Waiilatpu

“ Returning to Waiilatpu, Dr. White found awaiting him Tauitowe (sometimes called the young chief) , head man of the Cayuses on the Umatilla, and brother of Five Crows; and Feather Cap, belonging to Tiloukaikt s camp at Waiilatpu, with a few other chiefs from the three principal Cayuse camps, the third of which was half way be tween the two just mentioned, and governed by Camaspelo. It was at once evident that much disaffection existed here, which it would be difficult to cure, and White put forward Rogers and McKay as better informed how to deal with it than he. ”

“ To this party were added Cornelius Rogers, late of Waiilatpu, and Baptiste Dorion, as interpreters. They were also joined by Mr. and Mrs. Littlejohn, who wished to go to the aid of the Spaldings at Lapwai, as they had agreed to do before Dr. Whitman's departure. At The Dalles it was thought best for Mrs. Littlejohn to remain until the temper of the Indians became better known; but Mr. Geiger accompanied the excursion to look after the mission property at Waiilatpu. ”

“ It cuts no little figure, besides, in the trade of the town, there being expended by the military each year about four hundred thousand dollars.
Another place of interest, although associated only with painful ideas, is the site of the Waiilatpu mission, about seven miles west of the city, where, in 1847, perished Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, Presbyterian missionaries, and about a dozen others, at the hands of the Cayuse Indians. One common mound marks the spot where they were hastily buried by volunteer troops from Wallamet Yallcy after the flesh had been torn from their bones by wolves. ”

“ He will listen to no dissuasion. After presenting the needs of the emigrants at Washington and securing the reversal of the decision of the Board at Boston he returns. The mission increases in its usefulness to the emigrants. It is a hospital and orphan asylum and a refuge for the sick and helpless. The Indians, however, for whom it was established, foresee the inevitable. Disease and death invade their ranks; superstition and jealousy, distrust and resentment, take possession of their minds, and the dreadful tragedy of Waiilatpu follows. ”

“ The ancient Maori story of the Waipa plains and downs, as preserved by the word-of-mouth historians, the old men of the tribes, is a record of land-seeking, exploration, and place-naming by the chiefs who came in the Tainui canoe, and by Rakataura the priest; then a succession of tribal feuds and wars, raids, pa-buildings and pa-stormings, ambush, massacre, slave-taking, and man-eating. That warrior tale need not be gone into here; we take up our story of Te Awamutu with the first introduction of the pakeha interest, and in truth the place was savage and rough enough then. ”

“ But to this day every alae bird wears the symbol of punishment for telling its secret—a tuft of red feathers on the top of its head.
MAUI'S KITE.
Maui, the great demi-god of Hawaii, was restless. Time hung heavy on his hands. Uneventful days of quiet had fallen upon the land. Adventure seemed to be in hiding, and no exploit invited to service this active youngster's shining spear or magic club. Idleness grew more and more unbearable.
Now Laamaomao, god of the winds, dwelt not far above Rainbow Falls in the beautiful gorge of the Wailuku and to him Maui confided his discontent. ”

“ The physiographic charm of the country on the north side of the Puniu and the east side of the Waipa River is produced by the gently-rolling lie of the land with its countless sheltered valleys and its well-sunned slopes, with its leisurely-winding streams, with here and there a small lake; the old Maori garden lands of Te Awamutu, Rangiaowhia, Kihikihi, and Orakau, now covered with pakeha farms and tree-groves, with fat flocks and herds, and wearing all the aspect of a comfortable countryside enriched by the tillage of two generations of white farmers. ”

“ For landscape interest conjoined to the traditional and historic I know of no part of New Zealand more attractive than the zone along the old frontier line of the Waipa country of which Te Awamutu may be described as the metropolis to-day. Beauty of physical configuration! fertility of soil, poetic Maori folklore, memories of the heroic pioneer days, tales of sadness and glory of the war years—all these elements combine to invest the border line of the Waipa and the Rohepotae with a singular value, above all to those who have had the fortune to be reared on this well-favoured land. ”

