_TUPARA_[1] AGAINST ENFIELD
"The hills like giants at a hunting lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay."
[Footnote 1: _Tupara_ (two-barrel), the Maori name for the short
double-barrelled guns which were their handiest weapons against us in
bush warfare.]
In 1860 the Taranaki settlement was growing to be what it now is--a
very pleasant corner of the earth. Curving round the seashore under
the lofty, lonely, symmetrical cone of Egmont, it is a green land of
soft air and many streams. After long delays and much hope deferred,
the colonists--mostly English of the south-west counties--had begun to
prosper and to line the coast with their little homesteads standing
among peach orchards, grassy fields, and sometimes a garden gay with
the flowers of old Devon. Upon this quiet little realm the Maoris
swept down, and the labour of twenty years went up in smoke. The open
country was abandoned; the settlers took refuge in their town, New
Plymouth. Some 600 of their women and children were shipped off to
Nelson; about twice as many more who could not be induced to leave
stayed huddled up in the little town, and the necessity of keeping a
strong force in the place to defend them from a sudden dash by
the Maoris hampered the conduct of the campaign. Martial law was
proclaimed--destined not to be withdrawn for five years. After a time
the town was protected by redoubts and a line of entrenchment. Crowded
and ill-drained, it became as unhealthy as uncomfortable. Whereas for
sixteen months before the war there had not been a funeral in the
district, they were now seen almost daily. On the alarm of some
fancied Maori attack, noisy panics would break out, and the shrieks of
women and cries of children embarrassed husbands and brothers on whom
they called for help, and whose duty as militiamen took them to their
posts. The militia of settlers, numbering between four and five
hundred, were soon but a minor portion of the defenders of the
settlement. When fighting was seen to be inevitable, the Government
sent for aid to Australia, and drew thence all the Imperial soldiers
that could be spared. The Colony of Victoria, generous in the
emergency, lent New Zealand the colonial sloop-of-war _Victoria_, and
allowed the vessel not only to transport troops across the Tasman Sea,
but to serve for many months off the Taranaki coast, asking payment
for nothing except her steaming coal. By the end of the year there
were some 3,000 Europeans in arms at the scene of operations, and they
probably outnumbered several times over the fluctuating forces of the
natives. The fighting was limited to the strip of sea-coast bounded by
the Waitara on the north and the Tataramaika plain on the south, with
the town of New Plymouth lying about midway between. The coast was
open and surf-beaten, the land seamed by ravines or "gulleys," down
which the rainfall of Egmont streamed to the shore. Near the sea
the soil was--except in the settlers' clearings--covered with tough
bracken from two to six feet high, and with other troublesome growths.
Inland the great forest, mantling the volcano's flanks, and spreading
its harassing network like a far-stretching spider's web, checked
European movements. From the first the English officers in command
in this awkward country made up their minds that their men could do
nothing in the meshes of the bush, and they clung to the more open
strip with a caution and a profound respect for Native prowess which
epithets can hardly exaggerate, and which tended to intensify the
self-esteem of the Maori, never the least self-confident of warriors.
A war carried on in such a theatre and in such a temper was likely
to drag. There was plenty of fighting, mostly desultory. The Maoris
started out of the bush or the bracken to plunder, to cut off
stragglers, or to fight, and disappeared again when luck was against
them. Thirteen tiresome months saw much marching and counter-marching,
frequent displays of courage--more courage than co-operation
sometimes,--one or two defeats, and several rather barren successes.
For the first eight months the advantage inclined to the insurgents.
After that their overweening conceit of their Waikato contingent
enabled our superior strength to assert itself. The Maoris, for all
their courage and knowledge of the country, were neither clever
guerillas nor good marksmen. Their tribal wars had always been affairs
of sieges or hand-to-hand encounters. Half the skill displayed by them
in intrenching, half the pluck they showed behind stockades, had
they been devoted to harassing our soldiers on the march or to loose
skirmishing by means of jungle ambuscades, might, if backed
by reasonably straight shooting, have trebled our losses and
difficulties.
