JOHN GORST AT TE AWAMUTU.
The determination of the Maori tribes to establish a King was not in
the beginning hostile to the white Government. On the contrary, Wiremu
Tamehana, of Ngati-Haua, a man of lofty ideals and altogether admirable
character, continually emphasised the fact that the kingdom must be on
a footing of friendship with the pakeha; it was simply to govern the
Maoris within their own district and to ensure a measure of peace and
order which the Queen’s Government could not maintain. The King
movement was originated in 1851–52 by Tamehana te Rauparaha—son of the
great Rauparaha—who had been on a voyage to England and returned with
ideas for the betterment of his race, and by Matene te Whiwhi, of
Otaki. The difficulty was to select a suitable chief as King, and one
man after another declined the honour, until at last Matene and his
fellow-chiefs persuaded the aged warrior Potatau te Wherowhero, of
Waikato, to take the position. Potatau, like Tawhiao his son after him,
was merely a figurehead; the destinies of the native confederation were
decided by the runangas or tribal councils at Ngaruawahia and Kihikihi.
Tawhiao succeeded Potatau on the latter’s death in 1860.
A variety of elements, social and political, combined to produce a war
feeling in Waikato. Iwikau te Heuheu, of Taupo, on his way to a great
Waikato meeting in 1857, stayed at the mission station and gave Mr
Morgan his reasons for supporting the King. He contrasted the uncouth
and inhospitable treatment of Maori chiefs when visiting the towns with
the kindness shown by the Maoris to even the lowest grade of pakeha who
came to their settlements. Tamehana pointed to the inability of the
Government to preserve peace and order among the tribes; this could
only be done by means of a native king, and he quoted Scripture and
modern history in support of his argument. The blundering of the
Government in offering civil institutions and then withdrawing them
without a fair trial, the construction of the military road from Drury
to the Mangatawhiri River, and finally the heavy losses of the
Ngati-Haua and Ngati-Maniapoto in the Taranaki War had a cumulative
effect in hastening the outbreak in Waikato. It was when this feeling
was simmering in the Waikato that Mr John Gorst—as he was then—was
induced by the Government to undertake the difficult task of staying
the growing tide of anti-pakeha agitation and of diverting the energies
of the Kingite tribes to peaceful industries and crafts. He came
several years too late. The institutions and the measure of home rule
which Sir George Grey offered to the Kingites in 1863 only to have them
rejected would have met with a cordial acceptance had they been put
forward five or six years previously. But Grey was in South Africa
then, and his predecessor, Governor Gore-Browne, and his advisers went
from blunder to blunder in their determination to stifle the natives’
legitimate desire for local self-government.
Mr John Gorst arrived at Auckland from England in 1860, and, being a
young man of brilliant University attainments, he attracted the
attention and friendship of Bishop Selwyn, Sir George Grey, and other
notable people of the day. It was Mr (afterwards Sir William) Fox, then
Premier of the Colony, who determined to establish him as resident
magistrate in the Upper Waikato, and a house was procured for him at Te
Tomo, about half a mile from the centre of the present town of Te
Awamutu. (Te Tomo is now marked by an acacia grove in a field south of
Te Awamutu, near the Kihikihi Road.) This establishment was built on
thirty acres of grass land which had been sold to the Crown many years
before the war began. Here Mr Gorst set up his home in the beginning of
1861; later he removed to the mission house opposite the church.
During the first part of his residence in Te Awamutu district Mr Gorst
was a magistrate and a kind of intelligence officer for the Government.
During the latter part he was styled Commissioner of Upper Waikato, and
lived at the mission station in charge of a technical school and
hospital. In the early period, as Gorst narrated in after years, he was
rather the officer of Mr Fox’s Ministry than of the Government. He was
a magistrate, but as a matter of fact his jurisdiction was derided by
the Maoris, and he found none except a few pakehas to obey him. “The
Maori from the first,” he said, “refused to consent to my exercising
any kind of authority among them.” Even his great friend Wiremu
Tamehana, though anxious to receive advice and instruction, objected to
the admission into the Kingite district of a magistrate who received
his authority from the Queen.
