemed to be still living when I reached him. I snatched out my tomahawk from my girdle and dealt him a cut with it on the temple, to make sure of him, and killed him instantly. Then I took from him his uniform cap, his revolver and sword, and a lever watch which he had in his pocket.
"The sword, revolver, watch, and cap which I took from the soldier-chief's body I carried into thepaand laid before our war-chief Titokowaru. Thatwas one of the rules observed by Titokowaru's war-parties; the spoils of war must be taken to the chief for division. I was given the revolver, and used it afterwards in the war.
"That is the story of how von Tempsky was killed. I hope you will, when the opportunity comes, tell thepakehasthat the picture which represents Manu-rau as being shot by a Maori who was perched up in arata-tree is not correct. Youpakehaswill not regard my action in tomahawking Manu-rau as akohuru, a murder? Well, then, as you say, it was in the course of war, and it was quitetikaand correct. I was but a very young man then, just a boy, and it was my first battle."
By the side of this I will put Whakawhiria's account. Whakawhiria lives at the big native village of Parihaka, the old-time town of the prophets Te Whiti and Tohu. His narrative was given in May, 1909, to the Rev. T. G. Hammond, of Opunake, Wesleyan missionary to the Taranaki Maoris, who has sent it on to me to supplement the other versions of the fight. Whakawhiria's story is generally accepted as authentic by the Taranaki Maoris; most of the survivors of the fight agree that it was his father Te Rangi-hina-kau, as he says, who shot von Tempsky.
Whakawhiria was a young man of eighteen or so at the time of this engagement, but though so young he was already a veteran on the war-path. He hadseen the smoke of battle in 1860, at Waireka, when the Taranaki settlers, for the first time met the Maori on the field of war.
His estimate of the strength of the garrison in Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu is even lower than Tutangé's, for he says there were not more than forty-five fighting men in thepawhen it was attacked.
Te Rangi-hina-kau, Whakawhiria, and a party of others sallied out from the stockade and met their enemy skirmishing in the bush. In the rear of theparan a little stream, the Mangotahi. On the banks of the creek the eight Hauhaus took cover, Whakawhiria and his nearest companions crouching under akaraka-tree, and it was from that point that they shot von Tempsky and his men. The eight warriors were Te Rangi-hina-kau, Whakawhiria, Ika-wharau, Tutangé Waionui, Te Whau, Heheu, Umu-umu and Wairau. They fired at von Tempsky at very close range, not more than twenty paces, just across the little creek.
"It was Te Rangi-hina-kau who shot von Tempsky," said Whakawhiria. "He dropped on one knee, and, taking careful aim, fired and shot von Tempsky. He shot him through the head, and afterwards cut out his heart as an offering to the Maori war-gods." (Kimble Bent's and Tutangé's versions given me contradict this.) "Young Tutangé," continued Whakawhiria, "acted a very brave part, but it was not he who actuallyshot the major. Tutangé obtained von Tempsky's watch as his share of the loot, and Whakawhiria got his gun and pistol."
During the engagement Titokowaru remained in thepa, shouting to his men, urging them to continue firing, and yelling such battle-cries as "Whakawhiria!Whakawhiria!" ("Twist them round and round!" or "Encircle them!") It was from this circumstance that the warrior Whakawhiria assumed his present name.[8]
On von Tempsky's fall, Captain J. M. Roberts, a cool and gallant young Constabulary officer, ordered his bugler to sound the "Halt" and the "Officers' Call," and tried to form the rear-guard into some order. Collecting as many of the wounded as he could, he began his retreat through that terrible death-haunted forest.
All through the fighting Titokowaru remained within the stockade, directing the defence and reciting incantations and chanting sacredwaiatasto his gods for success in the fight. With him was the priestess Tangamoko, the woman who had that morning garbed the young warrior Tutangé with the sacred war-mat.
When von Tempsky fell and the retreat of the survivors began, Titokowaru ordered akokiri, or charge, in pursuit, which, as Tutangé has mentioned, was led by the warrior Kātené Tu-Whakaruru.