“ This sketch of the history of the Waipa district centreing in Te Awamutu has been written especially with a view to interesting the younger generation of colonists, and the now large population on both sides of the old Maori border, in the uncommonly dramatic story of the beautiful country in which their homes are set. The original settlers to whom many of the events here described were matters of personal knowledge are fast passing away, and a generation has arisen which has but a vague idea of the local history and of the old heroic life on the Waipa plains. ”

“ We rode some distance round to view the country, the Maori flour-mills, and cultivation. There were a lot of good cattle and horses about, and the crops of wheat and patches of potatoes were particularly good, although no bonedust was used in those days. The Roman Catholics had a very nice place of worship at Rangiaowhia, where regular worship was conducted. There were mission stations all up the Waikato and Waipa Rivers in those days, and as far as Te Awamutu. ”

“ Mrs Crispe, who was the daughter of Mr Mellsop, a pioneer settler of the Mauku district, was taken up by her father to the Rev. John Morgan’s mission station at Te Awamutu—in those days usually called Otawhao, after the old pa. She was then a young girl, and she was placed with the Morgans to be educated; schooling for children was a difficult problem with the back-blocks settlers in those days. All communication with the Waikato and Waipa country was carried on by canoe, for there were no roads into the interior until the troops opened up the country in the Waikato War. ”

“ At Wailuku, at the northern end of the isthmus, was the home of "Father Alexander," well known as one of the early missionaries. The name Wailuku means "Water of Destruction." A great battle was fought near here by Kamehameha the Great. [Pg 107]
Unfortunately we were unable to see the Ditch Trail, so well described by Jack London, or visit the famous Iao Valley, of which we had read such glowing descriptions. The entrance to this "gulch" is by a dark, wooded gorge that broadens out into an amphitheater surrounded by precipices as lofty as those of the Yosemite. ”

“ So far as concerned the theft of the Kiha-pu, the seers of the temple had spoken correctly. For some months a dense forest in the mountains back of Waipio, interspersed with marshes and patches of rank undergrowth, had been inhabited by a small band of wild-looking men, who boldly helped themselves to the pigs, fowls and fruits of the neighboring farmers, and held noisy festivals almost nightly within the gloomy recesses of their mountain retreat. They were said to be only half-human, and capable of assuming other than their natural forms. ”

“ One rides peacefully along a branch trail from the road, when unexpectedly, into a scene that has hinted no chasm or stream, there bursts a cataract of the Wailuku, eighty feet, into a green shaft lined with nodding ferns, where the fall, on a rainless day, sprays its deep pool with rainbows. Farther up the Wailuku, reached on foot from the main drive through cane fields, there is a succession of pools in the lava river-bed, known as the Boiling Pots from the wild swirling of cascading waters. They form a close rival to the beauty of Rainbow Falls. ”

“ Long ago, so one legend goes, the much dreaded Kuna (dragon) blocked the gorge below Rainbow Falls with intent to back the waters up and drown the goddess Hina, who dwelt in the great cave for which the falls form a curtain. How her son, the demi-god Maui, came to the rescue, saved his mother, and finally hunted Kuna from his lair up the river and slew him, is told in the legend, "The Last of Kuna."
When Paoa, a very powerful god from Tahiti, came to visit Hawaii he built a grass hut and made his home on the long, low rock—now known as Maui's canoe—in the Wailuku near its mouth. ”

“ The king’s heart grew warm toward his faithful friends as he want down into the valley to tell them there was no pursuit, and they could seek rest and healing. While the chiefs were around the poi-bowl that evening he was very quiet. He was thinking of the bodies of his warriors laid on the altars before the gods of the southern districts of the island. He thought of the naked altars of his own Waipio temple, to which he had brought no captives to be slain in sacrifice. ”

“ The Ngati-Maniapoto tribe, whose great fortress was Totorewa, an impregnable cliff-walled pa on the Waipa River, raised a feud against the Ngati-Raukawa and Ngati-Whakatere, and a large war-party set out under the chief Wahanui, who himself was a man of great frame, though no giant like Kiharoa. ”

