Scarcely had they reached the edge of the wood when they were set upon by the secreted warriors, and in the massacre which followed the chief and a number of his followers were killed, the remainder, with the exception of two, being taken prisoners. The two who escaped were Mahuri, the innocent cause of the disaster, and Te Aweawe, the father of the well-known family who still reside upon the Rangitane lands in the Manawatu. Side by side with Toki-poto, there fell that day another chief named Te Waraki, whose greenstone mere, a weapon famous in the annals of the tribe, was buried on the site of the massacre by the mourning people, and there it remained hidden for full sixty years, until it was discovered in 1882.
Strange to say, Te Rauparaha did not press the advantage gained by the removal of Hotuiti's chief by attacking the pa, but contented himself with carrying off his prisoners to Otaki, where he rejoined Waka Nene. Here the two chiefs rested for a time, pursuing vigilant inquiries into the number and disposition of the resident tribes. They visited for the first time the island stronghold of Kapiti, and found it in the possession of a section of the Ngati-Apa people, under the chieftainship of two men named Potau and Kotuku. The visit was made with a simulation of friendship, for the time was not ripe for an attack; and the northerners were satisfied for the moment with examining the strategical features of the island, and extorting from Potau and Kotuku a considerable quantity of the greenstone which they had accumulated during the course of their traffic with the Ngai-Tahu of the South Island.
Refreshed by their sojourn at Otaki, and considerably enlightened as to its military possibilities, the northern war party then pushed on southwards, fighting as they went, first at Wai-mapihi, a fortified pa, the remains of which are still to be seen not far from the Puke-rua railway station. The pa was captured, it is said, by treachery suggested by Te Rauparaha, and the Muaupoko, whose valour had defied the most desperate efforts of their assailants, were hunted in and through the bush by their fierce pursuers. Here, and at Porirua, a number of canoes fell into the hands of the invaders, some of whom now decided to vary the monotony of the land journey by the exhilaration of the sea route. This determination ended disastrously. Ignorant of the silent currents and treacherous tides of Cook Strait, the Nga-Puhi men of two canoes were swamped while taking the outer passage in rounding Sinclair Head, and fully one hundred of them were drowned. The remainder of the canoes, steering a course inside the reefs, escaped the danger of shipwreck, and reached Whanganui-a-Tara[40] almost simultaneously with the party who had journeyed by land.
The country surrounding this great basin was then held by the Ngati-Ira, a sub-branch of the Ngati-Kahungunu tribe, whose possessions practically extended from Gisborne to Cape Palliser, on the eastern side of the North Island. They were a brave and numerous people, and when their pa at Pa-ranga-hau was attacked, they fought with a desperation which extorted admiration even from their enemies. Though considerable numbers of Ngati-Ira were killed in this conflict, Nga-Puhi did not escape scatheless; for one native account says: "Ngati-Ira charged them in the face of the flames of their muskets, and with their native weapons killed many Nga-Puhi." Hunger was now beginning to assert its inconvenience; and the war party were at this time compelled to live exclusively on the flesh of their slaves, of whom large numbers were killed, each chief undertaking successively to provide the necessary supply. Disease also attacked their camps, of which there were two; and some mysterious pestilence was responsible for the death of many warriors and several chiefs, whose heads were preserved and their bodies burned, to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy. Scarcely had the stricken host recovered from the prevailing sickness than the Ngati-Ira swept down upon the bivouac at Te Aro in the dead of night, and, in the first shock of the surprise, inflicted sore loss upon the sleeping warriors. Thanks to their guns, the northerners were ultimately successful in beating off the attack, and immediately afterwards the pas which skirted the harbour were deserted by their inhabitants, who, reluctant to accept the responsibility of battle under such unequal conditions, beat a stealthy retreat into the Hutt Valley, whither the northern chiefs followed them, though their force was now only a remnant of what it had formerly been. They travelled by canoe up the river which waters the valley, and, as they went, the resident people, confident in their numbers, collected along the banks to jeer at them, and contemptuously invited them on shore to be eaten.
