SKIRMISHING AND FORT-BUILDING
Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu abandoned--On the march again--Skirmishing
on the Patea--_Pakeha_ in pickle--A new stockade--Bent the
_pa_-builder.
The famous "Bird's-Beak" _pa_, made so memorable by the terrible scenes
enacted around and within its stockade, was soon deserted.
Titokowaru, not long after the Hauhau victory and the savage rites
narrated in the last chapter, issued an order that the village must
be evacuated, and a new position selected for a bush-fort in which to
withstand the attack that must inevitably be delivered against him
by the Government. So one day the whole of the inhabitants of the Te
Ngutu-o-te-Manu--men, women, and children, and the solitary white
man--having gathered together their belongings, marched out of their
village and tramped away through the bush eastwards. The armed men of
the _Tekau-ma-rua_ preceded them, to make sure that the way was clear
of the _pakeha_ enemy.
At the village of Turangaréré and at Taiporohenui they dwelt for a
while, and the warriors scouted out day after day in the vicinity of
the European redoubts. A little skirmishing occurred; some shots were
fired at the Turuturu-Mokai redoubt, now re-garrisoned, and a sniping
party amused themselves, with the Manawapou Camp as a target. Before
very long Bent and his companions were once more on the move, swagging
through the bush to the Patea Valley. The scene of war was now to be
the Lower Patea and the Waitotara, whence Titokowaru, it was believed,
intended to raid the town of Wanganui.
For some weeks Titoko and his Hauhaus camped in the Oruatihi _pa_.
Then they shifted to Otoia, near the banks of the Patea, where they
built a redoubt, from which they could fire into the European position
at Manutahi. The fortification was finished in a day and a night, all
hands, men and women, toiling at it, Bent amongst them. Some dug the
trenches with their spades, some carried earth in flax baskets, and
others piles of flax and fern, with which they built up the parapets.
Early in the morning the day after the _pa_ was completed there was a
brush with the Government forces. A column of Armed Constabulary and
Wanganui Maoris made a reconnaissance up the cliffy, forest-fringed
banks of the Patea in the direction of the Hauhau redoubt. Titoko's
men attacked them, lining both sides of the river. The troops retired
to their tea after a pretty little skirmish; and the Hauhaus marched
back to the _pa_ in high jubilation, singing war-songs, waving their
guns, and bounding about and grimacing like a company of fiends. Then
the steaming pork and potatoes, and speech-making and howling _hakas_
around the great camp-fires. From the Maori point of view, quite a
pleasant day's sport.
During the two months following the bush fight at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu
no serious engagement occurred, but Titokowaru's war-parties scoured
the district for many miles, laid ambuscades on the tracks between the
European redoubts, burned settlers' houses, and bagged a stray _pakeha_
or two.
One incident of this period illustrates the peculiar ghoulish humour of
the Hauhau savage. Two friendly Maoris--Nga-hina and another--who were
mail-carriers in the Government service, halted awhile at Manawapou one
day, while on their way to Patea, and searched the settlement there for
the wherewithal for a dinner. A cask stood beside one of the _wharés_,
and on taking the top off they found it to be a barrel of brine,
containing meat--apparently pork.
Anticipating a good meal of salt pork, they fished up some of the meat.
They found to their disgust that it was human flesh!--"Long-pig!" Not
being Hauhaus or cannibals, they dropped the man-meat--white man--back
into the cask and stayed their hunger on good honest potatoes.
The question was, who pickled the _pakeha_? A Hauhau prisoner some time
later enlightened the Government Maoris. A scouting party from Titoko's
camp had dodged down to Manawapou, and discovered there, not far from
the redoubt--which had been temporarily vacated by the troops--a
new-made grave. Opening it, they disinterred a white man's corpse. In
sheer devilment they cut it up, put it into a cask of brine that stood
handy, and then recovered the cask and left it.
It would have been an exquisite joke, from the cannibal Hauhau
view-point, had the Government soldiers unknowingly helped themselves
to a joint of white man!
Titokowaru's entrenched position at Otoia was not a strong one, and
shortly he, after a council of war with his principal men, decided
to abandon it and build a new bush _pa_, which should be as nearly
impregnable as a Maori fort could be.
So one morning a long line of Hauhaus of all ages and both sexes--the
armed men in front and rear--bearing their simple belongings in
flax-basket _pikaus_ on their backs, left the Otoia redoubt, and
marched away through the bush to a spot about twelve miles from the
mouth of the Patea River and a mile and a half from the old Okotuku
_pa_, which had been attacked by the troops two years previously. At
this place, Moturoa--the "Song Bush," so called because of a long strip
of forest which covered the plain here--the war-chief ordered that the
new fort should be constructed.
The position was on partially cleared land, nearly level, surrounded
by the forest. The men, after hastily constructing huts, roofed with
the fronds of tree-fern and _nikau_, set to work with their axes to hew
out a large clearing. Titoko marked out the lines of the entrenchments
and palisades. The forest-trees quickly fell before the practised
assault of many bushmen, and the shrubby cover in front of the _pa_ was
carefully burned.
Then came the setting up of the stockade. _Tawa_ and other trees of
small size were cut into suitable lengths for the palisade-posts.
There were two rows of palisades; the outside one was the largest and
strongest. For the heavy outside row of stockading, timbers from eight
to twelve inches in diameter were sunk solidly in the ground, forming
a wall some ten feet high. Saplings were cut to serve as cross-ties or
rails to lash across the posts, and with supplejack and _aka_ vines the
whole were bound strongly and closely together.
Kimble Bent worked with the Hauhaus--toiling like a navvy, cutting
timber, setting up the great posts, lashing the palisading, and
digging trenches. He wore nothing but a rough flax mat round his
waist--trouserless, bootless, hatless. In everything but skin a Maori.
"It was exciting," says the white man, "but none the less it was
slavery. Many a night those times, when I lay down on my flax
_whariki_, though I was dog-tired, I could not sleep--thinking,
thinking over the past, and dreading what the future might bring me.
Many and many a time I wished myself dead and out of it all."
What furious, what Homeric toil was that _pa_-building! Those wild
brown men, spurred by the reports of speedy attack, laboured with
incredible energy and swiftness. The Moturoa fortified hold--which
later became known as Papa-tihakehake, because of the battle which
befell here--was completed in three days--stockaded, trenched,
parapeted, and rifle-pitted--ready for the enemy!
Behind the strong tree-trunk stockade there were trenches and casemated
rifle-pits from which the defenders could fire between the lower
interstices in the great war-fence; behind the trenches again was a
parapet from which a second line of Hauhaus could deliver their fire
over the top of the palisade. It was one of the strongest works yet
constructed by the Maoris, and one that was not likely to be stormed
except at the cost of many lives.