POVERTY BAY
During 1866 the New Zealand Government had deported a batch of political prisoners to the Chatham Islands. Amongst them was one Te Kooti, whose offence was said to be that, while ostensibly in alliance with the Pakeha, he had acted as a spy for the Hauhau. Te Kooti then and ever afterwards denied this charge, averring that he was at the time mentioned one hundred miles away from either belligerent. This denial has never been accepted, and most people frankly regret that Te Kooti was not hanged out of hand. This would certainly have prevented many hideous outrages; but to punish in anticipation of proof, however satisfactory, is not yet the Briton's way. So Te Kooti was deported to Chatham Island, there to eat out his heart in longing for the day when he should be able to repay the Pakeha an hundredfold for the insults and injustice (according to him) which had been inflicted upon him.
Te Kooti was a clever man, and his wits had been sharpened by much intercourse with the whites, so it was natural that he should scheme and plan ways of escape from a hateful bondage, and means to deal a return blow to the detested Pakeha.
He found and seized his opportunity when the schooner Rifleman visited the island with stores; for he engineered a mutiny, out-generalled Captain Thomas, R.N., the Governor, seized the schooner and sailed on the 4th of July, 1868, for New Zealand. To obviate pursuit he set adrift a ketch, the only vessel the authorities owned, and with consummate cleverness spared the lives of the crew of the schooner on condition that they navigated her to Poverty Bay. The voyage passed without incident, save that Te Kooti strove, during a spell of contrary weather, to propitiate the wind-god by the sacrifice of his aged uncle, whom he callously cast overboard.
On the 10th of July the Rifleman arrived at Whareongaonga, a point some fifteen miles south of Poverty Bay, and here the prisoners disembarked and, after looting the vessel of her cargo, arms and ammunition, set free the crew. The successful plotter then struck inland, marching, so he said, upon Waikato, there to dethrone the king, with whose conduct he professed himself dissatisfied.
News of his arrival had spread, and a mixed company of whites and friendlies under Captain Westrupp set off in chase of him, encountering him on the 20th at Paparatu. After a fight lasting all day, Te Kooti surrounded his opponents and forced them to retire with the loss of their horses, baggage and ammunition, while their casualties were two killed and ten wounded.
Colonel Whitmore at once organised the pursuit, but it was the 8th of August before he came up with Te Kooti, to whose standard more Hauhau had flocked, and who had chosen a strong position in the gorge of the Ruake Ture river, about twenty miles due west of Poverty Bay.
Colonel Whitmore had only one hundred and thirty tired and not too contented men with whom to do battle against over two hundred well-armed warriors; but his courage took no more heed of this than it had taken of the difficulties of the pursuit, which had been through country the nature of which it is hard for the untravelled Briton to imagine.
When the column struck Te Kooti's last camp, where the fires were still burning, the track led thence along the bed of the river between high cliffs, which were fortunately not occupied by the foe. Heartened by the knowledge that they were at last to come to grips with the wily fellows they had held in dreary chase for nearly three weeks, the column went cheerfully forward, and in time came where the track left the river and climbed through a gap in the cliffs into the hills. There the advance was suddenly checked by a volley which had no worse effect than to send the men scurrying to cover, whence they replied to the concealed enemy, who were nearer than they supposed.
Each side fired as the chance came. Some one fell back dead and the nearest man to him shouted down the line, "Captain Carr's gone," and himself fell dead. Mr. Canning, a volunteer, had dodged behind the trunk of a fallen tree and, anxious for opportunity, peeped cautiously over the great bole, seeking a target. He was instantly shot dead by some Hauhau who were lurking, quite unsuspected, on the other side of the tree. Two other men fell, and then the advanced guard retired on the main body, who had meantime been deserted by a number of lukewarm Maori volunteers, while some of the Pakeha were themselves in retreat. To make matters worse it poured with rain, and it was but a remnant of the column which that night reached the bivouac at Reinga, some miles down the river. It was well for them that Te Kooti, wounded in the foot, could not pursue.