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1. Govenor Fitzroy.—When Governor Hobson
died, his place was taken by his friend Lieutenant Shortland until a new
Governor could be sent out. The English people were at this time very anxious
to see that the natives of new lands which they colonised should be fairly
treated, and for that purpose they chose Captain Fitzroy to be the new
Governor. Up to this time he had been the captain of a ship and had made
himself famous in surveying and mapping little known shores in his ship the
Beagle, in which he had visited New Zealand on a trip round the world, and he
was therefore called to give evidence as to its condition before the Committee
of the House of Lords in 1838. He was well known to have shown much
consideration to native tribes, and his strong wish to deal justly by them had
often been shown. This was the main reason for his appointment. He landed in
November, 1843, and found the colony in a state of great depression, the public
treasury being not only empty but in debt. For many officials had been
appointed, judges, magistrates, policemen, customs receivers and so on; and to
pay the salaries of these every one had relied on the continued sale of land.
But in 1841 there had come out the first Land Commissioner, William
Spain, who began to inquire into the disputes about land which had arisen
between white men and Maoris. Out of every ten acres the white men said they
had bought he allowed them to keep only one. This was but fair to the Maoris,
who had been induced very often to make most foolish bargains; but the settlers
ceased to buy land when they were not certain of keeping it. Hence the land
sales stopped; the Governor owed £20,000 more than he could pay, and so he was
confronted with troubles from his very first arrival.
2. Wairau Massacre.—Just before he came an
incident had happened which deepened the trouble of the colony. At the north of
the South Island, not far from Nelson, there was a fine valley watered by the
stream Wairau, which Colonel Wakefield claimed, alleging that it was part of
the land he had bought with the Nelson district. Rauparaha and his son-in-law,
Rangihaeata, claimed it by right of conquest, and they had a couple of hundred
stout warriors at their back, all well armed with muskets. Mr. Spain sent word
that he was coming to settle the dispute, but, in spite of that, Captain
Wakefield sent surveyors to measure out the land for occupation by the
settlers. The surveyors were turned off by Rauparaha, who carried their
instruments and other property carefully off the land and then burnt the huts
they had put up. The Maoris did no violence, and were courteous though
determined. The surveyors returned to Nelson, and Captain Wakefield induced the
local magistrates to issue a warrant for the arrest of Rauparaha and
Rangihaeata. To execute this warrant Mr. Thompson, the police magistrate,
himself went in a small vessel, and with him went Captain Wakefield, seven
other gentlemen, and forty labourers, in all a party of forty-nine, of whom thirty-five
were armed with guns.
When they landed at the mouth of the Wairau River, Piraha, a Christian
native, met them and begged them not to go on, as Rauparaha was ready to fight,
but they paid no attention, and after marching eight miles up the pretty valley
they saw the Maoris about 100 in number standing behind the stream, which
though only waist-deep had a rushing current of chilly water. Rauparaha said:
“Here am I. What do you want with meMr. Thompson said
he must go to Nelson; and an irritating conversation ensued. Rangihaeata drew
up his tall form, his curly black hair setting off a face of eagle sharpness,
and from his eye there gleamed an angry light. Behind him stood his wife, the
daughter of Rauparaha, and near them this latter chief
himself, short and broad, but strong and wiry-looking, a man with a cunning
face, yet much dignity of manner. When the handcuffs were produced by Mr.
Thompson, Rauparaha warned him not to be so foolish. The magistrates gave the
order to fix bayonets and advance; as the white men were crossing the stream a
shot was fired by one of them. It struck dead the wife of Rangihaeata.
Thereupon the Maoris fired a volley and the white men hesitated on the brink of
the water; a second volley and a third told upon them with deadly effect, and
the labourers, who carried arms but had neither martial spirit nor experience,
turned and fled.
Five of the gentlemen with four of the labourers stood their ground, and
when the Maoris crossed they surrendered. Rauparaha called out to spare them;
but Rangihaeata, mad at the loss of a wife he loved, brained them with his
tomahawk one after another, while the young men hunted the labourers through
the trees and slew such as they overtook. Twenty-seven white men reached the
shore and were carried quickly in the boats to the brig, five of them badly
wounded. Twenty-two lay dead alongside of five natives whom the white men had
slain.
