THE WAR-CHIEF AND HIS GODS
The war-chief Titokowaru--Ancient ceremonies and religion
revived--Uenuku, the god of battle--Titokowaru's _mana-tapu_--Bent
makes cartridges for the Hauhaus--A novel weapon.
The year 1867 was one of little activity amongst the Hauhaus with whom
"Ringiringi" lived, except in respect of their interminable meetings
and _Niu_-parades and prophesyings. Hostilities had been suspended by
both sides for the time, but the temporary peace was only the prelude
to the fiercest fighting of the Ten-Years' War.
The white man worked for his master Rupé all that year, digging and
planting, carrying wood and water, and performing, in fact, the duties
of a household slave. But it was a slavery that had its privileges and
its compensations, and there were long days of abundant food and little
work, in the intervals between the seasons of communal labour in the
potato-fields and the periodical birding and eeling and pig-hunting
expeditions.
It was while living at Te Paka that "Ringiringi" became well
acquainted with the celebrated Titokowaru, the great war-chief of
the Hauhaus. Titoko, as his name was usually abbreviated, came riding
into the little bush-village one day at the head of an armed band of
Ngati-Ruanui and Nga-Ruahiné men, and held a meeting in the _marae_,
urging the people to renew the war. He was travelling from village
to village, haranguing the Hauhaus, and explaining his new plan of
campaign, which briefly was to make surprise attacks on small isolated
redoubts garrisoned by the white soldiers, and to lay ambuscades.
He declared, too, that his tactics would be, not to build any more
stockaded forts in positions where the Europeans could easily reach
them, but to entice the troops into the midst of the forest, where the
Maori warrior would have the advantage. This scheme met with general
approval, and the tribespeople signified their intention of joining
Titoko and fighting his battles for him whenever he gave the word to
begin.
Titokowaru was the most brainy, as well as the most ferocious, of the
Taranaki chiefs who led the Hauhaus against the whites. It was his
strategy that was responsible for the most serious defeats inflicted
on the Government forces in the war of 1868-9. In appearance he was a
stern, commanding man, with a countenance disfigured by the loss of
an eye--reminder of the Battle of Sentry Hill. He was not tattooed.
"When roused," says Bent, "he had a voice like a roaring lion." In his
attire he was often quaintly _pakeha_, for he frequently appeared in
a black "hard-hitter" hat and a full suit of European clothing. He
carried no weapon but his sacred _taiaha_, his tongue-pointed staff of
hardwood, ornamented with a plume of red _kaka_ feathers.
The war-chief revived many a half-forgotten savage practice in the
campaign that followed. Besides being a Hauhau "prophet," he was a
_tohunga_, or priest, of the ancient Maori religion.
Before despatching a war-party he invariably recited the customary
spells (_karakia_) to ensure their success, and the worship, or rather
placation and invocation of Uenuku, the war-god, was resuscitated in
every armed camp and on every battle-field.
Titoko possessed, in a strong degree, what the Maoris termed
_mana-tapu_--personal _tapu_, or sacred prestige, heritage from his
priestly forefathers of Ariki rank. His body was sacred in Maori eyes,
and he was accredited with many a singular supernatural attribute:
"Even the winds of heaven are his," said the Hauhaus. When the
_whakarua_, the north-east breeze, blew, it was a fitting time for the
war-parties to set out, for the _whakarua_ was the breath of Uenuku,
Titoko's deity, and his familiar spirit, and it was an omen of success
in battle.
Bent gives some curious instances of Titokowaru's _mana-tapu_. Once,
when the white man was travelling through the forest with Titoko and
his band of Hauhaus, the chief's shoulder accidentally struck against a
flax kit containing some cooked potatoes which an old man was carrying
on his back. Titoko immediately ordered the man to throw the potatoes
and basket away, for the food had become infected, through contact with
the priest, with the mysterious and deadly microbe of the _tapu_, and
consequently unfit to be eaten. So the old fellow had to cast his day's
rations into the bushes and go fasting.
Titokowaru would suffer no rivals in the _pa_. Now and then it happened
during the war-days that some budding _tohunga_ would arise and
prophesy things, in bold opposition to the chief, and announce that his
familiar spirit, or his ancestral gods, had conferred priestly powers
upon him. Titoko had "a short way with dissenters." His usual and most
effective method of silencing the pretender was to take a basket of
potatoes in his hand and seek out his rival.
"What," he would say, "have you then an _atua_, a god of your own?"
Should the Hauhau be so imprudent as to answer "Yes," Titoko would
lift his potato-kit and set it on his rival's head. "That for your
_atua_!" It was enough. The other's _tapu_--if he ever had any--would
be immediately destroyed by such an act, for the head of man must
not be touched by food, and any self-respecting _atua_ would desert
a _tapu_-less Maori without delay. But no man dared, by way of
retaliation, to try the potato-basket trick on Titokowaru.
"Ringiringi" had now been nearly three years with the Maoris, and spoke
their language well. "I lived exactly like a Maori," he says; "worked
like a nigger, and always went about bare-footed. They would not give
me a gun, nor did they make me fight--for Titokowaru made me _tapu_,
and would not permit me to go out on the war-path--but I had to make
cartridges for them. They managed to get plenty of gunpowder; I have
often seen it brought in in casks and in 25 lb. weights. They got a
good deal of it from the neutral and so-called 'friendly' tribes,
who procured it from the _pakehas_. The Puketapu tribe, and some of
the Whanganuis, helped us in this way. I know there was a white man,
Moffatt, living on the Upper Wanganui River, who made a coarse powder
for the Hauhaus there, but I don't think any of it came our way. I had
a wooden cartridge-filler, and we always had plenty of old newspapers
to make the cartridge-cases. Bullets were plentiful, too, as a rule;
but sometimes in the bush, when the Hauhaus ran short, they would use
old iron, stones, and even pieces of hard wood. I have sometimes loaded
my cartridges with bits of supplejack, cut to size, when I had no lead
bullets."
In those bush-whacking days the Hauhaus made use of some remarkable
devices against their enemies. One of these Maori engines of war was
called a _tawhiti_, or trap. It was a sapling of some tough and
elastic timber, _matipo_ for choice. When a suitable one, about ten
feet long or so, was found growing in a likely position outside a _pa_
or alongside a bush-track by which the enemy were expected, it would
be stripped of its branches, and bent down and back without breaking
it, until it was lying in as near as possible a horizontal position,
so that it would sweep the road. The end was fastened with flax in
such a way that any unsuspecting person marching along the track or
approaching the village and touching the trap, would cause the flax to
slip, and release the _tawhiti_. The tree in its rebound could inflict
a terrible blow.
In 1866 Bent saw ten or twelve of these _tawhiti_ set on the tracks
just outside Te Popoia, a small _pa_ near Keteonetea. The place was
attacked by the Government forces in the night, and in the darkness
several of the _Kupapas_, or Government Maoris, who formed the advance
guard, were injured by the unexpected release and rebound of these
savage traps.[4]