THE FALL OF TAURANGA-IKA
Shot and shell--The fort abandoned--Flight of the Hauhaus--The
chase--The fight at Karaka Flat--Mutilation of the dead--The
ambuscade at the peach-grove--The sergeant's leg--Rewards for
Hauhau heads.
Skirmishing up over the fern slopes of Tauranga-ika came Whitmore's
Armed Constabulary and Kepa's kilted guerillas from the Wanganui.
Some of the A.C.'s advanced to within about two hundred yards of the
stockade, and took cover in a ditch which ran parallel with the front
palisading; here they opened fire. The main body had pitched camp about
half a mile from the _pa_ front. At the same time Armstrong guns were
brought up and posted on the left front of the stockade, and shell-fire
was opened on the rebel position at a range of five hundred yards.
But most of the Hauhaus were safe in their trenches and their covered
ways, and the shells and bullets passed harmlessly over them. A few
of the young bloods danced and yelled defiance from above-ground. On
the stockade was the Hauhau _tekoteko_, the dummy figure which they
worked in marionette-fashion by means of ropes that led into the
trench below. This dummy was intended to draw the _pakeha_ fire, but
it had hardly deceived the veteran A.C.'s and Kepa's _Kupapas_, versed
in all Hauhau ways that were dark and tricks that were vain. Bent was
underground, listening to the bang of the Armstrongs and the whistle of
the shells, and now and again squinting through the palisades at his
adversaries.
One Maori, who was standing in an angle of the _pa_, was wounded in the
head by a splinter knocked off one of the palisade-posts by a shot from
an Armstrong gun. The same shell, whizzing through the _pa_, ripped a
hole in Titokowaru's tent.
When night fell, no appreciable breach had been made by the shell-fire.
It was now decided to storm the _pa_ at daybreak. Some of the A.C.'s
crept up with their entrenching tools to within fifty yards of the
stockade, and dug out shelter-trenches.
The fort was remarkably quiet during the night. It was reconnoitred
when daybreak came, and found--empty. The Hauhaus had for some
mysterious reason deserted it under cover of darkness, and taken to the
bush. So fell to the _pakeha_ the very strong Tauranga-ika _pa_.
Bent explains this unexpected abandonment of Titokowaru's most
formidable entrenchment.
The eternal feminine was at the bottom of it all.
The chief of blood and fire, with all his _mana-tapu_, was vulnerable
to the artillery of a dark _wahiné's_ eyes and soft _wahiné_
blandishments. He was detected in a liaison with another man's wife.
This misdemeanour was, in Maori eyes, fatal to his prestige as an
_ariki_ and a war-leader. He had trampled on his _tapu_, and his Hauhau
angel, who had so long successfully guided his fortunes, now deserted
him. His run of luck had turned.
A council of the people was held to discuss the _cause célèbre_,
and many an angry speech was made. Some of the chiefs went so far
as to threaten Titokowaru with death. At length a chieftainess of
considerable influence rose and quelled the storm of violent words.
She appealed to the aggrieved husband's people not to attempt Titoko's
life; but urged that the garrison should leave the _pa_--it would
be disastrous to make a stand there after their _tohunga_, their
spiritual head and their war-leader, had lost his _mana-tapu_. This
met with general approval, and on the night of the attack the people
packed their few belongings on their backs and struck quietly into the
forest for the Waitotara. Titokowaru, with forty warriors, covered
the retreat. "Afterwards," says Bent, "when we had taken safe shelter
in the Upper Waitara, Titokowaru regained his _tapu_ by means of
incantations and ceremonies performed by another _tohunga_. But by that
time the war was over."
So to the forest fled Titokowaru and all his people, and hard on their
trail, when the _pa_ was found deserted, came the A.C. scouts and
Kepa's Maoris, in lightest marching order for the chase.
The Government troops overtook the Hauhau rear-guard at Te Karaka flat,
on the descent to the Waitotara River. At Te Karaka Major Kepa, the
fighting chief of the Whanganuis, was leading the advance-guard of
the pursuing force, when he was hotly attacked by the Hauhaus who had
planted an ambush in the bush. Kepa was closely pressed. Captain T.
Porter, who commanded No. 8 Division of Armed Constabulary--consisting
of Arawa and Ngapuhi Maoris, with a few good European bushmen--was
close up when Kepa was fired on, and he promptly extended the supports
across the flat. Kepa, after a sharp hand-to-hand fight with the enemy,
burst through them and fell back on Captain Porter. The _Kupapas_
and their white comrades fought the Hauhaus till dark, and had to
leave them dead and wounded on the field. Next morning they found the
mutilated bodies minus hearts and livers, which the cannibal enemy had
cut out and taken away. The Hauhaus had also beheaded one of the slain,
a Whanganui soldier named Hori Raukawa.
The grief of the friendly Maoris at this mutilation of their dead was
intense, and was given vent to in weeping and furious threats. Kepa
was in a terrible rage, and determined on retaliation in kind.
This feeling was intensified a few days later, when a strong force of
Hauhaus ambuscaded and slaughtered seven out of a party of ten white
Constabulary men at the Papatupu peach-grove on the banks of the
Waitotara River. The Constabulary detachment was in charge of Sergeant
Menzies of No. 2 Division. The men, who belonged to Colonel McDonnell's
force at Te Karaka, had obtained leave to forage for peaches in a grove
at Papatupu, on the opposite (north) bank of the Waitotara, and crossed
the river in a canoe. They were gathering the fruit when a volley was
suddenly poured into them by a large body of Hauhaus, who were lying
close by waiting for _pakeha_ game. They at once seized their arms
and rushed for their canoe, pursued by two or three score of Maoris,
led by Big Kereopa. The rest of the story was told the author lately
by Tutangé Waionui, of Patea, he who had distinguished himself in the
repulse of the white troops at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu the previous year.
This is Tutangé's account:
"I was one of the Hauhaus who ambushed the Constabulary men, under
Sergeant Menzies, at the peach-grove at Papatupu. Some of them had
got into their canoe, and would have escaped, but the others held on
to it in an attempt to board it, and so we caught and killed seven of
them. The sergeant was a big, tall man, and stout. I killed him. He
was stooping down at the time. I slew him with no other weapon than a
canoe paddle of _manuka_ wood. I snatched up a paddle from the canoe
and struck him a slanting blow on the side of the temple with it, the
fatal blow called _tipi_, as delivered in sideways fashion with the
edge of a stone _mere_. The white sergeant fell, and a Maori named
Toawairere slashed off one of his legs with a tomahawk. This was done
for the sake of getting the boot on the _pakeha's_ foot for one of our
men, a one-legged fellow named Paramena, who wanted the boot. The leg
was taken away into the bush."
Next day Colonel Whitmore sent the _Kupapas_--the Maoris of No. 8
Division under Captain Porter and the Whanganui under Kepa--across
the river in pursuit of the enemy, and Colonel McDonnell's division
of Constabulary followed them in support. Porter and his men, during
the skirmish which followed, came across the fire in which Sergeant
Menzies' leg had been roasted. The remains of the bone of the leg were
there, and it was evident that Big Kereopa[12] and his fellow-savages
had once more feasted on the flesh of the _pakeha_.
It was now that Colonel Whitmore agreed to a request made by Kepa and
offered rewards for Hauhau heads. He said he would give £5 a head
for ordinary men and £10 for chiefs killed. This gave a fillip to the
bush-whacking chase, into which the Government Maoris entered with
ferocious zest.