THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA STOCKADE
Kātené's vigil—Attack on the stockade—Major Hunter's death—A Hauhau warrior's desperate feat—Over the palisades—Government forces repulsed—A rear-guard fight—An unanswered prayer—Scenes of terror—Tihirua's burnt-offering—A soldier's body eaten.
Justwithin the stockade of the Moturoa, or Papa-tihakehakepa,[10]there was a small, roughly builttaumaihi, or look-out stage, ten or twelve feet above the ground, high enough to allow a sentinel to see well over the sharp-pointed palisades, and scan the approaches to the fort.
In this bush watch-tower there stood, at misty dawn on a grey November morning, the Hauhau scout and warrior Kātené Tu-Whakaruru.
Kātené was cold, and he stamped his bare feet upon the unbarked logs that floored the sentry-box, and he chanted softly to himself a littlewaiatato Kopu, the morning star, which he had lookedfor in vain, for a heavy drizzling mist obscured everything. The thin, persistent rain penetrated the blanket that he held closely wrapped about him.
Presently a faint light began to steal over the forest, and Kātené could see the outlines of the black charred stumps and burned trees in front of thepa, then beyond the gloomy woods, through which a narrow winding path led to the open fern-lands of the Wairoa.
Suddenly Kātené's murmured chant ceased, and he strained his eyes into the mist. To a Maori forester the slightest sound was enough to set every faculty on the alert, asking suspiciously, "He aha tena!" He had heard a faint sound in the direction of the track beyond the black tree-stumps, a sound that he fancied resembled the striking of steel against steel.
Kātené hardly breathed. His eyes glared fixedly through the mist. In a few minutes his vision confirmed the evidence of his keen ears. He saw, just for a moment, a dark figure, then another, come hazily out of the wet fog where the track from the Wairoa emerged on the clearing, then disappear, as if they had suddenly dropped to the ground or vanished behind a tree.
That glimpse was enough for Kātené. He dropped from his sentry-perch, and ran fromwharétowharéand tent to tent giving the alarm.
"The soldiers are coming!" he said to thosewhom he awakened. "The soldiers are on us! They are by now entering the clearing. Get your arms quickly! Man the trenches! But don't make a sound!"
The fighting-men poured out of their sleeping huts, snatching up their weapons and accoutrements, and ran to their places in the pits and ditches behind the stockade. They hastily loaded theirtuparas, their rifles, and their carbines, and, peering eagerly through the defence-works, sought to penetrate the raw, damp morning mist that shrouded their front.
The whole bush-castle was alive and ready. Every man and boy who could shoulder a gun was in the well-hidden firing lines.
The wet mist slightly lifting as the morning light came, the musketeers presently saw dim figures moving out from the dark forest on their front and right and left flanks. Moving quickly, half running, in a cautious, crouching gait, they flitted from tree to tree, and burnt stump to stump, and nearer and nearer to the stockade.
Not a sound came from the breathlessly waiting warriors, nor from the ghost-like figures that now sank to the ground, each behind a log or a great blackened stump, or the butt of a standing tree.
Gun in hand, finger on the trigger, the Hauhaus waited.
The apparitions were picked bush-fighters of theNew Zealand forces, led by Colonel Whitmore, seeking to surprise Titoko in his forest-den.
Advancing silently in skirmishing order through the bush, they took cover, waiting for light enough to fight by. There were detachments of four divisions of the Armed Constabulary, many of them veteran bush-fighters, and men of the Patea Rifles and Patea Cavalry. There, too, came Kepa's Whanganui Maoris, with rifle and tomahawk, old hands on the war-trail, and eager for another brush with their ancient enemies of Taranaki.
There were two hundred Government men fronting the fort, but the fighting men behind the palisades did not, according to Maori accounts, number many more than half the number.
Amongst Titokowaru's men, however, there were some of the most renowned bush scouts and warriors in Taranaki, including—besides Kātené, the wide-awake sentry—such men as the veteran Te Waka-tapa-ruru, Paraone Tuteré, one of the best Hauhau shots, Timoti, the fiercest of the cannibals of Nga-Rauru, and the active young warrior Tutangé Waionui, he who had despatched von Tempsky on the battle-field of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu. Tutangé says that he was asleep in a tent when Kātené gave the alarm that morning. He was with his tribe, the Nga-Rauru, most ferocious of all Maori bush-fighters, who occupied one end of thepa; the other tribes holding the fort were Ngati-Ruanui andPakakohi. It was the side occupied by the Pakakohi men that was first attacked.
