HIROKI: THE STORY OF A FUGITIVE
Hiroki, the slayer of McLean--Strange faces at Rukumoana--A forest
chase--A meeting and a warning--Hiroki's wild bush life and his
end.
More than one outlaw from the white country outside took refuge in
the Taranaki bush even in those _post-bellum_ days. One of these was
Hiroki, the Maori who killed McLean. Hiroki ("The Lean One") had
quarrelled with a survey-party who had camped on his land away out
near the coast in the year 1878; the cause of the trouble, as he said,
was the killing of his pigs by McLean, who was the surveyor's cook.
Hiroki remonstrated with the _pakehas_, but they jeered at him; and
when his last pig had disappeared he sat down and wept, then loaded his
gun, went to the survey camp, and shot McLean dead. Wherefore he was a
hunted man, with a price on his head.
One day, as the _pakeha_-Maori (Kimble Bent) and his Maori companions
were sitting smoking in their lonely little bush-village at Rukumoana,
far up the Patea River, they heard a loud hail across the river. They
looked at each other in astonishment and a little alarm, for they
imagined that no one knew their hiding-place. Bent went to his hut,
and loading a revolver, put it in his belt, then walked over to the
river-bank. On the other side of the stream there were six natives
standing. They called to Bent to bring a canoe over and ferry them
across.
Bent, always on the _qui vive_ for danger, was dubious about the wisdom
of trusting himself alone with a party of strangers, who, for all he
knew, might be after his head, for he was still an outlaw. But he
dropped into his canoe, and with a few strong strokes sent the dug-out
across the river. He knelt in his canoe, holding her nose into the
bank, and interrogated the strange Maoris. The leader was a tall young
half-caste. They were all armed with revolvers, and one or two had
tomahawks stuck in their belts.
"Where do you come from, and what do you want here?" asked the white
man.
"We have come seeking a man who has committed a crime," replied the
half-caste, speaking, as Bent had done, in Maori.
Bent shoved the canoe a stroke off from the bank and said determinedly,
with a hand on his revolver:
"If you have come to capture me I will not be taken; I will spill the
blood of the first man who attempts it. I will kill my enemy first and
then kill myself." ("_Ka maringi i ahau te toto a te tangata tuatahi.
Ka mate taku hoariri nei, maku e whakamate toku tinana._")
"It's all right, friend, we don't want you," said the half-caste; "we
are looking for a Maori called Hiroki, who has murdered a surveyor's
cook, named McLean, out yonder on the plains. We have traced him up
here, and we want to know where he is, because there is a price on his
head, and we are Government Maoris."
"Come along, then; I'll take you across," said Bent. The strangers
stepped into the canoe, and the white man paddled them over the Patea;
then took them up to the village and into Hakopa's house.
To the old chief and his Maori companions the half-caste explained the
mission that had brought his party to lonely Rukumoana.
"We have not seen your man Hiroki," said Hakopa. "He may have swum the
river and passed through here by night. Who knows? If he has passed
this way he has no doubt gone to Te Ngaere, which is a very difficult
place to reach and a good refuge-place for men like Hiroki."
"We do not know the trail to Te Ngaere," said the half-caste. "Will any
of you guide us there?"
Bent offered to go as guide, saying he knew the track to Ngaere very
well and had frequently been there in the war-days. "But," he asked,
"will you guarantee my safety if I trust myself with you? How do I
know that you will not cut my head off when you get me out alone in the
bush, and take it out to get the Government reward?"
The half-caste laughed. "You're quite safe, _pakeha_. Not a man of us
will touch you. I tell you we only want Hiroki."
A young man named Pakanga, of the Ngati-Maniapoto tribe from the
King Country, happened to be in the village on a visit to the
forest-dwellers. He was sitting alongside Bent. "Friend," he said
quietly, "I will go with you, and see that they don't attack you
treacherously."
So Bent agreed to go as guide, and, after a meal of pork and potatoes,
set before them by the women of the _kainga_, the armed party of
man-hunters set out along the bush-track leading in the direction of
the swamp-defended Ngaere, the place where Colonel Whitmore and his
force of Colonial soldiers just failed in surprising and capturing
Titokowaru in the last days of the war in 1869.
Bent leading, the party filed along the narrow overgrown trail until
they were close to the banks of a small stream, the Mangamingi. A
little distance back from the creek the white man asked his companions
to halt, saying that he and Pakanga would go on to reconnoitre.
The half-caste and his five men sat down and lit their pipes, and Bent
and the King Country Maori went off cautiously, saying one of them
would come back at once if they caught sight of the fugitive.
The white man and his friend had gone only a short distance when
they came upon a fire burning just alongside the track, in an old
camping-place beneath the shade of a giant _totara_-tree, whose great
branches overhung the little dark river that flowed close by. A few
roasted potatoes, still warm, lay alongside the fire. Evidently it had
been deserted only a few minutes.
"Now," said Bent to his companion, "let us settle quickly how we shall
act. Hiroki--for it can be no one else--must be close by; he must
have only just left this spot. Shall we betray him to the Government,
or shall we let him escape? He had a just grievance against the man
whom he shot. We have heard all about it, and we know that he was a
peaceable man, who was provoked into a fit of passion. He is a lonely
and a hunted man, and for me my sympathies are with him, for is he not
a fugitive like myself?"
"_E tika ana_," said the young King Country Maori. "That's right. We
won't give him up to the Government head-hunters."
