Constabulary OfficerA CONSTABULARY OFFICER IN BUSH-FIGHTING COSTUME.(From a photo of Colonel T. Porter's taken in 1869.)
A CONSTABULARY OFFICER IN BUSH-FIGHTING COSTUME.(From a photo of Colonel T. Porter's taken in 1869.)
The advance-guard of the pursuing force numbered twenty-five Maoris, about equally divided between the Whanganui and Arawa tribes. Captain Porter was the only European officer with them, but one or two white scouts and bushmen accompanied the Maoris. As the column's march was necessarily in single file through thick and tangled bush, it was difficult to bring a large number of men into action when any skirmish or ambuscade occurred, and the consequence was that practically all the fighting was done by the advance-guard.
It was a picturesquely savage chapter of the war, that chase of Titokowaru and his scattered Hauhaus. There was more than a touch of the barbaric in it, for some of the Government forces reverted to the primitive war-methods of the Maori himself.
Between the moccasined hero of the war-trail in Fenimore Cooper's and Captain Mayne Reid's romances of Red Indian days, and Kepa's Maori guerilla and some of his white comrades, there was, after all, only this difference: one took the trail hunting for scalps, the other for heads!
As mentioned in a previous chapter, Colonel Whitmore had agreed to a request made by Major Kepa after the fighting on the Waitotara, and had offered rewards of £10 a head for Hauhau chiefs killed and £5 for ordinary men. Kepa'sKupapa,Maoris, recruited from the Whanganui, Ngati-Apa, Ngati-Raukawa, and other "friendly" tribes—only friendly to thepakehaby reason of their deadly animosity to the Taranaki tribes—were little less savage than the Hauhaus themselves, and this manhunt under themanaof the Government was just the work that delighted them. They were "stripped to a gantlin'" for the bush chase—simply a waist-mat or shawl and cartridge-belts and a pouch for their percussion-caps. And some of the white bushmen-scouts were just as eager on the head-hunting trail, and added to their service arms a tomahawk.
With the Whanganui men marched a European scout and bushman about whom some remarkable stories are told. This was Tom Adamson, Kepa'spakeha-Maori, a big, powerful fellow who surpassed the Maoris themselves in bush-craft and endurance. He marched bare-footed, like his Maori comrades. Another of the white scouts and Hauhau-hunters was a man who, in after years, became celebrated for his pioneer exploration work in the vast wilderness of Milford Sound, an old John-o'-Groat's sailor and soldier named Donald Sutherland, whose name has been given to the immense waterfall that is one of New Zealand's natural wonders.
It was a wild, picturesquely unkempt column, that little armed force ofpakehasand Maoris, as it filed off under its active and daring young officersinto the gloomy, danger-haunted woods, the unknown and trackless forest through which the Patea and its tributaries flowed. The bush-fighting costume of many of the whites as well as Maoris was simple, not to say brigand-like. Officers and men of the Constabulary and other corps who had to do much bush-marching discarded the trousers of civilisation and took to the "garb of old Gaul," worn alike by the Scottish Highlander and the Maori; this kilt was usually a coloured shawl, strapped round the waist and falling to the knee.
Through the huge and tangled woods they scrambled—hunters and hunted. Now along some narrow trail, hardly discernible to the untrained eye; now crawling through networks of supplejacks and brambly shrubs and great snaky lianes that looped tree to tree in bewildering coiled intricacies. Down into steep and narrow watercourses, swinging down one after another by the hanging vines and tough tree-creepers; up rocky gorges and jungle-clad cliffs. For endless miles upon miles the great solemn woods covered the face of the rugged land; beneath the shadows of the thick, dark foliage loped the blood-avengers.
In the afternoon of the first day of the chase the column descended into a deep, thickly wooded gorge. Suddenly from both sides a fire was opened upon the centre of the force, the main body of the A.C.'s. "Clear the bush!" was the order. Theadvance-guard and A.C.'s quickly circled round and enfiladed the enemy, who bolted like Red Indians through the thickets; and the chase went on.
Three Hauhaus were shot and decapitated on the first day of the chase. Every man killed, in fact, on this and the succeeding days of the pursuit had his head cut off.
The first Maori decapitated was a young chief, who was shot while in the act of climbing a steep cliff in the bush. Being arangatira, his was a £10 head. This man was a prominent Hauhau named Matangi-o-Rupé. He belonged to Titokowaru's own immediate clan, orhapu, Ngati-Manu-hiakai—"The Tribe of the Hungry Bird." It was a Ngati-Raukawa soldier in Kepa's contingent who took off the Hauhau's head with his tomahawk; later he duly delivered it at thepakehacamp. Matangi's son, Kuku—now living at the village of Taiporohenui—on learning of his father's fate, swore to haveutu—revenge—and vowed to Bent that if he ever encountered the man who beheaded his parent, he would "slice him to pieces like a piece of beef."
Some years after the war, Bent, while on a visit to a Maori settlement at Oroua, in the Manawatu district, met this Ngati-Raukawa head-hunter—"an ugly, tattooed old villain," as he describes him. Thepakeha, by way of imparting an interesting bit of news, informed the old warrior of Kuku's threat,but the tattooed veteran only smiled. The days of thelex talioniswere over. Thatutuaccount has not been squared; but only because of the inconveniently peaceful rule of thepakeha. Kuku has by no means forgotten or forgiven the man who sold his father's head to the white man.
