THE LAND OF REFUGE
The flight from Rukumoana--Retreat to the Waitara--The Kawau
_pa_--Life in the Ngatimaru Country--Rupé and his white man--a
Maori Donnybrook fair--a tale of a _Taniwha_.
One day two Hauhaus, exhausted and half-starved, entered the little
bush-camp at Rukumoana. One of them was Bent's old _rangatira_, Tito te
Hanataua. They had passed through many perils and hairbreadth escapes,
and they warned the white man and his Maori comrades that Kepa te
Rangihiwinui and his Whanganui Maori scouts were still hunting for
them, and would have their heads to a certainty should they happen on
the trail to the refuge place.
The old feeling of terror came over Bent and his companions at the
mention of Kepa's name. That night Hauhau piquets kept watch on the
edge of the clearing, and more than once they imagined they heard
stealthy footfalls, the breaking of branches, and the whispers of
enemies in the woods. These dangers, however, were things of the
imagination. Nevertheless, it was an anxious night in the lonely
_kainga_, and when morning came the people decided to abandon their
camp and bury themselves still deeper in the wilderness.
In a very short time the men and women of the settlement were on the
march, laden with their flax _pikaus_, containing such belongings
as they thought worth removing. They took to the forest in a due
northerly direction; bound for that Alsatia of rebels and Hauhaus, the
remote and rugged Ngati-Maru Country, up on the head-waters of the
Waitara--Titokowaru's hiding-place.
The utmost caution was observed on the march. No fires were lighted.
So that there should be no clue to the direction of the flight, care
was taken to leave no broken branches or other bushmen's signs; not
a leaf was turned or a twig displaced if the refugees could help it
until they were well into the ranges. Wherever possible they took
to the creek-beds and walked in the running water, so that no trail
should betray them. They could have spared themselves that anxiety and
trouble, however, for the Government troops had at last abandoned the
chase.
Two days Bent and his friends spent on that terrible trail--the
roughest, wildest part of the Taranaki hinterland. Fording rivers,
pushing through matted jungles, climbing wooded precipices, lowering
their swags down perpendicular cliffs, and swinging themselves down by
forest vines and creepers--they emerged at last, a weary little band,
on the banks of the Waitara, about thirty miles from the mouth of that
river. All around towered the densely forested blue ranges; the high
banks of the winding Waitara fell precipitously to its rapid-whitened
waters.
On the cliff-top where they left the forest there was a little Maori
camp. Here the fugitives were ordered to the main Hauhau camp, the
Kawau _pa_, where Titokowaru and his followers had established
themselves, weary of war, but nevertheless resolute to die "fighting
like the shark," as the Maori has it, if attacked in their last
hiding-place.
The Kawau _pa_ stood in an admirable position for defence, in a great
bend of the Waitara River. The winding rapid river here swept round
a long tongue of steep-banked level land, protecting it on three
sides; in the rear was the dense forest. The banks of the river were
from twenty to thirty feet high, and could be climbed only in a few
places. On this high tongue of land, about a quarter of a mile long,
there stood a large village of well-built _raupo_ and _nikau_ thatched
houses; between the village and the forest were the cultivations of
potatoes, _kumara_, and _taro_. On the opposite side of the river, in
the direction of the Taramouku Range, wild horses and cattle abounded
in the bush. A short distance below the village there was a large
_pa-tuna_, or eel-weir, consisting of two rows of stout _manuka_ stakes
set closely together and sunk into the river-bed and converging in a
=V=, at the lower end of which _hinaki_, or eel-baskets, were set
for the purpose of catching the _piharau_, or lamprey, which abounded
in the Waitara, and which were a great Maori delicacy.
As Rupé and his _pakeha_ Bent and their companions marched slowly into
the _marae_ of the war-chief's camp, their eyes on the ground, they
were welcomed with the ancient ceremony of the _powhiri_. The village
women and girls waved green branches and shawls as they retired before
them, singing all together the famous old greeting song, "_Toia Mai te
Waka!_" ("Oh, haul up the canoe!") likening the guests to a canoe-party
of visitors arriving from a distant shore.
Then as the women fell back the whole force of Titoko's warriors leaped
to their feet, and swinging their firearms this way and that, threw
themselves with martial fury into all the thrilling action of the
war-dance. The ground shook under the mighty tread of many scores of
brown feet, and the forest rang with the chorus of the war-song and the
reverberating volleys of many guns. And then, when the dance was ended,
the _hongi_ of long-severed friends, the pressing of nose to nose, and
the pitiful weeping for the dead. For quite two hours the great _tangi_
lasted. When it ceased one of the head-men of the river-tribes sent the
new arrivals to his own camp, close by the Kawau; the village women
came in procession, to the lilt of the _tuku-kai_ song, bearing their
baskets of food, steaming hot from the _hangi_, and the half-starved
white man and his friends were soon enjoying a bountiful feast after
their long-enforced existence upon the meagre rations of the bush.
