THE CAMP OF THE HAUHAUS
In the Maori country--Arrival at a Hauhau _Pa_--Maori village
scenes--The ceremonies round the sacred flagstaff--"_Riré, riré,
hau!_"--The man with the tomahawk--A white slave--The painted
warriors of Keteonetea--The blazing oven.
The saturnine Hauhau spoke little to the white man during that journey
to the rebel camp. He stalked silently on in front, his rifle over
his shoulder, turning quickly now and again to assure himself that
the soldier was still following him. Presently they forded another
stream, which Bent afterwards came to know as the Ingahape, and passed
through a deserted settlement, with its tumble-down dwellings of
_raupo_ reeds, and its old potato-gardens. A few minutes later they
came in sight of their destination, the Ohangai _pa_. A high stockade
of tree-trunks sunk in the ground, some of the upper ends hewn into
sharp points, others with round knobby tops that suggested impaled
human heads, surrounded a populous village of thatched huts. Just
beyond it was the bush, stretching away as far as the eye could carry.
It was a secluded, pretty scene, that village with its neat enclosure,
its rows of snug _wharés_ which could be seen through the gateway and
the openings in the palisade, and its squares of maize and potato
cultivations, sheltered by the friendly belt of dark green forest.
Some little, nearly naked children were playing about on the open space
in front of the palisades. When they suddenly beheld a white man riding
along towards them, with a Maori walking by his stirrup, they stared
wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and then rushed helter-skelter into the
_pa_, calling out at the top of their voices, "_He pakeha, he pakeha!_"
What a commotion that cry of "_Pakeha_" aroused in the slumbering _pa_!
Men leaped from the flax _whariki_ (mats), where they had been drowsing
away the afternoon awaiting the opening of the steam ovens, and poured
out of the narrow gateway armed with their guns and tomahawks. When
they saw that the European was a harmless, unarmed individual, and that
he was apparently the prisoner of one of their own people, the clamour
died away, and they escorted the soldier and his captor into the _pa_.
Bent quickly perceived that his companion was a man of some importance,
from the peremptory orders he issued and the alacrity with which they
were obeyed. The scout was, in fact, the chief Tito te Hanataua, a
_rangatira_ of high standing in the Ngati-Ruanui tribe, and one of the
Hauhaus' best fighting-leaders.
It was a wild scene that met the young soldier's gaze when he entered
the stockade, and his heart sank before the savagely hostile gaze
of a crowd of armed, half-stripped warriors, the black-bearded and
shaggy-headed men of the bush, and their scarcely less savage-looking
women.
A strange ceremony began.
In the centre of the village square or _marae_ stood a rough-hewn
pole or flagstaff, about fifteen feet high, on which flew one or two
coloured flags. This was the _Niu_, the sacred staff which the Hauhau
prophet Te Ua had commanded his followers to erect as a pole of worship
in each of their villages. [The _Niu_ was in more ancient times the
name of a peculiar ceremony of divination often resorted to by the
_tohungas_ or priests; it is perhaps worth noting, too, that in the
Islands of Polynesia, the traditional Maori Hawaiki, it is the general
name for the coco-nut-tree.] All the inhabitants of the village--men,
women, and children--formed up, and began to march round and round
the _Niu_, with a priest in their midst, rushing frantically to and
fro, and brandishing a Maori weapon as he yelled a ferocious-sounding
chant. The people, too, lifted up their voices as they marched, and,
after listening a while, Bent found to his astonishment that part of
what they were chanting in a singular wild cadence were these words in
"pidgin" English: "Big river, long river, big mountain, long mountain,
bush, big bush, long bush," and so on, ending with a loudly chanted
cry, "_Riré, riré, hau!_" This meaningless gibberish formed part of the
incantations solemnly taught to the Hauhaus by Te Ua, who professed to
have the "gift of tongues" of which the _pakeha's_ New Testament spoke;
his disciples fondly believed that they were endowed by their prophet's
"angel" with wonderful linguistic powers.
The singular march suddenly ceased, at an order from the shawl-kilted
_tohunga_ in the centre, and then the people filed into the village
meeting-house, a large _raupo_-reed-built structure, taking Bent
with them. He was motioned to a seat beside a Maori, whose name, he
afterwards found, was Hori Kerei (George Grey), and who could speak
English fairly well.
Sitting opposite Bent was a white-bearded old fighting-man, a
dour-faced savage, his brown face deeply scored with the marks of
blue-black tattoo; his sole attire was a blanket; in his right hand,
and partly concealed by the blanket, he held a tomahawk. His hand
twitched now and then, as if he were about to flash out the tomahawk
and use it on the _pakeha_, from whose face he never withdrew his
fierce old eyes. He was the chief, Te Rangi-tutaki.
