SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF TE RAUPARAHA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2514, 21 May 1902, Page 60

SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF TE RAUPARAHA.

By Jessie Mackat. IV. I think that old Te Heu Heu, of Taupo, was a -better man than Te Rauparaha ; Hone Heke was most certainly a better man ; and yet I think that Rauparaha was a man of longer thoughts and grander thoughts than either. There i&' something strangely pathetic in hih attitude towards the white men and their new faith in those last years of his life. The old Ariki, steeped in blood and statecraft from his youth up, drunk with the wine of a greater power than any of his nation had possessed in historic times — having already reached the allotted three-score and ten, moreover, — was scarcely a likely convert to the Gospel of Peace. Yet we find that when Tamihana had won permission to keep a Christian teacher in the main pa of Ngatitoa, Rauparaha opposed no more the spread of the Gospel, made no demur at sacrifices that must have searched his proud spirit to the core. No empty hearers were the young chiefs of Ngatitoa ; and Rauparaha permitted them to have their will. Hundreds of slaves taken from the southern pas 10 years before were returned, and not empty-handed, to their homes on the East Coast. Tamihana and Matene had greater reparation yet to make, however. The two young men went south, unarmed and unattended, through those very pas that Rauparaha had left in blood 1 and ashes. They visited every settlement of Ngai Tahu, and did not return home till every one of their ancient enemies had heard He Rongo" Pai (the Good Tidings). During their absence occurred that tragic event which, justly or unjustly, drew down, the fixed hate of the early settlers on Te Rauparaha. This was THE WAIRAU MASSACRE OF 1843. About the time Octavius Hadfield landed at Wellington there also arrived the ship Tory, with a number of officials commissioned to buy land from the Natives. Chief of these was Colonel Arthur Wakefield, brother to that strange, erratic nationfounder, Gibbon Wakefield. The colonel and his followers addressed themselves to their task — a vexed and difficult one, had they been actuated by the most scrupulous care for justice ; and it can scarcely be contended that early land purchases from the Maoris were characterised by such care. It does not seem that Colonel Wakefield offered worse terms than many officials of a far later day ; but the Maoris soon found the white man's land laws as full of devious complications as their own intricate system, with less chance of redress. So, while the missionaries were earnestly sowing the seeds of peace and progress, the traders were as busily sowing the' seeds of disaffection and distrust. While these works were proceeding the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, and New Zealand became a British colony. The colonel's party did not confine their labours to Wellington. They had crossed ever to Nelson, already a flourishing little settlement, and were haggling with Kangihaeata over the fertile Wairau Valley, in Marlborough ; they professing to have bought it, the chief denying all knowledge of the sale. Very various accounts of the ensuing murders are given-, but it does not appear that the attitude of Colonel Wakefield with regard to Wairau can be justified altogether. Certainly he was not to blame for the great wrong which, we are told, inflamed the mind of Rangihaeata | against the white men and their dealings at this time. A young Maori woman related to Rangihaeata had been atrociously murdered at Nelson. There was little or no doubt as to the identity of the murderer, a white man, but for some reason he escaped conviction, to the astonishment of most of the white settlers themselves. Naturally, no little bitterness followed this miscarriage of justice, and the arrogant attitude of the self-styled masters of the Wairau was ill-timed. The chief cent for his uncle and overlord, Rauparaha. At Wairau the two chiefs met the officials. Bitter recriminations followed ; the Europeans threatening that Rangihaeata should be hanged, the chief retorting by burning the surveyors' hut at Wairau, first putting out their belongings. The final meeting of the two parties at Wairau was a stormy one. According to the account of the Bey. R. Taylor, the police magistrate of the district, enraged at the reproaches of Rangihaeata, suddenly called on his men to fire. A filial was fired, kitting Jfo jofftj&LßiJttaiiJ