Later on in the bush chase the advance-guard, hurrying along at the double, came upon a Hauhau family—a grey-haired, middle-aged man, his wife, and two or three children. They had not been able to travel so fast as their friends, on account of the tired children, and so had been left behind. The old warrior was fired on by one of the Arawa Maoris, and was severely wounded. He fell, but struggled to a squatting position, with his empty gun across his knees. The Arawa rushed at him, with tomahawk raised, to finish him off. The old Hauhau sprang up with a great effort, gripping his tomahawk. He was too badly wounded, however, to strike a blow, and the Arawa seized him and his tomahawk. Just at that moment a white man, dressed like a Maori in a waist-shawl, and bare-footed, rushed up, tomahawk in hand. He seized the Hauhau by the hair, and, with a couple of furious strokes, chopped off his head, and dropped it, all bloody as it was, into the flax kit he carried slung at his back, and in which there were already other heads.
The Arawa by no means liked being done outof what he considered was his head, seeing that he had captured the Hauhau, and there was a savage squabble between the two as to its ownership. The white man "bluffed" the Maori out of it, however, and prepared to add the heads of the rest of the family to his collection. He rushed at the weepingwahinéand her children, and their heads would have come off also had not Captain Porter, fortunately for them, just come up. The poor, terrified woman clung to his knees, beseeching him to save her and her children. He told them they would be safe, and ordered the white scout forward. The Arawas took charge of the widow and her children, and she was sent to Rotorua when the campaign was over.
The WhanganuiKupapaswere fully as savage as any wild rebel. No quarter was given to any Hauhau warrior, and no Hauhau thought of asking for any mercy. Of one frightful scene Porter was an eye-witness. After killing and beheading two or three men in a little valley in the forest, the Whanganui Maoris tied flax ropes to their ankles and hung them up to the branches of the trees, eviscerated them and thrust sticks into them to keep them open, just like animals in a slaughter-yard. Then they danced round the bodies like fiends, flourishing the tattooed heads of the dead by their long hair and shouting and yelling war-songs, and making the hideous grimaces of thepukana. They were quite beyond control, mad with the lust of killing.
Porter at last managed to put a stop to this mutilation, but he was powerless to prevent the head-taking, except so far as his own men were concerned. He did not allow any Arawas to decapitate an enemy, much as some of the warriors from the Hot Lakes Country would have liked to. He asked the Whanganui natives to bury the heads, and, if necessary, take only the ears with them if they wished to claim Whitmore's reward. But the warriors answered, "No, Witimoa said 'heads,' and if he doesn't get the heads he may not pay us."
The pursuit of the Hauhaus continued for several days, until Titokowaru's warriors finally scattered in the dense forest, and the pursuers had exhausted their food. It was then determined to make for the coast again, but owing to the density of the bush the Government men lost their bearings. They were far in the tangled, jungly forest, without a guide, for they had killed their prisoners. The column accordingly divided, each division marching independently for the open country, food, and tented camps.
The night before the divisions of the pursuing column separated, Major Kepa ordered one of histohungas, a wild-looking, tattooed old warrior, learned in all the savage arts of Maoridom, towhakapakoko nga upoko, that is, to dry or preservethe heads of the slain Hauhaus. Porter and the other Europeans in the Maori contingents now for the first time witnessed the ancient process of smoke-drying human heads. The heads had up to this time been carried in flax kits on men's shoulders through the bush, and it was necessary, if they were to be taken out to the camp, that they should be preserved from decay.
The old medicine-man went into the bush and returned with armfuls of branches of themahoé-tree, and made a fire, which he kept burning until all the wood was reduced to glowing embers. The earth was heaped up around this fire, and the head, neck downwards, was placed over it, and all openings at the sides were closed, so that the fumes from the charcoal oven would pass up into the head. The brains had previously been removed and the eyes stuffed up. As the smoking went on, the old man smoothed down the skin of the face with his hands to prevent it wrinkling and wiped off the moisture, until the head was thoroughly smoke-dried and quite mummified. For several hours the head-smoking went on, and in the morning the trophies of the chase were packed for the final march.
Half-starved, ragged and weary, the Constabulary and their Maori allies at last reached the open country; from the top of the range of wooded hills they had seen the white tents of Colonel Whitmore'sheadquarters at Taiporohenui. That evening they were in camp, and there they enjoyed the first square meal they had had for days. Kepa and Porter and their contingents had been nine days in the bush.
Captain Porter went to Colonel Whitmore's quarters as soon as he arrived, and reported the result of his expedition. While he was giving the commanding officer an account of the forest chase, the Whanganui men who had taken the Hauhau heads came up in a body and opened the tent door, and poured in head after head upon the ground, exclaiming as they did so, "Na, Witimoa, to upoko!" ("There, Whitmore, your heads!")
The little colonel was thunderstruck. He stared with consternation in his eyes on the ghastly heads, most of them tattooed, with grinning teeth and long blood-stained hair, strewn about the floor where they had rolled. There were eleven of them, some at the colonel's feet, some beneath the table; some had rolled under the camp bedstead.
He had forgotten all about his promise of a reward for heads. Anyhow, he now told the Maoris, he did not mean that the heads should actually be brought in to him in camp, but that a reward would be paid for each Hauhau killed in the pursuit. But he kept his word to Kepa, and each head was paid for.
The white scouts, too, brought in their kits ofheads, and received their blood-money. These and certain other Taranaki heads brought in were not personally delivered, but were all paid for, mostly in orders for clothes, boots, and other necessaries.
"No more heads," was the colonel's order. He realised that this barbarous fashion of squaring affairs with the enemy would arouse a howl of condemnation from those who did not understand the sharp and savage necessities of frontier-fighting.
These facts may not please the mild or gentle variety of reader. The idea of a New Zealand Government force decapitating its enemies and smoke-drying those heads for purposes of reward is too, too savage for the refined humanitarian to contemplate without a shudder. Nevertheless, these are facts. Many an ugly incident happened in the bush-fighting of those days. It was no kid-glove warfare. In this case the Government Maoris were inflamed by anger and revenge, and indeed some of them were little better than the cannibals they were chasing. And they were wild with a desire tongaki mate, that is, to seek vengeance, payment, for their dead—blood for blood.
