TALES OF ADVENTURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 8 (Supplement)

TALES OF ADVENTURE.

( !! y -i.e.)

TOMAHAWK DAYS.

A STORY OF LAKE ROTOITI.

CATCHING HAUHAIS IN THE BUSH.

Luato and ITauparu arc pretlv white* beached bays, curving in half-moons, on tho south side of Lake Rotoiti. In each, alongside the motor road, is a small village, with the carved meetinghouse that gives the old-time touch to the modern kainga. Between the two bays is a tree-fringed stretch of cliff. Inland is the forest that extends to that lake of the wilds, Okataina. The road from Ruato to the lake, following the old Maori track, passes through the grand rimu woods of Waione, where tall red pines touch branches over the cool and flagrant aveniie. On the opposite side of Rotoiti's glimmering waters, the north, one of the deep winding inlets is the bay of Otaramarae, with its small kainga. Steering into the bay you pass on the west side a high headland covered with small forest; pohutukawa trees bend over the clear waters. This point is Kahuwera; it was a strong fenced pa in the war days of 1864-70, and was occupied by a large body of Arawa people who were in arms against the .Hauhaus. These bays and kaingas are linked together in a story of war-time bush adventure, an episode related to me by the venerable warrior woman Heni Pore, she who distinguished herself by her bravery in the Gate Pa battle. Heni fought first on the Kingite side, then she turned to the Government and went on the war path against the Hauhaus. The great chief of the Bay of Plenty eoast in those troubled days of 1865 was Hori Tupaea, the old Ariki of the .. gai-te-Rangi tribe of Tauranga. Hori had become a convert to the Pai-Marire or Hauhau fanatic religion, and word came to the loyalists of Rotorua and Rotoiti that he intended joining the murderous prophet Kereopa, the ruffian who had done the missionary Volkner to death at Opotun, and who was now roving the Urewera country. The route he intended taking lay through the Arawa country, and this intrusion the Arawa chiefs would not tolerate. They heard that he and a party of followers were making for Rotoiti, on theix way to the Kaingaroa and Te Whaiti.

The Lake Patrol. So a good lookout was kept, and every track was watched. Hori Tupaea would he handed over to the Government as a prisoner if he were caught. Heni Pore, with her family and her uncle, Matenga te Ruru, were living at Kahuwera at this time, and she played a warrior's part by taking a share in the scouting and patrolling duties. She carried an Enfield rifle, one of the oldpattern long muzzle-loaders. Daily she and Matenga and several young men went out in a canoe scouting the shores of Rotoiti. The Telltale Canoe. One morning as the patrol crew paddled along the lake, closely scanning the •outhern shore, keen-eyed Hem spied an empty canoe drifting on the quiet waters about half a mile from Ruato., Other •routing crews were out, and old Matenga, at the steering paddle of his canoe, shouted to them and pointed to the driftaway. The cry went up the lake, mid soon a score of canoes were racing for the mysterious waka. The Arawa crews overhauled the derelict. There was nothing in it; whoever had used it had taken away the paddles. "Now, what does this empty canoe mean?" asked old Matenga, and he answered his own question. "Only one thing. The Ngai-te-Rangi have used it to cross the lake. Hori Tupaea must Jiave crossed in the night-time or very •arly this morning." "Yes," said another warrior, Matene te Huaki, who steered a big canoe from Kahuwera, "and he must be somewhere yonder in the bush near Ruato."

The Cliff Trail. Heni's party did not waste time in speculating as to the Hauhaus' Whereabouts. They paddled close in to the shore at Pviiato and coasted along westward. "Sec," cried Matenga, pointing to the cliff above them, "the earth has been disturbed yonder! Someone has climbed the cliff." The old scout was right. A tuft of grass and earth had been dislodged from the higher part of the steep hill and was lying on its narrow bit of beach. The canoe party landed and peered j about for signs. The sand seemed to have been swvpt and smoothed just below the place where the earth was disturbed. "Ah," said Matenga, laughing grimly, "they thought to deceive us, did they 1 Do they take us for children?" Indeed, the device should have been transparent to a Maori child. The fugitives, whoever they were, had used the devi-ce of dragging brushwood back and forward along the sand to obliterate their footprints. But the telltale cliff betrayed them. The Pursuit. "Hurry, hurry," said the chief, "we must chase them quickly. Up you go." And one after another the canoeists, their guns slung over their shoulders, their tomahawks in their belts, climbed the cliff and followed the barefoot trail into the bush. Ruato was below them on the left, and Matenga guessed that the fugitive trail would presently join the track from that kainga to Okataina. By skirtin" that lake they would presently come on 5 a route to the Kaingaroa and the Urewera mountains.

All of a sudden, in a little clear space under the riniu and rata, trees, the pursuers overtook their quarry. There were about 20 of them, and as they outnumbered Matenga's party, the chief called to Heni and his men: "Take care, keep your guns on them!" With loaded rifles and shotguns at the ready, the pursuers rushed up and Matenga called to the fugitives to stop or he would fire.

