"Extensive wheat, maize, and potato plantings surround the place; broad carriage roads run in different directions; numerous herds of horses and cattle bear testimony to the wealthy condition of the natives; and the huts scattered over a large area are entirely concealed by fruit-trees. A separate race-course is laid out; here is a court-house, there a store; farther on a mill on a mill pond; and high above the luxuriant fruit-trees rise the tapering spires of the Catholic and Protestant churches.[12] I was surprised in entering the latter sanctuary at beholding a beautifully painted glass window reflecting its mellow tints in my wondering eyes."
Such was the land which was now to bear the ravages of war. Mr. Gorst and the missionaries were commanded to depart. Archdeacon and Mrs. Maunsell lingered to the last, and only escaped by walking all night through the thick bush till they reached the boundary river.
The military operations do not come within the scope of this work. Suffice it to say that the "king's" forces were soon defeated and his capital occupied. But, like "a fire in the fern," hostilities kept breaking out in unexpected places throughout the island for several years. The honours of the war were certainly not to the British army, though it showed no lack of bravery. But the ringing defiance of the "ake, ake, ake" of the hardly bestead and famishing garrison of Orakau will always remain one of the world's heroic memories; while the English soldiers, with their general, soon sickened of a war on behalf of greedy settlers against such magnificent opponents as the Maoris proved themselves to be.
While recognising, however, the gallantry of the Maoris, the world has hitherto taken little account of the high moral character of the king-movement. A conspicuous example of this quality is afforded by the career of Henare Wiremu Taratoa. Baptised and taught by Henry Williams, after whom he was named, this man had been afterwards trained at St. John's College, and had actually taken a part in the founding of the Melanesian Mission. When at length he was pronounced unfit for the sacred ministry on account of his impetuous disposition, he became a teacher in the mission school at Otaki. Here he remained until 1861, when the governor's aggressive policy determined him to cast in his lot with his threatened countrymen. Settling in Tauranga, a place which became the scene of military operations in 1864, he joined in the fighting at the Gate Pa, where the Imperial troops sustained their most severe defeat. But he had never forgotten his Christian training. On arrival at Tauranga, he set up a "school of instruction in arithmetic and christening." He then organised a system of councils, which regulated both civil and religious matters. The result was that "the people feared to do wrong, and nothing but good order prevailed." When war broke out, his rules were strikingly humane. There must be no ill-treatment of women or non-combatants; no soldier once hit must be shot a second time; if an enemy were hungry he must be fed; fighting must never begin on a Sunday (as all the British campaigns had done), but rather on a Friday, "that being the day on which Christ was crucified."
These rules were not vain ones with Taratoa and his men. Through the night after the conflict at the Gate Pa, Henare tended the English wounded, one of whom, in his dying agonies, thirsted for a drop of water. There was none in the pa, nor within three miles on the Maori side of it, but Taratoa threaded his way through the English sentries in the darkness, and returned with a calabash of water to slake his enemy's thirst. By the side of each wounded Englishman there was found in the morning some small water-vessel, placed there by the Maoris before they deserted the fort.
In spite of their success at the Gate Pa, the Maoris were soon afterwards beaten at Te Ranga (June 21), and in this battle the humane Taratoa was killed. Upon his body was found a little book of prayers which he had compiled and used. It concluded with the apostolic precept which he had obeyed at the risk of his life, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink."
Taratoa's laws of war were far from being observed by his "civilised" opponents. In sadness and shame we read of the devastation of the once smiling Rangiaohia, and of the utter destruction, there and throughout the country, of crops and houses.[13] Hostilities were followed up by wholesale confiscation of the Maoris' lands—a measure which was to some extent the real object of the war. Maddened by defeat, by the loss of lands and homes, by hunger, and by disease which followed hunger, the Maoris were at last ready to doubt the truth of the religion which the white man had brought them.
The match was soon laid to the train. An old man in Taranaki announced that he had received the revelation of a new religion, suited to the Maori people. Like the Arabian Mohammed, Te Ua was considered to be a person of weak intellect; like Mohammed, he claimed to have received his revelation from the Angel Gabriel; like the Arabian prophet again, he put forth a mixture of Judaism[14] and heathenism which sanctioned polygamy, and whose propagation was to be carried on by the sword. A trifling success over a small English troop gave the necessary impetus to the movement, and soon bands of ardent Hauhaus (as they were called) were traversing the island, and winning over crowds of restless and dissatisfied people. By making their listeners walk round a pole, chanting a strange jargon in which a few Latin words can be recognised, they mesmerised the susceptible Maoris, and gained complete control over their minds.
The attention of the Hauhaus was turned first to the south; but, at Otaki, Hadfield's influence once more availed to save the settlement, and to block the road to Wellington. At Wanganui, Taylor's Maoris stood firm in their loyalty, and in a desperate battle on the island of Moutoa drove back the enemy at fearful loss to themselves (May 14, 1864). Some months later, however, a second attack was made on Wanganui, and the crisis brought out the magnificent heroism of another of Selwyn's old students, "John Williams" Hipango. There had been no rejection in his case, but he had studied so hard by dim candlelight that his eyesight was affected, and he was obliged with great sorrow to give up his hope of entering the ministry. At the time of the attack he occupied a responsible position among the Maoris, and now he took command of the defence. The enemy sent four men to lie in ambush and kill him, but Hipango caught them, fed them, and sent them away unhurt. The next night ten men were sent for the same purpose; they too were caught, and they too were released. "I will not," said Hipango, "be the first to shed blood." Next day, Feb. 23rd, 1865, the Hauhaus came forward in open attack. They were completely defeated, but in the hour of victory a ball struck John in the chest. He was buried at Wanganui with military honours, white men carrying their deliverer's body to the grave.
In the same month a band of the fanatics reached Opotiki in the Bay of Plenty. The mission station at this place was now under the charge of Carl Sylvius Volkner, a fair-haired, blue-eyed German, who had been ordained by Bishop Williams in 1860. He had acquired great influence over the people, and had built a church and a school; but so threatening had the aspect of things become that he had taken his young wife for safety to Auckland, as Mr. Grace had done his family from Taupo. The two missionaries returned in a schooner on the first of March to Opotiki, bringing food and medicines for the sick and starving people. Their vessel was descried just at the time when the Hauhaus were indulging in one of their wild orgiastic dances. Their leader, Kereopa, announced that their god demanded a victim. On arrival in the river the schooner was seized by the excited crowd. After several hours of anxious suspense, the missionaries were ordered on shore, where, amidst taunts and revilings, they were conducted to a small house, there to await their fate.