Chief’s Resting-Place

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1066, 2 September 1930, Page 8

Chief’s Resting-Place

Early History Recalled

ON Sunday, at Waitara, Taranaki, the ashes of Sir Maui Poraare were laid to rest. So passed away a great Maori who did much for his people and for New Zealand. Let us go back a hundred years to a time when, in almost the same place, terrible atrocities were committed by a war-party of Waikato Maoris.

It was in November, 1831, that a party of Waikato natives cam©''to Waitara in order to seek some fish which they said was not to be found anywhere in their own district. The hospitable Te Ati-Awas treated their distinguished guests right royally, and when the Waikatos left the district they were showered with presents of dried fish and other delicacies dear to the heart of the early Maori. These natives had been sent out by the tribes of the Waikato to investigate. Not long after this party had returned home, a great “taua” of 4.000 Maoris came down the coast thirsting for “utu.” This they were claiming because of their great defeat at the hands of the Ati-Awas at the battle of Te Motu-Nui near Urenui in 1821. In that battle the Waikatos had lost several of their principal chiefs and as a consequence were eager to wipe out their defeat —and to wipe it out in blood! On came the men of the Waikato, burning and pillaging. And at last they cam£ to the place at which they meant to exact their price in full. This was the Puke-rangiora Pa standing on a precipice 300 feet above the Waitara River. The inhabitants of the district had seen the smoke from the fires of the burning pas and had become panic-stricken at the thought of being taken as slaves or killed. So they fled to the shelter of Puke-rangiora Pa. This, at normal times, was crowded, but with the addition of hundreds of frightened Maoris, the position became extremely awkward. These frightened Ati-Awas, in their flight, left in the fields, large stocks of almost ripened kumara for the enemy, and did not have the forethought to take in any stock of water. It was to this that the massacre was due. One morning the Waikatos arrived on the opposite side of the Waitara River. A golden opportunity was given to the men of the pa when the enemy was crossing the river. As the long straggling lines of the invading party would have had no chance against a well-concerted attack by the Ati-Awa warriors. The chance was not taken. That day the Waikato men tried an assault on the pa, but were repulsed with the loss of four chiefs and several men. Finding that way of conquest not open to them, the Waikato laid siege

to the pa. Inside the palisades there were between 1,800 and 2,200 souls, and as the supply of water normally used was renewed from day to day, the discomfort soon became acute. For three long months the siege kept on. The men inside the pa tried the experiment of sending about 200 old women and children away under cover of darkness, but these had not gone far before the Waikatos discovered them. They were killed. At last the Ati-Awas became desperate, and resolved upon an attempt to escape. Instead of trying at nightfall, however, they essayed their foolhardy plan in broad daylight, within full view of the enemy! Then began a massacre—a masacre that for sheer cruelty would be hard to equal. More than 1,600 Ati-Awas were killed that day. The Waikatos captured hundreds of Ati-Awa people, who were decapitated. Ati-Awa women, to save their small children from such savagery, threw them over the precipice and flung themselves after. It is on record that the chief of tho Waikatos, Te Wherowhero, killed more than 150 with liis own hand by smiting them with one single stroke of his mere. He would have continued after that, but his arm became too swollen. One writer has described a phase of the massacre as follows: “That day the Waikatos glutted themselves on the bodies of the slain lying in gore around the pa.” Later in his description he says: “Young children and lads were cut open by incisions hastily made, evicerated. and roasted on sticks placed before large fires made of the palisading of the pa.” One man who escaped from the pa. Ihaia Te Kuri-Kumara, described it afterward. He said: “All was deserted—the land, the sea. the streams, the lakes, the forests, the rocks, the food, the property, the works: the dead and the sick were deserted: the landmarks were deserted.” Return to the present. Sunday, August 31, 1930. There are again weeping women at Waitara. Their wailing seems to echo the grief that is a century old. But there is a difference. The tribes are now living in amity, and Waikato and Te Ati-Awa and all the Maori people have united this day to mourn the passing of a great chief. T.P.M.