As we drove quickly on, we found ourselves in the midst of a thronging crowd of square-built men, brown in color, and for the most part not much darker than Spaniards, but with here and there a woolly negro in their ranks. Glancing at them as we were hurried past, we saw that the men were robust, well limbed, and tall. They greeted us pleasantly with many a cheerful, open smile, but the faces of the older people were horribly tattooed in spiral curves. The chiefs carried battle-clubs of jade and bone; the women wore strange ornaments. At the flagstaff we pulled up, and, while the preliminaries of the council were arranged, had time to discuss with Maori and with “Pakéha” (white man) the questions that had brought us thither.
The purchase of an enormous block of land—that of the Manawatu—had long been an object wished for and worked for by the Provincial Government of Wellington. The completion of the sale it was that had brought the Superintendent, Dr. Featherston, and humbler Pakéhas to Parewanui Pah. It was not only that the land was wanted by way of room for the flood of settlers, but purchase by government was, moreover, the only means whereby war between the various native claimants of the land could be prevented. The Pakéha and Maori had agreed upon a price; the question that remained for settlement was how the money should be shared. One tribe had owned the land from the earliest times; another had conquered some miles of it; a third had had one of its chiefs cooked and eaten upon the ground. In the eye of the Maori law, the last of these titles was the best: the blood of a chief overrides all mere historic claims. The two strongest human motives concurred to make war probable, for avarice and jealousy alike prevented agreement as to the division of the spoil. Each of the three tribes claiming had half a dozen allied and related nations upon the ground; every man was there who had a claim, direct or indirect, or thought he had, to any portion of the block. Individual ownership and tribal ownership conflicted. The Ngatiapa were well armed; the Ngatiraukawa had their rifles; the Wanganuis had sent for theirs. The greatest tact on the part of Dr. Featherston was needed to prevent a fight such as would have roused New Zealand from Auckland to Port Nicholson.
On a signal from the Superintendent, the heralds went round the camps and pahs to call the tribes to council. The summons was a long-drawn minor-descending-scale: a plaintiff cadence, which at a distance blends into a bell-like chord. The words mean: “Come hither! Come hither! Come! come! Maories! Come—!” and men, women, and children soon came thronging in from every side, the chiefs bearing scepters and spears of ceremony, and their women wearing round their necks the symbol of nobility, the Heitiki, or greenstone god. These images, we were told, have pedigrees, and names like those of men.
We, with the resident magistrate of Wanganui, seated ourselves beneath the flagstaff. A chief, meeting the people as they came up, stayed them with the gesture that Homer ascribes to Hector, and bade them sit in a huge circle round the spar.
No sooner were we seated on our mat than there ran slowly into the center of the ring a plumed and kilted chief, with sparkling eyes, the perfection of a savage. Halting suddenly, he raised himself upon his toes, frowned, and stood brandishing his short feathered spear. It was Hunia té Hakéké, the young chief of the Ngatiapa.
Throwing off his plaid, he commenced to speak, springing hither and thither with leopard-like freedom of gait, and sometimes leaping high into the air to emphasize a word. Fierce as were the gestures, his speech was conciliatory, and the Maori flowed from his lips—a soft Tuscan tongue. As, with a movement full of vigorous grace, he sprang back to the ranks, to take his seat, there ran round the ring a hum and buzz of popular applause.
“Governor” Hunia was followed by a young Wanganui chief, who wore hunting breeches and high boots, and a long black mantle over his European clothes. There was something odd in the shape of the cloak; and when we came to look closely at it, we found that it was the skirt of the riding-habit of his half-caste wife. The great chiefs paid so little heed to this flippant fellow, as to stand up and harangue their tribes in the middle of his speech, which came thus to an untimely end.
A funny old graybeard, Waitéré Maru Maru, next rose, and, smothering down the jocularity of his face, turned toward us for a moment the typical head of Peter, as you see it on the windows of every modern church—for a moment only, for, as he raised his hand to wave his tribal scepter, his apostolic drapery began to slip from off his shoulders, and he had to clutch at it with the energy of a topman taking-in a reef in a whole gale. His speech was full of Nestorian proverbs and wise saws, but he wandered off into a history of the Wanganui lands, by which he soon became as wearied as we ourselves were; for he stopped short, and, with a twinkle of the eye, said: “Ah! Waitéré is no longer young: he is climbing the snow-clad mountain Ruahiné; he is becoming an old man;” and down he sat.
Karanama, a small Ngatiraukawa chief with a white moustache, who looked like an old French concierge, followed Maru Maru, and, with much use of his scepter, related a dream foretelling the happy issue of the negotiations; for the little man was one of those “dreamers of dreams” against whom Moses warned the Israelites.
Karanama‘s was not the only trance and vision of which we heard in the course of these debates. The Maories believe that in their dreams the seers hear great bands of spirits singing chants: these when they wake the prophets reveal to all the people; but it is remarked that the vision is generally to the advantage of the seer‘s tribe.