But while it was barbarous, it was thoroughly in accord with the spirit of guerilla warfare that was forced upon the troops, and it served its purpose, for it struck terror into the hearts of Titokowaru's warriors, and they never fought again.
The Hauhau war-chief'smana-tapuwas gone, and there was nothing for it but to fly to the depths of the wilderness. He and his men gathered in a few days at Rimatoto, but made a very short stay there. They marched through the forest to the island-fastness in the Ngaere swamp, where they were very nearly caught by Whitmore and his Constabulary, who made a roughtête-de-pontover the quaking morass with hurdles of supplejack and bush-vines. Then they made off for the Ngatimaru Country, on the upper waters of the Waitara, thirty or forty miles away, over terribly rough country and through an almost trackless forest.
"A party of forty or fifty of us," says Bent, "remained in our little settlement at Rimatoto, always on the alert against surprise by the troops, until the anxiety of our position became too much for us. We packed up our belongings, and swagged them inland to Rukumoana, on the Patea River. In this lonely spot, far in the bush, we camped, and made a little clearing in order to plant food. When we had felled the bush with our axes, twenty men travelled across to the Upper Waitara to procure seed potatoes from their friends, and we planted our crops and waited."
In this remote valley of refuge, far in the forest, the white runaway and his Hauhau companions—he was still with his chief Rupé—remained for many weeks, living the loneliest life conceivable, hearingnothing of the outside world, and existing precariously on the foods of the forest.
Titokowaru was safe in his bush retreat in the Ngatimaru Country, his last battle fought, his once godlikemanain the dust.
THE LAND OF REFUGE
The flight from Rukumoana—Retreat to the Waitara—The Kawaupa—Life in the Ngatimaru Country—Rupé and his white man—a Maori Donnybrook fair—a tale of aTaniwha.
Oneday two Hauhaus, exhausted and half-starved, entered the little bush-camp at Rukumoana. One of them was Bent's oldrangatira, Tito te Hanataua. They had passed through many perils and hairbreadth escapes, and they warned the white man and his Maori comrades that Kepa te Rangihiwinui and his Whanganui Maori scouts were still hunting for them, and would have their heads to a certainty should they happen on the trail to the refuge place.
The old feeling of terror came over Bent and his companions at the mention of Kepa's name. That night Hauhau piquets kept watch on the edge of the clearing, and more than once they imagined they heard stealthy footfalls, the breaking of branches, and the whispers of enemies in the woods. These dangers, however, were things of the imagination. Nevertheless, it was an anxious night in the lonelykainga, and when morning came the peopledecided to abandon their camp and bury themselves still deeper in the wilderness.
In a very short time the men and women of the settlement were on the march, laden with their flaxpikaus, containing such belongings as they thought worth removing. They took to the forest in a due northerly direction; bound for that Alsatia of rebels and Hauhaus, the remote and rugged Ngati-Maru Country, up on the head-waters of the Waitara—Titokowaru's hiding-place.
The utmost caution was observed on the march. No fires were lighted. So that there should be no clue to the direction of the flight, care was taken to leave no broken branches or other bushmen's signs; not a leaf was turned or a twig displaced if the refugees could help it until they were well into the ranges. Wherever possible they took to the creek-beds and walked in the running water, so that no trail should betray them. They could have spared themselves that anxiety and trouble, however, for the Government troops had at last abandoned the chase.
Two days Bent and his friends spent on that terrible trail—the roughest, wildest part of the Taranaki hinterland. Fording rivers, pushing through matted jungles, climbing wooded precipices, lowering their swags down perpendicular cliffs, and swinging themselves down by forest vines and creepers—they emerged at last, a weary little band,on the banks of the Waitara, about thirty miles from the mouth of that river. All around towered the densely forested blue ranges; the high banks of the winding Waitara fell precipitously to its rapid-whitened waters.
On the cliff-top where they left the forest there was a little Maori camp. Here the fugitives were ordered to the main Hauhau camp, the Kawaupa, where Titokowaru and his followers had established themselves, weary of war, but nevertheless resolute to die "fighting like the shark," as the Maori has it, if attacked in their last hiding-place.
The Kawaupastood in an admirable position for defence, in a great bend of the Waitara River. The winding rapid river here swept round a long tongue of steep-banked level land, protecting it on three sides; in the rear was the dense forest. The banks of the river were from twenty to thirty feet high, and could be climbed only in a few places. On this high tongue of land, about a quarter of a mile long, there stood a large village of well-builtraupoandnikauthatched houses; between the village and the forest were the cultivations of potatoes,kumara, andtaro. On the opposite side of the river, in the direction of the Taramouku Range, wild horses and cattle abounded in the bush. A short distance below the village there was a largepa-tuna, or eel-weir, consisting of two rows of stoutmanukastakes set closely together and sunk into the river-bedand converging in aV, at the lower end of whichhinaki, or eel-baskets, were set for the purpose of catching thepiharau, or lamprey, which abounded in the Waitara, and which were a great Maori delicacy.
As Rupé and hispakehaBent and their companions marched slowly into themaraeof the war-chief's camp, their eyes on the ground, they were welcomed with the ancient ceremony of thepowhiri. The village women and girls waved green branches and shawls as they retired before them, singing all together the famous old greeting song, "Toia Mai te Waka!" ("Oh, haul up the canoe!") likening the guests to a canoe-party of visitors arriving from a distant shore.
