BATTLE OF SENTRY HILL

Taranaki Daily News, 30 April 1934, Page 6

BATTLE OF SENTRY HILL

HAUHAUS HEAVILY DEFEATED THEIR IMMUNITY DISPROVED. SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY TO-DAY With the Hauhau succes at Ahu Ahu on April 6, 1864, when Captain Lloyd and others were killed the Maori belief in their new “religion” was considerably stimulated. The warriors believed that the Hauhau incantations really conveyed immunity from the pakeha’s bullets, and they decided to attack the British redoubt at Sentry Hill. This redoubt had been built by the military settlers under Captain W. B. Messenger. It stood on the top of a round hill, called Te Morere by the Maoris, close to the present Sentry Hill railway station. Subsequently the redoubt was garrisoned by a detachment of the 57th Regiment under Captain Shortt. The redoubt was regarded by the Maoris as a direct challenge. It menaced their pa at Manutahi (Lepperton) and it was the open demonstration of the pakeha’s intention to hold the land he had btained by fighting or purchase. The Hauhaus believed they had a mission to drive the Europeans out of New Zealand. Theirs was not a war of conquest as between tribe, and tribe but a “holy war” for the extirpation of the pakeha who would otherwise overrun the lands of the Maori and take control of his country. Strong in their fanaticism the Maoris decided to attack the redoubt in daylight, and Cowan gives the narrative of the fight as told him many years later by Te Kahu-pukoro, who as a wellgrown boy of twelve was considered fit to carry a gun in the attack on Sentry Hill on April 30, 1864. His father and uncle fell there, and the lad received two bullet wounds. ASSEMBLY AT FLAGSTAFF. “Very early in the morning,” said Te Kahu-pukoro, “we assembled at the flagstaff in the pa at Manutahi.” It was around the flagstaff, the sacred niu, that the Hauhau incantations were performed, and the best warriors on the west coast who had been chosen for the expedition had no fear as they marched around the sacred pole that morning but that the Hauhau “karakia” (incantation) would make them impervious to shot or steel.

Hepanaia, the Hauhau priest and the fighting leader of the expedition as well, was for attacking the redoubt from the rear, but his tactics were overbome by the warriors, who fancied themselves invincible.

“About 8 o’clock in the morning,” continued Te Kahu-pukoro, “we attacked the redoubt. Hepanaia led us on ... We did not stoop or crawl, we marched .on upright, and as we neared the fort we chanted steadily our Pai-marire hymn. (Che soldiers, who were all hidden behind their high parapet, did not open fire on us until we were within close range. Then the bullets came thickly among us, and close as the fingers on my hand.” The incantations were useless but “our chiefs encouraged us with loud cries of ‘fight on, fight on, be firm, be firm.’ The bullets came ripping through our ranks . . . The elder brother in a family would fall, then the-younger brother, then the old father would fall dead beside them ... Not until I felt and saw the blood running down my body did I know I had received my first wound.” A second wound made the boy—a lad of 12 remember—fall back to a little stream where he bathed his wounds and then joined his people who were fleeing back to the bush.

“Our people fell in heaps,” concluded Te Kahu-pukoro. Hepanaia the “prophet” was killed, so was the chieftain Hare te Hokai, who persuaded the Maoris to make the frontal attack. Another Maori of whom Taranaki was to learn a lot was also wounded at Sentry Hill, Titokowaru, whose exploits in South Taranaki became notorious in the years to come, lost an eye in the gentry Hill battle.

The explanation of the defeat by the founder of the Hauhau cult, Te Ua, was beautifully simple. The defeated men were to blame because they did not repose absolute faith in the incantations! And though the defeat checked the advance of the cult temporarily it soon regained its hold upon the West Coast tribes. For the Europeans in Taranaki the Sentry Hill victory was very welcome. It took the sting out of the Ahu Ahu ambuscade, and it made the Maori respect the white man’s ability to fight and to hold on.