For two days Wakefield rested at Otaki, but saw nothing of the chiefs. Rangihaeata was reported to be some distance in the interior, building a strong pa, where it was understood that the chiefs had determined to make a stand should the authorities seek to pursue them. Te Rauparaha was at the Pakakutu pa at the mouth of the river, endeavouring to break down the influence of Mr. Hadfield and Wiremu Kingi. His efforts to consolidate his forces were various, as suited the circumstances. He sought to ingratiate himself into the good opinion of the missionary natives by appearing to become zealous in religious observances; on the feeling of others he played by a recital of his wrongs; and towards the European residents of Otaki he assumed an attitude of unconcealed hostility, and ordered their removal from the district. This step he deemed to be necessary, in order that he might be free to act unhampered by spies in the supposed impending campaign against the Queen's troops, and it was this mandate which brought the chief and Wakefield face to face.
As a result of Rauparaha's prohibition, a pakeha settler named White, who had been living under the patronage of Te Ahu karamu, found himself suddenly stopped at the Otaki River while in the act of driving some thirty head of cattle on to the land upon which his patron chief had invited him to settle. This high-handed action naturally aroused the anger of the Ngati-Raukawa chiefs, who had hitherto assumed that they were masters of the territory which they had chosen to "sit upon" when the division of the conquered lands was made. Te Ahu was especially angered at what he regarded as an uncalled-for encroachment upon his prerogative as a chief. He therefore announced his determination to proceed to the Pakakutu pa and demand from Te Rauparaha a complete renunciation of his views. Wakefield was invited to be present, and to his facile pen we are indebted for a graphic account of what followed. The korero did not commence immediately upon the arrival of Te Ahu's party at the pa, and Wakefield employed the interval in the kindly office of helping to dress the wounded leg of a Maori, whom he has described as one "particularly gentle and dignified in his manners." While thus engaged, Te Rauparaha approached him, and, with evident signs of apprehension as to the propriety of his doing so, offered a friendly salutation. Wakefield coldly declined to grasp the hand which he naturally believed was imbrued in his uncle's blood; and Rauparaha, immediately acknowledging the delicacy of his position, muttered "It is good," and returned to his seat. The speech-making commenced by his entering upon a lengthy narrative of himself and his conquests, for the evident purpose of riveting in the minds of his hearers the fact that he was the brain and the heart of the tribe. His story was eloquently told, for not the least of his great natural endowments was the precious gift of the silver tongue. The tale of conquest ended, he was proceeding to refer to the incidents of the Wairau, when Wakefield rose and checked him. Naturally the latter was sensitive upon the point of prejudging so dreadful a tragedy, by listening to an ex-parte statement of its facts, when he was fully persuaded that at no distant date he would hear the truth disclosed before an impartial tribunal. He therefore told Te Rauparaha that he would not remain if he proposed to discuss the affair of the Wairau, but begged him to confine his speech to a justification of his extreme and arbitrary desire to drive the Europeans away from Otaki.
Te Rauparaha acknowledged the reasonableness of this request, but so anxious was he to excuse himself in the eyes of Wakefield, that his oration had not proceeded far before he reverted to the subject of the massacre. Thereupon Wakefield rose, and, walking to the stile at the outer fence, was in the act of stepping over it to proceed home, when a chorus of shouts called him back, and a promise was given that there would be no further reference to the Wairau. Te Rauparaha then earnestly addressed himself to the status of the pakehas at Otaki, claiming the land as his alone. He admitted the validity of the sales of the Manawatu, Whanganui, and Taranaki, but not those of Otaki or Ohau, and insisted that the white people, whalers included,[167] must remove to those districts which the Company had fairly bought. He upbraided the Queen for sending her constables to tie his hands. "Who is she," he asked, "that she should send her books and her constables after me? What have I to do with her? She may be Queen over the white people; I am the King of the Maori! If she chooses to have war, let her send me word, and I will stand up against her soldiers. But I must have room; I must have no white people so near."[168]