Early in the war we did none too well in an attack upon a hill _pa_ at
Waireka, a few miles south of New Plymouth. Colonel Murray was sent
out from the town with some 300 troops and militia to take it, and at
the same time to bring in some families of settlers who had stuck to
their farms, and who, if we may believe one of them, did not want to
be interfered with. The militia were sent by one route, the troops
took another. The Maoris watched the arrangements from the hills, let
the militia cross two difficult ravines, and then occupied these,
cutting off the Taranaki contingent. The militia officers, however,
kept their men together, and passed the day exchanging shots with
their enemy and waiting for Colonel Murray to make a diversion by
assailing Waireka. This, however, Colonel Murray did not do. He sent
Lieutenant Urquhart and thirty men to clear the ravines aforesaid, and
give the militiamen a chance of retreat. But when the latter, still
expecting him to attack the _pa_, did not retire, he rather coolly
withdrew Urquhart's party and retraced his steps to the town, alleging
that his orders had been not to go into the bush, and, in any case, to
return by dusk. Great was the excitement amongst the wives, children,
and friends of the settlers away in the fight when the soldiers
returned without them, and when one terrified woman, who clutched at
an officer's arm and asked their whereabouts, got for answer, "My good
woman, I don't know"! Loud was the joy when by the light of the moon
the militiamen were at length seen marching in. They had been
rescued without knowing it by Captain Cracroft and a party of sixty
bluejackets from H.M.S. _Niger_. These, meeting Colonel Murray in his
retreat, and hearing of the plight of the colonial force, pushed on in
gallant indignation, and in the dusk of the evening made that assault
upon the _pa_ which the Colonel had somehow not made during the day.
Climbing the hill, the sailors chanced upon a party of natives, whom
they chased before them pell-mell. Reaching the stockade at the
heels of the fugitives, the bluejackets gave each other "a back" and
scrambled over the palisades, hot to win the £10 promised by the
Captain to the first man to pull down the Maori flag. The defenders
from their rifle-pits cut at their feet with tomahawks, wounding
several nastily; but in a few minutes the scuffle was over, and the
_Niger's_ people returned victorious to New Plymouth in high spirits.
Moreover, their feat caused the main body of the natives to withdraw
from the ravines, thus releasing the endangered militia. Among these,
Captain Harry Atkinson--in after years the Colony's Premier and best
debater--had played the man. Our loss had been small--that of the
natives some fifty killed and wounded.
Month followed month, and still the settlers were pent up and the
province infested by the marauding Taranaki, Ngatiawa, and Ngatiruanui
Maoris, and by sympathisers from Waikato, who, after planting their
crops, had taken their guns and come over to New Plymouth to enjoy
the sport of shooting _Pakeha_. The farms and homes of the devastated
settlement lay a plundered wreck, and the owners complained bitterly
of the dawdling and timidity of the Imperial officers, who on their
side accused the settlers of unreason in refusing to remove their
families, of insolence to Native allies and prisoners, of want of
discipline, and of such selfish greed for compensation from Government
that they would let their cattle be captured by natives rather than
sell them to the commissariat. On the other hand, the natives were far
from a happy family. The Waikato had not forgotten that they had been
aforetime the conquerors of the Province, now the scene of war, that
the Ngatiawa and Taranaki had been their slaves, and that Wiremu Kingi
had fled to Cook's Straits to escape their raids. They swaggered among
their old foes and servants, and ostentatiously disregarded their
advice, much to our advantage.
In June we were defeated at Puké-te-kauere on the Waitara. Three
detachments were sent to surround and storm a _pa_ standing in
the fork of a Y made by the junction of two swampy ravines. The
plan broke down; the assailants went astray in the rough country and
had to retreat; Lieutenant Brooks and thirty men were killed and
thirty-four wounded. The Maori loss was little or nothing.
In August General Pratt came on the scene from Australia. He proceeded
to destroy the plantations and to attack the _pas_ of the insurgents.
He certainly took many positions. Yet so long and laborious were his
approaches by sapping, so abundant his precautions, that in no case
did the natives stay to be caught in their defences. They evacuated
them at the last moment, leaving the empty premises to us. Once,
however, with an undue contempt for the British soldier, a contingent,
newly arrived from the Waikato, occupied a dilapidated _pa_ at
Mahoe-tahi on the road from New Plymouth to Waitara. Their chief,
Tai Porutu, sent a laconic letter challenging the troops to come and
fight. "Make haste; don't prolong it! Make haste!" ran the epistle.
