TE PUOHO’S MARCH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21357, 10 June 1931, Page 12

TE PUOHO’S MARCH

NEW LIGHT ON A GREAT ADVENTURE OVER THE HAAST PASS Written for the Otago Daily Times, By James Cowan. The story of the northern Maori warrior, Chief Te Puoho, and his daring raid against the dwellers in this part oi New Zealand, very nearly a century ago, has often been told. To Puoho’s march from the Nelson district down the wild west coast of the island, and over the Haast Pass into Otago, was by far the most arduous war expedition 'ever undertaken in our history. His fate at the hands of Topi Patuki and his fellow-warriors of the south is well known. But until recently the exact reason for Te Puoho’e extraordinary march was not clear to me. None of the recorded accounts of the expedition revealed the motive, apart from general intertribal hostility, for that perilous and enormously difficult journey through the most formidable wilderness. Lately, however, I .obtained from kinsmen of some of those who joined Te Puoho in that great adventure the full narrative of the events which led up to the foray against the far south. This account is of peculiar interest, as illustrative of the internal tribal dissensions which frequently in Maori history prompted a band of restless or dissatisfied men tb abandon their homes and set out for far-away parte to win fame and booty. The few well-informed members of the once-powerful Ngati-Toa tribe, who, live at Porirua and other settlements a short distance north of Wellington, stated that To Puoho was a sub-chief of that tribe and allied clans, and that he was born at Kawhia. That pleasant place of the north, with its fish-teeming harbour and its warm, t fruitful soil, was Ngati-Toa’e home until the great Rauparaha led him southward on their migration in 1821-23. Te Puoho followed with his own small party about 1825. In 1830 or so we find him living in the north of the South Island, where the musket-armed conquistadors from Kawhia and Taranaki had conquered the local tribes. He and his wife Kauhoe (" The Swimmer ”) and their children and some relatives settled at Motuweka, that desirable part of the Nelson coast on the west side of Tasman Bay. And there began hie troubles. The various parts of the Cook Strait coast and the adjacent sounds and bays had been apportioned among the conquetrors, and Motuweka (now spelled Motueka) -was occupied by Ngati-Rarua. This eub-tribe of Ngati-Toa, or its remnant, now is resident on the Wairau River in Marlborough. Te Puoho was a masterful whose autocratic methods, while all well enough in war time, aroused popular resentment when peace prevailed. He appears to have been an individualist of a pronounced type, not popular in the Maori commune. A ROUGH BAPTISM.

The story, as told by Ngati-Toa to-day, is that when Te Puoho was shown the extent of the land claimed by NgatiRarua by virtue of conquest from the original owners of the soil he proceeded to subdivide it. He wished to have boundaries made for each family or group of families, and perhaps he wanted the chief share for his own family. At any rate, his cutting up of the big estate was resented by the conservatives in the tribe. > The quarrel grew, and at last one day the opposition laid violent hands on the autocrat of Motuweka, and, after hustling him about, ducked him in the river.

This was by way of punishment for Te Puoho’s interference with customary rights'in undertaking on his own account the subdivision of the tribal territory. In great anger he shook the mud of Motuweka off his feet, and, with his wife and family and immediate relatives, launched his war canoe and paddled away to seek a new home. He joined the Ngati-Tama tribe (which had come from North Taranaki) at Te Par'apara, now called Collingwood, in Golden Bay, up in the north-west corner of Nelson province.

There our masterful chief dwelt a while in peace. Then his restless soul set him again at cross purposes with his people. He began a subdivision of the tribal lands ■ there, and again the revolutionary police was resented. The quarrel resulted in an order to quit, though the Ngati-Tama were his kinsfolk. They made it plain to him that he was not wanted in those parts and that he must seek a region which would be entirely his own, where he would not interfere with his neighbour’s affairs. NEW FIELDS TO CONQUER. ,

