AN INCIDENT OF THE WAR.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1228, 28 April 1864, Page 3

AN INCIDENT OF THE WAR.

When a history of the present war is being written there will be many interesting and romantic episodes in it. which will furnish the historian with ample material to embellish his pages with. There is one incident of the war oi recent occurrence, which it will not be out of place to record. While the rebels were entrenched at Pikopiko and Paterangi, a Maori woman, married some years ago to a respectable settler, lived in her homestead close by. Her husband, whose name it is unnecessary to mention, left her at the commencement of hostilities, having reason to believe that through the assistance given by his sons to the General, his life would be in danger. During the whole of the siege this woman, by her own choice, lived in her house close to the rebels position, and it was her practice, to show that she was a neutral party, to keep a white flag flying and to visit the General's camp occasionally at Te Kore. Both these circumstances caused great annoyance to some of the rebels, particularly to the stranger tribes of Ngatimaniopoto, who insisted upon her taking down the Hag, and discontinuing her visits to the General's camp, and they threatened to Hoani Papita and others of the friendly disposed Waikato chiefs to Opheia—which was the woman's name—that if she did not do so they would abandon their position. The friendly chiefs, however, insisted that the woman had a perfect right to do as she liked upon her own land, and not only would I they allow her to keep her flag flying, but they would permit her to go to the General's camp at Te Kore as often as she pleased. This determined conduet on the part of the friendly chiefs—friendly only to this poor woman in her solitariness — immediately silenced her unfriendly countrymen, and she was not afterwards disturbed. During the whole time that the siege lasted, nothing was stolen from the homestead, and nothing was missed except a pig or two, which might have strayed away; and this forbearance existed, although there were sometimes as many as 3000 or 4000 Maoris in the neighborhood, and often, 110 doubt, in want of food. Several influential chiefs afterwards came over from Maungatautari and told Opheia that they saw now that they were wrong in going to war with the pakeha. It is stated by William Naylor, too, and confirmed by Opheia, that it had been Hoani Papita's wish for a long time to make peace, and that he had first proposed it immediately after the battle of Koheroa, but the Waikato chiefs would not hear of it, although they saw the folly of it now. It was also said that many of them would be willing lo surrender if it wei'e not for fear of being made prisoners of, as were those of Rangiriri. From the same source it was learned that the rebels had declared that if the General had attacked Puke Toke instead of going to Paterangi, it was their intention to have hoisted ihc white flag and laid down their arms. Sin«' tl,e rebels have left Pikopiko, Opheia's husband has returned, and they are once more in the enj<>y' nent of their home. Opehia is a chieftess of some note, and has a good deal of land in her own right, besi es a considerable tribal right.—Southern Cross, April ..