In 1862–63 Mr Gorst was rather the officer of Sir George Grey than of
the Ministry (then Mr Domett’s). The Church Mission estate of about 200
acres, with school buildings and dwelling-house, was lent to the
Governor for Maori educational purposes. Describing the establishment
then formed, Gorst wrote:
“Everyone in the school was clothed, lodged, and fed in plain but
wholesome and civilised style. Clothes and bedding were regularly
inspected and kept scrupulously clean. A schoolmaster was appointed,
who taught reading, writing, and arithmetic to all, and besides this
each young man was employed for five hours daily in one of the various
mechanical trades carried out within the school. Thus each had an
opportunity, not only of acquiring a sound elementary education, but of
fitting himself to gain a livelihood by practising some handicraft
taught at the school. The trades carried on were those of carpenter,
blacksmith, wheelwright, shoemaker, tailor, and, later on, printer. A
few were employed in agriculture and in tending cattle and sheep upon
the school estate, some as regular occupations and others as an
occasional change from indoor employment. English artisans employed as
teachers were chiefly men who had been living in the neighbourhood and
were familiar with the Maoris and their language. Most had previously
been exercising their trades for the benefit of the district, and the
only difference was that they were now more systematically at work and
were instructing native apprentices. The Maoris of the district had
therefore to resort to the Government establishment for the repair of
their ploughs and carts and for their shoes and clothes. The demand for
all these services was far greater than the supply, so there was a
prospect of being able to supply a great number of Maori apprentices in
every department with certain profit. Even Rewi and Tamehana themselves
visited the school. The latter extended his patronage so far as to be
measured for a pair of trousers, for which he paid £1 in advance, but
Te Oriori intercepted them on their way to Matamata, and was so charmed
with the fit that he refused to part with them, and told Tamehana he
would agree to take them as a present.”
The school establishment certainly did very useful work, and thus far
was appreciated by the Maoris; but they could never forget that Gorst
was a Government official.
It was presently decided by the Government that a native hospital
should be erected on an area of Crown land about three-quarters of a
mile from Te Awamutu. The position of Medical Commissioner of the
Waikato was offered to and accepted by the Rev. A. Purchas, of
Onehunga. At the same time Sir George Grey sanctioned the establishment
of a Maori newspaper to reply to the “Hokioi,” the Kingite print issued
at Ngaruawahia. Mr E. J. von Dadelszen [4] (afterwards
Registrar-General of New Zealand) was appointed printer; he had learned
the trade on Bishop Selwyn’s printing-press in Auckland.
A press and type were bought in Sydney, and set up in Te Awamutu early
in 1863. This was the beginning of the end for Mr Gorst’s
establishment.
The Government Maori newspaper was called “Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke i Runga
i te Tuanui” (“The Lonely Lark on the House-top”—the Maori having no
word for sparrow), and it set about briskly replying to the Kingite
propaganda of “Te Hokioi e Rere Atu Na” (“The Soaring War Bird”), which
was edited and printed by Patara te Tuhi, afterwards a great friend of
Sir John Gorst. The first number of the “Pihoihoi” was published at Te
Awamutu on 2nd February, 1863, and was widely distributed over Waikato,
arousing intense interest among the Kingites.
The “copy” for the first issue was revised by Sir George Grey himself,
and was published under his authority. It contained an article which
greatly excited the resentment of Rewi and the more truculent section
of the Kingite natives. The article was entitled, “The Evil of the King
Movement,” and it criticised a letter from King Tawhiao—or Matutaera
(Methusaleh), as he was then generally known—to the Governor, dated 8th
December, 1862, which had been printed in the “Hokioi,” and which
inquired what evil had been done by the King and on what account he was
blamed. The “Pihoihoi” gave an answer to these inquiries from the
pakeha Government point of view; Gorst’s leader was translated into
forceful and idiomatic Maori by Miss Ashwell, daughter of the
missionary at Kaitotehe, opposite Taupiri. The strong criticism of the
Kingite aspirations quickly provoked action among Mr Gorst’s
neighbours, who asked, “Why is this troublesome printing-press allowed
in our midst?” Only five numbers of the “Pihoihoi” were printed before
the indignant Rewi intervened with his war-party.