Challenged as to the inconsistency of these views with his action in signing the Treaty of Waitangi, he wheeled sharply round and exclaimed, "Yes; what of that? They gave me a blanket for it. I am still a chief, just the same. I am Rauparaha. Give me another blanket tomorrow and I will sign it again. What is there in writing?" The attitude of absolute authority assumed by the chief distinctly alarmed Wakefield, who saw in it the elements of unlimited trouble for the New Zealand Company. For if Te Rauparaha's claim to exclusive jurisdiction over the land was well founded, then verily many of their purchases had been brought to the brink of repudiation. Turning hastily to Te Ahu and several of the chiefs around him, he sought enlightenment on the point, reminding them that they had frequently laid claim to large possessions in the neighbourhood, but had never acknowledged Te Rauparaha as having the least right or interest in them. Then Te Ahu proceeded in a tone of apology and regret to elucidate one of the many intricate phases of Maori land tenure which were now beginning to prove so embarrassing to the Company. He explained that when the tribe burned their houses at Maungatautari and came down to assist Te Rauparaha in his conquest, they had selected Otaki out of the conquered lands to be their future home. In times of peace Rauparaha would have made no claim to the land, nor would his claim have been acknowledged if he had. In proof of this, he quoted the scorn with which Rangihaeata's assumptions over the Manawatu had been rejected by Ngati-Raukawa; but now that the war clouds were in the air, the riri, or anger, had completely altered the whole aspect of affairs; the land had reverted to him who had conquered it, and Ngati-Raukawa had no land which they could call their own. "And then he rose," says Wakefield, "and endeavoured to persuade Rauparaha to change his determination. He reminded him of the 'war parties which he had brought to him on his back to assist him against his enemies, through dangers and troubles more than he could count.' He related how 'he had burned the villages of the tribe at Taupo to make them come with him to be by the side of Rauparaha on the sea-coast.' He counted how many times he had adhered to him 'in his feuds with Ngati-Awa,' and described 'how much of the blood of Ngati-Raukawa had been spilt for his name.' Te Ahu had now warmed with his subject, and was running up and down, bounding and yelling at each turn, and beginning to foam at the mouth, as the natives do when they seek to speak impressively. 'Let the cows go!' he cried. 'Let them go to my place!'
"Rauparaha seemed to consider that Te Ahu's eloquence was becoming too powerful, and he jumped up too. They both continued to run up and down in short parallel lines, yelling at each other, with staring eyes and excited features, grimacing and foaming, shaking their hands and smacking their thighs. As they both spoke together, it became difficult to hear what they said, but I caught a sentence here and there, which gave me the sense of the argument. 'No!' cried Rauparaha; 'no cows; I will not have them.' 'Let them go!' yelled Te Ahu. 'Yield me my cows and my white man—the cows will not kill you.' 'No cows, no white men! I am King! Never mind your war parties! No cows!' answered Te Rauparaha. 'The cows cannot take you,' persisted Te Ahu; 'when the soldiers come we will fight for you, but let my cows go.' 'No, no, no, indeed,' firmly replied the chief, and sat down.
"Te Ahu remained standing. He took breath for a minute, then drew himself up to his full height, and addressed his own people in a solemn kind of recitative. 'Ngati-Raukawa,' he sang, 'arise! Arise, my sons and daughters, my elder brothers and my younger brothers, my sisters, my grand-children, arise! Stand up, the families of Ngati-Raukawa! To Taupo! to Taupo! to Maungatautari! To our old homes which we burned and deserted; arise and let us go! Carry the little children on your backs, as I carried you when I came to fight for this old man who has called us to fight for him and given us land to sit upon, but grudges us white people to be our friends and to give us trade. We have no white men or ships at Maungatautari, but the land is our own there. We need not beg to have a white man or cows yielded to us there if they should want to come. To Maungatautari. Arise, my sons, make up your packs, take your guns and your blankets, and let us go! It is enough, I have spoken.' As he sat down, a mournful silence prevailed. An important migration had been proposed by the chief, which no doubt would be agreed to by the greater part of the Otaki, Ohau, and Manawatu natives, on whom was Rauparaha's chief dependence for his defence.