Promptly he was taken at his word. Two columns marched on Mahoe-tahi
from New Plymouth and Waitara respectively. Though the old _pa_ was
weak, the approaches to it were difficult, and had the Maoris waylaid
the assailants on the road, they might have won. But at the favourable
moment Tai Porutu was at breakfast and would not stir. He paid for his
meal with his life. Caught between the 65th regiment and the militia,
the Maoris were between two fires. Driven out of their _pa_, they
tried to make a stand behind it in swamp and scrub. Half a dozen
well-directed shells sent them scampering thence to be pursued for
three miles. They lost over 100, amongst whom were several chiefs.
Our killed and wounded were but 22. Here again Captain Atkinson
distinguished himself. Not only did he handle his men well, but a
prominent warrior fell by his hand.
This was in November, 1860. For five months General Pratt, in the face
of much grumbling, went slowly on sapping and building redoubts. He
always reached his empty goal; but the spectacle of British forces
worming their way underground and sheltering themselves behind
earthworks against the fire of a few score or hundred invisible
savages who had neither artillery nor long-range rifles was not
calculated to impress the public imagination.
On the 23rd January, 1861, our respectful prudence again tempted
the Maoris to rashness. They tried a daybreak attack on one of the
General's redoubts. But, though they had crept into the ditch without
discovery, and, scrambling thence, swarmed over the parapet with such
resolution that they even gripped the bayonets of the soldiers with
their hands, they were attacked, in the flank and rear, by parties
running up to the rescue from neighbouring redoubts, and fled
headlong, leaving fifty killed and wounded behind. In March
hostilities were stopped after a not too brilliant year, in which our
casualties in fighting had been 228, beside certain settlers cut off
by marauders. Thompson, the king-maker, coming down from the Waikato,
negotiated a truce. There seemed yet a fair hope of peace. Governor
Browne had indeed issued a bellicose manifesto proclaiming his
intention of stamping out the King Movement. But before this could
provoke a general war, Governor Browne was recalled and Sir George
Grey sent back from the Cape to save the position. Moreover, the
Stafford Ministry, which headed the war party amongst colonists, fell
in 1862, and Sir William Fox, the friend of peace, became Premier.
For eighteen months Grey and his Premier laboured for peace. They
tried to conciliate the Kingite chiefs, who would not, for a long
time, meet the Governor. They withdrew Governor Browne's manifesto.
They offered the natives local self-government. At length the Governor
even made up his mind to give back the Waitara land. But a curse
seemed to cling to those unlucky acres. The proclamation of
restitution was somehow delayed, and meanwhile Grey sent troops to
resume possession of another Taranaki block, that of Tataramaika,
which fairly belonged to the settlers, but on which Maoris were
squatting. Under orders from the King natives, the Ngatiruanui
retaliated by surprising and killing a party of soldiers, and the
position in the province became at once hopeless. The war beginning
again there in 1863 smouldered on for more than three long and
wearisome years.
But the main interest soon shifted from Taranaki. In the Waikato,
relations with the King's tribes were drifting from bad to worse. Grey
had been called in too late. His _mana_ was no longer the influence it
had been ten years before. His diplomatic advances and offers of local
government were met with sheer sulkiness. The semi-comic incident of
Sir John Gorst's newspaper skirmish at Te Awamutu did no good. Gorst
was stationed there as Commissioner by the Government, as an agent of
peace and conciliation. In his charge was an industrial school. It was
in the heart of the King Country. The King's advisers must needs have
an organ--a broad-sheet called the _Hokioi_, a word which may be
paraphrased by Phoenix. With unquestionable courage, Gorst, acting on
Grey's orders, issued a sheet in opposition, entitled _Te Pihoihoi
Mokémoké_, or The Lonely Lark. Fierce was the encounter of the rival
birds. The Lark out-argued the Phoenix. But the truculent Kingites had
their own way of dealing with _lèse majesté_. They descended on the
printing-house, and carried off the press and type of _Te Pihoihoi
Mokémoké_. The press they afterwards sent back to Auckland; of the
type, it is said, they ultimately made bullets. Gorst, ordered to quit
the King Country, refused to budge without instructions. The Maoris
gave him three weeks to get them and depart, and very luckily for him
Grey sent them.