The coup planned by Ngati-Maniapoto in the tribal council-house
“Hui-te-Rangiora” at Kihikihi was executed on 24th March, 1863. A
war-party of eighty men and lads, most of them armed with guns, marched
into Te Awamutu that afternoon, led by Aporo Taratutu, and accompanied
by Rewi Maniapoto, and also by the old Taranaki chief Wiremu Kingi te
Rangitaake. (The unjustifiable seizure of Kingi’s land at Waitara by
the Government had been the cause of the first Taranaki War.) Rewi and
Wiremu Kingi remained at Porokoru’s house, which stood in the middle of
the present town of Te Awamutu, while Aporo led his taua down to the
mission station, halted them there, and had prayers by way of
sanctifying the afternoon’s operations. Young von Dadelszen and a Maori
youth were busy at the time in the little printing-office printing the
fifth number of the “Pihoihoi Mokemoke.” Mr Gorst was absent; he had
ridden over to the mission station at Te Kopua, on the Waipa, to
inquire about some bullocks which were being purchased for the
Government station. A report had reached him that a taua from Kihikihi
would visit Te Awamutu that day, but he treated it as an idle rumour.
The actions of Ngati-Maniapoto are described by Mr von Dadelszen in the
following report which Mr Gorst sent to Sir George Grey with his own
account of the breaking-up of the station:
“About 3 o’clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, 24th March, while the
newspapers for that day were being printed, a number of natives
arrived, about 50 of them armed with guns, and the remainder with
native weapons, and stationed themselves in front of the
printing-office. I locked the door before their faces, put the key in
my pocket, and went a little distance off. After a short prayer, they
broke the door open, and proceeded to take the press down, and carry it
outside to some drays they had there. While they were doing this,
Patene, the Ngaruawahia chief, arrived, and partly succeeded in
stopping them, turning about six out of the printing-office (it being
then quite full of natives). After some time, however, he came away,
and the work went on. Everything connected with the printing was taken
away, together with a port-manteau belonging to Mr Mainwaring, and a
box containing some of my clothes. When all was gone, they stationed
sentinels at the door, and allowed no one inside. Before breaking open
the door they had a scuffle with the native teacher, who placed himself
before it, and was dragged away after some resistance. They also broke
down about twenty yards of the fence between the printing-office and
the road. They camped all round the house, but about 6 o’clock allowed
us to enter and take our clothes from the little bedroom at the back.
They did not attempt to touch anything in the main building. In the
evening they stationed their soldiers all round the house. About 8
o’clock, Mr Gorst, Mr White, and Mr Mainwaring arrived. There was some
talk of setting fire to the place, and one or two fire-sticks were
brought, but they determined not to do it in the end. A good many guns
were loaded with ball, but none fired. A great many slept in the
printing-office that night. During the remainder of the afternoon,
Taati, Patene, and Te Oriori on one side, and the leaders of the
soldiers on the other, talked a great deal in the road. William King
[Wiremu Kingi], Rewi, and a few others stayed some distance off, and
gave their orders from there. The mail box, etc., were also taken, with
the mail money.—E. J. von Dadelszen.”
The printing-press, the Kingites’ bete noir, was carried out, with all
the type, reams of paper, and printed copies of the fifth number of the
“Pihoihoi,” and the whole plant was loaded on to bullock drays and
carted off to Kihikihi. Nothing else, however, was taken; some private
belongings, such as boxes of clothes, were scrupulously returned as
soon as it was discovered that they were not part of the printing
plant. Then the leader of the war-party surrounded the mission
buildings with a cordon of sentries, and awaited Mr Gorst’s return. The
Maoris camped on the road and in the adjacent field opposite the
church, and their watch-fires blazed as evening came down.
