FOOTNOTES:
[68] Pai Marire means "Good and Peaceful."
MURDER MOST FOUL
The year 1865 was full of incident. Fifteen years had gone by since Russell had bewailed the choice of Auckland as the capital, since Wellington had stormily asserted her right of elder birth, since men here and there with nothing better to suggest had demanded petulantly, "Why should it be Auckland, any way?" It was now Auckland's turn to lament; for, in the opinion of those qualified to judge, the central position of Wellington justified the transference thither of the seat of Government.
There is no way yet discovered of pleasing everybody; but, in order that the choice might be strictly impartial, the Governors of New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania were requested to decide upon the best site for the capital, while they were given to understand that the spot selected must be somewhere on the shores of Cook Strait, that being the geographical centre of the colony.
The Governors inspected the region without prejudice in favour of existing towns, and unanimously decided that "Wellington, in Port Nicholson, was the site upon the shores of Cook Strait which presented the greatest advantages for the administration of the government of the colony." No method of selection could have been more just, and in February, 1865, the seat of Government was removed from Auckland to Wellington.
The second notable event—the third in order of sequence—was the surrender of the celebrated Waikato chief, Wiremu Tamihana Te Waharoa (William Thompson), whose persistent energy had put so much heart into the insurgents. With his submission the Waikato war proper ended, and this although many Waikato joined the Hauhau movement. The conflict was not over; but the Waikato as a tribe withdrew from it. Some of their land had been confiscated, they had got the worst of the fight, and, though they still clung to their principles regarding the sale of land and the establishment of a Maori dynasty, they now acknowledged the might of the Government to be something beyond their power to overthrow.
The submission of Wiremu Tamihana influenced not the wild fanatics who were being recruited from almost every tribe of note in the North Island, and whose expressed determination it was to drive the Pakeha Rat into the sea. They would fight and die for Maoriland, if need be; but they would never give in. Not all of them believed the horrible creed which Te Ua had invented; but even these were content to be classed as Hauhau, if so they might help to free their country from the domination of the Pakeha.
"Good wine needs no bush," and if ever a cause was spoiled by the character and behaviour of its adherents, it was this; if ever a body of men in arms in the sacred name of patriotism earned, and rightly earned, the detestation and vengeance of their foes, the Hauhau did so at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of their war. The very Maori loathed their name and character, and these, concerned for the honour of their race, fought as strenuously against their degraded countrymen as did the whites with whom they were allied.
Between February, when Wellington became the capital, and June the 17th, when Wiremu Tamihana surrendered, an innocent missionary was murdered by his own flock under circumstances which served to show that, even at that late day, there were Maori who required but little persuasion to induce them to slip back into the pit of savagery out of which they had, it was hoped, climbed for all time.
The Church of England Mission Station at Opotiki (Bay of Plenty) had been for some years presided over by the Rev. C.S. Voelkner, an energetic and successful missionary. His station was among some of the wildest, least civilised tribes of the Maori; but his devotion had gained him the respect, and even the goodwill, of the fierce, untamed fellows in whose midst he dwelt.
When the war rolled almost to his door, Mr. Voelkner judged it wise to take his wife to Auckland; but he himself came backwards and forwards to the disturbed district. In February, during the missionary's absence, Opotiki was visited by two prophets, Patara of the Taranaki, and Kereopa of the Ngati-Porou, with a number of Taranaki Hauhau at their heels. The Whakatohea were ripe for any mischief as it was, and readily embraced the new creed, their conversion being accompanied by much revolting ritual.
Feeling already ran high against the absent missionary, the Whakatohea having allowed themselves to be persuaded that he was hostile to the Maori cause, and desirous of breaking up the tribes.
Patara, who cannot have been all bad, wrote warning Mr. Voelkner not to return to Opotiki; but the missionary unfortunately arrived on the very next day, in a schooner, accompanied by a colleague, the Rev. Mr. Grace.
Mr. Voelkner was at once informed that he was to be killed, but refused to believe that the people among whom he had laboured would prove false to his teaching. A few hearts were softened towards him; but Kereopa would brook neither denial nor delay, and on the following day took out Mr. Voelkner and hanged him upon a willow-tree, shooting him through the body before life was extinct. The fierce Hauhau then swallowed the eyes and drank the blood of his victim.