The Governor pushed on a military road from Auckland to the Waikato
frontier--a doubtful piece of policy, as it irritated the natives, and
the Waikato country, as experience afterwards showed, could be best
invaded with the help of river steamers. The steamers were, however,
not procured at that stage. About the same time as the Gorst incident
in the Upper Waikato, the Government tried to build a police-station
and barracks on a plot of land belonging to a friendly native lower
down the river. The King natives, however, forbade the erection,
and, when the work went on, a party of them paddled down, seized the
materials and threw them into the stream.
It was now clear that war was coming. The utmost anxiety prevailed in
Auckland, which was only forty miles from the frontier and exposed to
attack both from sea and land. Moreover, some hundreds of natives,
living quite close to the town, had arms, and were ascertained to be
in communication with the Waikatos. The Governor attempted to disarm
them, but the plan was not well carried out, and most of them escaped
with their weapons to the King Country. The choice of the Government
then lay between attacking and being attacked. They learned, beyond a
doubt, that the Waikatos were planning a march on Auckland, and in a
letter written by Thompson about this time he not only stated this,
but said that in the event of an assault the unarmed people would not
be spared. By the middle of the year 1863, however, a strong force was
concentrated on the border, just where the Waikato River, turning from
its long northward course, abruptly bends westward towards the sea. No
less than twelve Imperial Regiments were now in New Zealand, and their
commander, General Sir Duncan Cameron, a Crimean veteran, gained a
success of some note in Taranaki. He was a brave, methodical soldier,
destitute of originality, nimbleness or knowledge of the country or of
savage warfare. In July, the invasion of the Waikato was ordered. On
the very day before our men advanced, the Maoris had begun what they
meant to be their march to Auckland, and the two forces at once came
into collision. In a sharp fight at Koheroa the natives were driven
from their entrenchments with some loss, and any forward movement on
their part was effectually stopped. But, thanks to what seemed to the
colonists infuriating slowness, the advance up the Waikato was not
begun until the latter part of October, and the conquest of the
country not completed until February.
To understand the cause of this impatience on the part of the
onlookers, it should be mentioned that our forces were now, as usual
in the Maori wars, altogether overwhelming. The highest estimate of
the fighting men of the King tribes is two thousand. As against this,
General Cameron had ultimately rather more than ten thousand Imperial
troops in the Colony to draw upon. In addition to that, the colonial
militia and volunteers were gradually recruited until they numbered
nearly as many. About half of these were, at any rate after a short
time, quite as effectual as the regulars for the peculiar guerilla war
which was being waged. In armament there was no comparison between
the two sides. The _Pakeha_ had Enfield rifles and a good supply of
artillery. The Maoris were armed with old Tower muskets and shot-guns,
and were badly off both for powder and bullets, while, as already
said, they were not very good marksmen. Their artillery consisted of
two or three old ship's guns, from which salutes might have been fired
without extreme danger to their gunners. If the war in the Waikato,
and its off-shoot the fighting in the Bay of Plenty, had been in
thick forest and a mountainous country, the disparity of numbers and
equipment might have been counterbalanced. But the Waikato country was
flat or undulating, clothed in fern and with only patches of forest.
A first-class high road--the river--ran right through it. The sturdy
resistance of the natives was due first to their splendid courage and
skilful use of rifle-pits and earthworks, and in the second place to
our want of dash and tactical resource. Clever as the Maori engineers
were, bravely as the brown warriors defended their entrenchments,
their positions ought to have been nothing more than traps for them,
seeing how overwhelming was the white force. The explanation of this
lies in the Maori habit of taking up their positions without either
provisions or water. A greatly superior enemy, therefore, had only to
surround them. They then, in the course of two or three days at the
outside, had either to surrender at discretion or try the desperate
course of breaking through the hostile lines.
[Illustration: War Map]
General Cameron preferred the more slap-dash course of taking
entrenchments by assault. A stubborn fight took place at Rangiriri,
where the Maoris made a stand on a neck of land between the lake and
the Waikato River. Assaulted on two sides, they were quickly driven
from all their pits and earthworks except one large central redoubt.
