THE REBEL NATIVES.

Wellington Independent, Volume XIX, Issue 2051, 21 April 1864, Page 3

THE REBEL NATIVES.

Wellington, 20fch April, 1864. Sir, — If it were nofc for tlio saving standing notice which always appears at the top o] your " correspondence " column, I should scarcely think it would be worth while to pui pen to paper, because the subject I propose to write aoout is one that may oblige me tc advance opinions for which you would noi " hold yourself responsible." lam going t( attempt to palliate the conduct of the natives in some of the acts committed during the wai — acts which it is the fashion to denounc< with what I cannot help considering to be i most pharasaical horror. While I propos<

. n some measure to palliate Ido not attempt to defend these acts, that I could not do either in native or European, but I mean t© try and show that oftentimes the acts of the natives towards us, when viewed in the light of our acts towards them, are not quite ~ so black as the press represents them to be. Naturally we are prone to smooth over questionable conduct in our friends which wo like to paint in all its deformity in our enemies, and I. wouldn't give a fig for a man that wouldn't stick up for his friends. But still, at the same time, there is a lamentable proneness to maguify what our enemies do, and every reader of the papers must have observed that there is a practice growing up of condemning the natives wholesale as guilty of every atrocity, while there is a most careful avoidance of censure towards those of our own number who may have unfortunately set them an evil example. The latest illustration is the fearful tragedy at Taranaki which lias so naturally inspired us with horror. I mean the decapitation of Captain Lloyd and his Mowers. It is impossible for any of us to read that account without the deepest pain and indignation, and those who may in any measure have befriended the naI tives, feel how practically destructive of every I merciful feeling such an atrocity must prove. I Their mouths are closed and they cannot help seeing that a day of fearful reckoning is at hand, and yet the public voice is not raised in condemnation of the pakeha whose decapitation of a dead Maori led to this act of retaliation. Supposing the account quoted by you from the Nelson Examiner bo correct (which there does not appear any reason to doubt) let us pass off such an unpardonable act as we may, the fact remains that a fortnight" or three weeks .ago the dead body of a Maori is left headless in the bush, and when found by his countrymen naturally excites in them all the horror at such a deed which is excited in ourselves when, on the first opportunity, they follow what must have at any rate seemed to them a most brutal example. I forget now whether it is in Dillworth or Mayor, but at any rate in one of those books whose contents were birched into me in my young days, there is a story which is fixed in my memory more clearly even than that of the naughty boy who greedily ate all his plum cake and made himself ill, or than that of the tragic history of the three youths, who, on being caught swimming under the most opposite circumstances, were alike condemned to punishment by the pitiless logic of their pedagogue. As a plum cake never | fell to my lot, and there was nothing more inviting than a ditch in the neighbourhood of my early youth, plum cake nor bathing presented a moral that was attractive to my mind ; but having the bump of self-esteem somewhat prominent I required occasionally ! to be taken down a peg, and on these occasions I had to learn how little I was, in common with, grown-up men, a trustful witness in my own cause, by reference to the story of " the man and the lion." That storytells us that once upon a time, a man and a lion who were journeying together came to high words as to which was the braver and stronger creature of the two. As the dispute waxed warmer, they happened to pass by, on the roadside, a statute of a man strangling a lion, erected probably inhonorofsomepre-adamite Samson. " See there " said the man, " what more undeniable proof can you have of our superiority than that?" "That" said the lion, "is your version of the story; let us be the sculptors, and for one lion under the feet *6£ a man, you shall have twenty men under the paw of a lion." In every newspaper during the last few years the pakeha has been represented strangling the Maori, i.e., the former has been declared to be the embodiment of all that was brave and civilised, the latter of all that was weak or cowardly and savage. That is our own version, and lam not careful to conceal the belief that it is a very incorrect version sometimes, and that on the principle of one story being good until the other is told, the tables would very often be turned if the lion were the sculptor instead of the man, if the native version were pub- j lished as well as our own. So thoroughly am I indoctrinated with the belief that something is generally to be said on both sides, that the good is often far from being as good and the bad far from being as bad as they are said to be, that I own to a great deal of scepticism in the accounts which reach us of the pakehas invariable bravery