The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, .OCTOBER 15, 1908. A LINK WITH TE RAUPARAHA

New Zealand Tablet, 15 October 1908, Page 21

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, .OCTOBER 15, 1908. A LINK WITH TE RAUPARAHA

HERE has passed away in the Kaikoura district. an old Maori warrior named Ihaia Poreke Te Awanui. Age had shrivelled up Ihaia (Maori for Isaiah) a good deal, for he had seen ninety and two years of earth-life when he stepped through the door of death. The chief interest that attaches to Ihaia Poreke Te Awanui (we like the processional march of his full name) was this : that he was a link

that bound the present with the stone age of New Zealand, and that he witnessed the blazing of the path"" of blood and fire that led the Maori from the old order to the new. It was a headlong rush that_ lasted from 1818 to 1840, and went near ending in the extermination of New Zealand's handsome and intelligent native race. ' The chief instrument in the process was the muslcet. .It had been used in a small and local way to adjust accounts between tribe and tribe before 1817 — and Ihaia was born, in 1816. But the argument of the flying leaden ball began to be used on an extended and deadly scale after Chief Hongi , (a Methodist convert) returned from a visit to King George 111. in 1821. He sold in Sydney the royal presents which he had received, purchased three hundred stand of arms and powder and ball galore, and on his arrival took a hand in settling a little ' Balkan question ' that had arisen, during his absence, between his tribesmen and some of their - neighbors. Hongi stormed like a typhoon through ,the country, slew eight thousand or so of his enemies with the white man's weapon, used up a goodly percentage of them for fresh provisions, changed at a bound the traditions of olden Maori warfare, and struck terror into the heart of brown -New Zealand.

Among the tribes that, for dear life, made haste to barter flax and pork with the pakeha ships for firearms were- the Ngatitoa. Their , hard-hitting and terrible chief Te Rauparaha was about fifty years old when Hongi began to turn rival tribes into" ' dead meat with musket balls. Raha's tribe were- stout fighters..,

But they were numerically small, and they saw that, under the new conditions, their proximity to the strong and fierce Waikatos was neither good for their peace of mind nor " calculated to prolong their sojourn in this ' wale of tears.' So Te Rauparaha_ (or Raha, as he was called by his friends) decided on an exodus^ of his tribe to safer regions. He moved southwards — peacefully where he could ; where hostile warriors objected to his violation of territory, he hacked and skewered his way through them from Patca to Wellington. In 1819 he had transferred hispeople to their new homes on Kapiti Island. It had long been In his mind to conquer and permanently occupy the northern coasts of the South Island. So, after some years' rest, he and his warriors cut through the waves in their long war-canoes. They stormed the Kaikoura pa in 1828, slaughtered or captured v some fourteen hundred persons, baked and feasted on old chief Rerewhaka and numerous other vanquished warriors (aft^r the fashion of the time), and brought t»ack their boiled heads to adorn Raha's tall stockade on Kapiti. So, once upon a time, did the heads of white men adorn many a castle gate — as, for instance, for twenty years did Cromwell's cranium_Jorm a grim decoration to Westminster Hall, said cranium - having been previously hacked off his disinterred remains in Westminster Abbey. ;

It so befell that one section of Rerewhaka's tribe (the Ngaitahu) held a strong pa (built about the year of' grace 1700) at Kaiapoi (known in classic Maori as Kaiapohia), some fourteen miles from Christchurch. The Kaiapoi pa was situated on a small, thumb-shaped peninsula. It was made formidable by ■ strong earthworks and by its principal cincture of defence, which was composed, in the good old Maori way, of tree-trunks embedded deeply in the ground and rising to a height of nearly' thirty feet. Even while Te Rauparaha was storming and raging anu slaughtering and cannibalising up and down the coast, he - kept his weather eye upon the tall triple stockades of Kaiapoi. Maori etiquette required a proper pretext for attack — everything should be tika (correct). But with the brown man, as with his white brother, a pretext for war is easily found. Raha's first attack on the Kaiapoi pa failed. He drew off and awaited a tijne which his tohunga (Kukurangi) should deem more opportune. It came in due course. Then Kukurangi sang his mata (prophecy), and Raha with six hundred" of his braves pounded the boisterous waters of Raukawa (Cook's Strait), and the hundreds of other miles of troubled ocean, with the paddles of their big carved war canoes. They narrowly missed capturing the empty pa by surprise, for the Ngaitahu were absent gathering in their food. But these cleverly contrived to throw a sufficient garrison into the fort, and Te Rauparaha had no alternative but to settle down and reduce the place by a regular siege. Among those within the pa on the occasion was Ihaia Poreke Te Awanui, whose passing has recalled these stirring incidents in the history of Maori warfare.

The siege of Kaiapoi dragged its slow length ' along for over three months. By the aid of zig-zags, parallels, and flying saps (much in the European way, though not taught by Europeans) Raha contrived, with considerable loss, to get close enough to the wooden walls to pile against them great quantities of dry brushwood. The firestick did the rest. We may quote the sequel from an article written by us some years ago for the Australasian Catholic Record. ' The defenders, scorched with the fire, and choking with the vast volumes .of smoke that blew towards them, gave way. Through the beach, when the flames fell, the besiegers charged. Out of about a thousand souls- within the pa, only. some two hundred escaped into the neighboring' swamps. The customary scenes of old-time Maori . wars followed. Years later the Rev. John Raven found the surface of the ground outside the charred \vooden walls " strewn with human remains and weapons of all sorts." He "caused the bones to be collected," and about " two wagon-loads 'were buried by his orders in a pit at the base of the sandhill." . . . At last Raha became a Christian, hung up his musket, practised j the arts of peace, and preached friendship" with the pakeha till he died, at Otaki, on November 27, 1849. He lived to see the - Maori age of stone change through blood and fire to the age of iron ; he saw the beginnings of the long struggles between brown man and Briton that went on intermittently from the early forties till"iß69 ; but the .best thing old Raha saw was the manner in which the gradual spread of Christianity mitigated (it at last - ended) the torture, slaughter, .and enslavement of prisoners, and other atrocities of old pagan warfare in New Zealand.' And the whole transformation — and a vast deal for the Maori besides — has come to pass within the lifetime of Te Rauparaha's captured (and afterwards escaped) slave, Ihaia Poreke Te Awanui.