The Sydney Government did not prevent him. At Marsden's table, at Parramatta, Hongi met a chief of the offending tribe. Grimly he warned his fellow-guest to take himself home, make ready for war, and prepare to be killed—and eaten. Landing in New Zealand, he determined to imitate Napoleon. Allowing for the enormous difference in his arena, he managed to be nearly as mischievous.
His luckless enemies, armed only with spears, tomahawks, stones and clubs, were shot and enslaved by thousands and eaten by hundreds. Wide districts were swept bare of people. No man cared for anything except to procure a gun and thereby have a chance to save his life. A musket was, indeed, a pearl of great price. It has been pleaded for Hongi that he protected the missionaries, and that by forcing his race to get guns at any price he unwittingly developed trade. It is indeed true that in their desperate straits the tribes sold flax, timber, potatoes, mats, tattooed heads, pigs—even their precious land—for firearms. Without them their lives were not worth a month's purchase. Men and women toiled almost frantically at growing and preparing flax or providing anything exchangeable for muskets, powder and lead. An old Brown Bess was worth three tons of scraped flax. Undoubtedly whites were welcomed, both as traders and fighters, with a readiness unknown before. In 1835, New Zealand exports to Sydney alone were valued at £113,000, her imports at £31,000. It was a poor set-off against an era of butchery.
Determined to carry out the threats he had made in Sydney, Hongi began his campaigns by sailing southward with a great fleet of war-canoes. Passing to the head of the Hauraki Gulf he sat down before the pa of Totara, the chief fortress of the Thames tribes—the men whom he had doomed in Sydney. The place was well garrisoned, and commanded by the head chief, Trembling-Leaf. Even the three hundred musketeers found the pa too strong for open assault, though those inside had but one gun and no ammunition. Hongi fell back upon fraud and offered honourable peace, if a certain sacred greenstone mere were handed to him as a trophy. It was solemnly handed over, and the principal invaders were feasted in the pa. One of them, ashamed of the intended treachery, whispered to an acquaintance in the garrison, "Beware!" In vain. That night, as Hongi's victims were sleeping securely, the Ngapuhi rushed the stockade and all within were killed or taken. The dead were variously reckoned at from two hundred to a thousand. One division of the Ngapuhi were sufficiently disgusted at Hongi's deceit to refuse to join in the surprise, and Waikato, the powerful chief who had accompanied him to England, declared he would go afield with him no more. Even his own special clan, though they had yielded to the furious exhortations of his blind wife Kiri, an Amazon who followed him in all his fights, urged him to spare some of the captives of rank. The pitiless victor spared none. Five he killed with his own spear. The death songs of two have been preserved and are quoted as choice specimens of Maori poetry.
Between 1821 and 1827 Hongi carried fire and sword into almost every corner of what is now the Province of Auckland. At first none could stand before him. He assailed in 1822 two large pas near where the suburbs of Auckland city now spread. In vain the terrified inmates tried to buy off the savage with presents. Nearly all were slaughtered or taken, and Hongi left naught in their villages but bones, with such flesh on them "as even his dogs had not required." He invaded the Waikato and penetrated to a famous pa—a triple stockade at Mataki-taki (Look-out). To get there he dragged his war-canoes overland across the Auckland isthmus, straightened winding creeks for their passage, and, when the Waikatos felled large trees across one channel, patiently spent two months in cutting through the trunks. At length the Look-out fortress was stormed with horrible slaughter. Defended on one side by a creek, on another by the Waipa river, elsewhere by deep ditches and banks that were almost cliffs, the lofty stronghold was as difficult to escape from as to enter. It was crowded with women and children: ten thousand people were in it, says one account. When the spear-men broke before the terrible musket-fire, the mass of the despairing on-lookers choked the ways of escape. In their mad panic hundreds of the flying Waikatos were forced headlong over a cliff by the rush of their fellow-fugitives. Hundreds more were smothered in one of the deep ditches of the defences, or were shot by the merciless Ngapuhi, who fired down upon the writhing mass till tired of reloading. It was the greatest of Hongi's victories, though not bloodless for the conquerors, like that of Totara, where only one Ngapuhi had been killed. Famous fighting men, the Waikato chiefs had died bravely, despite the amazement caused by the mystery of firearms. One had killed four Ngapuhi before he was shot.
