FOOTNOTES:
[55] Good Tidings!
[56] By his own tribe pronounced "Shongi."
THE WARS OF HONGI IKA
It was necessary to steal a march on time in order to give a connected, though imperfect account of the foundation of Christianity in New Zealand. Return we to Hongi Ika and his doings.
If Mr. Marsden hoped to turn the philosopher-warrior-cannibal from the error of his ways, the good man must have been grievously disappointed. Hongi remained a pagan; but he never broke his promise to the missionary. He was a terrible fellow, but he was not a liar. His word was sacred, and he regretted on his deathbed that the men of Whangaroa had been too strong for him when they drove the Wesleyan missionaries from their station.
Leaving Mr. Marsden and his colleagues at Rangihoua, Hongi returned to his trade of war, and for five years or so enjoyed himself in his own way. Then, tiring again of strife, his thoughts turned once more upon foreign travel.
This time his ambition soared high, and with a fellow chief he sailed for London under the wing of a missionary. He was exceedingly well received, for the horror and fright with which the New Zealanders had been regarded was greatly diminished in 1820, and Britons were again looking longingly towards a country so rich in commercial possibilities.
So Hongi found himself a "lion," and with the adaptability of his race so comported himself, that it occurred to few to identify the bright-eyed little fellow with the ample forehead and keen brain with the lusty warrior and ferocious cannibal of whom startling tales had been told.
Even His Majesty, George the Fourth, did not disdain to receive the "Napoleon of New Zealand," and being, perhaps, in a prophetic mood, presented the great little man with a suit of armour.
Hongi would have preferred a present of the offensive kind in the shape of guns and ammunition; for the Nga-Puhi had early gauged the value of such weapons in settling tribal disputes, and had managed to acquire a few, though not nearly enough to meet the views of Hongi Ika.
The king had set the fashion, and his subjects followed suit so lavishly, that, if Hongi had chosen to lay aside his dignity and open a curio shop, he could have done so. The little man was overjoyed. He was rich now, and he gloated over his presents as a means to an end. What a war he could wage, if he could only find a pretext. Pretexts did not, as a rule, trouble Hongi; but the eyes of the great were upon him, and it would be just as well to consider appearances. As he recrossed the ocean his active brain was at work planning, planning. Ah, if he could but find a pretext!
Hongi had been absent for two years, and with right good will the tribes of the north-east wished that he might never return. However, with the dominant personality of the little man lacking to the all-conquering Nga-Puhi, there was no knowing what might happen; so the tribes around about the Thames river, whose frith is that thing of beauty, the Hauraki Gulf, took heart of grace, marched to the fight, and slew, among other folk, no less a person than Hongi's son-in-law.
Here was indeed a pretext. Hongi clung to it as a dog to his bone. In Sydney he had melted down, so to speak, his great pile of presents into three hundred stand of arms, which included a goodly share of the coveted tupara, or double-barrelled guns. Ammunition was added, and thus, with a very arsenal at his command, Hongi Ika came again to his native land.
He came armed cap-à-pie; for he wore the armour which the king had given him—and the good mihonari stood aghast at sight of him. "Even now the tribes are fighting," they groaned. "When is this bitter strife to cease?"
Pretext, indeed! To avenge his son-in-law was all very well. Utu should be exacted to the full. But here was a pretext beyond all others, and the wily Hongi instantly seized upon it.
"Fighting! Are they?" He grinned as only a Maori can grin. "I will stop these dogs in their worrying. They shall have their fill of fighting." He grinned again. "That will be the surest way, my mihonari friends. I will keep them fighting until they have no more stomach for it, and so shall there be an end." He muttered under his breath, "because their tribes shall be even as the moa."[57] As the moa was extinct, the significance of the addition should be sufficiently clear.
Hongi kept his word—he always did that—and sailed for the front in the proudest of his fleet of war-canoes, with a thousand warriors behind him, armed with mere and patu and spear, while in his van went a garde de corps of three hundred picked men, fondling—so pleased were they—the three hundred muskets and tupara for which their chief's presents had been exchanged.
Southward, through the Hauraki Gulf, he sails into the estuary of the Thames, into the Thames itself. One halt and the Totara pa is demolished, and with five hundred of its defenders dead in his rear Hongi sweeps on, southward still, to Matakitaki. Four to one against him! What care Hongi Ika and his three hundred musketeers? It is the same story—fierce attack and sudden victory, ruthless slaughter of twice a thousand foes, and Hongi, grinning in triumph, ever keeps his face to the south and drives his enemies before him as far as the Lake of Rotorua.
