A Hundred Years Ago

Evening Star, Issue 20522, 28 June 1930, Page 5

A Hundred Years Ago

[Arr, Eights Eeskxvid.]

No. VIII.

Ksiapoi had fallen, it • might easily teen, by the sheer malignity' of fortune- The strength of the pa was not at fault. No lack of courage had been shown by. its defenders. It was a cruel fate which caused , the proud fortress fo be subjected to the one. form of assault which. a wooden citadel, filled with living houses and store houses built entirely and ,of necessity -of wood .—since ho Maori ■ had ever conceived the idea of building in stone—was unfitted. to; withstand. Fir© was an unusual weapon to be used in Maori warfare. It was inconsistent, we may think, with the sportsmanlike code of n people who were, accustomed'to send notice to their enemies when they intended an assault, _ and would supply them on occasion with munitions when ax lack, of those threatened to make the fighting too short. An attempt was .made to use it .in the siege of Nga Mutu by the Waikato about this same time,. hut the tinder there, apparently, was too small in quantity, or. had not been so carefully prepared, and the stockade refused to burn. Te Eauparaha would be the last man to worry himself about precedents. H® was resourceful enough to make, those, for himself. " He was a realist, ,atso, who made war to achieve very. defim ito ends of his own. and did not regard it as a game, . , The shifting of the wind could, not he forseon. when a really promising plan .was hit upon to. frustrate a vital peril. Nevertheless, it would. seem that Kaiapoi should not have fallen if Kai Tahu could only have shown . a better conduct of their affairs. Taiaroa was apparently the soul of the defence, but a pa as strong as this one should havo had its. offu leaders, and he might have shown ■wiser judgment if, instead of shutting himself up in the fortress, he had kept himself, with all the forces he could gather, out of it. To Eauparaha would have been then between two fires, and his army would rot have been free, as from the , first it was, .to ravage the surr rounding country, which made its means of sustenance for half a year. For an extreme stroke Kai Tahu would have done better, instead of burning down their own pa, however inadvertently, after six mouths of a siege, to burn down its surrounding, villages at the beginning of it, inhabited although those were by its own people, Kai Tabu had. been at feud among themselves up to the eve -of this invasion. • It is not clear, that .they, were united in resisting it. We : hear nothing of Tangatabara, who -was 'a Peninsula chief, as either-participating in .the defence or attempting any diversion? against T© Eauparaha. If the Peninsula Natives,, while the siege continued, were : giving their ■ main attention to the fortifications Of .Onawe, on the principle, of protecting their., own ■kins, they were to/pay- bitterly, and very soon, for that- error' of policy.^^ 1 Kaiapoi fell, and we. can imagine the scene when it fell. The, .“ wild shriek from some captured town’? would .-be mellow music to the. dinr of this, barbaric storming and “ sauye qui pent.” . When the slaughter had-ended in the pa and in the nearer-marshes the victors gathered within their, camp, situated on the spot now known as Massacre Hill, on the' Main' North road between Kaiapoi and Rangiora, where the captives werefinally disposed of. Canon Stack tells the sequel' delicately. ‘ “Those devoted to the ‘manes’ of the dead were fastened to poles, erected on the summit of the knoll, . d bled to death, their bodies' being afterwards removed -t-o be cooked and eaten in accordance with the national custom, which required this indignity to be offered tojthe dead in I order to complete the humiliation of • the conquered.” Captain (afterwards rear admiral) Stokes, who’:-visited the scene early in 1850 with ’a party from H.M.S. Acheron, tells it to us with the stronger stomach of a sea- captain, as lie heard it from survivors: THE CANNIBAL FEAST “We Faulted at a; low; mound, the scsne of Rauparaha’s / encampment when, besieging the Kaiapoi Pa, vestiges of which were still visible some distance on our right hand. Here, with hff own-hand, and in sight of their nearest relatives, Eauparaha cut the throats of captive and, seated with his warriors between the triangles from which the bodies were suspended head downward, they lapped at their ■ Raping • wonnds until literally gorged with blood. Several circular hollows. . .still filled with fragments of charcoal ’" : 'aiid stones blackened by fire at the foot ’ of this' hillock, are-the oft-described ■ native ovens wherein he cooked the bodies, drained off the.vital fluid, and ; the bones' of' men, whitened by age, t: peeping everywhere through the grass, prove'the number of. his. victims amt the extent to which the infernal banquet was-indulged. Bones of infants, l! too, mingle, with the rest.” A sentence which follows is too terrible to bp offered to. our readers.-Oaptain-Stokes states that the taunt of Rerewaka, which bfofaght Te Rauparaha , into, conflict with the Kai 'Tahu,‘was not unprovoked. ,The North Jslandfchief -had'-carried '-away"certain South/Island r omen, which, regarded as a display of contemptuous bravado, caused the threat to bo made of evisceration. Capt pi" Stokes’s account, taken from . Kai Tabu survivors eighteen: years after the events which they recalled, mixes up the first and i : second visits of To .Eauparaha to Kaiai poi. He was told that he spent a whole year in his camp, .“varying the m0n0;.... ;.... tony of the siege by .many a bloody foray on the jadjacent’settlements. The prisoners they obtained served as pro ■’ * vender to him and.his '.warriors, and ; - when tins failed he sacrificed his own ‘ slaves as fast as the baskets of potatoes which they carried were conaumed.” The account which was given to him / of the last scene foregoes the peculiar jro.ny; of the more general version, which makes tho Kai Tahu destroyers of their own pa. “The. besieged .(he writes), having laid up immense stores of -dried eels, rern roots, and potatoes, the ordinary native food, little regarded ' his [Te Rauparaha’s] presence, till in » council of chiefs it was resolved to sot the pa on fire and compel its occupants to.aallv out. There is in New Zealand a species of bulrush called toetoe)- -with, a long reed-hko stalk covered.with leathery tufts, made into S' torches by the. . natives. - The Kai Tahu, who were possessed of some firearms, kept, .up n furious discharge • tlirijugh the intervals of the enormous piles j . and' gradually vhiilflfti the iiostils