Rauparaha feared the vengeance of the white man. He had few resources in
the South Island, while the Nelson settlers could send 500 armed men against
him. He crossed in his own war canoes, over a stormy strait in wild weather;
weary and wet with spray, he landed in the south of the North Island, roused
his countrymen by his fervid oratory, to which he gave a fine effect by
jingling before them the handcuff’s with which he was to have been led a
prisoner to Nelson. A day or two after the massacre, a Wesleyan clergyman went
out from Nelson to Wairau and reverently buried those ghastly bodies with the
cloven skulls. Not one had been mangled, far less had there been any
cannibalism.
3. Effects of Wairau Massacre.—The
Maoris were clearly less ferocious than they had been, and more than half of
them had become fervid Christians after a fashion, but in some respects they
were getting their eyes opened. The missionaries had told them that the white men
were coming for their benefit; yet now they began to see that the white men
were soon to be the lords of the soil, and that the natives must sink back into
the position of servants. If a white man visited a Maori village he was
received as a man of distinction and entertained. If a Maori chief went to a
white man’s town, he was allowed to wander in the street; or if at all accosted
it was with the condescension of a superior race to a race of servants. The
Maori blood was firing up. The story of Wairau made them change their mind
about the white man’s courage. The whalers had been hearts of daring; these
new-comers had run and bawled for their lives. The natives were anxious also as
to the result which would happen when all the lands near the shore should have
been occupied by white men, and they themselves hemmed up in the interior.
A special interest was given to these feelings when in 1844 Te Whero
Whero gave a great feast, only two miles out of Auckland, partly as a welcome
to Governor Fitzroy, and partly as a demonstration in regard to the land
question. He displayed a lavish bounty; 11,000 baskets of potatoes and 9,000
sharks, with great stores of other provisions, were distributed. But when the
settlers saw a war dance of 1,600 men, all well armed with muskets, and drilled
with wonderful precision, they felt that their lives were at the mercy of the
native tribes. Not one-fourth of that number of armed men with any training for
battle could have been sent forth from the settlement for its own defence. This
gave a significance to the Wairau massacre that
created quite a panic. Fresh settlers ceased to come; many that were there
already now left. Those who had taken up farms far out in the country abandoned
them and withdrew to the towns.
4. Honi Heke.—And yet the great majority of the Maoris seem to have had no unfriendly purpose.
When Governor Fitzroy went down to see Rauparaha he had no more than twelve
white men with him, when he entered an assemblage of 500 Maoris. He said he had
come to inquire about the sad quarrel at Wairau, and Rauparaha told him his
story while others supported it by their evidence. Fitzroy stated that the
Maoris had been very wrong to kill those who had surrendered, but as the white
men had fired first he would take no vengeance for their death. Indeed, at
Wellington and Nelson, Fitzroy openly said that the magistrates were wholly
misguided in trying to arrest the native chief; and at Nelson he rebuked all
those who had been concerned in the affair. This gave great offence to the
white men. They asked if the blood of their friends and relatives was thus to
be shed and no sort of penalty to be exacted for the slaughter. Many of the
magistrates resigned, and a deep feeling of irritation was shown towards the
Governor, some of the settlers petitioning the English Government to recall
him.
In the August of 1844 a young chief named Honi Heke, who dwelt at the
Bay of Islands, on account of a private quarrel with a rough whaler, entered
the town of Kororarika with a band of armed followers. He plundered a few shops
and cut down a flagstaff on which the Union Jack floated from a steep hill
behind the town. There were then not more than ninety soldiers in New Zealand,
and when Heke threatened to burn Kororarika, and do the same to Auckland, there
was too good reason to fear that he might be as good as his word, for he had
200 well-armed men at his back, and a comrade of his, named Kawiti, had nearly
as many. A chief named Waka-Nene with his men kept Heke in check, while Fitzroy
sent to Sydney and received 160 soldiers with two cannon. These landed at the
Bay of Islands, but Waka-Nene begged the Governor not to hurry into
hostilities. He arranged for a friendly meeting. Fitzroy met nine principal
chiefs, who apologised and made Heke send also a written apology. Fitzroy said
he would redress some wrongs the natives said they suffered, and having
obtained from Heke ten muskets by way of fine and having again set up the
flagstaff he returned to Auckland.
