for a new pah. They had only dug the ditches and made some rifle pits when the British were upon them. The troops carried the position with a rush, the Maoris standing up against the bayonets with the coolest courage. A hand-to-hand fight forced the natives out of the ditches, and then they turned and fled. The horse soldiers pursued and killed many. Altogether 123 of the Maoris were killed and a large number captured, while the English lost ten men killed.
11. Wereroa.—After this action, though skirmishes were frequent, the Maoris made no determined stand, and on the English side affairs were carried on in a slow fashion. General Cameron had under him 10,000 regular soldiers, and nearly 10,000 colonial volunteers. He had nearly a dozen vessels of different sorts, either on the coasts or up the river, and he had an abundance of heavy guns. There arose quarrels between him and the Governor, who thought that with less than 1,000 Maoris under arms more progress ought to have been made. General Cameron resigned and departed in the middle of 1865. The Governor wished him before he went to attack a pah called Wereroa, but the general said he required 2,000 more men to do it, and refused. Yet Sir George Grey, taking himself the command of the colonial forces, captured the fort without losing a man. The bulk of the Maoris escaped, and kept up for a time a guerilla warfare in forests and on mountain sides; but at last the Tauranga tribes, or the miserable remnant that was left, surrendered to the Governor. Grey, in admiration of their generous and often noble conduct and their straightforward mode of fighting, allowed all the prisoners to go free; and though he punished them by confiscating a quarter of their land, he did his best to settle them on the other three-fourths in peace and with such advantages as British help could secure them. So there came quietness round the Bay of Plenty.
12. The Hau Hau Religion.—Meantime new trouble was brewing in the Taranaki district. There the soldiers were skirmishing with the Maoris, but had them well in control, when a pair of mad or crafty native priests set the tribes in wild commotion, by declaring that the Angel Gabriel had told them in a vision that at the end of the year 1864 all white men would be driven out of New Zealand, that he himself would defend the Maoris, and that the Virgin Mary would be always with them; that the religion of the white men was false, and that legions of angels would come and teach the Maoris a better religion. In the meantime all good Maoris who shouted the word Hau Hau as they went into battle would be victorious, and angels would protect their lives. A body of these fanatics, deeply impressed with the belief in these and many other follies, tried their fortunes against the soldiers at Taranaki, but with small success. Forty of them, in spite of shouting their Hau Hau, fell before the muskets and guns of the white men. Then 300 of them made an effort in another direction, and, moving down the river Wanganui, threatened the little town at its mouth. Wanganui was defended by 300 soldiers; but all the out settlers up the valley were leaving their farms and hurrying in for shelter, when 300 men of the Wanganui tribe, who liked the white men and were friendly with them, offered to fight the Hau Haus. The challenge was accepted; and about 200 of the fanatics landed on a little island called Moutoa, in the middle of the river. Though surrounded by a pretty margin of white pebbles, it was covered with ferns and thick scrub. Through this at daybreak the combatants crept towards each other, the Hau Haus gesticulating and making queer sounds. At last they fell to work, and volley after volley was discharged at only ten yards distance. The friendly natives, having seen three of their chiefs fall, turned and fled. Many had plunged into the river, when one of their chiefs made a stand at the end of the island, and gathering twenty men around him poured in a volley and killed the Hau Hau leader. This surprised the fanatics and they hesitated; then a second volley and a charge routed them. Back came the friendly Maoris who had fled, and chased their enemies into the stream, wherein a heavy slaughter took place. About seventy of the Hau Haus were slain. The twelve who fell on the friendly side were buried in Wanganui with military honours, and a handsome monument now marks the place where their bones rest.
13. Conclusion of Maori Wars.—In 1866 General Chute came to take command of the troops, in place of General Cameron. A vigorous campaign crushed the Hau Haus after much skirmishing in different parts of the Wellington district. But the chief trouble arose from another source. The 183 prisoners taken at Rangiriri, together with some others taken afterwards, were detained on board a hulk near Auckland. Sir George Grey wished to deal in a kindly fashion with them, and proposed to release them if they gave their word not to give further trouble. The Ministers of his Cabinet were against this proposal, but agreed that he should send them to an island near Auckland to live there without any guards. They gave their promise, but broke it and all but four escaped, Te Waharoa being among them. They chose the top of a circular hill thirty-five miles from Auckland and there fortified themselves in a pah called Omaha. But they did no harm to any one, and as they soon quietly dispersed they were not meddled with.
A wild outburst of Hau Hau fanaticism on the east coast of the Bay of Plenty stirred up the fires of discord again, when a worthy old Church of England missionary named Mr. Volkner was seized, and, after some savage rites had been performed, was hanged on a willow tree as a victim. More fighting followed, in which a large share was taken by a Maori chief named Ropata, who, clad in European uniform and with the title of Major Ropata, fought stoutly against the Hau Haus, and captured several pahs.
14. Te Kooti.—When the last of these pahs was captured an English officer declared that one of the friendly chiefs named Te Kooti was playing false and acting as a spy. Thinking to do as Governor Grey had done with Rauparaha, this officer seized the chief, who, without trial of any sort, was sent off to the Chatham Islands, a lonely group 300 miles away, which New Zealand was now using as a penal establishment for prisoners. This conduct was quite unfair, as Te Kooti, so far as can now be known, was not a spy, and was friendly to the English.
Nearly 300 Maoris were on the Chatham Islands, most of them Hau Hau prisoners. They were told that if they behaved well they would be allowed to return in two years. When two years were past and no signs of their liberation appeared, Te Kooti planned a bold escape. An armed schooner, the
15. Poverty Bay Massacre.—Then, roused to madness by hunger, of which some of them had died, they crept cautiously back to the Poverty Bay district. Falling at night upon the little village, they slaughtered men, women, and children, as well as all the quiet Maoris they could catch. The dawn woke coldly on a silent village, wherein fifty or sixty bodies lay gashed and mangled in their beds, or at their doors, or upon their garden paths. An old man and a boy escaped by hiding. After taking all the provisions out of the place, Te Kooti set fire to the houses and retreated to the hills, where, on the top of a peak 2,000 feet high, he had made a pah called Ngatapa, which was defended on every side by precipices and deep gorges. There was only one narrow approach, and that had been fortified with immense care. The colonial troops under Colonel Whitmore, and bodies of friendly Maoris under Ropata, attacked him here. The work was very difficult, for after climbing those precipitous hills there were two palisades to be carried, one seven feet high and the other twelve. But science prevailed. After great exertions and appalling dangers the place was captured by Ropata, who climbed the cliffs and gained a corner of the palisades, killing a great number of Te Kooti’s men in the action. During the night the rest escaped from the pah, sliding from the cliffs by means of ropes. But in the morning they were chased, and for two days the fugitives were brought back to the pah in twos and threes. Ropata took it for granted that they were all concerned in the massacre at Poverty Bay. Each of the captives as he arrived was stripped, taken to the edge of the cliff, shot dead, and his body thrown over. About a hundred and twenty were thus slaughtered. But Te Kooti himself escaped, and for the next two years he lived the life of a hunted animal, chased through the gloomy forests by the relentless Ropata. He fought many fights; his twenty Hau Hau followers were often near to death from starvation; but at length wearied out he threw himself on the mercy of the white men, was pardoned, sunk into obscurity, and died in peace.
War was not really at an end till 1871; as up to that date occasional skirmishes took place. But there never
