A RUNNING BATTLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

A RUNNING BATTLE.

EPIC OF SIXTY YEARS AGO,

HOW ROTORUA WAS SAVED

FROM T£ KOOTL

(By J.C.)

"Fools, madmen!" shouted the shawlkilted pakeha, carbine in hand, who rushed along the track below Pukeroa Hill, at Rotorua. "Madmen, to trust that treacherous murderer! Throw down that flag, throw it down!"

The excited pakeha, who wa3 followed by a party of armed Arawa men, was addressing the leading men in a procession moving out from Ohinemutu towards the south. A chief at their head carried a white cloth mounted on a long stick. Aboet three hundred yards away, on the south, another band of men was advancing to meet them, also with a white flag. The Rotorua men were the principal chiefs of the place, headed by Petera te Pukuatua and Te Amohau. They were on their way to meet Te Kooti and his Hauhaus, who had sent in a message professing peace and desiring a meeting. The Ohinemutu elders relying on the good faith of the Urewera then relatives —and other warriors under the rebel chief, intended to invite them into their headquarters village on the lakeside. But one alert pakeha intervened. It was gallant Gilbert Mair, lieutenant of militia, who commanded a field force of the pick of the young Mair, running up to Petera te Pukuatua, tore the white flag from the chief's hands, threw it on the ground and jumped on it. "You would trast that treacherous fellow, would you?*' he said. "You would be the nrst to feel uiis tomahawk blade!" Mair Begins the Fight. Then, calling to the young men to follow hirn, Mair turned about and opened fire on the nearest Hauhaus. After his first shot—rSred to prevent that specious peacemaking, which be the prelude to massacre —he rapidly reckoned up his man-strength for the coming fight. Te Kooti, he supposed, had tino hundred men. The Arawa force available was less than half that number, for he had only that morning sent off various parties to guard tracks and villages. He had made a forced march through the Mamaku-Hautere Forest, on the ranges, from Tapapa, knowing that Rotorua was in danger, and only that morning, on emerging from the bosh, just

where the motor road of to-day comes out from the north, had struck the hauhaus' trail.

"Follow me, the Arawa!" cried Mair as he reloaded and ran towards the enemy.

The old chiefs tried to bar the young warriors' way by holding their taiaha weapons across the narrow track in the fern and manuka. But Tohe te Matehaere, a big lad armed with a rifle and tomahawk, burst through and dashed past his officer, eager for the battle. Mair called him back. "Steady, my boy," he cried, "we shall have a long fight today!" The Hauhau Retreat. Meantime the Hauhau advance guard seeing that the peacemaking game was up, had turned about and was in retreat towards Te Kooti, who waa up on the slopes of the Tihi-o-Tonga with his main body, awaiting the expected deputation and the invitation to feast and rest in Ohinemutu. At Paparata, on the southern hill rim of the Rotorua basin, he had commandeered pigs and potatoes; his force had been on starvation rations in the bush for many days. The Hauhaus had rounded up some horses, and Te Kooti and hia women and some of the men were mounted on these; they took the lead in the retreat to the distant shelter of the Urewera country. It waa now mid-day, a hot midsummer day—exactly this time of the year in 1870. The Hauhaus had a long start;' by the time Mair had a few men round him and pelting up the hill slopes south of Rotorua, Te Kooti was two miles ahead. The long running fight was on. Ambush and Skirmish. Te Kooti told off his best warriora, led by the savage half-caste Eru Peka, to form the rearguard. These men every now and again turned about to lay ambushes for their pursuers at places where there was good cover.

The first hot skirmish was near the Puarenga stream, at the junction of the present motor roads, tha Waiotapu and Atiamurl routes. Hers Mair, running well ahead of his company, was closely engaged, and shot hia first Hauhau of the day. A little further on, in the Waikorowhlti Valley, two more were shot, and at Ngapuketurua, six miles from Rotorua, the principal encounter took place. At every knoll or ridge Peka and his rearguard turned to fight. It was only Mair's personal courage and quick and accurate shooting that saved hia Arawa party, who were greatly outnumbered. Only a few of the strongest runners could keep with the tireless pakeha leader.

