Titokowaru's entrenched position at Otoia was not a strong one, and shortly he, after a council of war with his principal men, decided to abandon it and build a new bush pa, which should be as nearly impregnable as a Maori fort could be.
So one morning a long line of Hauhaus of all ages and both sexes—the armed men in front and rear—bearing their simple belongings in flax-basket pikaus on their backs, left the Otoia redoubt, and marched away through the bush to a spot about twelve miles from the mouth of the Patea River and a mile and a half from the old Okotuku pa, which had been attacked by the troops two years previously. At this place, Moturoa—the "Song Bush," so called because of a long strip of forest which covered the plain here—the war-chief ordered that the new fort should be constructed.
The position was on partially cleared land, nearly level, surrounded by the forest. The men, after hastily constructing huts, roofed with the fronds of tree-fern and nikau, set to work with their axes to hew out a large clearing. Titoko marked out the lines of the entrenchments and palisades. The forest-trees quickly fell before the practised assault of many bushmen, and the shrubby cover in front of the pa was carefully burned.
Then came the setting up of the stockade. Tawa and other trees of small size were cut into suitable lengths for the palisade-posts. There were two rows of palisades; the outside one was the largest and strongest. For the heavy outside row of stockading, timbers from eight to twelve inches in diameter were sunk solidly in the ground, forming a wall some ten feet high. Saplings were cut to serve as cross-ties or rails to lash across the posts, and with supplejack and aka vines the whole were bound strongly and closely together.
Kimble Bent worked with the Hauhaus—toiling like a navvy, cutting timber, setting up the great posts, lashing the palisading, and digging trenches. He wore nothing but a rough flax mat round his waist—trouserless, bootless, hatless. In everything but skin a Maori.
"It was exciting," says the white man, "but none the less it was slavery. Many a night those times, when I lay down on my flax whariki, though I was dog-tired, I could not sleep—thinking, thinking over the past, and dreading what the future might bring me. Many and many a time I wished myself dead and out of it all."
What furious, what Homeric toil was that pa-building! Those wild brown men, spurred by the reports of speedy attack, laboured with incredible energy and swiftness. The Moturoa fortified hold—which later became known as Papa-tihakehake, because of the battle which befell here—was completed in three days—stockaded, trenched, parapeted, and rifle-pitted—ready for the enemy!
Behind the strong tree-trunk stockade there were trenches and casemated rifle-pits from which the defenders could fire between the lower interstices in the great war-fence; behind the trenches again was a parapet from which a second line of Hauhaus could deliver their fire over the top of the palisade. It was one of the strongest works yet constructed by the Maoris, and one that was not likely to be stormed except at the cost of many lives.