A long talk began. Hori Kerei interpreted. The Maoris asked Bent why
he had come to them, why had he run away from his own people. The
deserter frankly told them that he was tired of being a soldier, that
he had been ill-treated and imprisoned, and that he came to them for
protection.
"_Pakeha_," said Kerei, "they want to know if you will ever leave the
Maori and go back to the soldiers."
"No," said Bent; "tell them I'll never run away from the Hauhaus. I
want to live with them always; I don't ever want to see a white man
again!"
"_Kapai!_" said Grey good-humouredly. "That the talk! All right, I tell
them true."
When Kerei had interpreted the white man's reply, the old man with the
tomahawk leaned over and said, very earnestly, tapping the blade of the
weapon with his left hand as he spoke:
"_Whakarongo mai!_ Listen, _pakeha_! You see this _patiti_ in my hand?
Yes. If you had not at once replied that you would never return to the
white soldiers I would have killed you. I would have sunk this into
your skull!"
After this brief speech, delivered with a fierceness of mien and
glitter of eye that made the refugee tremble in spite of his efforts to
appear calm, the old barbarian shook hands with him.
Then Tito te Hanataua--the man who had brought the soldier to the
_pa_--rose and said:
"O my tribe, listen to me! Take good care of the _pakeha_, and harm him
not, because our prophet has told us that if any white men come to us
as this man has done, and leave their own tribe for ours, we must not
injure them, but must keep them with us and protect them."
Tito's word assured Bent's safety, and the tone of the people changed
to one of friendliness; many of them shook hands with the lonely white
man. The women cooked some pork and potatoes for him in an earth-oven,
and he was given to eat, and received into the tribe. Henceforth he was
as a Maori.
Now began for the runaway an even harder life than that which he had
endured in the army. He found that he was virtually a slave amongst
the Maoris. He had had fond imaginings of the easy time he would enjoy
in the heart of Maoridom, but to quote from his own lips, "they made
me work like a blessed dog." Soon after his arrival in the _pa_ a
party of men was sent off to Taiporohenui--a celebrated old village
and meeting-place near the present town of Hawera--and he was ordered
to go with them, and was set to work felling bush, clearing and
digging, gathering firewood, and hauling water for the camp. Tito was
his master--not only his master, but in hard fact his owner, with
power of life and death over him. Bent divined the Maori nature too
well to refuse "fatigue duty," as he had done in the Manawapou camp.
There would have been no court-martial in Taiporohenui--just a crack
on the head with a tomahawk. So he bent his back to the burdens with
what cheerfulness he might, and was thankful for the good things Tito
provided, though they took no more elaborate form than a blanket and a
flax mat for a bed, and two square meals a day of pork and potatoes.
Tito was, says Bent, a man of about forty-five years of age, a stern,
but not unkindly owner, with a pretty young wife of seventeen or
eighteen, whose big, dark eyes were often turned with an expression of
pity on the unfortunate renegade _pakeha_.
The people watched the white man closely, thinking no doubt that as
he was being worked so hard he might be tempted to run away if he got
the chance. And whenever he went out of doors the old man who had sat
opposite him in the meeting-house on the day of his first arrival
followed him about, never speaking a word, with his tomahawk in his
hand.
The news that a white soldier had run away to the Hauhaus soon spread
amongst the Ngati-Ruanui. One day a messenger from the large village of
Keteonetea came to Taiporohenui and announced that he had been sent to
fetch the strange _pakeha_ to that settlement.
"What do they want with me?" asked Bent, when Tito told him that the
envoy was waiting for him.
"They want to see the colour of your skin," replied Tito.
Bent, in alarm, begged Tito not to send him to Keteonetea, for he
greatly feared that he would be killed.
Tito reassured his white man, telling him that the Keteonetea people
were his relatives, and that he was not to be alarmed at their
demeanour, because they would not harm him.
The messenger and his white charge tramped away through the bush to
the village, a lonely little spot hemmed in by the dense forests--long
since hewn away and replaced by grassy fields and dairy farms. A
palisade surrounded the _kainga_; within were clusters of large
well-built reed _wharés_, and the inevitable _Niu_ pole stood in the
middle of the _marae_.
