Camp Fire Yarns of the Lost Legion

by G. Hamilton-Browne

A Maori tribe considered it most unfortunate should even an accident befall a guest while dwelling in one of their villages; for if such an occurrence should happen, they ran the risk of being chaffed and held up to ridicule, by the surrounding tribes, for their inability to take care of a visitor.

Much more so was this the case during war-time. Should a white officer be detailed for duty to a native contingent, he would be looked after and his safety guarded in ways almost ludicrous and by no means congenial to himself.

This was done, because if that officer were killed or wounded, it would reflect the deepest disgrace on the tribe with whom he served; they would never hear the last of it, not only from their friends, but also from their enemies. And these would continually rate them, and charge them with the accusation that it was through their carelessness or cowardice that the misfortune had happened to the man who had been entrusted to them.

The Maori was very superstitious. He firmly believed in dreams, visions, omens of all sorts and the gift of prophecy, while the number of unlucky acts he might involuntarily commit during one day was quite sufficient to account for a whole chapter of accidents on the morrow. He regarded the tohungas (magicians) with great respect, so long as their divinations and prophecies panned out; but there are plenty of well-authenticated cases where a warrior has wreaked his vengeance on a tohunga through whose false prognostications the tribe has got into a mess. Nor are incidents lacking to show that prophets, who had earned a reputation for themselves, would not rather commit suicide than allow themselves to be proved wrong in their divinations.

Let me spin you a couple of yarns to illustrate what I have just written.

It was in March 1865 that the Hau Hau apostle Kereopa, in the course of a few hours, converted the swagger flock of red-hot Christians, who, under the guidance of Bishop Williams, had earned a mighty reputation for sanctity, to the new faith of Pai Marire. The good bishop and his family, barely escaping with their lives from his own sheep, departed to Napier, leaving the Hau Haus in possession of his residence at Waerengahika, at which place they built a pah that was, in November of the same year, attacked by the Colonial forces. The Hau Haus were superior in numbers, but during the first few days the Colonials gained some trivial advantages, and on the fourth day began to sap up to the works, which they had surrounded. This day chanced to be a Saturday, and the working party were surprised by an attack, in their rear, from a body of the enemy’s reinforcements seeking to enter the pah, which they succeeded in doing, the working party having to beat a retreat, with the loss of six men killed and five wounded. This trivial success greatly elated the natives and so bucked up one of the apostles that he at once started in and prophesied nineteen to the dozen.

Now this Johnny possessed that small amount of knowledge that is so dangerous to its owner. He had been brought up at a mission station, and accustomed to going to church, with great regularity, every Sunday. He therefore thought that all Christians acted in the same way, and that the Colonial Irregulars would be just as methodical in their religious observance as the goody-goody hangers-on at the various mission stations he was acquainted with.

Here of course he made a blooming error, for what member of the Lost Legion ever allowed preaching to interfere with fighting, or carried devotional books about with him when he had to hump his own swag.

Now this josser, thinking he knew all about the customs of the white man, considered he was quite safe in turning on his prophetic tap. So on the evening after the small success already spoken about he started in and informed his hearers that he had received a revelation, directing the Hau Haus that on the following day, which was Sunday, they were to leave the pah an hour before noon and advance on the white men’s shelter trenches, which they would find empty, and that the majority of the latter who had not been turned into stone by the angel Gabriel would be surprised at their devotions and fall a prey, without any resistance, to the tender mercies of the Hau Haus, who, he guaranteed, were to escape, scathless, from wounds or death.

These promises seem absurd to white men, but they were implicitly believed by the Maoris, who next day acted on the strength of them.