Hongi Hika

“ If the blood of the murderer could not be had, then someone else's blood must be shed—someone, too, of equal rank and dignity. Hongi could not bring himself to accept the new message of peace, and his dissatisfaction was, it would seem, fanned by Kendall, who had ambitions of his own to serve. The other settlers, fearing to lose the protection of Hongi's restraining hand, did their utmost to dissuade him from taking the journey, but in vain. "I shall die," said the chief, "if I do not go." ”

“ However, with the dominant personality of the little man lacking to the all-conquering Nga-Puhi, there was no knowing what might happen; so the tribes around about the Thames river, whose frith is that thing of beauty, the Hauraki Gulf, took heart of grace, marched to the fight, and slew, among other folk, no less a person than Hongi's son-in-law.
Here was indeed a pretext. Hongi clung to it as a dog to his bone. In Sydney he had melted down, so to speak, his great pile of presents into three hundred stand of arms, which included a goodly share of the coveted tupara, or double-barrelled guns. ”

“ They had divided themselves into little parties, each forming a circle, and were crying most piteously, and cutting their flesh as a cook would score pork for roasting. On such occasions each is armed with a sharp shell, or, if he can possibly obtain so valuable a prize, a piece of a broken glass bottle. All were streaming with tears and blood, while Hongi and his friends embarked in their large and richly-ornamented canoes, and sailed from our beach. ”

“ Hongi, accompanied by about a dozen of his chiefs, advanced towards our settlement, leaving their guns and hatchets behind them; as they approached, all our tribe discharged their pieces in the air. When they met, all rubbed noses (a ceremony never to be dispensed with on formal occasions) . They were then conducted by King George to his huts on the beach, and in the enclosure in front of them the warriors squatted on the ground. Hongi, being tabooed, or under the immediate protection of their Atua, or God, still sat apart. ”

“ Thursday, 8th.—A lake picnic, and a very hot but heavenly day. We started early, in a motor-launch, and in crossing Rotorua called at Mokoia Island, the scene of so many romances. It was the desire to take Mokoia and, literally, “eat up” the tribe that lived on it that made Hongi, the Maori warrior chief, perform the greatest of all his wondrous feats. Hongi was a very Napoleon among the Maoris, and the history of his devastating progress through the country is every bit as thrilling as that of his European counterpart on the Continent. ”

“ Hongi was affected by the same spirit. In 1820 he, accompanied by another chief, Waikato, and [Pg 80] under the charge of Rev. Mr. Kendall, visited England. There he was presented to King George, and was made much of. The two chiefs aided Mr. Kendall and Professor Lee in the compilation of the first Maori vocabulary. They returned to Sydney loaded with many and valuable presents.
But in Sydney the true character of Hongi came out. He realized all his property, and converted it into muskets, powder, and ball. With these he sailed joyfully back to his own country. ”

“ Now, poor Arawa, you will find out to your cost how Hongi is coming to Mokoia!
One morning, as the Arawa were preparing for their usual daily amusement, they saw, to their horror and consternation, the advancing fleet of their bloodthirsty enemies. The time for jeering and laughter had passed, some tried to escape and a few succeeded, the others stood and fought the hopeless fight of spears and stones versus muskets. The canoes drew near the island and Hongi opening fire on the hapless defenders, shot them down in heaps, then, landing, killed or enslaved all that remained of the Arawa tribe. ”

“ Good shall come of it.
"But, if there come over the sea men in red coats, who neither sow nor reap, but ever carry arms in their hands, beware of them. Their trade is war and they are paid to kill. Make you war upon them and drive them out. Otherwise evil will come of it.
"Children, and you, my old comrades, be brave and strong in your country's cause. Let not the land of your ancestors pass into the hands of the Pakeha. Behold! I have spoken."
With that the mighty chief Hongi drew the corner of his mat across his face and passed through the gates to the waters of Reinga. ”

