NOTES.
The terms “King Country,” “Rohepotae,” and “Aukati” require a little explanation for those who are unacquainted with the origin of the phrases.
The King Country, embracing a vast area of territory south of the Puniu River and west of the Upper Waikato, with the Tasman Sea as the western boundary, was so called because the Maori King Tawhiao with his adherents took refuge there in 1864 after being dispossessed of Waikato. For some years Tawhiao’s headquarters were at Tokangamutu, close to the site of the present town of Te Kuiti. The name Te Kuiti is an abbreviation of Te Kuititanga, meaning “the narrowing in,” a designation given by the Kingites in reference to the conquest of Waikato and the consequent hemming in of the Maoris in the country south of the Puniu.
“Rohe-potae” means a circular boundary line, literally a boundary resembling a head-covering. The term was applied to the King Country in the early Eighties by Wahanui and his fellow-chiefs, when defining the area within which no pakeha surveys or land-buying or leasing would be permitted.
“Aukati” means a line which may not be passed; a frontier or pale. It was particularly applied by the Kingites to the northern border of the King Country, the Government’s confiscation boundary; pakeha trespass over this line was forbidden. [[11]]
[1] The full name of Kakepuku is Kakepuku-o-Kahurere, or “The Swelled Neck of Kahurere.” It was so named nearly six centuries ago by Rakataura, the priest and magician of the Tainui people. Rakataura and his wife Kahurere explored all this wild new country from Kawhia eastward and southward, giving [[9]]names to the features of the landscape as they travelled. The name alluded to the shape of Kakepuku, but in truth it deserves a more poetical one, as, for example, that of Tauranga-Kohu, “The Resting Place of the Mists,” a beautiful place-description belonging to a mountain a few miles to the eastward on the south side of the Puniu. [↑]
CHAPTER II.
THE MISSIONARY ERA.
It was the Rev. B. Y. Ashwell who chose the site of the mission station at Te Awamutu. This was in 1839. He had made a missionary reconnaissance of Upper Waikato with a view to establishing a station among the savage cannibals of the district, great warriors and apparently irreclaimable man-eaters, and in July of 1839 he returned to Otawhao to carry on the mission. Among Ngati-Ruru there were some who had already gained an inkling of the Rongo-Pai, the Good News, from native teachers, but the majority were pagan. Shortly after his arrival a war party of Ngati-Ruru, who had been away with Ngati-Haua and other tribes raiding the Arawa country, returned from the Maketu and Rotorua districts, under their chiefs Puata and Te Mokorou. The party was laden with human flesh; there were, as Mr Ashwell recorded, sixty pikau or flax baskets packed with the cut-up remains of their slaughtered foes. Then came a fearful feast on cooked man (kai-tangata).
Mr Ashwell induced many of Ngati-Ruru to leave Otawhao and establish a Christian pa, which was built on the ground now occupied by the old mission station and the Church of St. John’s.
Mr Ashwell’s establishment of the mission station at Te Awamutu marked the end of the cannibal wars and the periodical fighting expeditions of Waikato in the Rotorua and Bay of Plenty districts. The grim old warrior Mokorou became a follower of the missionary, and was baptised by the name of Riwai (Levi). Most of the people by this time had become tired of wars; there was a general longing for a more settled state of life and a desire to obtain pakeha commodities other than weapons and munitions of war. So Mr Ashwell soon had large and eager congregations, and his preaching of the Rongo-Pai fell on willing ears.
But it was Mr Ashwell’s successor, the Rev. John Morgan, who truly civilised this Upper Waikato. Mr Ashwell had confined his teachings to the spiritual side. Mr Morgan took a more expansive view of his mission and his responsibilities. He introduced English methods of agriculture, brought in English fruit trees, taught the [[12]]natives to grow wheat, and to grind it in their own water-mills. He it was who by his precepts and personal example made the natives of Te Awamutu, Rangiaowhia, Kihikihi, and Orakau a farming and fruit-growing people, with the result that long before the Waikato War adventurous travellers to this district found to their astonishment a series of eye-delighting oases in the wilds, with great fields of wheat, potatoes, and maize, and dwellings arranged in neat streets and shaded by groves of peach and apple-trees; each settlement with its water-driven flour-mill procured by the community and busily grinding into flour the abundant yield of the cornfields.
Mr John Morgan was a missionary of the London Mission Society, and had had some years’ experience of the hazards of Christianising work on the Waihou, at Matamata, and at Rotorua. He and his brave wife lived in the midst of alarms, and more than once had to abandon their stations. In the most dangerous period of their life at Rotorua they had to take refuge, with the Rev. Thomas Chapman, of Te Ngae, on Mokoia Island, in the middle of the lake. After this sort of missionary pioneering it must have been a vast relief to Mr Morgan to receive orders in 1841 to take over the newly-established station at Te Awamutu. Here he carried on for more than twenty years, the religious teacher and counsellor and technical instructor for half a score of tribes in the Waipa basin. “Te Mokena” was in an infinite variety of ways the benefactor of his Maori flock; never did a missionary take a more liberal view of his duty to the native. In the later troubled days, when the war was looming and it was desirable that the Government authorities should be informed of the exact political conditions among the Maoris, he kept Governor Grey correctly advised of the views and intentions of the Kingites, and so came to be called “the watchman of the Waikato.”
