Kitabı oku: «An Old New Zealander; or, Te Rauparaha, the Napoleon of the South.», sayfa 20

Naturally, the little settlement at Taupo was thrown into a state of intense excitement. The seizure of their chief was so sudden, so unexpected, that its reality could not for the moment be grasped; but when its full significance broke in upon the astonished tribe, the startling tidings was immediately despatched to Te Rangihaeata, who was still sitting in defiance in his stronghold at Pahautanui. He at once made for the coast, but was too late. The Governor had several hours' start of him, and he was compelled to make a wide detour to avoid the British post at Porirua. He arrived on the wooded hill-side above Te Rauparaha's pa only in time to see the war-ship with her captives steaming down the coast.¹⁷⁸ Enraged and disappointed at what he must have regarded as the perfidy of the pakeha, and disheartened at his own impotency, he gloomily retired to his lair, there to sing¹⁷⁹ that beautiful lament, in which he mournfully acknowledges the increasing ascendancy of the stranger, and chides the waning loyalty of his own people.

 
"My brave canoe!
In lordly decoration lordliest far,
My proud canoe!
Amid the fleet that fleetest flew —
How wert thou shattered by the surge of war!
'Tis but the fragments of thy wreck,
O my renowned canoe,
That lie all crushed on yonder war-ship's deck!
Raha! my chief, my friend!
Thy lonely journey wend:
Stand with thy wrongs before our god of battle's face:
Bid him thy foes requite! —
Ah me! Te Raukawa's foul desertion and disgrace —
Ah me! the English ruler's might!
 
 
Raha! my chief of chiefs!
Ascend with all thy griefs
Up to their Lord of Peace – there stand before His face —
Let Him thy faith requite! —
Ah me! Te Toa's sad defection and disgrace —
Ah me! the English ruler's might!
 
 
One counsel from the first I gave,
'Break up thy forces, comrade brave,
Scatter them all about the land
In many a predatory band!' —
But Porirua's forest dense,
Ah, thou wouldst never stir from thence,
'There,' saidst thou, 'lies my best defence,' —
Now, now, of such design ill-starred,
How grievously thou reap'st the full reward!
 
 
Hence, vain lamenting – hence, away!
Hence, all the brood of sorrow born!
There will be time enough to mourn
In the long days of summer, ere the food
Is cropped, abundant for the work of blood.
Now I must marshal in compact array,
Great thoughts that crowding come of an avenging day!"¹⁸⁰
 

The seizure of Te Rauparaha, at such a time and in such a manner, is one of the many debatable points in the history of this period, and, notwithstanding that many pages have been written upon the incident, the ethics of the act are apparently as far from final determination as ever. To the present writer its justification lies in its success. There is no doubt that, however high-handed and arbitrary, it was a tactical stroke which compelled waverers to pause, and paralysed those who were already in active hostility. On the other hand, it might just as easily have roused the whole Maori race into a frenzy of injured pride, and plunged the country into the vortex of a retaliatory war. Only one thing saved New Zealand from this calamity, and that was the tribal dissensions. Had the Maori been a united people, this unprovoked indignity put upon one of their greatest men must have excited their bitterest passions against the perpetrators of the deed; and one almost shudders to realise in what a hair-balance the fate of the little Colony trembled at this moment of her history. In criticising the Governor's policy, however, it must be borne in mind that he, with his knowledge of Maori conditions, may have counted upon these very intertribal hatreds to prevent anything in the nature of a general rising. This being assumed, his action is shorn of some of its rashness and impolicy, and he becomes entitled to credit for the success of his methods of overawing the turbulent spirit of the malcontent Maoris. On no other ground than that the end justifies the means can the seizure of Te Rauparaha be defended, nor, so far as the writer is aware, has any other defence ever been seriously attempted. The most that can be urged against the chief is that, unlike Te Kingi Rangitake, he did not join the allies and enter upon active hostilities against the so-called rebels. Of the fact that he secretly aided them there is little evidence and no proof. What evidence there may be is confined to the intercepted letters, admitted by the Governor himself to be forgeries, and to the unsupported statements of natives, some jealous of his power, and others aggrieved at his previous treatment of them. In this respect Te Rauparaha must have felt that, having sown the wind, he was now reaping the whirlwind; for those natives who had gone down under his hand in war, or had been outwitted by his diplomacy, were only too anxious to represent him in an unfavourable light to the Governor, and were never tired of insinuating, and even broadly asserting, that his spirit was behind the rebellion, even though his hand might be invisible.