Ngapuketurua — the two hills — is a steep ridge covered with sparse manuka, trending parallel with the Waitaruna stream and t?ie present main road from Rotorua to Waiotapu and Taupo. The scene of the fight here, ©a the western

skyline, can be seen from the road, just below Owhinau hill in the State forest plantation. Mair was well in advance of his men here, and aa he ran he wa«= heavily fired on. He dropped down and fired ahead and right and left, as quickly as he could load hi 3 Westley-Richards carbine. Presently ten or twelve of his Arawa came panting up and joined in the combat. Seven Hauhaus were shot; one who fell to Mair, was Timoti te Kaka, a desperate fighter from Opotiki. Quite seventy men opposed Mair a score or so here. On the run again the survivors of the ambush turned to the right and made across to Kapenga plain for Tumunui Mountain, passing to the east and south of Pakaraka village. Mair expected the Tuhourangi men from Rotokakahi to intercept Te Kooti about here, but 'they considered their own villages would be in danger if they did so. The Final Shots. It waa nearly seven o'clock in the evening when the final skirmish took place. Mair and three men ran right into 'the Hauhau rearguard under Peka, among the rocks at the foot of squaretopped, earthquake-fissured Tumunui Mountain. Mair was fifty yards ahead of his men. Peka, who had about thirty men under cover, jumped up, fired a shot at Mair, and rushed at him with clubbed rifle. Mair let the 'big savage come ■ within about fifteen paces, and fired, j smashing Peka's right hipbone. The half-caste snatched at his revolver, but Mair ran ud and got it, and a little later Te Warihi" finished Te Kooti'a fiercest fighting man by putting a bullet through Ms head. Mair took from Peka a bugle, a trophy of the escape from Chatham Island in 1808, The half-caste was the Hauhau bugler. This ended tie battle; it was nearly dark. Mair had on3y two cartridges left; he had feed 58 day. Te Kooti and most of his xollower3 got clear away for the Urewera Country, but lost .the pick of hia warriors. About twenty Hauhaus were killed, seven or eight of them by Mair himself. The i Arawa lost one,"mortally wounded, a plucky-17-year-old lad named Te Waaka, and several others were vrcranded. One of Mair's best young fellows in that day's chase of quite 20 miles was Tohe te*Matehaere; he is still living, a whitemoustached veteran, in his old parapeted village Weriweri, near the mouth of the Waiteti stream at Rotorua. The Old Fighting Trail. Mair got hia captaincy for that day's I good work, which wa3 described by his superiors as a turning-point in the war. Sixteen years afterwards he received that most rare of all military decorations, the New Zealand Gross. The date of the running battle was February 7, 1870 —exactly 60 years ago. Forty -

eight year 3 after the fight Mair and I spent two days in following up the old war track on horseback. As we rode along the old hero of the Hauhau wars showed where Eru Peka laid his ambuscades and where so-and-so of the enemy fell. But the vegetation of the country had vastly changed. Thick scrub grew where in 1870 there had 'been only snort wiwi grass and patchy manuka; and we had to give up the exploration in the tangled gullies of the Kapenga. Captain Mair lies buried in the little churchyard by the lakeside at Ohinemutu, in the midst of his well-loved Arawa people, where he wished to be laid. Now and again one of his old soldiers—only a handful of them now— bares his head before the stone and murmurs a greeting and a- farewell to "Tawa," or "Kapene Mea," his dashing young officer of 60 years ago. Undoubtedly "Tawa" saved Ohinemutu, with its hundreds of all but defenceless people, from massacre that day of 1870 ; for Te Kooti had threatened to "hew them in pieces" after the manner of the Old Testament, aa he had hewn Poverty Bay and Mohaka, and he usually carried out his threats.