At Wharepapa, the site of a one-time large Maori village on the south side of the Puniu, a few miles from Waikeria, I heard the story of “Mokena” and the “missionary grass.” Here Mr Morgan had a little native church in the days before the war, and on his travels from Te Awamutu through the Maori country he did not confine his sowing of the good seed to the Gospel brand. On his rides from kainga to kainga he took his dog, and to the dog’s neck was tied a little bag filled with English clover-seed and grass-seed, which was allowed to drop out a seed at a time by a tiny hole.
In this way the pioneer missionary scattered seeds of civilisation [[13]]which spread over many a part of this wild countryside. To this day in some of these old villages there is a beautiful sward that goes back to the good parson of Te Awamutu, and to Wharepapa not many years since the natives used to go for the seed of the “mission grass,” esteemed alike by Maori and pakeha for its making of pasture.
“Mokena’s” fame hereabouts rests more, perhaps, on his thoughtful grass-sowing for future generations and on his practical teaching of English agriculture than on his preaching of the Faith to the Ngati-Maniapoto and Ngati-Ruru of the days before the War. [[14]]
CHAPTER III.
PLOUGH AND FLOUR-MILL.
An illuminating account of the growth of agricultural enterprise among these Upper Waikato people and the position about 1850 is contained in an unpublished manuscript journal written by the Rev. John Morgan.[1] The missionary prefaces the narrative of the temporal side of his labours at Te Awamutu with the statement that wheat was introduced among the natives chiefly by the missionaries. The Ven. Archdeacon Williams encouraged its cultivation in his district of Waiapu, East Coast. “It was small in quantity,” said Mr Morgan, “for it was contained in a stocking, but it was sown and re-sown, and at the present time the increase from the little seed contained in a stocking is being sent by the natives to the Auckland market. Much is also ground by the Maoris in steel mills for their own use.
“Shortly after the formation of the Otawhao (Te Awamutu) station,” the missionary’s story continued, “in consequence of the difficulty of obtaining supplies of flour from the coast I procured some seed wheat. After the reaping of the first crop I sent Pungarehu, of Rangiaowhia, a few quarts of seed. This he sowed and reaped. The second year he had a good-sized field. Other natives now desired to share in the benefit, and the applications for seed became so numerous that I could not supply them all, and many obtained seed from Kawhia and Aotea (West Coast), where wheat had been introduced either by the Wesleyan missionaries or the settlers.
“As a large quantity of wheat was now grown at Rangiaowhia, and the natives had not purchased steel mills, I recommended them to erect a water-mill. At the request of Kimi Hori, I went to the millwright who was then building a mill at Aotea. In March, 1846, the millwright arrived, and I drew up a contract for the erection of a mill at a cost of £200, not including the carriage of timber, building of the mill dam, and the formation of the watercourse, all of which were performed by the natives themselves. Seven men [[15]]were set to work, the natives promising to pay the first £50 instalment within a very short time. Instead of leaving immediately for Auckland with pigs to raise the required amount, they began to take up their potatoes and then the kumara to store them for winter use. They then promised to leave for town as soon as the crops were secured. An invitation, however, arrived from Maketu, and the entire tribe left Rangiaowhia to partake of a feast at that place, the millwright threatening to give up the contract. On their return they accepted a second invitation, and went to another distant village. It was with the greatest difficulty that I now detained the millwright. In this manner four months passed away. The millwright demanded compensation for loss of time, and a chief agreed to give him a piece of land of about 200 acres, but for which no Government grant has as yet been made. Still the natives delayed. The required sum (£200) was large for a tribe of New Zealanders to raise. The Aotea mill was now useless, and many feared that this (Rangiaowhia) would also be a failure, and there were several Europeans who had come up to trade in pigs who from interested motives freely gave their opinion that the whole scheme would fail. In this way two months passed away, and it required many personal visits to Rangiaowhia—first, to persuade the millwright, who was several times on the point of leaving, to remain, and, secondly, to urge the natives to take their pigs to town. At length they started. In a few weeks the £50 was raised, and paid into my hands to be paid to the millwright. After this I had no more trouble. The work went forward while the money was being collected, and the last instalment of £50 being paid into my hands, I had the pleasure of handing it to the millwright the day the work was completed.”
This water-driven flour-mill, it may be explained here, was built at Pekapeka-rau, the lower part of the swampy valley between Hairini Hill and Rangiaowhia, through which a watercourse flows toward the Mangapiko. Here a dam was constructed, and a lagoon was formed; the water collected here turned the mill-wheel.
Later, another mill was constructed, on the watercourse called Te Rua-o-Tawhiwhi, on the eastern side of Rangiaowhia village.
