Frederick Edward Maning

“ May your mana never be less;—long may you hold at bay the demon of civilization, though fall at last I fear you must. Plutus with golden hoof is trampling on your land-marks. He mocks the war-song, but should I see your fall, at least one Pakeha Maori shall raise the tangi; and with flint and shell as of old shall the women lament you. ”

“ On comes the taua. The mother begins to cry in proper form; the tribe shout the call of welcome to the approaching robbers; and then with a grand rush, all armed, and looking as if they intended to exterminate all before them, the kai muru appear on the scene. They dance the war dance, which the villagers answer with another. Then the chief's brother-in-law advances, spear in hand, with the most alarming gestures. ”

“ I dart upon him like a hungry shark! I have him! I have him under! Down, villain! down to the kraken and the whale, to the Taniwha cave!—down! down! down! As we sank I heard one grand roar of wild laughter from the shore: the word utu I heard roared by many voices, but did not then know its import. The pakeha was drowning the Maori for utu for himself, in case he should be drowned. No matter: if the Maori can't hold his own, it's fair play; and then, if the pakeha really does drown the Maori, has he not lots of taonga to be robbed of?—No, not exactly to be robbed of, either ”

“ But they had mistaken the meaning of the monster review of the Taniwha. It was a leave-taking of his favourite warrior; for the Ngati Kuri were fated to die to a man on the next land they trod. A hundred and fifty men were they—the pick and prime of their tribe. All rangatira, all warriors of name, few in number, but desperately resolute, they thought it little to defeat the thousands of the south, and take the women and children as a prey! Having feasted and rejoiced at Tuhua, they sail for Motiti. This world was too small for them. They were impatient for battle. ”

“ A distinguished friend of mine in New Zealand once asked a Maori chief who had fought against us on the Waikato, why, when he had command of a certain road, he did not attack the ammunition and provision trains? "Why, you fool!" answered the Maori, much astonished, "If we had stolen their powder and food, how could they have fought?"
Sometimes two villages would get up a little war, and the inhabitants, after potting at each other all day, would come out of their "pas" in the evening and talk over their day's sport in the most friendly manner. ”

“ Now can any one imagine a more respectable character?—a warrior, a musician, a friend in need, who would stand by you while he had a leg to stand on, and would not eat a friend on any account whatever—except he should be very hungry.
The boat darts on; she touches the edge of a steep rock; the "haere mai" has subsided; six or seven "personages"—the magnates of the tribe—come gravely to the front to meet me as I land. ”

“ So Heke lost in this battle many of his best old war chiefs, he was himself badly wounded and defeated, and escaped with difficulty to the fort at Ohaeawae, to which place he was chased by Walker and Te Tao Nui. These misfortunes would not have happened had not Heke been so thoughtless as to handle the bloody spoils of the dead, before the proper ceremonies had rendered them common. But there is nothing in this world so deaf to reason or so disobedient as a warrior—when he is enraged he only listens to his own courage, and, being led away by it, dies. ”

“ Who killed the pakeha? It was Melons. You are a nice man, are you not? (this with a sneer.) Killing my pakeha! (in a voice like thunder, and rushing savagely, mere in hand, at poor Melons, but turning exactly at the end of the ten steps and coming back again.) It will be heard of all over the country; we shall be called the 'pakeha killers;' I shall be sick with shame; the pakeha will run away, and take all his taonga along with him: what if you had killed him dead, or broken his bones? ”

“ Great, indeed, was the fear of the Maori when they heard of these soldiers, for all the pakeha agreed in saying that they would attack any one their chief ordered them to attack, no matter whether there was any just cause or not; that they would fight furiously till the last man was killed, and that nothing could make them run away. Fear came like a cold fog on all the Ngapuhi, and no chief but Heke had any courage left. But Heke called together his people, and spoke to them saying, "I will fight these soldiers, I will cut down the flagstaff, I will fulfil the last words of Hongi Ika. ”

“ A few years ago the madness ran upon horses and cattle; now, young New Zealand believes in nothing but money, and they are continually tormenting themselves with plans to acquire it in large sums at once, without the trouble of slow and saving industry; which, as applied to the accumulation of money, they neither approve of nor understand: nor will they ever, as a people, take this mode till convinced that money, like everything else of value, can only be procured as a rule by giving full value for it, either in labour or the produce of labour. ”

“ Now, ladies, I call that a fairish good fight, considering no one is killed on either side. I promise to be good in future and to keep the peace, if people will let me; and indeed, I may as well mention, that from that day to this I have never had occasion to explain again to a Maori how it is that "every Englishman's house is his castle."
(p. 78) "Fair play is a jewel;" and I will here, as bound in honour to do, declare that I have met amongst the natives with men who would be a credit to any nation ”