Mr Gorst rode in after dark, and was permitted to pass unmolested. A
message was sent in to him that if he refused to go away in the morning
he would be shot. Resistance was impossible, for although the youths in
the school establishment declared that they would stand by “Te Kohi”
there were no arms, and in any case a conflict could only have ended in
the victory of Rewi’s veterans of the Taranaki war and in the slaughter
of the Government people.
Next morning there were scenes of intense excitement on the gathering
road between the mission station and the church where the present main
road runs. Mr Gorst was ordered to depart. He replied that nothing
would induce him to leave his post but orders from the Governor. Rewi
for his part declared that he and his men would not stir from the spot
until his object was accomplished.
Presently, through the intervention of the Rev. A. Reid, the Wesleyan
missionary at Te Kopua, Rewi, at a personal interview with Mr Gorst,
agreed to withdraw his men and give the Commissioner three weeks in
which to communicate with Sir George Grey. Rewi then in a speech gave
his reasons for raiding the station. The Governor, he said, had shown
himself hostile to the Maori King movement, and had been ceaseless in
his machinations against the confederation of the tribes. Sir George
Grey had begun to make a military road to the Waikato, and finally at
Taupiri he had made a speech in which he said he “would dig around the
King until he fell.” They looked round to see where the spades were at
work, and they saw “Te Kohi”; they were resolved to have no digging of
that kind in Waikato, and so they had determined to remove him from the
land of the Maori.
Rewi then, at Mr Gorst’s invitation, went into the house and wrote the
following letter for transmission to the Governor:
(Translation.)
“Te Awamutu,
“March 25, 1863.
“Friend Governor Grey:
“Greeting. This is my word to you. Mr Gorst has been killed [has
suffered] through me. I have taken away the press. These are my men
who took it—eighty, armed with guns. The object of this is to expel
Mr Gorst, so that he may return to town; it is on account of the
great trouble occasioned by his being sent here to stay and beguile
us, and also on account of your words, ‘I shall dig at the sides,
and your kingdom will fall.’ Friend, take Mr Gorst back to the
town; do not leave him to stay with me at Te Awamutu. Enough; if
you say he is to stay, he will die. Enough; send speedily your
letter to fetch him in three weeks. It is ended.
“From your friend,
“From REWI MANIAPOTO.”
Mr Gorst also wrote a letter, informing Sir George Grey of the
occurrences, and saying that the natives had beaten him utterly, and
that Rewi said if the Governor left him it would be to certain death.
The letters were sent off to the Governor, who was then in Taranaki.
While an answer was awaited, Wiremu Tamehana came to see Mr Gorst, and
sorrowfully told him that he and others of the friendly-disposed party
could not protect him now. The Governor did not answer Rewi’s letter,
but sent instructions to Mr Gorst that in the event of there being any
danger whatever to life he was to return at once to Auckland, with the
other Europeans in the employment of the Government.
As the Upper Waikato was now inflamed with the war feeling, Mr Gorst
realised that the evacuation of Te Awamutu was the only possible
course. He left the station on 18th April, 1863. It was more than forty
years before he set eyes again on the olden scene of his labours for
the Maori.
The after-history of the “Pihoihoi Mokemoke” press has been cleared up
by dint of many inquiries. Practically the whole of the plant was
restored to the Government after Mr Gorst’s departure. It was placed in
a canoe and taken down the Waipa and Waikato to Te Iaroa, just below
the mouth of the Mangatawhiri River, near Mercer; there Mr Andrew
Kay—later of Orakau—had a trading store. The press and other material
were handed over to Mr Kay, who sent word to the Government, and carts
were sent to take it to Auckland. The press was afterwards used for a
time in printing the Government “Gazette.” A legend gained currency,
and was repeated by writer after writer, each copying his equally
ill-informed predecessor, that the Kingites melted the type into
bullets to use in the war. The fact, however, is that the plant was
returned to the Government very nearly complete. Sir John Gorst told me
(1906) that some of Rewi’s young men helped themselves to a little of
the type as curiosities, but there could have been very little missing
in that way. As for the “Hokioi” press, the Ngati-Maniapoto informed me
that it was taken up from Ngaruawahia to Te Kopua for safe-keeping when
the war began, and there it was lying, rusted and broken, when I last
heard of it; some of the scattered type was now and again ploughed up
on the bank of the Waipa.