In communicating with Mr. Gladstone on July 23, 1846, Grey described his military operations, which were designed to check a company of some two hundred rebels who, he had reason to believe, were marching from Whanganui to join Te Rangihaeata. He landed at Waikanae, Otaki, and Ohau, where he had a conference with the friendly chiefs. He proceeded to say: "The whole of the chiefs with whom I had interviews declared that these disturbances were to be entirely attributed to the intrigues of Te Rauparaha." How much his mind was influenced by the opinions of the chiefs may be judged by the fact that on the following day he launched his successful stroke, but how little he had weighed the value of their testimony may also be inferred from the circumstance that a year later he wrote a despatch to Mr. Gladstone's successor at the Colonial Office, in which he was forced to admit that after retaining Te Rauparaha in captivity for ten months his difficulties in deciding how to dispose of him were enhanced by the fact that all his "efforts made to secure the evidence of Pohi¹⁸¹ failed, consequently it was not possible to prove Te Rauparaha's guilt in a court of law."

It is strange, if so many chiefs knew that the brain of Te Rauparaha was forging the balls which Rangihaeata was firing, that none were able to testify to the fact in an established court of law, and, travesty upon British justice though it may seem, it is nevertheless a fact that the man who had relied upon the Treaty of Waitangi to secure him his rights and liberties was detained a prisoner without formal charge and without the chance of a trial until it was thought possible to prove his guilt. How far Te Rauparaha's seizure and continued detention were a palliation to the wounded feelings of the European settlers it is difficult to pronounce, but it is not in the least unlikely that the Governor paid some regard to the popular effect of the step, even if he totally ignored its judicial aspect. In all probability Te Rauparaha was at this time the best-hated man in New Zealand. The memory of the massacre at the Wairau had not yet died out, and there were many who, misunderstanding that fatal event, could not look upon the chief whose name had been so tragically associated with it in any other light than as a social and moral outcast. To this not inconsiderable section of the community imprisonment was much too good for Te Rauparaha, but it was preferable to the negative attitude of Governor Fitzroy, and Grey, no doubt, counted upon standing well with these extremists by the initiation of a policy in which there was a touch of retribution, however barren it might be of justice.

With the European population, then, the kidnapping of the Ngati-Toa leader was, on the whole, a popular move, and with a number of the natives it was hailed as an act of retribution, long delayed, but nevertheless a judgment at last. Upon his own people the effect was different. They were stunned by the swiftness of the blow and confounded by its audacity. Here in a twinkling the very eye had been plucked out of their head, the heart torn from their body, and that, too, at a time when they had no quarrel with the Government, and by a man whom they had been wont to regard as their friend. Their first impulse was to fly to arms. To attack Wellington, to sweep the pakeha into the sea, to avenge the wrongs of Te Rauparaha, was the cry. Te Rangihaeata called his own followers about him and sent out his appeals to the northern tribes: "Friends and children, come and revenge the injuries of Te Rauparaha, because Te Rauparaha is the eye of the faith of all men. Make haste hither in the days of December." But his design for the extermination of the Europeans was doomed to be frustrated. His own particular faithfuls were few in number, and the one great chief, Te Heuheu, to whom he might have looked for encouragement in such an emergency, was dead, buried beneath a huge landslide which had overwhelmed his village on the shores of Lake Taupo. Of others with whom he had been accustomed to co-operate in the days gone by, some were espousing the cause of the enemy, and some, having embraced the Christian faith, had grown weary of incessant war. Their reply, which was something in the nature of a rebuke, betokened that they had realised the futility of opposing the further progress of the pakeha. "How can you dry up the sea? That is why we say, finish fighting with the European." Such was their answer to his summons to arms, and Rangihaeata was left to fall back upon his small band of war-worn desperadoes to carry on a struggle which was hopeless from the first.¹⁸²

