Karanama‘s speech was answered by the head chief of the Rangitané Maories, Té Peeti Té Awé Awé, who, throwing off his upper clothing as he warmed to his subject, and strutting pompously round and round the ring, challenged Karanama to immediate battle, or his tribe to general encounter; but he cooled down as he went on, and in his last sentence showed us that Maori oratory, however ornate usually, can be made extremely terse. “It is hot,” he said—“it is hot, and the very birds are loath to sing. We have talked for a week, and are therefore dry. Let us take our share—£10,000, or whatever we can get, and then we shall be dry no more.”
The Maori custom of walking about, dancing, leaping, undressing, running, and brandishing spears during the delivery of a speech is convenient for all parties: to the speaker, because it gives him time to think of what he shall say next; to the listener, because it allows him to weigh the speaker‘s words; to the European hearer, because it permits the interpreter to keep pace with the orator without an effort. On this occasion, the resident magistrate of Wanganui, Mr. Buller, a Maori scholar of eminence, and the attached friend of some of the chiefs, interpreted for Dr. Featherston; and we were allowed to lean over him in such a way as to hear every word that passed. That the able Superintendent of Wellington—the great protector of the Maories, the man to whom they look as to Queen Victoria‘s second in command, should be wholly dependent upon interpreters, however skilled, seems almost too singular to be believed; but it is possible that Dr. Featherston may find in pretended want of knowledge much advantage to the government. He is able to collect his thoughts before he replies to a difficult question; he can allow an epithet to escape his notice in the filter of translation; he can listen and speak with greater dignity.
The day was wearing on before Té Peeti‘s speech was done, and, as the Maories say, our waistbands began to slip down low; so all now went to lunch, both Maori and Pakéha, they sitting in circles, each with his bowl, or flax-blade dish, and wooden spoon, we having a table and a chair or two in the Mission-house; but we were so tempted by Hori Kingi‘s whitebait that we begged some of him as we passed. The Maories boil the little fish in milk, and flavor them with leeks. Great fish, meat, vegetables, almost all they eat, in short, save whitebait, is “steamed” in the underground native oven. A hole is dug, and filled with wood, and stones are piled upon the wood, a small opening being left for draught. While the wood is burning, the stones become red-hot, and fall through into the hole. They are then covered with damp fern, or else with wet mats of flax, plaited at the moment; the meat is put in, and covered with more mats; the whole is sprinkled with water, and then earth is heaped on till the vapor ceases to escape. The joint takes about an hour, and is delicious. Fish is wrapped in a kind of dock-leaf, and so steamed.
While the men‘s eating was thus going on, many of the women stood idly round, and we were enabled to judge of Maori beauty. A profusion of long, crisp curls, a short black pipe thrust between stained lips, a pair of black eyes gleaming from a tattooed face, denote the Maori belle, who wears for her only robe a long bedgown of dirty calico, but whose ears and neck are tricked out with greenstone ornaments, the signs of birth and wealth. Here and there you find a girl with long, smooth tresses, and almond-shaped black eyes: these charms often go along with prominent, thin features, and suggest at once the Jewess and the gipsy girl. The women smoke continually; the men, not much.
When at four o‘clock we returned to the flagstaff, we found that the temperature, which during the morning had been too hot, had become that of a fine English June—the air light, the trees and grass lit by a gleaming yellow sunshine that reminded me of the Californian haze.
During luncheon we had heard that Dr. Featherston‘s proposals as to the division of the purchase-money had been accepted by the Ngatiapa, but not by Hunia himself, whose vanity would brook no scheme not of his own conception. We were no sooner returned to the ring than he burst in upon us with a defiant speech. “Unjust,” he declared, “as was the proposition of great ‘Pétatoné’ (Featherston), he would have accepted it for the sake of peace had he been allowed to divide the tribal share; but as the Wanganuis insisted on having a third of his £15,000, and as Pétatoné seemed to support them in their claim, he should have nothing more to do with the sale.” “The Wangenuis claim as our relatives,” he said: “verily, the pumpkin-shoots spread far.”
Karanama, the seer, stood up to answer Hunia, and began his speech in a tone of ridicule. “Hunia is like the ti-tree: if you cut him down he sprouts again.” Hunia sat quietly through a good deal of this kind of wit, till at last some epithet provoked him to interrupt the speaker. “What a fine fellow you are, Karanama; you‘ll tell us soon that you‘ve two pair of legs.” “Sit down!” shrieked Karanama, and a word-war ensued, but the abuse was too full of native raciness and vigor to be fit for English ears. The chiefs kept dancing round the ring, threatening each other with their spears. “Why do you not hurl at me, Karanama?” said Hunia; “it is easier to parry spears than lies.” At last Hunia sat down.
Karanama, feinting and making at him with his spear, reproached Hunia with a serious flaw in his pedigree—a blot which is said to account for Hunia‘s hatred to the Ngatiraukawa, to whom his mother was for years a slave. Hunia, without rising from the ground, shrieked “Liar!” Karanama again spoke the obnoxious word. Springing from the ground, Hunia snatched his spear from where it stood, and ran at his enemy as though to strike him. Karanama stood stock-still. Coming up to him at a charge, Hunia suddenly stopped, raised himself on tiptoe, shaking his spear, and flung out some contemptuous epithet; then turned, and stalked slowly, with a springing gait, back to his own corner of the ring. There he stood, haranguing his people in a bitter undertone. Karanama did the like with his. The interpreters could not keep pace with what was said. We understood that the chiefs were calling each upon his tribe to support him, if need were, in war. After a few minutes of this pause they wheeled round, as though by a common impulse, and again began to pour out torrents of abuse. The applause became frequent, hums quickened into shouts, cheer followed cheer, till at last the ring was alive with men and women springing from the ground, and crying out on the opposing leader for a dastard.
We had previously been told to have no fear that resort would be had to blows. The Maories never fight upon a sudden quarrel: war is with them a solemn act, entered upon only after much deliberation. Those of us who were strangers to New Zealand were nevertheless not without our doubts, while for half an hour we lay upon the grass watching the armed champions running round the ring, challenging each other to mortal combat on the spot.
The chieftains at last became exhausted, and the Mission-bell beginning to toll for evening chapel, Hunia broke off in the middle of his abuse: “Ah! I hear the bell!” and, turning, stalked out of the ring toward his pah, leaving it to be inferred, by those who did not know him, that he was going to attend the service. The meeting broke up in confusion, and the Upper Wanganui tribes at once began their march toward the mountains, leaving behind them only a delegation of their chiefs.