Mr Morgan, continuing his story of the new flour-mills, wrote:
“The Rangiaowhia mill was not completed before other tribes became jealous and wished for mills. I drew up two more contracts, one for the erection of a mill at Maunga-tautari, and the other at Otawhao, at the cost respectively of £110 and £120, not including [[16]]native labour. Both of these mills have been erected. A new difficulty now arose at Rangiaowhia, that of finding a miller to take charge of the mill. In the arrangement I experienced more vexations and difficulty than in the erection of the mills. There was a person ready to take charge, but the natives, not knowing the value of European labour, refused to give him a proper remuneration. One old chief offered one quart of wheat per day! At length, after two months, this knotty point was settled. On the following day the miller commenced work. In the year 1848 the natives of Rangiaowhia took down some flour to Auckland, which they sold for about £70. The neighbouring tribes, seeing the benefit likely to arise from the erection of mills, began earnestly to desire them. One was contracted for at Kawhia, and the sum of about £315 has been paid on account. About 1850 a contract was entered into for the erection at Mohoaonui [near Otorohanga], on the Waipa, of the largest mill yet built, at a cost of £300. The natives of Kawhia are anxious for the erection of a second mill, and the natives at Whatawhata and two other villages on the Waipa, and of Kirikiriroa and Maungapa, on the Waikato, and also Matamata, propose to erect mills; at several of these places the funds are being collected.
THE OLD MISSION CHURCHES
ST. JOHN’S CHURCH, TE AWAMUTU
W. Beattie, Photo.
THE ENGLISH CHURCH AT RANGIAOWHIA
“Wheat is very extensively grown in the Waikato district. At Rangiaowhia the wheat fields cover about 450 acres of land. I have also introduced barley and oats at that place. Many of the people at various villages are now forming orchards, and they possess many hundreds of trees budded or grafted by themselves, consisting of peach, apple, pear, plum, quince, and almond; also gooseberry bushes in abundance. For flowers or ornamental trees they have no taste; as they do not bear fruit, it is, in their opinion, loss of time to cultivate them.”
The missionary, concluding his interesting narrative, described a visit paid to the district by Sir George Grey, Governor.
“His Excellency,” wrote the missionary, “spent half a day at Rangiaowhia, and expressed himself much pleased with the progress of the natives at that place. He visited the mill, which was working at the time. Two bags of flour were presented to him for Her Majesty the Queen, and they have since been forwarded to London. The Governor has since that time presented the Rangiaowhia natives with a pair of fine horses, a dray and harness, and a plough and harness. He also requested me to engage a farm servant to instruct [[17]]the natives in the use of the plough, etc.[2] The value of the flour sent down this year from Rangiaowhia and now ready for the Auckland market may be estimated at about £330. Of this sum upward of £240 was, or will be, spent in the purchase of horses, drays, and ploughs. Each little tribe is now endeavouring to procure a plough and a pair of horses, and the people expect during the next year to have at least ten ploughs at work. The rapid advancement in cultivation is the fruit of Sir George Grey’s kind present to introduce the plough at those places. One of the chiefs at Rangiaowhia has erected a small boarded house. He has also several cows, one of which he generally milks in the morning.”
* * *
Such is the story of the very practical missionary work in this district. “Te Mokena” truly tamed the people; old cannibals followed the plough and spent days in discussing the Auckland market prices of wheat and flour. Distant white communities, too, came to depend largely on the Maori farmers of the Upper Waikato for their breadstuffs; and when the great gold rushes began in California and Victoria, in 1849–52, the cargoes of New Zealand produce sent to far-away San Francisco and to Melbourne often contained shipments from Rangiaowhia and other Maori farm-villages.
From a photo., 1906]
THE RIGHT HON. SIR JOHN E GORST
(Died 1916)
[[18]]
[1] MS. journal lent to the writer by Mr E. Earle Vaile, of Broadlands, Waiotapu. [↑]
[2] The old man Pou-patate Huihi, of Te Kopua, told the writer: “Before we procured European ploughs we made wooden ones, and these were sometimes drawn by men—Ko te tangata te hoiho tuatahi (Man was the first horse).”
Pou-patate also said that when wheat-growing was at its height on the Waipa, before the war, his people received as much as ten or eleven shillings a bushel for the wheat in the Auckland market. [↑]
CHAPTER IV.
THE GOLDEN AGE BEFORE THE WAR.
The period from about 1845 to 1860 was the era of peaceful progress and industry among Waikato and Ngati-Maniapoto. It was not until the latter year that the outbreak of the Taranaki War, the forerunner of that in Waikato, interrupted the new and profitable era of wheat-growing and flour-milling and the pleasures of the annual canoeing expeditions down the Waipa and Waikato to the city markets.
These farm-settlements of Morgan’s making were in what may be called their zenith of prosperity in the year 1852, when prices for produce were high. In February of that year a visit was paid to Te Awamutu and Rangiaowhia by a party of travellers from Auckland and Onehunga, among whom was young Heywood Crispe, later a well-known Mauku settler and volunteer rifleman. Describing long afterwards this memorable Waikato expedition, Mr Crispe said, after narrating that the canoe voyage ended at Te Rore, on the Waipa:
“I can well remember the first sight we got in the distance of the steeple of the church at the Rev. Mr Morgan’s mission station at Te Awamutu, for some of the party were getting a bit tired when it came into sight, and it seemed to put new life into them. The natives at Rangiaowhia had made preparations for a goodly party, as they had two days’ racing in hand. They allotted to us a large, newly-erected whare, the floor being covered with native mats, and it was on them that we indulged in sweet sleep. There was a line of whares erected on the crown of Rangiaowhia Hill, from which we could obtain a fine view of the surrounding country, and it all had a grand appearance in our eyes. There was a long grove of large peach trees and very fine fruit on them. Such a waste of fruit it seemed to us, but of course they were of no value there. One never sees such trees of peaches now. We, the Europeans, must be the cause by the importation of pests from other countries. A large portion of the ground round the hill was carrying a very good crop of wheat, for the Maoris believed in that as a crop, and they used to convert it into flour at the various flour-mills they had. It was of a very good quality, and some of the Waikato mills had a name for [[19]]the flour they produced, a good deal of which was put on the Auckland market, being taken down the Waikato, via Waiuku and Onehunga. It had taken our canoe party about three weeks to reach this, our journey’s end, but there was no iron horse then by which to make a rapid journey. Now it is only part of a day’s journey to get to the same spot.
