THE FIRE IN THE FERN
"But War, of its majestic mask laid bare,
The face of naked Murder seemed to wear."
From the middle of 1864, to January, 1865, there was so little
fighting that it might have been thought that the war was nearing its
end. The Waikato had been cleared, and the Tauranga tribes crushed.
Thompson, hopeless of further struggling ceased to resist the
irresistible, made his peace with us and during the short remainder of
his life was treated as became an honourable foe. Nevertheless, nearly
two years of harassing guerilla warfare were in store for the Colony.
Then there was to be another imperfect period of peace, or rather
exhaustion, between the October, 1866, and June, 1868, when
hostilities were once more to blaze up and only to die out finally in
1870. This persistency was due to several causes, of which the first
was the outbreak, early in 1864, of a curious superstition, the cult
of the Hau-Haus. Their doctrine would be hard to describe. It was a
wilder, more debased, and more barbaric parody of Christianity than
the Mormonism of Joe Smith. It was an angry reaction, a kind of savage
expression of a desire to revolt alike from the Christianity and
civilization of the _Pakeha_ and to found a national religion. For
years it drove its votaries into purposeless outbreaks, and acts of
pitiless and ferocious cruelty. By the Hau-Haus two white missionaries
were murdered--outrages unknown before in New Zealand. Their murderous
deeds and the reprisals these brought about gave a darker tinge to
the war henceforth. Their frantic faith led to absurdities as well
as horrors. They would work themselves up into frenzy by dances and
incantations, and in particular by barking like dogs--hence their
name. At first, they seem to have believed that the cry _Hau! Hau!_
accompanied by raising one hand above the head with palm turned to the
front, would turn aside the _Pakeha's_ bullets.
It was in April, 1864, that they first appeared in the field. A
Captain Lloyd, out with a reconnoitring party in Taranaki, fell,
rather carelessly, into an ambuscade, where he and six of his people
were killed and a dozen wounded. When Captain Atkinson and his rangers
came up at speed to the rescue, they found that the heads of the slain
had been cut off and carried away. Lloyd's, it appears, was carried
about the island by Hau-Hau preachers, who professed to find in it
a kind of diabolical oracle, and used it with much effect in
disseminating their teaching. One of these prophets, or preachers,
however, had a short career. Three weeks after Lloyd's death,
this man, having persuaded himself and his dupes that they were
invulnerable, led them against a strong and well-garrisoned redoubt at
Sentry Hill, between New Plymouth and Waitara. Early one fine morning,
in solid column, they marched deliberately to within 150 yards of the
fort, and before straight shooting undeceived them about the value of
their charms and passes, thirty-four of the poor fanatics were lying
beside their prophet in front of the redoubt. A number more were
carried off hurt or dying, and thenceforward the Taranaki natives were
reduced to the defensive.
In the summer of the same year another prophet met his death in the
most dramatic fight of the war, that by which the friendly natives
of the Wanganui district saved it from a Hau-Hau raid by a conflict
fought on an island in the Wanganui River, after a fashion which would
have warmed the heart of Sir Walter Scott had he been alive to hear
of a combat so worthy of the clansmen in "The Fair Maid of Perth." It
came about a month after the repulse at the Gate _Pa_. For months the
friendlies had been guarding the passage of the river against a strong
Hau-Hau force. At last, tired of waiting, they challenged the enemy to
a fair fight on the island of Moutua. It was agreed that neither
side should attempt to take advantage of the other by surprise or
ambuscade. They landed at opposite ends of the islet. First came the
friendlies, 100 strong; 50 formed their first line under three brave
chiefs; 50 stood in reserve under Haimona (Simon) Hiroti; 150 friends
watched them from one of the river banks. Presently the Hau-Haus
sprang from their canoes on to the river-girt arena, headed by their
warrior-prophet Matené (Martin). After much preliminary chanting of
incantations and shouting of defiance, the Hau-Haus charged. As they
came on, the friendly natives, more than half believing them to be
invulnerable, fired so wildly that every shot missed. Three of the
Wanganui leaders fell, and their line wavered and broke. In vain
a fourth chief, Tamihana, shot a Hau-Hau with each barrel of his
_tupara_, speared a third, and cleft the skull of yet another with
his tomahawk. Two bullets brought him down. It was Haimona Hiroti who
saved the day. Calling on the reserve, he stopped the flying, and,
rallying bravely at his appeal, they came on again. Amid a clash of
tomahawks and clubbed rifles, the antagonists fought hand to hand, and
fought well. At length our allies won. Fifty Hau-Haus died that day,
either on the island or while they endeavoured to escape by swimming.