"Let me tell you now, friend," said Bent, "that I have had suspicions
for some days that Hiroki has been in hiding near our village. One
morning lately, when I went to look in my _pataka_ (store-house)
across the river, where I keep my seed-potatoes for the new season's
planting, I found that some of them had been taken. Then half a mile
up the river the next day I saw a place where some stranger had been
fishing for eels, for there were heads of the eels lying there where he
had cut them off. There was a fire there, and some of my seed-potatoes
had been roasted in it. I told old Hakopa and no one else about it."
The two men descended the bank to the river. Just where the track
entered the slow-moving, muddy stream they saw the fresh prints of
naked feet. Wading across, they quickly mounted the opposite bank and
set out at a noiseless, easy lope, their bare feet making hardly a
sound, along the trail that wound into the glooms of the bush.
Suddenly, at a turn in the track, they came upon Hiroki.
The fugitive was standing there, waiting, for the low growling of his
dog, a white, savage-looking animal, had given him warning of pursuit.
The hunted man menacingly presented a short-barrelled gun at the
_pakeha_ and his companion. He was a fellow of middle stature, lean, as
his name implied, but strong and hard-limbed, with a dark determined
face and a short black beard.
"Where are you going?" cried Hiroki.
"Oh, nowhere in particular," Bent replied; "just strolling along" ("_ki
te haereere_").
The Maori looked puzzled and suspicious, and kept his gun at the ready.
"Listen to me, friend," said Bent quickly; "you are in danger. There
are six Government Maoris close behind you, and they want you dead or
alive. Now, go on, and go quickly. And don't venture back, lest you
die!"
"_Ka pai koe!_" ("You are good!") was all Hiroki said. Turning, he went
quickly at a half-trot along the path, with his gun at the trail, and
his wild-looking, mongrel dog close on his bare heels, and in a few
moments both disappeared in the dark forest.
Bent and Pakanga returned to the pursuing party, who were becoming
impatient at the long absence of their guide and were hot with
questions.
The white man and his companions managed to quiet the suspicions of the
man-hunters. They declared that there were no signs of any one having
passed that way, and that it would not be much use going on to the
Ngaere, which was a long and very toilsome journey. Fortunately for
them, the half-caste and his men had not troubled to go on as far as
the big _totara_ on the river-bank, where the tell-tale fire was not
yet cold.
After some debate the whole party returned to Rukumoana, and the
hunters, giving up the chase in that direction, made out to the open
country, and that was the last Bent heard of them.
Three years later Bent met Hiroki in Parihaka, the village of the
prophet Te Whiti. The slayer of McLean had had a wild and anxious life
of it after his escape from Rukumoana. He told Bent of his lonely
existence in the great forests of the back-country, living on eels,
wild honey, the young shoots of fern-trees, and such-like rough fare
of the bush. After he came out into the open country and was making
his way across the Waimate Plains in the direction of Parihaka he was
chased by several Government men (one of whom was Mr. William Williams,
a Plains settler), and was fired at and wounded, but escaped. Te Whiti
sheltered him and condoned his crime, which, being a semi-agrarian
one, was counted a patriotic deed by the people of Parihaka. He spoke
gratefully of what Bent had done for him, in giving him timely warning
that day in the Mangamingi bush, and offered him a money gift as some
measure of _utu_. This Bent promptly refused, saying, "Keep your money,
and thank the _Atua_ for your escape, not me."
Hiroki was a wild figure in Parihaka those lawless days of 1878-81.
On meeting-days and feast-days, when the faithful of the Maori tribes
gathered to hear the prophet expound the Scriptures after his fashion
and prophesy many strange happenings, the Lean One used to head the
procession of the _tuku-kai_, the bringing of the food for ceremonious
presentation to the visitors. A double line of gaily dressed girls,
bearing baskets of potatoes and pork and fish hot from the _hangi_,
marched in time to a lively song into the _marae_, and in front of
them paraded Hiroki, stripped to a loin-mat, a loaded and cocked
double-barrelled gun in his hands, white feathers stuck in his hair,
red war-paint on his cheeks and forehead, leaping from side to side,
eyes rolling, tongue defiantly protruded, the embodiment of Maori
savagery and ferocity. But when John Bryce, as native minister, invaded
Parihaka in 1881 with his force of 1,700 Armed Constabulary and
Volunteers, and arrested the two prophets Te Whiti and Tohu, Hiroki was
also captured, and shortly thereafter he was tried for McLean's murder
and was hanged.
To this day the Maoris of the Patea tell stories of Hiroki's solitary
and savage life in the bush. One place in particular--at Orangimura,
between three and four miles above Rukumoana--is pointed out as a
hiding-place of the refugee. Here a large, hollow _rata_-tree grew near
the top of a high bank; the Patea River flowed below. Hiroki had camped
here in order to get wild honey from a hive in the hollow tree, and
after he had filled a couple of calabashes with the honey he lit his
nightly fire and went to sleep close to the cliff-top, first tying his
dog up to a bush with a flax rope. In the night the dog bit through the
flax that held him, and jumping on his master so startled him that he
forgot he was so near the verge of the cliff, over which he promptly
rolled in the darkness; he fell with a mighty splash in the river
below, together with his astonished dog. The spot where this night
adventure occurred is called by the Maoris Te Pari-o-Hiroki, which
means "Hiroki's Precipice."