THE CAPTURE OF RANGIAOWHIA.
The first British soldiers to reach Te Awamutu marched in early on the
morning of 21st February, 1864. This was General Cameron’s force, which
outflanked the Maori defences at Paterangi and Rangiatea in a surprise
night march, and invaded the chief source of food
supplies—Rangiaowhia—the decisive strategic movement in the Waikato
War.
The following is Von Tempsky’s MS. narrative of the night march and the
morning’s hot work at Rangiaowhia:—
“On 20th February, 1864, the bugle at headquarters, Te Rore camp,
sounded, ‘Come for orders.’ Everyone, almost, knew what these orders
were going to be; and great excitement consequently prevailed. The
orders were that about half of the troops were to be under arms, in
heavy marching order, at half past ten that night. The rest, with the
luggage and so forth, were to follow in the day-time, leaving a
sufficient garrison for Te Rore. At half past ten the dense columns of
our force were drawn up in silence near headquarters. No bugle had
sounded; the tents were to remain standing, and the cover of a moonless
night was to hide our circumvention of the wily foe. I had the honour
to command the advanced guard, composed of my Rangers and 100 men of
the 65th under Lieutenant Tabuteau. Next followed the Defence Force
under Colonel Nixon, and the Mounted Artillery, doing troopers’
service, under Lieutenant Rait, an active and energetic officer. The
rest of the 65th, 70th, some of the 50th, and other detachments
followed, Westrupp, with No. 1 Company, Forest Rangers, bringing up the
rear, as Captain Jackson had not yet returned from Auckland. As far as
Waiari the road enabled us to march in fours. Thence, however, Indian
file had to be the order of the march. The importance of our redoubt at
Waiari became now apparent to me, as its existence there served to mask
our start. On that point alone was discovery from Paterangi to be
apprehended. Once past it, our detour of the fern ridges made us nearly
safe until we came close on to Te Awamutu. Mr James Edwards (half-caste
guide) rode ahead of us, Captain Greaves, of the staff (70th) by his
side, and a better combination of local knowledge and military sagacity
never led troops on a difficult march. The high fern had to be trodden
down, principally by the advanced guard, but we were used to it and
knew that honour of position had to be paid for. Ridge after ridge was
passed, now and then a gully, but never very steep, so that packhorses
and even bullock drays could easily follow our tracks on the morrow.”
At dawn (to summarise Von Tempsky’s story) the troops neared Te
Awamutu. It was known that at the entrance, by the pass, there was
situated an old pa. It was not known whether it was now occupied or had
been put into repair. The Rangers scouted on ahead and found it empty.
The cocks at Te Awamutu mission station were now crowing, and the
steeple of the church came into sight. Bishop Selwyn, and Mr Mainwaring
as his aide, galloped along ahead to the mission station, whose native
inhabitants “were under a theocratic flag of truce.” The column pushed
on to Rangiaowhia. The young troopers of the Colonial Defence Force
Cavalry now dashed forward in advance to their first serious work.
“Rangiaowhia,” narrated Von Tempsky, “came soon into sight with a blue
ridge of mountains at the back, its straggling houses between peach
groves crowning cultivated ridges, with two prominent churches at a
short distance from one another. Kahikatea forests straggled up to the
village, here and there, and when we approached it nearer a succession
of ridges with some swamp intervening showed us that we had been
somewhat deceived in the distance. The rapid crack, crack of revolvers
and carbines announced to us now that the troopers had not forgotten
their spurs in getting ahead of us. We listened eagerly for the sound
of double-barrel guns, and that sound also was soon heard. So the
conflict had commenced, and that idea lifted our feet with the power of
galvanism. We probably got there considerably ahead of the main body,
but our blood was up, and we wanted to support our troopers in the
arduous task of riding through streets lined with houses whence a
desperate foe might have great advantage over mounted men. When,
however, we got nearer to the thick of the firing, a mounted civilian,
with some artillery troopers, met me and said that in that direction
there was nothing for us to do; if we wanted to see a good body of men
we should go to the Catholic Church, which was crammed full of armed
Maoris. I at once took his advice, particularly as I had heard but few
double-barrels lately in the direction of the Defence Corps. In
extended order, with 100 of the 65th Regiment in support, we advanced
past several rows of deserted whares, from which, however, now and then
some balls whistled past us. The church being our main object, we paid
no attention to these minor matters. I sent Lieutenant Roberts with
some men round the right flank of the church, and our circle gradually
drew closer. I could see already some black heads at the windows—but of
a sudden a white flag went up.
“‘Very well, lads,’ I thought, ‘then I shall take you prisoner.’ We
advanced still nearer. Roberts’ signal announced to me that the church
was surrounded, when I heard Captain Greaves’ voice calling to me from
the rear:
“‘The General does not want you to press the Maoris any further.’
“‘Not take them prisoner, even?’
“‘No.’