Abandoned to his own resources, he applied himself to his duties of leader with the energy of despair. Realising that his position at Pahautanui was no longer tenable, as its swamps and shallows were no protection against the artillery which he knew was collected at Porirua, he withdrew his forces into the deeply wooded Horokiwi Valley. Through this forest defile, tangled and matted by an almost impenetrable undergrowth, he was pursued by a force of 1,000 men, composed of militia and native allies, under Major Last. Te Rangihaeata's generalship proved equal to the peculiar circumstances in which he found himself, and his genius for war won for him the warmest encomiums from British officers, who have generously expressed their admiration for the skill with which the chief conducted his retreat. Into the density of the wooded valley he led his pursuers, enticing them by a simulated resistance, but abandoning his camps as soon as they pressed too closely upon him. In one of these semi-fortified resting-places the British soldiers discovered the bugle which had been taken from the boy Allen when he was struck down at the fatal fight at Boulcott's Farm.

At length, retreat being no longer possible, the rebel chief turned at bay and fought his pursuers at a point near the head of the valley. His decision to throw down the gage of battle here was not the result of accident or impulse, but was due to deliberate calculation. The position was admirably chosen, and he held the enemy in check long enough to enable him to fortify it effectively. He threw a rough breastwork of tree-trunks across the narrow neck of a spur springing from a densely wooded hill, the approach to which was flanked by steep ravines, leaving so narrow a ridge that it could only be passed abreast by a very limited force of men. This wooden rampart, which presented so imposing a front to an enemy, was liberally perforated with loopholes, through which the defenders were able to concentrate their fire with deadly effect upon any approaching force. This arrangement, combined with the inaccessible nature of the ground, made its seizure by storm practically impossible. Nevertheless, an attack was determined upon, and on the morning of August 6, 1846, fire was opened upon the position, but with no other visible result than that Ensign Blackburn¹⁸³ and two privates were killed and nine others wounded. On the following day the assault, which had been so inauspiciously commenced, was suspended, for Major Last had now seen enough to convince him that some projectile more searching than bullets was necessary to dislodge the defenders from their stronghold. He accordingly sent to Porirua and procured two small mortars, which, after infinite labour spent in dragging them into position, were discovered to be absolutely worthless for purposes of attack, for the high forest trees made accurate gunnery impossible. Seeing his troops in a deplorable condition, even after this short bush campaign, and hopeless of driving Rangihaeata out, except at an enormous sacrifice of human life, Major Last decided to withdraw the regular troops and leave the friendly natives, under Puaha, to watch and wait for hunger to work its effects upon the stubborn garrison. A few days sufficed for this. On the 13th the allies were surprised by a hail of lead suddenly raining down upon their lines. No sooner had they sprung to arms than they saw that the enemy was afoot, the volley which they had fired being the signal for retreat. Immediately the real nature of the movement was ascertained, Puaha and his loyalists rushed forward over the fallen trees and broken ground, and reached the breastwork only in time to see the last of the defenders escape by the thickly veiled forest track, where they were swallowed up by the bush and lost to human view.

Hunger and cold had done their work, for there were no signs of food supplies inside the camp except some edible fern. Nor did the escape of the defenders to the open avail them much, for they were so harried by the followers of Puaha as they fled along the snow-covered mountain ridge that the opportunities for procuring food were few and uncertain. Some made their perilous way to the coast, in the secret hope of finding food and shelter amongst their friends in the pas, but these were for the most part found by the vigilant Wiremu Kingi, and either driven back into the mountain fastnesses or promptly secured as prisoners of war.¹⁸⁴ Deeming himself fortunate to have so far evaded death or capture, Te Rangihaeata retreated northwards with his famished adherents until he reached the lowlands of the Manawatu. There, beaten though still defiant, he retired to a pa built in the midst of the swamps and marshes of Poroutawhao, where he laid down his arms and, sullenly drawing his mat about him, prepared to watch the irresistible march of the pakeha, though refusing to acknowledge defeat at his hands. "I am finished," he wrote to the Governor, "but do not suppose that you conquered me. No; it was these my own relatives and friends, Rangitake and others. It was by them I was overcome, and not by you, O Governor."¹⁸⁵

