"And then, having repeated one hymn word for word on our knees, I and my converts charged, and walked into the Amorites no end; but whether it was the hymn or the fighting that did it is of course an open question to this day."
[4]: Of the Maori's passion for fighting for its own sake, with the chivalrous appearance that it somewhat misleadingly bore, I will give an instance. A certain chief had a missionary whom he desired to get rid of. Whether he was tired of his sermons, disliked his ritual, or what, I cannot say. However, he forwarded him on to another chief, with his compliments, as a present. Chief number two not being in need of a chaplain, having no living vacant, and having perhaps, too, a suspicion that the missionary was unsound in some respect from the careless way he was disposed of, declined him, and returned him untried. Chief number one was insulted, and declared that if chief number two had not known his superiority in arms and ammunition, he would not have dared to behave in such manner. When this came to the ears of number two, he divided his arms, &c., into two halves, and sent one to the enemy, with an invitation to war.
A distinguished friend of mine in New Zealand once asked a Maori chief who had fought against us on the Waikato, why, when he had command of a certain road, he did not attack the ammunition and provision trains? "Why, you fool!" answered the Maori, much astonished, "If we had stolen their powder and food, how could they have fought?"
Sometimes two villages would get up a little war, and the inhabitants, after potting at each other all day, would come out of their "pas" in the evening and talk over their day's sport in the most friendly manner. "I nearly bagged your brother to-day." "Ah, but you should have seen how I made your old father-in-law skip!" and so on. After one or two had been really killed, they would become more in earnest.
I have heard old Archdeacon ——, of Tauranga, relate how in one of these petty wars he has known the defenders of a pa send out to their adversaries to say they were short of provisions, who immediately sent them a supply to go on with. Also how he has performed service on Sunday between two belligerent pas, the inhabitants of which came out to pray, and met with the most perfect amity, returning to their pas when service was over, to recommence hostilities on Monday morning. The fact is, that they were, as the Pakeha Maori says, a race so demoralized by perpetual war that they had got to look instinctively upon fighting as the chief object in life. How difficult it was for the average Englishman to see this at first, and how misleading traits such as I have mentioned might be to him, it is not hard to imagine.
[5]: Printer's Devil:—How is this to be done?—which? what?—how?—civilise or exterminate? Pakeha Maori:—Eaha mau!
[6]: Hongi was shot through the body at Mangamuka, in Hokianga, of which wound he died, after lingering some years. The speech here given was not spoken on the day of his death, but some time before, when he saw he could not recover.
[7]: The Governor made some presents of no great value to some of the natives who signed the Treaty of Waitangi, and a report in consequence got about, as is related here, that he was paying a high price for signatures. Many suppositions and guesses were made by the ignorant natives of the part of the country alluded to in the story, as to what could be the reason he was so desirous to get these names written on his paper, and many suggested that he had some sinister design, probably that of bewitching them.
[8]: When a native says anything for which he thinks he may at some future time be called to account, he so wraps his ideas up in figurative and ambiguous terms as to leave him perfectly free, should he think fit, to give a directly contrary meaning to that which is most obvious at the time he speaks. Some natives are very clever at this, but it often happens that a fellow makes such a bungle of the business as to leave no meaning at all of any sort. This is what the narrator of the story means when he says, "the meaning of what the speaker of Maori said was closely concealed," which is a polite Maori way of saying that he was talking nonsense.
[9]: This is a common native superstition. The natives believe in omens of a thousand different kinds, and amongst others think it a very bad omen if, on an occasion when any business of importance is on hand, the food happens to be served underdone; or before a battle it is a particularly bad omen.