All at once, as the Hauhaus crouched behind their palisades squinting for a sight ofpakeha, with impatient fingers on their gun-triggers, fifty or sixty blue and grey figures sprang from cover and charged for the stockade. Some of the assaulting party ran past the corner of the war-fence, looking for some opening or gateway by which they might charge in.
The leading files were within a few paces of the high, solidly set palisading, when suddenly the whole face of the fence flashed fire, and volleys crashed in terrifying reverberations that set flocks of sleepykakaparrots flying, screaming harsh screams of fright, through the dark forest.
Nearly half the storming party of A.C.'s fell before that fearful fire.
The first man shot was their leader, a brave officer, Major Hunter, whose brother, Captain Hunter, had fallen at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu two months previously. Tutangé says that it was Paraone Tuteré who shot the major; he fired at the leading figure, not knowing then who he was. Colonel Whitmore came running in with the stormers, but, with his usual luck, although in the thickest fighting he was never hit.
Those of the attacking column who were not hit instantly dropped to cover amongst the logs andstumps that surrounded thepafront. Then they returned the fire as well as they could, but one man after another was hit, without being able to see one Hauhau of the scores that occupied thepaand thrust the muzzles of their guns through the interstices of the palisades.
It was a foolish thing, that blind frontal charge on the strong stockade. Major Hunter was too good a soldier to have done such an insane thing of his own volition. He was obeying Whitmore's orders. Hunter was shot in the femoral artery, when within nine or ten yards of the stockade. He implored those near him to try to stop the gushing blood, and some of his comrades attempted to staunch it; but the wound was too close to the stomach to get at, and he died in a few minutes.
Captain W. E. Gudgeon, with about forty Government Maoris, tried to work round and take thepain the rear. His line of charge was on Hunter's right flank, and he had good cover, but in spite of that he lost two killed and five wounded.
Now a brisk little fight went on on the flanks of thepabetween Kepa's men and a party of warriors who had made a sortie from the stockade. Kepa was furiously assailed by the bushmen, leaping from tree to tree, yelling their frightful Hauhau cries; and it was as much as the plucky Whanganui men could do to hold their own. Their attempt to take thepain the rear failed, and they at last slowlywithdrew to support the shattered ranks of their white comrades.
The A.C. supports came doubling up, and a heavy fire was concentrated on the stockade, but to little purpose. It was impregnable to rifle-fire, and in their pitted works the defenders were able to pick off the white skirmishers in perfect safety.
Bullets swept the clearing in every direction, and through the infernal music of the forest-battle the white soldiers heard the loudly yelled war-cries of the chiefs and the shrill voices of the Maori women as they encouraged their warriors, husbands, and brothers, and screamed them on to slaughter with all the fury of brown tattooed Hecates.
The women were gathered in themaraeand in the trenches, some armed, all filled with the fire of savage war.
"Ka horo, ka horo!" they shouted. "Kia maia, kia maia! Patua, kainga! Patua, kainga!" ("They fall, they fall! Be brave, oh, be brave! Kill them, eat them! Kill them, eat them!")
All this time Kimble Bent was walking to and fro on theparepare, the inner breastwork, the bullets screamingzssh! zssh!over his head and all about him. The air seemed filled with flying lead, yet very few Maoris were hit. One woman he saw shot dead through the head as she rose to wave her shawl and yell a fighting cry to the men at the palisades.
And here Bent was an eye-witness of the most desperately daring deed he had ever seen.
A fiery old tattooed warrior, by name Te Waka-tapa-ruru—the Hauhau mentioned in an earlier chapter as the man who had killed Charles Broughton, Government Native Agent, on the Patea River, in 1865—was in a quiver of excitement while the garrison awaited the assault, and could hardly be silenced until the attack was delivered.
When thepakehastorming party rushed up at the double, the old man was one of the first to open fire on them with histupara. And then, when the order "Kokiritia!" ("Charge!") was given, and the Hauhaus rushed out to engage the Government men who were trying to work round to the rear of thepa, he led the wild charge.
Perfectly naked, except for the broad flax waist-girdle, which held his short-handled tomahawk, and gripping his double-barrelled gun, the tall old savage took a great running jump at the stockade from the inner parapet, and leaped clean over it!
Yelling aPai-marirébattle-cry as he rose from the ground after his extraordinary leap, he snatched the tomahawk from his belt, and charged straight for the advancing whites.
It was a fit ofwhakamomori—sheer blind desperation, utter recklessness of death.