The Flight From Kaiapoi

Grim Stories of Survivors

(Written.by' WiF.A.'and- H.D.S., for ,th© • ‘ JSreaing Star.’]

ranks. , But a torch alighting on one of the feed-thatched huts, the whole interior was wrapped in flames. Men, young and old, women and children, all made for the narrow winding entrance, where the remorseless foomcn, with tomahawks gleaming in the flame light, and gestures and yells _ of disgusting ,-ferocity, stood impatient for the work of blood. Short was the interval. With a wall: of firo rapidly encircling them, ..to remain was madness; and amidst the wildest scenes of terror, they struggled through the t-hoked-up outlet. Of. the young and armed warriors a few cut their way through the opposing crowd and found safety in flight; but the greater number wore struck down as fast as they appeared, or were reserved to experience a more lingering death. They, too, augmented the cannibal repass.” Captain Stokes concludes: “These things were narrated by an eye-witness as we strolled among the ruins of Kaiapohia. Far from exhibiting any feeling of sadness, or even of ferocious excitement, they were tho merriest rascals possible. Every question produced a broad grin. One young fellow volunteered to explain how his brother and several besides had been put to death by holding. before me three sticks in the form ol a triangle His mirth knew some. little bounds until a question whether tho victims were suspended by the neck. The idea convulsed him. • ~0. him hung heels up,’ adding, with shouts of laughter, ‘ then Eauparaha made a beef’—i.e., roasted and ate them

