and the same place; but from a petition presented to the House of
Representatives in 1869 by the Ngai-Tahu tribe, it seems clear that
they were separate places, and that their destruction took place at
different times. Omihi is about 15 miles south of Kaikoura, near the
Conway River, but the battle took place on the hills near the valley
which leads down to the Waipara.

[86] Some accounts make it appear that Kekerengu was killed by a
wandering band of Ngai-Tahu after he landed on the Middle Island, and
that, although he had greatly offended Te Rangihaeata by his
impropriety, it was really to avenge his death and not to punish him
that this raid was made upon Kaikoura and Omihi. But these are
variations in tradition that we can scarcely hope to reconcile at this
date.

[87] Kaiapoi is a popular abbreviation of the old name--Kaiapohia,
which signifies "food gathered up in handfuls" or "a food depôt," but
Kaiapohia was seldom used except in formal speeches or in poetical
compositions. The name originated in the incident related in the text,
and the place became in reality a food depôt, because, owing to its
peculiar situation, large quantities of food, particularly kumaras,
were raised every year, not only for local consumption, but for the
purposes of exchange with other branches of the tribe which possessed
abundance of particular kinds of provisions which could not be
procured at Kaiapoi.

[88] Tamihana te Rauparaha would lead us to suppose that his father
was averse to this course, and was again overpersuaded by Te Pehi's
impetuosity. He makes him say to Te Pehi, "Be cautious in going into
the _pa_, lest you be killed. I have had an evil omen: mine was
an evil dream last night," But what, says Tamihana, was the good of
such advice to a man whose spirit had gone to death?

[89] At first only the heads of chiefs were sold, as they were the
most perfectly tattooed, but when chiefs' heads became scarce, the
native mind conceived the idea of tattooing the heads of the slaves
and selling them--the slave being killed as soon as his head was ready
for the market. Sometimes the slave was audacious enough to run away
just as he was attaining a commercial value, and the indignation of
one merchant who had just sustained such a loss is humorously
described in Manning's _Old New Zealand_.

[90] In an account of this incident given by a Captain Briggs to the
newspaper _Tasmanian_, in 1831, he states that a European named
Smith, who had been left at Kaiapoi by a Captain Wiseman, for the
purpose of trade, attempted to save Te Pehi's life, and was himself
killed for his interference. If this was so, the Ngai-Tahu accounts
are discreetly silent on the point; but Briggs infers that Te
Rauparaha and Te Hiko made it one of the arguments by which they
sought to convince him that he ought to assist them to capture
Tamaiharanui, and so revenge the death of his countryman.

[91] The names of the chiefs who were killed on this fatal day were Te
Pehi, Te Pokaitara, Te Rangikatuta, Te Ruatahi, Te Hua-piko, Te Kohi,
Te Aratangata, and Te Rohua. Tamihana te Rauparaha states that in all
some twenty of his father's people were killed, but that a number were
successful in escaping by clambering over the palisades.

[92] The Rev. Canon Stack considers that this event occurred either
late in 1828 or early in 1829.

[93] It is doubtful whether Tamaiharanui took any part in the killing
of Te Pehi and his comrades, but that would not relieve him of his
liability to be killed in return, as the whole tribe was responsible
for the acts of every member of it.

[94] There was little in Tamaiharanui's personal appearance to mark
his aristocratic lineage. His figure was short and thick-set, his
complexion dark, and his features rather forbidding. Unlike most Maori
chiefs of exalted rank, he was cowardly, cruel, and capricious--an
object of dread to friends and foes alike, and however much his people
may have mourned the manner of his death, they could not fail to
experience a sense of relief when he was gone (_Stack_).

[95] The _Elizabeth_ arrived in Sydney in July, 1830, and in the
following month left for New Zealand. A contemporary Australian
newspaper described her cargo as consisting of four cases and eighteen
muskets, two kegs of flints and bullets, two bales of slops, two kegs
of gunpowder, one bundle of hardware, and five baskets of tobacco and
stores.

[96] A more or less exaggerated account of this raid appeared in the
newspaper _Tasmanian_ on January 28, 1831, and in a subsequent
issue, Captain Briggs, in passing some comments upon it, said the
penalty which Captain Stewart had to pay for disregarding his advice
was that "the natives wanted to do as they pleased with him and his
ship." He further said that he endeavoured to persuade Stewart not to
deliver Tamaiharanui over to Te Rauparaha after their return to
Kapiti, but that worthy declined to carry the chief to Sydney, on the
ground that "The Marinewie," as he called him, "had been too long on
board already."

[97] Properly spelt Akau-roa--"the long coast line"; doubtless
referring to the deep inlet which forms the harbour of Akaroa.

[98] According to a Parliamentary Paper published in 1831, the
_Elizabeth_ carried eight guns, two swivels, and a full supply of
small arms. This fact, it is said, deluded some of the natives into
the belief that the ship was a British man-o'-war.

[99] Signifying "tear-drops."

[100] Some accounts say that this occurred before the vessel left the
harbour.

[101] It is said that the action of Tamaiharanui also so roused the
righteous anger of Captain Stewart that he deemed it his duty to have
the chief triced up to the mast and flogged. This met with the most
marked disapproval from Te Rauparaha, who maintained that as his
prisoner was a chief he should not be punished like a slave.

[102] The _Australian_ newspaper records the arrival of the
_Elizabeth_, Captain Stewart, in Sydney, on the above date, with
a cargo of thirty tons of flax, and carrying Mr. J. B. Montefiore and
Mr. A. Kemiss as passengers.

[103] When the _Elizabeth_ returned to Kapiti, her company was
increased by a Mr. Montefiore, who was then cruising round New Zealand
in his own vessel, in search of commercial speculations. Hearing of
what had occurred at Akaroa, he became apprehensive of his own safety,
and fearing that all the white people in the country would be killed,
he joined the _Elizabeth_ in the hope of being carried away from
New Zealand at the earliest possible moment. In giving evidence before
a Select Committee of the House of Lords, in 1838, he related what he
knew of the capture and death of Tamaiharanui. He claimed credit for
having protested to Captain Stewart against the chief being held in
irons, and succeeded in getting the fetters struck off, as the
prisoner's legs had commenced to mortify. He also stated that his
appeal to Captain Stewart to take the chief to Sydney, and not to hand
him over to his enemies, was futile. According to Mr. Montefiore, who
said he went ashore and "saw the whole process of his intended
sacrifice," Tamaiharanui was killed almost immediately after being
given up, but other accounts supplied by the natives place it some
weeks later. The wife of Tamaiharanui, unable to bear the sight of her
husband's agony, ran away from the scene of the tragedy, but was
recaptured and subsequently killed. Tamaiharanui's sister became the
wife of one of her captors, and lived at Wellington. It is generally
admitted that Te Rauparaha did not witness, or take any part in,
Tamaiharanui's death. Heaven knows, he had done enough.

[104] If this is an accurate statement of what occurred--and there is
every reason to believe that it is--the treatment of Tamaiharanui
presents an interesting parallel to the manner in which the Aztec
Indians of Mexico regaled their prisoners, destined to be sacrificed
at the annual feast to their god Tezcatlipoca.

[105] Rev. Canon Stack.

[106] The Sydney _Gazette_, in referring to the case, remarked
that its peculiarity lay in the fact that it involved "the question of
the liability of British subjects for offences committed against the
natives of New Zealand." The point was never tested, but it is
doubtful whether the Imperial Statute constituting the Supreme Court
of the Colony of New South Wales (9 Geo. IV., cap. 83) gave express
power to deal with such offences as that of Stewart. An amendment of
the law in the following year (June 7, 1832) made the position more
explicit.

[107] Captain Sturt afterwards did valuable work as an explorer in
Australia, but received no suitable recognition from the Imperial
Government. Sir George Grey vainly endeavoured to procure for him the
honour of knighthood.

[108] There is not much doubt that, had the case gone to trial,
counsel for the defence would have endeavoured to prove that Stewart
was compelled by the natives to do what he did; for the
_Australian_, a paper controlled by Dr. Wardell, argued that it
"could not divine the justice of denouncing Stewart as amenable to
laws which, however strict and necessary under certain circumstances,
were not applicable to savage broils and unintentional acts of
homicide, to which he must have been an unwilling party, and over
which he could not possibly exercise the slightest control."

[109] It will be charitable, and perhaps just, to suppose that this
feeling arose more from personal antipathy to the Governor than from
any inherent sympathy with crime. Governor Darling had succeeded in
making himself exceedingly unpopular with a large section of the
Sydney community, which resulted in his recall in 1831.

[110] The expedition probably started about the end of January or
beginning of February.

[111] Now Lyttelton Harbour.

[112] His _pa_ was in the vicinity of what is now the city of
Dunedin.

[113] The Rev. Canon Stack relates how one of the Ngai-Tahu men, Te
Ata-o-tu, was carrying his infant son on his back during this march.
When they approached the _pa_, some of his companions, seeing how
closely it was invested, whispered to him to strangle the child, lest
it might cry at a critical moment and betray them. The father,
however, could not find it in his heart to take this extreme step, but
he wrapped the boy tightly in a thick mat, and, strapping him across
his broad shoulders, carried him safely through the dangers of that
terrible night. The child, however, was only spared to be drowned in
the waters of the swamp as his mother vainly endeavoured to escape a
few months later, when the _pa_ fell.

[114] A storehouse erected upon a high central pole, to
protect the food from the depredations of rats.

[115] So far as is known, this was the first occasion on which the
principle of the sap was applied in Maori warfare.

[116] An interesting parallel to these proceedings is to be found in
Gibbon's description of the siege of Constantinople: "To fill the
ditch was the toil of the besiegers; to clear away the rubbish was the
safety of the besieged; and, after a long and bloody conflict, the web
which had been woven in the day was still unravelled in the night."

[117] It is a popular belief in some quarters that the reason why the
defenders so lost heart was that they were oppressed by the guilty
knowledge that they had acted treacherously in killing Te Pehi and his
companions.

[118] Popularly known as "Maori-heads" or "Nigger-heads." Flax and
_raupo_ also grew freely in the swamps.

[119] This was rendered more difficult owing to the fact that for many
days Te Rauparaha's followers were scouring the country, far and wide,
in search of fugitives. The Rev. Canon Stack mentions the pathetic
instance of two young children who were in hiding with their father.
He left them to go in search of food, promising to return; but he
never did so, having in all probability been captured and killed. The
children, who afterwards lived to be well-known Canterbury residents,
sustained themselves by eating _raupo_ roots for several months,
until they were found by an eeling party in the bed of the Selwyn
River.

[120] Te Auta is described as a man of grave and venerable appearance,
who was a strict disciplinarian in all matters pertaining to the
religious ceremonies of the _pa_, his authority in these respects
being considerably enhanced by his long white hair and flowing beard.
He was one of the last of the Ngai-Tahu _tohungas_, who were
deeply versed in all the peculiar rites of Maori heathendom.

[121] Kahukura was the patron divinity of the Ngai-Tahu tribe. His
cultus was introduced by the crew of the Takitimu canoe, who were the
ancestors of the Kaiapohians (_Stack_).

[122] Amongst the prisoners taken was a boy named Pura, who excited
the interest of Te Rauparaha. The chief took him under his personal
protection, and on the night that Kaiapoi fell, he led him into his
own _whare_. In order to prevent any possibility of escape,
Rauparaha tied a rope round the boy's body and attached the other end
to his own wrist. During the early hours of the night the chief was
exceedingly restless, but after he fell asleep Pura quietly disengaged
himself from the rope, and tied the end of it to a peg which he found
driven into the floor of the _whare_. He then crept stealthily to
the door, but in passing out he had the misfortune to overturn a pile
of _manuka_ which was piled up outside. Luckily, the brushwood
fell on top of him, completely covering him, but the noise aroused Te
Rauparaha, who, as soon as he perceived that his captive had flown,
raised the alarm, and in an incredibly short time the whole camp was
in a state of uproar and panic. The warriors, suddenly aroused from
their sleep, were in a condition of extreme nervous tension after the
excitement and exertion of the day. Some imagined that the prisoners
had risen in revolt, while others believed that the fugitives had
returned in force to attack the camp, and it was some time before
order could be restored and the true position explained. Meanwhile,
Pura lay panting with fear and trembling lest he should be found, for
recapture meant certain death. His hiding, however, was not
discovered, and when the camp had once more settled down to sleep, he
quietly pushed the brushwood aside, and, threading his way out into
the swamp, made good his escape to the south, where he afterwards
joined the main body of the fugitives. Pura subsequently became a
well-known resident of Lyttelton, under the name of Pitama.

[123] "Some conception may be formed of the numbers slain and eaten
when I mention that some time after the settlement of Canterbury the
Rev. Mr. Raven, incumbent of Woodend, near the site of the _pa_
in question, collected many cartloads of their bones, and buried them
in a mound on the side of the main road from the present town of
Kaiapoi to the north. Ghastly relics of these feasts still strew the
ground, from which I myself have gathered many" (_Travers_).

[124] "The summit of Onawe was called Te-pa-nui-o-Hau. There, amongst
the huge boulders and rocks that crown the hill and cover its steep
sloping sides, dwelt the Spirit of the Wind, and tradition tells how
jealously it guarded its sacred haunts from careless intrusion"
(_Tales of Banks's Peninsula_).

