THE TAURANGA-IKA STOCKADE
Another fighting _pa_ built--Scouting and skirmishing--The watcher
on the tower--McDonnell and Titokowaru--How Trooper Lingard won
the New Zealand Cross--Hairbreadth escapes--Pairama and the white
man's leg.
On the edge of the great forest, some miles to the south of the
Waitotara River, was the site of the olden Maori village, Tauranga-ika.
In front fern and grass lands stretched away to the sand-dunes of
the sea-coast, with here and there a small shallow lake; in the rear
was the dense and roadless bush, a perfect and safe retreat for the
Hauhaus in the event of defeat. The country hereabouts was dotted with
the white man's farmsteads; but the whites had been driven off before
Titokowaru's victorious army, leaving their homes, the labour of many
years, to go up in smoke, and their sheep and cattle to feed the Hauhau
bands. Wanganui town was only a day's march away, and Titokowaru's
council of chiefs, eager to follow up their victory at Moturoa,
proposed to assault the town and massacre every soul in it.
This old-time village was fixed on by the Hauhau war-chief as the site
of his new fighting _pa_, for he abandoned Papa-tihakehake soon after
the repulse of the white forces at that strong stockade. With the
wariness of the Maori strategist, he avoided a second attack in any one
entrenchment, and sooner than risk another, and possibly disastrous,
engagement at Papa-tihakehake, he took the trouble to construct an
even stronger fortification, a splendid example of native military
engineering genius.
In the building of this new _pa_, Kimble Bent and his Hauhau comrades
toiled early and late until it was completed. It was of large size,
fully defended with palisading, trenches, parapet, and rifle-pits. It
was between two and three chains in extreme length at the rear, with a
somewhat narrower front. The ground in front was bare of forest, but
carried high fern cover; on the flanks were burned clearings, dotted
with blackened tree-stumps and cumbered with logs; then the forest,
with some beautiful groves of _mahoé_ on its outskirts. Two rows of
palisades, high and strong, were erected around the position; the
posts, solid tree-trunks, were from six to twelve inches thick and ten
to fifteen feet high; the rows were four feet apart. The spaces between
the larger stockade-posts were filled in with saplings set upright
close together, and fastened by cross-rails and supplejack ties; these
saplings did not rest in the ground, but hung a few inches above it,
so that between them and the ground a space was left for the fire of
the defending musketeers, who were enabled to pour volleys from their
trenches inside the war-fence on any approaching enemy with perfect
safety to themselves. Behind the inner stockading was a parapet about
six feet high and four feet wide, formed of the earth thrown out of the
trenches. The interior of the _pa_ was pitted everywhere with trenches
and covered ways, so that in the event of attack the defenders could
literally take to the earth like rabbits, and live underground secure
from rifle-fire, and even from artillery. The place was a network of
trenches with connecting passages, roofed over with timber, _raupo_,
and _toetoe_ reeds and earth. To any assault that could be delivered
by the Government forces then available, the fort was practically
impregnable.
At one angle of the _pa_ the Hauhau garrison erected a roughly
timbered watch-tower, about thirty-five feet in height. This tower,
or _taumaihi_, was a feature of the ancient _pas_ of Maoridom; on its
upper platform a sentinel was posted, day and night, to give warning of
the approach of the enemy. In front of the _pa_, outside the palisades,
a tall flagstaff was set up, and on this staff the Hauhau war-flags
were hoisted. There were two gateways in the rear stockading, giving
access to the bush. In one end of the _pa_ near the rear was a small
tent occupied by Titokowaru. Bent, the cartridge-maker, lived in
a little rush-built _wharé_ towards the other end, near one of the
gateways.
When the stockade was finished the Hauhaus constructed a _tekoteko_,
a great marionette-like figure of a man, cut out of a _pukatea_-tree.