“We spent several days in our camp on the Rangiaowhia Hill, taking walks and viewing the country. We attended the races, which afforded some good sport, all being managed by the natives, assisted by some pakeha-Maoris of the neighbourhood. They were white men living a Maori life. Some of them had been well-brought-up young men, rather wild perhaps, who had drifted away from home and had taken up an idle life among the natives, getting regular remittances from their people at Home.
“The Maoris provided all their pakeha friends with a most excellent meal on the ground, and peaches galore, as well as horses to ride. We rode some distance round to view the country, the Maori flour-mills, and cultivation. There were a lot of good cattle and horses about, and the crops of wheat and patches of potatoes were particularly good, although no bonedust was used in those days. The Roman Catholics had a very nice place of worship at Rangiaowhia, where regular worship was conducted. There were mission stations all up the Waikato and Waipa Rivers in those days, and as far as Te Awamutu.”
Everywhere the Maoris of those days showed the travellers on their six weeks’ trip the greatest hospitality. On the canoe voyage the pakehas called in here and there at native settlements and got a supply of pork, potatoes, and peaches.
When the aged Potatau te Wherowhero was made Maori King (1858) there were great gatherings at Ngaruawahia and Rangiaowhia. At the latter place the Europeans in the district—the mission people, the traders, and artisans—were invited to the festivities. The abundance of food at Rangiaowhia was probably the reason why that large village of Ngati-Apakura was selected as one of the principal gathering places of the Waikato in 1858–60. Rangiaowhia in those days was a beautiful place, with its comfortable thatched houses, shaded by groves of peach and apple trees, dotted along the crown of a gently-sloping hill, among the fields of wheat, maize, potatoes, and kumara, and its flour-mills in the valley. On the most commanding mound was the Roman Catholic Church in front of [[20]]Hoani Papita’s home; a few hundred yards to the south was the English Church, locally greatly admired because of its large stained-glass window, sent out from England by Bishop Selwyn. The Maori congregations have vanished long ago, and the pre-war wharekarakia are used by the white settlers.
A pioneer colonist, Mrs B. A. Crispe, widow of the late Heywood Crispe, the only survivor of the Europeans who witnessed the gathering, recalls some of the scenes in the Rangiaowhia of 1858, when she was a girl at school at Mr Morgan’s mission station at Te Awamutu. She describes the venerable Potatau as a feeble old man with his face completely tattooed; he wore a long black coat and a dark cloth cap with a gold band round it.
Mrs Crispe has memories of the Upper Waikato district as it was toward the end of the Fifties, before the Kingite war had destroyed the prosperous agricultural life of the Maoris, who then constituted the whole population of the interior with the exception of a few missionaries and their families and several traders and other pakeha-Maoris. Mrs Crispe, who was the daughter of Mr Mellsop, a pioneer settler of the Mauku district, was taken up by her father to the Rev. John Morgan’s mission station at Te Awamutu—in those days usually called Otawhao, after the old pa. She was then a young girl, and she was placed with the Morgans to be educated; schooling for children was a difficult problem with the back-blocks settlers in those days. All communication with the Waikato and Waipa country was carried on by canoe, for there were no roads into the interior until the troops opened up the country in the Waikato War. In about 1858 the Mellsops embarked at Waiuku and passed through the narrow and crooked Awaroa Creek in kopapa, or small canoes, the only craft which could navigate this stream, connecting the Manukau harbour with the Waikato River. In the Waikato they transferred to a large canoe, about sixty feet long, well loaded with goods from Auckland for the mission station and the Maori settlements. Their Maori crew paddled them up to Te Rore, on the Waipa; the voyage occupied three days. Two nights were spent in camp on the Waikato banks; the third day was spent in working up the Waipa River from its junction with the Waikato at Ngaruawahia. From Te Rore the party rode across the plain to Te Awamutu. Here Mrs Crispe spent two years at school.
The farming missionary had succeeded in giving the wilds of Te Awamutu a thoroughly settled and home-like appearance, with [[21]]wheat fields enclosed by hedges of hawthorn. The wheat grown by the natives in the Rangiaowhia-Te Awamutu district was ground at the mills, bagged, and sent down to the white settlements for sale. The flour-bags were sewn by the native girls in Mrs Morgan’s sewing class at the mission boarding school; and when the flour was being ground there would be sewing-bees at the mills, where the girls stitched up the bags as they were filled. The flour was carted in bullock drays to Te Rore, where it was loaded into canoes. The cargoes were paddled down the Waipa and Waikato, along the Awaroa to Waiuku, there loaded into a cutter for Onehunga, and finally carted across the isthmus to Auckland town, a journey of over a hundred miles from the Rangiaowhia water-mills. The Maoris would invest the proceeds in clothes, blankets, tea, sugar, and all kinds of European goods, and then begin their homeward journey. Time was no object in those golden years, and a marketing party from Rangiaowhia and Te Awamutu would sometimes spend several weeks on the trip, returning with pakeha commodities to delight the hearts of their families and endless tales of all the sights they had seen in the distant town.