Twenty more were wounded. The Hau-Hau leader, shot as he swam, managed
to reach the further shore. "There is your fish!" said Haimona,
pointing the prophet out to a henchman, who, _meré_ in hand plunged in
after him, struck him down as he staggered up the bank, and swam back
with his head. His flag and ninety sovereigns were amongst the prizes
of the winners in the hard trial of strength. The victors carried the
bodies of their fallen chiefs back to Wanganui, where the settlers for
whom they had died lined the road, standing bareheaded as the brave
dead were borne past.
That three such blows as Sentry Hill, Moutua, and Te Rangi had not a
more lasting effect was due, amongst other things, to the confiscation
policy.
To punish the insurgent tribes, and to defray in part the cost of the
war, the New Zealand Government confiscated 2,800,000 acres of native
land. As a punishment it may have been justified; as a financial
stroke it was to the end a failure. Coming as it did in the midst of
hostilities, it did not simplify matters. Among the tribes affected
it bred despair, amongst their neighbours apprehension, in England
unpleasant suspicions. At first both the Governor and the Colonial
Office endorsed the scheme of confiscation. Then, when Mr. Cardwell
had replaced the Duke of Newcastle, the Colonial Office changed front
and condemned it, and their pressure naturally induced the Governor to
modify his attitude.
An angry collision followed between him and his ministers, and in
November, 1864, the Ministry, whose leaders were Sir William Fox and
Sir Frederick Whitaker, resigned. They were succeeded by Sir Frederick
Weld, upon whose advice Grey let the confiscation go on. Weld became
noted for his advocacy of what was known as the Self-reliance
Policy--in other words, that the Colony should dispense with the
costly and rather cumbrous Imperial forces, and trust in future to the
militia and Maori auxiliaries. And, certainly, when campaigning began
again in January, 1865, General Cameron seemed to do his best to
convert all Colonists to Weld's view. He did indeed appear with a
force upon the coast north of Wanganui. But his principal feat was
the extraordinary one of consuming fifty-seven days in a march of
fifty-four miles along the sea beach, to which he clung with a
tenacity which made the natives scornfully name him the Lame Seagull.
At the outset he pitched his camp so close to thick cover that the
Maoris twice dashed at him, and though of course beaten off, despite
astonishing daring, they killed or wounded forty-eight soldiers. After
that the General went to the cautious extreme. He declared it was
useless for regulars to follow the natives into the forest, and
committed himself to the statement that two hundred natives in a
stockade could stop Colonel Warre with five hundred men from joining
him. He declined to assault the strong Weraroa _pa_--the key to the
west coast. He hinted depressingly that 2,000 more troops might be
required from England. In vain Sir George Grey urged him to greater
activity. The only result was a long and acrid correspondence between
them. From this--to one who reads it now--the General seems to emerge
in a damaged condition. The best that can be said for him is that he
and many of his officers were sick of the war, which they regarded
as an iniquitous job, and inglorious to boot. They knew that a very
strong party in England, headed by the Aborigines Protection Society,
were urging this view, and that the Colonial Office, under Mr.
Cardwell, had veered round to the same standpoint. This is probably
the true explanation of General Cameron's singular slackness. The
impatience and indignation of the colonists waxed high. They had
borrowed three millions of money to pay for the war. They were paying
£40 a year per man for ten thousand Imperial soldiers. They naturally
thought this too much for troops which did not march a mile a day.
Whatever the colonists thought of Grey's warfare with his ministers,
they were heartily with him in his endeavours to quicken the slow
dragging on of the military operations. He did not confine himself to
exhortation. He made up his mind to attack the Weraroa _pa_ himself.
General Cameron let him have two hundred soldiers to act as a moral
support. With these, and somewhat less than five hundred militia and
friendly Maoris, the Governor sat down before the fort, which rose on
a high, steep kind of plateau, above a small river. But though too
strong for front attack, it was itself liable to be commanded from an
outwork on a yet higher spur of the hills. Bringing common sense to
bear, Grey quietly despatched a party, which captured this, and with
it a strong reinforcement about to join the garrison. The latter fled,
and the bloodless capture of Weraroa was justly regarded as among the
most brilliant feats of the whole war. The credit fairly belonged to
Grey, who showed, not only skill, but signal personal daring. The
authorities at home must be assumed to have appreciated this really
fine feat of his, for they made the officer commanding the two hundred
moral supports a C.B. But Grey, it is needless to say, by thus
trumping the trick of his opponent the General, did not improve his
own relations with the Home authorities. He did, however, furnish
another strong reason for a self-reliant policy. Ultimately, though
gradually, the Imperial troops were withdrawn, and the colonists
carried on the war with their own men, as well as their own money.