But before the year was ended Heke approached the town once more with
100 armed men. He insulted it from the hills, cut down the flagstaff again, and
then withdrew to the forests. Fitzroy published a proclamation offering £100
for his capture, and Heke replied by offering £100 for the head of Fitzroy. The
Governor now caused a new flagstaff to be set up, all sheathed with iron at the
bottom, and with a strong wooden house attached to it, in which a score of
soldiers were always to keep guard. A block-house or small wooden fortress was
set up at a little distance down the hill towards Kororarika. Nevertheless,
Heke said he would come and cut down the flagstaff again. Then the inhabitants
of Kororarika began to drill in order to give him a warm reception if he came.
Lieutenant Philpott, the commander of the Hazard ship of war, came ashore to
drill them, and to mount one or two cannon. Yet Heke, lurking among the hills,
contrived by a sudden dash to capture Lieutenant Philpott. However, after
dealing courteously with him, he released him.
5. Kororarika Burnt.—On 11th March, 1845, at daylight, Heke with 200 men
crept up to the flagstaff, surprised the men in the house attached, and when
twenty men came out of the lower block-house to help their friends on the top
of the hill, he attacked them and drove them down to the town in the hollow
beside the shore. Close to the beach was a little hill, and on the top of this
hill stood a house with a garden surrounded by a high fence. Behind this the
soldiers and all the people of Kororarika took refuge. From the rocky high
ground round about the Maoris fired down upon them, while the white men fired
back, and the guns of the Hazard, which had come close in to the shore, kept up
a constant roar. For three hours this lasted, ten white men being killed as
well as a poor little child, while thirty-four of the natives were shot dead.
The Maoris were preparing to retreat when, by some accident, the whole of the
powder that the white men possessed was exploded. Then they had to save
themselves. The women and children were carried out boat after boat to the
three ships in the harbour. Then the men went off, and the Maoris, greatly
surprised, crept cautiously down into the deserted town. They danced their war
dance; sent off to their parents in the ships some white children who had been
left behind, and then set fire to the town, destroying property to the value of
£50,000.
Heke’s fame now spread among the Maoris. When the settlers from
Kororarika were landed at Auckland, homeless, desperate, and haggard, a panic
set in, and some settlers sold their houses and land for a trifle, and
departed. Others with more spirit enrolled themselves as volunteers. Three
hundred men were armed and drilled. Fortifications were thrown up round the
town, and sentries posted on all the roads leading to it. At Wellington and
Nelson also men were drilled and stockades were built for defence.
6. First Maori War.—But Honi Heke was
afraid of the soldiers, and when Colonel Hulme arrived from Sydney with several
companies he withdrew to a strong pah of his, eighteen miles inland. Hulme
landed at the nearest point of the coast, with a force of 400 men; these were
joined by 400 friendly allies under Waka-Nene, whose wife led the tribe in a
diabolic war dance, not a little startling to the British soldiers. The road
that was to lead them to Honi Heke was only a track through a dense forest.
Carts could not be taken, but each man carried biscuits for five days and
thirty rounds of ammunition. Under four days of heavy rain they trudged along
in the dripping pathway, all their biscuits wet and much of their powder
ruined. At last on a little plain, between a lake and a wooded hill, they saw
before them the pah of Honi Heke. Two great rows of
tree trunks stuck upright formed a palisade round it. They were more than a
foot thick, and twelve feet high, and they were so close that only a gun could
be thrust between them. Behind these there was a ditch in which stood 250
Maoris, who could shoot through the palisades in security.
The British slept that night without tents round fires of kauri gum, but
next morning all was astir for the attack. A rocket was sent whizzing over the
palisades. It fell and burst among the Maoris, frightening them greatly, but
succeeding discharges were failures, and the Maoris gathered courage to such an
extent that a number under Kawiti came out to fight. The soldiers lowered their
bayonets and charged, driving them back into the pah.
During the night while the white men were smoking round their fires, the sound
of the plaintive evening hymn rising in the still air from the
pah suggested how strong was the hold that the new faith now had on the
Maori mind. Next day Colonel Hulme, seeing that a place defended on all sides
by such a strong palisade could not be captured without artillery, dug the graves
of the fourteen soldiers killed, and marched back carrying with him thirty-nine
wounded men.