Then as the women fell back the whole force of Titoko's warriors leaped to their feet, and swinging their firearms this way and that, threw themselves with martial fury into all the thrilling action of the war-dance. The ground shook under the mighty tread of many scores of brown feet, and the forest rang with the chorus of the war-song and the reverberating volleys of many guns. And then, when the dance was ended, thehongiof long-severed friends, the pressing of nose to nose, and the pitiful weeping for the dead. For quite two hours the greattangilasted. When it ceased one of the head-men of the river-tribes sent the new arrivals to his own camp, close by the Kawau; the village womencame in procession, to the lilt of thetuku-kaisong, bearing their baskets of food, steaming hot from thehangi, and the half-starved white man and his friends were soon enjoying a bountiful feast after their long-enforced existence upon the meagre rations of the bush.
Kimble Bent lived in this securely hidden place of refuge, and at Paihau village, near by, from the end of 1869 until about 1876. He was now a Maori in all his ways; he planted food-crops and harvested them, snared birds, fished for eels, cut out canoes, and paddled his canoe on the river, joined the Hauhaus in their songs and their sacred chants, and danced with them in theirhakas; he wore as little clothing as any native in the camp.
Life did not go too easily with the white man during those days on the Waitara. He was still Rupé's bond-servant; and his master and owner sometimes took fits of ungovernable passion. In one of these paroxysms of anger Bent had a narrow escape.
Rupé one day ordered his white man to go down to a creek, which ran into the Waitara near the Paihaupa, and clear out the little dam in which the household were accustomed to steep their Indian corn, theirkaanga-pirau. Bent was working away cleaning out the steeping-pool when his chief cameup and found fault with him because he was not working hard enough. "I made him some answer which didn't please him," says Bent, "whereupon he flew into a terrible rage and rushed at me like a tiger. I stooped and caught him by the leg, and he fell into the muddy pool. Up he jumped in a foaming passion, and ran to thepa, got out his gun, and loaded it to shoot me. But his wife rushed at him, took the gun out of his hands, and told me to hurry down to the other village, where I would be safe. So I ran to the river-bank, loosed a small canoe, and paddled down the river to the lowerpa, where I was kindly received and taken into my old friend Hakopa's house, and I lived and worked there for some months."
Another incident of those wild old days on the Waitara, narrated by Bent, is worth the telling, as an illustration of the whimsically variable temper of the Maori and of his truly Hibernian love of a "free fight."
The war had long been over, and somehapusof the tribes on the upper river talked of selling their lands to the whites. Certain of the chiefs had been down at Waitara township and in New Plymouth, and there they had been approached by the agents of the Government. In the end they sold their lands for eighteenpence an acre. But the more conservative of the Hauhaus stoutly held out against land-selling, and against any dealings withthe hatedpakeha; and the difference of opinion led to frequent quarrels.
One day a council of the people was held on themaraeof the Paihau village for the purpose of discussing the land-selling proposals. Long and bitter were the speeches; speaker after speakertaki'd up and down themarae, and worked himself up into a fury of excitement.
Two old chiefs, tattooed veterans of the war, their long hair adorned with feathers, weapons of wood and stone in their hands, angrily assailed each other. One was Rupé, the other was Horopapera Matangi. One advocated the sale of surplus lands, the other vigorously opposed it, and insisted on the principle of "Maori land for Maori men." Then there arose a dispute about the ownership of atangiwai(greenstone pendant). From argument they came to hurling abusive threats at each other.
At last Rupé furiously hurled his weapon—a sharp wooden spear—at Horopapera, who dodged it, and cleverly caught it near the butt end as it whistled past him. He instantly smartly returned it to its owner, spearing him through the leg.
Next two women went at it. Women of rank these, who considered themselves entitled to equal debating voice with the men-folk. Their powers of rhetoric and invective exhausted, they fell on each other very literally "tooth and nail," biting, hair-pulling,scratching, screaming. In their struggle they tore each other's clothes off, and two nude Amazons raged round themarae.
One of the wild women, a young chieftainess, her long hair streaming behind her, her pendant breasts quivering, her shoulders bleeding, seized a canoe paddle and struck her antagonist a blow across the naked back with it. The other grabbed atokotoko, or walking-staff, and, thrusting it between her opponent's legs, neatly up-ended her, in the "altogether," on the greenmarae.
By this time the whole tribe were into the battle, with sticks, paddles, spears, and any weapon they could lay their hands on—men and women alike. It was a real faction fight. Fortunately, the people had left their guns in theirwharés, and were too intent upon their hand-to-hand encounter to run for their firearms.
Kimble Bent stood on one side watching the squabble. He was close to the river-bank, where the canoes were tied up. Presently, one of the Maoris ran down to the water-side with an axe, and began furiously cutting away at his antagonists' canoes. Others ran to the cookinghangis, and with burning sticks from the ovens set fire to some of the thatched houses in thekainga. Soon there was a pretty blaze, and half the village was burned down in a few minutes.
In half an hour's time the people had cooled down,and the trouble was over. Then—a Hibernian people the Maoris, surely!—they began to weep over their quarrel, and fell on each other's necks—or, rather, pressed each other's noses—to make up for the hard words and blows they had just exchanged, and set to work to rebuild the dwellings they had destroyed in their hasty anger.
Meanwhile, Titokowaru wearied for the trail again, unable to rest in this secluded wilderness of the Waitara. Histapustatus had been restored by a Waitara priest, with the appropriatekarakiasand invocations. Gathering together a band of his warriors—the remnant of the once ever-victoriousTekau-ma-rua—he paraded them in themaraeof the Kawaupa, and farewelling his people, took his old place at the head of thetauaand led them off in a grand war-dance. A truly savage figure, that stern old chief, as he leaped to the van of his war-party and danced, his sacredtaiahain the air; his waist girt with a coloured shawl, a rich feather cape of native make fastened over the left shoulder and under the right; his grizzled head decked with white plumes. And with loud cries of "Haere, ra!Haere ra!" the villagers farewelled the great war-chief as he marched his armed men out of thepaand struck into the forest of the Taramouku, bound for the open lands of South Taranaki and his ancestral home. But it was no longer the war-trail,for Titoko and his henchmen fought no more, but betook themselves to the great camp of Te Whiti the Prophet, who preached peace, and prophesied sundry supernatural ways by which the Maori would come into his own again.