[Illustration: MAJOR KEMP MEIHA KEPA TE RANGI-HIWINUI]
In January, 1866, however, after General Cameron had by resignation
escaped from a disagreeable position, but while the withdrawal of the
troops was still incomplete, his successor, General Chute, showed that
under officers of determination and energy British soldiers are by no
means feeble folk even in the intricacies of the New Zealand bush.
Setting out from the Weraroa aforesaid on January 3rd with three
companies of regulars, a force of militia, and 300 Maoris under the
chief Kepa, or Kemp, he began to march northward through the forest to
New Plymouth. At first following the coast he captured various _pas_
by the way, including a strong position at Otapawa, which was fairly
stormed in the face of a stout defence, during which both sides
suffered more than a little. There, when one of the buttons on Chute's
coat was cut off by a bullet, he merely snapped out the remark, "The
niggers seem to have found me out." Both the coolness and the words
used were characteristic of the hard but capable soldier. Further on
the route Kemp in one day of running skirmishes took seven villages.
Arriving at the southern side of Mount Egmont, the General decided to
march round its inland flank through a country then almost unknown
except to a few missionaries. Encumbered with pack-horses, who were
checked by every flooded stream, the expedition took seven days to
accomplish the sixty miles of the journey. But they did it, and met
no worse foes than continual rain, short commons, deep mud, and the
gloomy silence of the saturated forest, which then spread without
a break over a country now almost entirely taken up by thriving
dairy-farmers. Turning south again from New Plymouth by the
coast-road, Chute had to fight but once in completing a march right
round Mount Egmont, and thenceforward, except on its southern verge,
long-distracted Taranaki saw no more campaigning.
Other districts were less fortunate. By the early part of 1865 the
Hau-Hau craze was at work on the east as well as the west coast. It
was in the country round the Wanganui River to the west, and in the
part of the east coast, between Tauranga on the Bay of Plenty and
Hawkes Bay, that the new mischief gave the most trouble. The task of
coping with it devolved on the New Zealand Militia, and the warriors
of certain friendly tribes, headed by the chiefs called by the
Europeans Ropata and Kemp. In this loose and desultory but exceedingly
arduous warfare, the irregulars and friendlies undoubtedly proved far
more efficient than the regular troops had usually been permitted to
be. They did not think it useless to follow the enemy into the bush;
far from it. They went there to seek him out. They could march many
miles in a day, and were not fastidious as to commissariat. More than
once they gained food and quarters for the night by taking them from
their opponents. In a multitude of skirmishes in 1865 and 1866, they
were almost uniformly victorious. Of the laurels gained in New Zealand
warfare, a large share belongs to Ropata, to Kemp, and to Militia
officers like Tuke, McDonnell and Fraser. Later in the war, when
energetic officers tried to get equally good results out of
inexperienced volunteers, and when, too--in some cases--militia
discipline had slackened, the consequences were by no means so
satisfactory. It did not follow that brave men ready to plunge into
the bush were good irregulars merely because they were not regulars.
Nor were all friendly natives by any means as effective as the
Wanganui and Ngatiporou, or all chiefs as serviceable as Ropata and
Kemp.
The east coast troubles began in March, 1865, with the murder at
Opotiki, on the Bay of Plenty, of Mr. Volckner, a missionary and the
most kindly and inoffensive of mankind. At the bidding of Kereopa, a
Hau-Hau emissary, the missionary's people suddenly turned on him, hung
him, hacked his body to pieces, and smeared themselves with his blood.