and the natives almost invariable cowardice, and that I am prone sometimes hastily to palliate the weak, simply because of the habit I know editorial angels have got into of painting whatever may happen to be the devil of the day somewhat too blackly. There is an immense amount of cant continually appearing about our warlike superiority to the native. I should very much like j to see a little more of this superiority manifested and a little less talked about it. Ido not mean for one moment to say that if a hundred troops were pitted against a hundred natives on Waikato plains that there would be the slightest doubt as to the result. I should be unworthy the white skinned mother who bore me if I could harbor such a thought for an instant ; on our own ground we are unquestionably the stronger without considering any advantage derivable from superior armament. But I cannot as fearlessly say that if a hundred troops were pitted against a hundred natives in the bush that our superiority would be as evident. It has in one or two most memorable instances been so, but as a rule it may be said that while we are the strongest on our own ground there are many instances to prove that they are the strongest on theirs. I use the word "strongest" not "bravest." I would not belie our troops by such a slander as to say they are less brave than their enemies anywhere, but I do say that in the bush the advantages possessed by the natives are such as to give them .man for man a very great advantage. We call them cowards because they wont meet us in " fair fight," because they wont meet us in the open, forgetting that to make the fight " fair" the relative armament of both parties must be equal. If we go to a horse race we are wonderfully (and properly) careful that certain horses shall carry certain weights so as to render the race really a test of superiority, and wo I should scarcely admit that a prize r ing encounter would bo any test ol plu c k, endurance, science, or whatever may be the peculiar virtues nourished within the ropes, if one of the combatants came to the scratch in knuckle dusters. And yet fair fight, to which we challenge the natives to engage on the open, means that we are to have a force, some on foot and some mounted armed with the finest weapons, amply supjdied with ammunition of the best character, and supported by Armstrong guns, mortars, rocket tubes and what not with all their accessories of • ball, cannister and grape, to compete with a f force having only old rifles or muskets, coarse I powder, make, shift bullets, and a total afrb senco of anything equivalent to ordinance. } That is really our idea of fair fight, stripped > of all the cant with which you editors and t your war correspondents envelope it. Now ) I cannot see anything remarkably cowardly s in the natives refusing to "fight fair";? after p this fashion. I can understand them feeling a how vain such an attempt on their part would % be, and their determination to make up theii 3 deficiencies in the appliances of war by a

careful choosing of their ground. If the lion were the sculptor instead oi' Ihe man, if the native were the historian instead of the pakeha, he might probably say that being the parties attacked they have a right to choose where they will flee and where they will make a stand, and if one position gives them more chance of resisting attack than another they would be fools indeed not to avail themselves of it. Tho day for despising the enemy has gone by, and in nothing do I see greater reason to praiso the General than in his having thoroughly denuded himself of all ideas of what we call glory, as shown in his preserving determinationnotto attackanative force without superior uumbers. With what you wrote a few weeks back about the necessity for this at Taranaki, I, (and of course all sensible people) fully agree. I am a thorough believer in Attorney-General Swainson's doctrino that the smallest defeat, even of a corporal's guard, does more to inspirit the enemy than any ordinary victory does to dismay them. Of the bravery of the enemy the defence of Orakau appears to have con-vincedmanywhobeforepooh-poohedit,andyet there were many instances of it during the Taranaki war and there certainly are not wanting instances in the one now being carried on in "Waikato. The retreat of the natives from pa to pa before the overwhelming force invariably brought against them is often spoken of as cowardice, and yet it cannot even in our eyes have the semblance of cowardice compared to what some of the famous " withdrawal of the forces" on our part must have in the eyes of the natives. " Those who have fouglit with the maories (says Colonel Alexander in his late narrative) are the last to despise them ,as foes j on tho contrary tho British/ troops who contended, against these lusty, active, intelligent, tattoed warriors in the deep gullies, on the wooded banks of the clear streams, and on the ferny plain 3 of Taranaki, respect them." You editors don't write in this strain, or have not done so until the events at Orakau compelled you. One of your number (the Southern Cross I think) spoke of what happened at Rangiriri as only what rats would do when driven to despair. Colonel