The minds of these isolated forest-dwellers were saturated with superstition, with strange beliefs that were a reflex of the vast untrimmed places of nature in which they lived. The white man, too, almost came to believe in the tales of saurian-liketaniwhasand water-demons, in thepatupaiareheandmaero, the forest-fairies and forest-giants, in the occult malevolence of thetapuandmakutuspells.
A story related by Bent is illustrative of the Maori belief, up to quite modern days, in malignant beings which made their homes in lonely waters and in caves—the dreadedtaniwha.
The tale of the "Taniwha" of the Kopua:
One day—this was in the early "seventies"—an old man named Te Maire left the Kawau landing in his canoe, and paddled down the Waitara to a place called Te Kopua, the site of an ancient village. The object of his expedition was to procure dry resinous strips of therimu-pine for the purpose of making torches to be used in catchingpiharau(lampreys) in the river at night. After getting the wood he required he started on the return paddle to his home. On the way to the Kawau he disappeared, and was never seen again alive; no doubt he overbalanced and fell into the river while poling his canoe up one of the small rapids near the Kopua.
That afternoon five men from the Kawau, including Kimble Bent, were paddling their canoe down the river to a settlement a few miles distant, when they caught sight of the old man's empty canoe drifting down with the swift current. As they approached it it sped away rapidly before them, and at last stranded on a shingle-bank in a bend of the river. In it they found Te Maire's gun and a young pig, which the vanished man had evidently caught in the bush while on his torch-making expedition.
Bent's Maori companions immediately explained in their own way the mystery of their tribesman's disappearance.
"There is ataniwhathere," they said, "a fearful water-monster that dwells in a deep, still pool under Te Kopua's banks. He has stretched forth his long claws and dragged the old fellow down to his den."
The Maori canoeists made haste to quit the dead man's craft, and plied their paddles with unusual energy until they reached their destination on the shore below. They told their story, and that eveninga meeting of the village people was held in thewharepunito discuss the mystery.
For hours the wiseacres of the bush-hamlet solemnly debated the circumstances, and each canoeist in turn had to give his account of the affair and advance his theory. At last it was decided that there was no possible doubt that thetaniwhaof the river had seized Te Maire and drowned him. There must, of course, be a reason, for notaniwhaof any repute would take such an extreme step without some good cause.
The verdict was that Te Maire had violated thetapuof the deserted village; he had in all probability taken some dryrimufrom an old house that stood there, and which was sacred because a chief had died in it—goodness knows how long ago. The river-god had very properly punished him with death—it was the penalty of infringing the law oftapu.
The next day and for some days thereafter canoe crews hunted the river for the old man's body, but found it not. At last a woman at the lower settlement, on going down to the river one morning to get a calabash of water, spied the body of the missing man hanging in the branches of a prostratekahikatea-tree on the opposite side of the river, about four feet above the water.
The question was, how did the body get there, entangled in the branches that height above theriver, for there had been no flood, no noticeable rise or fall in the level of the river.
The answer was plain to the mind of the Maori. He summed it all up in two words:
"Te taniwha!"
The river-monster, after grabbing Te Maire from his canoe and detaining him a while in his watery grave, had dragged the body away down-stream and hung it up in the tree-branches opposite the village, so that the dead man's people should have no difficulty in recovering it, and in giving it decent burial.
A truly thoughtful and consideratetaniwha!
BUSH LIFE ON THE PATEA
The return to Rukumoana—The forest-village—Bird-snaring and bird-spearing—Bent the canoe-builder—His third wife.
Atlast—about the year 1876—the Upper Waitara was sold to the Government. The white man and his Maori people cried their farewells to Ngati-Maru and journeyed back over the ranges and through the forests to their old lands in the valley of the Patea. Bent was still Rupé's servant. The old chief and his household and some Hauhau relatives, armed, and carrying their belongings on their backs, trudged through the wilderness until they reached Rukumoana, their old-time shelter-camp on the banks of the Patea, about thirty miles from the sea. Here they halted and built their hamlet of saplings and thatch, and an old overgrown clearing was burnt off and planted with potatoes and maize. The party was but a small one. Besides Bent, there were Rupé, his wife, and their two sons; old Hakopa and his wife; and their niece, a girl named Te Hau-rutu-wai ("The Breeze that shakes the Raindrops down").
It was an even lonelier spot than the refuge-camp in the Ngati-Maru country; life here was simple and primitive in the extreme. The people tended their little plots of food-crops, shadowed by the dark forest; they snared and speared the forest birds, they hunted the wild pig, and climbed the hollow trees for wild honey. For nearly two years thepakeha-Maori lived with his little tribe in Rukumoana.
The ancient customs of the Maori fowler's cult were observed by these bush-dwellers, brown and white. For instance, the firstkakaparrot ortuior other forest creature snared or speared in a day's birding was not eaten, but was left, as an offering to the gods of the forest, beside an oldtapucanoe which was lying in the bush close to the river-bank. It was a hoary relic, this ancientwaka-tapu, a carved dug-out covered with long grey moss. It was a small canoe, eight or ten feet long, and had lain there for years and years filled with water. Somewhat similar canoe-shaped troughs, filled with water, stood in various places in the forest; these were filled with water, and were generally placed in spots remote from streams or pools. Above them slip-knot snares were arranged, so that the pigeons andtuiand other birds, flying down to quench their thirst after feeding on themiroorhinauortawaberries, were caught in the nooses, and hung there, flapping and helpless, until thefowlers went round to collect the day's bag. This canoe was called awaka-whangai, orwai-tuhi.