Possibly the furious old fanatic imagined that his Hauhau angel and his mesmeric password, "Hapa!Pai-mariré! Hau!" would avert the bullets of thepakeha. But he was killed in the very charge—the only Maori fighting-man killed that day.
Two white soldiers met him. He was in the act of striking a desperate blow when apakehaball took him square in the forehead, and with a huge convulsive bound and a half-choked barking "Hau!" on his lips, the old tattooed brave fell dead amongst the foremost of his enemies.
It was just the death that he desired—face to the foe, with his war-axe in his hand—the death of a true Maoritoa!
This savage hero's son, Ratoia—now living in the village of Taiporohenui—a young boy at the time of the fight, saw his father's great leap over the palisade, and saw him killed.
Bent tells of a curiousmatakité, or prophetic dream, which Te Waka-tapa-ruru had on the night before the battle. The old man was a close friend of the white runaway, and they were accustomed to sleep side by side on thewhariki-spread floor of one of the huts. He dreamed that he saw his face reflected in apakehalooking-glass, and that he was combing his hair. This vision disturbed the old man, and deeming it a warning from the unseen world, he asked Titokowaru—just when the approach of the troops was first announced—what it might portend. The war-chief interpreted the dream as an omen of death, and warned Te Wakanot to leave the shelter of the stockade during the impending engagement or he would be killed. But he disregarded this in his fit ofwhakamomori, and ran amok, and so he fell.
Finding it impossible to take such a strong and well-defended position by storm, the white colonel withdrew his forces. There were dead and wounded lying all over the place. Thepakehassucceeded in carrying off the wounded and some of the dead, including the gallant Major Hunter. A number of dead, however, had to be left where they were lying, for it was death to attempt their removal from under the very muzzles of the Hauhau guns.
The rescue of Hunter's body from the Hauhau tomahawks, under a heavy fire, was a gallant piece of work. Captain Gudgeon was one of those who brought the dead officer out; one of his comrades was Captain Edward McDonnell, and troopers Foote and Kelly were amongst the others. Two or three men were shot in the attempt. Kepa (Major Kemp) was there, too, but he was pretty well engaged in looking after his own men and extricating them from that place of death.
Major KempMAJOR KEMP (KEPA TE RANGIHIWINUI.)
MAJOR KEMP (KEPA TE RANGIHIWINUI.)
The Colonial soldiers retired, fighting a hard rear-guard action, out to the edge of the bush. Each division of Armed Constabulary in turn halted, knelt down facing the enemy, and covered the retreat of the other divisions, thus giving time for those of the dead and wounded who had been recovered tobe carried off the field. Out to the fern-lands the Hauhaus followed the troops, sometimes engaging them so closely that the fighting was hand-to-hand, and it was carbine and revolver against long-handled tomahawk. The skirmishing lasted until the whites were well clear of the bush; the Maoris would have followed them out even to their camp, the Wairoa Redoubt, had not they been recalled by orders from Titokowaru. The battle of Papa-tihakehake was over. It was a more severe repulse for the Government men than even the engagement at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu a bare two months before. One man out of every four in the force actually engaged was on the casualty list—more than twenty killed and quite thirty wounded.[11]
Fight at Moturoa, sketch one.THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA, 1869.This sketch, with the one opposite, drawn by an eye-witness shortly after the engagement, depicts the defeat of the Government A.C. Force by the Maoris.
THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA, 1869.This sketch, with the one opposite, drawn by an eye-witness shortly after the engagement, depicts the defeat of the Government A.C. Force by the Maoris.
Fight at Moturoa, sketch two.THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA, 1869.
THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA, 1869.
A grim story of that hard-fought retreat through the bush is told by Kimble Bent.
After thekokiri, the rush out in pursuit, had been ordered by the Maori war-chief, one of the Nga-Rauru men came across a white soldier lying on the ground, with his head pillowed against a fallenpukatea-tree. He had been cut off from his divisionby the foremost of the pursuing Hauhaus, and was lying there feigning death, hoping that the rest of the Maoris would pass on and not notice him.
The Nga-Rauru man, however, stopped and looked closely at the prostratepakeha. He said to one of his comrades, "I don't think that man is dead." Going up to the Constabulary man, he put his hand on his shoulder, and said in English, "Wake up!"
The white man opened his eyes. He exclaimed, "Save my life! Let me go, and I'll never forget you—I'll repay you for it."