At Kawhia, on the west, there lived, when Hongi scourged the land, the hereditary chief, Te Rauparaha, a notable fighter, but a better diplomate. On Te Rauparaha men's eyes were now turned. He will know how to deal with the proud Nga-Puhi. Hongi's triumphal progress is nearing its end.
No. Hongi, at Mauinaina, is too close. Besides, he is a demon. He carries a charm which renders him invulnerable. That shining headpiece, that sparkling plate upon his chest—what are they, if not charms to keep him whole and sound? At Totara did not some strong arm deal him a buffet which would have scattered the brains of any mere man? Yet he did but stagger, while all around heard the sullen clang which was the howl of the evil spirit protecting his head. At Matakitaki was not a spear driven against his breast which should have split his heart and let out his villainous blood? Yet the point was blunted against the chest charm, and the spearman, poor wretch, slain. These things being so, who can stand against Hongi?
Not Te Rauparaha. The bold raider's nerves give way, and with black rage and hatred in his heart he gathers his followers together and flees southward to Otaki, giving as he goes the measure he has received, and leaving a trail of blood and fire behind him.
Hongi "has made a solitude and calls it—peace"; he is satisfied for the time being with what he has done and won, and must go home with his slaves and his heads and his loot, to enter his village in triumph like a general of old Rome.
Te Rauparaha, fleeing south, takes vengeance for the wrongs done him by Hongi upon all who come in his way. To be sure, it is not their affair; but Te Rauparaha cares nothing for that. Vengeance he wants; so hews a bloody path from north to south, till stayed by the rippling streak at the end of the land. Beyond that lies Te Wai Pounamou, The Waters of Greenstone, the Middle Island, washed by the Tasman Sea.
Te Rauparaha's smouldering rage blazes up again. What! Shall that strip of water stop him? Not while he has an arm to strike, and there is a canoe to be had for the striking.
So again the fearful drama—murder and rapine. The canoes are seized, the owners left stark upon the beach. Then across the strait, where a wondering crowd await his coming, not without apprehension. They have reason.
"Who is it that comes?" "It is Te Rauparaha!" In a moment the chief is among them. Blood flows again. Te Rauparaha is once more the victor. Will it never end?
Not yet. Hongi Ika comes not here to stop fighting by fighting, and Te Rauparaha has learned the lesson of the tupara, for he now has guns. Once more tearing a leaf from Hongi's book, he springs at the cowering population upon the great plain. Some he slaughters, some he enslaves; some, frantic with terror, braving the heaving Pacific, speed eastwards to Wari Kauri (Chatham Islands) six hundred miles away.
Again we have been obliged to fly ahead of time in order to give full impression—not a complete picture—of these sinister happenings; for the wars of Hongi in the north, and Te Rauparaha's sanguinary progress to the south were not over and done with in a month or a year. It was in 1821 that Hongi started upon his self-imposed mission to cure like with like, and for the next twenty years—long after the death of Hongi—quarrel was piled upon quarrel, war led to war, till the whole of the north was involved.
We left Hongi marching home in triumph, unconcerned that his hammering of the north had turned loose in the south a devil in the shape of Te Rauparaha. He had sustained no serious losses, and for some time continued pre-eminent. But his many and powerful foes had by now appreciated the reason of his success, and provided themselves with firearms. From that time Hongi, though victorious, paid more dearly for his victories.
Hongi, when in battle, as a rule shone resplendent in the armour which George the Fourth had given him, and which was supposed to render him invulnerable. The belief received justification from the issue of Hongi's last fight at Hokianga in 1827.
For some reason the great chief wore only his helmet upon that fatal day.
Ill fared it then with Roderick Dhu,
When on the field his targe he threw.
Ill fared it with Hongi when he rushed into the fight without his shining breastplate; for hardly was the battle joined when a bullet passed through his body, and the day of the great Hongi, the Lion of the North, was done.
Hongi's last "word" to his people
Fifteen months later, as he lay upon his death mats at Whangaroa, feasting his glazing eyes upon the array of clubs, battleaxes, muskets, and tupara set around the bed, he called to him his relatives, his dearest friends, and his fighting-chiefs, and spoke to them this word:—
"Children, and you who have carried my arms to victory, this is my word to you. I promised long ago to be kind to the mihonari, and I have kept my promise. It is not my fault if they have not been well treated by others. Do as I have done. Let them dwell in peace; for they do no harm, and some good.