Mr. Grace was in great danger; for the fanatics, having literally tasted blood, clamoured for more. For fourteen days the unfortunate man endured agonies of suspense, and his relief must have been intense when H.M.S. Eclipse appeared outside the bar. Owing to Patara's influence, the missionary was free to wander within the boundaries of the Opotiki plain, and this circumstance, along with the absence of most of the Hauhau at a feast, helped to effect his escape.
As he was watching the crew of the schooner shifting cargo, one of the sailors murmured, "Go down to the point, and we will get you off." Mr. Grace obeyed with assumed carelessness, and a moment later was in the schooner's boat, speeding towards the Eclipse. Two of the boats from the man-of-war dashed up the river immediately afterwards and towed the schooner over the bar, when no time was lost in leaving Opotiki of tragic memory.
Three months later the ruffians at Opotiki again drenched themselves with blood, murdering the crew of a cutter and Mr. Fulloon, a Government agent, who was on board as a passenger. Mr. Fulloon was a Maori of distinguished lineage on his mother's side; but, nevertheless, at the order of Horomona, the Hauhau, one Kirimangu shot the poor man while asleep with his own revolver. Kirimangu was captured and hanged; but Kereopa managed to evade his doom for seven years, when justice, long disappointed, made sure of him.
Kereopa and his Hauhau were not allowed to pursue their wicked way unchecked. As soon as they could be spared from Whanganui, five hundred men of the Military Settlers, the Bush Rangers, the Native Contingent, and the Whanganui Yeomen Cavalry were ordered to Opotiki, under Majors Brassey and McDonnell, the latter of whom could effect things with the Native Contingent which few other officers could bring about. Not only was McDonnell familiar with the Maori, but he knew their language and their country, so that he met them on their own ground in their own manner. He was brave to rashness, but this was hardly a fault in Maori eyes.
The column accomplished some good, and captured Moko Moko and Hakaraia, who were immediately informed that they could not be treated as prisoners of war, but would be tried for the murder of Mr. Voelkner, in which they had been concerned. After a good deal of successful skirmishing, the force returned to Whanganui, their chief casualty occurring on the way.
The mate of the transport loaded a small cannon for the amusement of some friendlies, but the gun would not "go off," whereupon the searchers after entertainment peeped inquiringly down the muzzle. The humoursome cannon chose that particular moment to indulge in a belated explosion, which fortunately did no more than wound the mate and two of the Maori. The outcome of the accident was the refusal of the Native Contingent to proceed after so evil an omen.
The superstitious fellows actually surrounded the capstan and prevented the weighing of the anchor, until one of themselves, Lieutenant Wirihana, an exceptionally strong man and one of the best officers in the contingent, swung the ringleader up in his arms and made to heave him overboard. A round dozen of the offender's relatives rushed the officer, and even then with difficulty prevented disaster to their cousin.
Kereopa, tired of dodging about the region round Opotiki, struck across country for Poverty Bay, preaching his perverted gospel as he went. Behind him followed Patara, intent to prevent his fellow-prophet from too free an indulgence in his lust for blood. Patara more than suspected his colleague of an intention to murder Bishop Williams, and this he was determined not to allow. Kereopa had good ground in which to sow his evil seed, yet many of the leading chiefs among the Ngati-Porou not only refused to join him, but requested the Government to supply them with firearms, so that they might adequately deal with the monster. The request was sensibly granted, and Ropata and his chiefs kept the Hauhau busy until the arrival of Captain Fraser and his colonials.
Ropata showed the manner of man he was in the fights which followed. A dozen of his own sub-tribe (Aowera, of the iwi of Ngati-Porou) had been taken, fighting among the Hauhau. Ropata set them before him in a row and said, more in sorrow than in anger, "This is my word to you, O foolish children. You are about to die. I do not kill you because you fought against me, but because you disobeyed my orders and joined the Hauhau." He then shot every man of the twelve with his own hand.
Like master, like man. On one occasion a couple of fleeing Hauhau encountered one of Ropata's dispatch-bearers and, delighted to make a capture, haled him in the direction of Patara's camp. But they had caught a Tartar, though they were left little time to realise it. Ropata's man, with every sense alert, noticed that the tupara carried by one of his captors was capped and cocked. Assuming the gun to be loaded, the prisoner suddenly snatched it, wheeled like lightning and shot the other guard. Number one could, of course, make no resistance, and was almost immediately shot dead with the second barrel of his own gun. The cleverness of the prisoner in first shooting the armed guard illustrates very well the quick-wittedness of the average Maori.