The Nga-Rauru man, who must have been a humorous kind of barbarian, said to his victim, again in English, "Go on your knees and pray to your God to save your life!"
The soldier knelt as he was told, and ejaculated some sort of a prayer.
Playing with his prey, the savage asked, "Well, are you saved now?"
The kneeling soldier looked up, but could make no answer. He stared at his terrible-looking captor, with horror in his eyes.
"Poroporoaki ki to Atua!" ("Say farewell to your God!") cried the Maori, and swinging his gun round in both hands, he brought it butt down with a frightful smashing blow on the soldier's head.
The man fell backwards dead. His slayer stripped him of his uniform and accoutrements, and a littlelater could have been seen dancing a furioushakain front of the stockade, his face blackened with charcoal from the charred tree-stumps, the soldier's cap on his head, and the captured carbine in his hand.
Young Tutangé Waionui was in the thick of the skirmishing. "My weapons that day," he says, "were atupara(double-barrelled gun) and a revolver. The gun was a muzzle-loader; I preferred it to the breech-loaders used by thepakeha, because something was always going wrong with them. I could load (puru-pu) very quickly; but a quicker man was old Te Waka-tapa-ruru—he who was killed; there was no one so expert as he at loading a muzzle-loader."
What scenes of horror followed that battle in the bush!
The Hauhaus were in a delirium of triumphant savagery. Like frenzied things they came dancing and yelling back to thepa. They had blackened their ferocious faces with charcoal from the burnt tree-stumps in front of thepa. Singing war-songs, shoutingPai-marirécries, dancing their weapons in the air, projecting their long snaky tongues and rolling their eyes till only the whites were visible, set in a petrifying glare—the grimace of thepukana—it was a sight that brought fear to the heart of the lone white man, accustomed though he was by this time to spectacles of barbaric ferocity.
The women were as wild and savage-looking as the men—their dark eyes blazing with excitement, their faces black-painted like the warriors, their loosened hair flying behind them, many of them nude from the waist up—waving shawls, mats, tomahawks, in welcome to the returning heroes, shouting, singing, screaming.
Outside the front fence of thepa, just us they fell, among the logs and stumps and on the blood-stained ground, lay the dead men whom the retreating A.C.'s had been compelled to leave on the battle-field. There were seven of them.
Upon these fallen soldiers rushed the Hauhaus. They stripped them of their uniforms. They tied flax-leaf ropes round the necks of the deadpakehas, and hauled them away to the gateway of thepa.
As they dragged the corpses off, leaping from side to side as they hauled in a fury of blood-madness, they shouted out such sentences as these:
"Taku kai! Taku kai! E hara ka kite noho koe taku kai, taku tika, taku he! Nau te kino, naku whakahoki ton kino. Taea hokitia—te mahi o te atua a Titokowaru!" ("My food! My food! Behold my food; behold the right and the wrong of it all. 'Twas you"—addressing the slain—"that wrought the evil work. And I have returned your evil. Behold the work of the god of Titokowaru!")
A young Hauhau, huge-limbed and naked butfor a very brief waist-mat of dangling flax, leaps to the side of one of the white men's bodies, just as it is harnessed in so revolting a fashion to be dragged into thepa.
His tomahawk flashes in the air above him as he steps over the fallen soldier—once, twice, thrice!
He thrusts in a hand into a huge gaping wound in the dead man's breast; he is searching for something. He rises with some object, all bloody, in his horrible red hand. He sticks his tomahawk back into his girdle, he comes bounding from the corpse, waving his dripping trophy in his hand, swinging it round his head. His fiendish yells ring echoing over the forest clearing.
What is it he flourishes so exultingly?
It is the white man's heart!
This is the young warrior Tihirua, the priest of the burnt sacrifice. He has torn out themanawaof the soldier, as amawé—an offering to the God of War!
At his waist, buckled to his flax girdle, is a leather pouch, such as was generally used for carrying percussion-caps. Out of this he takes matches—pakehamatches! Striking match after match, he holds them underneath the bleeding heart until it is singed, and dark smoke goes up from it—incense to Uenuku, the war-god, who appears to his savage worshippers in the arch of the rainbow.
The heathen rite—the ceremony of theWhangai-hau—performed, Tihirua flings down his terrible trophy, and then directs the hauling of the bodies into the palisaded inferno.
Bent, standing just outside thepagateway, watched the in-bringing of the bodies of his fellow-whites—prelude, he too well knew, to a cannibal feast.