“ * * * I obeyed, though I was fast consuming my tongue by merciless
mastication. But honour is due to the order of a man like General
Cameron, so I ordered my men off and marched to where the firing still
continued. [6]
“The two churches lay more towards the left flank of the village. The
firing continued more to our right near the centre of the village. As
we approached that point we got a few long-range shots from distant
whares, but took no notice of them.
“In passing a boarded house, however, one more like the building of a
European than a Maori, two shots were rapidly fired at us from its
verandah. I did not believe my eyes when I saw there a woman coolly
sitting on the verandah and hiding a still smoking double-barrel
underneath it. She was decently dressed in the semi-European style
adopted by influential Maoris. She was oldish, and not very fair to
look at, particularly as her time-worn features were bent into one
concentrated expression of hatred—such a hatred as Johnson revered and
you read of occasionally in old plays.
“I went up to her and had the gun taken away, looking at her all the
time, not knowing whether I should laugh or feel pathetic—the coolness,
the ugliness, and reckless hatred of this specimen of Maoridom puzzling
my choice of sentiment exceedingly. I thought of passing on, just with
a warning for future good behaviour, when some officers shouted to me
that ‘the old wretch’ had also fired at them, wounded a man of the
65th, and been warned already, and that I had better take her prisoner.
“Reluctantly I gave her in charge of one of my men, but accompanied the
order with a Freemason’s sign which my man understood, the result of
which was that the woman afterwards quietly slipped away unnoticed.
“Just as we started again we heard another couple of shots from the
same house, and now thinking that some men might be inside I had the
house surrounded.
“Just as Roberts got to the back part, another fairy burst from its
door, and, running with the fleetness of a deer, dropped her gun just
in time to have her sex recognised and respected. I was glad that her
fleetness saved me from another female responsibility, and proceeded
onward.
“I met Captain Bower, Adjutant of the Defence Corps, one of the Six
Hundred at Balaklava. He looked fearfully excited, and hurriedly told
me that Colonel Nixon had just been shot, and that the bullet had gone
through his lung.”
Von Tempsky, describing what he then saw, says that a circle of
soldiers of all regiments surrounded at some distance a nearly solitary
whare with a very narrow and low door; in the open doorway lay the body
of a soldier of the 65th, shot through the head. A constant firing of
rifles into the house was carried on with little regard to the effects
of cross-fire, and the narrator formed his men in a half-circle, in the
safe radius of the “dead angle” of the house. It seemed that after the
house had been first surrounded Colonel Nixon sent Lieut. T. McDonnell
and Mr Mair, the interpreter, to ask the Maoris in it to surrender,
assuring them of good treatment. A volley was the concise answer. Then
the firing into the house commenced, but as the floor was below the
level of the outside ground the Maoris were comparatively secure for
some time. Then of a sudden an excited trooper of the Defence Corps
dismounted, and dashed, sword and revolver in hand, into the whare.
Some quick shots were heard, and nothing more was seen or heard of him.
A man of the 65th rushed forward to ascertain the fate of the trooper,
but, being covered and hampered by his roll of blankets and other
paraphernalia, he stuck in the door and was shot in the head. The
firing into the whare now became a perfect cannonade, and even Colonel
Nixon could not abstain from firing with his revolver at the open door.
Stepping incautiously from behind the corner of a neighbouring whare,
he received a bullet, fired from that open door.
“When we arrived,” resumes Von Tempsky, “some neighbouring whares had
been set fire to with the view to communicating the fire to the
all-dreaded one. But somehow this seemed to me an uncertain process,
and unfair. So, looking round at my nearest men, I said, ‘We will rush
the whare, boys.’
“‘Aye! Rush it, rush it!’ was echoed, and with one ‘Forward!’ about a
dozen of us were round the door in an instant. Sergeant Carron had got
ahead of me, and had poked his head into the low doorway. I stood
impatiently behind him, just on one side of the door, thinking that we
ought to take the body of the 65th man out of the way first. Carron
then drew back his head and said to me:
“‘There is only one dead man inside, sir.’
“I could not quite understand this, though I could see that it was
pitch dark inside, and so Carron might have been mistaken.
“At this moment Corporal Alexander, of the Defence Corps, had pushed
his way between myself and Carron, and, squatting down in the low
doorway, commenced to arrange his carbine for taking aim, evidently
puzzled by the darkness—I urging him either to make room for us or jump
in.
“A double-barrel thunders, discharged from the interior of the house, a
bullet knocks through Alexander’s brain, and he drops backward. The
doorway was now completely chocked with the two bodies. My men dragged
away Alexander, and, after firing five shots of my revolver quickly
into the corner from which I had heard the last report, I dragged the
65th man out of the door myself. At that moment, also, one of my men
got shot in the hip—a fine young fellow, John Ballender. He staggered
forward and dropped, never more to rise, though he lingered for months
in hospital. (Note.—A Canadian by birth, by profession a surgeon, he
served as a private with me. An excellent shot, and brave to a fault. I
had known him first at Mauku. His comrades have erected a handsome
marble slab over his grave at Queen’s Redoubt.)