“ In a moment the chief is among them. Blood flows again. Te Rauparaha is once more the victor. Will it never end?
Not yet. Hongi Ika comes not here to stop fighting by fighting, and Te Rauparaha has learned the lesson of the tupara, for he now has guns. Once more tearing a leaf from Hongi's book, he springs at the cowering population upon the great plain. Some he slaughters, some he enslaves; some, frantic with terror, braving the heaving Pacific, speed eastwards to Wari Kauri (Chatham Islands) six hundred miles away. ”

“ We had passed some months here, and were beginning to look out for the return of our brig, to take us again into civilised society, when we were once more thrown into alarm by a threatened invasion. A rumour was circulated in the village that Hongi, who now lay at the point of death, had declared that he would make one last glorious effort before he expired. He was resolved (it was reported) to collect his warriors, overcome George and his followers, possess himself of Kororarika, and die upon the conquered territory of his enemy ”

“ A thousand fell in the fight; then the women and children were slaughtered in heaps. The strong tribe of the Arawa further south had their chief pah on an island in the middle of Lake Rotorua. Hongi with great labour carried his canoes over to the lake. The spear-armed Maoris could do nothing in defence while he shot at them from the lake; and when he assaulted the island, though they came down to the water’s edge to repel him, again there was victory for the muskets. Thus did Hongi conquer till the whole North Island owned his ascendancy. ”

“ The dead were variously reckoned at from two hundred to a thousand. One division of the Ngapuhi were sufficiently disgusted at Hongi's deceit to refuse to join in the surprise, and Waikato, the powerful chief who had accompanied him to England, declared he would go afield with him no more. Even his own special clan, though they had yielded to the furious exhortations of his blind wife Kiri, an Amazon who followed him in all his fights, urged him to spare some of the captives of rank. The pitiless victor spared none. Five he killed with his own spear. ”

“ Long after the happy union of its lovers, Mokoia saw another sight when Hongi, “eater of men,” marched down with his Ngapuhi musketeers from the north to exterminate the Arawa of the lake country. To the Roto-rua people Mokoia had in times past been a sure refuge. In camp there, they commanded the lake with their canoes; no invader could reach them, for no invader could bring a fleet overland. So it had always been, and the Mokoians trusting thereto, paddled about the lake defying and insulting Hongi and his men in their camp on the farther shore. ”

“ Overpowered by [Pg 252] numbers, and by superiority of weapons, the grim fight was soon over, and the last of the Ngatewhatua were slain. But, beside their bodies, many a Ngapuhi corpse showed that the vanquished had died as warriors should.
"The Ngapuhi who had slain Tuwhare, cut off the dead chiefs head, and placing it in the nearest tree, rushed back towards Marahemo to summon Hongi. Now Hongi was brave as man could be, but, like all Maoris then, he was intensely superstitious, and held all the Maori gods and devils in the very highest respect. ”

“ Concerned with their own wars, and with numbers thinned, the Maori left the white settlers time and opportunity to increase, whereby they grew daily better able to resist the power of the brown men when this was at last sternly directed against them. In the third place, Hongi's dying advice was without the shadow of a doubt the part cause of Honi Heke's outbreak at Kororareka fifteen years later, and of the strife which immediately followed it. ”

“ The Ngatewhatua, a populous tribe of the Kaipara districts, had to bear the brunt of Hongi's advance, and were almost annihilated. He penetrated a long way south, ever victorious over every one by reason of his superior weapons. There is little doubt that he must have sometimes led an army of as many as five thousand men, mostly armed with muskets. This was a prodigious force for Maori war, irrespective of the enormous advantage of powder and ball over the native merè (battle-axe) and patu (a sort of halberd) . ”

“ But Heke was very much enraged to see his fort and provisions thus snatched from him, and he determined to retake it before the soldiers should return from Auckland to help Walker. So he sent messengers to all parts of the country where he had friends, and to the old chiefs who were still alive who had been companions of the great Hongi in the old wars. (p. 227) And they came, and with them came Te Kahakaha, he who had been Hongi's chosen friend. He had seen more battles than any man now alive, and was a very brave and experienced leader. ”