At another spot in the same Bay a trading schooner was seized just
afterwards by order of another Hau-Hau fanatic, and all on board
killed save two half-caste boys. A force of militia soon dealt out
condign punishment for these misdeeds, but meanwhile Kereopa and his
fellow fire-brands had passed down the coast and kindled a flame which
gradually crept southward even to Hawkes Bay. In village after village
the fire blazed up, and a rising equal to that in the Waikato seemed
imminent. It was, indeed, fortunate that much the ablest warrior on
that side of the island at once declared against the craze. This was
Ropata Te Wahawaha, then and afterwards the most valuable Maori ally
the Government had, and one of the very few captains on either side
who went through the wars without anything that could be called a
defeat. Without fear or pity, he was a warrior of the older Maori
type, who with equal enjoyment could plan a campaign, join in a
hand-to-hand tussle, doom a captive to death, or shoot a deserter
with his own rifle. As he would not join the Hau-Haus, they and their
converts made the mistake of attacking him. After beating them off
he was joined by Major Biggs and a company of militia. Together they
advanced against the stronghold of the insurgents, perched on a cliff
among the Waiapu hills. By scaling a precipice with twenty picked men,
Ropata and Biggs gained a crest above the _pa_, whence they could fire
down into the midst of their astonished adversaries, over 400 of whom
surrendered in terror to the daring handful. But the mischief had run
down the coast. Spreading from point to point, dying down and then
starting up, it was as hard to put out as fire abroad in the fern. The
amiable Kereopa visited Poverty Bay, three days' journey south of
the Waiapu, and tried hard to persuade the natives to murder Bishop
Williams, the translator of the Scriptures into Maori. Though they
shrank from this, the Bishop had to fly, and his flock took up arms,
stood a siege in one of their _pas_, and lost over a hundred men
before they would surrender to the militia. Further south still the
next rising flared up on the northern frontier of the Hawkes Bay
province. Once more Ropata stamped it under, and the generalship with
which he repaired the mistakes made by others, and routed a body
of 500 insurgents was not more remarkable than the cold-blooded
promptitude with which after the fight he shot four prisoners of note
with his own hand. It took ten months for the spluttering fire to
flame up again. Then it was yet another stage further south, within a
few miles of Napier, amid pastoral plains, where, if anywhere, peace,
it would seem, should have an abiding-place. The rising there was
but a short one-act play. To Colonel Whitmore belonged the credit of
dealing it a first and final blow at Omaranui, where, with a hastily
raised force of volunteers, and some rather useless friendlies, he
went straight at the insurgents, caught them in the open, and quickly
killed, wounded, or captured over ninety per cent. of their number.
After this there was a kind of insecure tranquillity until June, 1868.
Then fighting began again near the coast between Wanganui and Mount
Egmont, where the occupation of confiscated lands bred bitter
feelings. Natives were arrested for horse-stealing. Straggling
settlers were shot. A chief, Titokowaru, hitherto insignificant,
became the head and front of the resistance. In June a sudden attack
was made by his people upon some militia holding a tumble-down
redoubt--an attack so desperate that out of twenty-three in the work,
only six remained unwounded when help came, after two hours' manful
resistance. Colonel McDonnell, then in command on the coast, had
proved his dash and bravery in a score of bush-fights. In his various
encounters he killed ten Maoris with his own hand. He was an expert
bushman, and a capital manager of the friendly natives. But during
the eighteen months of quiet the trained militia which had done such
excellent work in 1865 and 1866, had been in part dispersed. The force
which in July McDonnell led into the bush to attempt Titokowaru's
_pa_, at Ngutu-o-te-manu (Beak-of-the-bird) was to a large extent raw
material. The Hau-Haus were found fully prepared. Skilfully posted,
they poured in a hot cross-fire, both from the _pa_ and from an ambush
in the neighbouring thickets. Broken into two bodies, McDonnell's men
were driven to make a long and painful retreat, during which two died
of exhaustion. They lost twenty-four killed and twenty-six wounded.
McDonnell resigned in disgust. Whitmore, who replaced him, demanded
better men, and got them, but to meet no better success. At Moturoa
his assault on another forest stockade failed under a withering fire;
the native contingent held back sulkily; and again our men retreated,
with a loss this time of forty-seven, of which twenty-one were killed.
This was on November 5th. Before Whitmore could try again he was
called to the other side of the island by evil tidings from Poverty
Bay.
These had their cause in the strangest story of the Maori wars.
Amongst the many blunders in these, some of the oddest were the
displays of rank carelessness which repeatedly led to the escape of
Maori prisoners. Three times did large bodies get away and rejoin
their tribes--once from Sir George Grey's island estate at Kawau,
where they had been turned loose on parole; once from a hulk in
Wellington Harbour, through one of the port-holes of which they
slipped into the sea on a stormy night; the third time from the
Chatham Islands. This last escape, which was in July, 1868, was
fraught with grave mischief.