Another of Hongi's triumphs was at Rotorua in the Hot Lakes district—the land of the Arawa tribe. He began by defeating them on the Bay of Plenty, and thence turning inland found the tribe gathered in strength on the green island-hill of Mokoia, encircled by the Rotorua lake. Hongi's war-canoes were twenty-five miles away on the sea-beach, and the Mokoians ridiculed him as he lay encamped by the edge of their lake, unable to get at them. Day after day they paddled to within hailing distance and insulted him with yells and gestures. But the Ngapuhi general was not to be stopped. Like Mahomet the second, he made his slaves drag their craft overland, and the astonished islanders saw his flotilla sweep across Rotorua bearing the irresistible musketeers. On their exposed strand they were easily mown down. Flying they were followed by the Ngapuhi, and few indeed were the survivors of the day. Hongi's ravages reached far to the south and east. Even the Ngatiporou, who dwelt between Cape Runaway and Poverty Bay, felt his hand. Their pas fell one after the other, and only those were not slaughtered who fled to the mountains.
For a while it seemed as though Hongi's dream might come true, and all New Zealand hail him as sole king. His race trembled at his name. But his cruelty deprived him of allies, and the scanty numbers of his army gave breathing time to his foes. He wisely made peace with the Waikatos, who, under Te Whero Whero, had rallied and cut off more than one Ngapuhi war-party. In the Hauraki country he could neither crush nor entrap the chief Te Waharoa, as cunning a captain and as bloodthirsty a savage as himself. His enemies, indeed, getting muskets and gaining courage, came once far north of the Auckland isthmus to meet him; and though he beat them there in a pitched battle, it cost him the life of his eldest son. He became involved in feuds with his northern neighbours, and finally marched to attack our old acquaintances the Whangaroans of Boyd notoriety. In a bush-fight with them he neglected to wear the suit of chain armour, the gift of George IV., which had saved his life more than once. A shot fired by one of his own men struck him in the back and passed through a lung. He did not die of the wound for fifteen months. It is said that he used to entertain select friends by letting the wind whistle through the bullet-hole in his body. Mr. Polack, who was the author of the tale, was not always implicitly believed by those who knew him; but as Surgeon-Major Thomson embodies the story in his book, perhaps a writer who is not a surgeon ought not to doubt it.
Of Hongi's antagonists none were more stubborn or successful than Te Waharoa, a fighting chief whose long life of warfare contains in it many stirring episodes of his times. Born in 1773 in a village near the upper Thames, he owed his life, when two years old, to a spasm of pity in the heart of a victorious chief from the Hot Lakes. This warrior and his tribe sacked the pa of Te Waharoa's father, and killed nearly all therein. The conqueror saw a pretty boy crying among the ashes of his mother's hut, and struck with the child's face, took him up and carried him on his back home to Lake Rotorua. "Oh! that I had not saved him!" groaned the old chief, when, nearly two generations later, Te Waharoa exacted ample vengeance from the Rotorua people. After twenty years of a slave's life, Te Waharoa was allowed to go back to his people. Though, in spite of the brand of slavery, his craft and courage carried him on till he became their head, he was even then but the leader of a poor three hundred fighting men.