“ At the time I am speaking of, the only restraint on such people was the fear of retaliation, and the consequence was, that often a dare-devil savage would run a long career of murder, robbery, and outrage, before meeting with a check, simply from the terror he inspired, and the "luck" which often accompanies outrageous daring. At a time, however, and in a country like New Zealand, where every man was a fighting man or nothing, these desperadoes, sooner or later, came to grief; being at last invariably shot, or run through the body, by some sturdy freeholder, whose rights they had invaded. ”

“ One of the slaves, a stout, hungry fellow, seeing the chief's unfinished dinner, eat it up before asking any questions, and had hardly finished when he was informed by a horror-stricken individual—another slave who had remained behind when the taua had moved on—of the fatal act he had committed. I knew the unfortunate delinquent well. He was remarkable for courage, and had signalized himself in the wars of the tribe. (The able-bodied slaves are always expected to fight in the quarrels of their masters, to do which they are nothing loth.) ”

“ The pigs and potatoes having been deposited, a train of women appeared—the whole, indeed, of the young and middle-aged women of the tribe. They advanced with a half-dancing, half-hopping sort of step, to the time of a wild but not unmusical chant, each woman holding high in both hands a smoking dish of some kind or other of Maori delicacy, hot from the oven. The groundwork of this feast appeared to be sweet potatoes and taro, but on the top of each smoking mess was placed either dried shark, eels, mullet, or pork, all "piping hot." ”

“ This was the speech of Haupokeha—"Have great patience this day, O children and friends; we have said 'Let us fight the soldiers,' and behold the rage of the soldier is at hand; be brave and enduring this day; be victorious; the parent who maintains us is the land—die (p. 249) for the land!—die for the land!" ”

“ As for real courage, I do not believe there can be any such thing. A man who sees himself in danger of being killed by his enemy and is not in a precious fright, is simply not courageous but mad. The man who is not frightened because he cannot see the danger, is a person of weak mind—a fool—who ought to be locked up lest he walk into a well with eyes open; but the appearance of courage—or rather, as I deny the existence of the thing itself, that appearance which is thought to be courage—that is the thing will carry you through! ”

“ If these two little books should suggest to any careless Englishman that foreigners of dark complexion are not all like either those white men who seem to have got into brown or black skins by mistake, whom one reads about in anti-slavery books and some missionary reports, or those equally tiresome black dummies whom one reads about in another sort of book who have no marked characteristic or intelligible custom except shooting spears and arrows at people for no apparent reason, I shall be glad to have introduced them to an English public ”

“ Then he is a boy of good family, a rangatira by birth, and it would never do to let the thing pass without making a noise about it: that would be an insult to the dignity of the families of both father and mother. Decidedly, besides being robbed, the father must be assaulted with a spear. True, he is a famous spearsman, and for his own credit must "hurt" some one or another if attacked. But this is of no consequence: a flesh wound more or less deep is to be counted on; and then think of the plunder! It is against the law of muru that any one should be killed, and first blood ends the duel. ”

“ Men were rushing in mad haste through the smashed windows and doors, loaded with anything and everything they could lay hands on. The chief was stamping against the door of a room in which he was aware the most valuable goods were kept, and shouting for help to break it open. A large canoe was floating close to the house, and was being rapidly filled with plunder. I saw a fat old Maori woman, who was washerwoman to the establishment, being dragged along the ground by a huge fellow who was trying to tear from her grasp one of my shirts, to which she clung with perfect desperation. ”

“ Then, O my children, be brave! then, O friends, be strong! Be brave that you may not be enslaved, and that your country may not become the possession of strangers." And having said these words, he died.
After this, years passed away, and the pakeha increased in numbers, and were spread over the whole country, and traded with the Maori, and lived with them, and the Maori were pleased with them, for they got from them plenty of gunpowder, and tomahawks, and blankets, and all the wealth of the pakeha became theirs, and there was no fighting between them, but all lived together as friends. ”

“ The poor savage was now, as I believe, past hearing, and gasping his last "Kia kotahi ki te ao!"—shouted the devil priest again in his ear, and shaking his shoulder roughly with his hand—"Kia kotahi ki te ao!—Kia kotahi ki te po!" Then giving a significant look to the surrounding hundreds of natives, a roar of musketry burst forth. Kia kotahi ki te ao! Thus in a din like pandemonium, guns firing, women screaming, and the accursed tohunga shouting in his ear, died "Lizard Skin," as good a fighting man as ever worshipped force or trusted in the spear. ”

“ If I had laid hold of the calabash and drank in the ordinary way as practised by pakehas, I would have at once fallen in the estimation of all bystanders, and been set down as a tutua—a nobody, who had no tapu or mana about him; a mere scrub of a pakeha, whom any one might eat or drink after without the slightest danger of being poisoned. ”

“ I am now describing a regular Maori ruffian of the good old times; the natural growth of a state of society wherein might was to a very great extent right, and where bodily strength and courage were almost the sole qualities for which a man was respected or valued. He was a bullet-headed, scowling, bow-legged, broad-shouldered, herculean savage, and all these qualifications combined made him unquestionably "a great rangatira;" and, as he had never been defeated, his mana was in full force. ”