CRUSOE ON PONUI.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 261, 3 November 1928, Page 6 (Supplement)

CRUSOE ON PONUI.

TOO MANY "MAN FRIDAYS."

OLD-TIME ADVENTURE IN THE HAURAKL

f 'A LAST-MINUTE REPRIEVE,

(By J.C.)

This tale of an early-days' episode on the island of Ponui, usually called Chamberlin's Island in those days, at the east end of Waiheke Island, was told me by the son of the pioneer who was the chief figure in the adventure. My informant, a veteran of a settlement in the Bay of Plenty, was well on in his 'eighties; the exciting incident in which his father had some anxious moments occurred in the year 1843 or 1844. The new-chum pakeha, soon after his arrival in infant Auckland from London, became acquainted with two men who had a small schooner trading along the coast. He invested a little money in the concern, and the three of them went cruising around, picking up produce by barter from the Maoris and taking it to the town. They acquired some interest in part of Ponui Island, and one day the Londoner stayed ashore there to start a small farm, while his partners went on •down the coast on a trading trip. They were to return for him in two or three weeks, meanwhile he was to get some fencing and digging done. The Lone Pakeha's Camp. For food the Londoner relied chiefly on potatoes, a pile of which had been left him by the schoonermen. This heap of potatoes was covered with a tarpaulin under the pohutukawa trees a little way above high water mark. The young trader-farmer pegged away at his job, living on the potatoes and an occasional ■ haul of fish. It was a lonely spot, thought the young lone-hand settler, as he went about his daily work and cooked his solitary meals. His tent was pitched in a beautiful little bay, not far from where the Chamberlin homestead was built many years afterwards. There was no sign of any other inhabitant when he landed; he and his mates knew that there had been Maori camps on the island, but it was thought that all the natives had given up posses- : sion to the Crown under a deed of sale. The Vanishing Potatoes. One morning this Robinson Crusoe of Ponui noticed that his pile of potatoes ■had been reduced considerably in size ; since he had taken his last potfuL It was mysterious, inexplicable. No one 'had landed in the bay, by boat or canoe. The potatoes could scarcely have removed themselves, nor could the wekas be ■blamed. Crusoe resolved to keep a close look'out, but he could not remain awake all day and all night. When he roused himself early next morning end inspected his potatoes, he saw that they had again been depleted. "There must be someone else oil the island," said Crusoe to himself. "I'll scout round a bit and find who's been : stealing my spuds." That morning after breakfast of "taewa ■and tamure"—potatoes and schnapper—Crusoe climbed the hill above his camp, the first time since he arrived, and cautiously taking to hands and knees as he approached the manuka-covered top he peered through the bushes at the slopes and bays beyond. Over the .shoulder of a little hill he saw smoke rising, a thin column, of pale-blue smoke. He guessed rightly that it came from -the cooking-oven of a Maori camp. "So there have been Maoris on the Island all the time," he thought, "and I llrnew nothing about them. They've been watching me, and living on my potatoes. 'I'll have something to say about that though." Crusoe, without scouting further along, returned to his camp. That afternoon he had a "watch below" in his tent, to be ready for an all-night vigil. He had :a gun, but no ammunition for it. If it 'came to a tussle, he had an axe and a kauri-gum digging spear—a sharp-ended iron rod. The watcher's vigilance had its reward 'very early in the morning, just as the :first tints of dawn were lightening the i sky over the distant Coromandel ranges. A Maori came silently stealing out of the Ibushes. He approached the potato store, with a large flax kit in his hand. When .filled, it would be hoisted to his shoulders .and made fast with the "kawae," or flax islings. Spearing the Thief. Just as the Maori was stooping to haul away a corner of .the tarpaulin covering, Crusoe quietly approached him from his tent, gum-spear in hand. "Now I've got you!" he said, and with that he jabbed the spear sharply into the nearest part of the stooping figure. There was a terrific yell as the Maori (Straightened up like a shot and clapped both hands to his wounded posterior. Crusoe recovered his spear and made .another vigorous thrust. But he did not get a chance of a third jab, for the potato.-stealer was off, legging it as fast as he could go in his painful plight. He vanished into the scrub; he didn't wait to take his big kit. The pakeha, having saved his store from further theft, flattered himself on having done a good early morning's work. He did not turn in again, but boiled his billy and had some ship's biscuit and cold potatoes by way of early morning tea. But there was no peaceful farm for Crusoe that day. Quiet as the island had been all the week, it burst into furious life that morning. The sun had scarcely lifted above the hills before the noise of shouts from a party of men and the sound of pounding bare feet was brought to Crusoe's ears. He had scarcely time to run for his axe and gum-spear before a band of about twenty Maoris came thundering down on him. Crusoe a Prisoner. They were all armed, some with guns, .some with tomahawks. Crusoe saw it was useless to resist. He dropped axe and spear at his feet. Next moment he was seized, his hands were tied. A big tattooed fellow pointed a flintlock musket at him, took steady aim, and pressed the trigger. Crusoe's start roused yells of mingled I laughter and anger. The gun wasn't loaded, but how was Crusoe to know that before the trigger was pulled? i om * b * w ks were brandished over his %S!l PP i* b with the P'-vßpear was IrusW * ***** *&* mt « reßt » thought v ,. v -,, j