There was dismay in Auckland when this news arrived. What could be said
when 400 English soldiers retreated from 250 savages? But, on the other hand,
the Maoris had learnt a lesson. They could not fight against English bayonets
in the open, but while taking aim from behind palisades they were safe.
Therefore they began in different places to strengthen their fortresses, and
Honi Heke added new defences to his pah of Oheawai, which stood in the forest
nineteen miles from the coast.
7. Oheawai.—More soldiers were sent from Sydney, and with them, to take the chief command,
Colonel Despard, who had seen much fighting against hill tribes in India. He
landed 630 men and six cannons; but these latter, being ship’s cannons on
wooden carriages with small wheels, stuck in the boggy forest roads. The men
had to pull the guns, and they were assisted by 250 friendly Maoris. On the
evening of 22nd June, 1845, they spread out before the pah during the gathering dusk. It was a strong place. In the midst of a deep and
gloomy forest, a square had been cleared about a third of a mile in length and
in breadth. Great trunks of trees had been set up in the earth, and they stood
fifteen feet high; between their great stems, a foot or eighteen inches thick,
there was just room enough left for firing a musket. Three rows of these
gigantic palings, with a ditch five feet deep between the inner ones, made the
fortress most dangerous to assault; and in the ground within hollows had been
dug where men could sleep secure from shells and rockets. Two hundred and fifty
warriors were there with plenty of muskets and powder.
On the second morning the British had got their guns planted within a
hundred yards of the palisade, but the small balls they threw did little harm
to such huge timber. The whole expedition would have had to retire had not a
heavier gun come up. This threw shot thirty-two pounds in weight, and after
twenty-six of these had struck the same place, a breach was seen of a yard or
two in width. Colonel Despard ordered 200 men with ropes and hatchets and
ladders to be ready for an assault at daybreak. In the still dawn of a wintry
morning, the bugles rang out and the brave fellows gathered for the deadly
duty. They rushed at the breach, and for ten minutes a wild scene ensued. The
place was very narrow, and it was blocked by resolute Maoris, who shot down
exactly half of the attacking party. Many of the soldiers forced their way through,
but only to find a second and then a third palisade in front of them. Then they
returned, losing men as they fled, and the whole British force fell back a
little way into the forest. That night the groans and cries of the wounded,
lying just outside the pah, were mingled with the wild
shouts of the war dance within. Two days later the Maoris hoisted a flag of
truce, and offered to let the white men carry off the dead and wounded.
Thirty-four bodies lay at the fatal breach, and sixty-six men were found to
have been wounded.
A week later another load of cannon balls for the heavy gun was brought
up, and the palisades were further broken down. A second assault would have
been made, but during the night the Maoris tied up their dogs, and quietly
dropping over the palisades at the rear of the pah, got far away into the
forest before their retreat was known, for the howling of the dogs all night
within the pah kept the officers from suspecting that the Maoris were escaping.
The British destroyed the palisades, and carried off the stores of potatoes and
other provisions which they found inside.
8. Governor Grey.—Fitzroy was preparing
to chase Heke and Kawiti into their fastnesses, when he was recalled. The
English Government thought he had not acted wisely in some ways and they blamed
him for disobeying their instructions. They had more faith in that young
officer, George Grey, who, after exploring in Western Australia, was now the
Governor of South Australia. He arrived in November, 1845, to take charge of
New Zealand; and at once went to Kororarika, where he found 700 soldiers
waiting for orders. But he did not wish for fighting, if it could be avoided.
He sent out a proclamation that Maoris who wished peace were to send in their
submission by a certain day. If they did, he would see that the treaty of
Waitangi was kept, and that justice was done to them.
Honi Heke sent two letters, but neither of them was satisfactory; and as
more than a year passed without any signs of his submitting, Colonel Despard
was directed to go after him. Heke was at a pah called
Ikorangi; but Kawiti had 500 Maoris at a nearer pah called Ruapekapeka.