It was so placed that its head stood about fifteen feet above the
ground, well above the front stockade, and it had loose-jointed arms,
to which flax ropes were fastened, leading down to the trench below. By
manipulating these ropes the arms of the wooden warrior were made to
move in the actions of the _haka_, just as if some painted Hauhau were
dancing a dance of defiance on the fortress walls.
When the fort was finished the garrison gathered in their food
supplies, saw to their arms, and for many weeks waited for the
_pakeha_. Hauhau scouts and small war-parties daily sallied out from
the fort, seeking game in the shape of stray _pakehas_.
One of these savage man-hunters was a Ngati-Maniapoto man from the King
Country, whose name was Pairama, and who had married a Nga-Rauru woman.
He used to go out by himself, looking for some one or something to
kill. Te Pairama returned to the stockade in huge jubilation one day,
bearing as a trophy of his prowess on the trail a white man's leg! He
had, says Bent, scouted down until he was close to Kai-iwi. There he
spied a white settler in a grass paddock, carrying a rifle.
Down he crouched at once, and stealthily stalked the _pakeha_. Just
as the unsuspecting settler came to the paddock gate, the Maori leaped
out from behind the fence, with a furious snatch tore the rifle from
the man's grasp, and shot him dead with it. He cut off one of the
_pakeha's_ legs with his tomahawk, and brought it home as proof of
his success on the war-path as proudly as any Indian ever flourished
his take of scalps. Up and down the _marae_ of the _pa_ he bounded,
exhibiting the captured rifle and severed limb, yelling his war-song,
and loudly boasting that he would that night cook the _pakeha's_ leg
and eat it all himself.
But the warrior's braggadocio received a sharp check from Titokowaru.
The war-chief disapproved of this sort of thing on the part of
irresponsible young free-lances. "No man must bring white man's flesh
into this _pa_," he said, "unless he is one of the _Tekau-ma-rua_, the
war-party sent out by me. Take that _pakeha_ leg back again at once and
place it alongside the body." And soon thereafter the disgusted scout,
his ardour for "long-pig" so unexpectedly damped by Titoko's code of
cannibal etiquette, was to be seen trudging back along the track to the
_pakeha_ farm, with sulky visage and reluctant gait, and a white foot
and leg--raw--protruding from a flax basket strapped to his shoulders.
By day the scouting parties of the Hauhau "Twelve Apostles" scoured the
country; by night the people gathered round the fires on the _marae_
or in the big sleeping _wharés_, and talked and sang and danced the
_hakas_ of which they never wearied. Wild night-scenes those on the
stockaded _marae_, with the crowds of blanketed or flax-cloaked men and
women, their wild faces illumined by the leaping flames, squatting in
great circles round the camp fires, while more than half nude figures
leaped and stamped and slapped their limbs and chests with resounding
slaps, and expelled the air from their lungs in wolfish "Ooh's!" and
"Hau's!" as they trod the assembly ground in all the fury of the
war-dance. A warrior orator would rise, weapon in hand, and throwing
off his blanket for freedom of action, go bounding along the _marae_ in
front of the assemblage, shouting short, sharp sentences as he _taki_'d
to and fro, his athletic figure untrammelled except for a waist-shawl
or short dangling mat, fire in his movements, and ferocity in every
gesture and in every cry--the embodiment of belligerent Maoridom in its
savage prime.
Like defiant replying shouts from some hidden foe in the blackness of
the forest that rose in a solid wall above the rear stockade came the
clear echoes of the roaring _haka_ choruses.
And so the wild night passed, until the camp fires died down, and
the tribespeople sought sleep in their packed _wharepunis_ and
their rush-strewn burrows; and the melancholy "_Kou-kou_!" of the
"hundred-eyed" _ruru_, the bush-owl, was heard, as the bird-sentry
of the night hours cried his watchword from the forest or a perch on
some tall palisade-post. Yet not all eyes were closed in the _pa_, for
the Hauhaus, grown wise by much hard experience, did not neglect the
posting of sentries, and a sentinel watched from the platform in the
angle-tower. At intervals he cried his watch-cry, or raised his voice
in a night-song that rose and fell in measured cadences like a _tangi_
wail.