Before the Bash Court. The Maoris haled the pakeha over the hill and down into the little bay from which he had seen the smoke rising the previous morning. There was a neat little Kainga there, a village of half-a-dozen raupo and nikau thatch. He came to know later that this was the favourite fishing camp of a hapu of the NgatiPaoa tribe, who owned most of these Hauraki shores. Crusoe's hands were unbound, and he was told to sit down in the open space between the whares, the marae of the ' camp. A "runanga" was at once assembled. This was a tribal court, a council of war, in which all men of the place took part. The women sat around muffled to the eyes in their shawls, blankets and mats. "Utu" Demanded. As each warrior rose to speak his piece, he threw off his upper mat or his blanket, and paced to and fro, rapidly | stating the case against the pakeha, who had dared to draw the blood of the old chief's son. This young hopeful was seated there, wrapped in a blanket. He was called on to state his grievous complaints and exhibit his injuries. The potato-stealer dropped his blanket, turned round and round, and displayed his wound. Crusoe's gum-spear had certainly caught him very neatly, right in the centre of his newly-tattooed "rape" pattern on the thigh, the pride of every warrior of those days. Crusoe did not know much of the Maori tongue at that time, but one of the men could speak some English, coastwise sailor's kind, and he made clear to the prisoner the nature of the charge, as they say in the courts, and the judgment of the runanga. The head of the little hapu, a tall old chief greatly tattooed, announced the decision of himself and his men. "You have spilled 'blood," he said, "you have killed us; you have murdered my son. He is quite, quite dead. You are a murderer like Maketu. And it is fitting that you should be punished as Maketu was punished. You shall be hanged by the neck till you are dead!" The execution of Maketu, the Norths era man who had murdered the Robertson family at the Bay of Islands, was still fresh in the Maori mind. By a convenient figure of speech Crusoe had murdered the potato-stealer, he had shed his sacred blood, therefore "utu" must be exacted. Crusoe stood up for his rights. He told how he had only defended his property against a thief, the man who had been stealing his potatoes every night. This was brushed away as a point of no account, The "runanga" over-ruled it. "Bring a Rope!" The cry was raised, "Bring a rope!" A young fellow, grimacing fearfully as he pranced along, brought a plaited fiax line. Quite in the style that three generations later was made familiar to the descendants of pakeha and Maori in Wild West movies, a noose was made in one end, and the other was thrown over the lower branch of a great pohutukawa tree that shaded the village square. A man put the noose' about Crusoe's neck. "This is the way you pakehas hanged Maketu!" he said. "Now, be ready to haul away!" he shouted, and the young men rushed to tail on to the rope. But at this last moment, when Crusoe was wondering, with staring eyes and perspiring brow, whether they really were going to hang him, and indeed realising with horror that they seemed very much in earnest—at this very uncomfortable crisis in his earthly affairs, a tall young man, a Ngati-Paoa chief, who had not hitherto spoken, came forward to the gallows-tree. Without a word, he grasped the noose that was about Crusoe's neck, lifted it over his head and dropped it loose. He took the white man by the arm, led him a few yards away and bade him sit down. Then, for the first time, he addressed his tribesfolk. The white man's life was his, he said; he would not permit him to be hanged for defending his own food supplies. The pakeha must go free. Emphatically, with voice, expression of warrior countenance, and gesture of his flourished whalebone mere, he made his resolution clear. And not a voice was raised against him. Crusoe's Escape. Probably the Ngati-Paoa "necktie party" thought that as they had given the pakeha a- good fright, sufficient utu had been exacted, or at any rate it would have been satisfied when Crusoe had handed out some tobacco as compensation for the hapu's injured dignity and the young potato-stealer's loss of blood. As for the chief who had come to the rescue, it is possible that he was secretly rather pleased that the troublesome young villain had been tickled wholesomely with the gum-spear. Crusoe slept soundly that night, and troubled no more about his potatoes. No one would trouble them henceforth. He did the haudsome thing in Ngati-Paoa's eyes, by handing them out his stock of tobacco plaits—the "whiri" beloved of a Maori—and, as a final touch, by presenting the wounded youth with the gumspear. That was but the beginning of a lifelong friendship with the Hauraki folk. In after years he was often visited at his place of business in Auckland by the canoe-men of Ngati-Paoa. The tall hero who had loosed the noose from his neck fought in after-years in the Waikato War, and many a time I saw him stalking the lower part of Queen Street, his Scotch cap pulled jauntily on one side over his black-tattooed brows, straightbacked, alert even in his 'eighties, a warrior figure all of the olden time.