An incident of the visits to Rangiaowhia over sixty years ago is recalled by Mrs Crispe. She and the Morgan girls noticed a peach tree loaded with great white korako in an enclosure near the English Church, and presently they were enjoying a feast of fruit. A Maori woman came up to them in great alarm and told them that they must not touch the peaches; the tree was tapu, and she was afraid that the fruit would kill them as it assuredly would have killed any Maori who ate it. It often happened that the choicest fruit trees were under the ban of tapu for some reason, such as the recent death of the owner.
In front of Mr Morgan’s mission house at Te Awamutu there was a row of almond trees. These almonds—so seldom seen in a New Zealand orchard now—were widely distributed among the natives; hence the remarkably large trees, up to about thirty feet in height, which grew on the old Maori cultivations at Orakau and elsewhere, and survived long after the land had been confiscated by the Crown and settled by white farmers.
Dr Ferdinand von Hochstetter, the famous Austrian geologist, on his expedition through the interior of the North Island in 1859, admired the settled aspect of Te Awamutu and the neighbouring country. He made an ascent of Mount Kakepuku, setting out from [[22]]the Rev. Alexander Reid’s Wesleyan mission station at Te Kopua, and from the summit viewed the valley of the Waipa: “The beautiful, richly-cultivated country about Rangiaowhia and Otawhao lay spread out before us like a map. I counted ten small lakes and ponds scattered about the plains. The church steeples of three places were seen rising from among orchards and fields. Verily I could hardly realise that I was in the interior of New Zealand.”
Now the scene has vastly changed. A far more richly-cultivated country than that which the wandering geologist saw in 1859 stretches in all directions, and the railway engine trails the smoke-banner of the pakeha past Kakepuku’s foot, between him and his hill-wife Kawa. But some relics of Hochstetter’s day remain. The picture-like spires of the English mission church at Te Awamutu and the English and Roman Catholic Churches at Rangiaowhia still rise above the tree-groves, heaven-pointing fingers that carry a suggestion of antiquity all too rare in man’s work in New Zealand. [[23]]
CHAPTER V.
JOHN GORST AT TE AWAMUTU.
The determination of the Maori tribes to establish a King was not in the beginning hostile to the white Government. On the contrary, Wiremu Tamehana, of Ngati-Haua, a man of lofty ideals and altogether admirable character, continually emphasised the fact that the kingdom must be on a footing of friendship with the pakeha; it was simply to govern the Maoris within their own district and to ensure a measure of peace and order which the Queen’s Government could not maintain. The King movement was originated in 1851–52 by Tamehana te Rauparaha—son of the great Rauparaha—who had been on a voyage to England and returned with ideas for the betterment of his race, and by Matene te Whiwhi, of Otaki. The difficulty was to select a suitable chief as King, and one man after another declined the honour, until at last Matene and his fellow-chiefs persuaded the aged warrior Potatau te Wherowhero, of Waikato, to take the position. Potatau, like Tawhiao his son after him, was merely a figurehead; the destinies of the native confederation were decided by the runangas or tribal councils at Ngaruawahia and Kihikihi. Tawhiao succeeded Potatau on the latter’s death in 1860.
A variety of elements, social and political, combined to produce a war feeling in Waikato. Iwikau te Heuheu, of Taupo, on his way to a great Waikato meeting in 1857, stayed at the mission station and gave Mr Morgan his reasons for supporting the King. He contrasted the uncouth and inhospitable treatment of Maori chiefs when visiting the towns with the kindness shown by the Maoris to even the lowest grade of pakeha who came to their settlements. Tamehana pointed to the inability of the Government to preserve peace and order among the tribes; this could only be done by means of a native king, and he quoted Scripture and modern history in support of his argument. The blundering of the Government in offering civil institutions and then withdrawing them without a fair trial, the construction of the military road from Drury to the Mangatawhiri River, and finally the heavy losses of the Ngati-Haua and Ngati-Maniapoto in the Taranaki War had a cumulative effect in hastening the outbreak in Waikato. It was when this feeling [[24]]was simmering in the Waikato that Mr John Gorst—as he was then—was induced by the Government to undertake the difficult task of staying the growing tide of anti-pakeha agitation and of diverting the energies of the Kingite tribes to peaceful industries and crafts. He came several years too late. The institutions and the measure of home rule which Sir George Grey offered to the Kingites in 1863 only to have them rejected would have met with a cordial acceptance had they been put forward five or six years previously. But Grey was in South Africa then, and his predecessor, Governor Gore-Browne, and his advisers went from blunder to blunder in their determination to stifle the natives’ legitimate desire for local self-government.