9. Ruapekapeka.—Despard took his men
sixteen miles in boats up a river; then nine miles through the forest, and on
the 31st December he had 1,173 soldiers with 450 friendly natives in a camp 800
yards from the pah. It was like the other pahs, but bigger and stronger, for
behind the palisades there were earthen walls into which cannon balls would
only plunge without doing any harm. Three heavy guns, however, were mounted,
and when the Maoris sent up their flag, the first shot was so well aimed as to
bring its flagstaff down amid the ringing cheers of the white men. All New
Year’s Day was spent in pouring in cannon balls by the hundred, but they did
little harm. Next day the Maoris made a sally, but were driven back with the
bayonet. Meantime, Heke came in one night with men to help his friend, and
heavy firing on both sides was kept up for a week, after which two small
breaches appeared near one of the corners of the palisades. The next day was
Sunday, which the Maoris thought would be observed as a day of rest, but the
soldiers, creeping cautiously up, pushed their way through the breaches; a
number of the Maoris ran to arms and fired a volley or two, but before the main
body could do anything several hundred soldiers were in the place. A stout
fight took place, during which thirteen white men were killed. The Maoris, now
no longer under cover, were no match for the soldiers, and they fled, leaving
behind them all the provisions that were to have kept them for a whole season.
This discouraged them, and Heke and Kawiti saw their men scatter out and join
themselves to the quieter tribes for the sake of food. They therefore wrote to
Grey asking peace, and promising to give no further trouble. Grey agreed, but
left 200 soldiers at Kororarika in order to keep the Maoris of the district in
check.
10. Rauparaha.—During the eighteen months while Heke’s war was going on, troubles had been brewing at
Wellington, where Rauparaha and Rangihaeata kept up an agitation. The latter
declared his enmity; he plundered and sometimes killed the settlers; and when
soldiers were sent round to keep him in order he surprised and killed some of
them. But Rauparaha pretended to be friendly, though the Governor well knew he
was the ringleader in the mischief. Grey quietly sent a ship, which by night
landed 130 soldiers just in front of Rauparaha’s house on the shore. They
seized him sleeping in bed, and he was carried round to Auckland, where for
some months he was kept a prisoner, though allowed to go about. Rangihaeata
fled into the wildly wooded mountain ranges of the interior. Once or twice he
made a stand, but was driven from his rocky positions, with the slaughter of
men on both sides. At last he and his followers scattered out as fugitives into
lonely and savage regions into which they could not be followed.
Thinking that good roads would do much to keep the country quiet, Grey
offered half a crown a day to Maoris who would work at making roads. Quite a
crowd gathered to the task, and for a while white men and Maoris toiled happily
together, making good carriage roads into the heart of the country. But at
Wanganui, in May, 1847, land disputes roused a tribe to bloodshed. They killed
a white woman and her four little children; they attacked the town, and when
the inhabitants withdrew to a stockade they had made, a fight took place which
lasted for five hours, after which the Maoris burnt the town and retreated,
carrying off all the cattle. Two months later, Governor Grey reached Wanganui,
with 500 men. He chased the Maoris up the valley and fought them, gaining a
decisive victory over them with the loss of two white men killed. He gave them
no rest till the chiefs applied for peace, and early in the next year a meeting
was held, and the principal chiefs of the district promised to obey the Queen’s
laws. The war had lasted five years, had cost a million pounds, and the lives
of eighty-five white men, besides those of perhaps a hundred Maoris.
The English Government withdrew the larger part of the soldiers from New
Zealand; but the colonists, to make themselves safe,
enrolled a body they called the New Zealand Fencibles. They were all old
soldiers who had retired from the British army, and who were offered little
farms and a small payment. Five hundred came out from England on these terms,
and were placed in four settlements round Auckland for the protection of that
town. They were really farmers, who were paid to be ready to fight if need
should arise. With their wives and children they made a population of 2,000
souls.
In this same year Rauparaha was allowed to go home. He was surprised at
the permission and grateful for it; but he was an old man and died in the
following year. In 1850 Honi Heke died, but Rangihaeata lingered on till 1856,
giving no further trouble.
Governor Grey dealt fairly with the Maoris. He paid them for their
lands. He hung such white men as murdered them. He set up schools to educate
their children, and distributed ploughs and carts, harrows and horses, and even
mills, so that they might grow and prepare for themselves better and more
abundant food than they had ever known before.
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