Sir John Gorst, re-visiting New Zealand after forty-three years, set
foot once more in Te Awamutu on 3rd December, 1906, and renewed his
acquaintance with some of his old native pupils and travelled over the
old familiar ground. He was welcomed with immense enthusiasm by pakeha
and Maori alike, and there was a peculiarly pathetic touch in the
speeches made by the few Maori survivors of the old regime in Waikato.
Sir John, with Miss Gorst, visited Captain D. Bockett, one of the
original military settlers of Rangiaowhia, who occupied the historic
mission-house. He went through the old buildings and the
well-remembered church. Then, with a large party, he visited Mr Andrew
Kay at his farm at Otautahanga, and talked over the old Waikato days;
and on the day’s drive passed over the battlefields of Hairini,
Rangiaowhia, and Orakau. At a great gathering at Te Awamutu to welcome
“Te Kohi” one of the speakers was the veteran Tupotahi, one of the
heroes of the Orakau defence; he had been a member of Aporo’s war-party
which invaded the Government station in 1863. Ngati-Maniapoto greeted
with a quite extraordinary enthusiasm the distinguished manuhiri whom
they had driven from their midst in the days of the racial quarrels,
now happily buried for ever.
There was more than a touch of the poetic in the farewell to “Te Kohi”
and his daughter at the railway station, Te Awamutu, when the venerable
man bade good-bye for ever to his friends old and new. Two pretty
native girls, Victoria and Ngahuia Kahu Hughes, daughters of William
Hughes, of Kakepuku—one of Mr Gorst’s old pupils at the mission station
before the debacle of 1863—stood hand-in-hand on the platform and sang
very sweetly this parting waiata:
Hoki hoki tonu mai
Te wairua a Te Kohi.
Kia awhi-reinga
Ki tenei kiri—ee—ii!
Ka huri koe i Te Awamutu
Ka tahuri whakamuri;
Mokemoke rere a te aroha—ee—ii!
Ka eke ki tereina,
Ka tahuri whakamuri;
Mokemoke te rere a te auahi—ee—ii!
Ka pinea korua
Ki te pine o te aroha,
Ki te pine e kore nei e waikura—ee—ii!
(Translation.)
Return, return, the spirit of Te Kohi,
To greet me once again
In the shadowy land of dreams.
When you look your last on Te Awamutu
Send back your love to us,
To the lonely ones you ne’er will see again!
And as the railway bears you far away,
O backward turn your gaze;
Like the smoke that backward drifts—ah, me!
Farewell, a fond farewell!
We will pin you both to our hearts
With the pin of love,
The pin that will never rust!
It was a pathetic little song with something of the sentiment breathed
in Tom Moore’s beautiful old Irish melody:
As slow our ship her foamy track
Against the wind was cleaving,
Her trembling pennant still looked back
To that dear isle ‘twas leaving.
So loth we part from all we love,
From all the links that bind us;
So turn our hearts, where’er we rove,
To those we’ve left behind us.
THE LAST CANOE VOYAGE.
Of a picturesque quality, too, was “Te Kohi’s” passage to Auckland down
the Waikato River. It had been arranged with Mahuta, the King of
Waikato—son of Tawhiao—that Sir John should be taken down the river
from Ngaruawahia to Waahi, near Huntly, by Maori canoe, passing the
scenes once familiar to him in his before-the-war journeyings and
reviving memories of the primitive old days. Ngaruawahia in his era in
the Waikato was the capital of the Maori King, and no craft but dug-out
canoes floated on the great river. It was a glorious summer morning
when Sir John Gorst and his daughter and their party embarked at the
green delta in a fine, roomy, white-pine canoe, the “Tangi-te-Kiwi,” 70
feet in length, with a crew of fifteen Maori paddlers, for the voyage
down the Waikato to Waahi. The sun drove away the early mists, and the
bush-clad range of the Hakarimata “stood up and took the morning,” high
above the willows that fringed the low banks of the shining river. Down
the long curving reaches the big waka swept with the powerful current
aiding the paddles, and the canoe captain, old Hori te Ngongo, standing
amidships, gave the time to his crew with voice and gesture, now and
again breaking into a high chanted song of the ancient days. One of
Hori’s songs was peculiarly appropriate, for it had been composed in
1863 with special reference to Gorst and the Mangatawhiri River, the
frontier line of those days. Thus chanted old Hori, the kai-hau-tu, in
a long-drawn high song to which the paddlers kept time as they dipped
and lifted their blades:
Koia e Te Kohi,
Purua i Mangatawhiri,
Kia puta ai ona pokohiwi,
Kia whato tou
E hi na wa!
