Sixthly.—All desirable jobs of work, and all advantages of all kinds, to be offered first to the family of my rangatira before letting any one else have them; payment for same to be about 25 per cent. more than to any one else, exclusive of a douceur to the chief himself because he did not work.
In return for these duties and customs, well and truly performed on my part, the chief was understood to—
Firstly.—Stick up for me in a general way, and not let me be bullied or imposed upon by any one but himself, as far as he was able to prevent it.
Secondly.—In case of my being plundered or maltreated by any powerful marauder, it was the duty of my chief to come in hot haste with all his family, armed to the teeth, to my rescue, after all was over, and when it was too late to be of any service. He was also bound on such occasions to make a great noise, dance the war dance, and fire muskets, (I finding the powder,) and to declare loudly what he would have done had he only been in time. I, of course, on such occasions, for my own dignity, and in consideration of the spirited conduct of my friends, was bound to order two or three fat pigs to be killed, and lots of potatoes to be served out to the "army," who were always expected to be starving, as a general rule. A distribution of tobacco, in the way of largess, was also a necessity of the case.
Thirdly.—In case of my losing anything of consequence by theft—a thing which, as a veracious pakeha, I am bound to say, seldom happened; the natives in those days being, as I have already mentioned, a very law-observing people, (the law of muru,) had, indeed, little occasion to steal, the above-named law answering their purposes in a general way much better, and helping them pretty certainly to any little matter they coveted; yet, as there are exceptions to all rules, theft would sometimes be committed; and then, as I was saying, it became the bounden duty of my rangatira to get the stolen article back if he was able, and keep it for himself for his trouble, unless I gave him something of more value in lieu thereof.
Under the above regulations things went on pleasantly enough, the chief being restrained, by public opinion and the danger of the pakeha running away from pushing his prerogative to the utmost limit; and the pakeha, on the other hand, making the commonalty pay for the indirect taxation he was subjected to; so that in general, after ten or fifteen years' residence, he would not be much poorer than when he arrived, unless, indeed, some unlucky accident happened, such as pakehas were liable to sometimes in the good old times.
Mentioning "public opinion" as a restraint on the chiefs' acquisitiveness, I must explain that a chief possessing a pakeha was much envied by his neighbours, who, in consequence, took every opportunity of scandalizing him, and blaming him for any rough plucking process he might submit the said pakeha to; and should he, by any awkward handling of this sort, cause the pakeha at last to run for it, the chief would never hear the end of it from his own family and connections, pakehas being, in those glorious old times, considered to be geese who laid golden eggs, and it would be held to be the very extreme of foolishness and bad policy either to kill them, or, by too rough handling, to cause them to fly away.
On the other hand, should the pakeha fail in a culpable manner in the performance of his duties, though he would not, as a rule, be subjected to any stated punishment, he would soon begin to find a most unaccountable train of accidents and all sorts of unpleasant occurrences happening, enough, in the aggregate, to drive Job himself out of his wits; and, moreover, he would get a bad name, which, though he removed, would follow him from one end of the island to the other, and effectually prevent him having the slightest chance of doing any good,—that is, holding his own in the country, as the natives, wherever he went, would consider him a person out of whom the most was to be made at once, as he was not to be depended on as a source of permanent revenue. I have known several industrious, active, and sober pakeha who never could do any good, and whose life, for a long series of years, was a mere train of mishaps, till at last they were reduced to extreme poverty, merely from having, in their first dealings with the natives, got a bad name, in consequence of not having been able to understand clearly the beauty of the set of regulations I have just mentioned, and from an inability to make them work smoothly. The bad name I have mentioned was short and expressive; wherever they went, there would be sure to be some one who would introduce them to their new acquaintances as "a pakeha pakeke"—a hard pakeha; "a pakeha taehae"—a miser; or, to sum up all, "a pakeha kino."