To the north of him lay the Thames tribe, then the terror of half New Zealand; to the south, his old enemies the Arawas of the Hot Lakes. To the west the main body of the Waikatos were overwhelmingly his superiors in numbers. Eastward the Tauranga tribe—destined in aftertimes to defeat the Queen's troops at the Gate Pa—could in those days muster two thousand five hundred braves, and point to a thousand canoes lying on their beaches. But Te Waharoa was something more than an able guerilla chief. He was an acute diplomatist. Always keeping on good terms with the Waikatos, he made firm allies of the men of Tauranga. Protected, indeed helped, thus on both flanks, he devoted his life to harassing the dwellers by the lower Thames and the Hauraki Gulf. One great victory he won over them with the aid of his Waikato allies. Their chief pa, Mata-mata, he seized by a piece of callous bad faith and murder. After being admitted there by treaty to dwell as friends and fellow-citizens, his warriors rose one night and massacred their hosts without compunction. Harried from the north by Hongi, the wretched people of the Thames were between the hammer and the anvil. When at last their persecutors—the Ngapuhi and Te Waharoa—met over their bodies, Te Waharoa's astuteness and nerve were a match for the invaders from the north. In vain the Ngapuhi besiegers tried to lure him out from behind the massive palisades of Mata-mata, where, well-provisioned, he lay sheltered from their bullets. When he did make a sally it was to catch half a dozen stragglers, whom, in mortal defiance, he crucified in front of his gateway. Then he challenged the Ngapuhi captain to single combat with long-handled tomahawks. The Northerners broke up their camp, and went home; they had found a man whom even muskets could not terrify.
Te Waharoa's final lesson to the Ngapuhi was administered in 1831, and effectually stopped them from making raids on their southern neighbours. A war-party from the Bay of Islands, in which were two of Hongi's sons, ventured, though only 140 strong, to sail down the Bay of Plenty, slaying and plundering as they went. Twice they landed, and when they had slain and eaten more than their own number the more prudent would have turned back. But a blind wizard, a prophet of prodigious repute, who was with them, predicted victory and speedy reinforcement, and urged them to hold on their way. Disembarking on an islet in the bay, the inhabitants of which had fled, they encamped among the deserted gardens. Looking out next morning, they saw the sea blackened with war-canoes. Believing these to be the prophesied reinforcement, they rushed down to welcome their friends. Cruelly were they undeceived as the canoes of Te Waharoa and his Tauranga allies shot on to the beach. Short was the struggle. Only two of the Ngapuhi were spared, and as the blind soothsayer's blood was too sacred to be shed, the victors pounded him to death with their fists. Never again did the Ngapuhi come southwards. So for the remaining years of his life Waharoa was free to turn upon the Arawas, the men who had slain his father and mother. From one raid on Rotorua his men came back with the bodies of sixty enemies—cut off in an ambush. Not once did Waharoa meet defeat; and when, in 1839, he died, he was as full of fame as of years. Long afterwards his mana was still a halo round the head of his son Wiremu Tamihana, whom we shall meet in due time as William Thompson the king-maker, best of his race.
Hongi once dead and the Ngapuhi beaten off, the always formidable Waikato tribes began in turn to play the part of raiders. At their head was Te Whero Whero, whom in the rout at Mataki-taki a friendly hand had dragged out of the suffocating ditch of death. Without the skill of Hongi, or the craft of Te Waharoa, he was a keen and active fighter. More than once before Hongi's day he had invaded the Taranaki country, and had only been forced back by the superior generalship of the famous Rauparaha, of whom more anon. In 1831 Rauparaha could no longer protect Taranaki. He had migrated to Cook's Strait, and was warring far away in the South Island. Therefore it was without much doubt that, followed by some three thousand men, Te Whero Whero set his face towards Mount Egmont, and swept all before him. Only at a strong hill-pa looking down upon the Waitara river, did his enemies venture to make a stand. They easily repulsed his first assaults, but hundreds of women and children were among the refugees, and as was the wont of the Maoris, no proper stock of provisions had been laid in. On the thirteenth day, therefore, the defenders, weakened and half starved, had to make a frantic attempt to break through the Waikatos. Part managed to get away; most were either killed at once, or hunted down and taken. Many women threw themselves with their children over the cliff into the Waitara. Next day the captives were brought before Te Whero Whero. Those with the best tattooed faces were carefully beheaded that their heads might be sold unmarred to the White traders. The skulls of the less valuable were cleft with tomahawk or mere. Te Whero Whero himself slew many scores with a favourite greenstone weapon. A miserable train of slaves were spared to labour in the villages of the Waikato.