In this waiata the Commissioner of Waikato was requested to “plug up”
the boundary river between pakeha and Maori lands and make it a close
frontier, and thus prevent the King’s followers passing below its mouth
to trade in Auckland, so that presently, for want of European clothing,
their naked bodies might be seen protruding from their scanty native
garments.
Now and again as the “Tangi-te-Kiwi” approached a native hamlet on the
west bank of the river the crew would redouble their strokes and the
captain would chant in a louder, wilder key the old-time song for “Te
Kohi,” and from the village women would come a shrill reply and long,
wailing cries of “Haere-mai! Haere mai!” The canoe swept past the sites
of the old mission station and mission schools at Hopuhopu and at
Kaitotehe (opposite Taupiri)—the latter was Mr Ashwell’s station before
the war—and Sir John’s eyes lingered with a pathetic interest on the
scenes he knew in 1861–63 until a change of course or bend in the river
hid them from his view.
High-peaked Taupiri, beloved of the old-time Maori, tapu and
legend-haunted, was passed on the right; and then, as the canoe glided
down the broad, glimmering reach, willow-walled, toward Huntly town, we
saw another long Maori waka appear in the distance ahead, its two rows
of paddles flashing in the sun with beautiful regularity. In a few
moments the two canoes met. The stranger was the royal canoe, “Te
Wao-nui-a Tane” (“The Great Forest of Tane”—the Maori god of the
woods), which had been sent up by Mahuta to meet Sir John Gorst’s
canoe, challenge us in true Maori style, and escort us down to the
meeting-place at Waahi. A splendid picture the “Wao-nui-a Tane” made as
she swept up under the strong strokes of twenty-six paddlers, all
stripped to the waist, their brown shoulders bowing and rising as one.
Amidships stood a red-capped captain, the chief Te Paki, giving the
time to his crew and chanting the old war-time songs. The crew were all
picked men of the Ngati-Whawhakia tribe of Waahi, the best canoe-men on
the Waikato. The canoe itself was about 70 feet in length, like our
waka, the “Tangi-te-Kiwi.” As the King’s canoe came alongside, Miss
Gorst and the Minister of the Crown (the Hon. George Fowlds) who
accompanied the Dominion’s guests were transferred to her, and away
down the glistening river shot the “Wao-nui-a Tane,” easily distancing
our canoe. Down the river she flashed at racing speed, her paddles
glinting like wet wings in the sun. Ngati-Whawhakia gave an exhibition
of faultless time and paddling that day as they swept down far ahead of
us to Waahi, their old kai-hau-tu yelling himself hoarse with his
boat-songs. It was a perfect picture of old Maoridom revived, bringing
once more to the honoured guest’s mind the romantic and adventurous
scenes in the days before the war, when hundreds of canoes, large and
small, made lively this noble waterway; the days before ever a pakeha
steamboat’s paddle-wheel startled the Waikato.
And after the great welcome chants of the powhiri at the crowded marae
of Waahi, “Te Kohi” gripped hands once again with the venerable and
benevolent-looking veteran Patara te Tuhi, the chivalrous Kingite who
edited and printed the “Hokioi” at Ngaruawahia in the Sixties, and who,
when Mr Gorst had been ejected from Te Awamutu, gave him shelter one
night—the ironical humour of fate!—in the raupo-thatched
printing-office of the rebel “War Bird.”