John Rutherford, the White Chief: A Story of Adventure in New Zealand

by George L. Craik

Cruise, in like manner, states that they use their firelocks very awkwardly, lose an immense deal of time in looking for a rest and taking aim, and after all, seldom hit their object, unless close to it.

Muskets, however, are by far more prized and coveted by the New Zealander than any of the other commodities to which his intercourse with the civilized world has given him access. The ships that touch at the country always find it the readiest way of obtaining the supplies they want from the natives, to purchase them with arms or ammunition; and the missionaries, who have declined to traffic in these articles, have often scarcely been able to procure a single pig by the most tempting price they could offer in another shape. Although the arms which they have obtained in this way have generally been of the most trashy description, they have been sufficient to secure to the tribes that have been most plentifully provided with them a decided superiority over the rest; and the consequence has been that the people of the Bay of Islands, who have hitherto had most intercourse with European ships, have been of late years the terror of the whole country, and while they themselves have remained uninvaded, have repeatedly carried devastation into its remotest districts.

More recently, however, the River Thames, and the coasts to the south of it, have also been a good deal resorted to by vessels navigating those seas; and a great many muskets have in consequence also found their way into the hands of the inhabitants of that part of the island.

When Rutherford speaks of the two parties whom he saw engaged having had about two thousand stand of arms between them, it may be thought that his estimate is probably an exaggerated one; but it is completely borne out by other authorities. Thus, for example, Davis, one of the missionaries, writes, in 1827: "They have at this time many thousand stand of arms among them, both in the Bay and at the River Thames."

The method of fighting, which is described as being in use among the New Zealanders, in which, after the first onset, every man chooses his individual antagonist, and the field of battle presents merely the spectacle of a multitude of single combats, is the same which has, perhaps, everywhere prevailed, not only in the primitive wars of men, but up to a period of considerable refinement in the history of the military art.

The Greeks and Trojans, at the time of the siege of Troy, used both chariots and missiles; and yet it is evident from Homer that their battles and skirmishes usually resolved themselves in a great measure into a number of duels between heroes who seem to have sometimes paused by mutual consent to hold parley together, without at all minding the course of the general fight.

Exactly the same thing takes place in the battles of the American Indians, who are also possessed of bows and arrows. The New Zealanders have no weapons of this description, and, until their intercourse with Europeans had put muskets into their hands, were without any arms whatever by which one body could, by its combined strength, have made an impression upon another from a distance. Even the long spears which they sometimes used could evidently have been employed with effect only when each was directed with a particular aim. When two parties engaged, therefore, they necessarily always came to close combat, and every man singled out his adversary; a mode of fighting which was, besides, much more adapted to their tempers, and to the feelings of vehement animosity with which they came into the field, than any which would have kept them at a greater distance from each other.

The details of such personal conflicts amongst more refined nations always formed a principal ingredient in poetry and romance, from the times of Homer to those of Spenser. They are, indeed, always uninteresting and tiresome, although related with the highest descriptive power; and even in the splendid descriptions of Ariosto and Tasso there is something absolutely ludicrous in the minute representations of two champions in complete armour, hammering each other about with their maces like blacksmiths.

Still, the poets have clung to this love of individual prowess, wherever their subjects would admit of such descriptions; and, even to our own day, that habit which we derived from the times of chivalry, of describing personal bravery as the greatest of human virtues, is not altogether abandoned.

The realities of modern warfare are, however, very unfavourable to such stimulating representations. The military discipline in use among the more cultivated nations of antiquity, for example the Persians, the Macedonians, the Grecian states, and above all, the Romans, undoubtedly did much to give to their armies the power of united masses, controllable by one will, and not liable to be broken down and rendered comparatively inefficient by the irregular movements of individuals. But it is the introduction of fire-arms which has, most of all, contributed to change the original character of war, and the elements of the strength of armies. Where it is merely one field of artillery opposed to another, and the efficient value of every man on either side lies principally in the musket which he carries on his shoulder, individual strength and courage become alike of little account. The result depends, it may be almost said, entirely on the skill of the commander, not on the exertions of those over whom he exercises nearly as absolute an authority as a chess-player does over his pieces.