Mr John Gorst arrived at Auckland from England in 1860, and, being a young man of brilliant University attainments, he attracted the attention and friendship of Bishop Selwyn, Sir George Grey, and other notable people of the day. It was Mr (afterwards Sir William) Fox, then Premier of the Colony, who determined to establish him as resident magistrate in the Upper Waikato, and a house was procured for him at Te Tomo, about half a mile from the centre of the present town of Te Awamutu. (Te Tomo is now marked by an acacia grove in a field south of Te Awamutu, near the Kihikihi Road.) This establishment was built on thirty acres of grass land which had been sold to the Crown many years before the war began. Here Mr Gorst set up his home in the beginning of 1861; later he removed to the mission house opposite the church.
During the first part of his residence in Te Awamutu district Mr Gorst was a magistrate and a kind of intelligence officer for the Government. During the latter part he was styled Commissioner of Upper Waikato, and lived at the mission station in charge of a technical school and hospital. In the early period, as Gorst narrated in after years, he was rather the officer of Mr Fox’s Ministry than of the Government. He was a magistrate, but as a matter of fact his jurisdiction was derided by the Maoris, and he found none except a few pakehas to obey him. “The Maori from the first,” he said, “refused to consent to my exercising any kind of authority among them.” Even his great friend Wiremu Tamehana, though anxious to receive advice and instruction, objected to the admission into the Kingite district of a magistrate who received his authority from the Queen. [[25]]
In 1862–63 Mr Gorst was rather the officer of Sir George Grey than of the Ministry (then Mr Domett’s). The Church Mission estate of about 200 acres, with school buildings and dwelling-house, was lent to the Governor for Maori educational purposes. Describing the establishment then formed, Gorst wrote:
“Everyone in the school was clothed, lodged, and fed in plain but wholesome and civilised style. Clothes and bedding were regularly inspected and kept scrupulously clean. A schoolmaster was appointed, who taught reading, writing, and arithmetic to all, and besides this each young man was employed for five hours daily in one of the various mechanical trades carried out within the school. Thus each had an opportunity, not only of acquiring a sound elementary education, but of fitting himself to gain a livelihood by practising some handicraft taught at the school. The trades carried on were those of carpenter, blacksmith, wheelwright, shoemaker, tailor, and, later on, printer. A few were employed in agriculture and in tending cattle and sheep upon the school estate, some as regular occupations and others as an occasional change from indoor employment. English artisans employed as teachers were chiefly men who had been living in the neighbourhood and were familiar with the Maoris and their language. Most had previously been exercising their trades for the benefit of the district, and the only difference was that they were now more systematically at work and were instructing native apprentices. The Maoris of the district had therefore to resort to the Government establishment for the repair of their ploughs and carts and for their shoes and clothes. The demand for all these services was far greater than the supply, so there was a prospect of being able to supply a great number of Maori apprentices in every department with certain profit. Even Rewi and Tamehana themselves visited the school. The latter extended his patronage so far as to be measured for a pair of trousers, for which he paid £1 in advance, but Te Oriori intercepted them on their way to Matamata, and was so charmed with the fit that he refused to part with them, and told Tamehana he would agree to take them as a present.”
The school establishment certainly did very useful work, and thus far was appreciated by the Maoris; but they could never forget that Gorst was a Government official.
W. Beattie, Photo.]
THE LAST CANOE VOYAGE
Sir John Gorst and party in the “Tangi-te-Kiwi” at Ngaruawahia, December 6th, 1906.
THE REV. B. Y. ASHWELL’S MISSION STATION, KAITOTEHE, WAIKATO RIVER
The site of this pre-war mission station was on the left bank of the Waikato, opposite Taupiri. This picture is a sketch made shortly before the war in 1863, by Lieut. (afterwards Colonel) H. S. Bates of the 65th Regiment, who was an A.D.C. to Sir George Grey and Staff Interpreter to General Cameron. Governor Grey’s camp, on one of his Waikato expeditions, is shown on the river bank (see Note in Appendices, p. 103).
It was presently decided by the Government that a native hospital should be erected on an area of Crown land about three-quarters [[26]]of a mile from Te Awamutu. The position of Medical Commissioner of the Waikato was offered to and accepted by the Rev. A. Purchas, of Onehunga. At the same time Sir George Grey sanctioned the establishment of a Maori newspaper to reply to the “Hokioi,” the Kingite print issued at Ngaruawahia. Mr E. J. von Dadelszen[1] (afterwards Registrar-General of New Zealand) was appointed printer; he had learned the trade on Bishop Selwyn’s printing-press in Auckland.
A press and type were bought in Sydney, and set up in Te Awamutu early in 1863. This was the beginning of the end for Mr Gorst’s establishment.
The Government Maori newspaper was called “Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke i Runga i te Tuanui” (“The Lonely Lark on the House-top”—the Maori having no word for sparrow), and it set about briskly replying to the Kingite propaganda of “Te Hokioi e Rere Atu Na” (“The Soaring War Bird”), which was edited and printed by Patara te Tuhi, afterwards a great friend of Sir John Gorst. The first number of the “Pihoihoi” was published at Te Awamutu on 2nd February, 1863, and was widely distributed over Waikato, arousing intense interest among the Kingites.