* * * * *
Kimble Bent lived in this securely hidden place of refuge, and at
Paihau village, near by, from the end of 1869 until about 1876. He was
now a Maori in all his ways; he planted food-crops and harvested them,
snared birds, fished for eels, cut out canoes, and paddled his canoe on
the river, joined the Hauhaus in their songs and their sacred chants,
and danced with them in their _hakas_; he wore as little clothing as
any native in the camp.
Life did not go too easily with the white man during those days on the
Waitara. He was still Rupé's bond-servant; and his master and owner
sometimes took fits of ungovernable passion. In one of these paroxysms
of anger Bent had a narrow escape.
Rupé one day ordered his white man to go down to a creek, which ran
into the Waitara near the Paihau _pa_, and clear out the little dam in
which the household were accustomed to steep their Indian corn, their
_kaanga-pirau_. Bent was working away cleaning out the steeping-pool
when his chief came up and found fault with him because he was not
working hard enough. "I made him some answer which didn't please him,"
says Bent, "whereupon he flew into a terrible rage and rushed at me
like a tiger. I stooped and caught him by the leg, and he fell into the
muddy pool. Up he jumped in a foaming passion, and ran to the _pa_, got
out his gun, and loaded it to shoot me. But his wife rushed at him,
took the gun out of his hands, and told me to hurry down to the other
village, where I would be safe. So I ran to the river-bank, loosed a
small canoe, and paddled down the river to the lower _pa_, where I was
kindly received and taken into my old friend Hakopa's house, and I
lived and worked there for some months."
Another incident of those wild old days on the Waitara, narrated by
Bent, is worth the telling, as an illustration of the whimsically
variable temper of the Maori and of his truly Hibernian love of a "free
fight."
The war had long been over, and some _hapus_ of the tribes on the
upper river talked of selling their lands to the whites. Certain of
the chiefs had been down at Waitara township and in New Plymouth, and
there they had been approached by the agents of the Government. In
the end they sold their lands for eighteenpence an acre. But the more
conservative of the Hauhaus stoutly held out against land-selling, and
against any dealings with the hated _pakeha_; and the difference of
opinion led to frequent quarrels.
One day a council of the people was held on the _marae_ of the Paihau
village for the purpose of discussing the land-selling proposals. Long
and bitter were the speeches; speaker after speaker _taki_'d up and
down the _marae_, and worked himself up into a fury of excitement.
Two old chiefs, tattooed veterans of the war, their long hair adorned
with feathers, weapons of wood and stone in their hands, angrily
assailed each other. One was Rupé, the other was Horopapera Matangi.
One advocated the sale of surplus lands, the other vigorously opposed
it, and insisted on the principle of "Maori land for Maori men." Then
there arose a dispute about the ownership of a _tangiwai_ (greenstone
pendant). From argument they came to hurling abusive threats at each
other.
At last Rupé furiously hurled his weapon--a sharp wooden spear--at
Horopapera, who dodged it, and cleverly caught it near the butt end as
it whistled past him. He instantly smartly returned it to its owner,
spearing him through the leg.
Next two women went at it. Women of rank these, who considered
themselves entitled to equal debating voice with the men-folk. Their
powers of rhetoric and invective exhausted, they fell on each other
very literally "tooth and nail," biting, hair-pulling, scratching,
screaming. In their struggle they tore each other's clothes off, and
two nude Amazons raged round the _marae_.
One of the wild women, a young chieftainess, her long hair streaming
behind her, her pendant breasts quivering, her shoulders bleeding,
seized a canoe paddle and struck her antagonist a blow across the naked
back with it. The other grabbed a _tokotoko_, or walking-staff, and,
thrusting it between her opponent's legs, neatly up-ended her, in the
"altogether," on the green _marae_.
By this time the whole tribe were into the battle, with sticks,
paddles, spears, and any weapon they could lay their hands on--men
and women alike. It was a real faction fight. Fortunately, the people
had left their guns in their _wharés_, and were too intent upon their
hand-to-hand encounter to run for their firearms.
Kimble Bent stood on one side watching the squabble. He was close to
the river-bank, where the canoes were tied up. Presently, one of the
Maoris ran down to the water-side with an axe, and began furiously
cutting away at his antagonists' canoes. Others ran to the cooking
_hangis_, and with burning sticks from the ovens set fire to some of
the thatched houses in the _kainga_. Soon there was a pretty blaze, and
half the village was burned down in a few minutes.