Those of the Hauhaus who were in or near the stockade gathered under Kātené and danced in their ferocious joy a dance of victory, and this is thengeri(war-song) they shouted all together as they leaped in that terrifyingtutu-waewae:
"Kia kutia—Au—au!Kia wherahia—Au—au!A kia rere atuTe Kawana ki tawhiti,Titiro mai ai!Ae—ae—au!"("Squeeze close—Au—au!(imitating the bark of a dog)Spread out—Au—au!See the Government soldiers flee away,And turn and fearfully gaze at me.Yes, yes—au!")
"Kia kutia—Au—au!Kia wherahia—Au—au!A kia rere atuTe Kawana ki tawhiti,Titiro mai ai!Ae—ae—au!"("Squeeze close—Au—au!(imitating the bark of a dog)Spread out—Au—au!See the Government soldiers flee away,And turn and fearfully gaze at me.Yes, yes—au!")
"Kia kutia—
Au—au!
Kia wherahia—
Au—au!
A kia rere atu
Te Kawana ki tawhiti,
Titiro mai ai!
Ae—ae—au!"
("Squeeze close—
Au—au!(imitating the bark of a dog)
Spread out—
Au—au!
See the Government soldiers flee away,
And turn and fearfully gaze at me.
Yes, yes—au!")
The puffy clouds of smoke now drew away from thepa, as the Hauhaus followed their defeated foes into the dark forest. With appalling yells they rushed at their white enemies, tomahawking those who had fallen to make sure of them, as Tutangé had done with von Tempsky.
MAJOR VON TEMPSKY.
MAJOR VON TEMPSKY.
"Ka horo! Ka horo!" they yelled. "They are beaten!" And thrusting their bloody tomahawks into their belts they recharged their guns, and, leaping from tree to tree, fired heavily and incessantly at the gallant little rear-guard who werestruggling through the tangled bush, caps gone, uniforms torn, nearly every man either wounded or blood-stained from his comrades' wounds.
The sun had just set. The ghostly tree-shadows lengthened, and it was already dark in the deeper thicknesses of the bush.
Just after the retreat commenced one of Captain Roberts' steadiest men, Corporal Russell, dropped his carbine and fell; a big-calibre bullet had smashed his thigh-bone.
"Shoot me, boys—shoot me!" he begged his comrades. "Don't leave me to be tomahawked."
He knew as well as they did that his smashed leg meant death. The rear-guard was already encumbered with wounded and could carry no more.
"No, we can't shoot you, old man," said a big, tall volunteer sergeant, who was a tower of strength to Roberts' little band, shooting with deadly aim from his post in the rear of the retreat. "Take this," and he shoved into the wounded man's hand a loaded revolver.
Then the sergeant (James Livingston) picked up the corporal's empty carbine, and swinging it by the barrel, hot with much firing, smashed it against a tree-butt. "Old Tito'll never use that gun, anyhow," he said.
Bursting from the trees, the brown, nearly naked savages came yelling at the rear-guard. Hastily slipping fresh cartridges into their carbines, thegigantic volunteer and his comrades sent a volley at the enemy. It was takingutufor the corporal in anticipation. Then they sorrowfully turned and went on into the dusky forest, leaving their comrade stretched there on the mossy ground, gazing stern-mouthed, unflinchingly down the way of death.
Out from the ferns and supplejack leaped the foremost of the Hauhaus, a tattooed, blanket-girded man, with wild eyes rolling in blood-madness. His double-barrelled gun he had shifted from his right hand to his left, and he drew his shining tomahawk from his flax belt.
With an ear-ripping cry and the bound of a tiger he came on, hatchet in air.
The corporal stiffened his back, levelled his revolver, and fired.
The Maori fell, and lay with his face touching the soldier's boot.
A yell of "Patua! Patua!" came from the trees, and more bare figures with crossed cartridge-belts came rushing on, war-axe in hand.
Gripping his revolver hard, his trigger-finger steady, the corporal fired again, and another of his foes fell.
Now they stood off and shot the brave corporal dead, and so, after all, he died like a soldier and not under the frightful tomahawk.
