THE WAIKATO CAMPAIGN

Otago Witness, Issue 2649, 21 December 1904, Page 33 (Supplement)

THE WAIKATO CAMPAIGN

a typical Maori pa of great strength at Rangiriri was assaulted repeatedly and unavailmgly. When at last it was taken the troops shook hands with the Maori defenders, and heartily .congratulated them on their courage and skill. General Cameron rendered a long line of the enemies' defences futile by turning their flank and intercepting the line of supplies.

At Orakau, on the upper W r aipa, 300 Maoris made a determined stand. Brigadier-General Carey, with four times that number of soldiers, surrounded the hastily constructed pa, and was repulsed three times. On April 2, 1864, with the aid of a heavy gun, the walls were breached. Knowing that there were women and children in the pa Carey called on the defenders to yield that their lives might be spared. "Our women fight, too," was the answer, "and for ourselves, we fight to the ilast, for ever." Finally the Maoris marched against the British, and a singular circumstance marked the change which the events of the last few months nad wrought m then: menta-l attitude.

Bishop Selwyn and his associates had by their unwavering advocacy of Maori rights laid them selves open to miserable misapprehension by the Government. Now, to complete the disheartening circuit of their difficulties, they found themselves distrusted and suspected by the Maoris beoaiuse of their association with the military forces. Some time afterwards, Bishop Selwyn, writing to an Engl sh friend, said : "The part I took in the Waikato campaign has destroyed my influence with many. . . . You will ask, 'Why did I go?' I answer that, though 10,000 men were sent from England, no miT.itary chaplain arrived at head quarters until the advance had reached its farthest point in Waikato. . . . There were many wounded Maoris brought in from time to time, to whom it was my duty to m.mster." But the altered feeling to the Church that the once loved and trusted Bishop represented made itself felt in the fact that as the Maoris advanced upon the British line the Christian hymns they bad so long used were abandoned for the wild and ferocious war songs of their ancestors. For six miles the irregular conflict ebbed and flowed, until only the shattered remnant of the Maori force remained to take refuge m the forests of the Upper Waikato. That phase of the war was ended.