[125] "Te Hiko struck us forcibly by his commanding stature, by his
noble, intelligent physiognomy, and by his truly chieftain-like
demeanour. His descent by both parents pointed him out as a great
leader in Cook Strait, should he inherit his father's great qualities.
He was sparing of his words and mild in speech. He had carefully
treasured up his father's instructions and the relics of his voyage to
England.... He was said to pay his slaves for their work, and to treat
them with unusual kindness, and the white men spoke of him as mild and
inoffensive in his intercourse with them" (_Wakefield_).

[126] "Before the northern fleet got clear of Banks's Peninsula, a
number of the prisoners escaped, the chief person amongst them being
Te Hori, known in after years as the highly respected native
Magistrate of Kaiapoi, the only man of acknowledged learning left
amongst the Ngai-Tahu after Te Rauparaha's last raid" (_Stack_).

CHAPTER VI

THE SMOKING FLAX

The conquest of the southern districts being now completed, and the
winter months approaching, the whole of the northern fleet took its
departure for Cloudy Bay, where, according to the records of the
whalers who were there at the time, scenes of the wildest excitement
prevailed for many days, and the unhappy condition of the captives was
observed with much compassion by persons who were powerless to
intervene. From Cloudy Bay the main body of the conquerors passed over
to Kapiti, and there the scenes of unbridled ferocity were resumed,
until sufficient slaves had been killed and eaten to fittingly honour
the returning warriors. These rejoicings at an end, Te Rauparaha set
himself to seriously administer the affairs of his own people, which
were always in danger of violent disturbance, due to the mutual
jealousies of the tribes when not preoccupied by the excitement of
war. This work of domestic management almost wholly absorbed his
attention during the next few years; and it was fortunate for the
Kaiapoi captives that he had so much on hand, as the pressure of
circumstances and the stress of inter-tribal complications more than
once compelled him to treat them with greater consideration than might
otherwise have been their lot. While these events were proceeding in
the North Island, the Maoris in the south were slowly reorganising
their forces. The majority of the fugitives from Kaiapoi and Onawe had
travelled southward until they reached Taiaroa's settlement at Otago,
where, under his guidance, they began to formulate their plans for
avenging their many humiliations. Amongst these fugitives was
Tu-te-hounuku, the son of the treacherously captured Tamaiharanui, who,
recognising that his own people were not equal to the task of
accomplishing vengeance, sought the aid of the great Otago warrior,
and chief of Ruapuke, Tu-Hawaiki. This chief had received from the
whalers the startling appellation of "Bloody Jack,"[127] not so much
because of his sanguinary disposition as from the lurid nature of his
language. He was a warrior of the progressive type, who at once saw
the advantage of intimate intercourse with the white man; and to this
end he made common cause with all the whalers stationed along the
coast. He assisted them in their quarrels, and they in return supplied
him with the implements of war necessary to overcome his tribal
enemies. In this way he managed to acquire the mastery over a large
area of country, and to amass a considerable amount of wealth. He
owned a small vessel, which was commanded by one of his whaler
friends, in which he frequently made trips to Sydney. There he formed
an acquaintance with Governor Gipps, who presented him with a number
of old military uniforms; and on his return to New Zealand he enrolled
a squad of his own tribe, clothed them in the soldiers' garb, drilled
them, and on state occasions paraded them as his personal bodyguard,
"all the same the _Kawana_."[128] To this enterprising barbarian the
prospect of a brush with Rauparaha--or with any one else for that
matter--was a most agreeable one, and so the alliance with
Tu-te-hounuku was entered upon after the most trifling negotiation.

Although Taiaroa appears to have taken some part in organising the
expedition, he did not accompany it. The leadership was therefore
entrusted to Tu-Hawaiki, who came and secreted himself in the vicinity
of Cape Campbell, being thus favourably situated for an attack upon
the Ngati-Toa, who now had entire control of the northern portion of
the Middle Island, where a section of their people were continuously
settled. Moreover, it had become one of their practices to visit Lake
Grasmere for the purpose of snaring the paradise duck, which then, as
now, made this sheet of water one of their favourite breeding grounds;
and it was while upon one of these bird-catching expeditions that Te
Rauparaha nearly lost his life. Being intent upon the manipulation of
his snares, he was unconscious of the approach from behind the Cape of
Tu-Hawaiki and his horde, until, with a savage yell, they pounced upon
the unwary Ngati-Toa. For the latter the situation was indeed
critical, and all its difficulties were taken in by Rauparaha at a
glance. He saw that in point of numbers the odds were terribly against
him, and that to stand his ground and fight it out with such a
formidable foe could only result in certain death. On the other hand,
the chances of escape had been almost completely cut off; for when the
party landed at the lake, the canoes, with one exception, were drawn
up on the beach, and were now high and dry. The delay in launching
these meant the difference between life and death, so closely were
they pressed. But fortunately for him, one still remained in the water
some distance from the shore; and on observing this solitary gleam of
hope, Te Rauparaha swiftly made up his mind that discretion was the
better part of valour. He raced for the sea, and, plunging into the
surf, swam to the canoe with rapid and powerful strokes, followed by
at least forty of his own people. At the canoe a general scramble
ensued, in which only the fittest survived, the remainder being left
struggling in the water to escape as best they could, or be despatched
by their enemies as opportunity offered.

In the meantime, those of the Ngati-Toa who had not been able to
plunge into the sea were unceremoniously killed on the spot, and those
of the attacking party who were not actively engaged in this
sanguinary work at once launched the canoes lying on the Boulder Bank,
which divides the lake from the sea, and set off in hot pursuit of the
retreating Rauparaha. As might be expected, the chase was a desperate
one, each party straining every nerve to defeat the object of the
other. Rauparaha, standing in the stern of his canoe, by word and
gesture urged the men at the paddles to renewed exertions; not that
they required much exhortation, for they knew that their lives
depended entirely upon themselves. But, notwithstanding their utmost
endeavours, it soon became painfully evident that their pursuers were
gaining upon them, owing to the overloaded condition of the canoe.
Rauparaha then determined upon a course which can scarcely recommend
him to our admiration, although Nature's first law, self-preservation,
might be urged in extenuation of his crime. Without further ceremony
he ordered half the people in the canoe, many of whom were women and
children, to jump overboard, and those who demurred were forcibly
compelled to obey.[129] Thus relieved of some of its burden, the canoe
gradually forged ahead, and the diversion of the pursuers' attention
to the jettisoned passengers, who were struggling in the water,
enabled Rauparaha to make good his escape to Cloudy Bay. The Ngai-Tahu
people are especially proud of this encounter, which they regard as a
brilliant victory, and have called it _Rua Moa iti_, or "The battle of
the little Moa's feather."

It could not, of course, be supposed that a man of action, such as Te
Rauparaha was, would long remain idle while so black a stain upon his
reputation as a warrior remained unavenged. He therefore lost no time
in sending his messengers to a branch of the Ngati-Awa tribe, who then
resided at the Wairau, soliciting their aid in a mission of
retaliation. The request was readily granted, and, with this
reinforcement, a war party of considerable strength set sail in their
canoes for the _karaka_ groves which grew luxuriantly at
O-Rua-Moa Bay, immediately to the south of Cape Campbell, where it was
fully expected that the enemy would be resting. In these anticipations
they were disappointed. The prey had flown; and if the purpose of the
expedition was not to fail utterly, there was nothing for it but to
push on until the object of their search was found. They were soon
rewarded, for close to the shore, at the mouth of the Flaxbourne
River, Tu-Hawaiki and his braves were encamped, and here the gage of
battle was thrown down. That the encounter was a desperate one may be
judged by the fact that both sides claimed the victory, and they seem
to have withdrawn from the combat mutually agreeing that they had each
had enough. According to the Ngai-Tahu account, Te Rauparaha's
stratagem of sending one hundred and forty men of Ngati-Awa down the
steep face of a cliff to cut off Tu-Hawaiki's retreat was successfully
circumvented, the flanking party being caught in their own trap and
every one of them destroyed. The Ngati-Toa are equally positive that
the palm of victory rested with them; but in that event the advantage
gained was not sufficiently great to justify them in following it up,
for Tu-Hawaiki was allowed to depart next morning unmolested to
Kaikoura. On the journey down an incident occurred which betrayed the
savage side of this man's nature, and showed how much he deserved, in
another sense, the title of the old whalers, when they styled him
"Bloody Jack." During the voyage the canoe commanded by Tu-te-hounuku
was capsized in a southerly gale, and the young chief was drowned,
although every other man was saved. The selfishness of the men in
seeking their own safety and letting their leader perish so enraged
the fiery Tu-Hawaiki, that as soon as he heard of the accident he
ordered the canoes ashore, and with his own hand slew every one of the
surviving crew.[130]

Immediately after this skirmish Te Rauparaha returned to the North
Island, where there was urgent need of his presence. With the coming
of the Ngati-Awa, Ngati-Ruanui, and other Taranaki tribes, the domestic
disagreements, of which he stood in daily dread, began to ferment, and
were already breaking out into open rupture. The Ngati-Awa had cast
envious eyes upon a piece of country under tillage by Ngati-Raukawa,
in the vicinity of Otaki, and were openly boasting of their intention
to make it their own. Their cause was espoused by their Taranaki
relatives, and even a section of Te Rauparaha's own people threw in
their lot with them against their old allies, the Ngati-Raukawa. This
defection, which was especially distressing to Te Rauparaha, arose from
some act of favouritism--real or fancied--displayed towards Te
Whatanui, the great Ngati-Raukawa chief, for whom Te Rauparaha ever
felt and showed the highest regard. These strained relations, however,
did not break out into actual civil strife until the Ngati-Raukawa
people discovered the Ngati-Ruanui malcontents looting their
potato-pits at Waikawa. Up to this point the Ngati-Raukawa had borne
the pin-pricks of the Taranaki braggarts with some degree of patience;
but this act of plunder satisfied them that, unless they were prepared
to defend their property, they would soon have no property to defend.
They therefore stood no longer upon ceremony, but straightway attacked
the Ngati-Ruanui settlement, and thus let slip the dogs of civil
war.[131] In the conflict which ensued Tauake, a Ngati-Ruanui chief,
was killed, an incident which only served to fan the flame of
internecine strife, and hostilities of a more or less virulent nature
involved all the settlements along the coast from Waikanae to
Manawatu. Both sides were equally well armed, for guns and ammunition
were now plentiful, the traders having learned the Maori's weakness,
and being prepared to pander to it for the sake of cheap cargoes of
flax and potatoes. The consequence was that in each skirmish numbers
of the belligerents were killed, and Te Rauparaha saw with increasing
dismay the havoc wrought amongst his fighting men, and the useless
waste of tribal strength which must ensue from these insane
proceedings. Only too clearly he realised that, watched as he was by
enemies both on the north and to the east, this state of division
might at any moment be seized on as an opportunity for attack. His own
efforts to reconcile the disputants were unavailing; and when he saw
the spirit of insurrection growing and spreading beyond his power of
control, he determined upon making an appeal for outside aid. He
accordingly dispatched a mission to Taupo, requesting Te Heuheu to
bring down a large force wherewith to crush out the seeds of
rebellion, by inflicting a telling defeat upon the most turbulent
insurgents. Te Heuheu's reply to this appeal was of a practical kind.
Within a few months he marched out from Taupo with an effective
fighting force of eight hundred men, officered by some of the most
famous of his own and the Maungatautari chiefs of that time. Almost
immediately upon their arrival on the coast, they, in conjunction with
Ngati-Raukawa, proceeded to attack the Ngati-Awa at a pa close to the
Otaki River, and for several months the conflict was maintained with
fluctuating success. Notwithstanding the numbers brought against them,
the Ngati-Awa and Ngati-Ruanui proved themselves stubborn fighters,
maintaining their ground with heroic desperation.

In several of the battles the slaughter was exceedingly heavy, amongst
the slain being counted many important chiefs attached to both sides;
but still the issue hung in doubt, and so it remained until the great
battle of Pakakutu had been fought. On this occasion a supreme effort
was made by Te Heuheu, and the struggle culminated in the decisive
defeat of Ngati-Awa. Their _pa_ was taken, and their chief
Takerangi was slain. With his death was removed one of the principal
factors in the quarrel, and the way was paved for a settlement
honourable in its terms to all the parties. A conference of
considerable importance was immediately held at Kapiti, at which the
disquieting issues were discussed, and in the debates upon these
contentious points both Te Heuheu and Te Whatanui raised their voices
with force and eloquence in the cause of peace. As a result of these
negotiations, the differences which had so nearly wrecked Te Rauparaha's
consolidating work of fourteen years were amicably settled.[132] The
general result was that Ngati-Raukawa were reinstated in their
possessions at Ohau and Horowhenua and as far north as Rangitikei,
while Ngati-Awa retired southward of Waikanae, and extended their
settlements as far in that direction as Wellington, where they
replaced Pomare, and where, under Te Puni and Wharepouri, they were
found by Colonel Wakefield and his fellow-pioneers of the New Zealand
Company when they came to the spot in 1839.

But, though the civil war had thus ended in a manner satisfactory to
himself and to his friends, Te Rauparaha was stung to the quick by the
knowledge that his authority had been so completely set at defiance by
Ngati-Awa. And this feeling of irritation was further intensified by
the fact that some of his own tribe had shown him so little regard as
to aid and abet them in their rebellion. Their disloyal conduct so
preyed upon his mind that, as the result of much serious reflection,
he determined to absolve himself from all further responsibility on
their behalf, by abandoning the business of conquest and returning
with Te Heuheu to Maungatautari, where he proposed to live for the
remainder of his days the quiet and restful life, to which waning
years look forward as their heritage. To this end he collected a
number of his most trusty followers, and, shaking the dust of Kapiti
from his feet, had travelled as far as Ohau in the execution of his
petulant decision, when he was overtaken by representatives of all the
tribes, who begged him to return and once more become a father to
them. In these entreaties the suppliants were joined by Te Heuheu,
whose advocacy broke down the chief's resolution. He at length agreed,
amidst general rejoicing, to retrace his steps, and none rejoiced more
sincerely than the repentant Ngati-Awa.