When spearing birds with the long barbed spear oftawa-wood, the hunter would take great care to avoid getting any blood on his hands in withdrawing the weapon from the bird's body. Should blood stain the hands—"kaore e mana te tao"—the spear would lose its bird-killing powers; it would be an unlucky affair altogether, and the forest-man might as well throw it away. Such were the beliefs of the dwellers in those dim forest-places.
At the end of the first harvest season Rupé led his white man out into the forest one day, and, halting before a tall, straighttotara-pine that grew near the steep bank of the Patea, he said:
"This is my canoe! Hew it down and carve it out! In it we will paddle down the river to Hukatéré, and you shall look upon the faces of your fellow-pakehasagain."
So now behold Bent the canoe-builder. There above him towered the tree—Tane the Forest-god personified. In his hand was his broad-axe; with it he must make hisrangatira'sriver-boat.
He felled the tree, and, lopping off the upper part, began the laborious work of dubbing out thewaka. The upper side of the trunk he levelled off with his axe, and then he gradually cut it into hollowed shape, an art he had learned on the Waitara. For this portion of the work an adze was chiefly used,a steel blade lashed to a wooden handle in the old Maori fashion. He trimmed and shaped the ends into bow and stern, and day by day the canoe assumed more shapely proportions, until at last it lay complete—a craft of about twenty-five feet in length and three feet in beam, rough and undecorated, it is true, but still a ship of the Maori, fit to carry cargo and paddlers, and run the rapids of the swift and broken Patea. Ropes were made of stout supplejack vines, and with Rupé and his family the white man lowered the canoe down the high bank to the water-edge.Te Riu-o-Tanélay ready for its crew—the Hollow Trunk of Tané.
Then paddles were shaped out, and Bent and his companions set to work catching and drying eels and gathering wild honey, in preparation for the voyage down the river to Hukatéré village, where the main body of Rupé's tribe resided.
About this time the white man entered upon his third matrimonial experience. His chief's granddaughter, a good-looking girl of about eighteen, came to the little village with a visiting party of Ngati-Ruanui. She had already a husband, but he had quarrelled with her, and attempted to kill her; she, therefore, returned to her oldtupuna, Rupé, who now gave her to Bent; and the white man and his young Maori wife lived happily there in well-hidden Rukumoana.[14]
HIROKI: THE STORY OF A FUGITIVE
Hiroki, the slayer of McLean—Strange faces at Rukumoana—A forest chase—A meeting and a warning—Hiroki's wild bush life and his end.
Morethan one outlaw from the white country outside took refuge in the Taranaki bush even in thosepost-bellumdays. One of these was Hiroki, the Maori who killed McLean. Hiroki ("The Lean One") had quarrelled with a survey-party who had camped on his land away out near the coast in the year 1878; the cause of the trouble, as he said, was the killing of his pigs by McLean, who was the surveyor's cook. Hiroki remonstrated with thepakehas, but they jeered at him; and when his last pig had disappeared he sat down and wept, then loaded his gun, went to the survey camp, and shot McLean dead. Wherefore he was a hunted man, with a price on his head.
One day, as thepakeha-Maori (Kimble Bent) and his Maori companions were sitting smoking in their lonely little bush-village at Rukumoana, far up the Patea River, they heard a loud hail across the river.They looked at each other in astonishment and a little alarm, for they imagined that no one knew their hiding-place. Bent went to his hut, and loading a revolver, put it in his belt, then walked over to the river-bank. On the other side of the stream there were six natives standing. They called to Bent to bring a canoe over and ferry them across.
Bent, always on thequi vivefor danger, was dubious about the wisdom of trusting himself alone with a party of strangers, who, for all he knew, might be after his head, for he was still an outlaw. But he dropped into his canoe, and with a few strong strokes sent the dug-out across the river. He knelt in his canoe, holding her nose into the bank, and interrogated the strange Maoris. The leader was a tall young half-caste. They were all armed with revolvers, and one or two had tomahawks stuck in their belts.
"Where do you come from, and what do you want here?" asked the white man.
"We have come seeking a man who has committed a crime," replied the half-caste, speaking, as Bent had done, in Maori.
Bent shoved the canoe a stroke off from the bank and said determinedly, with a hand on his revolver:
"If you have come to capture me I will not be taken; I will spill the blood of the first man who attempts it. I will kill my enemy first and then kill myself." ("Ka maringi i ahau te toto a te tangatatuatahi. Ka mate taku hoariri nei, maku e whakamate toku tinana.")
"It's all right, friend, we don't want you," said the half-caste; "we are looking for a Maori called Hiroki, who has murdered a surveyor's cook, named McLean, out yonder on the plains. We have traced him up here, and we want to know where he is, because there is a price on his head, and we are Government Maoris."
"Come along, then; I'll take you across," said Bent. The strangers stepped into the canoe, and the white man paddled them over the Patea; then took them up to the village and into Hakopa's house.
To the old chief and his Maori companions the half-caste explained the mission that had brought his party to lonely Rukumoana.
"We have not seen your man Hiroki," said Hakopa. "He may have swum the river and passed through here by night. Who knows? If he has passed this way he has no doubt gone to Te Ngaere, which is a very difficult place to reach and a good refuge-place for men like Hiroki."
"We do not know the trail to Te Ngaere," said the half-caste. "Will any of you guide us there?"
Bent offered to go as guide, saying he knew the track to Ngaere very well and had frequently been there in the war-days. "But," he asked, "willyou guarantee my safety if I trust myself with you? How do I know that you will not cut my head off when you get me out alone in the bush, and take it out to get the Government reward?"
The half-caste laughed. "You're quite safe,pakeha. Not a man of us will touch you. I tell you we only want Hiroki."