haeata, who was also the daughter of Rauparaha. The Maoris at once sprang to their guns, Rangihaeata fled in fear ; but Te Rauparaha stood his .jjround, with a hasty exclamation commonly made by a chief before battle, but taking no part in the struggle. A panic seized the Europeans, who rushed to the canoe, a few escaping by this means. Wakefield and the gentlemen of his party were all made prisoners, but not touched till the return of Rangihaeata, who at once ordered their J murder as payment for the death of the ■ woman, adding that the Europeans had broken their professed rule never to kill women. Then the chiefs sailed to Otaki. The part taken by Rauparaha in the massacre has been much debated. He was held j by the Governor and white people generally !to have consented to it ; he himself denied having done so. In Tamihana's account of his father's latter days, the chief says. "I never wanted to have the white men killed ; great was my love to Wakefield and party." The account goes on to repeat the conversation of the chiefs while • the prisoners' fate was in the balance. Te Rauparaha said, "Hearken, Te Rangihaeata. j I will now leave you, since you have set aside my word. Let those who are killed suffice: do not kill the rest.'' Rangihaeata replied, "What about your daughter who has been killed?" Rauparaha answered, "Why should not that daughter die?" Then, he avowed his intention of accepting the new faith. "Now I will embrace Christianity and turn to God, who has spared me from the hands of the EuroI peans."' Had Governor Fitzroy exacted the Surrender of Wairau as b!ood-wite for the murdered men, it would have been quite according to Maori law, and would have impressed the Natives with respect. When, after a long lecture on their crime, they , were told that, as the quarrel was not just no vengeance would be taken, the scorn , of the chiefs broke out in the saying, ''This Governor is soft ; -he is a pump- ; kin." From that time Rauparaha and Rangihaeata walked divided ways. The old Ariki remained peaceably at Porirua, near Wellington, taking no part in the wars I that followed between whites and Maoris, and concerning himself only with the proj gress and enlightenment of his people. ' Raugihaeata took to the bush as an avowed enemy of the pakeha. Three years later, when the Hutt war began, he put himself at the head of the rebels. The following messages are said to have passed at thattime between him and his uncle, the last ' apparently recorded. Rauparaha said { angrily: "Go you to the mountain, that you may be smoked to death by wet fern," alluding to the miseries of a winter campaign among the hills. The fiery old man answered bitingly : "Go you to the sea, as a relish for potatoes," a sneer at his uncle's inactive attitude on the coast, and his having been taken prisoner. ; After hostilities became imminent at the j Hutt, Governor Grey was shown certain ' letters said to have been sent by RaupaTaha to the Wanganui chiefs, stirring them tip to revolt. Whether these letters were genuine, or whether they were rank forgeries, as Rauparaha and his family asserted, cannot be positively determined. But two things are certain: these letters were absolutely opposed to the whole tenor of the old chief's latter life and policy ; and he had bitter enemies among the Wanganui chiefs and also among the settlers, who would have snatched at any chance of embroiling him with the Government. However it may have been, the old chief was seized in his house at Porirua, and imprisoned for two years on board the Calliope, a man-of-war. The faithful Tamihana was again absent, being under Bishop Selwyn at Auckland, studying with his young wife Ruth. As soon as possible, he went to see his father. He gives the purport of the interview simply and touchingly. "When I went to Wellington on board the Calliope to see him, we cried together ; then he said, 'Son, go to your tribes and tell them to remain in peace. Do not pay for my arrest with evil. You, must love the Europeans. I have not murdered Europeans ; Governor Grey has arrested me through the lies of the people. If I had been taken prisoner in battle it would have been well, but I was unjustly taken.' " "I and Matene," continues Tamihana, "returned to the shore, and went on to Otaki, where we built the town of Hadwas well that the old Ariki and hifi young chiefs were in accord on this matter. Rangihaeata, on hearing of the arrest, wanted to bring down his wild warriors and destroy the infant settlement of Wellington—probably more for love of mischief than for love of his relative, and there were those of Rauparaha' s household who would gladly have helped him. His daughter has left a song of lament, in which she bitterly speaks of her father as the offering made by Tamihana and Matene to the God of Peace." Rauparaha was kindly treated on board theTJalliope, and became strongly attached to his gaolor, Captain Stanley. In l*£o lie was released with nonours and gifts from the Governor. He retired to the new Christian village of Otaki, where ne built a church after the best style of Maori art, calling it by the name of a great legendary sacred house or temple of Hawaiki. The stormy day of his life had a calm sunset. After three years spent in contentedly watching and encouraging the work of the new teachers among his people, the great Ariki died at Otaki in 1849, aged about 80. . It is difficult to form a clear estimate of Te Rauparaha's character. Most contemporary writers paint it very . black ; yet it seems to me that their utterly unfavourable accounts of his early life and aimß i do not tally with the comparatively wellauthenticated facts of his latter years. Had he been merely the low-born Maori filibuster described by the Rev. R. Taylox*, he could scarcely have turned so readily in a yet powerful old age to the meek counsels Lfil Jtiifl^ jfrnimainnaxiMm.^ ffavlor. (With fajfl-