McDonnell's column, the stronger one, was in themeantime fighting its way out through the forest to the Wai-ngongoro, hard beset by the Hauhaus, who had by this time been reinforced by others from the nearest villages. The Maoris followed closely in the rear and kept up a heavy fire, to which McDonnell and his officers and men could only return occasionally; their ammunition was getting very short. With McDonnell marched a French Roman Catholic priest, Father Jean Baptiste Rolland, thepadreof the forces, who had been described only a few weeks before, in a letter written by von Tempsky, as "a man without fear." Whenever a soldier fell, whether he was Catholic or Protestant, the kind-faced father was by his side in a moment, tending his wounds, and, if dying, soothing his last moments with a prayer. He took his turn, too, at carrying the wounded.
Three holes, drilled by Hauhau bullets, ornamented thepadre'sold wide-brimmed soft felt hat when he reached the Waihi camp that night.
It was just dark when the snoring Wai-ngongoro was reached, and the bridgeless river, running high and swiftly, was forded with some difficulty under fire. At ten o'clock at night the redoubt was reached, and here it was found that a mixed party of fugitives from the battle-field, numbering about eighty Europeans besides theKupapas, had already arrived, and had reported all the officers, McDonnell included, killed or wounded and left on the field.
And how fared Captain Roberts' little rear-guard of sixty men?
Extending his force in skirmishing order, the young officer pushed on as well as he could, carrying his wounded—one in every six. When darkness came on he halted, for it was hopeless to try to force a way through the jungle-matted woods in the blackness of the night. It was a cold frosty night, and the wounded were in agonies of pain, which their distressed comrades were helpless to relieve. There on the damp and freezing ground they crouched till the moon rose at two o'clock in the morning. Now, guided by five brave fellows of the Maori contingent, Whanganui and Ngati-Apa men, who stood by Roberts and his wounded to the last, the rear-guard recommenced the retreat. Struggling wearily on through the tanglingkareaoand the densely growing shrubs, stumbling over logs and splashing through little watercourses, they emerged at last thankfully on to the open country, and soon, bearing their wounded and dying comrades across the dark flooded Wai-ngongoro, were greeted by the joyful cheers of their comrades, European and Maori, under Kepa te Rangihiwinui, who had set out from the Waihi Redoubt to their rescue when daylight broke.
Only then was the full story of the repulse pieced together—a story of a fight that in point of numberswas only a skirmish, as battles go, but that was the most serious set-back the white man had yet suffered at the hands of the brown warriors of the Taranaki bush. Of the twenty-four whites killed five were officers, men who could badly be spared in that frontier warfare. The wounded numbered twenty-six, whose rescue from the tomahawks of the Hauhau was carried out in a way truly heroic.
THE CANNIBALS OF THE BUSH
After the battle—The slain heroes of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu—A terrible scene on themarae—What Bent saw from his prison-hut—The sword of "Manu-rau"—A funeral pyre—Priestly incantations—A soldier's body eaten—Why the Hauhaus became cannibals.
Onthe morning after the battle, Kimble Bent and his companions, who had been informed by a messenger the previous night of the result of the forest engagement, hurried back to the stockade.
The news of the repulse of the white troops had spread with incredible swiftness all over the Maori country-side, and the Hauhaus from the neighbouring villages gathered in Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu to hear the story of the fight and to share in the distribution of the loot taken on the battle-field.
The village was crowded with Hauhaus, all in a fearful state of excitement, a delirium of triumphant savagery.
Yelling like furies, shouting ferocious battle-songs, waving their weapons in the air, the victorious warriors were there with their spoils—carbines, swords, revolvers, soldiers' caps and belts.
More frightful still was the sight of which Bent had just a glimpse as he entered the gateway of thepa.
Laid out in a low row in the centre of themarae, side by side, were bodies of many white soldiers, nearly twenty of them, all stripped naked—the fallen heroes of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu.
Just a glimpse the white man had as he entered the blood-stained square. The next moment he was surrounded by a howling mob of Hauhaus, grinning, yelling, laughing fiendishly, shaking their weapons in his face, all in sheer hate and contempt of anything with a white skin.
