WHERE THE WHITE MAN TREADS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13235, 21 July 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHERE THE WHITE MAN TREADS.

; . ;V: No.'X.

WHY AND HOW THE MAORI LOVED WAR, .

BY W. 8., TE KTJITI.*

I am • writing the history of pakeha-Maori, or very early colonial, if a man who settled among them in the opening years of the last century can be termed such. This

I intend to publish as soon as it is ready.

In this book I have recorded many, oldtime war customs, and for the purpose of this article I have excerpted such parts as will incite my readers for the rest. The annals of the race are rich in studies of human passions, which literature pretending to treat of him has conveniently happened to miss. »'■'■■''■■ That the Maori was a warrior we all know, but i.he reason why, and the many

details of how, no writer, to my knowledge, has yet touched upon. Firstly, be* cause he did not know; and lastly, a few perfunctory incidents- have sufficed to satisfy the subject in hand. Before 1 proceed I wish to correct the universal error that, say, two contiguous tribes were constantly at. war. On the contrary, his own and a neighbouring tribe might, and did, live in amity for a genera-

tion or more, and intermarried

ly, it is. true, and with careful selections and safeguards against land complications;

.but because he abhorred the status of idle spectator, where precious glory and undy-

ing fame might be acquired, he formed aggressive combinations with his neighbours to assist at quarrels in which neither

were implicated ; nay, he even ormed alliances with that neighbour for mutual defence. . But this intimacy permitted no relaxing of vigilance. His kumara yield was kept as secret as usual; tribal boundary rights were as rigidly insisted upon and observed; his fortified pa and its. defences were as scrupulously examined and kept in repair, its food stores periodically inspected, the perishing removed and replaced ;by sound, the* fluctuations of its water supply investigated and corrected; in fine, he was prepared for every emergency of sudden attack, and his neighbours knowing this acted in like manner.

Why was the Maori a lover of war? Af-

ter reviewing the matter from every point, and eliminating the factor that by it Nature killed off his weaklings, and by this process of natural selection perpetuated the healthy and strong, the only reason remains that by it'ho obeyed Nature's law to strive for and acquire the largest. share of this world's goods—to him the earth, its ,bird rookeries and fishing waters. And ■ for the same reason that we civilised" nations invade Africa,.and divide it into parallelograms of latitude and longitude, and tint each one's . grab with its national colour, whether the owners desire our presence or not, and term this "Empire extension!" The other reasons are mere stemlets growing from this enormous tap-root, and are. of too maddening ,a' variety to be classified here...'.;'.'■ .

The Maori loved to,perform his social functions with the' greatest possible noise. The louder the diii. the more it satisfied his incurable affection for noise; it permeated every act of his life/- His laugh 'must be iKitoterous lest' his companions underrate his bonhomie; his conversation is "loud, that his hearers bo impressed with it 6 importance; his singing is stentorian,' that it declare his glottis, is mobile; hie deathdirge is clamorous, lest it be said that his grief is imaginary. But none approached in vehemence his war-cries. Then he expanded with the occasion. They not only vibrated the ; ambience and gratified his craving for, noise— were meant to strike terror into and impress his opponent with the ferocity of his intentions when they should come to hand-grips. Not only

| these, but - they wound up his . couragetendons until they responded to any tone of daring he might desire; they duplicated his person, and exalted him above fear, favour, and death !

But oven these failed to satisfy his peace-

weary inclinations. They were mere accessories to more tangible admonitions. For these he cultivated a facial distortion. No Albert Durer in his most extravagant con-. ceptions of Satan could approach for contempt, defiance, and malignity when the Maori warrior pijanced up to an enemy and the paroxysm to kill gnawed at his heartcore It was no casual protrusion of tongue and inversion of eyesin this facial deformity ho could delineate every passion as it welled in his soul!

Of ballistic engines his want of metal tools confined him to a " pere," a missile twenty-eight inches long and an inch and a.n eighth thick, decreasing in size from each end to half an inch and lees in the middle, and sharply pointed at one end. It ,was propelled- by a stick with a thong eighteen inches long, which thong he wound

tightly a few turns round the thickestpart of the point, and tucking the end under the first wind laid it on the groundlevel if for • a short distance, but if it re-

quired trajectory he raised the point according to what the skilled thrower judged would strike the object aimed at; then, with a quick, powerful jerk, he whipped it forward, when the .thong revolved it, released itself, and sped the bolt to its goal with astounding force and precision. And when it struck, the enemy's body its revolving whirr snapped it off at its thinnest part and thus prevented its speedy extraction. Its effective range was from fifty to one hundred yards. I saw one at the lesser distance swish clean through a pig. It was employed to harass an enemy's onrush, and/force him to call : " Kia mohio ho per©" ("Beware of the pere") and take cover, and thus permitted the user to select his own point of attack. I have described this weapon thus minutely because I practised with' it in my boyhood, until I fired one into an old man's abdomen, and was forbidden to throw it any more,, even with the blunted end mine had. .