In September, Sir George Grey formally proclaimed that the war which had begun at the time of the murders at Oakura was at an end, and that, the rebels having been punished enough by their disasters in the field and the confiscation of part of their lands, he pardoned all who had taken up arms, save those responsible for certain murders. The Governor further announced that he would confiscate no more lands on account of the war, and that he would release all prisoners as soon as the rebels should return in peace to their homes. The proclamation gave great offence to numbers of colonists, who jeered at the idea of peace while so many Maori were in arms; but Sir George Grey's statement that "the war was at an end" had no reference to the Hauhau, neither were they included in his pardon—unless, indeed, they chose promptly to submit, which they did not.
The Hauhau on the west coast made clear their decision in a most atrocious fashion. The Governor dispatched the proclamation to Patea, near Whanganui, by a Maori, who was shot, but lived long enough to warn the Government interpreter, Mr. Broughton, who was coming up behind him, to put no trust in the Hauhau.
Mr. Broughton was doubly deceived. He believed in his own influence over the Maori, and he was quite unaware that the Hauhau were predetermined to kill any messengers bringing overtures of peace. Their treachery went further; for, in order to be sure of a victim, they had begged that an interpreter might be sent to explain to them certain passages in the Governor's message which they professed not to understand.
After such a beginning, the end was inevitable, should Mr. Broughton persist in delivering himself into the power of the Hauhau. And this, deaf to advice and persuasion, he did. Three Hauhau came out from the pa to meet him when he arrived on the 30th of September, and even then he was offered a last chance of escape; for one of the three had formerly been in his service, and now implored his old master not to trust himself within the pa. Mr. Broughton persisted, and was received in sullen silence. Striving to seem unconcerned, he took no notice of the incivility, and moved towards a fire which was burning in the marae. As he reached it, a Hauhau shot him in the back, and the poor man fell dying into the blaze, where he lay until some of his murderers pulled him out and flung him, still alive, over the cliff into the Patea.
The hatred of the Hauhau for the Pakeha was intense, and their attitude to the whites differed completely from that of the Maori in previous wars. They seemed to be obsessed with evil spirits, whose mission was to promote in their victims a lust for blood and a disposition for cruelty of the most appalling kind. They were as men who had swallowed a drug having power to kill goodness and purity and generosity, and to fill the soul in their stead with malice, hatred and vices too degrading to be named.
It was fortunate for New Zealand that the evil seed which Te Ua sowed fell only here and there on soil whence it sprang rank and poisonous as the deadly upas tree; for, had it taken root universally, there is no saying at what bitter cost the colonists must have weeded it out. But, though almost every tribe in the north sent its recruits to the fanatics, there yet remained in most of them a remnant who refused "to bow the knee to Baal," and who, if they did not fight for the Pakeha, at least gave no aid to the Hauhau.
ALARMS! EXCURSIONS!
Though the war occupied her supreme attention, it must not be supposed that New Zealand stood still. The plucky little daughter of Great Britain kept her eyes open and, though her hands were reasonably full of swords and guns, found other work for them to do. June, 1866, saw the commencement of a mail service to Panama, which vastly accelerated communication with the northern hemisphere; and, before August was out, the Government had laid a submarine cable across Cook Strait, bringing the extreme north of the North Island and the extreme south of the Middle Island within a few minutes of one another.
In October, 1867, the Board of Revenue rejoiced at the passing of an Act imposing stamp duties; the scholarly and aesthetic were gladdened by another Act which provided for an institute for the promotion of Science and Art in the colony; and, lastly, the Maori were rendered happy by an Act which, while it showed great wisdom, proved conclusively the desire of the British Pakeha to deal in most generous spirit with their native fellow-subjects. This Act provided for the division of the colony into four Maori electorates, and the admission of four Maori members to the House of Representatives. When it is remembered that a large number of the native population were at the very moment in arms against the State, the lavish generosity of this measure must excite profound admiration.
The intellectual and high-minded Maori were quick to learn, and as quick to put in practice the knowledge they acquired. From the first, although they quarrelled with them, they admired the Pakeha and recognised their superiority. Indeed, but for their ruling passion, they would probably have much earlier amalgamated with the whites. This, as we have seen, was their attachment to their land, which they regarded as sacrosanct and inalienable; and from this Naboth-like devotion sprang much of the trouble between them and the Pakeha.