Alexander can write in a vastly different style, and I shall quote some of his words for the sake of unbelievers in the bravery and endurance of the foe with which our troops and fellow-colo-nists have to contend. And Ido so because all the while the general public think they have a puny enemy, there can be no proper appreciation of the patience and courageous skill which our forces have to manifest. On one occasion during an engagement which was kept up all night, the natives buried their dead and read the burial service over them. " Thus (says the Colonel) under no ordinary fire, and at a distance of from 100 to 150 yards from the enemy, these people thoughtfully and without confusion interred their dead — a fact which, perhaps, has no parallel in the annals of war. The farewell honors of these bold spirits were literally paid by the guns of the artillery .and the unbroken volleys ofthe6sth and 40th regiments. Sir John Moore's burial (the theme of song) is tame contrasted with this." Of individual instances of native courage and endurance, the following may be quoted from several by the same writer. " Natawa, a wild character, tired of firing away all day in his riflo pit, got up into a tree ton feet above the ground to fire with better effect at the 12 th, 14th, 40th and other skirmishers, but ho was dropped by a ball in the forehead. Having perhaps a thick skull the Minio ball stuck fast over one eye without passing into the brain, and JNTatawa recovering himself went on fighting for two days afterwards. The second evening some of his friends tried to get tho ball out by moving it with their fingers, but perhaps a portion of bone was dislodged and touched the brain, and ISTatawa, after five days raging madness, died." And here, before closing Colonel Alexander's book, I may remark (for I pretend to no logical sequence in my observations) that the troops are armed with rifles and bayonets and the natives with guns and tomahawks. Our dead we find shot and tomahawked, and we think it a monstrous barbarity that it should be so. Let us not forget, however, that their dead are not found tomahawked for this reason, at least among others, because our troops do not carry them. But the troops do carry bayonets, and I suppose no one will deny that their native dead are often found shot and bayoneted. A maori shoots a man and then tomahawks him, a soldier shoots a man and then bayonets him ; both may be right or both may be wrong, but the one cannot be right and the other wrong, although the horror with which we allude to tomahawks and the pleasantries wo utter about " cold steel" might sometimes lead a third party to think differently. But independently of ordinary casualties during the heat of action in which the effect of the bayonet is evident, it is often said that wounded natives are always respected, yet occasionally something creeps into print to confirm what is sometimes learnt otherwise. Colonel Alexander incidentally mentions how Lieutenant Pennefather struck a soldier's bayonet aside as lie was about to run it into a wounded native lying on the ground, and at Orakau, among several instances in which lives were saved by some of the officers at the risk o£ their own, Mr Mair shines by knocking a soldier down with his fist and standing over him with his revolver for attempting to bayonet a woman. My letter grows so under the material to hand that I must begin to close it. I am glad to find that man does not always strangle the lion but sometimes depicts the lion strangling liim. The extracts I have made show that the natives are not always des- ! cribed as devils, nor the pakehas always as angels, and I willingly admit that even the Taranalci Herald has abandoned the use of the misnomer " murder" so absurdly applied indiscriminately to the killing of any pakeha straggler that may chance to be ambushed. The death of Mrs Thompson and her daughter at Kaipara was a murder, and that of Mr Rayner at Rangitikei was a murder, at neither of which places was there fighting going on ; but to shoot one another at Taranaki or Waikato is, however lamentable, nothing more than one of those ingredients which make up that infernal compound war. Tho Forest Rangers go out with a view to surprise any natives there may be in the neighbourhood, and spend hours in ambush, lurking for what they look upon as their lawful prey. What they do none of us would call murder, how then can wo call the result of a surprise by the natives a murder. Wow that tho JTaranaki press has abandoned the fallacy, the press elsewhere may abandon it also without any fear of injustice or getting into bad bread with the public. The Taranaki News speaking of the decapitation of Captain Lloyd's party, says : — " It is difficult to speculate on the consequenco of this fearful disaster with all its embittering atrocities. It has been the prayer of the settlers that this unhappy war should pause short of annihilation, but there are limits beyond which control is impossible, and the law of retaliation becomes the only guageof safety.'^ Wow this retaliation, which it seems so impossible to restrain in ourselves, is just what had previously brought about so much that this colony has to lament.