He turned to enter the village, when an old Maori, tugging away madly at a flax line which he had made fast to the neck of a dead man, caught sight of him, and shouted:
"You,pakeha! Come and give me a hand. Help me to drag in my food!"
"What do you want?" Bent heard a roughvoice ask. He turned and saw the war-chief Titokowaru standing at his side. "What do you want of thispakeha?"
The Maori replied that he wished the white man to help him haul the soldier's body into themarae.
"No!" cried the chief in his great hoarse voice. "No! you must not call upon mypakehato help you. He shall not touch the bodies of his countrymen."
So the war-captain and his cartridge-maker stood by watching the frightful procession of Hauhaus and their prizes. The seven naked bodies were dragged into thepaand laid out in the centre of themarae.
The excited people all gathered in a great circle around the bodies. One after another the oratorsleaped out from the squatting ranks, their eyes flashing wildly in thepukanaglare; they bounded to and fro, and cut the air with their tomahawks as they told the thrilling episodes of the fight.
All the clothes, arms, and accoutrements taken from the dead and wounded were laid before Titokowaru.
"Whose was this?" the war-chief would ask, picking up a carbine, or an ammunition-pouch, or a soldier's tunic from the heap.
"Mine," replied the man who had taken it on the battle-field.
"Take it away, then," said Titokowaru. "Whose is this?" picking up another trophy.
"It is mine," a young man would reply; "it is my first spoils of war, atanga-ika."
"Burn it," was the chief's order.
Then the human bodies lying on themaraewere apportioned one by one, to each tribe, as piles of food are served out at a ceremonial Maori gathering.
"Nga-Rauru, this is yours! Tangahoé, this is yours!" and so on, till the seven bodies were all disposed of.
A woman sat weeping on themarae. She was Te Hau-karewa, wife to one Te Rangi-whakairi-papa and a sister of Te Waka-tapa-ruru, the old warrior who had fallen in his desperate rush upon the white enemy that morning. Though old, shewas a tall, fine-looking woman, with a mass of black curly hair.
Ceasing hertangifor the dead, when the bodies of the soldiers were laid out on the ground, she rose, and, taking a stick in her hand, she walked along the row of the dead men and struck each a blow on the head.
"Upoko-kohua!" she cried vehemently, with hate flashing in her eyes; "Upoko-kohua! Ka taona koe ki te umu, he utu mo taku tungane kua mate, ko Te Waka-tapa-ruru! Mehemea ko au i tata i taku tungane i te takiwa i mate ai, ka kainga au i te karu o te tangata nana i whakamatea Te Waka!" ("Boiled heads! Cursed heads! Soon ye'll be cooked in the oven, as payment for the death of my brother, Te Waka-tapa-ruru. Had I but been near my brother when he fell, I would have swallowed the eyes of the man who slew him!")
Then, throwing away her stick, she sat down again, and fell to weeping in the very abandonment of woe, for the savage woman of the woods loved her grim warrior-brother greatly.
Some of the Maoris proposed that the bodies of the slain whites, the "Fish of Whiro," should all be burned or buried.
But up leaped Timoti, wildest of all the wild Waitotara tribe, the cannibal Nga-Rauru, a thin, savage-faced fellow, very dark of complexion, asactive and agile as a wild cat. He ran up and down in front of his slain enemies, turning from one side to the other,pukana-ing—only the whites of his eyes showing—and his tongue protruded in derision and defiance. He flashed his tomahawk in the air; he yelled, "We must have one body—one body to cook in thehangi!"
"Yes," said another of the clan, "the customs of our fathers must be observed. What is the use of killing so manypakehasif we cannot have one to eat?"
No man making objection, several Hauhaus jumped up and ran to the heap of slain Constabulary men. They selected a body, and dragged it off to the cooking-place at the rear of themarae. "He is the fattest of thepakehas," said the saturnine Timoti.
All eyes watched them, but no man said a word.
Bent, after a while, rose with some of his Hauhau companions, and walked over to the cooking-hangis, and watched the cooks at their horrible work.
They were roasting the white man's body on the great fire of hot stones, in a hollowed-out earth-oven. "It was being cooked," says Bent, "much as you would roast a piece of mutton; they turned it over and over until it was thoroughly done, and then they cut it up for the feast."
When the cannibal meal was ready, it was brought on to themaraewith much ceremony in flaxbaskets. Potatoes had been steam-boiled in otherhangisat the same time, and these were carried to the assembly-ground, to be eaten with the man-meat. Bent saw the flesh of the soldier eaten. The man-eaters, he says, all belonged to the Waitotara tribe. Ten of them consumed thepakeha, or as much of him as was borne to themarae; the rest of the people did not share in the feast. Titokowaru himself would not eat human flesh, because of histapu.