“I now debated within myself whether the rush might not be renewed, as
the door was clear now; but I saw that my men, even, had had enough of
it, and were pointing significantly and triumphantly to the flames that
now commenced to lap over from the nearest burning whare to the fatal
and now fated house. What the feelings of the inmates of that doomed
fortress must have been passes almost the power of imagination. They
must have heard by this time the crackling of the approaching fire;
they must have felt the heat already. Could human nature hold out any
longer in resistance?
“No! Behold, one man, in a white blanket, quickly steps from the door
and approaches the fatal circle at some distance from us. He holds up
his arms to show himself unarmed; he makes a gesture of surrender; he
is an old-looking man.
“‘Spare him! Spare him!’ is shouted by all the officers and most of my
men. But some ruffians—and some men blinded by rage at the loss of
comrades, perhaps—fired at the Maori.
“The expression of that Maori’s face, his attitude on receiving the
first bullet, is now as vivid before my mind’s eye as when my heart
first sickened over that sight. When the first shots struck him he
smiled a sort of sad and disappointed smile; then, bowing his head, and
staggering already, he wrapped his blanket over his face, and,
receiving his death bullets without a groan, dropped quietly to the
ground. (Note.—Had all the men been with their regiments—that is to
say, had had their own officers near them—this would not have happened.
In that promiscuous crowd no one knew who one belonged to.)
“The flames now caught the roof. Could there be another being yet in
that house of death? The roaring sound of approaching destruction
inside the house, the certainty of death outside! What man can bear
such wrath of fate?
“Behold! There is one such man! Like an apparition he suddenly stands
in front of the door—stands bolt upright—and fires his last two shots
at us. Defiance flashes from his eyes even as he sinks under a shower
of bullets.
‘The house is one mass of flame—it is near falling—when another Maori
bursts from it, gun in hand, and drops pierced by bullets while
dauntlessly aiming at the foe. As he fell the timbers of the roof bent
inward, the house tottered, and with a crash crumbled to pieces on the
well-fought ground.
“Seven charred bodies of Maoris and the first Defence Corps man were
found among the blackened ruins. That fortress had held ten defenders.
What would not ten hundred of such defenders do when properly armed and
commanded? Yet I am sorry to say that much of this unyielding desperate
disposition is based upon one of the worst if the strongest features in
Maori character.
“After the fall of the house there remained nothing to do at
Rangiaowhia. The General, fearing the results of straggling in such a
rambling, extensive community as this, together with the presumed
absence of water in the most important military points, decided on
returning to Te Awamutu.
“On our way to Te Awamutu I had occasion to observe the peculiar
insensibility to wounds in Maoris; the same that I had previously
observed in North American Indians. I had seen an immense, brawny Maori
lying on the ground covered with blood, Dr. Mouat, V.C., of the Staff,
attending him with his usual skill and celerity. I thought that kindly
attention but thrown away, for the Maori had a sabre cut over the head,
a revolver bullet in his mouth, a shot through the liver, and a sabre
cut over the back. He was carried in a stretcher half way to Te
Awamutu, when he insisted on getting out, and walked the remainder of
the way. I saw him the following day in hospital, sitting up among the
female prisoners, chatting in such an unconcerned way and with such
equanimity of expression in his features that I doubted the evidence of
my eyes that this could be the same man I had seen on the previous day
with four wounds, each of which would have prostrated for some time a
European.”
A veteran of No. 1 Company of Forest Rangers, Mr Wm. Johns, of Auckland
(formerly of Te Rahu), gives the following account of his experiences
at Rangiaowhia:
“About a dozen whares were burned in the village. The fight extended
from the head of the swamp, where Colonel Nixon was shot, right up to
the Catholic Church, whence we drove the Maoris over the crest into the
swamps, next the native racecourse. Some shots were fired at us from
the English Church; some Maoris were inside the building. It was an
open skirmish from then right along. There were not more than 200
Maoris altogether in Rangiaowhia that day, but they fought well, and
had plenty of ammunition. After one of our fellows had been shot, my
commanding officer said to me, ‘Corporal, take two men and see if there
are any Maoris in the whare there,’ pointing to a house about twenty
yards away. I posted the two men outside and stooped to enter the
house, which was sunk in the ground, with a low entrance. As I entered
I was felled by a terrific blow on the side of the neck, but deflected
somewhat by the edge of the doorway. I lay there stunned for some
moments, and when I recovered I saw a Maori weapon, a long taiaha,
lying beside me. [It is now in the Old Colonists’ Museum in Auckland; a
small piece was nicked out of the blade of it by the doorway edge.] My
men told me that the inmates of the whare had escaped by bursting
through the thatch at the back, and got clear away. It was a very
narrow escape for me, and I took the taiaha as a memento of it. I took
no further share in the fight that day, but I was able to march back to
Te Awamutu.”