Fruitlessly the officer in charge of prisoners there had protested
against being left with twenty men to control three hundred and thirty
captives. The leader of these, Te Kooti, one of the ablest as well
as most ferocious partisans the colonists ever had to face, had been
deported from Poverty Bay to the Chathams two years before, without
trial. Unlike most of his fellow prisoners he had never borne arms
against us. The charge against him was that he was in communication
with Hau-Hau insurgents in 1865. His real offence seems to have
been that he was regarded by some of the Poverty Bay settlers as
a disagreeable, thievish, disaffected fellow, and there is an
uncomfortable doubt as to whether he deserved his punishment. During
his exile he vowed vengeance against those who had denounced him, and
against one man in particular. In July, 1868, the schooner _Rifleman_
was sent down to the Chathams with supplies. The prisoners took the
chance thus offered. They surprised the weak guard, killed a sentry
who showed fight, and seized and tied up the others, letting the women
and children escape unharmed. Going on board the _Rifleman_, Te Kooti
gave the crew the choice between taking his people to New Zealand and
instant death. They chose the former, and the schooner set sail
for the east coast of New Zealand with about one hundred and sixty
fighting men, and a number of women and children. The outbreak and
departure were successfully managed in less than two hours. When head
winds checked the runaways, Te Kooti ordered an old man, his uncle, to
be bound and thrown overboard as a sacrifice to the god of winds and
storms. The unhappy human sacrifice struggled for awhile in the sea
and then sank. At once the wind changed, the schooner lay her course,
and the _mana_ of Te Kooti grew great. After sailing for a week,
the fugitives had their reward, and were landed at Wharé-onga-onga
(Abode-of-stinging-nettles), fifteen miles from Poverty Bay. They kept
their word to the crew, whom they allowed to take their vessel and go
scot-free. Then they made for the interior. Major Biggs, the Poverty
Bay magistrate, got together a force of friendly natives and went
in pursuit. The Hau-Haus showed their teeth to such effect that the
pursuers would not come to close quarters. Even less successful
was the attempt of a small band of White volunteers. They placed
themselves across Te Kooti's path; but after a long day's skirmishing
were scattered in retreat, losing their baggage, ammunition, and
horses. Colonel Whitmore, picking them up next day, joined them to his
force and dragged them off after him in pursuit of the victors. It
was winter, and the weather and country both of the roughest. The
exhausted volunteers, irritated by Whitmore's manner, left him
half-way. For himself the little colonel, all wire and leather, knew
not fatigue. But even the best of his men were pretty well worn out
when they did at last catch a Tartar in the shape of the enemy's
rearguard. The latter made a stand under cover, in an angle of the
narrow bed of a mountain-torrent floored with boulders and shut in
by cliffs. Our men, asked to charge in single file, hung back, and a
party of Native allies sent round to take the Hau Haus in flank made
off altogether. Though Te Kooti was shot through the foot, the pursuit
had to be given up. The net result of the various skirmishes with him
had been that we had lost twenty-six killed and wounded, and that he
had got away.
Whitmore went away to take command on the west coast. Thus Te Kooti
gained time to send messengers to the tribes, and many joined him. He
spoke of himself as God's instrument against the _Pakeha_, preached
eloquently, and kept strict discipline amongst his men. In November,
after a three months' lull, he made his swoop on his hated enemies the
settlers in Poverty Bay, and in a night surprise took bloody vengeance
for his sojourn at the Chathams. His followers massacred thirty-three
white men, women and children, and thirty-seven natives. Major Biggs
was shot at the door of his house. Captain Wilson held out in his till
it was in flames. Then he surrendered under promise of life for his
family, all of whom, however, were at once bayonetted, except a boy
who slipped into the scrub unnoticed. McCulloch, a farmer, was shot as
he sat milking. Several fugitives owed their lives to the heroism of a
friendly chief, Tutari, who refused to gain his life by telling their
pursuers the path they had taken. The Hau Haus killed him and seized
his wife, who, however, adroitly saved both the flying settlers and
herself by pointing out the wrong track. Lieutenant Gascoigne with a
hasty levy of friendly Natives set out after the murderers, only to be
easily held in check at Makaretu with a loss of twenty-eight killed
and wounded. Te Kooti, moreover, intercepted an ammunition train and
captured eight kegs of gunpowder. Fortifying himself on a precipitous
forest-clad hill named Ngatapa, he seemed likely to rally round him
the disaffected of his race. But his red star was about to wane.