The theatre of war having shifted again to the west coast, General Chute took command on the retirement of General Cameron. There was nothing of Fabius in General Chute, who was accustomed to follow up as speedily as possible whatever advantage he might gain. Quot homines, tot sententiae; so many men, so many ways of doing things; and it is just as well. Had General Chute commanded from the first, the war might have been sooner over; but there would never have arisen the need for the colonists to take their own part, and they must have been much longer in learning their good qualities of strength and self-reliance.
Throughout January, 1866, General Chute with his regulars, colonials and the Maori contingent punished the Hauhau, who had learned by painful experience that they were not invulnerable. He beat them at Okotuku, and chased them out of Putahi, where Major McDonnell was so severely wounded in the foot as to be rendered unfit for active work during the remainder of the campaign. Yet, so indispensable was the Major because of his immense influence with the Maori, that, despite his suffering, he remained with the force lest, finding him absent, his men should march off home until their leader was able to rejoin them.
Notwithstanding the experiences of others in the not very remote past, General Chute determined to assault the well-garrisoned pa of Otapawa, and on the 12th of January the Armstrong gun roared a challenge to the Hauhau. Grimly silent, the defenders kept so strictly to cover, that General Chute, half-inclined to believe that they had escaped, thought it unnecessary to wait until the Native Contingent and volunteers (kupapa) had worked completely round to the rear. So he ordered Colonel Butler and his "Die Hards" (57th), supported by the 14th, to storm the stockade.
He had barely finished speaking when he received a practical hint that the pa was not empty; for a bullet carried away one of the buttons of his tunic. "Aha! The beggars seem to have found me out," General Chute coolly observed. "Go on, Colonel Butler."
Colonel Butler went on, Lieutenant-Colonel Hassard beside him, and the "Die Hards" close behind them. The Hauhau had removed every vestige of cover from the front of the pa—which fact alone should have warned the General that the place was occupied, and by a skilful foe—and, as the 57th came on, they were greeted with a volley from the covered rifle-pits which staggered them, veterans of Sebastopol though they were.
"Come on, Die Hards!" shouted Colonel Butler, and the gallant fellows charged over the glacis, dropping fast and losing Colonel Hassard on the way. Enraged, the men tore down the palisades with their bare hands and drove the enemy helter-skelter out at the rear of the pa into the clutch of Von Tempsky and his Forest Rangers. Thirty-two of the Hauhau fell, while General Chute lost a colonel and eleven men, not to speak of twenty wounded. A little patience, siege instead of assault, and the stronghold might have been reduced without loss. As it is, the action is memorable as being the only occasion during these wars upon which a well-defended pa was ever taken by assault.
Whereas General Cameron would never go near the bush, General Chute now determined to march through it a distance of sixty miles to Taranaki, and sweep the enemy out of his path. But General Cameron despised the native levies, while General Chute realised their value, particularly when led by such a man as Major McDonnell, and it cannot be gainsaid that their presence greatly contributed to the success of the bush march.
But for McDonnell and another, General Chute must either have chosen another route, or have marched without the Native Contingent, for the Maori, men of the Whanganui district, decided not to go to Taranaki, alleging that "it was too far from home!" Nor would they have yielded either to advice or persuasion, but for the timely arrival in camp of Major McDonnell and Dr. Featherston, the Superintendent of the Wellington Province, who, like the major, exercised unbounded influence over the Maori, and particularly over the men of Whanganui.
These two, upon whom the fortunes of the Colony more than once depended, summoned to their tent the aged paramount chief, Hori Kingi Te Anaua, and bluntly asked him whether the friendship which had for years existed between him and Dr. Featherston was to be broken. The old man looked for a long time in silence at his questioners, and then left the tent without a word. His voice presently reached them as he addressed the crowd of Maori thronging there to learn the result of the interview:—
"Listen, you who have refused to march with the Pakeha. This is my word to you. I will go with them, though I go alone. But hearken! If you desert me and them, never more will I dwell with you in Whanganui. I have spoken!"