A young man named Pakanga, of the Ngati-Maniapoto tribe from the King Country, happened to be in the village on a visit to the forest-dwellers. He was sitting alongside Bent. "Friend," he said quietly, "I will go with you, and see that they don't attack you treacherously."
So Bent agreed to go as guide, and, after a meal of pork and potatoes, set before them by the women of thekainga, the armed party of man-hunters set out along the bush-track leading in the direction of the swamp-defended Ngaere, the place where Colonel Whitmore and his force of Colonial soldiers just failed in surprising and capturing Titokowaru in the last days of the war in 1869.
Bent leading, the party filed along the narrow overgrown trail until they were close to the banks of a small stream, the Mangamingi. A little distance back from the creek the white man asked his companions to halt, saying that he and Pakanga would go on to reconnoitre.
The half-caste and his five men sat down and lit their pipes, and Bent and the King Country Maoriwent off cautiously, saying one of them would come back at once if they caught sight of the fugitive.
The white man and his friend had gone only a short distance when they came upon a fire burning just alongside the track, in an old camping-place beneath the shade of a gianttotara-tree, whose great branches overhung the little dark river that flowed close by. A few roasted potatoes, still warm, lay alongside the fire. Evidently it had been deserted only a few minutes.
"Now," said Bent to his companion, "let us settle quickly how we shall act. Hiroki—for it can be no one else—must be close by; he must have only just left this spot. Shall we betray him to the Government, or shall we let him escape? He had a just grievance against the man whom he shot. We have heard all about it, and we know that he was a peaceable man, who was provoked into a fit of passion. He is a lonely and a hunted man, and for me my sympathies are with him, for is he not a fugitive like myself?"
"E tika ana," said the young King Country Maori. "That's right. We won't give him up to the Government head-hunters."
"Let me tell you now, friend," said Bent, "that I have had suspicions for some days that Hiroki has been in hiding near our village. One morning lately, when I went to look in mypataka(store-house)across the river, where I keep my seed-potatoes for the new season's planting, I found that some of them had been taken. Then half a mile up the river the next day I saw a place where some stranger had been fishing for eels, for there were heads of the eels lying there where he had cut them off. There was a fire there, and some of my seed-potatoes had been roasted in it. I told old Hakopa and no one else about it."
The two men descended the bank to the river. Just where the track entered the slow-moving, muddy stream they saw the fresh prints of naked feet. Wading across, they quickly mounted the opposite bank and set out at a noiseless, easy lope, their bare feet making hardly a sound, along the trail that wound into the glooms of the bush.
Suddenly, at a turn in the track, they came upon Hiroki.
The fugitive was standing there, waiting, for the low growling of his dog, a white, savage-looking animal, had given him warning of pursuit. The hunted man menacingly presented a short-barrelled gun at thepakehaand his companion. He was a fellow of middle stature, lean, as his name implied, but strong and hard-limbed, with a dark determined face and a short black beard.
"Where are you going?" cried Hiroki.
"Oh, nowhere in particular," Bent replied; "just strolling along" ("ki te haereere").
The Maori looked puzzled and suspicious, and kept his gun at the ready.
"Listen to me, friend," said Bent quickly; "you are in danger. There are six Government Maoris close behind you, and they want you dead or alive. Now, go on, and go quickly. And don't venture back, lest you die!"
"Ka pai koe!" ("You are good!") was all Hiroki said. Turning, he went quickly at a half-trot along the path, with his gun at the trail, and his wild-looking, mongrel dog close on his bare heels, and in a few moments both disappeared in the dark forest.
Bent and Pakanga returned to the pursuing party, who were becoming impatient at the long absence of their guide and were hot with questions.
The white man and his companions managed to quiet the suspicions of the man-hunters. They declared that there were no signs of any one having passed that way, and that it would not be much use going on to the Ngaere, which was a long and very toilsome journey. Fortunately for them, the half-caste and his men had not troubled to go on as far as the bigtotaraon the river-bank, where the tell-tale fire was not yet cold.
After some debate the whole party returned to Rukumoana, and the hunters, giving up the chase in that direction, made out to the open country, and that was the last Bent heard of them.
Three years later Bent met Hiroki in Parihaka, the village of the prophet Te Whiti. The slayer of McLean had had a wild and anxious life of it after his escape from Rukumoana. He told Bent of his lonely existence in the great forests of the back-country, living on eels, wild honey, the young shoots of fern-trees, and such-like rough fare of the bush. After he came out into the open country and was making his way across the Waimate Plains in the direction of Parihaka he was chased by several Government men (one of whom was Mr. William Williams, a Plains settler), and was fired at and wounded, but escaped. Te Whiti sheltered him and condoned his crime, which, being a semi-agrarian one, was counted a patriotic deed by the people of Parihaka. He spoke gratefully of what Bent had done for him, in giving him timely warning that day in the Mangamingi bush, and offered him a money gift as some measure ofutu. This Bent promptly refused, saying, "Keep your money, and thank theAtuafor your escape, not me."
Hiroki was a wild figure in Parihaka those lawless days of 1878-81. On meeting-days and feast-days, when the faithful of the Maori tribes gathered to hear the prophet expound the Scriptures after his fashion and prophesy many strange happenings, the Lean One used to head the procession of thetuku-kai, the bringing of the food for ceremonious presentation to the visitors. A double line of gailydressed girls, bearing baskets of potatoes and pork and fish hot from thehangi, marched in time to a lively song into themarae, and in front of them paraded Hiroki, stripped to a loin-mat, a loaded and cocked double-barrelled gun in his hands, white feathers stuck in his hair, red war-paint on his cheeks and forehead, leaping from side to side, eyes rolling, tongue defiantly protruded, the embodiment of Maori savagery and ferocity. But when John Bryce, as native minister, invaded Parihaka in 1881 with his force of 1,700 Armed Constabulary and Volunteers, and arrested the two prophets Te Whiti and Tohu, Hiroki was also captured, and shortly thereafter he was tried for McLean's murder and was hanged.