Two or three of theTekau-ma-ruamen whom Bent knew came bounding up. One of them said to him:
"Tu-nui, you must come with me. It is Titoko's command." The Maori led Bent to a small thatched hut on one side of themarae. Here he shut the white man in, and fastened the low sliding-door on the outside.
For a little while the white man sat in the gloom of the windowlesswharé, listening to the demoniac shouts of the Hauhaus outside, and wondering what would come next—whether, indeed, his own body would not soon be added to the terrible pile of slain soldiers on themarae.
At last, hearing Titokowaru's great voice raised in commanding tones, Bent's mingled curiosity andfear impelled him to search for a loophole from which he could see what was going on.
Discovering a small crack in the reed-thatched walls of the hut, he enlarged it sufficiently to gain a good view of the assemblage on the village square.
There they squatted, men, women, and children, their faces smudged with charcoal or with red ochre, the paint of the war-path. They were seated on the ground in a great half-circle, facing the staring white corpses of the slainpakehas. The frightful clamour of the savages had given place with strange suddenness to a dead silence, as they listened to their war-chief's harangue, and watched him pacing quickly to and fro, with his sacredtaiahain his hand, now carrying it at the trail in thetakiattitude, now dandling it high in the air as he intoned a chant to his battle-god Uenuku.
"Bring out mypakehaTu-nui-a-moa!" cried Titokowaru, when he had ended his speech.
A Maori rose, and, unfastening thewharédoor, led Bent out on to the assembly-ground.
He was taken up to the corpses of the slain soldiers, and one of the Hauhau chiefs asked him if he knew any of them.
Bent walked slowly past the dead, scrutinising each body carefully. He recognised two of them. One was an old soldier who had been a comrade of his in the 57th Regiment, and who had afterwards joined the Colonial forces.
The other dead soldier he identified was von Tempsky. The major's body lay there naked, with a deep tomahawk cut on the right temple, and the long, curly black hair matted with blood. The other bodies were hacked about the head with tomahawks; this was the work of the Maori women, who delighted in mutilating the dead in revenge for those of their relatives who had fallen.
Before announcing his recognition of the white warrior's remains, he turned to the people and asked if any of them had taken from apakehaofficer a sword with an unusual curve in it, and a cap bound with a brass band.
A Hauhau jumped up and said, "Yes, I have them."
"Show me which soldier you took them from," said Bent.
The Maori, with von Tempsky's sword in his hand, pointed to the major's corpse.
"Well," said Bent, "that is the body of Manu-rau, whom thepakehascalled von Tempsky, and that is his sword."
A great "Ah-h" came from the people, and the exultant possessor of Manu-rau's sword of wondrousmanawent bounding down themarae, flashing the weapon above his head, turning his painted face from side to side in the hideous grimaces of thepukana, and thrusting out his tongue to an extraordinary length.
The Hauhaus were in a frenzy of excitement when they realised that the renowned Manu-rau was indeed lying dead before them. Some of them proposed to drag the body out and cook it in thehangi, so that they might have the satisfaction of devouring their most dreaded enemy, and eating his heart, the heart of atino-toa, a warrior indeed.
But Titokowaru, raising his sacred spear-staff, forbade the handling of the dead for the present.
Bent was now ordered to return to his hut, and the door was again fastened on him. The proposal to cook and eat the bodies of von Tempsky and his comrades was debated in a wildkorero. Bent, from his eye-hole in the wall of thewharé, saw Hauhau after Hauhau, the orators of the tribes, jump up, tomahawk or gun or sword in hand, and furiously declaim as they went leaping and trotting backward and forward in the open space between the ranks of the victors and the dead; and the deeds of the battle-field were told again and again in great boasting words.
Von Tempsky's body, thepakeha-Maori had observed while on themarae, had not been mutilated, except for that tomahawk cut. His heart had not been cut out, though Bent half expected it would have been. The rite of theWhangai-hau, the ceremony of propitiation and burnt sacrifice following a battle, had not, however, been omitted. On the previous night, Tihirua, the young war-priest, hadcut open a soldier's body and had torn out the heart, which he had offered in smoke and fire as oblation to Uenuku, the God of War, chanting akarakiaas he watched the heart of the hated white man smoking in the flames.