“ Torches were lighted, armed warriors sprang with alacrity into line, and half an hour after Umi, in feather mantle and helmet plumed with royal colors, and preceded by the war-god Akuapaao, borne upon a manele, or palanquin, resting upon the shoulders of kahunas, with Kaoleioku as high-priest, marched out of the enclosure, followed by two thousand well-armed and devoted supporters. His address to his warriors was brief. “The moments are precious,” said Umi, “and must not be wasted in words. Let our spears speak, and at sunset to-morrow we will eat meat in peace in Waipio!” ”

“ Along the whole eastern face of the island of Hawaii there are numberless rills and streams that come bounding from the lofty sides of the giant mountains, in cataracts and cascades, until at last they jump from the green-clad shores into the salt foam of the ocean. One of the largest of them is the Wailuku. No farther than a league from the harbor inland is a miniature Niagara, of more than a hundred feet, which dashes a mass of broken water into a bowl-like basin, flashing upon, either side brilliant rainbows, from which the fall takes its name. ”

“ But there is a powerful man, Kalelealuaka,—if [100] he were to go into battle I am confident he would perform wonders. Such is the opinion I have formed of him, after careful study.”
So the King waited for the return of the cripple until night, and all night until nearly dawn. When finally the lame marshal arrived, the King prudently abstained from questioning him until he had rested a while and taken breath; then he obtained from him the whole story of this new hero from Waialua, whose name he did not know, but who, he declared, resembled the King’s son-in-law, Kalelealuaka. ”

“ At last one of the Waikato chiefs, regardless of the fact that his tribespeople were only in the Rohepotae by sufferance of Ngati-Maniapoto, had the hardihood to declare that the sod would not be turned because it was Waikato’s land. “Oh, well,” said the Premier, quietly regarding the deeply-incensed Wahanui, “if it is Waikato’s land we have come to the wrong place.” Then the tall, dignified rangatira Taonui, almost as big a man as Wahanui, arose and said, with angry determination: “It is our land ”

“ Six hundred armed Kingites escorted the tattooed king and his chiefs, the lordly Wahanui and his shawl-kilted cabinet of rangatiras, on the pilgrimage to the scenes of the last despairing fights, and there were amazingly animated scenes in the outermost villages of Waikato when Tawhiao came to town, riding grimly in his buggy, and guarded front and rear by his fierce-faced riflemen. The march was by way of Te Awamutu, and the Cavalry band rode out from the township along the Alexandra Road to meet the Kingites and play them through the village. ”

“ Behind, looking away up to the mountain tops, they are literally hidden in "clouds of thick darkness," and so majestic is the whole that the mind is overwhelmed with its grandeur and sublimity, and quite unfit to analyze it into its component parts.
We descend swiftly now into the famous Wairarapa Valley. The great lake now takes on a muddy hue. It is like an inland sea of dull olive green. The dun manuka hills around, and swampy flats bordering the lake, seem very tame after the majesty of the mountains and solemn grandeur of the gorges. ”

“ He is born at Keauhou, Kona, Hawaii, and goes to Waianae, Oahu, where he marries and becomes chief, under the name of Kaehaikiaholeha, because of his famous aku-catching hook called Pahuhu (see Aiai) . He goes on to Waimea, Kauai, and becomes ruler of that island, dies, and his body is brought back to Waianae. The parents place the body in a small house built of poles in the shape of a pyramid and worship it until it is strong enough to become a man again. ”

“ Haleakala Ranch, Maui, Monday, July 15.
Except one be deaf, dumb, and blind, there is no boredom in these Islands. Indeed, one must avoid bewilderment among the attractions that fill the days. Little opportunity was ours to become acquainted with the old town of Wailuku, with its picturesque population of natives and immigrants, for yesterday’s program included a private-car trip over the Hawaiian Commercial and Kihei Sugar Companies’ vast plantations. We were the guests of the superintendent of the Kahului Railroad Company, who entertained us at Kahului, where we went aboard the car. ”