, Retaliation is the law of war. It was because our troops burnt the whares of some I two hundred natives and destroyed cultivaj tious, &c, that William King's natives retaliated by burning tho Bottler* houses aa soon as they got the chance, no settlers houses having been previously burnt by them. This is fully reported by Lieutenant Bates in the Waitara papers ; but lest his authority should be disputed, Colonel Carey in his book on the Taranaki War says, " a large number of tho pahs on both banks of tho Waitara were pulled down, many whares were destroyed, crops were rooted up, and much loss was inflicted on the enemy. The maoris, on the other hand, retaliated on us by burning the deserted houses of the settlors," and I have only to say that Colonel Carey elsewhere speaks highly of some of the settlers, describing one of them particularly (Mr Mace) as "the pluckiest fellow he ever knew" to ensure his authority being tolerated if not wholly accepted. To "retaliate" means to meet like with like. If we first burnt the natives houses and destroyed their cultivations, how can we complain if they thereupon burn and destroy ours. In a j state of war it is scarcely to oe expected but that retaliation will follow. It does so among two civilized peoples, how much more so in this war of ours. I should be sorry to go farther and declare on my own responsibility that any of the subsequent brutalities of tho natives were the result of retaliation. How could I say so in the face of the utter silence of tho newspapers of the day on this subject, j Colonel Carey, however, says that the settlers at Taranaki " treated the friendly tribes with brutality?' and then adds "one of these tribes occupied Fort Herbert, an outpost of New " Plymouth, and on several occasions went out and saved Europeans (settlers), who , had strayed into the bush and had been attacked by the enemy, The prisoners we took had to be most carefully guarded, not so much to prevent escape as to save them from the un-English and unmanly attacks of the Europeans (settlers) who, when they could do so with safety, treated them with the greatest indignities." Whether there is any truth in this statement, I cannot pretend to decide, but if it be true I should have little hesitation in saying that it must have been confined to the few vagabonds of that district and not to tho settlers generally. But to come to the present day, one thing is quite clear that the ominous threat of the Taranaki News, already quoted, implies a fearful responsibility on the head of that individual in retaliation for whose thoughtless (I would not in the absence of information wrong him by saying wanton) decaptation of a dead maori we owe the Lloyd tragedy which has so justly horrified us. How much of the treachery attributed to friendly natives is rightly imputed it would be difficult to discover ; but in numberless cases it may be safely said that it has no other foundation than disappointment at the want of success that has attended particular operations. When our forces have found the native encampment they hoped to surprise I totally deserted, their chagrin has vented it--1 self oftentimes on tho devoted heads of friendly natives supposed (onno reliable grounds whatever) to have given information. It is so easy and pleasant to attribute your want of success to the evil of others rather than to any defect in yourself, that we cannot wonder at the friendly maoris being so frequently made i tho scape goat. We almost forget that wo are not the only persons who can send out I spies to discover what is going on in an enemy's camp, and there is no doubt that it is to tho watchfulness of the rebels that we must put down much that is so healing to a galled spirit to attribute to friendly natives. No doubt some, perhaps many, of tho friendly natives are very unfriendly, are really enemies in disguise, and it behoves us to be on our guai'd against them. If we were so, there would be no farther use for the clap trap heading some of the papers appear to keep ! standing " The Feiendly Natives again." Sometimes, however, we are under great obligations to them, proving that there are those who are friendly in deed as well as in name. As one instance among very many the Taranaki Herald tells us that without the aid of Hemi, Lieut. Coxand his party would never have found out their way home, that withouttheaidof one of these friendly maories they could not have escaped from the natives at the late defeat. Look at the late trial at Auckland of the Nelson natives for using seditious language. What a noble people we are. Wo can pounce upon and bring to trial a few Kingite natives at Nelson where we feel quite secure ; yet the bold and defiant language of natives in the provinces of this Northern Island is passed over for the present (I believe I am right in saying " for tho present") because we dare not capture them for fear of the consequencos ; and there are nearly two hundred natives on board a hulk in Auckland who are kept without trial, because wo fear the consequencos if the trial were to result in what it is legitimate to suppose it would result in, conviction and sentence of death. It would have been well to have winked at the doings in Nelson, and not blazoned it abroad that we strike not where we will but only just where we dare. Yet we are a brave and justice loving people, and the natives are a cowardly and time serving race, i I don't know what impression my long letter may produce on those who may have patience enough to read it. I have written it simply because the spirit moved me to do something, however little, towards preventing the growth of that cant with which we are becoming saturated. I have no secret purpose to do anything else than attempt to create a wholesome healthy feeling. I have no covert design to influence anybody to think well of a patched up peace. I have no other desire than what appears on the surface. Above all, I have no wish or thought to disparage the efforts that are being made by the combined forces in the field. For their sakes as well as for that of the colony I wish the war was ended as I heard a Presbyterian Minister once pray that it might be ended, speedily, permanently, and satisfactorily. I have taken the best means in my power to enable mo to judge of the reasonableness of the difficulties the forces have to contend against. I have frequently gone into tho bush on the outskirts of this town, and in that comparatively favorable position have seriously asked myself what was best to be done if volley after volley came from an unseen enomy to my right and loft or in front and rear, and I have learned by that means to be little indisposed to find fault with men thus surprised and possibly encumbered directly with a wounded comrade or two, even though the surprisers consist of half-starved Tawa-berry eating natives. t Your obedient servant, Faie Plat.