Three times our men were sent at this, and three times, despite a
fine display of courage, they were flung back with loss. The bravest
soldier cannot--without wings--surmount a bank which rises eighteen
feet sheer from the bottom of a broad ditch. This was seen next day.
The attack ceased at nightfall. During the dark hours the redoubt's
defenders yelled defiance, but next morning they surrendered, and,
marching out, a hundred and eighty-three laid down their arms. Our
loss was one hundred and thirty-two killed and wounded; the Maori loss
was fifty killed, wounded unknown. By January, General Cameron had
passed beyond Ngaruawahia, the village which had been the Maori King's
head-quarters, and which stood at the fine river-junction where the
brown, sluggish Waipa loses its name and waters in the light-green
volume of the swifter Waikato. Twice the English beat the enemy in the
triangle between the rivers. A third encounter was signalised by the
most heroic incident in the Colony's history. Some three hundred
Maoris were shut up in entrenchments at a place called Orakau. Without
food, except a few raw potatoes; without water; pounded at by our
artillery, and under a hail of rifle bullets and hand grenades;
unsuccessfully assaulted no less than five times--they held out for
three days, though completely surrounded. General Cameron humanely
sent a flag of truce inviting them to surrender honourably. To this
they made the ever-famous reply, "Enough! We fight right on, for
ever!" (Heoi ano! Ka whawhai tonu, aké, aké, aké.) Then the General
offered to let the women come out, and the answer was, "The women will
fight as well as we." At length, on the afternoon of the third day,
the garrison assembling in a body charged at quick march right through
the English lines, fairly jumping (according to one account) over the
heads of the men of the Fortieth Regiment as they lay behind a bank.
So unexpected and amazing was their charge, that they would have got
away with but slight loss had they not, when outside the lines, been
headed and confronted by a force of colonial rangers and cavalry. Half
of them fell; the remainder, including the celebrated war-chief Rewi,
got clear away. The earthworks and the victory remained with us, but
the glory of the engagement lay with those whose message of "Aké, aké,
aké," will never be forgotten in New Zealand.
[Illustration: REWI, THE WAIKATO LEADER
Photo by J. MARTIN, Auckland.]
The country round the middle and lower Waikato was now in our hands,
and the King natives were driven to the country about its upper
waters. They were not followed. It was decided to attack the Tauranga
tribe, which had been aiding them. Tauranga lies on the Bay of Plenty,
about forty miles to the east of the Waikato. It was in the campaign
which now took place there that there occurred the noted repulse at
the Gate _Pa_. The Maoris, entrenched on a narrow neck of land between
two swamps, were invested by our forces both in the front and rear
We were, as usual, immensely the stronger in numbers. Our officers,
non-commissioned officers and drummers by themselves almost equalled
the garrison. After a heavy though not always very accurate
bombardment, General Cameron decided to storm the works. The attacking
parties of soldiers and sailors charged well enough and entered the
front of the defences, and the Maoris, hopeless and endeavouring to
escape, found themselves shut in by the troops in their rear. Turning,
however, with the courage of despair, they flung themselves on the
assailants of their front. These, seized with an extraordinary panic,
ran in confusion, breaking from their officers and sweeping away their
supports. The assault was completely repulsed, and was not renewed.
In the night the defenders escaped through the swamps, leaving us the
empty _pa_. Their loss was slight. Ours was one hundred and eleven,
and amongst the killed were ten good officers. As a defeat it was
worse than Ohaeawai, for that had been solely due to a commander's
error of judgment.
The blow stung the English officers and men deeply, and they speedily
avenged it. Hearing that the Tauranga warriors were entrenching
themselves at Te Rangi, Colonel Greer promptly marched thither, caught
them before they had completed their works, and charging into the
rifle-pits with the bayonet, completely routed the Maoris. The temper
of the attacking force may be judged from the fact that out of the
Maori loss of one hundred and forty-five no less than one hundred and
twenty-three were killed or died of wounds. The blow was decisive, and
the Tauranga tribe at once submitted.
[Illustration]