Between the date of the battle of Pakakutu and the arrival of the ship
_Tory_, Te Rauparaha does not appear to have been engaged in any
conflict of great importance in the North Island, the years being
spent in visiting the various settlements which had been established
under his guiding genius. These journeys frequently led him across
Cook Strait to the Middle Island, where, at Cloudy Bay, there was now
a considerable colony of his own and the Ngati-Awa people, who were
actively cultivating the friendship of the whalers.[133] These visits
also more than once led him into sharp conflict with his old enemies,
the Ngai-Tahu, who were ever vigilantly watching for the favourable
moment to repay their defeat at Kaiapoi. Once they met him on the
fringe of Port Underwood, at a spot still called Fighting Bay, where
they claim to have defeated him with considerable slaughter. From this
engagement, in which his small force was neatly ambushed, the great
chief only escaped by diving into the sea and hiding amongst the
floating kelp, until he was picked up by one of his canoes, and,
availing himself of a heavy mist which suddenly enveloped the scene of
strife, fled, leaving his allies, the Ngati-Awa, to continue the
unequal struggle. After the fight, the bones of the slain were left to
bleach on the beach, where they were repeatedly seen by the first
settlers at the port.[134]

This success did not induce the Ngai-Tahu to pursue the retreating
enemy across the Strait; but, elated in spirit, they returned to the
south for the purpose of fitting out an expedition on a much more
extensive scale, with which they hoped to inflict a crushing blow on
their hated enemy. These operations were superintended by Taiaroa, who
in a few months had gathered together a flotilla of canoes and boats
sufficient to transport some four hundred men. These he commanded in
person, and with them proceeded by slow stages to the neighbourhood of
Cloudy Bay. Hearing that Te Rauparaha was at Queen Charlotte Sound,
the southern warriors steered their fleet for Tory Channel,[135] but
failed to encounter the enemy until they had reached Waitohi, near the
head of the Sound. Here they met, and immediately attacked a large
party of Te Rauparaha's followers, who were under the personal
direction of their chief. The ground upon which the battle took place
was broken and wooded, and it was difficult to bring the whole of the
respective forces advantageously into action at once; and therefore
the combat resolved itself into a series of skirmishes, rather than a
pitched and decisive battle. At the end of the first day Te Rauparaha
shifted his position, a fact which has encouraged the Ngai-Tahu people
to claim the credit of a victory. But Ngati-Toa did not retire from
the field altogether; and for several days hostilities continued to be
carried on in a succession of duels between the champions of the
opposing tribes, in which the battle honours were fairly evenly
divided between them. In these contests Te Rauparaha is said to have
warned his men against risking defeat by coming too confidently into
close quarters with the enemy. Numerous incidents during the siege of
Kaiapoi had served to impress him with Ngai-Tahu's prowess in this
class of warfare, and any recklessness on the part of his warriors
might therefore easily lose him a valuable life. Thus, when a
Ngati-Toa and a Ngai-Tahu were struggling upon the hill-side in full
view of both forces, and victory ultimately rested with the southern
warrior, Te Rauparaha exclaimed to those about him, "_I kiia atu ano_"
(I told you it would be so). But though an occasional success of this
kind attended the southern arms, nothing of a decisive nature was
accomplished by Taiaroa on this raid. Scarcity of provisions shortly
afterwards compelled him to withdraw to the south; and before he had
time or inclination to devise fresh reprisals, events of an external
nature had so operated upon the Maori mind as to make any further
conflict between the Ngati-Toa and Ngai-Tahu tribes undesirable if not
impossible.

It is now fitting to remember that, while these events had been
proceeding along the eastern coast of the Middle Island, the process
of subduing the southern tribes had not been neglected on its western
shore. Out of the extreme confidence which pervaded the Ngati-Toa mind
upon the return of Te Pehi from England, a wider field of conquest was
sought than appeared to be provided by the plains of Canterbury. In
obedience to these aspirations, an important division of their forces
was sent across the Strait for the purpose of forcibly establishing
themselves in the bays of the Nelson coast. _Hapus_ of the Ngati-Toa
and Ngati-Awa united in this expedition, which was attended with
unqualified success. They immediately moved to attack the Ngati-Apa
settlements in Blind and Massacre Bays, from out of which they drove
the inhabitants with ruthless severity, and immediately assumed
possession of the soil. Those who had fought under Te Koihua and Te
Puoho, the Ngati-Awa leaders, built _pas_ and remained in permanent
occupation of the conquered country;[136] but Niho, a son of Te Pehi,
and Takerei took their Ngati-Tama, and perhaps a few of their
Ngati-Rarua, warriors across the wild and almost trackless mountains
which intervene between Blind Bay and the west coast. From the Buller
district they worked their way southward, killing and taking prisoners
almost the entire population as they went, until they reached the
Hokitika River, where resistance ceased and the need for further
aggression disappeared.

Niho and Takerei settled at Mawhera, on the banks of the Grey River,
the centre of that romantic region, the greenstone country, which for
centuries had been the Eldorado of Maori dreams.[137] At various other
points, both to the northward and southward of Mawhera, the
northerners established themselves in permanent _pas_, to the
total exclusion of the weaker tribes, who had formerly controlled the
barter of the precious nephrite. From these points of colonisation the
restless spirit of the invaders was ever carrying them further
southward and eastward in search of excitement and adventure. No
systematic occupation of the land appears to have been attempted
southward of Hokitika; but stray bands of marauders were frequently
setting off on predatory expeditions into the pathless mountain-waste
of western Otago, which then sheltered the shadowy remnant of the
Ngati-Mamoe race. Further and further these adventurers penetrated
into the deep glens, rugged passes, and dark forests, until they knew
the geographical secrets of the interior almost as intimately as did
its former conquerors.[138]

In the absence of written records, many of these militant journeys
have necessarily been effaced from memory, and no tradition has been
left to commemorate those whose valiant spirit led them into the wilds
of a hostile country, from which only a lion-hearted courage could
bring them safely back. Of one such venture, however, undertaken about
the year 1836, for the purpose of attacking Tu-Hawaiki on his island
fortress at Ruapuke, the story has been preserved; and, because of its
ambitious conception and dramatic ending, it is worthy of being
narrated here as it has been told in the tribal traditions. The chief
concerned in leading the adventure was Te Puoho, who came originally
from the country south of the Mokau River, in Taranaki, to assist Te
Rauparaha in his policy of conquest. He was at this time the head
chief of the Ngati-Tama tribe, who were closely allied to Ngati-Awa,
and whom the fortune of war had now settled round the great bays on
the Nelson coast. Hearing that the inhabitants away to the south were
"a soft people," Te Puoho conceived the idea of raiding their country,
and, in addition to matching himself against Tu-Hawaiki, securing a
large number of slaves,[139] whom he intended to use as beasts of
burden. To this end he first completed a strong stockade, in which he
intended to herd his captives, and then he set off with a fighting
force of some seventy men, and a small number of women, to pierce his
way through the dense forest and dangerous passes of the overland
route. Arrived at the Grey River, where Niho and his people were
settled, he expected to be largely reinforced from amongst his former
friends; but, to his consternation, he found that his old comrade,
Niho, was distinctly hostile, and most of his people coldly
indifferent. A number of his own followers, finding that the purpose
of the expedition was not approved by Niho, declined to proceed
further in the enterprise and returned to Cook Strait. But at length
Te Puoho, nothing daunted, succeeded in persuading a section of the
Ngati-Wairangi to reverse their decision not to accompany him, and
then with about a hundred followers he commenced his march southward.

His first route took him over the sinuous tracks which hugged the
coast line until they reached Jackson's Head, a distance of many
hundred miles from the point of departure. Few particulars of this
stage of the journey have been preserved: but it is known that they
returned northward as far as the Haast River,[140] where they
deflected their course to the eastward, and proceeded inland by way of
the Haast Pass. At Lake Hawea they met a Ngai-Tahu eeling party, from
whom they ascertained that the chief with his two wives had gone to
Lake Wanaka. On the pretence of guiding two of Te Puoho's men thither,
the chief's son, Te Raki, succeeded in getting them deeply entangled
in the bush; and then, abandoning them to their own resources, he
slipped away to his father's camp and advised him of what had
occurred. Arming themselves, they went in search of the two men, who
were now wandering aimlessly about, and, finding them floundering in
the forest, they soon succeeded in killing them. When it dawned upon
him that he had been duped, Te Puoho exacted _utu_ from amongst the
other members of the eeling party, and pushed on further into the
interior. They navigated the upper waters of the Molyneaux on
_mokihis_, and made their way down the valley of the Mataura through
the country of Wakatipu. In view of his previous achievements in that
direction, no one would have been surprised had Te Rauparaha or his
people attempted an invasion of these far southern districts by sea;
but no one ever dreamed of a blow being struck at them by an inland
route. Consequently, when this war party marched down the valley of
the Mataura, the inhabitants were wholly off their guard, and fell an
easy prey to the invaders. An eeling party was captured at Whakaea,
and their store of food proved exceedingly welcome to the hungry
wanderers, whose only provender up to this time had been wild cabbage,
the root of the _ti_ palm, and a few _wekas_. These wanderings had now
occupied the northern men nearly two years, during which many of them
had died of cold and hunger. But, though a "dwindled and enfeebled
band," they were still strong enough to secure another party of
Ngai-Tahu, whom they found camped in the midst of a clump of _korokiu_
trees, which then grew upon the Waimea Plain. Te Puoho believed that
he had secured the whole of the party, but in this he was mistaken.
Some few escaped, and, hastening off to the Tuturau _pa_, warned the
people there of the approaching danger, the fugitives making their way
to the Awarua whaling station. Te Puoho and his party immediately
proceeded to occupy the abandoned _pa_, in the hope that a prolonged
rest would recruit their exhausted powers; and, innocent of the fact
that retributive justice was at hand, they settled down to leisurely
enjoy the recuperative process.

From Awarua news of the raid was dispatched to the island of Ruapuke,
where Tu-Hawaiki and his men were. Memory of the event is still well
preserved on the island, as the last occasion on which oblation was
offered to the god of battle. In accordance with ancient Maori custom,
this ceremony took place in an immense cavern, which opens to the sea
beach beneath the island fortress. It may still be seen, a dark abyss;
and, although geological periods must have elapsed since it was
instinct with the life of mighty waters, the echo-swish still sounds
and resounds, as if acting and reacting the story of its birth. Shut
up amidst these ghostly sights and sounds, the tribal _tohunga_ spent
the night in severe exorcisms. Outside in the open was heard the clash
of arms, plaintive wails and lamentations of the _tangi_ for the dead.
At dawn of day the prescribed spells to weaken the enemy were cast and
the invocation to the spear was spoken. The followers of Tu-Hawaiki
then sailed for the mainland and effected a landing at what is now
known as Fortrose. Concealing themselves during the day, they marched
under cover of night, reaching Tuturau early on the morning of the
third day. Being unapprehensive of danger, the inmates of the _pa_
were in their turn caught napping, and the recapture was effected as
smartly as had been the original capture. As the attacking force crept
cautiously within gunshot, Te Puoho was observed sleeping on the
verandah of one of the houses. A slight noise fell upon his quick ear
and startled him. He sprang to his feet; instantly the report of a gun
rang out, and he fell a lifeless heap upon his bed. Some thirty in all
were killed. The rest, with one exception,[141] were taken prisoners,
and confined on Ruapuke Island, whence they were afterwards smuggled
away by a pakeha-maori boatman named McDonald, who, under an
arrangement with the Ngati-Toa tribe, landed them safely back at
Kapiti.

The Haast River raid, as the exploit of Te Puoho is known in Maori
history, becomes interesting not only because it was on this occasion
that the followers of Te Rauparaha reached the most southerly limit of
their aggressions upon Ngai-Tahu, but because it affords another
evidence, if such were needed, of the extremes to which the Maori was
ever ready to go in order to get even with an enemy. Primarily, the
raid was designed as a stroke of retaliation upon Tu-Hawaiki, whom
they hoped to surprise by pouncing upon him from a new and unexpected
quarter. To effect this, a long and dangerous journey had to be
braved; they had to penetrate into a region in which Nature seemed to
have determined to impose in the path of human progress her most
forbidding barriers. Not only had this band of half-clad savages to
cross what the late Sir Julius Von Haast has described as "one of the
most rugged pieces of New Zealand ground which, during my long
wanderings, I have ever passed," but they had to contend with
snowfields lying deep in the Southern Alps, the swollen torrent, the
pathless forest, and the foodless plains. Not even the roar of the
avalanche as it swept down the mountain-side, the impassible precipice
as it loomed dark across their path, nor the severity of the climate,
with its oscillations from arctic cold to tropical heat, was
sufficient to chill their ardour for revenge. So for two years they
wandered amidst some of the grandest and gloomiest surroundings, at
times suffering bitterly from cold and hunger. In the stress of these
privations the weaker ones died; but the survivors were sustained by
the enthusiasm of their leader, who directed their course ever to the
southward, where they hoped some day to meet and vanquish their hated
rival. Of the fate which overtook them, history has told; and, though
future generations may be reluctant to endorse the purpose of their
mission, they will not refuse to credit them with a certain spirit of
heroism in daring and enduring what they did to accomplish their end.