The most dreaded hour in Maori warfare was the dark, dank hour just
before the dawn, and then it was well to be on the qui vive, for Kepa's
dusky forest-rangers and their white comrades the A.C.'s had a truly
unpleasant fashion of attacking their enemies at most unholy, shivery
times, when man slept soundest. So the watchmen in the tower were
enjoined to extra vigilance in the early morning hours. And, as in the
olden Maori days, out rang the voice of the high sentinel, chanting his
ancient "_Whakaara-pa_," his "All's well" song, to Tarioa and Kopu, the
first and morning stars.
This is one of the songs he cried, an old watch-chant of the Ngati-Toa
tribe of Kawhia:
_Translation._
_Kia hiwa e!_ Now watchful be,
_Kia hiwa!_ O watchful be,
_Kia hiwa e tenei tuku,_ On this side and on that!
_Kia hiwa e tera tuku;_ Bend ears to every sound,
_Kia, whakarongo koe_ High up, high up
_Ki nga kupu._ The surf rolls in
_Whakapuru tonu,_ On Harihari's cliffs,
_Whakapuru tonu_ And loudly sounds the restless sea
_Te tai ki Harihari,_ On Mokau's coast.
_Ka tangi tere_ Now yonder, lo! the sun--
_Te tai ki Mokau._ The sun leaps up
_Ka ao atu te ra,_ Above the mountain-tops.
_Ka ao mai te ra_
_Ki tua o nga pae ra._
_E--e! I--a--we!_
Late one night, as the Hauhaus lay behind their palisades, Colonel
Thomas McDonnell--a man who spoke Maori like a native--rode boldly up
to the _pa_ wall with his escort, and asked for Titokowaru. He called
out in the native tongue, "O Titoko--where are you?"
Titoko, summoned from his tent, went down to the stockade. "I am here!"
he shouted.
The white officer cried: "Titoko, I have been trying to discover your
_atua_, the god which guides you in your battles. Now I have found
it--I know the source of your _mana_. When the wind blows hard from the
_whakarua_ (the north-east), I know it is the breath of your god, the
wind of Uenuku! But your _atua_ is only a _tutua_--a low fellow!"
Spoke Titoko angrily, and said: "McDonnell, go! Depart at once! If you
do not ride away directly, there will be a blazing oven ready for you!"
McDonnell rode away, and the angry chief returned to his tent. Why
McDonnell should have paid this daring night visit to the stockade is
not quite clear, but the incident is given just as Bent narrates it.
He and his companions on the _marae_ heard the dialogue, and Bent says
the old fear struck to his heart when he heard Titokowaru menacing
the white officer with the oven. The Taranakis seem to have been
particularly addicted to the "ordeal by fire."
"The oven is gaping open for you!" was their customary threat. Their
tribal history abounds, too, in tales of how some obnoxious neighbours
or others, Ngati-so-and-so, had been effectively disposed of by the
simple process of surrounding their huts while they slept, fastening
the doors, and then setting fire to the _wharés_. The only objection
from the Maori point of view to this summary method of obtaining _utu_
was that it "spoiled the meat!"
Colonel McDonnell was so conversant with Maori _tikanga_--customs,
rules of life, and ways of thought--that he was by way of being a
_tohunga_-Maori himself, and his dramatic twitting of Titokowaru with
the fact that the reputed source of his fighting _mana_ was within his
(McDonnell's) knowledge was a circumstance that hugely annoyed the old
war-chief.
It was just as if so much of his _mana-tapu_ had passed to his white
foeman--to the rival maker of strong "war-medicine."