In half an hour's time the people had cooled down, and the trouble
was over. Then--a Hibernian people the Maoris, surely!--they began to
weep over their quarrel, and fell on each other's necks--or, rather,
pressed each other's noses--to make up for the hard words and blows
they had just exchanged, and set to work to rebuild the dwellings they
had destroyed in their hasty anger.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, Titokowaru wearied for the trail again, unable to rest in
this secluded wilderness of the Waitara. His _tapu_ status had been
restored by a Waitara priest, with the appropriate _karakias_ and
invocations. Gathering together a band of his warriors--the remnant of
the once ever-victorious _Tekau-ma-rua_--he paraded them in the _marae_
of the Kawau _pa_, and farewelling his people, took his old place at
the head of the _taua_ and led them off in a grand war-dance. A truly
savage figure, that stern old chief, as he leaped to the van of his
war-party and danced, his sacred _taiaha_ in the air; his waist girt
with a coloured shawl, a rich feather cape of native make fastened over
the left shoulder and under the right; his grizzled head decked with
white plumes. And with loud cries of "_Haere, ra!_ _Haere ra!_" the
villagers farewelled the great war-chief as he marched his armed men
out of the _pa_ and struck into the forest of the Taramouku, bound for
the open lands of South Taranaki and his ancestral home. But it was
no longer the war-trail, for Titoko and his henchmen fought no more,
but betook themselves to the great camp of Te Whiti the Prophet, who
preached peace, and prophesied sundry supernatural ways by which the
Maori would come into his own again.
* * * * *
The minds of these isolated forest-dwellers were saturated with
superstition, with strange beliefs that were a reflex of the vast
untrimmed places of nature in which they lived. The white man, too,
almost came to believe in the tales of saurian-like _taniwhas_ and
water-demons, in the _patupaiarehe_ and _maero_, the forest-fairies and
forest-giants, in the occult malevolence of the _tapu_ and _makutu_
spells.
A story related by Bent is illustrative of the Maori belief, up to
quite modern days, in malignant beings which made their homes in lonely
waters and in caves--the dreaded _taniwha_.
_The tale of the "Taniwha" of the Kopua_:
One day--this was in the early "seventies"--an old man named Te Maire
left the Kawau landing in his canoe, and paddled down the Waitara to a
place called Te Kopua, the site of an ancient village. The object of
his expedition was to procure dry resinous strips of the _rimu_-pine
for the purpose of making torches to be used in catching _piharau_
(lampreys) in the river at night. After getting the wood he required he
started on the return paddle to his home. On the way to the Kawau he
disappeared, and was never seen again alive; no doubt he overbalanced
and fell into the river while poling his canoe up one of the small
rapids near the Kopua.
That afternoon five men from the Kawau, including Kimble Bent, were
paddling their canoe down the river to a settlement a few miles
distant, when they caught sight of the old man's empty canoe drifting
down with the swift current. As they approached it it sped away rapidly
before them, and at last stranded on a shingle-bank in a bend of the
river. In it they found Te Maire's gun and a young pig, which the
vanished man had evidently caught in the bush while on his torch-making
expedition.
Bent's Maori companions immediately explained in their own way the
mystery of their tribesman's disappearance.
"There is a _taniwha_ there," they said, "a fearful water-monster that
dwells in a deep, still pool under Te Kopua's banks. He has stretched
forth his long claws and dragged the old fellow down to his den."
The Maori canoeists made haste to quit the dead man's craft, and plied
their paddles with unusual energy until they reached their destination
on the shore below. They told their story, and that evening a meeting
of the village people was held in the _wharepuni_ to discuss the
mystery.
For hours the wiseacres of the bush-hamlet solemnly debated the
circumstances, and each canoeist in turn had to give his account of the
affair and advance his theory. At last it was decided that there was no
possible doubt that the _taniwha_ of the river had seized Te Maire and
drowned him. There must, of course, be a reason, for no _taniwha_ of
any repute would take such an extreme step without some good cause.
The verdict was that Te Maire had violated the _tapu_ of the deserted
village; he had in all probability taken some dry _rimu_ from an old
house that stood there, and which was sacred because a chief had died
in it--goodness knows how long ago. The river-god had very properly
punished him with death--it was the penalty of infringing the law of
_tapu_.
The next day and for some days thereafter canoe crews hunted the river
for the old man's body, but found it not. At last a woman at the lower
settlement, on going down to the river one morning to get a calabash
of water, spied the body of the missing man hanging in the branches of
a prostrate _kahikatea_-tree on the opposite side of the river, about
four feet above the water.
The question was, how did the body get there, entangled in the
branches that height above the river, for there had been no flood, no
noticeable rise or fall in the level of the river.
The answer was plain to the mind of the Maori. He summed it all up in
two words:
"_Te taniwha!_"
The river-monster, after grabbing Te Maire from his canoe and detaining
him a while in his watery grave, had dragged the body away down-stream
and hung it up in the tree-branches opposite the village, so that the
dead man's people should have no difficulty in recovering it, and in
giving it decent burial.
A truly thoughtful and considerate _taniwha_!