A new cause for anxiety, in the outbreak of hostilities at Whanganui, now diverted Grey's attention momentarily from the fugitive chief, who improved the respite thus given by refraining from any act of violence. Although no formal peace was declared, Grey wisely decided not to precipitate further trouble by following him into the marshes of Poroutawhao. True, on the very day (April 18, 1847) that the news of the outbreak at Whanganui reached Wellington, the chief made a sensational descent upon Kapiti. In the grey of the early morning a whaler named Brown was awakened by a sound at the door of his hut, and, as he raised himself on his elbow, he saw the tall form of Rangihaeata enter the room with a tomahawk in his hand. The whaler not unnaturally thought he had come to take his life, and, in his subsequent narration of the incident, he indulged in some heroics, telling how he had challenged the chief to slay him on the spot. But Rangihaeata was not in search of a defenceless whaler's blood. He had come to demand some powder which was rightly his, and which he had left there for safe keeping. When he had secured his property, he went harmlessly away, after shaking hands in the most friendly manner with the frightened seaman. Some of his followers, however, were not quite so scrupulous; and, in searching the hut for the powder, they had appropriated a bundle of bank notes and some sovereigns, and secreted them about their persons until they returned to the pa. Here Rangihaeata discovered the theft, and immediately sent back the plunder to the Governor, accompanied by a characteristic note, in which he made it clear that, however much he might be in opposition to the Government, he had no desire to be esteemed a common thief.

With Rangihaeata beaten out of the field, we may now return to Te Rauparaha, whom we left in the hands of his captors. To ensure his greater security, he was, immediately upon the arrival of the Driver at Wellington, transferred to H.M.S. Calliope,¹⁸⁶ where he was placed under the watchful eye of Captain Stanley, for whom, we are told, he afterwards acquired a high regard. On board this ship he was detained with some show of liberty for upwards of ten months, visiting the principal ports of northern and central New Zealand, as the duties of the station demanded the presence of the vessel. During all this period no attempt was made to bring him to trial, though no pains were spared by the Governor to secure the evidence which would ensure his conviction. In a despatch written to the Colonial Office on December 1, 1846, Grey endeavoured to explain his position and justify his halting attitude, but, in the trenchant words of one of his critics, his was a justification which itself required to be justified: —

"A number of designing Europeans, who are annoyed at my interfering with their illegal purchases of land, have thought it proper to agitate the question of the justice and propriety of my arresting Te Rauparaha. Some most improper publications have already appeared, and I regret to state that I find a great effect is being produced upon the minds of the native chiefs. The difficulty of my position is that I am not yet quite satisfied whether or not it will be expedient or necessary to bring the old man to trial. In fact, I am rather anxious to avoid doing so, and I fear that, were I to make public the various crimes for which he has been seized by the Government, and the proofs of his guilt upon which the Government justify his detention, a large portion of the European population would be so exasperated against him that it would be difficult for the Government to avoid bringing him to trial; and, if I were compelled to adopt this step from having made known the charges against him, I should probably be accused of having ungenerously prejudiced the public against him previously to his being brought to trial."

The only impression which the unbiassed student can derive from a perusal of this specious reasoning is that the Governor, in seeking to excuse himself for an unjustifiable action, has in reality delivered his own condemnation for a grave breach of trust. If the "various crimes" of which the chief was suspected were as defined as the Governor implies they were, and if "the proofs of his guilt upon which the Government justified his detention" were clear and unimpeachable, obviously then it was his bounden duty to the Colony and to Te Rauparaha that the chief should be brought to trial at the earliest possible moment. But the real fact was that the offences of Te Rauparaha were as imaginary as the proofs of his guilt were mythical, and he was kept captive on a ship of war while the Governor was diligently endeavouring to find Pohi, who was supposed to be possessed of important secrets, or was sedulously filling in the missing links in the chain of evidence which he hoped would establish the fact that certain messengers, who were known to have carried information to Rangihaeata, were indeed sent by Te Rauparaha.