"Manu-rau's" famous sword, too, was set apart as a sacred gift to the gods; it was aparakia, ortaumahatanga, a thank-offering for victory. It became atapurelic, and was religiously preserved by the Hauhaus. It is in their possession to this day.
Presently the bodies of the slain—the "Fish-of-Tu"—were ceremoniously apportioned amongst the several tribes represented in the village, as Bent again watched from his eye-hole in the wall.
One of the chiefs paced up and down past the pile of dead, with a stick in his hand. Pointing to a soldier's corpse, he cried:
"This is for Taranaki! Take it away!"
Pointing to the others, he said:
"This is for Ngati-Ruanui—take it away! This is for Nga-Rauru—take it away"—and so on until the whole of the dead men had been portioned out to the Hauhau clans to deal with as they deemed fit—subject always, however, to Titokowaru's approval.
The Nga-Rauru, the wild tribe of the Waitotara River, were the only men who actually took a body from the line of dead.
Two warriors jumped up and, laying their weapons aside, seized a dead soldier by the ankles and dragged the corpse away. One was Wairau, the other was the celebrated scout Kātené Tu-Whakaruru. This Kātené was a strange fellow. He had fought for some time on the Government side against his own countrymen, then he suddenly reverted to Hauhauism and barbarism, and led his warriors against his old friends and commanding officers, McDonnell and Gudgeon, with utter valour and ferocity. Now he was to turn cannibal.
Kātené and his companion dragged the body along the ground across themaraeto the cooking-ovens in the rear of the dwelling-huts, watched in silence by the people. "I could not say whose body it was," says Bent, "but it was a man in good flesh!"
When the two Hauhaus had hauled their body away to thehangifor a terrible feast, the tribes sat in silence for a few moments, gazing intently on their dead enemies lying there before them. It was a calm, windless day, and the midday sun beat hotly down on that ghastly pile in the middle of the crowdedmarae.
Titokowaru rose,taiahain hand. In his great croaking voice he cried:
"E koro ma, e kui ma, tena ra koutou! Tanumia te hunga tapu, e takoto nei; e tahu ki te ahi. Kaore e pai kia takoto ki runga ki te kino. Te mea pai metahu ki te ahi!" ("Oh, friends, men and women—I salute you! Bury the sacred bodies of the slain, lying before us here. And burn them with fire! It is not well that they should be left to offend. They must be consumed in fire!")
At this command the people dispersed to collect fuel for a funeral pyre. They brought logs and branches of drytawatimber from the surrounding bush and from the firewood piles in the rear of thewharés, and a huge pile of wood was built in the centre of themarae. Even the little naked children came running up with their little hands full of sticks to cast upon the heap.
All the mutilated bodies of the white soldiers—except the one that had been dragged away—were lifted up and placed on the roughly levelled top of the pyre, which was about four feet high and about fifteen feet long.
Titokowaru ordered his men to place von Tempsky's body on the fire-pile first, and then lay the others on top of it. The chief suspected, perhaps, that some of the Hauhaus wished to cook and eat Manu-rau's body, and he so far respected his gallant foeman even in death that he resolved to spare it that last degradation.
So the major's body went on first, and then around and above it were heaped the other soldiers. On top of the bodies more wood was thrown.
Bent's hut door was now unfastened, and thenatives called to him to come out. What he saw he will tell in his own words:
"When I walked out on to themarae, I met two Nga-Rauru men I knew from Hukatéré village, on the Patea River. They had come to Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu with a gift of gunpowder to Titokowaru. With them I presently went down to the cooking-quarters to see what had become of the body that had been dragged away. There we found a large earth-oven full of red-hot stones, and there they were engaged in roasting the white man's corpse. They had prepared it for cooking in the usual way, and were turning it over and over on the hot stones, scraping off the outer skin.
