that Te Kooti had some reputation as a sailor. He says that Te Kooti acted as supercargo on a Maori trading schooner for some voyages and later commanded another. This is supported to some extent by McKay who adds a note that he could trace no shipping list showing Te Kooti as a master mariner. This is not surprising. There must have been many Maori skippers of coastal craft who never bothered with the formality of registration. Ted Burke, whose family I have mentioned preiously maintained that Te Kooti, as a skipper, was a good business man, capable of acting in the interests of the Maori and of explaining to them the benefits they would obtain by trading directly with the Auckland merchants and not dealing with the local trader, Captain Reade. If these things are true, and there is no reason to doubt that they are, it is easy to believe that during this period Te Kooti established himself in a relation of some leadership among his people. The Dunlops, Burkes and U'Rens all stoutly insisted that it was this very championing of his fellow Maori which led to Te Kooti's downfall. Both Mrs. Ross and Mrs. U'Ren senior openly declared that it was Captain Reade's rum shops, “spread,” as Mrs U'Ren put it, “like spiders webs to catch flies,” which gave Te Kooti that taste for drink which was to take so strong a hold of him. Fergus Dunlop, a grandson of James, told me his grandfather always held that Reade encouraged Te Kooti to drink for the purpose of discrediting him. From what I have read and heard of the character of Captain George Edward Reade he was not a man lightly to take what he would undoubtedly regard as the officious meddling of a smart-aleck native, far too big for his boots. Mrs Ross states in her narrative that Reade opened a chain of rum shops, managed by pakehas, and aimed especially at the Maori trade. Frederick Williams, in “Through Ninety Years” states that the effect of this on the Maoris was so frightening to the settlers that a meeting of traders was held with the object of putting a stop to the selling of liquor to Maoris. The traders who attended the meeting, under the chairmanship of Captain Harris, agreed to refrain from serving the Maoris with liquor under penalty of a payment of fifty pounds, but, as Williams remarks, “it had little effect in checking this illegal practice and did not end it.” There is one point on which all evidence, published and unpublished, agrees. Having taken to drink, Te Kooti became a drunkard. Even Mrs Ross, one of his chief defenders, records that he Matawhero Presbyterian Church was one of the few buildings spared by Te Kooti and his followers during the Poverty Bay massacre in 1868. Built about 1860 it was originally a store for Captain G. E. Reade, the ‘uncrowned king’ of Poverty Bay whose enmity Te Kooti aroused. At the time of the massacre it was in use as an Anglican Church. Bought by the Presbyterian Church in 1872, it is still a parish church today. (Photo: Helen Todd) “became very troublesome and demanded rum, or the grape wine made by the settlers. When other means of obtaining it failed, he stole it.” It is said that Te Kooti was not popular with his fellow Maoris. This appears upon investigation to be a mis-statement of the case. He appears to have been a high spirited man, and on occasion a high handed one, with a liking for other men's women and a boldness in pursuing his liking. His adoption of pakeha ways would not endear him to the conservative elders, and his claims to leadership would tend to be resented by chiefs, for Te Kooti himself, though his whakapapa shows him to be affiliated with the leading lines of descent on the coast, was not himself of rangitira rank. Consequently there are many accounts of Te Kooti's brushes with other Maoris but these were matters they settled among themselves and by their own methods, both then and thereafter.

THE CHATHAM ISLANDS When the Hauhau troubles came to Poverty Bay and culminated in the seige of Waerenga-a-hika, Te Kooti was one of those who fought on the side of the Government forces. The Dunlops state that Te Kooti fought by the side of their brother-in-law, Lieut. Ross and was with him when he was wounded. It was here that some of Te Kooti's earlier misdeeds appear to have boomeranged, for Paora Parau, one of the friendly chiefs with whose wife Te Kooti is suspected of having dallied, accused him of trafficking with the enemy. Te Kooti was charged and brought before a court-martial held in the Bishop's house at Waerenga-a-hika, but the hearing resulted in his being cleared of the charge and dismissed with a clean character. Almost immediately afterwards he was arrested and brought before a magistrate, Major Biggs, on a civil charge, this time of stealing a horse the property of Captain Reade. Once again the charge had to be dismissed as Captain Reade did not come forward to sustain his charge. Te Kooti had fought for the pakeha against the Hauhau Maoris. He had been cleared of all charges, civil and military, brought against him.