The “copy” for the first issue was revised by Sir George Grey himself, and was published under his authority. It contained an article which greatly excited the resentment of Rewi and the more truculent section of the Kingite natives. The article was entitled, “The Evil of the King Movement,” and it criticised a letter from King Tawhiao—or Matutaera (Methusaleh), as he was then generally known—to the Governor, dated 8th December, 1862, which had been printed in the “Hokioi,” and which inquired what evil had been done by the King and on what account he was blamed. The “Pihoihoi” gave an answer to these inquiries from the pakeha Government point of view; Gorst’s leader was translated into forceful and idiomatic Maori by Miss Ashwell, daughter of the missionary at Kaitotehe, opposite Taupiri. The strong criticism of the Kingite aspirations quickly provoked action among Mr Gorst’s neighbours, who asked, “Why is this troublesome printing-press allowed in our midst?” Only five numbers of the “Pihoihoi” were printed before the indignant Rewi intervened with his war-party.
The coup planned by Ngati-Maniapoto in the tribal council-house “Hui-te-Rangiora” at Kihikihi was executed on 24th March, [[27]]1863. A war-party of eighty men and lads, most of them armed with guns, marched into Te Awamutu that afternoon, led by Aporo Taratutu, and accompanied by Rewi Maniapoto, and also by the old Taranaki chief Wiremu Kingi te Rangitaake. (The unjustifiable seizure of Kingi’s land at Waitara by the Government had been the cause of the first Taranaki War.) Rewi and Wiremu Kingi remained at Porokoru’s house, which stood in the middle of the present town of Te Awamutu, while Aporo led his taua down to the mission station, halted them there, and had prayers by way of sanctifying the afternoon’s operations. Young von Dadelszen and a Maori youth were busy at the time in the little printing-office printing the fifth number of the “Pihoihoi Mokemoke.” Mr Gorst was absent; he had ridden over to the mission station at Te Kopua, on the Waipa, to inquire about some bullocks which were being purchased for the Government station. A report had reached him that a taua from Kihikihi would visit Te Awamutu that day, but he treated it as an idle rumour.
The actions of Ngati-Maniapoto are described by Mr von Dadelszen in the following report which Mr Gorst sent to Sir George Grey with his own account of the breaking-up of the station:
“About 3 o’clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, 24th March, while the newspapers for that day were being printed, a number of natives arrived, about 50 of them armed with guns, and the remainder with native weapons, and stationed themselves in front of the printing-office. I locked the door before their faces, put the key in my pocket, and went a little distance off. After a short prayer, they broke the door open, and proceeded to take the press down, and carry it outside to some drays they had there. While they were doing this, Patene, the Ngaruawahia chief, arrived, and partly succeeded in stopping them, turning about six out of the printing-office (it being then quite full of natives). After some time, however, he came away, and the work went on. Everything connected with the printing was taken away, together with a port-manteau belonging to Mr Mainwaring, and a box containing some of my clothes. When all was gone, they stationed sentinels at the door, and allowed no one inside. Before breaking open the door they had a scuffle with the native teacher, who placed himself before it, and was dragged away after some resistance. They also broke down about twenty yards of the fence between the printing-office and the road. They camped all round the house, but about 6 o’clock [[28]]allowed us to enter and take our clothes from the little bedroom at the back. They did not attempt to touch anything in the main building. In the evening they stationed their soldiers all round the house. About 8 o’clock, Mr Gorst, Mr White, and Mr Mainwaring arrived. There was some talk of setting fire to the place, and one or two fire-sticks were brought, but they determined not to do it in the end. A good many guns were loaded with ball, but none fired. A great many slept in the printing-office that night. During the remainder of the afternoon, Taati, Patene, and Te Oriori on one side, and the leaders of the soldiers on the other, talked a great deal in the road. William King [Wiremu Kingi], Rewi, and a few others stayed some distance off, and gave their orders from there. The mail box, etc., were also taken, with the mail money.—E. J. von Dadelszen.”
The printing-press, the Kingites’ bete noir, was carried out, with all the type, reams of paper, and printed copies of the fifth number of the “Pihoihoi,” and the whole plant was loaded on to bullock drays and carted off to Kihikihi. Nothing else, however, was taken; some private belongings, such as boxes of clothes, were scrupulously returned as soon as it was discovered that they were not part of the printing plant. Then the leader of the war-party surrounded the mission buildings with a cordon of sentries, and awaited Mr Gorst’s return. The Maoris camped on the road and in the adjacent field opposite the church, and their watch-fires blazed as evening came down.
Mr Gorst rode in after dark, and was permitted to pass unmolested. A message was sent in to him that if he refused to go away in the morning he would be shot. Resistance was impossible, for although the youths in the school establishment declared that they would stand by “Te Kohi” there were no arms, and in any case a conflict could only have ended in the victory of Rewi’s veterans of the Taranaki war and in the slaughter of the Government people.
Next morning there were scenes of intense excitement on the gathering road between the mission station and the church where the present main road runs. Mr Gorst was ordered to depart. He replied that nothing would induce him to leave his post but orders from the Governor. Rewi for his part declared that he and his men would not stir from the spot until his object was accomplished. [[29]]
Presently, through the intervention of the Rev. A. Reid, the Wesleyan missionary at Te Kopua, Rewi, at a personal interview with Mr Gorst, agreed to withdraw his men and give the Commissioner three weeks in which to communicate with Sir George Grey. Rewi then in a speech gave his reasons for raiding the station. The Governor, he said, had shown himself hostile to the Maori King movement, and had been ceaseless in his machinations against the confederation of the tribes. Sir George Grey had begun to make a military road to the Waikato, and finally at Taupiri he had made a speech in which he said he “would dig around the King until he fell.” They looked round to see where the spades were at work, and they saw “Te Kohi”; they were resolved to have no digging of that kind in Waikato, and so they had determined to remove him from the land of the Maori.
