TAUPO-NUI-A-TIA

Taupo Times, Volume II, Issue 65, 15 April 1953, Page 1

TAUPO-NUI-A-TIA

TALES OF THE TAUPO COUNTRY

(By

K. H.

W.)

In this column, in the Times of April 1st., it was related how Lieut. Herbert Meade, having spent nearly four week at Taupo in January 1865, had set out on the 27th. from Oruanui, with a Maori guide named Hemipo, in a n endeavour to make his way through the hostile Kingite area to the nearest British post in the Waikato. The same afteroon he was forcibly detained at Taharoa by a party of a hundred and fifty armed Hau-haus. Te Aokatoa, the leader, a tattooed tohunga oi the old sehool, stop'ped a threatening attack upon him by several of his followers and commenced the Hau- hau eerejnonv of worship.

iSilence having been established, Te Ao-kato^, standing near the pole, from which three flags were flying, of different types, but each bearing -a eix>ss? commenced the service, which consisted of a long recitative, aecompanied by obeisances toward ihe staff, foliowed by the chanting of a hymn and something in the style of a iitany to which tne people gave responses. Then the whole gathering sprang to their feet and in a circular column, some eight or ten deep, began to march siowiy round the pole, pointing to the sky with guns, swords or taiahas, and. chanting responses to the priest in excellent time and powerful voices. This -ceremony over, the congregation became a ''runanga" to decide on Meade's fate. The first two speakers urged that Meade should be killed, tne second of them including Hemipo, the guide, as Well, the ground for their demand being that Meade was a spy. The majority indicated their a greemont with the speakers by cries of "Let the pig be stuck!" and "Let the calf (te kuao) be killed!" Following this inauspickms start of ihe proceedings, the guide Hemipo addressed the assembly, asserting that Meade's only purpose in wishing to pass thfough their territory was to avoid missing his ship, and asserting that Meade had not been concerned with the war. He spoke particularly to the Ngatiraukawa tribesmen present, to whom his fatheri, Ngaperi, a Kingite chief, was related, and Meade records his admiration of the way in which Hemipo, whose life was in almost as much danger as his own, comported himself, Speaking in a cool, almost careless, manner as thoughi speaking to his own, people at home. Behaving, in faet, as Meade says, as became a "rangatira" in difficulties. Then Te Ao-katoa rose and in a violent speech demanded Meade's death, "Mate rawai Mate rawai Let him die, let him die!" He was followedi by others, and now, wiaen thmgs were sjooking black indeed, a young woman Ipft her place among the Kingites, \ and walking slowly across the open space, sat down by Meade's feet. It was Ahumai, whom Meade and Mair had met shortly before at Waihaha, in the W estern Bay, the Taupo woman who, at the Battle of Orakau, had replied to the ofter of safety for the women and children by saying that if the men must die, they would die with them. She was a woman of considerable influence, and her action was the turning point in the debate, for the majority of the later speakers, influenced by her obviously sympathetic gesture. expressed the opinion that it would 'b© bad policy to risk provoki ng an attack from the Arawas by killing their late guest. At last Meade and his guide were

told that they might go, returning by the way they had come, and: in an atmosphere of tension they walk- ! ed to their horses and commenced to saddle theim. Then came an anxious moment for Meade, for a Maori came running from the pa and called Hemipo to one side. Meade at first thought that this was a ruse to enable the others to shoot him from the pa, fifty yards away. But it turned out that the man wished to warn them that strong party were still determined to kill him, and at cnce Meade and Hemipo sprang to their saddles and rode for their lives, observing as they did so several men! hastily leaving the pa, But the fugitives had got a good lead, and rode hard for some miles, reaching Oruanui that night berween nine and ten p.m. A few weeks later the Rev Carl Volkner and the Rev Thomas Grace, of Pukawa, Taupo, fell into the hands of the Hauhaus at Opotiki. Volkner was killed, but Grace was spared and later escaped. Wamed by his experience, Meade abandoned jhe- idea of reaching Auckland direct, and shortly after left Tapuaeharuru and rode to Napier, which he reached on February 1st., and was able to proceed from there by ship to Auckland.