There was a moment of silence, and then the words of the old lion-heart prevailed and yells of "Kapai! Kapai!" were blent with shouts of "We will go! We will go!" The situation was saved; General Chute marched through the bush in nine days (January 17th to 25th) skirmishing as he went, reached Taranaki, and the campaign came to an end. With it practically ended the employment of the regular forces in New Zealand, as far as active service went.
How valuable was the aid which the friendly Maori gave is illustrated by the following incident, related by Lieutenant Gudgeon in his reminiscences.
At the close of General Chute's operations a detachment of the Native Contingent stationed at Pipiriki, a most picturesque spot on the upper Whanganui, made themselves so agreeable to the rebels, that the Hauhau chief, Pehi Turoa, invited the friendlies to meet him at Mangaio and discuss the situation. Some four hundred accepted the invitation and, led by their chief, Mete Kingi, went up-stream in their beautiful canoes to the conference.
As they neared the rebel pa, Mete Kingi said characteristically, "Once these men were Whanganui like ourselves, and then they were good; but no faith can now be placed in them. For who would trust the word of a Hauhau? You know, my children, it is Maori etiquette to show confidence in your hosts; therefore, fire off your guns, that they may see our faith in them; but load them as quickly and quietly as you can, in case they mean us harm."
So said, so done. The Whanganui discharged their guns with deafening clatter and, before they landed, unobtrusively reloaded them. There was fortunately no breach of faith, and the upshot of the conference was that the contracting parties swore to maintain an eternal peace on the Whanganui river, but reserved the right to fight in any other part of New Zealand. Thus, entirely in their own manner, did the friendly Whanganui bring peace to an important district, long convulsed with war.
McDonnell, now colonel, continued operations on the west coast, particularly against the Nga-Ruahini, one of whose chiefs, Titokowaru, then and afterwards gave much trouble. The colonel was very successful, and the Hauhau learned that his methods were not those of the military, for he employed their own tricks against them. One of their captured chiefs grumblingly said to him, "We thought that we were fighting a man; but we find that he is a rat, who moves only by night." "Nay, O Toi, you thought that you were fighting soldiers," returned McDonnell, probably with unintentional sarcasm, "whereas you find that we are Pakeha Maori."
The war swung round to the east, and the Province of Hawke's Bay, hitherto almost immune from "alarms and excursions," found itself in the thick of it. The Ngati-Hineuru and other tribes had joined the new sect; but, when they broke out, the Superintendent, Sir Donald McLean, was ready for them. With the help of Colonel Whitmore, Major Fraser and Captain Gordon with his volunteer cavalry, he stamped out the spreading flame, and Hawke's Bay once more grew calm after its brief flurry.
The year 1867 was for some reason styled by the Hauhau "the Year of the Lamb," that is, of peace, and, save for a skirmish or two, and some fell murders here and there in true Hauhau style, they remained quiet They were terrible folk, and their behaviour differed unpleasantly from that of the ordinary Maori in time of war; but some of them had not altogether lost that simplicity which, despite their intelligence, is characteristic of the race.
For instance, having declared the year to be one of peace, they failed to understand why their confiscated lands should not be restored to them. Some, too, observing that the friendly Maori were rewarded with pensions and land, complained that they were omitted, when they also had fought (against the Pakeha!) much as a child grumbles because he does not receive a prize for his misdirected efforts. One Hauhau gentleman did actually apply to the Commissioner for a pension, and was mortally offended when the great man dismissed him in terms more forcible than polite.
The hopes raised by all this talk of peace were falsified, not only by the activity of Titokowaru and his Nga-Ruahini, but by the sudden and quite unexpected appearance of a man who was destined to set the country ablaze, and to incur the bitter execration of thousands in the war-worn North Island.
POVERTY BAY
During 1866 the New Zealand Government had deported a batch of political prisoners to the Chatham Islands. Amongst them was one Te Kooti, whose offence was said to be that, while ostensibly in alliance with the Pakeha, he had acted as a spy for the Hauhau. Te Kooti then and ever afterwards denied this charge, averring that he was at the time mentioned one hundred miles away from either belligerent. This denial has never been accepted, and most people frankly regret that Te Kooti was not hanged out of hand. This would certainly have prevented many hideous outrages; but to punish in anticipation of proof, however satisfactory, is not yet the Briton's way. So Te Kooti was deported to Chatham Island, there to eat out his heart in longing for the day when he should be able to repay the Pakeha an hundredfold for the insults and injustice (according to him) which had been inflicted upon him.