A fruitless ten months was spent in these endeavours to bring home guilt to Te Rauparaha, and at the end of that time Grey was forced to admit that he was still unable to prove the chief guilty in a court of law. He therefore began to consider how far he was justified in longer detaining him, while still refusing to do him the justice of giving him a clear acquittal. He temporised with other reasons, from which it is clear that he regarded the step as one of expediency rather than of right. "The detention of the prisoners," he wrote to Earl Grey, "has caused expense and inconvenience to the Government"; and therefore, to relieve his administration of something which it had forced upon itself, he was magnanimous enough to loose the chains from off the chief. But the Governor was also influenced by other considerations. He believed that the capture and long captivity of Te Rauparaha had completely destroyed his mana, so that he was now incapable of originating any new mischief, even if he were so inclined. But we may also do him the justice of believing that he was genuinely anxious to placate the Ngati-Toa people, who had repeatedly petitioned him for their leader's release, and to allay an ugly suspicion, which had gained credence amongst them, that Te Rauparaha had been murdered, and that his so-called detention was merely a subterfuge to cover a desperate crime.

"Repeated applications," wrote the Governor, "have been made by Te Rauparaha's tribe for his release, and this step seems to be quite justified by his ten months of good conduct. Waka Nene and Te Wherowhero also petitioned for his release, and went guarantee for his good behaviour. Upon the whole, with the larger force that will be placed at my disposal, and after the convincing proofs which the natives have so frequently afforded of their regarding their interests as identical with those of the Government, I entertain no apprehension of Te Rauparaha being able to effect further mischief, even if he were disposed to do so. I therefore determined to order his release, merely requiring Te Wherowhero and Waka Nene to pledge their words for his future good conduct, and although I exacted no conditions either from themselves or from the prisoners, I recommended them to require both Te Rauparaha and Hohepa to reside on the northern portions of the island until I felt justified in stating that I had no objection to them permitting Te Rauparaha to return to his own country."

Under the guarantee of good conduct given by Te Wherowhero and Waka Nene, Te Rauparaha was released at Auckland, and was received as a guest into Te Wherowhero's house, which had been built for him by the Government in what is now the Auckland Domain. Here, though nominally free, he must have felt the bitterness of his exile, for he frequently displayed the humiliation which was surging within his soul by relapsing into periods of deep melancholy, during which he doubtless meditated upon the departed glory of the past and the hopelessness of the future. With him times had indeed changed. From the imperious leader of a victorious tribe, supreme and absolute, his word the word of authority, his very look, his merest gesture, an unquestionable command, he found himself shorn of his power, degraded by captivity, destitute of influence, and little more than a memory – the hoary vestige of a stately ruin. But his path was not all strewn with thorns, and there were not wanting those, both Maori and European, who strove to lighten his burden and salve his wounded soul. Visitors frequently sought to cheer his drooping spirits, and, as a compliment to the conqueror of Kapiti, Te Wherowhero brought the flower of the Hauraki chiefs to do him honour. In September, 1847, two hundred of these warriors, casting aside their tribal prejudices, came and visited him. As the kilted band of strangers advanced, Te Rauparaha, dressed in a dogskin mat and forage cap, went out to meet them. He saluted several of the leading men according to native custom, and then followed the speechmaking inseparable from Maori gatherings. Squatting in a semicircle upon the ground, the assemblage listened with rapt attention to the oration delivered by Te Rauparaha, of whom all had heard, but whom few had previously seen. His speech was a dignified recitation of his past deeds, and while he spoke of his struggles with Waikato, his pilgrimage, and his conquests, he delivered himself brilliantly and dramatically, for the fire of the old warrior seemed to burn again within him and the blood of the victor to pulsate once more through his veins. But when he came to describe his seizure and captivity, the injustice and humiliation of it all bore down his valiant spirit, and he concluded his oration with difficulty and almost in tears. To this great effort of Maori eloquence replies of a lengthy and ceremonial nature were delivered by Taraia, Te Wherowhero, and several members of Hauraki's aristocracy, and then food was served on a sumptuous scale to the strangers. It was, however, noticed that Te Rauparaha ate but sparingly and was ill at ease. He rose and walked to his house, into which he was followed by two of the women, who there sang to him of the deeds of his fathers, and of the heroes of the ancient line from which he had sprung, the lament bringing a flood of tears to the old man's dim eyes. Still under the surveillance of Te Wherowhero, Te Rauparaha spent six months in the country of the Waikatos, the scene of some of his youthful exploits; but, feeling his freedom to be liberty only in name, and himself a stranger in a strange land, he preferred a request to the Governor to be allowed to return to his own people by the shores of Cook Strait, where was centred everything in life that he valued. The Governor granted his request, believing that he had now nothing to fear from the chief, and recognising that his return would have a quieting influence upon Rangihaeata, who, during his uncle's absence, had steadfastly refused to believe that the man by whose orders Wareaitu¹⁸⁷ had been executed would be more merciful to Te Rauparaha. Accordingly, in January of 1848, the Governor, Lady Grey, Lieut. – Colonel Mundy, Te Wherowhero, Taraia, Te Rauparaha, and several other chiefs, embarked on board H.M.S. Inflexible and steamed for Otaki. Arrived there, the vessel was immediately boarded by Tamihana Te Rauparaha, who, clothed in the garb of a clergyman, came off to welcome his father.