The peace which had been dramatically concluded at Kapiti by Te Heuheu
breaking the _taiaha_ across his knee, and which closed what is
known as the Hao-whenua war, was sacredly observed by all the tribes
for some years; and this respite from anxiety afforded Te Rauparaha
freedom of opportunity to pursue his grudge against the Rangitane and
Muaupoko peoples. The humiliated remnant of the Muaupoko tribe had by
this time sought and obtained the protection of Te Whatanui, who had
promised them, in his now historic words, quoted many years afterwards
by Major Kemp, that so long as they remained his dutiful subjects he
would shield them from the wrath of Te Rauparaha: "I will be the
rata-tree that will shelter all of you. All that you will see will be
the stars that are shining in the sky above us; all that will descend
upon you will be the raindrops that fall from heaven." Although
slavery was the price they had to pay for the privilege of breathing
their native air, it at least secured them the right to live, though
it did not secure them absolute immunity from attack. More than once
Te Whatanui had to protest against the inhumanity of Ngati-Toa towards
those whom he had elected to save from utter destruction; and these
distressing persecutions did not cease until the Ngati-Raukawa chief
told Te Rauparaha, in unmistakable language, emphasised by
unmistakable gestures, that, before another hair of a Muaupoko head
was touched, he and his followers would first have to pass over his
(Te Whatanui's) dead body. Unwilling to create a breach of friendship
with so powerful an ally as Te Whatanui, Te Rauparaha ceased openly to
assail the helpless Muaupoko, though still continuing to harass them
in secret. He plotted with Te Puoho to trap the Rangitane, and with Wi
Tako to ensnare the Muaupoko: the scheme being to invite them to a
great feast at Waikanae, to partake of some new food[142] which the
_pakeha_ had brought to Kapiti. So far as the Rangitane were
concerned, the invitation was prefaced by an exchange of civilities in
the shape of presents between Mahuri and Te Puoho; and when it was
thought that their confidence had been secured, the vanity of the
Rangitane was still further flattered by an invitation to the feast. A
considerable number of them at once set out for Waikanae; but, when
they arrived at Horowhenua, Te Whatanui used his utmost endeavours to
dissuade Mahuri, their chief, from proceeding further. Knowing Te
Rauparaha as he did, he felt convinced that he could not so soon
forget his hatred for those who had sought to take his life at
Papaitonga: and, while he would have had no compunction about killing
in open war every man and woman of the tribes he was protecting, his
generous soul revolted against the treachery and slaughter which he
feared lay concealed beneath the present invitation. His counsel was
therefore against going to Waikanae; but the impetuous young Mahuri
saw no reason for alarm, and, heedless of the advice of Te Whatanui,
he led his people to their destruction.

On their arrival, the hospitality of Te Puoho was of the most
bountiful nature. The visitors were shown to their houses, and no
effort was spared to allay any suspicion of treachery. But one night,
as they sat around their fires, the appointed signal was given, and
the guests were set upon by a force superior in numbers by two to one,
and, to use the words of a native[143] who knew the story well, "they
were killed like pigs," only one man escaping from the massacre. This
was Te Aweawe, whose life was spared at the instigation of Tungia, in
return for a similar act of humanity which the Rangitane chief had
been able to perform for him some time before. In justice to Te
Rauparaha, it should be stated that this massacre was not entirely
prompted by his old grudge against the Rangitane people, but partly
arose out of a new cause of grievance against them, which serves to
illustrate the complexity of Maori morality and the smallness of the
pretence upon which they deemed a sacrifice of life both justifiable
and necessary. The offence of which the Rangitane people had been
adjudged guilty enough to deserve so terrible a punishment was the
fact that they were somewhat distantly related to the Ngati-Kahungunu
tribe, resident in the Wairarapa. These people had some time
previously killed a number of Ngati-Toa natives, whom they believed to
be plotting their destruction; for, while they were discussing their
plans in one of the _whares_, a Ngati-Kahungunu, who was sleeping with
at least one ear open, overheard their conversation, and at once gave
the alarm, with the result that the tables were turned on the scheming
Ngati-Toa. Their deaths, however, had to be avenged; and it is easy to
understand how gladly Te Rauparaha would avail himself of this new
excuse for wiping out old scores.

The morning after the massacre, Tungia took Te Aweawe outside the
Waikanae _pa_, and, placing a weapon in his hand, said, "Go! come
back again and kill these people." The released chief at once made his
way back as best he could to the Manawatu, where he found most of the
settlements deserted by the terror-stricken inhabitants, in
consequence of the appalling news which had just reached them of the
death of their friends. He, however, succeeded in collecting about
thirty warriors, and with these he travelled down the coast, receiving
additions by the way from a few stragglers belonging to his own and
the Muaupoko tribes. When they reached Waikanae, they found the
Ngati-Toa and Ngati-Awa peoples busily engaged in gathering flax to
trade away for guns and powder and little suspecting an attack. They
had beguiled themselves into the false belief that the shattered
Rangitane would not be able to collect in so short a time a force
sufficiently strong to harm them. When, therefore, Te Aweawe, at the
head of his brave little band, burst in upon them, dealing death at
every blow, they, in their turn, were at all the disadvantage of being
taken completely by surprise. Upwards of sixty of the followers of Te
Rauparaha were killed, amongst them a chieftainess named
Muri-whakaroto, who fell into the hands of the enraged Te Aweawe, and
was despatched without the slightest compunction. Matea, the Rangitane
chief second in command, was more chivalrous to Tainai Rangi, for he
spared her and brought her back, a prisoner certainly, but still
alive. Such of the flax-gathering party as were not slain made good
their escape down the coast; and the avengers of Mahuri, fearing that
they might soon return with a large and active war party, beat a hasty
retreat, well satisfied with the result of their mission of
revenge--the last great act of slaughter perpetrated by the resident
people as a protest against the conquest of their country.

Any policy of retaliation which Te Rauparaha and the chiefs who were
co-operating with him may have contemplated, as a step towards
restoring the equilibrium of tribal honour, had to be indefinitely
delayed, owing to the rapidity with which events developed in another
direction; and that delay robbed them of future opportunity. The death
of Waitohi, Te Rauparaha's sister, and mother of Rangihaeata, had just
occurred at Mana, where she had been living with her son. The demise
of so high-born a woman necessarily demanded a _tangi_ on an
unusually elaborate and extensive scale, and the whole of the tribes
who had been associated with Te Rauparaha in his scheme of conquest
assembled on the island to attend the obsequies of the honoured dead.
Levies of provisions were made upon all the tributary tribes on both
sides of the Straits, and for several weeks the peculiar rites of a
Maori funeral were continued without intermission.

It is said that, for no other purpose than to appear opulent in the
eyes of his guests, Te Rauparaha ordered the killing and cooking of
one of the poor slaves who had come from the Pelorus with his people's
tribute to the feast. Be this as it may--and it is by no means
improbable under the circumstances--the strange admixture of funeral
and festival, which marks the Maori _tangi_, was observed at Mana
in all its completeness and elaboration. But the death of Waitohi
brought in its train something more than a great _tangi_; for
indirectly it was the cause of the renewal of hostilities between
Ngati-Awa and Ngati-Raukawa, culminating in the engagement known in
Maori history as Kuititanga, which was fought on October 16, 1839. It
is not clear why or in what way the old sore between these comrades in
arms was re-opened, but the weight of testimony inclines towards the
assumption that Te Rauparaha's irrepressible passion for intrigue was
the moving impulse in urging Ngati-Raukawa to take the step they did.
Whether he had grown jealous of Ngati-Awa's increasing numbers and
power, or whether, having achieved all he could hope to accomplish, he
wished to shake himself free from any further obligation to them,
cannot of course be asserted with any confidence. Ngati-Raukawa were
nothing loath to join in any conspiracy against Ngati-Awa. Living, as
they did, north of Kapiti, they began to find themselves somewhat out
of touch with the whalers; and probably it was the rapid extension of
trade, enabling Ngati-Awa to procure guns as readily as Rauparaha
himself, that induced him to instigate Ngati-Raukawa to break the
truce which had existed since the battle of Pakakutu. No breach of the
peace actually occurred at Mana, but bickerings and threats foretold
the coming storm; and when Ngati-Awa returned to their _pas_ on
the mainland, it was with the full consciousness that the attack would
not be long delayed. The Ngati-Raukawa mourners remained at Mana for
some time after Ngati-Awa had left, and it would have caused the
latter no surprise had Ngati-Raukawa made an attack upon them--as
indeed they invited it--as they passed Waikanae on their way to Otaki.
This Ngati-Raukawa did not do, but went on with every semblance of
peace, even ignoring the shots of defiance which were fired by
Ngati-Awa as they passed. Towards evening, however, they altered their
tactics, and, doubling back, surrounded the Kuititanga _pa_ during the
night, in preparation for the attack at daybreak. A reconnoitring
party was sent out to investigate the state of the defences, one of
whom was indiscreet enough to enter a house, and, rousing a boy by his
intrusion, attempted to cover his blunder by asking him for a light
for his pipe. The boy sharply recognised his visitor as a
Ngati-Raukawa; and knowing that no friendly native would be prowling
about at that unseemly hour, sprang for his gun, and fired point-blank
at the intruder. The echo of the shot rang through the clear morning
air, and was the signal for a general movement on both sides. The
women and children made a hurried flight to the neighbouring
settlements, from which Ngati-Awa reinforcements swarmed up to the
assistance of their beleaguered tribesmen; and by daylight the full
strength of both forces--variously estimated at between eight hundred
and a thousand men--was actively engaged. The _pa_, which bore the
brunt of the first assault, stood close to the seashore on a narrow
tongue of sand, between the Waikanae and Waimea Rivers.[144] At the
inception of the attack it was defended by a slender company of thirty
men, who offered so stubborn a defence that the assailants were held
in check until assistance arrived. A strong company of Ngati-Awa
crossed the Waikanae, and, catching Ngati-Raukawa between two fires at
this point, caused them to deploy and so open an avenue, by which the
supports reached the _pa_. Trenches were now hurriedly dug in the
loose soil, which, together with the protection offered by the
stockade, afforded them a friendly shelter from the fire of the enemy.
In this respect they were more fortunate than the aggressors, who,
fighting in the open, suffered a greater number of casualties,
including several of their principal chiefs.

Te Rauparaha took no part in the battle; but that he anticipated its
occurrence is proved by the fact that he landed from his canoe shortly
after it commenced. And when, at the close of an hour's desperate
fighting, Ngati-Raukawa, who had his silent sympathy, if not his
active help, began to waver under their heavy losses, he thought it
prudent to get beyond the danger zone, and, plunging into the surf,
swam towards his canoe. Ngati-Awa, who knew that he was inside the
enemy's lines, saw the movement, and made a spirited effort to
frustrate it, in the hope of capturing the man to whose subtle
intrigues they attributed all their misfortunes. An equally vigorous
rally on the part of Ngati-Raukawa intercepted their rush, and saved
the chief, though at heavy cost to themselves. With Te Rauparaha safe
amongst the whalers, who were watching the conflict from their boats,
Ngati-Raukawa began rapidly to fall back; and, after maintaining a
slackened fire, retired from the field altogether, taking their
wounded with them, but leaving to Ngati-Awa the victor's privilege of
burying the dead. Sixty of the Ngati-Raukawa had fallen, but only
sixteen of the defenders. There were, however, many wounded in both
camps. These were attended to by the medical men on board the
_Tory_, which arrived at Kapiti on the day that the battle was
fought; and, as Dr. Dieffenbach has left a graphic account of what he
saw, no better authority can be here quoted:--

 "All the people of the village were assembled; and, though grief was
 expressed in every face, they received us with the greatest kindness
 and attention, and we were obliged to shake hands with everybody.
 They regarded us as friends and allies, for we had brought with us
 from Te-Awaiti some of their relations; and when they saw the medical
 men of our party giving assistance to the wounded, their confidence
 and gratitude were unbounded. Some of the women gave themselves up to
 violent expressions of grief, cutting their faces, arms, and legs
 with broken mussel-shells, and inflicting deep gashes, from which the
 blood flowed profusely. We had brought with us E Patu, the son of a
 chief in East Bay, whose uncle had been killed in the battle. We
 found the widow standing on the roof of a hut, deploring in a low
 strain the loss of her husband. When E Patu approached she threw
 herself upon the ground, and, lying at his feet, related to him, in a
 funeral song, how great had been their happiness, how flourishing
 were their plantations, until the Ngati-Raukawa had destroyed their
 peace and bereft her of her husband. During this time E Patu stood
 before her, convulsively throwing his arms backwards and forwards,
 and joining in her lamentations. An old woman, bent down under the
 burden of many years, had her arms and face frightfully cut; she was
 painted with red _kokowai_, with a wreath of leaves round her
 head, and gesticulated and sang in a similar manner. In this place
 there were no wounded; they had been carried to the principal and
 most fortified _pa_, which lies a little to the northward. This
 latter village was very large; it stood on a sand-hill, and was well
 fenced in, and the houses were neatly constructed. Everything was
 kept clean and in good order, and in this respect it surpassed many
 villages in Europe. The population seemed to be numerous, and I
 estimated it, together with that of the first-mentioned village, and
 a third, about a mile higher up, to amount, on the whole, to seven
 hundred souls. Several native missionaries, some of them liberated
 Ngati-Awa slaves, live here; and the natives had built a large house,
 neatly lined with a firm and tall reed, for their church and
 meeting-house. At the time of our visit they were expecting the
 arrival of a missionary of the Church of England from the Bay of
 Islands, who purposed living amongst them. The medical aid which they
 had given to their wounded was confined to binding the broken limbs
 with splints made of the bark of a pine, or of the strongest part of
 the flax-leaves, and carefully protecting the wounds from external
 injury by means of hoops. Some of these bandages had been very well
 applied. I went to the beach on the following day to attend my
 wounded patients and to visit the scene of battle. This was at the
 third village, and many traces of the strife were visible: trenches
 were dug in the sand of the beach, the fences of the village had been
 thrown down, and the houses were devastated. The Ngati-Awa buried
 their own dead; and the improved state of this tribe was shown by the
 fact that, instead of feasting on the dead bodies of their enemies,
 they buried them, depositing them in one common grave, together with
 their muskets, powder, mats, &c., a generosity and good feeling as
 unusual as it was honourable to their character. The grave of their
 enemies they enclosed, and made it _tapu_ (sacred)."