"I noticed," says thepakeha-Maori, "Timoti and Big Kereopa, each with a basket before them, enjoying the meal of human flesh. Timoti grabbed up his portion of meat from his basket, and ate it just as if he were eating a piece of bread."
Then Titokowaru rose and, crying in a loud voice, ordered the people to burn the rest of the corpses, so that they should not defile themarae.
The bundles of clothing from the dead lay on themarae. The Maoris gave Bent three pairs of soldiers' trousers, four shirts, and some boots. "I tell you I was pleased," says the oldpakeha-Maori, who had no inconvenient scruples on the subject of dead men's clothes; "for a long time I had been wearing only Maori-made garments of flax."
A great pile of wood was collected, heaped up six or seven feet high, and in the evening, as darknessfell, the bodies of thepakehaswere placed on this funeral pyre and cremated.
The people squatted round—as they had sat at a similar ceremony in the "Bird's Beak"pa—and watched the flames devour their fallen foemen. And by the light of the great fire roaring away there on themarae, Titokowarutaki'd up and down, addressing his followers, and bounding and parading to and fro, his sacred feather-plumedtaiahain his hand. He recited incantations, and chanted songs, and exhorted the Hauhaus, bidding them be of good heart and fight to the bitter end.
Then Titokowaru turned to the body of the slain warrior Te Waka-tapa-ruru, lying on a blanket on themarae, with gun and tomahawk by his side. Gazing upon the silent, tattooed features of the deadtoa, his comrade in many a wild foray and forest battle, he cried the old farewells to those whose spirits have passed to theReinga, and he chanted this lament:
"Ki konei ra, e Waka e!Ka wehe koe i au.Ka riro i a koeI nuku-maniapoto,E ngakinga mate.Aue, e Waka e!"("There thou liest, O Waka!Parted from me for ever.Thou'rt borne away to the fields of night,In revenge for other deaths.Alas, O Waka!")
"Ki konei ra, e Waka e!Ka wehe koe i au.Ka riro i a koeI nuku-maniapoto,E ngakinga mate.Aue, e Waka e!"("There thou liest, O Waka!Parted from me for ever.Thou'rt borne away to the fields of night,In revenge for other deaths.Alas, O Waka!")
"Ki konei ra, e Waka e!
Ka wehe koe i au.
Ka riro i a koe
I nuku-maniapoto,
E ngakinga mate.
Aue, e Waka e!"
("There thou liest, O Waka!
Parted from me for ever.
Thou'rt borne away to the fields of night,
In revenge for other deaths.
Alas, O Waka!")
And the wildkorerowent on.Tangisongs were chanted, and there were speeches of savage, boastful jubilation made—"great swelling words." But from a lone little thatched hut on one side of the crowded parade ground came a long-sustained crying sound, a sobbing heart-breaking dirge, rising and falling like a Highland coronach—a keening for the dead. Te Hau-karewa made lamentation for her slain warrior.
THE TAURANGA-IKA STOCKADE
Another fightingpabuilt—Scouting and skirmishing—The watcher on the tower—McDonnell and Titokowaru—How Trooper Lingard won the New Zealand Cross—Hairbreadth escapes—Pairama and the white man's leg.
Onthe edge of the great forest, some miles to the south of the Waitotara River, was the site of the olden Maori village, Tauranga-ika. In front fern and grass lands stretched away to the sand-dunes of the sea-coast, with here and there a small shallow lake; in the rear was the dense and roadless bush, a perfect and safe retreat for the Hauhaus in the event of defeat. The country hereabouts was dotted with the white man's farmsteads; but the whites had been driven off before Titokowaru's victorious army, leaving their homes, the labour of many years, to go up in smoke, and their sheep and cattle to feed the Hauhau bands. Wanganui town was only a day's march away, and Titokowaru's council of chiefs, eager to follow up their victory at Moturoa, proposed to assault the town and massacre every soul in it.
This old-time village was fixed on by the Hauhau war-chief as the site of his new fightingpa, for he abandoned Papa-tihakehake soon after the repulse of the white forces at that strong stockade. With the wariness of the Maori strategist, he avoided a second attack in any one entrenchment, and sooner than risk another, and possibly disastrous, engagement at Papa-tihakehake, he took the trouble to construct an even stronger fortification, a splendid example of native military engineering genius.