The details of this campaign are but a repetition of successive slaughters; for the panic created by the strange sound and deadly power of the gun left the unhappy defenders no spirit to resist the onslaughts of their assailants. For several weeks they remained in the valley, guided from pa to pa by their slaves, who, to save their own lives, were forced to sacrifice those of their tribesmen. Every nook of the dark forest was penetrated, and even the steeps of the Rimutaka Range were climbed in vengeful pursuit of the fugitives. In connection with these manœuvres the reputation of Te Rauparaha has again been besmirched by suggestions of treachery—and treachery of the blackest type; for nothing could be more hurtful to the honour of a high chief than that he should prove faithless while feigning hospitality. It has been recorded by the Nga-Puhi chroniclers that, as they pushed on through the forest, they came upon a strongly built and populous pa, which left some room for doubt as to what the issue of an attack would be. To tempt the warriors into the open was the policy advocated by Te Rauparaha, and to achieve this end he sent messengers to the Ngati-Ira chiefs with offers of peace. To render the bait more seductive, a feast was prepared, to which the warriors of the Hutt were invited; and, on assembling, a northern man sat down beside each one, prepared at a sign from their chief to spring upon the unsuspecting guests. Into the marae the women brought the food, and, as the unsuspecting Ngati-Ira were revelling in the delights of the banquet, the fatal signal was given by Te Rauparaha, and a massacre commenced, which ended only with the capture of the pa and the rout of its inhabitants.[41] Whether the name of Te Rauparaha will ever be cleared of this odious imputation which the Nga-Puhi record has branded upon it is uncertain. But, as a counterpoise, it must be remembered that those who have made the accusations were at least willing participators in the schemes which they ascribe to him, and that, if the plans were his, the execution of them was undoubtedly theirs.
Having exhausted the field of conquest open to them in the valley of the Hutt, the war party returned to the harbour where their canoes were beached, and, undeterred by the fact that their numbers had now dwindled to less than three hundred, they set off by sea for Palliser Bay, by which route they had determined to enter the Wairarapa. A successful reprisal by the Ngati-Kahungunu tribe, who had cut off and annihilated a small party of the northerners, was the immediate justification for this new development in the plans of Tuwhare and Te Rauparaha. The opposing forces met at the Tauhere Nikau pa, near Featherston, which was strongly fortified and bravely defended; but the muskets which these rude imitators of Cortés carried with them were here, as elsewhere, sufficient to spread consternation through the opposing ranks, and the pa soon fell before the Ngati-Toa assault. Numbers of the besieged escaped to the hills, where they suffered the biting pangs of hunger, and the bitterness of soul inseparable from the aftermath of war.[42] Others, keeping to the open country, were pursued as far as Porangahau, in Hawke's Bay; and then the war party, weary of their bloody work, made their way back to Tauhere Nikau, where they spent some days demonstrating their contempt for the enemy by eating the bodies of the slain.
When hunger and tribal hatred had been sated, the victorious warriors, observing ominous signs of a gathering storm, returned to the west coast, and remained for a few days' rest at Omere.[43] While here, the eagle eye of Waka Nene descried a vessel[44] in full sail beating through Cook Strait. To the quick intellect of the chief, the sight of the ship opened up in an instant fresh possibilities; for he knew what intercourse with the pakeha had done for the Nga-Puhi, and he saw no reason why the same advantages should not be shared by his friend and ally, Te Rauparaha. Doubtless that chief had confided his fears to Waka Nene, and they had probably consulted long and anxiously as to the growing weakness of the position at Kawhia. When, therefore, Tamati beheld the passing ship, he saw at a glance that, if this part of the coast was frequented by vessels of the white man, it offered the same facilities for obtaining arms and ammunition which Hongi enjoyed at the Bay of Islands. With unrestrained excitement he called out to his comrade: "Oh, Raha,[45] do you see that people sailing on the sea? They are a very good people; and if you conquer this land and hold intercourse with them, you will obtain guns and powder and become very great." This optimistic little speech was apparently all that was required to confirm Te Rauparaha in his growing desire to take the decisive step of migrating with the whole of his people from the storm-threatened Kawhia; and when the chief turned his face towards home, it was with the full resolve to come back at the first convenient season and make the country his own.
