[ 11 ] Colonel W. E. Gudgeon writes me: "For the number engaged Moturoa was the most desperate engagement fought in the Maori War. Whitmore's return did not give nearly our losses. I made it at the time fifty-two out of less than two hundred actually engaged. At Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu all did not behave well, but at Moturoa any one might have been proud of the men. No force in the world could have behaved better."
[ 12 ] Kereopa, in the days before the war, had been a pupil at the Kai-iwi mission school.
[ 13 ] The Taranaki Maoris used to cultivate the mamaku fern-tree for the sake of the edible pith. The natives point out one of the olden mamaku grounds just to the north of Keteonetea (near the present township of Normanby), where the old Whakaahurangi track went in towards Mount Egmont. Here there were two or three miles of mamaku forest. The Maoris used to cut off the upper parts of the trees and plant them in the ground, thus making two mamaku grow where only one grew before. The old tree so decapitated always sent out a new head.
[ 14 ] This name Rukumoana originated thus, according to the Maoris: About the year 1830 a war-party from the Waikato attacked and slaughtered a number of Taranaki people here. One of the Taranakis saved his own life and that of his brother in a remarkable manner. These two men were cousins of Hakopa, the old warrior who befriended Kimble Bent in Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu pa in 1868, and later on the Waitara. One of the men was wounded, and in another moment his head would have been slashed off by a Waikato savage, but his brother seized him in his arms, and leaped over the steep bank of the Patea into the river below. He dived to the bottom, and still holding his brother, crawled along the bottom until he reached a place under the banks where the overhanging shrubs concealed them from view. The pursuers failed to find the brothers, who presently escaped to the forest. The Taranaki people commemorated this heroic deed by naming the spot where Hakopa's cousin took his daring leap "Rukumoana" ("Deep-Sea Diving"). cousin took his daring leap "Rukumoana" ("Deep-Sea Diving").
Transcriber's Note:
- Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
- Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant form was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
- Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
- Mid-paragraph illustrations have been moved between paragraphs and some illustrations have been moved closer to the text that references them. The List of Illustrations paginations were not corrected.
- Footnotes were moved to the ends of the text and numbered in one continuous sequence.