Ropata with his Ngatiporou now came on the scene. A second attack
on Makaretu sent the insurgents flying. They left thirty-seven dead
behind, for Ropata gave no quarter, and had not his men loitered to
plunder, Te Kooti, who, still lame, was carried off on a woman's back,
must have been among their prizes. Pushing on to Ngatapa, Ropata found
it a very formidable stronghold. The _pa_ was on the summit of
an abrupt hill, steep and scarped on two sides, narrowing to a
razor-backed ridge in the rear. In front three lines of earthwork rose
one above another, the highest fourteen feet high, aided and connected
by the usual rifle-pits and covered way. Most of Ropata's men refused
to follow him against such a robbers' nest, and though the fearless
chief tried to take it with the faithful minority, he had to fall
back, under cover of darkness, and return home in a towering passion.
A month later his turn came. Whitmore arrived. Joining their forces,
he and Ropata invested Ngatapa closely, attacked it in front and
rear, and took the lowest of the three lines of intrenchment. A final
assault was to come next morning. The Hau Haus were short of food
and water, and in a desperate plight. But one cliff had been left
unwatched, and over that they lowered themselves by ropes as the
storming party outside sat waiting for the grey dawn. They were not,
however, to escape unscathed. Ropata at once sent his men in chase.
Hungry and thirsty, the fugitives straggled loosely, and were cut down
by scores or brought back. Short shrift was theirs. The Government
had decided that Poverty Bay must be revenged, and the prisoners were
forthwith shot, and their bodies stripped and tossed over a cliff.
From first to last at Ngatapa the loss to the Hau Haus was 136 killed
outright, ours but 22, half of whom were wounded only. It was the last
important engagement fought in New Zealand, and ended all fear of a
general rising. Yet in one respect the success was incomplete: Te
Kooti once more escaped. This time he reached the fastnesses of the
wild Urewera tribe, and made more than one bloodstained raid thence.
In April he pounced on Mohaka, at the northern end of the Hawkes Bay
Province, killed seven whites, fooled the occupants of a Native _pa_
into opening their gates to him, and then massacred 57 of them. But
the collapse of the insurrection on the West Coast enabled attention
to be concentrated upon the marauder. He fell back on the plateau
round Lake Taupo. There, in June, 1869, he outwitted a party of
militia-men by making his men enter their camp, pretending to be
friendlies. When the befooled troopers saw the trick and tried to
seize their arms, nine were cut down. McDonnell, however, was at the
heels of the Hau Haus, and in three encounters in the Taupo region Te
Kooti was soundly beaten with a loss of 50 killed. He became a hunted
fugitive. Ropata and Kemp chased him from district to district,
backwards and forwards, across and about the island, for a high price
had been put on his head. For three years the pursuit was urged or
renewed. Every band Te Kooti got together was scattered. His wife
was taken; once he himself was shot in the hand; again and again the
hunters were within a few yards of their game. Crossing snow-clad
ranges, wading up the beds of mountain torrents, hacking paths through
the tangled forest, they were ever on his track, only to miss him.
It was in the Uriwera wilderness that Te Kooti lost his congenially
bloodthirsty crony Kereopa, who was caught there and hung. Left almost
without followers, he himself at last took refuge in the King Country,
where he stayed quiet and unmolested. In the end he received a pardon,
and died in peace after living for some twenty years after his hunters
had abandoned their chase.
Colonel Whitmore, crossing to the Wanganui district after the fall of
Ngatapa, had set off to deal with Titokowaru. He, however, threw up
the game and fled to the interior, where he was wisely left alone,
and, except for the fruitless pursuit of Te Kooti, the year 1870 may
be marked as the end of warfare in New Zealand.