"The cannibal cooks looked round and asked me savagely what I wanted there. They threatened that if I did not leave instantly they would throw me into the oven too, and roast me alive.
"I returned to themarae, and was sitting amongst the crowd there some time later, perhaps an hour, when I saw a man's hands and ribs, cooked, carried up. The human flesh was placed in front of the two powder-carriers from Hukatéré, who were sitting close to me. The meat was in a flax basket, and a basket of cooked potatoes was set down with it. This present of food was out of compliment to the visitors.
"The two Maoris refused to touch it, saying, 'No, we will not eat man!' So the other natives ate it.The rest of the body was also served round, and the people consumed the whole of it.
"Kātené and Wairau were two of those who ate the cooked soldier. I saw Kātené squatting there, with a basket of this man-meat and some potatoes before him. He took up a cooked hand, and before eating it sucked up thehinu, or fat, that was collected in the palm just as if he were drinking water. The hands when cooked curled up with the fingers half-closed, and the hollowed palm was filled with the meltedhinu.
"Titokowaru did not eat human flesh himself. His reason for abstaining was that if he ate it hismana tapu, his personal sacredness, would thereby be destroyed."
The younger people in thepawere rather awe-stricken by the preparations for the cannibal feast, and stood together some distance away from thehangi. "I stood with them," says one Te Kahu-pukoro, who was a boy at the time; "I was afraid to join in the eating, but the savour of the flesh cooking in the ovens was delightful!"
When the warriors, a little later on, were enjoying their meal of man-meat, some of the little children were heard calling out to their fathers: "Homai he poaka mou" ("Give me some pork to eat"). They had seen the meat carried up in flax baskets, and thought it was pork.
Now the white soldiers' funeral pyre was setalight. An old man, Titokowaru'stohunga, or priest, walked up to it with a long stick of green timber in his hand, an unbarked sapling with a rough crook at one end. He stood in front of the pile as the flames shot up and chanted a song. Then, when the logs with their terrible burdens were well alight, he began a strange incantation. Using his long stick with both hands he turned over the burning logs, pushed them closer together to create a fiercer heat, and forked the bodies into the midst of the blaze. And as he did so he recited a pagankarakia, the chant of theIki, anciently repeated over the bodies of warriors when they were being cremated on the battle-field. These were the words of the incantation (the mystic meaning underlying some of the expressions would require many notes to fully elucidate them):
The people sat there on themarae, silently watching the burning of the dead. Far above the trees of the surrounding forest rose the thick black column of smoke from the blazing pile. It went up as straight as an arrow, unswayed by any breath of air, to a great height. To the savage watchers itwas verily the incense of the battle-field, rising to the war-god's nostrils. "Now and then," says Bent, "a body would burst, and the blaze of flame and the smoke would leap straight up, high into the air."
Long the Hauhaus gazed at the dreadful crematory blaze on the palisadedmarae, replenishing the fire with dry logs as it burned down, until all the dead were consumed, and nothing but a great heap of charcoal and ashes remained.
The revival of the ancient practice of cannibalism was the most hideously savage feature of Titokowaru's method of warfare. It was not meat-hunger in this case; it was a battle-field rite. In olden Maoridom war was war to the death, and to the oven; it was no use beating your enemy unless you killed him, and no use killing him unless you also ate him. The eating of soldiers' bodies not only glutted racial revenge; but also—in Maori eyes—destroyed the prestige of the whites; it ruined theirmanaas men and as warriors.
The Taranaki Maoris tell a singular little story in explanation of those man-eating rites in Titokowaru's camps. In consuming bodies from the battle-fields they were only putting into practice the spirit of a speech made by old King Potatau te Wherowhero a decade or so before.
Potatau—grandfather of the present "king" ofWaikato, Mahuta Potatau te Wherowhero, M.L.C.—was a warrior of exceeding renown three-quarters of a century ago, and a cannibal of cannibals.