To this day the Maoris of the Patea tell stories of Hiroki's solitary and savage life in the bush. One place in particular—at Orangimura, between three and four miles above Rukumoana—is pointed out as a hiding-place of the refugee. Here a large, hollowrata-tree grew near the top of a high bank; the Patea River flowed below. Hiroki had camped here in order to get wild honey from a hive in the hollow tree, and after he had filled a couple of calabashes with the honey he lit his nightly fire and went to sleep close to the cliff-top, first tying his dog up to a bush with a flax rope. In the night the dog bit through the flax that held him, and jumping on his master so startled him that he forgot he was sonear the verge of the cliff, over which he promptly rolled in the darkness; he fell with a mighty splash in the river below, together with his astonished dog. The spot where this night adventure occurred is called by the Maoris Te Pari-o-Hiroki, which means "Hiroki's Precipice."
OUT OF EXILE
Canoeing on the Patea—The voyage to Hukatéré—The white man's world again—Bent the medicine-man—Makutu, or the Black Art—Bent's later days—The end.
Allwas ready for the voyage, and thepakeha-Maori and his companions loaded their canoe and embarked for Hukatéré—thirty miles down-stream, not far from the sea-coast. The Patea was a very winding stream, flowing between high forest-covered banks; its course was impeded by frequent rocky shoals and accumulations of sunken logs, which formed rapids. Aboard the canoe, besides Bent, were Rupé, Hakopa and his niece, and a man named Te Rii, who was anurukehu, or "fair hair."
The white man and his Maori companions paddled along merrily for seven or eight miles, lightening their labours with canoe-songs. Then, in shooting a rapid, the canoe struck a rock, swung broadside on to the swift current, and immediately capsized.
The crew reached the shore safely, and hauled the canoe up on to a shingly bank. Fortunatelyall the cargo—the baskets of dried eels and the calabashes filled with honey—had been made fast to the thwarts, as a precaution against such an accident, and so was saved; but old Hakopa lost a little kit—his bush savings-bank—containing a sum of money which he had acquired at the Waitara. On the bank a fire was kindled by means of flint and steel—commonly used amongst the Maoris in those days, and still occasionally seen in use in remote forest districts, such as the Urewera Country. By the blaze of the great fire the wrecked canoeists dried themselves and their garments, and they camped there that night.
At daylight next morning they embarked again, and another day and a half at the paddles took them down to the Hukatérékainga, a large settlement ofraupo-thatched houses, standing on the left bank of the Patea, in a beautiful bend, with the lofty, forest-fringed cliffs of Pariroa jutting out abruptly on the opposite shore.
The approaching canoe, its four paddles flashing in the sun and dipping again all together, was seen from thekaingawhile still some little distance up the river, and the men and women of the Hukatéré gathered on the water-side and cried and waved their welcome to the long-absent people of the bush.
"Kumea mai te waka!" they chanted, and the women waved shawls and green branches in the poetic greeting of thepowhiri. "To-o-ia mai tewaka!Oh, haul up the canoe! Draw hitherwards the canoe. To the resting-place—that canoe! To the sleeping-place—that canoe! Oh, welcome, welcome, strangers from the forest-land! Urge swift your paddles, for home darts your canoe!"
So, chanting their ancient song, the villagers received the new arrivals, and, still waving their garments and their leafy branches, retired slowly before them as they landed and walked up the sloping banks until the openmaraein the centre of thekaingawas reached. There the guests from Rukumoana were received by a dignified chief, white-bearded old Nga-waka-taurua (Double-canoe). Now thepowhiriwas succeeded by the doleful sounds of thetangi, and one after another the Hukatéré tribespeople pressed their noses to those of Rupé and his household; and they wept long and unrestrainedly for the dead, for those who had passed away since they last met.
And then the feasting. The bush-family and their "tame white man" enjoyed a meal of truly huge proportions and variety in comparison with the meagre forest-fare to which they had been confined so long. And when thepakehatobacco andpakehagrog came out—unwonted luxuries to themohoao, the bush-people—old Rupé and his household were indeed in the Promised Land for which they had longed for many a month; they had all that the heart of the Hauhau could desire.
The feast over, the dried eels and honey, conveyed with so much toil from distant Rukumoana, were brought up to themarae, and ceremoniously presented to old "Double-Canoe," who distributed the food amongst the people of the village. The canoe itself was similarly presented to the chief as a gift ofarohafrom Rupé. In return, the men of Hukatéré placed before the visitors their gifts—£5 in money (representing the sum total of thepakehacash in the village), and blankets, shirts, and other articles of clothing, of which Bent and his companions were in much need after their rough life in the bush.
"While I was in thekainga," says Bent, "the local chief went down to the town of Patea, a few miles away, to get me some European clothing. He informed some people in the town that Tu-nui-a-moa, thepakeha-Maori, who had been with the Hauhaus for twelve or thirteen years, was in hiskainga, and next day about twenty Europeans rode up to the settlement out of curiosity to see me. We had a long talk, and they gave me some articles of clothing, and told me all about the white man's world from which I had cut myself off. This was about the end of the year 1878.
"After a month's stay we returned to our own village, in a canoe belonging to the Hukatéré natives, loaded with goods and 'tucker.' Five days' paddling and poling up-river took us to Rukumoana.Planting season came round again; then we whiled away the time in Maori fashion—hunting wild pigs, snaring and shooting birds, catching eels, and getting honey—until the crops were harvested. And not long after that we bade farewell to our oldkaingafor ever, loaded our canoe for the last time, and once more paddled down to Hukatéré."