"I noticed that he winced when he first heard the purport of Te Ahu's song; but, while Te Ahu continued, his countenance gradually resumed its confidence. Much as I abhorred his character, I could not but yield my unbounded admiration to the imperious manner in which he overthrew the whole effect of Te Ahu's beautiful summons to his tribe. Instead of his usual doubting and suspicious manner, his every gesture became that of a noble chief. He rose with all the majesty of a monarch, and he spoke in the clearest and firmest tones, so that the change from his customary shuffling, cautious and snarling diction was of itself sufficient to command the earnest attention of his audience. 'Go,' said he, 'go, all of you!—go, Ngati-Raukawa, to Maungatautari! Take your children on your backs and go, and leave my land without men. When you are gone, I will stay and fight the soldiers with my own hands. I do not beg you to stop. Rauparaha is not afraid! I began to fight when I was as high as my hip. All my days have been spent in fighting, and by fighting I have got my name. Since I seized by war all this land, from Taranaki to Port Nicholson, and from Blind Bay to Cloudy Bay beyond the water, I have been spoken of as a King. I am the King of all this land. I have lived a King, and I will die a King, with my mere in my hand. Go; I am no beggar; Rauparaha will fight the soldiers of the Queen when they come, with his own hands and his own name. Go to Maungatautari.' Then, suddenly changing his strain, he looked on the assemblage of chiefs, bending down towards them with a paternal smile, and softening his voice to kindness and emotion. 'But what do I say?' said he; 'what is my talk about? You are children! It is not for you to talk. You talk of going here and doing that. Can one of you talk when I am here? No! I shall rise and speak for you all, and you shall sit dumb, for you are all my children, and Rauparaha is your head chief and patriarch.'"
This fearless rejection of Ngati-Raukawa assistance, culminating in an arrogant assumption of absolute authority over their movements, completely won him his point, and one of the highest chiefs said to Wakefield, "It is true, Tiraweke! He is our father and our Ariki. Rauparaha is the King of the Maori, like your Queen over the white people." The others, full of conscious dignity in being followers of such a leader, acknowledged his authority by bowing a silent assent. Rauparaha remained inflexible in refusing to permit the cattle to enter the district, but, in deference to the urgent persuasions of the chiefs, he subsequently relaxed his prohibition against the white men already settled in the district, but stoutly refused to sanction the coming of any more.
But this effort of Te Rauparaha to consolidate his forces was in no sense the full range of his preparations. To augment his fighting strength was as much his policy as to unite those who already acknowledged allegiance to him. And this he sought to do in a quarter which, in view of past events, he would have been least expected to approach, and where his advances, once made, would have been least likely to touch a responsive chord. His scheme involved no less a delicate task than salving the wounds of the Ngai-Tahu tribe, and negotiating a friendly alliance with the men whose mana he had so rudely trampled in the dust at Kaikoura and Kaiapoi. To this end he collected a number of the most influential prisoners whom he had taken at the latter place, and, bidding them go back to their tribe, charged them to use their utmost endeavour to promote a good feeling towards him amongst their people. This unexpected act of clemency—or apparent clemency—which restored to them their much esteemed chief Momo, their great warrior Iwikau, and others equally noted in their history, went far to soothe the injured pride of Ngai-Tahu, who, after much serious debate, decided to forget the past, make peace, and accede to the new proposals. As an earnest of their acceptance of Rauparaha's terms, Taiaroa at once paid a visit to Kapiti, and, as he professed to be aggrieved at the manner in which some land transactions had been conducted in the south, there is little doubt that, had an attack upon Wellington been contemplated, he and his people would have combined with their former enemies to effect the annihilation of the colonists.[169]
A fearful uncertainty thus continued to agitate the breasts of the settlers; and when H.M. ship of war, North Star arrived in Wellington on 31st August, as the result of a memorial sent by the settlers to Sir George Gipps, Governor of New South Wales, she was received with a salute of guns and a display of bunting, which indicated a belief that the day of retribution was at hand. It was not, however, for four days that her commander, Sir Everard Home, was able to enter into communication with Major Richmond, the principal officer of the Government in Cook Strait. By him he was assured that "he had received various reports of meditated attacks upon Wellington by the natives under Te Rauparaha; that the chief was at a pa not more than fourteen miles away, with between five hundred and a thousand of his fighting men; that Taiaroa, the chief from the Middle Island, had joined Te Rauparaha, and, having been an ancient enemy to him, had made peace; that the pa at Porirua was fortified, and every preparation made for an attack on the town of Wellington." To this Sir Everard, having regard to his explicit instructions not to intervene unless the natives and the whites were at actual war, replied that, in his judgment, the circumstances did not warrant his interference, but that he would keep his ship in the harbour as a salutary check upon Maori aggression. In the meantime he penned the following letter to Te Rauparaha:—