MAORI HEROINES

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 6, 1 March 1900, Page 41

MAORI HEROINES

A. little romance is interwoven with Hill's exploits at Mohaka. Te Huke pa, which was the small stronghold near the clift", and which, as I have said, was captured by Te Kooti, had amongst its garrison some splendid women, the finest of their race, lueluded among these were four sisters, half-castes, one of whom afterwards became Hill's wife. These women, with tho othors,

fought determinodly, and handled thenumloloadors in the pa as woll as tho men. The grandfather of tho girls, an old chief, was in the act of trying to sever with a sword a chain with a cross-bar attached thrown over the palisades of To Huke, when he wan shot dead by the enemy. Lucy, one of the girls, was so frantic with grief and rage at this that she instantly shot the old man's slayer dead through the palisades. Thin woman still lives at Mohuka. She and her sisters escaped from the pa when the iinal slaughter was going on by scaling the palisades at the back, sliding down the steep elilT, some of them carrying children tied in shawls at their backs, and bravely swimming the Mohaka River to the opposite shore. That was how the plucky Harata lived to become the spouse of Trooper Hill, whose acquaintance she had made some time previously at Mohaka. When she was hurriedly climbing the palisades, when bullets wore flying around her, and when men, women, and children were being pitilessly massacred, a Hauhau struck her heavily on the back with the butt of his rifle. She still suffers from the effect of this blow, and has in fact been an invalid most of her married life as the result of that wild foray of thirty years ago.