"Hear ye this word also. The ends of the world draw together, and men of a strong race come ever over the sea to this our land. Let these likewise dwell in peace. Trade with them. Give them your daughters in marriage. Good shall come of it.
"But, if there come over the sea men in red coats, who neither sow nor reap, but ever carry arms in their hands, beware of them. Their trade is war and they are paid to kill. Make you war upon them and drive them out. Otherwise evil will come of it.
"Children, and you, my old comrades, be brave and strong in your country's cause. Let not the land of your ancestors pass into the hands of the Pakeha. Behold! I have spoken."
With that the mighty chief Hongi drew the corner of his mat across his face and passed through the gates to the waters of Reinga.
So died Hongi Ika, aged fifty-five, or thereabouts, who had made his influence felt from his youth until his death, and whose words and acts deeply swayed the fortunes of his country. Paradoxical as it may sound, these combined with the spread of Christianity to render colonisation possible, while they helped to foment the discontent with which Hongi's successors viewed the coming of armed forces, and the gradual absorption of their land by the Pakeha.
In the first place, Hongi protected the missionaries. In the second place, during his wars and the wars they induced, more than twenty thousand Maori fell in the score of years occupied in civil strife. Concerned with their own wars, and with numbers thinned, the Maori left the white settlers time and opportunity to increase, whereby they grew daily better able to resist the power of the brown men when this was at last sternly directed against them. In the third place, Hongi's dying advice was without the shadow of a doubt the part cause of Honi Heke's outbreak at Kororareka fifteen years later, and of the strife which immediately followed it.
After the death of Hongi the leading spirits among the warriors in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands were the chiefs Pomare and Kawiti—the latter a thorn in the colonials' flesh for many a long year; while the Waikato tribe boasted a leader of no ordinary parts in Te Wherowhero, whose descendant, the Honourable Mahuta Tawhiao Potatau te Wherowhero, sits to-day in the Legislative Council of the Dominion of New Zealand.
Te Wherowhero had himself captained the Waikato on that day when Hongi decimated them and cooked two thousand of their slain to celebrate his victory, and a memory so red would not, one would have said, be likely soon to pale. Yet Te Wherowhero led his men not against his old enemies, but against the men of Taranaki.
Both Waikato and Taranaki owed Nga-Puhi a grudge, and reasonable men would have combined against a common foe. But the Maori were ever unreasonable where war was concerned, holding tribal grudges more important than unification of the nation; so, instead of combining against Nga-Puhi, Waikato and Taranaki warred the one against the other.
This disunion among the tribes materially assisted the colonists in their own long struggle for supremacy; for the "friendly" Maori often helped their cause not so much from love of them, as from hate of some tribe in opposition to British rule.
Even a particular tribe sometimes divided against itself. A civil strife of this nature broke out in 1827 among the Bay of Islands folk. It was a small affair, and is mentioned only to illustrate the chivalry with which the Maori could behave on occasion.
A European settlement had been established at a charming spot, known as Kororareka. There were decent people there, and a missionary station stood hard by; but for the most part drunkenness and profligacy prevailed, while Pomare, whose village lay close at hand, pandered to the vices of the whites in return for the coveted tupara.
Bad as many of the settlers were, they were white men; so when news of the war reached Sydney, Captain Hobson's ship was ordered to Kororareka to afford the residents what protection they might require.
But when H.M.S. Rattlesnake entered the Bay, her decks cleared for action, guns frowning through their ports, bare-armed, bare-footed tars at quarters, lo! all was peace. Captain Hobson at once went ashore to make inquiries, and was amazed at the information he received.
Not one white settler had been inconvenienced, much less injured. The contending parties, fearing lest one side or the other might be forced back upon the settlement, and so bring disaster upon its inhabitants, had by mutual agreement transferred the theatre of war to a spot too remote to allow of such a contingency.
After this, who shall say that the Maori were deficient in generosity, destitute of chivalry?
Note.—Mr. Augustus Earle, Draughtsman to H.M. Surveying Ship Beagle, in 1827, relates that the pagan Maori in the Bay of Islands used to rise at daybreak on Sunday to finish their canoe-building and other work before the whites were astir, thus showing their respect for the reverence in which the Pakeha held the Day. Mr. Earle adds: "It was more respect than we Europeans pay to any religious ceremony we do not understand. Even their tabooed grounds would not be so respected by us, if we were not quite certain they possessed the power instantly to revenge any affront offered to their sacred places."