The morning of January 16, 1848, was the time appointed for the restoration of Te Rauparaha to his people. When the boats had been lowered to row the party ashore, the old chief came upon the quarter-deck dressed in full naval uniform, even to the cocked hat and the epaulets. His surprise and indignation were, however, considerable when he observed that the Governor and his suite had no idea of regarding the event as a State occasion, and were clothed in simple undress coats. Nor was his ill-temper improved when the Governor further robbed the incident of ceremonial importance by refusing to accord to him the honour of a salute from the ship's guns as he left the vessel's side. With eyes flashing and nostrils dilated, he sprang back into his cabin, and, throwing off his brilliant uniform, immediately reappeared wrapped in the sombre folds of an ancient blanket. Wounded in spirit at the absence of those impressive features which would have made his homecoming something of a triumph, he landed on the Otaki beach in no enviable mood; and, as the party proceeded towards the inland pa, he turned away from them, and sitting down in the sand with his face towards the ocean, covered his old grey head with his mat, and for two hours sat and sobbed like a child. During this meditation of tears no one approached him. Maori etiquette forbade his kinsmen breaking in upon his grief, and European courtesy dictated a discreet respect for the feelings of one who had come back to find the times so vastly changed, and for him so sadly out of joint.

In that brief time, as the old warrior sat sighing in sympathy with the sobbing sea, there must have passed before him in vivid picture the whole panorama of his eventful life – his struggles, his schemes, his dreams, the anguish of defeat, the glut of victory, and then the final triumph in which tribe after tribe went down before him, and his name became wonderful and mighty throughout the land. But now, because of the advent of the pakeha, power had melted in his hand like snow. His life, like the wind-swept ruin of his old heathen pa, which stood broken and dilapidated a few chains off, had become but a shadow and a memory of the past; an exemplification of the fallible and transitory nature of mundane things. At length, rousing himself from his reverie, he proceeded to the new Christian settlement of Hadfield, at Otaki, which had been built mainly by the efforts of his son, Tamahana te Rauparaha, and his nephew, Matene te Whiwhi. A motley crowd of five or six hundred people poured out of the little settlement to welcome their chief, the Governor, and Lady Grey; and, as an evidence of the elevating influences which were operating amongst them,¹⁸⁸ prayers in the native tongue were read in the open air, before the feast which had been prepared for the visitors was placed before them. A glass-windowed, carpeted whare was the banquet-room, and a clean damask cloth covered the table at which the guests were seated, while a daughter of Rangihaeata courteously discharged the duties of hostess.

On the following day Te Rauparaha presented himself before the people, and was received with the usual evidences of Maori jubilation – interminable speeches, wild and barbarous dances, and endless feasting. Almost immediately he exercised the prerogative of his freedom by visiting Rangihaeata, who was hovering in the neighbourhood of Otaki, but with what intent no one knew. Te Rauparaha was accompanied by Te Wherowhero and some of the visiting chiefs, and the korero lasted several days. What the precise nature of their discussions was will never be known; but that they were not of a treasonable nature may be inferred from the fact that the Governor, hearing that Rangihaeata was at that time harbouring a notorious murderer, whom he refused to deliver up to justice, sent a letter to Te Rauparaha calling upon him and his compatriots to show their displeasure at Rangihaeata's conduct by instantly withdrawing from his presence. At the time the letter arrived, the chiefs were on the point of sitting down to partake of Rangihaeata's hospitality; but without hesitation they rose and left, though not before telling the obdurate chief their reason for doing so.¹⁸⁹