THE LAST CANOE VOYAGE.
Of a picturesque quality, too, was “Te Kohi’s” passage to Auckland down the Waikato River. It had been arranged with Mahuta, the King of Waikato—son of Tawhiao—that Sir John should be taken down the river from Ngaruawahia to Waahi, near Huntly, by Maori canoe, passing the scenes once familiar to him in his before-the-war journeyings and reviving memories of the primitive old days. Ngaruawahia in his era in the Waikato was the capital of the Maori King, and no craft but dug-out canoes floated on the great river. It was a glorious summer morning when Sir John Gorst and his daughter and their party embarked at the green delta in a fine, roomy, white-pine canoe, the “Tangi-te-Kiwi,” 70 feet in length, with a crew of fifteen Maori paddlers, for the voyage down the Waikato to Waahi. The sun drove away the early mists, and the bush-clad range of the Hakarimata “stood up and took the morning,” high above the willows that fringed the low banks of the shining river. Down the long curving reaches the big waka swept with the powerful current aiding the paddles, and the canoe captain, old Hori te Ngongo, standing amidships, gave the time to his crew with voice and gesture, now and again breaking into a high chanted song of the ancient days. One of Hori’s songs was peculiarly appropriate, for it had been composed in 1863 with special reference to Gorst and the Mangatawhiri River, the frontier line of those days. Thus chanted old Hori, the kai-hau-tu, in a long-drawn high song to which the paddlers kept time as they dipped and lifted their blades:
Koia e Te Kohi,
Purua i Mangatawhiri,
Kia puta ai ona pokohiwi,
Kia whato tou
E hi na wa!
In this waiata the Commissioner of Waikato was requested to [[33]]“plug up” the boundary river between pakeha and Maori lands and make it a close frontier, and thus prevent the King’s followers passing below its mouth to trade in Auckland, so that presently, for want of European clothing, their naked bodies might be seen protruding from their scanty native garments.
Now and again as the “Tangi-te-Kiwi” approached a native hamlet on the west bank of the river the crew would redouble their strokes and the captain would chant in a louder, wilder key the old-time song for “Te Kohi,” and from the village women would come a shrill reply and long, wailing cries of “Haere-mai! Haere mai!” The canoe swept past the sites of the old mission station and mission schools at Hopuhopu and at Kaitotehe (opposite Taupiri)—the latter was Mr Ashwell’s station before the war—and Sir John’s eyes lingered with a pathetic interest on the scenes he knew in 1861–63 until a change of course or bend in the river hid them from his view.
| COLONEL WADDY, C.B., 50th Regiment (This veteran soldier was affectionately called by his men “Old Daddy.”) | CAPTAIN H. C. RYDER (Capt. H. C. Ryder, father of Col. H. R. Ryder of Te Awamutu, was paymaster of the 40th Regiment and was stationed at Te Awamutu, 1863–7) |
| SIR GEORGE GREY (From a photograph about 1860) | GEORGE AUGUSTUS SELWYN (First Bishop of New Zealand) |
High-peaked Taupiri, beloved of the old-time Maori, tapu and legend-haunted, was passed on the right; and then, as the canoe glided down the broad, glimmering reach, willow-walled, toward Huntly town, we saw another long Maori waka appear in the distance ahead, its two rows of paddles flashing in the sun with beautiful regularity. In a few moments the two canoes met. The stranger was the royal canoe, “Te Wao-nui-a Tane” (“The Great Forest of Tane”—the Maori god of the woods), which had been sent up by Mahuta to meet Sir John Gorst’s canoe, challenge us in true Maori style, and escort us down to the meeting-place at Waahi. A splendid picture the “Wao-nui-a Tane” made as she swept up under the strong strokes of twenty-six paddlers, all stripped to the waist, their brown shoulders bowing and rising as one. Amidships stood a red-capped captain, the chief Te Paki, giving the time to his crew and chanting the old war-time songs. The crew were all picked men of the Ngati-Whawhakia tribe of Waahi, the best canoe-men on the Waikato. The canoe itself was about 70 feet in length, like our waka, the “Tangi-te-Kiwi.” As the King’s canoe came alongside, Miss Gorst and the Minister of the Crown (the Hon. George Fowlds) who accompanied the Dominion’s guests were transferred to her, and away down the glistening river shot the “Wao-nui-a Tane,” easily distancing our canoe. Down the river she flashed at racing speed, her paddles glinting like wet wings in the sun. Ngati-Whawhakia gave an exhibition of faultless time [[34]]and paddling that day as they swept down far ahead of us to Waahi, their old kai-hau-tu yelling himself hoarse with his boat-songs. It was a perfect picture of old Maoridom revived, bringing once more to the honoured guest’s mind the romantic and adventurous scenes in the days before the war, when hundreds of canoes, large and small, made lively this noble waterway; the days before ever a pakeha steamboat’s paddle-wheel startled the Waikato.