“ Fragments or half-burnt wood were. thickly strewn; about, with many other indications, of _ its being a spot over which destructive fire had passed. Our guides, all young men except Moumou, all took care - to point out the respective sites of their parents’ huts, and led us to what had been the entrance where the friend of. Eauparaha had been hacked piecemeal, and to a corner of the beach where a confused heap of bones proved that. death had been busy. A Kai Tahu who afterwards escaped hero shot down ten of the assailants by pointing his musket through the openings in the fence. ‘ Of this, one solitary great beam alone survives. It is about 15ft high, and largo as the Acheron’s main, mast, causing stonishmont at the prodigious labour requisite to have put up from a distance the thousands of trees' consumed in the erection of this pa, and the impossibility of reducing it by any means save fire.’? Stack relates,that when 'the Rev. John Raven, one of the Canterbury pilgrims, ' took possession of the land in the neighbourhood of Massacre Hill, the , whole surface of the ground between it. and the. lagoon .was strewn with human remains and weapons of all. sorts, Mr Raven caused the bones to be collected, and about two, wagon loads were buried by his orders in a pit at the base of the sandhill, which has since been' almost levelled. The remains df the houses and fortifications of Kaiapoi were destroyed by the fires lit to clear the land for farming. . A tall column of white stone, crowned with a grotesque tiki figure, and surmounting a fine grotto, marks the spot where the warriors of Kaiapoi fell round the hurning walls of their stockade, as the followers of Te Eauparaha burst in on them. No attempt is made in the inscription to tell tho story of the siege. (To ,be continued.) THE BRIG ELIZABETH MASSACRE ro t*m spiros Sir, —Reading the articles on _ 1 A Hundred Years Ago,’ in No. 5 it is stated that Takapuueke, where the massacre' associated with the brig Elizabeth took place, was on the opposite side of the harbour from Akaroa. This is not correct. It was situated in a small hay one mile from Akaroa, the Spur on which the monument is-erected dividing it from the town. This was where Captain Stanley hoisted the Union Jack a few days before the | French ship, the Compte do Paris, ar- | rived with French settlers. A full de- { scription of the bay is given in a book j published by Mr Johannes Andersen I entitled ‘ Place Names of Banks Peuin- • sula.’ Having lived in Akaroa in the i ’seventies, I was acquainted with an j old Maori who was taken prisoner ! there when fourteen years old and let j come hack twelve /years later. His [ name was Tamati Paurina, and he died lat the age of ninety. He described to i me all about the massacre and pointed i out t© me the bay from where he was living at Tikau Bay, opposite Akaroa. —I am, etc., , G.J.B. Gisborne," June 21. [Our correspondent’s .Maori evidence is interesting, but his evidence from Mr Andersen’s generally most valuable little book cannot in this case be accepted. It -is almost certain that Mr Andersen confused tho Red Ilouse Bay (Takapuneke),' near which 1 was not • known till 1839, with tho older Takapuneke, across the harbour, I near 'Wainui, -which' -was ' the scone of the massacre of. 1830. Jacobson’s ; ‘ Tales of Banks Peninsula ’ (third edi--1 tion) in a list of errata, expressly corIrects a suggestion that “ G.J.B.’s u bay, which received its name when W. , B. Rhodes built a-red house there, was •the place of the earlier outrage, and differentiates them again in a chapter lon * Origin of Names.’ In three places I it states that tho pa of tho massacre j was by Wainui. Tho presumptions are that “ G.J.8.,” with a later Takapu- ' noko in his mind, misunderstood his I Maori informant, and that Mr Ander--1 sen would have written differently if he had worked from the third edition of Jacobson’s book instead of the second, which leaves room for confusion, when it rhentions the name; Takapuneke as that of Tama-i-hara-Nui’s Bay without distinctly indicating its, location. Tho name was given to the more famous site because the roof of tho pa (or roof of tho chieftain’s house there) was thatched with red flax.—Ed. E.S.] WHY THE CRIMINALS ESCAPED to ms Burro*. Sir, —The probable reason why the trial of Captain Stewart was never pressed i and his European assistants never apprehended for their share in the brig | Elizabeth outrage is explained by Miss 1 J. I. Iletliorington in ‘ New Zealand; I Its .Political Connection with Great Britain I .’ Governor Darling, who did his best (b• sco jihat justice-.was an-

plied, .considered that its failure was duo to ■ “ the supineness of -the Crown Solicitor and the machinations of that enemy of Governors—Charles Wontworth, part-owner of the brig.” The fact that such a powerful personage as Wentworth had an interest in tho brig would not ho likely to stimulate the activity of the Crown Solicitor.—l am, etc., . W. June 24.