wonted fairness, suspends final judgment, indeed, on this remarkable man, while relating current tales of his ' treachery andambition. That he was ruthless when injured, cruelly ambitious, and totally careless of other lives when his own safety and plans were involved, goes without saying: he was a Maori Ariki of the time of the Terror. Yet at his worst, he was never actuated, it appears, by the frenzied lust of killing that possessed Te Wherowhero from time to time — Te Wherowhero, who after a battle had 400 bound prisoners carried before him, and who sat on the groundkilling each doomed wretch as he was borne along, till 250 had fallen under his murderous hand. Jerningham Wakefield, ia his book, "Adventures in New Zealand," gives a most unflattering account of the great chief at their first interview. A near relative of Colonel Wakefield could not be expected to regard his reputed murderer with a friendly eye. Yet even Jerningham Wakefield, while dwelling on. the darting, furtive looks of the chief, surrounded by the guarded hostility he suspected in pakeha officials^ is constrained to note the over-mastering dignity of his presence and the power of his piercing eyes — traits always striking and evident to all who met him. It is readily gathered that he was a man of many and generous friendships, and of deep family, affections. His Attitude towards the white men seems to me to denote a pathetic, large-minded" kind of faith in a coming era whose beginning must needs be the undoing of all that, he and his had hitherto wrought in Maoridom. Almost every atrocity of his found a parallel in the so-called civilised policy of Napoleon in war. An odd analogy exists, too, in the matter of their names; "Rauparaha" signifies a convolvulus leaf ; Napoleon's chosen emblem was the violet—inapt emblems both, one would think : ,it will be remembered that during his temporary sojourn at Elba, loyal Frenchmen drank to the return of "Corporal Violet." Taylor notes that he was a little man, like nearly all the famous conquerors of history, Napoleon, Attila, Alexander — and, we" may add for ourselves, Lord Roberts. He was well proportioned and handsome ; his features were strongly aquiline, a rare trait in his race ; the best portrait of him extant shows in profile a face both powerful and pleasing, and singularly free from the ferocity that might have been expected. It seems reasonable to believe, -with Mr Travers, his most friendly biographer, that Te Rauparaha was #- great, though much, erring, man, whose virtues were all his own, while his crimes and vices were largely those of his wild time. Peace to the Ariki who sought peace, and made it in the last days of his hitherto stormy life !

— As illustrative of the prolificacy of rabbits, a statistician calculates that, since they commence to breed at six months of age and produce an average of about eight young every three months, a stud of 20 of these animals— lo mates and 10 females— will in the course of three years have the enormous progeny of 306,446,720. — The- French Minister of Public Works has prohibited Frenoh railway oomparues, from working their men over 12 hours out of the 24. The signalmen at level crossings must not have an uninterrupted break for at least eight or nine hours. One hour is to be allowed for meale at midday, and each is to have one day or two half days a month free. Employees are forbidden to work more than two months consecutively without at least one day's holiday. The companies are allowed 90 days to introduce the new system.