In the building of this newpa, Kimble Bent and his Hauhau comrades toiled early and late until it was completed. It was of large size, fully defended with palisading, trenches, parapet, and rifle-pits. It was between two and three chains in extreme length at the rear, with a somewhat narrower front. The ground in front was bare of forest, but carried high fern cover; on the flanks were burned clearings, dotted with blackened tree-stumps and cumbered with logs; then the forest, with some beautiful groves ofmahoéon its outskirts. Two rows of palisades, high and strong, were erected around the position; the posts, solid tree-trunks, were from six to twelve inches thick and ten to fifteen feet high; the rows were four feet apart. The spaces between the larger stockade-posts were filled in with saplings set upright close together, and fastened by cross-rails and supplejack ties; these saplings did not rest in the ground, but hung a fewinches above it, so that between them and the ground a space was left for the fire of the defending musketeers, who were enabled to pour volleys from their trenches inside the war-fence on any approaching enemy with perfect safety to themselves. Behind the inner stockading was a parapet about six feet high and four feet wide, formed of the earth thrown out of the trenches. The interior of thepawas pitted everywhere with trenches and covered ways, so that in the event of attack the defenders could literally take to the earth like rabbits, and live underground secure from rifle-fire, and even from artillery. The place was a network of trenches with connecting passages, roofed over with timber,raupo, andtoetoereeds and earth. To any assault that could be delivered by the Government forces then available, the fort was practically impregnable.
At one angle of thepathe Hauhau garrison erected a roughly timbered watch-tower, about thirty-five feet in height. This tower, ortaumaihi, was a feature of the ancientpasof Maoridom; on its upper platform a sentinel was posted, day and night, to give warning of the approach of the enemy. In front of thepa, outside the palisades, a tall flagstaff was set up, and on this staff the Hauhau war-flags were hoisted. There were two gateways in the rear stockading, giving access to the bush. In one end of thepanear the rear was a small tent occupied by Titokowaru. Bent, the cartridge-maker,lived in a little rush-builtwharétowards the other end, near one of the gateways.
When the stockade was finished the Hauhaus constructed atekoteko, a great marionette-like figure of a man, cut out of apukatea-tree. It was so placed that its head stood about fifteen feet above the ground, well above the front stockade, and it had loose-jointed arms, to which flax ropes were fastened, leading down to the trench below. By manipulating these ropes the arms of the wooden warrior were made to move in the actions of thehaka, just as if some painted Hauhau were dancing a dance of defiance on the fortress walls.
When the fort was finished the garrison gathered in their food supplies, saw to their arms, and for many weeks waited for thepakeha. Hauhau scouts and small war-parties daily sallied out from the fort, seeking game in the shape of straypakehas.
One of these savage man-hunters was a Ngati-Maniapoto man from the King Country, whose name was Pairama, and who had married a Nga-Rauru woman. He used to go out by himself, looking for some one or something to kill. Te Pairama returned to the stockade in huge jubilation one day, bearing as a trophy of his prowess on the trail a white man's leg! He had, says Bent, scouted down until he was close to Kai-iwi. There he spied a white settler in a grass paddock, carrying a rifle.
Down he crouched at once, and stealthily stalkedthepakeha. Just as the unsuspecting settler came to the paddock gate, the Maori leaped out from behind the fence, with a furious snatch tore the rifle from the man's grasp, and shot him dead with it. He cut off one of thepakeha'slegs with his tomahawk, and brought it home as proof of his success on the war-path as proudly as any Indian ever flourished his take of scalps. Up and down themaraeof thepahe bounded, exhibiting the captured rifle and severed limb, yelling his war-song, and loudly boasting that he would that night cook thepakeha'sleg and eat it all himself.
But the warrior's braggadocio received a sharp check from Titokowaru. The war-chief disapproved of this sort of thing on the part of irresponsible young free-lances. "No man must bring white man's flesh into thispa," he said, "unless he is one of theTekau-ma-rua, the war-party sent out by me. Take thatpakehaleg back again at once and place it alongside the body." And soon thereafter the disgusted scout, his ardour for "long-pig" so unexpectedly damped by Titoko's code of cannibal etiquette, was to be seen trudging back along the track to thepakehafarm, with sulky visage and reluctant gait, and a white foot and leg—raw—protruding from a flax basket strapped to his shoulders.
