THE STORY OF TE WAHAROA. No. 4—Part I.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXII, Issue 2807, 25 July 1866, Page 5

THE STORY OF TE WAHAROA. No. 4 —Part I.

To the Editor of the Daily Southern Caoss. Sir, — The Ngaiterangi are of Ngatiawa origin; their ancient andmorepropernanie is Te Rangihohiri. Four generations before the time we write of, they lived on the East Coast. It is said they were driven by war from a place there, called Whangara. Accounts differ as to whether, or not, they fought their way in advancing northward along the boast; suffice to say, they arrived in force at Maketu, where they were well received. Soon, however, in consequence of a murder they committed, war ensued between them and the Tapuika, the people of the place, resulting in the defeat and expulsion of the latter. Tapuika being then the rangatira hapu of the Arawas,and though the vanquished were subsequently suffered to return, yet Te JEtangihohiri maintained their hold of Maketu down to the year 1832. Being dissatisfied, however, with Maketu, and desirous of possessing the coveted district of Tauranga, this tribe, which we shall now call Ngaiteranga, advanced. On the night of a heavy gale, accompanied with much thunder and lightning, eight hundred warriors, under Kotorerua, set forth from Maketu to take the great pa at Maunganui, and to destroy the bulk of Ngatiranginui, and Waitaha, the ancient inhabitants of Tauranga. The doomed pa was situated on the majestic and singular hill, which no one who has seen Tauranga will forget ; it forms a peninsula, and is the east head to the entrance of the harbour. When -Ngaiterangi arrived at Maunganui, they commenced, by cutting, with stone axes, large holes in the bottoms of all the canoes on the strand, the sound of their operations being drowned by the roar of the elements. The natives, with superstitious awe, tell how, at this critical point of time, a certain celebrated pritstess of the pa went forth into the storm, and cried with a loud voice, her prophetic spirit being moved to a knowledge of approaching woe — "Heaven and earth are being rent, the men next." Having scuttled the canoes, Ngaiterangi entered the pa, and the work of death began. Such of the affrighted inhabitants aa escapsd being murdered in their beds, rushed to the canoes ; but when they had launched, out into the harbour, there about ,two miles broad, th& canoes became full of water, and.the whole were drowned. Thus Ngaiterangi obtained possession of Tauranga, and drove the remnant of its former people, Ngatipekekiore, away into the hills, to the - sources of the Wairoa, and Tapuna rivers ; where, although now rtlated to the conquerors, they still live. Another hapu of Taurauga's ancient people are Te Whanau o JN'gaitaiwhao, also called Te Whitikiore. They hold Tuhua — Mayor Island — and in 1835 numbered 170 people. Their chief was Tangiteruru ; but now Tupaia, chief of Ngaiterangi proper, is also chief of both those tribes. Yet, notwithstanding their ancestors' too unceremonious mode of acquiring a new estate, it is but just to Ngaiterangi to say that, unlike some other tribes, their intercourse with _our countrymen was ever characterized by fairness and good conduct. They were not blustering and turbulent like .Ngatimaru, or lying and thievish as Ngatiwhakaue were ; nor were they inclined to substitute might for right, in the way th© Wakatohea sometimes acted towards Europeans. .. It was their boast, that they had never harmed apak«ha. They were called by other natives " Ngait«rangi~kupu tahi," which may be freely rendered "Ngaiterangi the upright," and finally their recent hostilities againtt our troops were conducted in an udmittedly honourable manner. We will only add, in reference to Tauranga, that its ,climate is, a ■ort of average between* tho.se of Auckland and Opotiki ; more frosty, "and less subject to westerly winds, than the former ; and le3*a frosty, and more windy, than that of the latter place, Before returning to the immediate subject of our story, w» will narrate the unfortunate episode of an. English trader's visit to the Bay of Plenty, a year after the 'Herald's' voyage. In 1830 the brig • Haws,' of Sydney anchored •& Wakatane. Having large quantities pf arms and ammunition on board, she sooa obtained a carg* of pigs and flax, and then moved over to Whale Island, where by the side of a •pring of boiling water, ' conveniently situated near the beach, th« captain and some of the crew proceeded to kill the pigs and salt them down into casks; while thus engaged a number of .canoes were seen to bewd the Y«Meffr9«W*kftfttt^ aadtbcwilwawlw

