New Zealand

by Reginald Horsley

One-fifth of the men engaged had fallen, the total casualties of the disastrous affair being one major, two captains, two lieutenants, a sergeant and eighteen men killed, and twenty-six wounded. The final result was a blaze of anger against McDonnell, during which those who should have known better forgot his eminent services and used so bitter and unjust words that the colonel resigned the chief command into the hands of Colonel Whitmore.

Thus were the Nga-Ruanui under Titokowaru successful to an extent which caused the gravest apprehension among the colonists, while the friendly Whanganui retired to their homes. For they knew of Te Kooti's success on the east, and now, when the colonial troops evacuated all the advanced posts and fell back upon Patea before Titokowaru's formidable force, it seemed to them that the long-impending doom of the Pakeha was about to fall at last.

Whitmore had at first no better success; for, when storming the defences of Motorua on the 7th of November, he was repulsed with the heavy loss of nineteen killed and twenty wounded, Major Hunter being among the dead. The gallant colonel then fell back upon Nukumaru and, on the news of the massacre at Poverty Bay reaching Wellington, was ordered back to the east with every available man of his command.

The remainder of the year was filled by skirmishes between the friendly Maori and Te Kooti, who had more than one narrow escape, and who, unable to run because of the wound in his ankle, was on one occasion carried into safety upon a woman's back. But in January, 1869, he received a serious set-back when the pa of Ngatapa, in the Poverty Bay district, was taken after a siege of six days by Colonel Whitmore and Ropata with his men of the Ngati-Porou. Te Kooti again managed to escape; but he lost many of his fighting chiefs, nearly one hundred and fifty of his men and, more than all, his band was dispersed and pursued in all directions.

Back to the west went the energetic Colonel Whitmore, taking measures to deal with Titokowaru as he had dealt with Te Kooti, and found that the Rev. Mr. Whitely, Lieutenant and Mrs. Gascoigne and their three children had been murdered by Wetere and his Ngati-Maniapoto at White Cliffs, north of Taranaki. This was an entirely purposeless crime, and the Hauhau declared that it had been committed at the instigation of the king, Tawhaio.

After several skirmishes it was believed that the district close to Whanganui had been swept clear of the Hauhau; but tragic proof to the contrary was given on the 18th of February, in the neighbourhood of the Karaka camp, by the Waitotara river.

For many years past troops had marched and countermarched in the Whanganui district, and the soldiers, moving up or down the rivers, often amused themselves by throwing at objects on the shore the stones of the numberless peaches they ate. The banks of more than one stream were in consequence lined with peach trees, wild, perhaps, but producing fruit not to be rejected by campaigners.

How little thought the soldiers in their careless play, that they were sowing the seed not only of peach-trees, but of a tragedy which was to come to full fruit ten years later.

Yet so it was. On the afternoon of the 18th of February several field officers, visiting the camp, expressed a desire for some of the peaches which were growing in profusion on the opposite side of the Waitotara, and Sergeant Menzies, overhearing their talk, volunteered to go and get some of the fruit. Colonel McDonnell made no objection, and Menzies, taking with him nine men as a matter of precaution, crossed the river and set to work to fill a number of baskets with the ripe peaches.

Suddenly they were fired upon. The volley was so very heavy, so near and so totally unexpected, that the men were startled into bolting for their canoe instead of taking cover, and thus offered a fair mark to seventy Hauhau, who stood upon the bank and shot them down with ease, all save three, who succeeded in escaping. Their comrades, hearing the firing so close at hand, came up at the double, but too late to do more than receive the few survivors and discover some of the dead.