Rewi then, at Mr Gorst’s invitation, went into the house and wrote the following letter for transmission to the Governor:
(Translation.)
“Te Awamutu,
“March 25, 1863.“Friend Governor Grey:
“Greeting. This is my word to you. Mr Gorst has been killed [has suffered] through me. I have taken away the press. These are my men who took it—eighty, armed with guns. The object of this is to expel Mr Gorst, so that he may return to town; it is on account of the great trouble occasioned by his being sent here to stay and beguile us, and also on account of your words, ‘I shall dig at the sides, and your kingdom will fall.’ Friend, take Mr Gorst back to the town; do not leave him to stay with me at Te Awamutu. Enough; if you say he is to stay, he will die. Enough; send speedily your letter to fetch him in three weeks. It is ended.
“From your friend,
“From REWI MANIAPOTO.”
Mr Gorst also wrote a letter, informing Sir George Grey of the occurrences, and saying that the natives had beaten him utterly, and that Rewi said if the Governor left him it would be to certain death. The letters were sent off to the Governor, who was then in Taranaki. While an answer was awaited, Wiremu Tamehana came to see Mr Gorst, and sorrowfully told him that he and others of the friendly-disposed party could not protect him now. The Governor did not answer Rewi’s letter, but sent instructions to Mr Gorst that in the event of there being any danger whatever to life he was to return at once to Auckland, with the other Europeans in the employment of the Government.
As the Upper Waikato was now inflamed with the war feeling, [[30]]Mr Gorst realised that the evacuation of Te Awamutu was the only possible course. He left the station on 18th April, 1863. It was more than forty years before he set eyes again on the olden scene of his labours for the Maori.
The after-history of the “Pihoihoi Mokemoke” press has been cleared up by dint of many inquiries. Practically the whole of the plant was restored to the Government after Mr Gorst’s departure. It was placed in a canoe and taken down the Waipa and Waikato to Te Iaroa, just below the mouth of the Mangatawhiri River, near Mercer; there Mr Andrew Kay—later of Orakau—had a trading store. The press and other material were handed over to Mr Kay, who sent word to the Government, and carts were sent to take it to Auckland. The press was afterwards used for a time in printing the Government “Gazette.” A legend gained currency, and was repeated by writer after writer, each copying his equally ill-informed predecessor, that the Kingites melted the type into bullets to use in the war. The fact, however, is that the plant was returned to the Government very nearly complete. Sir John Gorst told me (1906) that some of Rewi’s young men helped themselves to a little of the type as curiosities, but there could have been very little missing in that way. As for the “Hokioi” press, the Ngati-Maniapoto informed me that it was taken up from Ngaruawahia to Te Kopua for safe-keeping when the war began, and there it was lying, rusted and broken, when I last heard of it; some of the scattered type was now and again ploughed up on the bank of the Waipa.
Sir John Gorst, re-visiting New Zealand after forty-three years, set foot once more in Te Awamutu on 3rd December, 1906, and renewed his acquaintance with some of his old native pupils and travelled over the old familiar ground. He was welcomed with immense enthusiasm by pakeha and Maori alike, and there was a peculiarly pathetic touch in the speeches made by the few Maori survivors of the old regime in Waikato. Sir John, with Miss Gorst, visited Captain D. Bockett, one of the original military settlers of Rangiaowhia, who occupied the historic mission-house. He went through the old buildings and the well-remembered church. Then, with a large party, he visited Mr Andrew Kay at his farm at Otautahanga, and talked over the old Waikato days; and on the day’s drive passed over the battlefields of Hairini, Rangiaowhia, and Orakau. At a great gathering at Te Awamutu to welcome “Te [[31]]Kohi” one of the speakers was the veteran Tupotahi, one of the heroes of the Orakau defence; he had been a member of Aporo’s war-party which invaded the Government station in 1863. Ngati-Maniapoto greeted with a quite extraordinary enthusiasm the distinguished manuhiri whom they had driven from their midst in the days of the racial quarrels, now happily buried for ever.
There was more than a touch of the poetic in the farewell to “Te Kohi” and his daughter at the railway station, Te Awamutu, when the venerable man bade good-bye for ever to his friends old and new. Two pretty native girls, Victoria and Ngahuia Kahu Hughes, daughters of William Hughes, of Kakepuku—one of Mr Gorst’s old pupils at the mission station before the debacle of 1863—stood hand-in-hand on the platform and sang very sweetly this parting waiata:
Hoki hoki tonu mai
Te wairua a Te Kohi.
Kia awhi-reinga
Ki tenei kiri—ee—ii!
Ka huri koe i Te Awamutu
Ka tahuri whakamuri;
Mokemoke rere a te aroha—ee—ii!
Ka eke ki tereina,
Ka tahuri whakamuri;
Mokemoke te rere a te auahi—ee—ii!
Ka pinea korua
Ki te pine o te aroha,
Ki te pine e kore nei e waikura—ee—ii!