By day the scouting parties of the Hauhau "Twelve Apostles" scoured the country; by nightthe people gathered round the fires on themaraeor in the big sleepingwharés, and talked and sang and danced thehakasof which they never wearied. Wild night-scenes those on the stockadedmarae, with the crowds of blanketed or flax-cloaked men and women, their wild faces illumined by the leaping flames, squatting in great circles round the camp fires, while more than half nude figures leaped and stamped and slapped their limbs and chests with resounding slaps, and expelled the air from their lungs in wolfish "Ooh's!" and "Hau's!" as they trod the assembly ground in all the fury of the war-dance. A warrior orator would rise, weapon in hand, and throwing off his blanket for freedom of action, go bounding along themaraein front of the assemblage, shouting short, sharp sentences as hetaki'd to and fro, his athletic figure untrammelled except for a waist-shawl or short dangling mat, fire in his movements, and ferocity in every gesture and in every cry—the embodiment of belligerent Maoridom in its savage prime.
Like defiant replying shouts from some hidden foe in the blackness of the forest that rose in a solid wall above the rear stockade came the clear echoes of the roaringhakachoruses.
And so the wild night passed, until the camp fires died down, and the tribespeople sought sleep in their packedwharepunisand their rush-strewn burrows; and the melancholy "Kou-kou!" of the"hundred-eyed"ruru, the bush-owl, was heard, as the bird-sentry of the night hours cried his watchword from the forest or a perch on some tall palisade-post. Yet not all eyes were closed in thepa, for the Hauhaus, grown wise by much hard experience, did not neglect the posting of sentries, and a sentinel watched from the platform in the angle-tower. At intervals he cried his watch-cry, or raised his voice in a night-song that rose and fell in measured cadences like atangiwail.
The most dreaded hour in Maori warfare was the dark, dank hour just before the dawn, and then it was well to be on the qui vive, for Kepa's dusky forest-rangers and their white comrades the A.C.'s had a truly unpleasant fashion of attacking their enemies at most unholy, shivery times, when man slept soundest. So the watchmen in the tower were enjoined to extra vigilance in the early morning hours. And, as in the olden Maori days, out rang the voice of the high sentinel, chanting his ancient "Whakaara-pa," his "All's well" song, to Tarioa and Kopu, the first and morning stars.
This is one of the songs he cried, an old watch-chant of the Ngati-Toa tribe of Kawhia:
Late one night, as the Hauhaus lay behind their palisades, Colonel Thomas McDonnell—a man who spoke Maori like a native—rode boldly up to thepawall with his escort, and asked for Titokowaru. He called out in the native tongue, "O Titoko—where are you?"
Titoko, summoned from his tent, went down to the stockade. "I am here!" he shouted.
The white officer cried: "Titoko, I have been trying to discover youratua, the god which guides you in your battles. Now I have found it—I know the source of yourmana. When the wind blows hard from thewhakarua(the north-east), I know it is the breath of your god, the wind of Uenuku! But youratuais only atutua—a low fellow!"
Spoke Titoko angrily, and said: "McDonnell, go! Depart at once! If you do not ride away directly, there will be a blazing oven ready for you!"
McDonnell rode away, and the angry chief returned to his tent. Why McDonnell should have paid this daring night visit to the stockade is notquite clear, but the incident is given just as Bent narrates it. He and his companions on themaraeheard the dialogue, and Bent says the old fear struck to his heart when he heard Titokowaru menacing the white officer with the oven. The Taranakis seem to have been particularly addicted to the "ordeal by fire."
"The oven is gaping open for you!" was their customary threat. Their tribal history abounds, too, in tales of how some obnoxious neighbours or others, Ngati-so-and-so, had been effectively disposed of by the simple process of surrounding their huts while they slept, fastening the doors, and then setting fire to thewharés. The only objection from the Maori point of view to this summary method of obtainingutuwas that it "spoiled the meat!"
Colonel McDonnell was so conversant with Maoritikanga—customs, rules of life, and ways of thought—that he was by way of being atohunga-Maori himself, and his dramatic twitting of Titokowaru with the fact that the reputed source of his fightingmanawas within his (McDonnell's) knowledge was a circumstance that hugely annoyed the old war-chief.
It was just as if so much of hismana-tapuhad passed to his white foeman—to the rival maker of strong "war-medicine."
Occasional skirmishes with the white cavalry patrol-parties enlivened the three months' sojournin Tauranga-ika. In one of these rencontres a young Wanganui trooper—now a resident of Wellington—won his New Zealand Cross. This was William Lingard, a member of Captain John Bryce's troop of Kai-iwi Cavalry.