“ However beneficial his life may have been, the historian cannot help a sigh of relief when he comes to his death. For it marks the time when the mission began to stand on its own feet. So far from being "stripped," the missionaries actually rose in the estimation of the Maoris. A quarrel arose out of Hongi's death, which led to hostilities between the men of the Bay of Islands and those of Hokianga. The army of the Bay was worsted, and both sides were not unwilling for peace if honour could be preserved. Henry Williams and three of his colleagues went to the field and visited the camps. ”

“ He chortled to himself as did Lamech: 'I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.'
'Landing with his battery of muskets,' Sir George had the tale, 'Hongi lost no time in carrying slaughter through Maoriland. His lurid fame spread far and wide; his bill of slaughter grew bigger and bigger. Yet, he met his death by a stray shot. Te-Whero-Whero, another Maori chief, complained to me, while we were discussing Hongi, that it was quite unfair he, should have been cut down in that fashion. ”

“ But here was a pretext beyond all others, and the wily Hongi instantly seized upon it.
"Fighting! Are they?" He grinned as only a Maori can grin. "I will stop these dogs in their worrying. They shall have their fill of fighting." He grinned again. "That will be the surest way, my mihonari friends. I will keep them fighting until they have no more stomach for it, and so shall there [Pg 111] be an end." He muttered under his breath, "because their tribes shall be even as the moa." [57] As the moa was extinct, the significance of the addition should be sufficiently clear. ”

“ Then Hōïchi lifted up his voice, and chanted the chant of the fight on the bitter sea,—wonderfully making his biwa to sound like the straining of oars and the rushing of ships, the whirr and the hissing of arrows, the shouting and trampling of men, the crashing of steel upon helmets, the plunging of slain in the flood. And to left and right of him, in the pauses of his playing, he could hear voices murmuring praise: “How marvelous an artist!”—“Never in our own province was playing heard like this!”—“Not in all the empire is there another singer like Hōïchi!” ”

“ Indeed, they were always welcomed by the insurgents, who never charged them with bad faith. It was rather the other way, inasmuch as the friendly natives were more than suspected of giving information of probable movements by the troops to their countrymen. But, if it were so, their apologists replied that it was, after all, merely in accordance with the ancient Maori custom, which was to send notice to the enemy that they were coming to attack them. The famous Hongi did so in the case of his next-door neighbour, Hinaki, Chief of the Ngatimaru tribe, when they met in Sydney, at Mr. ”

“ To understand its purport it is necessary to cast a backward glance over the years since the early days of the mission, when the Ngapuhi were procuring firearms from traders and missionaries. Hongi was not the only man in those days who foresaw the power which the musket would give. Rauparaha, the young chief of a small tribe living round the harbour of Kawhia on the West Coast, realised that his Waikato neighbours must from their geographical position acquire the precious weapons before his own tribe could do so. ”

“ Doubtless that chief had confided his fears to Waka Nene, and they had probably consulted long and anxiously as to the growing weakness of the position at Kawhia. When, therefore, Tamati beheld the passing ship, he saw at a glance that, if this part of the coast was frequented by vessels of the white man, it offered the same facilities for obtaining arms and ammunition which Hongi enjoyed at the Bay of Islands. With unrestrained excitement he called out to his comrade: "Oh, Raha, [45] do you see that people sailing on the sea? They are a very good people ”

“ Lady Holme sat still. She had wrapped a white cloth cloak round her. She put up her hand to the disfigured side of her face, and touched it, trying to see its disfigurement as the blind see, by feeling. She kept her hand there, and her hand recognized ugliness vividly. After two or three minutes she took her hand away, got up and walked to and fro in the piazza, very near to the balustrade.
Now she was thinking fiercely.
She thought of Fritz. What would he feel when he knew? Shocked for a moment, no doubt. After all, they had been very close to each other, in body at least, if not in soul. ”