Magic Incantations. The strangers thereupon halted, but instead of surrendering straightway— they did not appear to be arrued—they gathered in a ring around one of their number, a tail, gaunt bushy-haired man, and began a loud chant, the opening of the Pai-Marire ritual. The pursuers surrounded them, and listened to their chanting. "Why," said Heni, "there is my old friend Timoti! What is he doing with those foolish people ?" The man she had recognised was an old tohunga, Timoti te Aniopo, who had been on the war path with lier and her Koheriki people in the Wairoa and Hunua Ranges, near Anckland, in 1863, find later on had saved her life in the pate Pa battle. A§ she found After-

wards, he had now turned Hauhau and was guiding the party across country to the Urewera tracks. ft was a curious scene there in the bush. The group of fanatics gathered round their prophet, each with right hand uplifted, chanting the Pai-marire service. White-bearded Hori Tupaea was there, but the leader of the Hauhaus was the long-haired, wild-eyed prophet. He was a man renowned along the coast, Tiu Tamehana ("Jew Thompson"). The Hauhaus looked on Jews as friends and co-religionists, and a prophet or prayer leader was frequently called a "Tiu," equivalent to the term tohunga.

The Gods of the Hauhaus. "Listen!" said Matenga. "They are calling on their gods to strike us blind!" And that was the purport of a rhythmic Karakia that the "Tiu" began It called upon Rura and Riki, the Ila_.iau deities, to blind the eyes o" the Kupapas, the Government Maoris, so that the chosen ones, the "good and peaceful," should elude their enemies. But the Tiu's charm, chanted with tremendous earnestness by priest and disciples, did not seem to impair the Kupapas' vision. The Hauhaus set to at another chant; it was nothing else than the Church of England Doxology, musically pidgin-Maorified. "Glory to the Father" in their diction became "Kororia mete Pata." The chanting ended, the Hauhaus earnestly regarded their captors, looking for signs of weakening or, maybe, conversions to Pai-marire. But the godless Arawa only laughed at them, and Matenga said, "Come on now, we'll get back to the canoes." Meanwhile Matenga had sent his niece Heni out to the lakes, telling her to signal the canoes together at the beach. Heni hurried to the cliff top and fired a shot from her rifle. The report brought all the canoe crews paddling excitedly for the beach at Ruato.

The Arawa Canoe Fleet. The prisoners were marched out to the lakeside and put into Matene te Huaki's war canoe, a large shapely "waka-taua" with carved figurehead and sternpost, and adorned with feathers. There was not a gun or even a stone patu among them; they had relied altogether on supernatural aid. "Where are your guns ?" one of the 4xawa asked the Tiu. "We have no ordinary weapons," said the prophet; '"our guns are the angels." Afterwards, one of the men in the party said the Hauhaus believed that when they were well skilled in the chants and prayers their gods, Rura and Riki, would give them power to walk on the water and perform other wonderful deeds. "Then," he was asked, "wby did not Hori Tupaea walk across Rotoiti instead of taking a canoer" "Oh," was the reply, "Tie did not know the Karakia well enough then." Across the lake swept the triumphant flotilla of war canoes, with Matene te Huaki's big waka leading, all the captains chanting war songs to give the | time to the paddle strokes and a hundred voices roaring out the chorus. At Kehuwera the people dashed into the water to meet them; they flourished tomahawks and yelled threats of death to the prisoners. Matene kept the dejected Hauhaus out in his canoe a while until the excitement had subsided, then he took them ashore, and they were given the first square meal they had had for a week. Marched down to Tauranga, Hori Tupaea and his companions were lodged in military care for a time, until presently they were released by arrangement in return for the Rev. C. S. Volkner's fellow-captive, the Rev. Thomas Samuel Grace. More fortunate than poor Yolkner, Mr. Grace was kept in a state of suspense for many days; prob-

ably he, too, would have been sacrificed had not the Hauba.ua been assured that Tupaea "Vould be released. Timoti's Little Hatchet. So ended the Tauranga Ariki's attempt to join Kereopa the Eye-swal-lower. Of course, there must have been some reasons for the failure; something in the Hauhau plans'went astray; and presently Thompson the Tiu supplied the explanation. When Heni's old tohunga friend Timoti te Amopo was searched in Tauranga gaol a short-handled tomahawk was found thrust through his flax girdle under his clothes. "It was that tomahawk that spoiled the whole thing," declared the prophet. "I had given strict orders that no weapons should be carried on our Becret expedition. Timoti broke the rule; that was the 'aitua' that delivered our people into the enemy's grip." Two or three of the Arawa who took an active hand in that exciting episode of old Rotoiti are still in the land of the living. Good old Heni's memory is still clear as to those far-away events when every bay of these beautiful lakes held its populous kainga and when palisaded forts crowned many of the headlands where nowadays all is given up to the wildwood and where the warriors' camp fires are extinguished for ever.