While this internecine strife raged up and down the coast, its
disturbing influence had almost completely suspended the systematic
settlement of the land by Europeans. There were many in Australia who,
but for the peril of life and uncertainty of title, would long before
this have swarmed over to New Zealand and occupied its shores. Only
the most wanton and the more adventurous had come, and of these latter
a few had been invited by the chiefs to remain, land being given to
them on which to reside and establish themselves as traders. In
isolated instances attempts had been made, chiefly by some subterfuge,
to acquire from the natives large tracts of country for a nominal
consideration; but these examples of dishonesty almost invariably
brought their own punishment. One of the most unscrupulous of such
perfidious transactions was that of Captain Blenkinsopp. He had sailed
these seas in command of the whaler _Caroline_, and had made more
than one trip to Cloudy Bay. There he became infatuated with a Maori
woman of the Ngati-Toa tribe. His alliance with her gave him influence
with Te Rauparaha and Rangihaeata, who, about the year 1834, entered
into a bargain with him, the spirit of which was that for the right to
procure wood and water for his ship while at Cloudy Bay, the captain
was to present the tribe with a ship's cannon,[145] which he had then
with him at Kapiti. The conditions of this bargain were reduced to
writing by Blenkinsopp, but not the bargain Te Rauparaha had counted
upon. For wood and water, Ocean Bay and the magnificent Wairau Plain
were substituted in the deed; and Rauparaha, with that reckless
disregard for the value of his signature which he exhibited at all
times when fire-arms were concerned, had signed it with the lines of
his _moko_.

The Wairau Plain is the floor of the valley through which the Wairau
River runs. Terminating on the shores of Cloudy Bay, it recedes in
ever-increasing elevation and diminishing breadth back for many miles,
until it vanishes in the gorge at the foot of the Spencer Range.
Covering an area of 65,000 acres, it comprises some of the richest
agricultural and pastoral land in the Middle Island, and was at this
time treasured by Rauparaha as one of his principal food-producing
centres. Eager as he was to procure weapons with which to slaughter
his enemies, he was equally sensible of the value of this valley; and
it is scarcely reasonable to suppose that he would have parted with so
rich an estate for a single piece of rusty artillery, subject to the
additional disadvantage of the difficulty involved in its transport.
Knowing that he was, for such purposes, ignorant of the English
language, Blenkinsopp, with a touch of irony, presented Te Rauparaha
with a copy of the deed, and told him to show it to any captain of a
man-o'-war who might visit Kapiti. Te Rauparaha did not wait for a
naval officer, but gave the document to a whaler protege of his, named
Hawes, then living at his island fortress. Hawes explained to
Rauparaha that by the deed he had parted with all his land at the
Wairau: whereupon the chief, in a fit of anger, tore up the paper,
threw the fragments into the fire, and declared that, so far as he was
concerned, the contract was at an end. Not so with Blenkinsopp. He
sailed to Sydney, and there proceeded to raise a substantial sum of
money upon the security of his deed from a solicitor named Unwin, then
practising in that city. For reasons which need not be discussed here,
Mr. Unwin eventually claimed the valley as his own; and his attempt to
occupy the district, its disastrous failure, culminating in the
massacre at the Wairau Bar, in 1840, of his manager and all his men,
are now matters of history, affording another instance of how the just
sometimes suffer for the unjust. Nor were the deception of Mr. Unwin
and the death of Mr. Wilton and his fellow employees the full measure
of the toll exacted as the result of Blenkinsopp's perfidy. When
Colonel Wakefield met at Hokianga the native woman who had formerly
been Captain Blenkinsopp's wife, and was now his widow, she showed him
a document which purported to be the original deed to which her late
husband had secured Te Rauparaha's signature. As a matter of fact, the
document was no more than a copy which had been left amongst the
captain's papers, but, believing it to be genuine, Wakefield purchased
it for £300;[146] and it was largely on this spurious foundation that
his brother, Captain Wakefield, subsequently, and with such fatal
results, sought to build up the New Zealand Company's claim to the
Wairau. This transaction, in which Captain Blenkinsopp was so
scandalously concerned, was but typical of many another, by which the
credulity of the natives was cunningly exploited. Their influence had,
however, been so far comparatively harmless, and the measure of injury
they had inflicted had told more heavily upon the unscrupulous
speculators than upon the natives.

But now Te Rauparaha, and those tribes with whom he was associated,
were about to be brought into contact, and to some extent into
conflict, with a more persistent earth-hunger, and more powerful
land-buyers, than any which had yet operated upon the coasts of New
Zealand. The spirit of colonisation was abroad in England, and the
restless genius of Edward Gibbon Wakefield[147] was busy coining
schemes whereby the spirit of the hour might be embodied in action.
Canada and South Australia had each attracted his attention; and now
his eyes were turned to New Zealand as a field suitable for the
planting of his quasi-philanthropic projects. His writings upon the
subject of colonisation had drawn within the circle of his influence a
galaxy of men, whose liberal education, lofty ideals, and generous
impulses had earned for them the title of "philosophic radicals," and
with these men, who stood for the most advanced development of English
political aspiration, as its sponsors, the New Zealand Company was
founded in 1839. With the story of this Company's early political
troubles we are not concerned, for they bear only slightly on
subsequent events in New Zealand. But the central fact with which we
are concerned is that the Company was established for the purpose of
acquiring land from the natives and transporting emigrants from
England to settle thereon. To this end, the expeditionary ship
_Tory_ was hurriedly despatched from the Thames, and arrived
safely in New Zealand waters, bringing with her Colonel Wakefield,
brother of the founder of the Company, with a staff of officers
charged with the duty of conducting the negotiations for the purchase
of land and arranging other preliminaries--which appeared to be
regarded in the light of mere formalities--incidental to the
introduction of a great colonising scheme. In furtherance of her
mission, the _Tory_ paid a brief visit to Queen Charlotte Sound
and Port Nicholson, and reached Kapiti on October 16, 1839, the day on
which Ngati-Raukawa had been routed by Ngati-Awa at the fight of
Kuititanga.

The first tidings of this engagement was brought to the officers of
the _Tory_ by a canoe-crew of natives who had just left the scene
of strife; and although the sea was high, a boat's company had been
organised, and was on the point of starting for the battlefield, when
a message came from Te Rauparaha, who had returned to Evans' Island,
that he wished them to pay him the honour of a visit. Accordingly, the
course of the boat was deflected to the island, and there the chiefs
of the two races met for the first time. Te Rauparaha was sitting upon
the ground beside his wife, a woman who has been described as being of
the "Meg Merrilies" type. He was deeply smeared with red ochre, and
evidently in an uneasy frame of mind. His manner was restless, his
glance furtive, and he was obviously depressed at the result of the
battle. As Colonel Wakefield and his party approached, Te Rauparaha
rose and hastened to exchange with them the missionary greeting,
shaking them by the hand. With equal alacrity he sought to convince
them that he had been in no way concerned in promoting the fight. In
these protestations it cannot be said that he was in the least
successful, for the Englishmen had already been prejudiced against him
by the tales of his duplicity told them by both whalers and Ngati-Awas
at Cloudy Bay; whilst his wandering, distrustful glances, as he spoke,
were not calculated to inspire confidence. Though, on the whole, his
conduct was unsatisfactory, the interview was occasionally illumined
by flashes of his imperious nature, the inborn power to lead and
command momentarily asserting itself, only to be again clouded by a
mean cringing, which seemed to bespeak a craven spirit.

Being assured that there were no hostile natives harbouring on board
the _Tory_, Te Rauparaha left Evans' Island for Kapiti, promising
to visit the ship on the following morning. Next day he was received
by Colonel Wakefield with a salute of guns, which filled him with
alarm, until it had been made clear that the demonstration was
intended as a great compliment to him and those chiefs who were with
him. The preliminaries of the reception being over, the question of
the land purchase was introduced to the chiefs; but Colonel Wakefield
discovered them to be distinctly hostile to his proposals, an
opposition which he attributed to the influence of Mr. Wynen, the
agent for a Sydney land syndicate, whose headquarters were then at
Cloudy Bay. The energies of this gentleman had been insidiously
applied to prejudice the native mind against the Company's scheme of
colonisation; and it was only with the greatest difficulty that the
Colonel was ultimately able to dissipate these prejudices, and to
obtain their consent "to look over their land, and if he found it
good, to take it." A gale which raged through the Strait prevented all
communication with the shore and suspended the negotiations until the
21st, when Colonel Wakefield made a definite proposal to purchase all
the Ngati-Toa possessions, together with their rights and claims on
both sides of the Strait. After he had exhibited to their wondering
eyes a great portion of the goods--the finery and the trumpery--which
he intended to dignify by the term "payment," his proposals were
doubtingly accepted, Te Hiko pressing for more soap and clothing, and
Te Rauparaha clamouring for more arms. Te Rauparaha dictated to Mr.
Jerningham Wakefield the names of the localities involved in the sale;
and the binding nature of the bargain was impressed upon the natives
as clearly as the linguistic limitations of Dicky Barrett, the
interpreter, would permit.

These preliminaries settled, the following day was appointed for the
distribution of the goods; but the ceremony was intercepted by the
indisposition of Te Hiko, whom Colonel Wakefield regarded as an
indispensable party to the transaction, and he refused to proceed
without him. This refusal greatly aggravated Te Rauparaha, whose hands
were itching to grasp the guns, which had been thrown like leaven
amongst the heap of worthless stuff; and he railed bitterly against
the deference paid to one whom he designated "a boy," destitute alike
of any interest in, or knowledge of, land. "Give us the goods," said
he, "with more powder and arms. Of what use are blankets, soap, tools,
and iron pots, when we are going to war? What does it matter whether
we die cold or warm, clean or dirty, hungry or full? Give us
two-barrelled guns, plenty of muskets, lead, powder, cartridges and
cartouche boxes." This militant appeal was coldly ignored by Colonel
Wakefield, who steadfastly declined to consider the question of
distribution until Hiko's return, which did not occur until two days
later. On the 23rd, however, the chiefs again assembled, and the
merchandise, which the Company offered as payment for the land, was
ostentatiously displayed on the deck of the _Tory_. The
consummation of the transaction was, however, still to be delayed.
While Te Hiko was busy trying on one of the coats which he had
selected from the pile of clothing, Te Rauparaha, Tungia, and several
of the warlike chiefs made an unseemly rush to secure some of the
fowling-pieces, which were lying on the companion hatch ready for
distribution. This exhibition of selfishness so exasperated Te Hiko
that he at once threw down the garment, and, calling to Rangihiroa to
accompany him, went down over the ship's side and made for the shore
in a fit of ill-humour, out of which he could not be cajoled until
next day.

Colonel Wakefield immediately suspended the proceedings, whereupon Te
Rauparaha again became deeply offended at the consideration shown for
one whom he regarded as so much his inferior; but, in spite of
importunities and threats which sorely tried his patience, the Colonel
refused to recede from his former attitude, and declined to take one
step towards the sale in Hiko's absence. As Wakefield was adamant
against all their menaces and blandishments, nothing remained but to
return on shore for the purpose of placating Te Hiko, which they
shortly succeeded in doing. Next day, unsolicited by Colonel
Wakefield, both Te Hiko and Te Rauparaha came off to the ship, and,
after entertaining themselves for some time with the novelties of the
_pakeha_, they asked that the deed of sale might be read over to
them, the map being at the same time consulted. After questions had
been asked and answered, and all doubts on either side apparently
cleared away, the fateful document was signed, Te Rauparaha making a
mark peculiarly his own, and Te Hiko subscribing the sign of the
cross. Each then left the vessel, possessed of a gun, promising that
the rest of the chiefs would come on board and sign on the next day.
This ceremony was duly performed, but only eleven signatures were
obtained, Te Rauparaha and two minor chiefs signing as proxy for the
natives on the opposite side of the Strait. A share of the gifts was
reserved for Te Rangihaeata, who was at Mana, and had taken no part in
the negotiations. On Thursday, 24th October, Colonel Wakefield was
able to report to his Directors in London that he had acquired by his
purchases at Port Nicholson and Kapiti, at a cost of a few guns, some
powder, lead, and miscellaneous goods, "possessions for the Company
extending from the 38th to the 43rd degree of latitude on the western
coast, and from the 41st to the 43rd on the eastern." But Colonel
Wakefield still had some reservations as to the completeness and
validity of his purchases; for he added to his report this qualifying
sentence: "To complete the rights of the Company to all the land
unsold to foreigners in the above extensive district, it remains for
me to secure the cession of their rights in it from the Ngati-Awa,
and, in a proportionately small degree, from the Ngati-Raukawa and
Whanganui peoples."