And after the great welcome chants of the powhiri at the crowded marae of Waahi, “Te Kohi” gripped hands once again with the venerable and benevolent-looking veteran Patara te Tuhi, the chivalrous Kingite who edited and printed the “Hokioi” at Ngaruawahia in the Sixties, and who, when Mr Gorst had been ejected from Te Awamutu, gave him shelter one night—the ironical humour of fate!—in the raupo-thatched printing-office of the rebel “War Bird.” [[35]]
[1] Died in Wellington, 1922. [↑]
CHAPTER VI.
THE WAIKATO WAR.
We broke a King and we built a road—
A courthouse stands where the reg’ment goed,
And the river’s clean where the raw blood flowed,
When the Widow give the party.
—“Barrack-Room Ballads.”
The eviction of Mr Gorst from Te Awamutu served to precipitate the Waikato War, but in truth a conflict had become inevitable. There was a widespread feeling that the time had come for a racial trial of strength, and the conflict was due as much to the aggressive policy of the Government and the anti-Maori tone of the newspapers and the politicians as to the martial preparations of the Kingites.
The construction of the military road and the establishment of military posts in obvious readiness for an advance into the Waikato confirmed the natives in their belief that the Government meant to force a way into the interior and shatter their home-rule plans.
The first definite act of war was Lieutenant-General Cameron’s despatch of troops across the frontier, the Mangatawhiri River, on 12th July, 1863.
Te Huirama, with a body of Waikato, barred the way with rifle-pits on the Koheroa ridge, near Mercer, and on 17th July the first engagement took place. The troops under Cameron charged the Maori position with the bayonet, and the Kingites were driven out with the loss of their leader and about thirty others. Numerous skirmishes followed in the South Auckland country on the northern side of the Mangatawhiri; the Lower Waikato and Wairoa and Hauraki war-parties carried gun and tomahawk into their enemy’s country, following their favourite tactics of ambuscade and plunder. There were many bush fights, in which the Forest Rangers and the Forest Rifle Volunteers, as well as Imperial troops and militia, were engaged.
The three principal fortified posts of the Kingites in the early stages of the war were Paparata, Meremere, and Pukekawa. These positions were designed to stop the southward progress of the troops and enable the Maoris to levy war on the frontier settlements. [[36]]Pukekawa is the beautiful round green hill on the west side of the great elbow of the Waikato, where the river bends westward below Mercer; anciently a fortified pa of the Ngati-Tamaoho stood on its summit. When the Waikato War began the Ngati-Maniapoto came down the river in their canoes and selected it as their headquarters, and from Pukekawa as a convenient base they made raids on Patumahoe, Mauku, Camerontown, and other frontier districts. They expected to be attacked there, and entrenched themselves, but General Cameron did not carry the war to the west side of the Waikato.
Presently the arrival of gunboats specially adapted for the river war enabled Cameron to outflank and capture the strongholds on the east bank of the Waikato and to occupy Ngaruawahia, the Maori King’s headquarters, unopposed. His only serious check was at Rangiriri, where in disastrous frontal attacks the Imperial naval and military forces sustained heavy casualties—47 dead and 85 wounded. The pa surrendered next day, and 183 prisoners were taken. The Lower Waikato was conquered, and the General with his steam flotilla shifted the army to the Waikato-Waipa delta for the final blows to the Kingite cause.