Te Wherowhero Kai-tangata—"man-devourer"—he was called. Many a time he raided Taranaki with his war-parties of Waikato and Ngati-Maniapoto and Tainui. At Pukerangiora, about 1830, he slew hundreds of Ngati-Awa tribespeople, and with his warriors cooked and ate them. Nearly thirty years later he was set up as king over the confederated Maori tribes in the centre of the island.
When the Maori kingdom was first established, the then governor of the colony visited old Potatau, and discussed the Maori aspirations for independence. The governor, according to the Maori story, endeavoured to show the king the folly of opposing the sway of the white man; if it did come to warfare—which was not then contemplated by either side—the British soldiers would soon make a clean sweep of the ill-armed and ill-provisioned Maori.
"You are wrong," said Potatau; "it will take you many a year to sweep away the Maoris—you will never do it."
"But," said the governor, "suppose we fight you, and drive you into the forest, far away from your cultivations, what will you do for food?"
"Why," replied the old king, "I have plenty of food even in the bush—the berries of thetawaandkarakatrees, the heart of themamakutree-fern,and thenikau, and other foods of the forest. We can live on those."
"And suppose I chase you with my soldiers, and fight you in the forest, and pursue you so that you cannot even get those things to eat, the berries and themamaku, what then will you do for food?"
Said old Potatau, grinning, "Then I'll eat you!"[9]
This half-defiant, half-jocular speech of the venerable warrior of Waikato was repeated word for word, as it is given here, in every Kingite village and in the Hauhaupasof after years; but it was left for Titoko's bushmen of Taranaki to put into actual execution their old foeman's commissariat methods.
"Titokowaru heard it," say the Maoris; "and when the war began, and he became a fighting chief, he did as Potatau would have done—he fought his enemy in the forest, and slew him there, and ate his flesh for food. And, as Potatau had predicted, it was many a year before the war was ended—and even then Titokowaru was never caught."
SKIRMISHING AND FORT-BUILDING
Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu abandoned—On the march again—Skirmishing on the Patea—Pakehain pickle—A new stockade—Bent thepa-builder.
Thefamous "Bird's-Beak"pa, made so memorable by the terrible scenes enacted around and within its stockade, was soon deserted.
Titokowaru, not long after the Hauhau victory and the savage rites narrated in the last chapter, issued an order that the village must be evacuated, and a new position selected for a bush-fort in which to withstand the attack that must inevitably be delivered against him by the Government. So one day the whole of the inhabitants of the Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu—men, women, and children, and the solitary white man—having gathered together their belongings, marched out of their village and tramped away through the bush eastwards. The armed men of theTekau-ma-ruapreceded them, to make sure that the way was clear of thepakehaenemy.
At the village of Turangaréré and at Taiporohenuithey dwelt for a while, and the warriors scouted out day after day in the vicinity of the European redoubts. A little skirmishing occurred; some shots were fired at the Turuturu-Mokai redoubt, now re-garrisoned, and a sniping party amused themselves, with the Manawapou Camp as a target. Before very long Bent and his companions were once more on the move, swagging through the bush to the Patea Valley. The scene of war was now to be the Lower Patea and the Waitotara, whence Titokowaru, it was believed, intended to raid the town of Wanganui.
For some weeks Titoko and his Hauhaus camped in the Oruatihipa. Then they shifted to Otoia, near the banks of the Patea, where they built a redoubt, from which they could fire into the European position at Manutahi. The fortification was finished in a day and a night, all hands, men and women, toiling at it, Bent amongst them. Some dug the trenches with their spades, some carried earth in flax baskets, and others piles of flax and fern, with which they built up the parapets.
Early in the morning the day after thepawas completed there was a brush with the Government forces. A column of Armed Constabulary and Wanganui Maoris made a reconnaissance up the cliffy, forest-fringed banks of the Patea in the direction of the Hauhau redoubt. Titoko's men attacked them, lining both sides of the river. The troopsretired to their tea after a pretty little skirmish; and the Hauhaus marched back to thepain high jubilation, singing war-songs, waving their guns, and bounding about and grimacing like a company of fiends. Then the steaming pork and potatoes, and speech-making and howlinghakasaround the great camp-fires. From the Maori point of view, quite a pleasant day's sport.