Three days later he had an interview with the Ngati-Awa people at
Waikanae, and they, being excited by the spirit of war and fearful of
another attack by Ngati-Raukawa, were easily tempted by the sight of
guns and the prospect of powder. Several of the elder chiefs addressed
the assemblage, and urged their followers to acquiesce in the
Colonel's proposals, conditionally upon their receiving arms and
ammunition. To this stipulation Wakefield felt no reluctance in
agreeing, and, for the purpose of giving it effect, a conference was
arranged to take place on board the _Tory_. On the appointed day
(8th November) the natives were astir bright and early; soon after
daylight they "began to come on board, and by 12 o'clock more than two
hundred had assembled on the deck, including all the principal chiefs
of the Sounds." To these unsophisticated dealers in real estate was
produced the deed, phrased in stilted terms, which purported to convey
to the Colonel, as agent for the Company, and in trust for the
Company, a vast area of country, over much of which the signatories
had absolutely no authority whatever.

"Know all men that we the undersigned chiefs of the Ngati-Awa tribes,
residing in Queen Charlotte's Sound, on both sides of Cook Strait, in
New Zealand, have this day sold and parted with, in consideration of
having received, as full and just payment for the same, ten
single-barrelled guns, three double-barrelled guns, sixty muskets,
forty kegs of powder, two kegs of lead slabs, two dozen pairs of
scissors, two dozen combs, two pounds of beads, one thousand flints,
the land bounded on the south by the parallel of the 43rd degree of
South latitude, and on the west, north and east by the sea (with all
islands), and also comprising all those lands, islands, tenements,
&c., situate on the northern shore of Cook Straits, which are bounded
on the north-east by a direct line drawn from the southern head of the
river or harbour of Mokau, situate on the west coast in latitude of
about 38 degrees South, to Tikukahore, situate on the east coast in
the latitude of about 41 degrees South, and on the east, south and
west by the sea, excepting always the island of Kapiti, and the small
islands adjacent thereto, and the island of Mana, but including
Tehukahore, Wairarapa, Port Nicholson, Otaki, Manawatu, Rangitikei,
Whanganui, Waitotara, Patea, Ngati-Ruanui, Taranaki, Moturoa, and the
several sugar-loaf islands and the river or harbour of Mokau."

The goods which were specified in the deed as the price of the land
were carefully arranged on deck; but during the process of distribution
a violent altercation took place, which was only quelled by a threat
from the Colonel to send the wares below and proceed to sea, if peace
was not immediately restored. Advantage was taken of the "momentary
calm" thus secured to obtain the coveted signatures, and consenting
chiefs to the number of about thirty appended their marks to the
document. Scarcely had the distribution of the beads and bullets
recommenced than another mêlée, even more violent, took place. "In a
moment," says the Colonel in his report to the Company, "the most
tumultuous scene we had ever witnessed took place, in which many blows
were exchanged: never did a ship witness such a scene of violence
without bloodshed." A similar, "if not more unfriendly," riot occurred
on shore amongst those natives who had first conveyed their goods to
land before they commenced their peculiar method of division; but it
mattered nothing to the Company's representative how the natives
abused their goods or each other so long as they had put their marks
to his deed. Equally was it a matter of indifference to the Maoris how
many deeds they signed, so long as they became possessed of arms and
ammunition. It was sufficient for the one that he had outwitted his
rivals, and appeared to be doing well for his employers, and for the
other that they had satisfied the most pressing need of the moment.
Neither looked beyond the immediate present, or took a single thought
for the long years of mistrust and misunderstanding that were to
follow upon their hasty and ill-considered transactions. Confident
that he had made "a full and just payment" for the land described in
the deed, Colonel Wakefield on 9th November went on shore and took
possession of the estate, in the name of the Company; and, in order to
distinguish their possessions, "which so greatly predominate in this
extensive territory," from those of other buyers, he designated them
North and South Durham, according to the respective islands in which
they were situated. Having completed his purchases at Kapiti to his
own satisfaction, Colonel Wakefield, on 18th November, sailed northward,
intending to call in at Whanganui for the purpose of perfecting his
purchases there, as he regarded that district as one of some
importance. But before he left he had received a glimmering that his
proceedings had not been perfectly understood, and the first shadow of
doubt must have crossed his mind when Te Rauparaha calmly informed him
that he (Te Rauparaha) wanted more guns, and, in order to get them,
intended to make further sales, embracing territory which the Colonel
believed he had already bought. Language of the most reproachful
character was used towards the chief, and his speedy repudiation of a
solemn bargain was characterised in unmeasured terms; but Te Rauparaha
steadfastly maintained that, so far as he was concerned, the sale in
the Middle Island had not included more than D'Urville Island and
Blind Bay at Nelson. Subsequent investigations proved that Te
Rauparaha was right and the Colonel was wrong; but it is doubtful
whether, when he left for Whanganui, the latter had realised the full
extent of his error, and therefore he parted from the chief with
bitterness in his heart and an angry word upon his lips.

While these events were in progress in New Zealand, the operations of
the Company and its contemporary land-speculators had not passed
unnoticed in England. The British authorities were beginning to regard
those islands with an anxious eye, but they displayed a painful
indecision in adopting measures to meet the political emergency which
they were commencing to realise was inevitable. As a tentative step,
Mr. Busby was sent from New South Wales in the capacity of British
Resident; but his usefulness was shorn down to the point of nullity by
the purely nominal nature of the powers with which he was endowed.
Negative as the results of this experiment had been, it nevertheless
encouraged the British authorities to take a still bolder step in the
appointment of Captain Hobson, R.N., as the accredited British Consul,
who was authorised to negotiate with the chiefs, and, if possible, to
acquire the country by cession, preparatory to annexing it as a
dependency of New South Wales. Even Hobson's position was extremely
anomalous until the now famous Treaty of Waitangi had been formulated
and successfully promulgated amongst the tribes. The ratification of
this document by the chiefs was a severe blow to the New Zealand
Company, while it is doubtful whether the Maoris had more than a
nebulous idea of its real meaning. It, however, gave the British
Government the colour of right to institute the principles of
established authority in those islands, where it had become their
imperative duty to control the colonisation which their indifference
had not been able to thwart. With the policy of the Treaty of Waitangi
we are not now concerned, beyond recording the fact that, in order to
give effect to that policy, it became necessary to procure the
signatures of all the principal chiefs, as acknowledging their assent
to the solemn obligations involved in the covenant. To this end
Archdeacon Williams came southward, and in due course reached Kapiti,
where, on May 14, 1840, he succeeded, but by what means we are not
told, in inducing Te Rauparaha to sign the treaty. Similarly, Major
Bunbury, an officer of the 80th Regiment, had been despatched by
Captain Hobson in H.M.S. _Herald_, charged with the mission of
securing the assent of the chiefs in the Middle Island to the
proposals of the Government. After having visited all the southern
_pas_ of importance, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the Queen
both at Stewart Island and Cloudy Bay, he arrived at Kapiti on June
19th, and to him we are indebted for the following account of what
there occurred:--

 "When we arrived off the island of Kapiti several canoes were leaving
 the island, and on my preparing to go ashore, fortunately the first
 canoe we met had on board the chief Rauparaha, whom I was anxious to
 see. He returned on board with me in the ship's boat, his own canoe,
 one of the most splendid I have yet seen, following. He told me the
 Rev. Mr. Williams had been there, and had obtained his signature to
 the treaty, and on inquiring for the chiefs Rangihaeata and Te Hiko,
 I was informed that we should meet them both, probably at the island
 of Mana, and, as this lay on our route to Port Nicholson, thither we
 proceeded, the chief Rauparaha remaining on board the _Herald_,
 his canoes following. On our arrival, the _Herald_ having
 anchored, I went on shore, accompanied by Mr. Williams and Rauparaha.
 We learnt that Hiko, son of the late chief Te Pehi, had gone out on a
 distant expedition. The other chief, Rangihaeata, after some time
 returned with us on board, accompanied by Rauparaha, when both signed
 the treaty."

What arguments or other inducements were held out to the chiefs to
lead them to append their marks to the document is not clear.
Rauparaha subsequently boasted that he had received a blanket for his
signature, but whether this gift, or bribe, was tendered by the
missionary or the Major is equally a matter of doubt. It would,
however, be safe to assume that the blanket was a more potent factor
in securing the allegiance of the chief to the policy of the treaty
than any arguments that could have been pressed upon him. It is
certainly asking much of the intelligence of Te Rauparaha to assert
that he was seized with the full significance of the step he had
taken, seeing that the terms and intentions of the treaty were
afterwards so diversely interpreted by cultured Englishmen.[148] Major
Bunbury, when being sent out on his southern mission, was instructed
by Captain Hobson to assemble the chiefs, to explain the provisions of
the treaty to them, and further, to give them "a solemn pledge that
the most perfect good faith would be kept by Her Majesty's Government,
that their property, their rights and privileges should be most fully
preserved." In direct conflict with this official view, which was an
accurate reflex of the instructions given to Captain Hobson himself by
the Marquis of Normanby, the then Secretary of State for the Colonies,
Lord Howick persuaded a Committee of the House of Commons to condemn
the treaty as "a part of a series of injudicious proceedings," and
with a light-hearted ignorance of Maori reverence for landed
rights,[149] to assert that the acknowledgment of Maori property in
wild lands subsequent to the Queen's assumption of sovereignty was
"not essential to the construction of the treaty, and was an error
which had been productive of serious consequences."

Whether or not Te Rauparaha and his fellow-signatories were able to
analyse the language of the treaty with the precision of an English
statesman, they had certainly never placed upon it such a loose
interpretation as this. And when tidings of the Committee's deliberations
reached the colony, the alleged "serious consequences" which had
followed upon the observance and administration of the treaty as laid
down by Captain Hobson were safety itself compared with the
catastrophe which might have followed from this rash attempt to
repudiate, in the interests of the New Zealand Company, the essential
principle of the treaty--that the "full, exclusive, and undisturbed
possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries, and other
possessions" was guaranteed to the natives by the Queen. Fortunately,
at this time there was at the head of Britain's Colonial Department a
Minister who held national honour to be dearer than personal gain.
Lord Stanley, to his credit, refused to comply with the recommendations
of the Committee to confiscate the native land "without reference to
the validity or otherwise of its supposed purchase from the natives,"
and at the end of the famous three days' debate induced the House of
Commons to adopt his view of the nation's obligations to the Maoris.

The Crown having now assumed sovereignty over New Zealand, it became
necessary to administer its affairs impartially in the interests of
both Maori and _pakeha_ population; and, in this connection, one
of its first and most pressing duties was to make an honest effort to
unravel the complex web of land claims, in which both races had become
unhappily entangled. The Government of Lord John Russell accordingly
appointed as a commissioner to adjudicate upon claims of all classes
of buyers Mr. Spain, an English lawyer, who, it is said, had been a
prominent electioneering agent on the side of the Liberals. Mr. Spain
arrived in New Zealand on December 8, 1841, and immediately took steps
to establish his court. He has been described as a man of solid
intelligence, but burdened with a good deal of legal pedantry; slow in
thinking and in his apprehension of ways of dealing with new
emergencies; steady and plodding in his methods, thoroughly honest in
his intentions, and utterly inflexible to threats, though, perhaps,
not unsusceptible to flattery. Considering the magnitude of their
alleged purchases, the claims of the New Zealand Company naturally
took precedence over all others in the business of the court; and,
having regard to the temperament of the Commissioner, an inauspicious
start was made by the representatives of the Company metaphorically
shaking their fists in his face. In some degree their annoyance may
have been pardonable, for they, believing themselves to be the
pioneers of a great colonising scheme, had flattered themselves that
not only the merit of their cause, but the fact that they had made
their purchases prior to the proclamation of the Queen's sovereignty,
would have placed them outside the exacting conditions of the Treaty
of Waitangi.

The coming of Mr. Spain, and his insistence upon an exhaustive
examination of their titles, was a heavy blow to them, which they at
first thought to ward off by affecting an attitude of amused
indifference. They laughed at the treaty, with its engagement to
respect Maori rights in land, and its elevation of the Maori to a
civil status equal to themselves. But amidst this simulated merriment
they exhibited an ill-concealed chagrin that the little self-governing
community, which they had hoped to set up on the shores of Cook
Strait, had been so unceremoniously superseded by the sovereignty of
the Queen, and they resented with fear and anxiety the appointment of
a commissioner, who might deem it his duty to ask awkward questions
regarding their titles. Their policy was, therefore, one of delay and
evasion, which was inaugurated by their raising technical objections
to the constitution of the court, its jurisdiction, and its forms of
procedure, but, most of all, to Mr. Spain's determination to call
native evidence. That was surely an unnecessary elevation of the
savage, and a corresponding degradation of the white man. In fact,
they openly asserted that to put the testimony of the one against the
other was a gratuitous insult to the dignity of the British subject.
But this was not the full measure of Spain's offending in the eyes of
the Company's champions. He was audacious enough to ask Colonel
Wakefield to submit proof that those natives who had signed the
Company's deed had the right to sell the land which they thus
purported to convey to the Company; and some of them made themselves
conspicuously offensive in the manner in which they ridiculed this
demand as preposterous and ridiculous.