The interest of the Maori struggle, thus concluded, does not spring
from the numbers engaged. To a European eye the combats were in point
of size mere battles of the frogs and mice. What gave them interest
was their peculiar and picturesque setting, the local difficulties to
be met, and the boldness, rising at moments to heroism, with which
clusters of badly armed savages met again and again the finest
fighting men of Europe. It was the race conflict which gave dignity
to what Lieutenant Gudgeon in his chronicle truthfully reduces to
"expeditions and skirmishes grandiloquently styled campaigns". Out of
a multitude of fights between 1843 and 1870, thirty-seven (exclusive
of the raid on Poverty Bay, which was a massacre) may be classed as of
greater importance than the rest. Out of these we were unmistakably
beaten nine times, and a tenth encounter, that of Okaihau, was
indecisive. Of twenty-seven victories, however, those of Rangi-riri
and Orakau were dearly bought; in the double fight at Nukumaru we lost
more than the enemy, and at Waireka most of our forces retreated,
and only heard of the success from a distance. Two disasters and six
successes were wholly or almost wholly the work of native auxiliaries.
The cleverness and daring of the Maori also scored in the repeated
escapes of batches of prisoners.
By 1870 it was possible to try and count the cost of the ten years'
conflict. It was not so easy to do so correctly. The killed alone
amounted to about 800 on the English side and 1,800 on the part of the
beaten natives. Added to the thousands wounded, there had been many
scores of "murders" and heavy losses from disease, exposure and
hardship. The Maoris were, for the most part, left without hope and
without self-confidence. The missionaries never fully regained
their old moral hold upon the race, nor has it shown much zeal and
enthusiasm in industrial progress. On the other side, the colonists
had spent between three and four millions in fighting, and for more
than fifteen years after the war they had to keep up an expensive
force of armed police. There had been destruction of property in
many parts of the North Island, and an even more disastrous loss
of security and paralysis of settlement. Since 1865, moreover, the
pastoral industry in the south had been depressed by bad prices. It
is true that some millions of acres of Maori land had been gained by
confiscation, but of this portions were handed over to loyal natives.
Much more was ultimately given back to the insurgent tribes, and the
settlement of the rest was naturally a tardy and difficult process.
Farmers do not rush upon land to be the mark of revengeful raids. The
opening of the year 1870 was one of New Zealand's dark hours.
Nevertheless, had the colonists but known it, the great native
difficulty was destined to melt fast away. Out of the innumerable
perplexities, difficulties, and errors of the previous generation, a
really capable Native Minister had been evolved. This was Sir Donald
McLean, who, from the beginning of 1869 to the end of 1876, took
the almost entire direction of the native policy. A burly, patient,
kindly-natured Highlander, his Celtic blood helped him to sympathize
with the proud, warlike, clannish nature of the Maori. It was largely
owing to his influence that Ropata and others aided us so actively
against Te Kooti. It was not, however, as a war minister, but as the
man who established complete and lasting peace through New Zealand,
that his name should be remembered. By liberal payment for service, by
skilful land purchases, by showing respect to the chiefs, and tact and
good humour with the people, McLean acquired a permanent influence
over the race. The war party in the Colony might sneer at his "Flour
and Sugar Policy"; but even the dullest had come to see by this time
that peace paid. Into the remnant of the King Country McLean never
tried to carry authority. He left that and the Urewera country further
east discreetly alone. Elsewhere the Queen's writ ran, and roads,
railways, and telegraphs, coming together with a great tide of
settlement, made the era of war seem like an evil dream. It is true
that the delays in redeeming promises concerning reserves to be made
and given back from the confiscated Maori territory were allowed to
remain a grievance for more than another decade, and led, as late as
1880, to interference by the natives with road making in some of this
lost land of theirs in Taranaki. There, round a prophet named Te
Whiti, flocked numbers of natives sore with a sense of injustice.
Though Te Whiti was as pacific as eccentric, the Government, swayed
by the alarm and irritation thus aroused, took the extreme step of
pouring into his village of Parihaka an overwhelming armed force.
Then, after reading the Riot Act to a passive and orderly crowd of
men, women and children, they proceeded to make wholesale arrests, to
evict the villagers and to destroy houses and crops. Public opinion,
which had conjured up the phantom of an imminent native rising,
supported the proceeding. There was no such danger, for the natives
were virtually not supplied with arms, and the writer is one of a
minority of New Zealanders who thinks that our neglect to make the
reserves put us in the wrong in the affair. However, as the breaking
up of Parihaka was at last followed up by an honourable and liberal
settlement of the long-delayed Reserves question, it may be classed as
the last of the long series of native alarms. There will be no more
Maori wars. Unfortunately, it has become a question whether in a
hundred years there will be any more Maoris. They were perhaps,
seventy thousand when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed; they and the
half-castes can scarcely muster forty-three thousand now.