Te Kooti was a clever man, and his wits had been sharpened by much intercourse with the whites, so it was natural that he should scheme and plan ways of escape from a hateful bondage, and means to deal a return blow to the detested Pakeha.
He found and seized his opportunity when the schooner Rifleman visited the island with stores; for he engineered a mutiny, out-generalled Captain Thomas, R.N., the Governor, seized the schooner and sailed on the 4th of July, 1868, for New Zealand. To obviate pursuit he set adrift a ketch, the only vessel the authorities owned, and with consummate cleverness spared the lives of the crew of the schooner on condition that they navigated her to Poverty Bay. The voyage passed without incident, save that Te Kooti strove, during a spell of contrary weather, to propitiate the wind-god by the sacrifice of his aged uncle, whom he callously cast overboard.
On the 10th of July the Rifleman arrived at Whareongaonga, a point some fifteen miles south of Poverty Bay, and here the prisoners disembarked and, after looting the vessel of her cargo, arms and ammunition, set free the crew. The successful plotter then struck inland, marching, so he said, upon Waikato, there to dethrone the king, with whose conduct he professed himself dissatisfied.
News of his arrival had spread, and a mixed company of whites and friendlies under Captain Westrupp set off in chase of him, encountering him on the 20th at Paparatu. After a fight lasting all day, Te Kooti surrounded his opponents and forced them to retire with the loss of their horses, baggage and ammunition, while their casualties were two killed and ten wounded.
Colonel Whitmore at once organised the pursuit, but it was the 8th of August before he came up with Te Kooti, to whose standard more Hauhau had flocked, and who had chosen a strong position in the gorge of the Ruake Ture river, about twenty miles due west of Poverty Bay.
Colonel Whitmore had only one hundred and thirty tired and not too contented men with whom to do battle against over two hundred well-armed warriors; but his courage took no more heed of this than it had taken of the difficulties of the pursuit, which had been through country the nature of which it is hard for the untravelled Briton to imagine.
When the column struck Te Kooti's last camp, where the fires were still burning, the track led thence along the bed of the river between high cliffs, which were fortunately not occupied by the foe. Heartened by the knowledge that they were at last to come to grips with the wily fellows they had held in dreary chase for nearly three weeks, the column went cheerfully forward, and in time came where the track left the river and climbed through a gap in the cliffs into the hills. There the advance was suddenly checked by a volley which had no worse effect than to send the men scurrying to cover, whence they replied to the concealed enemy, who were nearer than they supposed.
Each side fired as the chance came. Some one fell back dead and the nearest man to him shouted down the line, "Captain Carr's gone," and himself fell dead. Mr. Canning, a volunteer, had dodged behind the trunk of a fallen tree and, anxious for opportunity, peeped cautiously over the great bole, seeking a target. He was instantly shot dead by some Hauhau who were lurking, quite unsuspected, on the other side of the tree. Two other men fell, and then the advanced guard retired on the main body, who had meantime been deserted by a number of lukewarm Maori volunteers, while some of the Pakeha were themselves in retreat. To make matters worse it poured with rain, and it was but a remnant of the column which that night reached the bivouac at Reinga, some miles down the river. It was well for them that Te Kooti, wounded in the foot, could not pursue.
The victorious Hauhau encamped at Puketapu, hard by the scene of the fight, and thence sent his runners all over the island, calling on the tribes to join him, and announcing himself the chosen of God to sweep the Pakeha into the sea. The worst of it was, the road to Poverty Bay was now practically open to the Hauhau chief, who was already breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the people there, some of whom had been chiefly instrumental in procuring his deportation to Chatham Island.
It was no brutum fulmen that Te Kooti launched against the settlement, though, strange to say, both Major Biggs, in charge there, and other leading men, imperfectly realised the imminence of their danger. Biggs even dissuaded the settlers from building a strong blockhouse for a rendezvous, assuring them that there was no reason for alarm, since his scouts would surely give him twenty-four hours' notice of any projected attack. He actually laughed at them for their vigilance in watching the various fords of the Waipoa river and, as the Anglo-Saxon is extremely sensitive to ridicule, this very sensible precaution was dropped. The ford to which they had given particular attention was that at Patutahi, and there it was where Te Kooti presently crossed the stream.