The proceedings of the court at Wellington[150] do not materially
concern our purpose, for Te Rauparaha took no part in the sale of Port
Nicholson, nor need we burden the narrative with the interminable
finesse which took place before the court was able seriously to attack
the work which lay before it in other districts. When this condition
was at length reached, Spain soon saw that he was faced with a most
serious problem. That the Company's purchases were in most instances
bad he had little hesitation in declaring. But there was no blinking
the fact that hundreds of settlers had risked their all on the
assurances of the Company that they could give them a title, and it
would have been cruel indeed to visit the sins of the Company upon the
unfortunate colonists. Spain, therefore, halted between justice to the
Maoris and equity to the settlers, satisfying the requirements of his
office by issuing interim reports, hoping that in the meantime some
workable compromise might be evolved. This was ultimately found in an
arrangement whereby Mr. Clarke and Colonel Wakefield were to agree
upon what additional compensation was to be paid for the land
purchased, and, failing their arriving at an understanding, Mr. Spain
was to be the final arbitrator. At the outset of these negotiations,
Mr. Clarke stipulated that the natives were not to be evicted from
their _pas_ or their cultivations, nor were their burial-places
to be disturbed; but to these reasonable reservations Colonel
Wakefield could not at first be induced to frankly agree, while his
unwillingness, or his inability, to comply with the ultimate awards
tended to accentuate rather than to soothe public irritation.

Meanwhile, Rangihaeata had been busy entering his practical protest
against what he believed to be a violation of his rights at Porirua.
He, in conjunction with Te Rauparaha and Te Hiko,[151] stoutly
contended that Porirua, like the Wairau, had never been sold; and
when, in the early part of 1841, the Company's surveyors went there to
survey, Rangihaeata blocked up the forest track, levelled the
surveyors' tents to the ground, and, at the end of each day, undid all
the work which they had performed. This interference with the survey
was obviated by an assurance being given to the chief, that, even if
the land were surveyed, the Company's title must still be investigated
by Mr. Spain before the settlers would be permitted to enter upon it.
But, in defiance of this assurance, Colonel Wakefield, in April, 1842,
issued leases to four settlers--Joseph Hurley, Thomas Parry, Benjamin
Lowndes and Josiah Torr--who at once proceeded to erect houses and
occupy their holdings. Two of the houses were nearly finished when the
intelligence was brought to the chief. Rangihaeata immediately gave
the settlers notice of his intention to pull their houses down; and
this threat, so chivalrously declared, was duly executed next day,
without any unnecessary violence, by the chief and a band of fifty
men. The indignation which followed this assertion of native authority
found expression in a public meeting at Wellington, at which the
arrest of Rangihaeata was violently demanded, and those present
declared their readiness to assist the Sheriff in effecting his
capture. With the mandate of this meeting Mr. Murphy, the magistrate,
refused to comply,[152] and when, in the following June, the huts were
again demolished, he wrote to the Governor declaring his determination
not to interfere "to prevent any natives keeping land which they state
they have not sold, until Mr. Spain decides upon the claims." This
determination to regard the Porirua land claims as _sub judice_
met with the entire concurrence of Captain Hobson, but was as bitterly
assailed by Colonel Wakefield, who committed the indiscretion, almost
criminal under the circumstances, of declaring, when speaking at
Wellington, that he had not treated with the natives for a settlement
of their claims, but preferred to employ the inconvenience created by
these claims as grounds of complaint against the Government, and as
arguments in aid of his efforts to secure the removal of the Governor.
With such a feeling of declared insincerity pervading Colonel
Wakefield's conduct, it is small wonder that the differences between
the natives and the Company were slow of settlement, or that the
efforts of Spain and Clarke to that end were unduly protracted.
Equally true is it that thereby the cares and worries of the Governor
were unnecessarily aggravated, while both brown and white populations
were exasperated almost to the point of desperation by the vexatious
delays. The irritated state of the public temper thus engendered not
only made acts of violence possible, but even encouraged them, and
these only added fuel to the threatened conflagration. A native woman
was found by her friends murdered at Wellington, and suspicion fell
upon a European. Only a few months later a settler was discovered
lying upon the Petone road with his skull fractured, and questioning
eyes were at once turned in the direction of the Maoris. The
burial-grounds of the natives were being repeatedly desecrated by
_pakeha_ looters in search of greenstone ornaments, and in the
prosecution of this shameful traffic, deep offence was given by the
secret exhumation of the body of Te Rauparaha's brother, Nohorua, at
Cloudy Bay. For this act of violence to the honoured dead the natives
would at one time have taken swift vengeance; but, acting under the
restraining counsel of Mr. Clarke, they consented to refer their
complaint to the Government for settlement, a forbearance which the
Protector, in his letter to Captain Hobson, assured the Governor
greatly surprised him.[153] The weight of these and other accumulating
troubles began to tell heavily upon the frail physique of Captain
Hobson, and borne down by the stress of his increasing responsibilities,
he died at Auckland in September, 1842. Before his successor, Captain
Fitzroy, arrived in the Colony, the tragedy for which the country was
being rapidly prepared had been enacted, and the faithlessness of the
New Zealand Company had been written in letters of blood on the floor
of the Wairau Valley.

[127] "Amongst these, there was a great chief named Tu-Hawaiki in
Maori, 'Bloody Jack' by the Englishmen, because in his English, which
he learned mostly from the rough whalers and traders, he often used
the low word 'bloody'" (_Memoirs of the Rev. J.F.H. Wohlers_). Tu
Hawaiki was both the patron and the pupil of the whalers, and was
referred to by them as an evidence of what they had done in civilising
the aborigines. "He was undoubtedly the most intelligent native in the
country in 1840, and his reputation for honesty was such that
Europeans trusted him with large quantities of goods" (_Thomson_).

[128] "Just like the Governor."

[129] Travers doubts the occurrence of this incident, holding that had
Te Rauparaha been guilty of such conduct towards his own people, he
could never have retained the respect of his fellow-chiefs. Wakefield,
on the other hand, insists upon it, and it is also referred to in a
Ngati-Toa account of Te Rauparaha's life found in White's _Ancient
History of the Maori_.

[130] A modified version of this incident states that all the crew
were drowned except an old woman, who escaped by clinging to the
overturned canoe. Tu-Hawaiki and his friends waited about the shore
for some days until the bodies were cast up, and then the old woman
was killed, her death being part of the religious rites performed at
the funeral ceremonies. But there are discrepancies in the tradition,
upon which it is now impossible to arbitrate.

[131] This war is known in Maori history as the Hao-whenua war.

[132] Te Heuheu's peace was made at Kapiti. He took a _taiaha_
and broke it across his knee. Some people then gave him a long-handled
tomahawk, and Hoani Tuhata gave a sword, and peace was made (_Native
Land Court Record_).

[133] I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Robert McNab, for the following
note, culled from an American whaling captain's log, which probably
refers to this period, the incident described having occurred at
Cloudy Bay on Saturday, April 30, 1836:--

"At 4 had visit from Roabolla (Rauparaha), the head chief of this Bay
(just returned from a marauding expedition), accompanied with the
customary demand of lay of tobacco, muskets, and cask of powder, which
I peremptorily denied. This they returned with a threat that I should
not whale here, to which I replied I was perfectly willing to go to
sea, for I would not submit to any imposition, although I would
present them with the same the English ships and parties did, but no
more, and if they would not take that they should have nothing. They
finally consented to receive a dozen pipes, 10 lbs. tobacco, and a
piece of low-priced calico of about 30 yards, priced 17s. 4d., and a
tin pot, then dismissed them with a blessing. He afterwards came and
demanded supper, which I, of course, declined furnishing him, and bade
him goodbye. There is no other way to deal with these people only to
be positive with them, and let them know you do not fear them, as if
any timidity is shown, they demand everything they see, nor would the
ship hold enough for them, and the bad conduct of masters has
encouraged them to be very importunate. I am willing to allow a lone
ship here, not well armed, might be obliged to comply with their
requisition, but no excuse can be offered for any one to do so now, as
there are seven ships here all partially armed, and yet he showed me
three muskets given him by the captains of ships the other side, to
their shame be it spoken, for if they only reflected they would know
'tis for the interest of these natives to keep on good terms with us,
as they know if ships are hindered coming here, adieu to their darling
tobacco, muskets, and pipes. I have adopted this line of conduct from
my own conviction, and the advice of the English masters now here who
know them well."

[134] This fight is known in Ngai-Tahu tradition as _Oroua-moa-nui_.
The Rev. Canon Stack says that Paora Taki, afterwards a well-known
Maori Assessor at Rapaki, who was fighting under Tu-Hawaiki,
recognised Rauparaha, and might have killed him as he brushed past him
on his way to the water, if he had only possessed a better weapon than
a sharpened stake with which to assault him.

[135] Dieffenbach says: "Ten or twelve years ago (1827-29) the
southern headland of Tory Channel was the scene of a sanguinary
contest between the original natives of the channel and the tribes of
the Ngati-Awa. Rauparaha, at the head of the latter people, earned
inglorious laurels by shutting up his opponents on a narrow tongue of
land and then exterminating them."

[136] "Te Koihua settled near Pakawau, in Massacre Bay, where I
frequently saw the old man prior to his death. Strange to say, his
love for greenstone was so great that even after he and his wife had
reached a very advanced age, they travelled down the west coast in
1858, then a very arduous task, and brought back a large rough slab of
that substance, which they proceeded diligently to reduce to the form
of a _mere_" (_Travers_).

[137] "Every tribe throughout Maoridom prized greenstone above
everything else, and strove to acquire it. The locality in which it
was found was known by report to all, and the popular imagination
pictured untold wealth to be awaiting the adventurous explorer of that
region" (_Stack_).

[138] When Mr. Edward Shortland was travelling in the Middle Island in
1843-44, an account of which he has left us in his _Southern Districts
of New Zealand_, he had for guide and assistant a native named
Huruhuru, who employed the leisure of his evenings in giving Mr.
Shortland information about the interior of the country, with which he
was well acquainted. He drew a map of the four great lakes in central
Otago, described the country through which the path across the island
passed, and was able to name the principal streams, and even to point
out the various stopping-places at the end of each day's journey.

[139] In confirmation of at least one purpose of the expedition--that
of securing slaves--it is interesting to note that, with the exception
of two children who were killed and eaten at Lake Wanaka, none of the
prisoners were sacrificed, although the temptation to do so must have
been difficult to resist, as the party often suffered severely from
hunger.

[140] "For three miles we followed this stream, flowing in a
north-north-east direction, through a comparatively open valley, with
occasional patches of grass on its sides, and arrived then at its
junction with a large stream of glacial origin, and of the size of the
Makarora, which came from the eastern central chain, and to which,
according to the direction of His Honour the Superintendent, I gave my
name. This river forms, before it reaches the valley, a magnificent
waterfall, several hundred feet in height" (_Haast's "Geology of
Canterbury and Westland"_).

[141] The exception above referred to was Nga-whakawa, Te Puoho's
brother-in-law, who escaped in the dim light of the early morning. Mr.
Percy Smith, writing in the _Polynesian Journal_, says: "His was
a most unenviable position. A distance of nearly five hundred miles in
a straight line separated him from his own people, the intermediate
country being occupied by tribes bitterly hostile to his, who would
welcome with joy the opportunity of sacrificing him. But notwithstanding
the exceeding difficulties which lay in his path, this brave fellow
decided to try to rejoin his relatives at Massacre Bay, at the extreme
north end of the South Island. How long his arduous journey took I
know not, but it must have been months. He dare not keep near the east
coast, which was inhabited by his enemies, but had to follow the base
of the mountains inland, seeking his sustenance in roots of the fern,
which is very scarce, and of the _taramea_, occasionally snaring
a _weka_ or other bird. So he made his toilsome way by mountain
and valley, swimming the snow-cold rivers, ever on the alert for signs
of wandering parties of his enemies, only lighting fires after dark by
the arduous process of _hika-ahi_, or rubbing two sticks together,
enduring cold, fatigue, and hunger, until, after making one of the
most extraordinary journeys on record, he at last reached the home of
his people at Parapara, Massacre Bay. Here he was the first to bring
the news of the disaster which had befallen Te Puoho and his
companions. The daughter of this man, born after his return, named Ema
Nga-whakawa, was still living at Manawatu a few years since."

[142] This food was composed of pumpkins, probably the first grown on
the coast.

[143] The late Rangitane chief at Awapuni, Kerei te Panau.

[144] Kuititanga means the wedge-shaped piece of land which is
formed by the junction of two rivers.

[145] This celebrated cannon is now at the town of Blenheim. Its
history has been stated as follows, by the late John Guard, of Port
Underwood. In 1833, his father, the original "Jack Guard" of the
_Harriet_, brought this gun from Sydney and traded it away to
Nohorua, a brother of Rauparaha, for the right to establish a whaling
station at Kakapo Bay. This bargain was greatly facilitated by a
demonstration which Guard gave by loading the gun and firing it off,
for its power vastly pleased the natives, who christened it
_Pu-huri-whenua_, "the gun that causes the earth to tremble." In
1834, Captain Blenkinsopp came upon the scene, and is said to have
carried the gun away from Kakapo Bay "without leave or licence," and
bartered it to Rauparaha for the Wairau Plain and Ocean Bay.
Subsequently, it was brought back to Port Underwood by Rauparaha, and
again given to Guard's father. After his death, it was taken
possession of by the province of Marlborough as an historic relic,
during the superintendency of Mr. Eyes.