Indignant at his treatment at the, hands and tongues of his fellow norths erners, Te Puoho now resolved on heroic' measures to win a home where he would be able to put his progressive ideas into practice untrammelled by the old die-' hards of the tribes. He would march far away and accomplish two things—conquer new land and win fame, make a name that would strike against the sky. In the words of a famous proverbial expression of his Tainui people, he woul ■ leave the abundant food baskets: of the etay-at-homes; fo'r him and those who would follow him the meagre fare of the far-travelling war party (“ te rourou iti a haere”). Robert Louis Stevenson expressed just that sentiment of the high adventure in one of his poems; Hail and farewell! I must arise. Leave here the fatted cattle, And paint on foreign lands and skies My Odyssey of battle. Beating up recruits for a war party, Te Puoho announced that he intended to march to the far south and attack the Ngai-Tahu people, of whom Taiaroa and Tuhawaiki were the chiefs. By eloquent appeals and by promises of land, plunder, women, and slaves, be presently had under his command a company of about 70 men, consisting of some of his relatives of Ngati-Rarua, some Ngati-Hinetuhi, of Te Taitopu, and others eager for the great adventure. He sent also to Ngati-Toa and NgatiAwa at 'Kapiti Islands, but those tribes had some military business of their, own on hand at the time. The only men who came from the north were a few from Paekakariki. under a young chief named Te Wahapiro, who was Te Puoho s nephew. . , , , At Te Parapara the captain assembled his tattooed company, all armed with muskets and tomahawks and well supplied with ammunition. He led them in a great war dance. As they danced and stamped and thrust their shining muskets this way and that they chanted the triumphant war song of their ancestors that begins: “When wi(i your courage rage, when will your valour burn? ” Then Te Puoho turned his back for ever on the glittering sands of Golden Bay. THROUGH THE SAVAGE WILDERNESS. Down the wild West Coast they marched, those determined fellows; they took the most difficult route for strategic reasons. It was Te Puoho’e intention to take the people of Otago and Southland in the rear. For weeks they marched, living scantily on what little they carried until it was done and then chiefly on the birds they caught in the bush and the eels they got in the streams and lagoons. They trudged along the heavy sands of the coftst, they climbed precipitous cliffs, making bush' ladders in some places. They crossed innumerable rivers, some by swimming, some on rafts of driftwood or of korari flax stalks. As they advanced southward with the surf of the Tasman Sea ever close on their right hand, the rivers became more swift and icy cold. They came straight from the glaciers and snowfields, those fierce torrents, threatening death and destruction. Drenched in the rains, soaked and chilled in the rivers and swamps, still the warriors marched on. Always before their eyes were the open lands and the desirable possessions of Ngai-Tahu at the journey’s end, over the Alps that made an endless wall on their left. ACROSS THE DIVIDE. * There was a cut-through that tremendous alpine wall of which they had heard from the few original habitants of the coast; several of these they took as guides from Arahura atid other settlements. This mountain way was the route now known as the Haast Pass. They crossed the mile-wide snow-fed Awarua River (now the Haast) near its mouth, ami turned inland, following the strong stream

up through the tangled forests and the : gorges to its head Under the mighty shoulders of ice-clad Hau-mai-tiketike, which is now mapped as Mount Brewster; i the Maori name means “ Wind from the I Lofty Heights.” I can picture that march of the half- I starved musketeers of 1836, for I have I travelled along the Haust and over the i pass from Westland into Otago. (It took us a week on horseback from the Franz Josef Glacier track down to the head of Lake Wanaka, the roughest, wildest saddle journey in New Zealand.) Te Puoh'o led his men, gaunt with hunger and arduous travel, through the solemn, moss-hung beech woods in the 1 pass, and down through the eastern forests to Lake Wanaka, and now at last there lay before them the borders of the promised land they had sought for j so many painful weeks. } The rest of the story is a matter of j history—how Te Puoho and his warriors, j after capturing prisoners here and there j on their way into Southland, took the j Ngai-Tahu village, at Tuturau, on the , Mataura River, by surprise, killing - many and enslaving others, and were in j their turn defeated by a large body of I men led by the celebrated Tuhawaiki. 1 Te Puoho was shot, and his head was 1 cut off and smoke-dried as a trophy of i war. The Ngati-Toa people say that only one or two of all that hard-marching com- , pany escaped death or captivity and found | their way north again to tell Kauhoe, j at Te Parapara, of her husband’s fate. Paremata te Wahapiro, the leader's nephew, was taken prisoner. Three years j later (about 1839) his Ngai-Tahu captors released him. He was ceremoniously escorted north to the Nelson country and restored to his tribe, and he took his place among them as a chief again. His ; descendants " are living at Porirua and I thereabouts to-day. But Te Puoho s direct line is now extinct. His great march remains an epic of military endeavour. It was a pity he lost his head after all his toil and trouble.