The advance-guard of the pursuing force numbered twenty-five Maoris, about equally divided between the Whanganui and Arawa tribes. Captain Porter was the only European officer with them, but one or two white scouts and bushmen accompanied the Maoris. As the column's march was necessarily in single file through thick and tangled bush, it was difficult to bring a large number of men into action when any skirmish or ambuscade occurred, and the consequence was that practically all the fighting was done by the advance-guard.
It was a picturesquely savage chapter of the war, that chase of Titokowaru and his scattered Hauhaus. There was more than a touch of the barbaric in it, for some of the Government forces reverted to the primitive war-methods of the Maori himself.
Between the moccasined hero of the war-trail in Fenimore Cooper's and Captain Mayne Reid's romances of Red Indian days, and Kepa's Maori guerilla and some of his white comrades, there was, after all, only this difference: one took the trail hunting for scalps, the other for heads!
As mentioned in a previous chapter, Colonel Whitmore had agreed to a request made by Major Kepa after the fighting on the Waitotara, and had offered rewards of £10 a head for Hauhau chiefs killed and £5 for ordinary men. Kepa's Kupapa, Maoris, recruited from the Whanganui, Ngati-Apa, Ngati-Raukawa, and other "friendly" tribes—only friendly to the pakeha by reason of their deadly animosity to the Taranaki tribes—were little less savage than the Hauhaus themselves, and this manhunt under the mana of the Government was just the work that delighted them. They were "stripped to a gantlin'" for the bush chase—simply a waist-mat or shawl and cartridge-belts and a pouch for their percussion-caps. And some of the white bushmen-scouts were just as eager on the head-hunting trail, and added to their service arms a tomahawk.
With the Whanganui men marched a European scout and bushman about whom some remarkable stories are told. This was Tom Adamson, Kepa's pakeha-Maori, a big, powerful fellow who surpassed the Maoris themselves in bush-craft and endurance. He marched bare-footed, like his Maori comrades. Another of the white scouts and Hauhau-hunters was a man who, in after years, became celebrated for his pioneer exploration work in the vast wilderness of Milford Sound, an old John-o'-Groat's sailor and soldier named Donald Sutherland, whose name has been given to the immense waterfall that is one of New Zealand's natural wonders.
It was a wild, picturesquely unkempt column, that little armed force of pakehas and Maoris, as it filed off under its active and daring young officers into the gloomy, danger-haunted woods, the unknown and trackless forest through which the Patea and its tributaries flowed. The bush-fighting costume of many of the whites as well as Maoris was simple, not to say brigand-like. Officers and men of the Constabulary and other corps who had to do much bush-marching discarded the trousers of civilisation and took to the "garb of old Gaul," worn alike by the Scottish Highlander and the Maori; this kilt was usually a coloured shawl, strapped round the waist and falling to the knee.
Through the huge and tangled woods they scrambled—hunters and hunted. Now along some narrow trail, hardly discernible to the untrained eye; now crawling through networks of supplejacks and brambly shrubs and great snaky lianes that looped tree to tree in bewildering coiled intricacies. Down into steep and narrow watercourses, swinging down one after another by the hanging vines and tough tree-creepers; up rocky gorges and jungle-clad cliffs. For endless miles upon miles the great solemn woods covered the face of the rugged land; beneath the shadows of the thick, dark foliage loped the blood-avengers.
In the afternoon of the first day of the chase the column descended into a deep, thickly wooded gorge. Suddenly from both sides a fire was opened upon the centre of the force, the main body of the A.C.'s. "Clear the bush!" was the order. The advance-guard and A.C.'s quickly circled round and enfiladed the enemy, who bolted like Red Indians through the thickets; and the chase went on.
Three Hauhaus were shot and decapitated on the first day of the chase. Every man killed, in fact, on this and the succeeding days of the pursuit had his head cut off.
The first Maori decapitated was a young chief, who was shot while in the act of climbing a steep cliff in the bush. Being a rangatira, his was a £10 head. This man was a prominent Hauhau named Matangi-o-Rupé. He belonged to Titokowaru's own immediate clan, or hapu, Ngati-Manu-hiakai—"The Tribe of the Hungry Bird." It was a Ngati-Raukawa soldier in Kepa's contingent who took off the Hauhau's head with his tomahawk; later he duly delivered it at the pakeha camp. Matangi's son, Kuku—now living at the village of Taiporohenui—on learning of his father's fate, swore to have utu—revenge—and vowed to Bent that if he ever encountered the man who beheaded his parent, he would "slice him to pieces like a piece of beef."