The chief who claimed me was a good specimen of the Maori rangatira. He was a very old man, and had fought the French when Marion, the French circumnavigator, was killed. He had killed a Frenchman himself, and carried his thighs and legs many miles as a bonne bouche for his friends at home at the pa. This old gentleman was not head of his tribe. He was a man of good family, related to several high chiefs. He was head of a strong family, or hapu, which mustered a considerable number of fighting men, all his near relations. He had been himself a most celebrated fighting man, and a war chief; and was altogether a highly respectable person, and of great weight in the councils of the tribe. I may say I was fortunate in having been appropriated by this old patrician. He gave me very little trouble; did not press his rights and privileges too forcibly on my notice, and in fact behaved in all respects towards me in so liberal and friendly a manner, that before long I began to have a very sincere regard for him, and he to take a sort of paternal interest in me, which was both gratifying to observe, and also extremely comical sometimes, when he, out of real anxiety to see me a perfectly accomplished rangatira, would lecture on good manners, etiquette, and the use of the spear. He was, indeed, a model of a rangatira, and well worth being described. He was a little man, with a high massive head, and remarkably high square forehead, on which the tattooer had exhausted his art. Though, as I have said, of a great age, he was still nimble and active. He had evidently been one of those tough, active men, who, though small in stature, are a match for any one. There was in my old friend's eyes a sort of dull fiery appearance, which, when anything excited him, or when he recounted some of those numerous battles, onslaughts, massacres, or stormings in which all the active part of his life had been spent, actually seemed to blaze up and give forth real fire. His breast was covered with spear-wounds, and he also had two very severe spear-wounds on his head; but he boasted that no single man had ever been able to touch him with the point of a spear. It was in grand mêlées, where he would have sometimes six or eight antagonists, that he had received these wounds. He was a great general, and I have heard him criticize closely the order and conduct of every battle of consequence which had been fought for fifty years before my arrival in the country. On these occasions the old "martialist" would draw on the sand the plan of the battle he was criticizing and describing; and in the course of time I began to perceive that, before the introduction of the musket, the art of war had been brought to great perfection by the natives: and that, when large numbers were engaged in a pitched battle, the order of battle resembled, in a most striking manner, some of the most approved orders of battle of the ancients. Since the introduction of firearms the natives have entirely altered their tactics, and adopted a system better adapted to the new weapon and the nature of the country.
My old friend had a great hatred for the musket. He said that in battles fought with the musket there were never so many men killed as when, in his young days, men fought hand to hand with the spear; when a good warrior would kill six, eight, ten, or even twenty men in a single fight; for when once the enemy broke and commenced to run, the combatants being so close together, a fast runner would knock a dozen on the head in a short time; and the great aim of these fast-running warriors, of whom my old friend had been one, was to chase straight on and never stop, only striking one blow at one man, so as to cripple him, so that those behind should be sure to overtake and finish him. It was not uncommon for one man, strong and swift of foot, when the enemy were fairly routed, to stab with a light spear ten or a dozen men in such a way as to ensure their being overtaken and killed. On one occasion of this kind my old tutor had the misfortune to stab a running man in the back. He did it, of course, scientifically, so as to stop his running, and as he passed him by he perceived it was his wife's brother. He was finished immediately by the men close behind. I should have said the man was a brother of one of my friend's four wives, which being the case, I dare say he had a sufficient number of brothers-in-law to afford to kill one now and then. A worse mishap, however, occurred to him on another occasion. He was returning from a successful expedition from the south (in the course of which, by-the-bye, he and his men killed and cooked several men of the enemy in Shortland Crescent, and forced three others to jump over a cliff, which is, I think, now called Soldier's Point), when off the Mahurangi a smoke was seen rising from amongst the trees near the beach. They at once concluded that it came from the fires of people belonging to that part of the country, and who they considered as game. They therefore waited till night, concealing their canoes behind some rocks, and when it became dark landed; they then divided into two parties, took the supposed enemy completely by surprise, attacked, rushing upon them from two opposite directions at once. My rangatira, dashing furiously among them, and, as I can well suppose, those eyes of his flashing fire, had the happiness of once again killing the first man, and being authorized to shout, "Ki au te mataika!" A few more blows, the parties recognize each other: they are friends!—men of the same tribe! Who is the last mataika slain by this famous warrior? Quick, bring a flaming brand; here he lies dead! Ha! It is his father!