The homeward journey was characterised by the same ruthless behaviour towards the resident people which had been practised on the way down, those who were captured being killed and eaten without any unnecessary ceremony.[46] What occurred within the confines of the Manawatu district we do not know, because the present-day representatives of the Rangitane people declare that they saw and heard nothing of the invaders. As they proceeded further north, however, we hear more of them; for while they were in the Rangitikei district an incident occurred which it suited the Ngati-Apa people not to forget. In one of the many excursions made into the interior in search of prisoners, a young chieftainess, named Pikinga, was captured by a party of Te Rangihaeata's men. Pikinga was the sister of Arapata Hiria, the Ngati-Apa chief against whom Waka Nene and Te Rauparaha were operating at the moment; and, if the gossip of the day is to be believed, she was possessed of no mean personal charms. She, at least, was attractive enough to captivate the most ruthless of the party, for it was not long before Te Rangihaeata fell a victim to her charms and made her his wife.
Whether this was merely a passing whim on the part of an amorous young warrior or a move in a much deeper game of diplomacy, it would be difficult to say at this distance of time, particularly as each tribe now imputes to the action of the chief a different motive. The Ngati-Apa claim, with some insistence, that the marriage was the expression of a bond of perpetual peace between them and Te Rauparaha: while the Ngati-Raukawa, to whose lot it fell some fifty years later to contest the point, contend that no such wide construction could be put upon Rangihaeata's action, and that, even if it involved the tribes in a treaty of friendship at the time, the compact was subsequently denounced by Te Rauparaha on account of the treachery of Ngati-Apa. It is quite within the region of possibility that Te Rauparaha, having regard to the political aspect of the situation, would, so soon as he had measured their strength, lead the Ngati-Apa to believe that he desired to cultivate their goodwill; because immediately he had determined to seize the country opposite Kapiti, he would perceive the wisdom of having some friendly tribe stationed between him and his northern enemies, upon whom he could rely to withstand the first shock of battle in the event of a Waikato invasion. Such tactics would not be foreign to the Ngati-Toa leader, for that part of his life which was not spent in battle was occupied in the development of schemes whereby the efforts of one tribe were neutralised by the efforts of another; and if he could make pawns of the Ngati-Apa, he would chuckle to himself and say, "Why not?"
But Te Rauparaha was not the man to seriously contemplate anything in the way of a permanent peace with Ngati-Apa, or with any one else whom he felt strong enough to destroy. And even assuming that he encouraged them in the belief that Rangihaeata's devotion to Pikinga was a common bond between them, he would not dream of maintaining such an understanding a moment longer than it suited his purpose. It seems, therefore, more likely that, when he satisfied himself that the people of the Rangitikei were no match for his own warriors, and that he could subdue them at his leisure, he was at some pains to impress them with a sense of his magnanimity, but only because he desired to use them as a buffer between himself and the Waikatos. Years afterwards, when he felt secure against invasion, he repudiated all friendship with Ngati-Apa, and ordered his people to wage eternal war against them. The claim which the Ngati-Apa subsequently made to the land in the Rangitikei-Manawatu districts, on the ground that they were never conquered by the Ngati-Toa, because this marriage protected them from conquest, was therefore not well founded, the ordinary occurrence of a chief taking a captive woman to be his slave-wife being invested with a significance which it did not possess. Upon the consummation of this happy event, the war party, laden with spoil and prisoners, made their way back to the north. When they reached Kawhia, after an absence of eleven months, Tuwhare being dead,[47] Waka Nene, who had now assumed command of the northern contingent, took his leave of Te Rauparaha, and Te Rauparaha prepared to take leave of the land of his fathers.