The Fighting Ngatiporou.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVI, Issue XXV, 22 June 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Fighting Ngatiporou.

Crossing just across the main avenue in this ( areas Town kainga we find ourselves in the camp of another elan of hardy warriors, the Ngatiporou (tile late Major Ropata's tribe), from the East Cape. Upwards of two score of the party of 250 men who are rehearsing their war dances and hakas here (belonging to Ngatiporou. Rongowhakaata. Aitanga-a-Mahaki, and the Children of Apa the Great) have carried rifle and tomahawk during Te Kooti’s wars. Three of Major Ropata’s old officers are here—Kuka Aratapu. Wiremu Keilia. and Pine Tubaka- who endured the perils and intense privations of the campaigns after Te Kooti through the wild I’rewera Country. Ruka. that harmlesslooking white-bearded old fellow, was a daredevil in his way in the dnvs of ’S9 and thereabouts. At the siege of Ngatapa. East Coast, he climbed a tree close by the pa. in spite of the flying bullets, and calmly plugged awav with his carbine at the rebels inside the parapets. He was fighting in the mountains and gloomy forests of Tuhoe Land up to 1871. ‘ Another old campaigner here, a chief of high rank at Hicks’ Bay. is Te Hati Houkautau. who with a force of youths and women bravely defended a pa up near tbe East Gape against a much stronger force of Te Kooti-ites from inland, and who in after years served in the Titokowaru campaign in Taranaki.

livery tribe here in fact has its battle-scarred veterans, some of them bearing the marks of wounds received either in the Queen’s service or in fighting against her. It is curious, too, to reflect that thirty year or so ago these very men were deadly foes, ready to cut each other’s hearts out, some of them furiously rabid Haubaus who assisted in the bloody deeds of Kereopa. Te Kooti and Co. There are men here who have “drawn a bead” on each other over the earth•n parapets of the Porere fort, when •he winter snows clothed the neai-by hatghta of Tongariro with a wautle

of white, and when bgau rubor belched forth its fires and ashes even while Kupapa and rebel were shooting each other uuder the shadow of the great mountains.

There are those sitting in their tents here who have fought each other with savage desperation on the isle of Mouton; there are others who have sent leaden pills at one another in the forests of Taranaki or the L'rewera Country. Amongst others in this great "marae” are people whose war experiences give us the record of every campaign in New Zealand since it -became a British colony. Yon tall broad-shouldered, white-bearded Ngapuhi, seventy-two years old he reckons as he telis us. fought in Heke’s Northern War of 1845, as a then nntnttooed lad, and as one of the garrison of Ruapekapeka Pa joined in the shooting at the British red-coats, and the friendlies under the famous Tamati Waka Nene. Hori Ngatai. the tattooed patriarch of Whareroa, on Tauranga Harbour, who is here at the head of his two hundred Ngaiterangis, fought against the British at the disastrous Gate Pa in 1864, and with his tribespeople held the redoubt so bravely that the whites’ losses were very heavy. His weapon, he tells me, was a “tupara” (double-barrelled gun). Old Ngatai, an excellent stamp of the hospitable Maori rangatira, prides himself on the fair and open manner in which the Gate Pa battle was conducted on the part of his clansmen, "ft was a good fight, a very good fight indeed.” says he to his interviewer; “we have nothing to be ashamed of in that fight; it was altogether ’tika’ (correct), and no act of treachery was committed there by the Maoris.” Indeed the Ngaiterangi and their allies fought full squarely at the Gate I’a, for they killed no prisoners and they chivalrously cared for the wounded of the British and gave water to Colonel Booth as he lay dying in the bloodstained earthworks of the Pukehinahina redoubt.

Yon white-mou stacked old fellow with a head of leonine ruggedness, elaborately scrolled with the blue lines of the cunning tattooer's ehisel. and who greets the [takeha with a cheerful salutation from his tentdoor, is Hori Ngakapa te Whanaunga. the last surviving chief of rank in the Ngatiwhanaunga tribe, of Coromandel and the Miranda. Old Hori. who came up here with the Thames contingent, the descendants of Marutuahu, has a remarkable history. He was one of the young braves of the Hauraki Gulf who invaded Auckland in their fleet of war canoes iu 1851, to obtain “utu” for an affront to one of their chiefs, and who danced their fierce war-dance on the beaeh at Waipapa (Mechanics’ Bay), but who prudently backed down before the firmness of tbe Governor and the presence of the military and the ominouslooking guns of H.M.S. Fly, and sulkily paddled home again. In 1863 Hori took up his trusty “tupara'’ and his stone mere and went on the warpath to help his cousins, the Waikatos. against the all-grasping pakeha. He ambushed a eompanv of the 18th Regiment at Martin’s Clearing, near Drury, and had a narrow escape from death in the lively bush skirmish which followed. Later on he was one of tbe garrison of the Rangiriri pa. but escaped capture by swimming. At Paterangi too Hori and his band of snipers from the shores of the Hauraki helped to garrison the Kingite redoubt: and then when Waikato was overrun by the white soldiers he went home and hung tip his gun and club for good, afterwards doing good service to the Government in the opening up of the Thames goldfield.

There are dark - faced “old hands” here, who withstood General Cameron at Orakau. and starving and thirstracked refused to surrender and broke through the troops in tbeir despairing rush for liberty. Men, too. who followed the masterful Te Kooti on his ruthless raids, shooting and tomahawking both pakeha and Maori. But, whether foe or friend, they are at one now—and Hanbau or Kupapa, they one and all agree that the Government’s old age pension is a very excellent thing, for that same lieneficent Government bears no grudge against it* one-time enemies and heaps coals of Arc on their heads by paying pensions U> the heroes of Moutoa and the

defenders of Orakau 'nd Porere and Ngatapa with admirable impartiality. Such, then, are some of the war-worn veterans of the fighting roving Polynesian stock shat will parade before the Prince of the Blood on the Rotorua “marae.”