During the two months following the bush fight at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu no serious engagement occurred, but Titokowaru's war-parties scoured the district for many miles, laid ambuscades on the tracks between the European redoubts, burned settlers' houses, and bagged a straypakehaor two.
One incident of this period illustrates the peculiar ghoulish humour of the Hauhau savage. Two friendly Maoris—Nga-hina and another—who were mail-carriers in the Government service, halted awhile at Manawapou one day, while on their way to Patea, and searched the settlement there for the wherewithal for a dinner. A cask stood beside one of thewharés, and on taking the top off they found it to be a barrel of brine, containing meat—apparently pork.
Anticipating a good meal of salt pork, they fished up some of the meat. They found to their disgust that it was human flesh!—"Long-pig!" Not being Hauhaus or cannibals, they dropped the man-meat—white man—backinto the cask and stayed their hunger on good honest potatoes.
The question was, who pickled thepakeha? A Hauhau prisoner some time later enlightened the Government Maoris. A scouting party from Titoko's camp had dodged down to Manawapou, and discovered there, not far from the redoubt—which had been temporarily vacated by the troops—a new-made grave. Opening it, they disinterred a white man's corpse. In sheer devilment they cut it up, put it into a cask of brine that stood handy, and then recovered the cask and left it.
It would have been an exquisite joke, from the cannibal Hauhau view-point, had the Government soldiers unknowingly helped themselves to a joint of white man!
Titokowaru's entrenched position at Otoia was not a strong one, and shortly he, after a council of war with his principal men, decided to abandon it and build a new bushpa, which should be as nearly impregnable as a Maori fort could be.
So one morning a long line of Hauhaus of all ages and both sexes—the armed men in front and rear—bearing their simple belongings in flax-basketpikauson their backs, left the Otoia redoubt, and marched away through the bush to a spot about twelve miles from the mouth of the Patea River and a mile and a half from the old Okotukupa, which had been attacked by thetroops two years previously. At this place, Moturoa—the "Song Bush," so called because of a long strip of forest which covered the plain here—the war-chief ordered that the new fort should be constructed.
The position was on partially cleared land, nearly level, surrounded by the forest. The men, after hastily constructing huts, roofed with the fronds of tree-fern andnikau, set to work with their axes to hew out a large clearing. Titoko marked out the lines of the entrenchments and palisades. The forest-trees quickly fell before the practised assault of many bushmen, and the shrubby cover in front of thepawas carefully burned.
Then came the setting up of the stockade.Tawaand other trees of small size were cut into suitable lengths for the palisade-posts. There were two rows of palisades; the outside one was the largest and strongest. For the heavy outside row of stockading, timbers from eight to twelve inches in diameter were sunk solidly in the ground, forming a wall some ten feet high. Saplings were cut to serve as cross-ties or rails to lash across the posts, and with supplejack andakavines the whole were bound strongly and closely together.
Kimble Bent worked with the Hauhaus—toiling like a navvy, cutting timber, setting up the great posts, lashing the palisading, and digging trenches. He wore nothing but a rough flax mat round hiswaist—trouserless, bootless, hatless. In everything but skin a Maori.
"It was exciting," says the white man, "but none the less it was slavery. Many a night those times, when I lay down on my flaxwhariki, though I was dog-tired, I could not sleep—thinking, thinking over the past, and dreading what the future might bring me. Many and many a time I wished myself dead and out of it all."
What furious, what Homeric toil was thatpa-building! Those wild brown men, spurred by the reports of speedy attack, laboured with incredible energy and swiftness. The Moturoa fortified hold—which later became known as Papa-tihakehake, because of the battle which befell here—was completed in three days—stockaded, trenched, parapeted, and rifle-pitted—ready for the enemy!
Behind the strong tree-trunk stockade there were trenches and casemated rifle-pits from which the defenders could fire between the lower interstices in the great war-fence; behind the trenches again was a parapet from which a second line of Hauhaus could deliver their fire over the top of the palisade. It was one of the strongest works yet constructed by the Maoris, and one that was not likely to be stormed except at the cost of many lives.