Te Kooti, who maintained an iron discipline in camp and field, had by this time received numbers of recruits from the fierce Uriwera and other tribes in the locality, as well as promises of support from some at a distance. Leaving his main body in camp, he now swept down upon the plains with a chosen band of ruffians, and before the 10th of November had well begun, scattered his rascals in various directions over the settlement of Turanga, or Poverty Bay.
Mr. Butters, a wool-presser, rode up at dawn to the station of Messrs. Dodd and Peppard, where he was engaged to work, and to his horror found the two men dead upon their own threshold, while the shepherd had disappeared—he, too, had been killed.
"The raid is come. Te Kooti is upon us!" thought Mr. Butters and, instead of hurrying out of the district into safety, he went at racing speed to the mission at Waerenga-a-hika, warned the inmates, and then galloped from station to station, bearing his terrible news. He was riding all the time through the very midst of the scattered Hauhau, carrying his life in his hand and, had he worn a uniform, must have gained the cross "For Valour." As it was, he had for reward the consciousness of a good deed well done, and the knowledge that he had saved some lives by risking his own.
Butters gives the alarm—Poverty Bay
Some few he found alert and forearmed; others he advised in time, and some he was too late to help, as when, on riding up to one homestead, he saw outside the door the bodies of the proprietor, his wife and their baby. Knowing that here he could do no good, Butters thundered past the desolated hearth with averted face.
The Hauhau had already occupied Major Biggs's place as Butters drew near, and were dancing and yelling like fiends incarnate. The would-be saviour galloped on, sadly thinking, no doubt, that, if the poor major had consented to be wise in time, all this trouble might have been averted. Biggs had indeed paid the heaviest price for his rashness, and his last moments must have been embittered by the knowledge of the fate of those whom he had actually dissuaded from timely action in their own defence.
He met his end like a man. The natives' account of his death—the only one available—says that when the Hauhau knocked at his door he was still up, writing. Recognising that the danger he had held so lightly had come upon them, he called out to his wife to escape by the back, which she refused to do. In a few seconds more, husband, wife, child and servant lay dead, the only survivor being a hired boy, James, who escaped and joined his mother, who, with her eight children, narrowly managed to make her way to safety.
While all this horror was in progress in one direction the settlers in another, near the Patutahi ford, were warned by one of their number, who had lain awake from dawn listening to the distant firing, the meaning of which he did not apprehend until himself warned by a friendly Maori. It was here that the Hauhau had crossed the river, but refrained from doing mischief, as their leader wished to keep the murder of Mr. Wylie, one of the settlers there, as a sweet morsel for the finish. For Wylie was the man principally concerned in Te Kooti's deportation, and the fierce Hauhau had vowed that he would cut the Pakeha to pieces inch by inch, Chinese fashion. Their neighbour's warning saved Wylie and the rest, and they had gained safety before Te Kooti could overtake them.
Benson, a settler who also did good service that day in warning others, had himself the narrowest escape. As he rode home through the night, before the murders had begun, he suddenly found himself in the very midst of the Hauhau who had just crossed the ford. Supposing them to be friendlies, he spoke a word of greeting and passed through them on his way. Many a gun was pointed at him, and the savage fanatics ground their teeth with rage at losing a victim; for they dared not spoil their chance of a general massacre by the premature murder of a solitary settler.
Captain Wilson, besieged within a burning house, surrendered to the Hauhau on their promise that he and his should be spared. No sooner were the unfortunates outside, than Captain Wilson was shot, his man tomahawked and his wife and children bayoneted, save one little boy, who crawled from his dying father's arms and escaped into the scrub. The poor little fellow wandered about for days and at last found himself at the ruins of his home, where he discovered his mother, sorely wounded, but alive, in an outhouse.
A week later, when the Hauhau had departed and burial parties were searching for the dead, the two were found, the dying woman having been kept in life by the efforts of her baby son, who had stolen out nightly and foraged for food. Poor Mrs. Wilson was carried to Napier, where she died, leaving the doubly-orphaned little boy the sole survivor of the family.
Thus did Te Kooti revenge himself upon those whom he deemed the cause of his banishment. But he had gone too far; for above the cry of horror which went up all over the island when the dismal news of the massacre[69] spread, was heard the stern oath of strong men, who vowed they would not rest until they had cleared the earth of this blood-soaked savage and his gang of murderers.