had taken to the rigging were shot. Upon this the captain and those with him fled in their boat to Te Awaote Atua, and thence to Tauranga. The natives, who were led by Ngarara, then took everything out of the brig, and burnt her. Among other things they found a quantity of flour, the use of which very* much puzzled them; at length they contented themselves with emptying it into the aea, and simply retained the bags. When the news.of the cutting off of the 'Haws' -reached the Bay of Islands, some of the Europeans resident there considered it necessary, if possible, to make an example of Ngarara. They therefore sent the ' New Zealanderj. schooner to Wakatane, and Te Hana, r a Ngapuhi chief acquainted with Ngarara, rolunteered to accompany the expedition. TJpon the 'NewZealanderV arrival off Wakat'ane, Ngarara, encouraged by the success of his enterprise against the •Haws,' determined to serve flier in the same way. But first, with the usually cautious instinct ,of a Maori, he went on board in friendly guise ; for the double purpose of informing himself of the ckaracter of the vessel, and of putting the pakehas off their guard. Ngarara spent a pleasant day, hearing tte korero~(news) and doubtless doing a little business-:— so much so — that his was the last, canoe alongside the vessel, which latter it was arranged should enter the river the following morning. Meanwhile bur Ngapuhi chief sat quietly, and apparently unconcernedly, smoking his pipe on the taffrail, his double-barrelled gun as a matter of course lying near at hand : yet was he not unmindful of his mission, or indifferent to what was passing before him. He had marked his prey, and only awaited the time when Ngarara, the last to leave, should take his seat in the canoe; for a moment the canoe's painter was retained by the ship, "but in that drop of time," an age of sin, a life of crime had passed away ; aud Ngarara, the Reptile, had writhed his last in the bottom of his own canoe : shot by the Ngapuhi chief in retribution of the ' Haws' tragedy, in which he had been the prime mover, and chief participator. Te Whanau o Apanui were much enraged at being thus outwitted, and deprived of one of their most leading chiefs. The difficulty, however, was to find a pakeha whom they might sacrifice in utu ; for utu they must have for the violent death of a tapued chief ; or the Atua would be down upon them, and visit them, or theirs, with some fresh calamity. In the end therefore, they were compelled to fit out a flotilla, andwentasfarasHicks'sßay; for Europeans lived on the East Coast prior to their, settlement in the Bay of Plenty ; where they, too successfully, attacked a pa at Warekahika, for the purpose of getting into their hands two pakehas, who lived in it. • One poor fellow was instantly killed, but the natives complained he was thin, and tough, and that they could scarcely eat him ; and we may add, in reference to pakehas they have murdered, that other New Zealanders have found the same fault, and experienced the same hardship. The other European escaped in a marvellous manner ; he fled and attempted to climb a tree, but the native who pursued him, a Ngaitai man, cut his fingers off with a tomahawk, and tumbled him down out of it. We suppose the Maori preferred making a live man walk to the kainga to carrying a dead man there ; otherwise another moment would have ended the pakehas life. During the brief interval our pakeha turned his auxiouseyes towards the sea— whenlo, an apparition ! Was it not mocking him ? or could it be real 1 Yes, * reality, there, " walking the watersjike a thing of life," a ship — no phantem ship — approached, as if sent in his hour of need; she suddenly shot round Warekahika point;, not more than a mile off, and anchored in the Bay. " Now," said the pakeha, "if you spare me, my countrymen on board that ship will give a handsome ransom in guns and ammunition. The Maoris at once saw the force of the observation ; the thing was plain on the face of it ; and, as they wanted both guns and ammunition, they toek him to the landing place, a rocky point, to negefrate the business. Presently an armed whale boil geared .the shore (the. ship was a whaler), the pake?*- advanced a pace or two beyond the group 'of Maoris to the edge of the rock to speak; and when he spoke, he said to those iv the boat, " When I jump Into the water, fire." He plunged, and they fired ; he was Bared, and the natives fled ; excepting suck as may have been compelled to remain on the rock, contrary to their feelings aud wishes 0 temporal O mores ! The unfortunate pakehas were proteges of Makau, alias Kaugimatauiuku, the Wakatohea chief who. it will be remembered, had fled from upottia wlien JNgatimaru devastated that place. Makau lost; several men in this affair, and always considered himself ah upholder, and martyr in the cause of the pakeha. It was lucky this idea possessed his mind, as it probably saved the crew of the ' Sir John Dauscombe,' a schooner which afterwards came to grief at Opotiki. Another incident in connection with the 'Haws' tragedy catinot'be omitted. One of the natives who took part iv it was a Ngapuhi man, who at the time was visiting ab Whakatane, jrffc usually lived at ■ Maungatapu, at Tauranga, havicg taken a woman of that pa to wife. It so happened that Neneof Hokianga — now Tamati Waka — was on -the beach at Maungatapu when this Ngapuhi native returned from Wakatane to his wife and friends. Tamati Waka advanced to meet him/ and delivered a speech, taki-ing up and down in Maori style, while Ngatihi, the natives of the pa, sat round. " Ugh ! your a pretty fellow to cull yourself a Ngapuhi. Do they murder pakehas in that manner at Ngapuhi ? What makes you steal away kere to kill pakehas ? Has the pakeha done you any karm that you kill him ? There— thatis for your work, "he said as he suddenly stopped short and shot the native he addressed dead in the midst of his connections and friends. This act, bold even to rashness on Wakas part, stamped his character for the future throughout the length and breadth of New Zealand as the friend of the pakeha ; a reputation which that veteran chief has since so well sustained. The next matter we have to chronicle is a curious compound of superstitious absurdity, and thirst for human blood. In the summer of 1831, two Bay of Islands girls of rank bathed together in the *ea *t Kororareka. Their play in the water gradually became serious, and ended in a quatrel in which one cursed the other's tribt. When this dreadful result became publicly known, the girls' tribes gravely prepared for war — one to avenge the intuit, the other to defend itself. In an engagement which followed, the assailants were so forcibly worsted, that tht other party, remembering they were all related to each other, became aihamtd and sorry at the chastisement they had inflicted ; and they actually gave up Kororareka — the site of thejtownship of Russell — in eempensation for £he tupapakus they had killed. But the gift of a pa, no matter how advantageously situated, could not appease the craving of blood for blood. Accordingly an expedition of Ngapuhis and Barawas was sent to Tauranga to get a bloody atonement for the ptople slain in their intertribal war in the North. The expedition was void of result, and returned to the Bay of Islands after having been beaten off the Maungatapu, pa — the same pa which three years before Te Rohu had vainly tried to take. The only incident worth mentioning on this occasion is that the celebrated Heki was shot in the neck, and fell iv the fern near the ditch of the pa, from which perilous position he was removed in the night by his comrades. "Ah!" said Nuka, chief of Maungatapu* in allusion, seme years afterwards, to this circumstance, " if we had only known that he was there in the fere, he never would have troubled the pakeha." —I *m, 4c, , W.