But until the introduction of pakeha muskets the Maori objected to ballistic aids. It was contrary to Nature's ordainmenfc that he should be able to kill at a distance. That ie probably why she infused into his vitals an abhorrence of everything which militated against personal trial of strength. And it may be that in her inscrutable wisdom she withheld from him a knowledge of metals abundant in their crude state, as also the fuel to extract them—lest he be tempted to make long-distance missiles which any weakling could throw, and thus interfere with her decree, that the strongest alone shall live and propagate their kind— knows? Hence wo find him ; thigh to thigh with his adversary, glaring eye into eye and crying: "Tena, ko taua!" ! ('lt is you and I for it!" And his opponi ent gladly responding : " At\ tena!" ("I am ! ready!"), leap at each.other with taiaha, V;pou-whenua. and tewha-tewlui, for long reach and; scientific' display in the open; i the tao (long spear—twelve to fourteen feet long), for the defence of and in trenches, arid, to thrust through palisading, and the kotiute, and short, broad, sharp greenstone mere, strapped to the wrist with a strong, ; thong, in the hand of the bravest of the (brave, where the crush is thickest, with | cut, stab, shin-stroke,'.;.neck-thwack, , in- ..'|.:' sweep, outsweep— Oh! the glory of the carnage, and the• kudos of } which genera--1 tions yet unborn shall sing down the roil- | ing ages to eternity! . . .-

Another modo of: harassing . the enemy was by ambuscade. If war had been, .declared and the numbers opposed to, .'bun, exceeded his own, his favourite means ot reducing the.excess was by ambush, and in the laying of a treacherous buscade) the Maori excelled creation! hen Hongi began his raid with guns in the Waikato a wave of consternation swept over the land like a pestilence. Mutual jealousies were forgotten; : smaller pas were, deserted; in fever-haste greater and stronger pas were built and fortified with all the skill , the quick-witted Maori could invent to protect himself from the rumoured terrible " pu" (gun). Some fled in haste to the inland mountain fastnesses.- One dav a fugitive panted up the escarpmeKfcoi: fortified Arapae. , "Yes," he , said when questioned, "loud and perilous is this 'pu, a devastating weapon where men are closelv packed; but "only one at a time can be killed ; then he must reload, but before, he can do so and he be close to you, a -rush. up. a blow of the patiti (hand axe), and the danger is past." Is that so'/" his hearers asked, ashamed of their fear of this new weapon: "then we will lay a kauaeroa, so that before they can reload we shall be upon them. Ha, ha! to work, brothers, to work!" ■ :'

To lay a successful kauaeroa the first consideration was that the land formation should not suggest a hidden enemy. Where the European strategist selects a narrow defile, sheltered on both sides -with a dense undergrowth and rocky declivities, the wily Maori laid.his. on open.item land through which the road wound in short ..curves/ where the fern is just of a height sufficient to cover his body from observation, and where when he leaped up he could swing his long taiaha freely. He had no firearms to pour in a destructive volley from a distance, out of dense scrub and from behind boulders; with his weapons he must come to close quarters ";. hence his selection of a winding road with short turns, to prevent the sudden doubling back of the leading sections and be overwhelmed by superior numbers; that, and the confusion of at-, tack where no enemy was expected and where he could be assailed in detail until the preponderance could be reduced, this was the object of his ambuscade. After that he loved a fair stand-up fight. I have been shown two successful kauueroas, where, the land lay just as I have described it, both won by lesser numbers, and from which not a soul escaped. If the enemy came from a distance an ambush involved no profundity of genius, because the in-: vaders must rely on the information and experience of fallible scouts; but if the war was inter-tribal, or between tribes of frequent intercourse, who , would know where attack might expected, the strategist who could lay a successful kauaeroa touched the apex of proficient generalship. And the leader who could detect one, and adroitly exchange disaster .for. victory deserved the plaudits of posterity. ,:. . ; It is generally and generously admitted that as a military engineer the Maori stood facile princeps. This was true when he nad to defend himself against a taiaha and;, stone axe, or rifle and howitzer. And in •both stages the exigencies of danger suggested to his fertile brain adequate estoppels to assault. But it is of pre-pakeha; clays, while still in the stone age, I would tell. From the window. where I write- I can see the remains of an ancient fortified pa.' And as I ponder on the past feats of this ingenious people old histories heard at winter firesides, or birding camps, and listened to with awe, come back to mehistories now forgotten because the tattooed old heroes who fought- there are dead, and the patriotic blood of their descendants is diluted with beer and their stamina effeminated with billiards, horseracmg, and pakeha ostracism! ■ ,'■;.'> The tatooed Todleben of 'that age selected the site for his fortress on a steep, conical; hill, whoso first requisite, : water, if not within the lines, was so located that the, slave • lowered over the parapet ■to fetch some, was v protected, and the enemy's i at-;; tempt to cut off : "r6r"'^eslo-its'''source' ,: be, i frustrated, , and if the forest were only ' half, Hi mile away so much the better. The slopes of the hill were, denuded of all cover under which an enemy could approach unseen,, and only short, stunted fern was permitted to grow, kia huatan (that -it be pleasant to look upon for decoration). Up this slope his road zigzagged in regular Vandykes to the outer trench*. The earth of that old rampart is now securely held in place by an intricate meshwork of fern roots, which crept up unseen, through and over into the trench, across it, and up again against the perpendicular face, which a recent fire still shows to be a. fosse twenty feet wide at the top, ten feet at the bottom and eight feet deep, benched on the inner face of the parapet three feet from the top, permitting a clear view to a, standing man of the outer part of the parapet to the base of the hill. Four feet away from the perpendicular face-edge of the fosse a ring of large circular holes indicates where the massive posts of the pekerangi (outer palisades), which fires and decay have left like a jawbone from which the teeth have been' extracted. From this ring outward a narrow band of earth slopes into the fosse, as if the pa had been chucked on the face-plate of some infinite lathe, and a three-foot arris champered neatly all round. But my pa is no first-class battleship, so there is no second trench between the katua (inner line of palisades) and the pekerangi, six feet in the ground, and ten above; every sixth post longer than the rest, and its top rudely carved into a gargoyle with paua shell (haliotis) eyes, and a defiaut hanging tongue, lolling the hatreds of the ages! • • ■'■■ (To be continued.)