Occasional skirmishes with the white cavalry patrol-parties enlivened
the three months' sojourn in Tauranga-ika. In one of these
rencontres a young Wanganui trooper--now a resident of Wellington--won
his New Zealand Cross. This was William Lingard, a member of Captain
John Bryce's troop of Kai-iwi Cavalry.
[Illustration: A HAUHAU SCOUT, TUTANGÉ WAIONUI, OF PATEA.]
Out scouting one day, Bryce took a party of his men boldly up to the
front of the stockade on a reconnaissance. The place was unusually
quiet, and a white flag was flying on the flagstaff in front of the
_pa_. One of the cavalrymen, Sergeant Maxwell, leaping a ditch and
hedge that intervened between the farm lands and the _pa_, raced right
up close to the stockade, and fired at it. Trooper Lingard, also
leaping the obstacles, with the rest of the detachment, rode up past
the _pa_. Lingard, though he could see nothing of the Maoris, raised
his carbine and fired a shot. The next instant the whole palisade
front--just above the ground, where the interstices were left for
musketry--was a blaze of fire, and a storm of lead sang over the little
troop. The Hauhaus, hidden in their trenches, and preserving complete
silence, had waited till the patrol was within murderously close range.
Maxwell was mortally wounded; but he sat his horse till it carried
him out of range. Several horses were shot, and fell. One trooper, H.
Wright, was pinned to the ground by his horse falling on his leg, and
was unable to extricate himself, but, nevertheless, drew his revolver,
and kept popping away at the palisades.
The whole _pa_ was now in a roar of battle-excitement. The Maoris, as
they fired, raised their fearful yells and war-shouts, an infernal din
that almost drowned the cracks of the firearms. Kimble Bent was there,
sitting on the parapet inside the stockade, and watching the encounter.
A burly framed Hauhau, a herculean savage known as Big Kereopa--one of
those who had shared in the cannibal feast at Papa-tihakehake--dashed
out from the rear of the stockade, armed with a long-handled tomahawk,
and rushed at the helpless _pakeha_. Trooper Lingard instantly put
his plunging horse at the Hauhau, and cut at him with his sword.
Another trooper, Tom D. Cummins (now of Wanganui) took a hand in the
combat, and with a shot from his carbine stopped the charging Hauhau.
He put a bullet into Kereopa, and the big fellow clapping a hand to
his wound--which was in his posterior parts--bolted back into the
_pa_ nearly as quickly as he had come, yelling "I'm shot! I'm shot!"
Lingard, leaning over, got Wright by the hand, and, though almost
dismounted himself, succeeded in dragging his comrade from under the
fallen horse. Then, noticing a white horse--which was usually ridden
by one of the Maori scouts--tethered to a _tutu_-bush a short distance
from the palisades, Lingard galloped at it, cut the tether-line with
his sword, and soon had Wright mounted again and riding down the hill
out of range, with the Hauhau bullets whistling close around their
heads. Lingard's rescue of his comrade was a remarkably plucky bit of
work.
* * * * *
An incident of Hauhau life at this period, illustrative of the
pitilessly savage character of the olden Maori, is told thus by Kimble
Bent:
"While we were living in the _pa_ at Tauranga-ika, a Hauhau
fighting-man named Taketake quarrelled with his sister. She threatened
that she would run away to the _pakehas_, and tell them of the cannibal
practices of the rebels. He warned her that if she did he would
shoot her. That evening she left the _pa_, and started for the white
soldiers' camp. Taketake loaded his gun and followed her. Overtaking
her on the road, he shot her through the back and killed her. He
returned to the _pa_ and reported what he had done. A party of men
went out and brought back the murdered woman's body, and that was all
there was about it. No one interfered with Taketake, or considered what
he had done was a crime. All they said was '_Kaitoa!_' ('Serve her
right')."
While the _pakeha_ attack was awaited, Bent and his companions spent
much of their time in the forest at the rear of the fort, catching eels
in the creeks, hunting wild pigs, and gathering wild honey for the
garrison food-supplies.