Bent found a large number of Maoris, about three hundred, assembled on
the _marae_, the village parade ground. The scene still lives vividly
in his memory--an even wilder, more savage spectacle than that of his
first day at Tito's _pa_. The men's faces were painted red, in token of
war--red smudges of ochre on their cheeks and red lines drawn across
their brows; they wore feathers in their hair, their only clothes were
flax mats. The lone _pakeha_ might well have imagined himself back
in the days of ancient Maoridom, before missionaries or traders had
changed the barbaric simplicity of the aboriginal life. The only modern
note was the firearms of the warriors; all the men carried guns (most
of them double-barrelled shot-guns, and a few rifles and carbines),
and wore tomahawks stuck in their broad-plaited flax belts. Most of
the women were as primitive in their garb as the men; their clothing
consisted chiefly of flaxen cloaks; a few wore shawls and blankets.
"The people looked at me very fiercely as I came into the _marae_,"
says Bent, "and I felt my heart sinking low, in spite of Tito's
assurance." They put him into a _raupo_ hut by himself, and fastened
the door--a proceeding that did not at all tend to elevate his spirits.
The ex-soldier was left to himself in the dark _wharé_ for quite a
couple of hours. He could hear the people gathered on the village
square discussing him excitedly; one orator after another declaiming
with frantic energy. At length a Maori unfastened the door of the
_wharé_, and, taking Bent by the hand, led him out on to the _marae_.
The native could speak English; Bent afterwards found that he had been
an old whaler, and had lived amongst white people for many years;
his name was Kere (Kelly). He told the _pakeha_, with some show of
kindness, that he must not be frightened, that no one would harm him,
but he must go to the sacred _Niu_ and promise that he would never
return to the _pakehas_.
The first thing that met Bent's eyes on stepping out through the low
doorway of the _wharé_ was a great fire blazing in the centre of the
_marae_, surrounded by a ring of short stakes. Accustomed as he was by
this time to sights of terror, this struck a fresh note of alarm.
"Good Lord!" he said to himself, "are they going to burn me alive?"
"Friend," he said to Kere, "tell me, what's that fire for?"
The Maori explained that it was an _ahi tapu_, a sacred fire, used in
the Hauhau war-rites.
Bent was very doubtful. "I'm afraid," said he to his companion, "that
it's for me! Are they going to throw me into it? I've heard they do
such things."
"No, no, _pakeha_! It's all right. You'll be safe. But remember, do as
the _tohunga_ tells you, and promise him you'll never go back to the
_pakeha_ soldiers, or you'll die!"
The Maori led the white man up to the foot of the _Niu_ pole, a tall
ricker, with rough crosstrees and with flag halliards of flax rope.
Bent was told to sit down at the foot of the pole. The people all
gathered around in a ring.
A tall old warrior stood in the middle of the ring, facing Bent--the
prophet of the _Niu_. He was naked from the waist up; his face was
completely covered with tattooing. He was a _tohunga_, or priest, Bent
afterwards discovered; by name Tu-ahi-pa, or Tautahi-ariki, a man held
in much awe by the people as a worker of _makutu_ (witchcraft).
For a long time the old wizard closely eyed the pale-faced stranger
before him. Then he said, through the interpreter, Kere:
"You behold this ring of people, the people of Keteonetea?"
"Yes," said Bent.
"I ask you this, will you return to your people or remain with us?"
"I will never return to the _pakehas_," Bent replied; "I want to live
with the Maoris and to make them my people."
"Good!" exclaimed the Hauhau priest. "Now, turn your eyes upon yon
fire, burning there upon the _marae_. Well, if you had not promised to
become a Maori and live with us, the tribe would have thrown you into
that blazing oven. It is well that you have spoken as you have."
This, to Bent's great relief, ended the ordeal. The Hauhaus, at a cry
from the priest, began their mad march round the _Niu_--men, women, and
children--chanting as they went their savage psalms, rolling their
eyes and lifting their arms high in the air as every now and again they
cried their wild refrain, "_Riré, riré, hau!_"--the last word literally
barked out from the hundreds of throats.
When the Hauhau ceremony was at an end, a young woman who had joined
in the march round the _Niu_ came to Bent, took him away to a hut and
gave him a meal of pork and potatoes, and then led him to her father's
house. The father was the principal chief of the _kainga_, and, as it
turned out, cousin to Bent's _rangatira_ Tito.
Here the white man spent the night, the chief's daughter lying across
the entrance just inside the doorway, for fear--as the chief told
him--that some young desperado might take it into his head to earn a
little notoriety by tomahawking the pale-face. Outside, the Maoris
were gathered on the _marae_, by the light of great fires, the chiefs
making speeches and _taki_-ing up and down in excited fashion, weapon
in hand; now and again the fanatic crowd would burst into a loud Hauhau
chant that echoed long amidst the black encircling forest. So the wild
_korero_ went on, far into the night.