[146] "Previous to sailing, Colonel Wakefield purchased from a lady,
representing herself to be the widow of Captain Blenkinsopp, some
deeds professing to be the original conveyances of the plains of the
Wairau by Rauparaha, Rangihaeata, and others to that gentleman, in
consideration of a ship's gun. They were signed with elaborate
drawings of the _moko_ or tattoo on the chiefs' faces" (_Wakefield_).

[147] According to Lord Lytton, Edward Gibbon Wakefield was "the man
in these latter days beyond comparison of the most genius and widest
influence in the great science of colonisation, both as a thinker, a
writer, and a worker, whose name is like a spell to all interested in
that subject."

[148] Mr. Somes, one of the champions of the New Zealand Company in
London, thus expressed the views of the Directorate upon the treaty:
"We did not believe that even the Royal power of making treaties could
establish in the eye of our courts such a fiction as a native law of
real property in New Zealand. We have always had very serious doubts
whether the Treaty of Waitangi, made with naked savages by a Consul
invested with no plenipotentiary powers, could be treated by lawyers
as anything but a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying
savages for the moment." To this Lord Stanley replied through his
secretary that he was "not prepared, as Her Majesty's Secretary of
State, to join with the Company in setting aside the Treaty of
Waitangi after having obtained the advantage guaranteed by it, even
though it might be made with 'naked savages,' or though it might be
treated by lawyers as a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying
savages for the moment. Lord Stanley entertains a different view of
the respect due to obligations contracted by the Crown of England, and
his final answer to the demands of the Company must be that, as long
as he has the honour of serving the Crown, he will not admit that any
person, or any Government, acting in the name of Her Majesty, can
contract a legal, moral, or honorary obligation to despoil others of
their lawful and equitable rights."

[149] "Long before the arrival of the white man in New Zealand there
was a proverb amongst the Maoris--'_He wahine he whenua, e ngaro ai
te tangata_,' which may be rendered in English 'For land or wife man
stakes his life'" (_Clarke_).

[150] When the court opened at Wellington on 16th May, one of the
first witnesses called was Dicky Barrett, who had acted as interpreter
to Colonel Wakefield when making his purchases, and Mr. George Clarke,
who appeared as the representative of the natives, has left us the
following sketch of Dicky's appearance in the box: "Barrett was a
shore whaler who had married a native woman; he was a decent fellow
enough among men of his class, but he was very ignorant, and I soon
made him show, in the course of his evidence, that he did not even
understand the English meaning of the deeds he professed to interpret.
He admitted, too, that instead of telling the natives, as the deed set
forth, that one-tenth of the surveyed lots should be reserved for
their use, he had simply put it that one lot of the alienated land
should be kept for the Maoris and one for the _pakehas_, and so on
through the whole--that is, one half the land should be kept for their
use. He admitted, further, that he had taken no account of many
natives who were unwilling to sell. It soon became clear that Barrett's
qualification to interpret was that he spoke whaler Maori, a jargon
that bears much the same relation to the real language as the pigeon
English of the Chinese does to our mother tongue."

[151] "Te Hiko, whose signature Colonel Wakefield had boasted of
obtaining in 1839, being examined before the Governor, the Chief
Justice, Colonel Wakefield, the Rev. O. Hadfield, and others, denied
that he had signed any deed of sale of Porirua. E. J. Wakefield
asserted the contrary. The ignorant Barrett ... admitted that Hiko's
signature was 'not obtained willingly,' and Clarke, the Protector,
skilled in the language, declared that the document signed was
calculated to mislead the natives. Hiko was constant in his denial of
Wakefield's statements, and Hobson's mind was 'left with the
impression that he had not sold' the land" (_Rusden_).

[152] Subsequently, a similar application was made to Chief Justice
Martin, when he arrived in Wellington in October, 1842, but he also
declined to issue a warrant for the arrest of Rangihaeata, partly
because the application was _ex parte_, and argument was
requisite before judgment could be given on so grave a matter, and
partly on technical grounds connected with the Police Magistrates
Ordinance.

[153] Mr. Spain, writing to Captain Hobson in 1842, remarked that the
natives at Wellington had, upon many occasions, shown the greatest
forbearance when deprived of their cultivations, and he very much
doubted whether their white brethren would have followed their example
if placed in similar circumstances.

CHAPTER VII

WAKEFIELD AND THE WAIRAU

Amongst the many unsatisfactory negotiations for the purchase of land
entered into between Colonel Wakefield and Te Rauparaha, few seem to
have been so ill-defined as that relating to the Wairau Plain. Whether
Wakefield really believed that he had bought it, or whether Rauparaha
was equally confident that he had not sold it, will never be known.
Certainly it is difficult to understand how such a wide difference of
impression could have arisen between them, had they both been sincere
in the transaction. It is true the Colonel might have considered that
the plain was included in the purchases made in 1839, when he
bargained for four hundred miles of country, extending from the 38th
to the 43rd degree of latitude on the west coast, and from the 41st to
the 43rd degree on the east coast. But he knew that the plain had
never been specifically named, and in his heart he must have felt that
no valid title could rest upon a purchase made as this one was, its
full purport not being clearly explained by Dicky Barrett, who acted
as interpreter, and the signatures of three chiefs only being obtained
to the deed, when thirty thousand natives had, by native law, a voice
in its disposal. That Colonel Wakefield did have some reservation,
later on, about his right to the land is almost certain, for, after
the settlement of Nelson had been in progress about a year, he
strongly opposed the suggestion of his brother, Captain Wakefield, to
include the Wairau in the district to be surveyed, partly because he
considered that its occupation might militate against the success of
the Wellington colony, but chiefly because he anticipated that the
Company's title would be disputed by other claimants and by the
natives. It would therefore seem that Captain Wakefield, the resident
agent of the Company, was the more to blame for the improper
occupation of the valley and for all the subsequent trouble, which he
expiated with his life. He was as conversant as the Colonel with the
whole circumstances of the case, perhaps more so; and, had it not been
that he had no alternative between opening up the Wairau and
acknowledging the ignominious failure of the Nelson settlement, he
would hardly, in the face of so many warnings, have persisted in his
high-handed and injudicious course.

The story of the Nelson settlement repeats the tale of undue haste,
imperfect preparations, a disposition to make florid promises and hold
out inflated inducements, that characterised all the New Zealand
Company's attempts at colonisation. One of the essential features of
this settlement was that each settler should receive 150 acres of
rural land, 50 acres of suburban land, and one town acre. But after
the most thorough exploration of the region round Blind and Massacre
Bays, it was found that, although a great deal of inferior country had
been included in the sections laid off by the surveyors, there was
still an enormous deficiency in the area required to provide for all
the settlers who had either paid for their land in advance or were
waiting to settle on it. Misled by the reports of some of his
officers, Captain Wakefield had caused it to be broadly published that
there was more than sufficient land at Port Whakatu to meet the
requirements of the settlement, and it was while looking round for
some tangible fact to justify his assertion that he bethought him of
the Wairau.

During his many excursions in search of rural land, Mr. Tuckett, the
Company's chief surveyor, had discovered a route via Top House, by
which the Wairau might be reached after a journey of 110 miles. This
fact was reported to Captain Wakefield, who ordered that a complete
examination of the district should be made by Mr. Tuckett. He,
accompanied by his assistant, Mr. Davidson, and Captain England, a
landowner in the settlement, made an extensive exploration, and
subsequently conveyed the discomfiting intelligence to the resident
agent that the Wairau Plain was the only available surface between
Cape Farewell and Cape Campbell sufficient to afford the number of
sections required to complete the settlement. The survey of the plain
was then decided upon, but intelligence had reached Kapiti that the
_pakehas_ had been down to the Wairau and that they intended to
take possession of it. Immediately upon the receipt of this news,
Rauparaha, accompanied by Hiko and Rangihaeata, crossed over to Nelson
and sought an interview with Captain Wakefield. In plain and
straightforward terms the natives told the Europeans, who had gathered
in Dr. Wilson's residence to hear the _korero_, that they had not
sold the Wairau to the principal agent of the Company, and that they
had no intention of doing so, unless (to use Rauparaha's own
expressive phrase) "the cask of gold was very great." They therefore
warned them not to go there, as they had no right to the land.

Captain Wakefield's answer was that he intended to proceed with the
survey, as he claimed the land in the name of the Company. Rangihaeata
vehemently denied the sale, and backed up his protestations by a
threat that if Captain Wakefield attempted to carry out his intentions
he would meet him and take his head. The agent was in no way disturbed
or shaken by the hostile attitude of the chiefs; and to Rangihaeata's
boisterous manner he calmly replied that, if any interference was
offered, he would come with three hundred constables and arrest the
belligerent natives. This unconciliatory attitude did not in the least
assist to clear the atmosphere, for Rangihaeata went about the
settlement during the next few days openly threatening with death
every one who, he conceived, had any authority amongst the colonists,
if they ventured to annex the Wairau, unless they could first succeed
in killing him, in which event, he said, the land would remain as the
lawful possession of the conqueror. Rauparaha, on the other hand,
assumed the air of the diplomat, and professed not to sympathise with
the policy of his lieutenant, whom he described as a "bad man." At the
same time, in his fawning fashion, he entreated the Europeans not to
go to the Wairau, and begged that the dispute might be referred to Mr.
Spain, the Government Land Commissioner, who had been appointed to
investigate the claims of the Company. But Captain Wakefield
repudiated the jurisdiction of Mr. Spain in the matter, and refused to
comply with the request. The chiefs, finding that neither threats nor
persuasion could shake Captain Wakefield in his determination to take
possession of the Wairau, indignantly left the settlement, Rauparaha
expressing his intention to lay the whole circumstances of the case
before the Queen's Commissioner and demand an immediate settlement of
the claim.

Scarcely had the angry Ngati-Toas left Nelson than the three chiefs
who were resident at the Wairau arrived. These natives were sons of
Rauparaha's elder brother, Nohorua, the oldest of whom, Rawiri Puaha,
had previously informed Mr. Tuckett, when that gentleman visited his
_pa_, that the plain was theirs and that Rauparaha had no power
to sell it. They were gratified at the idea that the Europeans looked
upon it with a favourable eye, but, at the same time, they were in no
haste to enter into any negotiations for its sale until they had
considerably extended their cultivations, in order that they might
fairly claim a larger compensation. Doubtless one of their reasons for
desiring closer intercourse with the _pakehas_ was that, in
addition to their clearings, they had a large number of pigs running
on the plain, which they used as a marketable commodity with the
settlers at Port Underwood. But as fast as they cleared and cultivated
the land and reared their pigs, Rauparaha was in the habit of coming
over and coolly helping himself, with the result that his relations
with the resident people were by this time considerably strained, and
they probably thought that the presence of the settlers would check
these depredations on the part of their high-handed relative. When
they heard that Rauparaha had been to Nelson, they, being utterly
mistrustful of his methods, at once concluded that he had gone there
for the purpose of selling the plain; and it was to counteract this
policy, as far as possible, that they went to see Captain Wakefield.
The latter had always been much more considerate to resident natives
than to those whom, like Rauparaha and Rangihaeata, he described as
"travelling bullies."[154] He was therefore most anxious to make a
valid and binding bargain with Puaha, to whom he offered a small
schooner, and any reasonable quantity of goods, if he would
acknowledge that the Wairau had been purchased by his brother, the
Colonel. This Puaha refused to do, and therefore, at a subsequent
interview, the resident agent adopted another line of argument,
contending that the Company had already a legal title to the district
by virtue of its being included in the latitude and longitude
purchases made in 1839, and by right of a deed bought from Captain
Blenkinsopp's widow for £300. Puaha denied the validity of both
titles, pointing out that "the Wairau" had evidently been written into
the first deed after signature; and that, in the second case, if
Rauparaha had sold any portion of the land to Blenkinsopp, he had no
right to do so without his (Puaha's) consent, which had never been
asked and never given. For three days the conference was continued by
the agent and the chief, without either being able to convince the
other; but, at last, Puaha withdrew, still protesting in manly and
dignified language against the views of the agent as to his title to
the land.

After these animated interviews, it might have been supposed that
Captain Wakefield would, in his calmer moments, have seriously
reviewed the position, and that against the vague and shadowy rights
of the Company, as expressed in the two deeds in his possession, he
would have set the fact that the authenticity of these sales was being
stoutly contested by the resident and non-resident natives interested.
He might have been expected also to recognise that the whole question,
having been placed in the hands of Mr. Spain, was _sub judice_, and as
such should remain in abeyance until the court had pronounced its
judgment. These considerations were, however, altogether outweighed by
the desire to placate the settlers, who were clamouring for their
land, and to prevent the exposure of the Company's inability to fulfil
its engagements. The fear that, if this could not be done, he would be
open to crushing censure from all with whom they had entered into
engagements, and the desire to rescue his own and his brother's
reputation from public anger and ridicule, biased his otherwise
judicial mind against the merits of the opposing case. Accordingly, he
decided to act upon the impulse that moved him most, and on April 15,
1843, he entered into three contracts for the survey of the plain with
Messrs. Barnicoat and Thompson, Mr. Cotterell, and Mr. Parkinson. In
view of the probability of native interference, a special provision
was inserted in the tenders that the contractors were to be
indemnified in case of loss; and, on this understanding, the
surveyors, with forty assistants, arrived a few days later, and
commenced operations--Messrs. Barnicoat and Thompson at the Marshlands
side of the valley, Mr. Cotterell in the neighbourhood of Riverlands,
and Mr. Parkinson still higher up the plain, towards Grovetown.

At first, the resident natives allowed the work to proceed with but
slight resistance. Once or twice they refused to permit timber to be