BURNED THEIR FOES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 173, 20 January 1912, Page 6

BURNED THEIR FOES.

A PAGAN WAR RITE IN THE BUSH.

THE REAL STORY OF VON TEMPSKY'S END.

(By James Cowan in Dunedin Star)

Bit by bit one is enabled to piece together the real story of the Hauhau wars, the war story from the inside—the Maori side. The pakeha side is well known, and has been told again and again. But it is to the Maoris, and to those few white men who have shared some of the adventures of the Maoris, that one must go to learn the true inwardness of many an incident of the campaigns of the '"sixties. Here, for instance, is an episode in the dark story of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu, the Taranaki forest stockade—the Death Trap of the Plains, as it has been called —where Von Tempsky and more than a score of his comrades fell in 1868, outgeneralled by the warriors of the woods. Many of the actors in these savage scenes are still alive. Two of the occupants of the pa were in Wellington the other day, and we talked about the fight. One of them was Tutange, of the Patea country, who tomahawked Von Tempsky after he fell to the fatal bullet of Te Rangi-hina-kau. The other was Titokowaru's cartridge-maker and adopted "mokopuna," or grandson, the white ex-soldier, Kimble Bent.

It is the day after the fight. The square in the centre of the forest stockade is an amazing scene of excitement. The men, with blackened faces, and all but nude, are dancing furious akas and yelling war songs that can be heard a mile away. The women are yelling, too, screaming to each other, and running about with tomahawks in their hands; dogs are barking; children are screeching. It is a bedlam in the forest. The reason? There, on the ground, lie the naked bodies of a score of white men, stripped by the Hauhaus, who had dragged them in from the forest where they had been left when the retreat was ordered. Von Tempsky's body is there. The face has been hacked about with a tomahawk, the work of one of the Maori women—the natives revenged themselves in such fashion upon, the dead for those of their relatives who fell in the battle—but it is easily recognised by the long, black, curly hair, of which the major was so proud. The camp is in a quiver of ferocious exultation over the fall of; "Manu-rau," the pakeha fighting man whom they most dreaded. "Manu-rau" I they called him because of his activity in guerilla warfare. "Many birds," it I means. Von Tempsky was here, there and everywhere with his Forest Rangers, as nimble as the very birds of the forest. His long curved syord, which he always carried without a sheath when on the warpath, is in the hands of one of the dancing Hauhaus. And there, in front of the heap of slain, stands grim old Titokowaru, the war chief of Ngati-Rua-nui, the planner of ambuscades and midnight surprises, the victor of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu. , Long he stands there, his: chin resting upon his two hands, which are crossed on the end of his long tongueI pointed taiaha, his halbert-fashioned I staff. A dour old savage, glowering, | gloating over the terrible fruit of tie, i battlefield, the Fish of Tu. At last he' raises his head, and in a great croaking voice' cries to his men that they must "tahutalra" the bodies of the pakehas—they must destroy them by fire. And this must be done within the walls of | the pa. The slain must be dragged outside the palisades, on to the little clearing which fronts the fenced bush village. And with savage cries that go ringing through the forest the brown foresters obey the orders of their priest and war captain.

As Odin, in the Norse nature-myth, directed the building of Balder's funeral pile, so Titokowaru ordered his followers to burn the bodies of "Manu-rau" and his fallen heroes. Sigurd, the lover of Brunhild, the favorite hero of'the North, was 1 80 cremated, as you may read in the "Nibelungenlied." The funeral pyres of the Maoris resembled those of the ancient Vikings. But the Maoris, unlike the Norse, who burned only the bodies of their friends, took care in this case to cremate the remains of their foes as well. ;; And the scene at that funeral Pyre., i® the heart of the Maori bush,' certainly equalled in picturesqiieness, if it. surpassed in savagery, any Norse heroburning. . TITOKOWARU'S FAREWELL TO VON TEMPSKY. When the funeral pyre was prepared by the Hauhaus, the body of Von Tempsky was laid upon it in the middle, and the other slain soldiers were piled around and above him, laid crossways on'each other. As the Maoris cast the major's body on the pile of firewood Titokowaru stalked forward, his taiaha in his hand, and cried his farewell word, his kupu poroporoaki, to his dead foeman. These were his words: • I nga ra i mua i whawhai koe i tena wahi i tena walii. i ki hoki hoe ka puta i tena wahi, i ki hoki koe go puta koe koe kite ao marama. Ka tae mai hoki koe ki au, moe ana a kanohi. Taea hokitia nau i kima mate mou naku. Ka moe koe! (In the days of the past you fought here and you fought there, and you boasted that you would always emerge safely from your battles to the bright world of life. But when you Encountered me, your eyes were closed in their last sleep! It could not be helped; you sought your death at my ■hands. And now you sleep for ever!) In this not unpoetic fashion did the great war chief of the forest speed his fallen foe to the spirit land of heroes. The great pile of firewood, trunks and branches of dry tawa were set alight with a brand from one of the village fires. ° Soon with a roaring rose the mighty fire, ° J And the pile crackled; and between the logs Sharp quivering tongues of flame shot out and leapt, Curling and darting, higher, until they lick'd ' The summit of the pile. —"Balder Dead" (Matthew Arnold). When the funeral pyre was kindled an old man walked *p to it with a long forked stick of green timber in his hand, an unbarked sapling about seven feet long. He was Titokowaru's toliunga, or priest, by name Te Waka-takere-nui. His wrinkled cheeks were deeply tattooed. The old warlock stood in front of the pile as the flames shot up, and chanted a song; and when the logs with their terrible burdens were well alight, he began A STRANGE INCANTATION. ' Usuing his long two-pronged stick with both hands, he turned over the burning log, forked the bodies this way and that, and pushed them closer together into the heart of the flames. As he did 80 he recited a pagan karakia, the chant of the Iki (or Iliki), anciently repeated over the bodies of warriors when they were being cremated on the battlefield. These, translated, were the words of the incantation (the mystic meaning underlying some of the expressions would require jnany notes to fully elucidate them; the original began: "Ka waere, ka waere, ka waere i runga ma kereta"):

Clear them away, Clear them away! Sweep them into the earth; There let them perish and. decay, For now they but cumber the grouni Sweep man's flesh to dust again. Fork them that way! Haul them this way ! Fork them to Whiti, Fork them to Tonga, To the ancient homes of man. Here I hold my fork erect, I turn them this way, that way. Quickly stir the funeral pile; Now this way haul, now that! Their spirits far have gone; The flesh alone remains; They have gone the way of Destiny. Their courage no longer stirs them; Their pride and power have flown; Their valor's gone! In the fullness of life they fell— Like the fullness of the tide! And now they lie naked before me! They leaped in the war-dance; And were strenuous in battle! But they fell! Farewell! spirits of the brave! The pride and power of heroes! Heart of Earth, and Heart of Heaven— For both joined to produce you! Now turns the night; It turns to day again. The clouds obscure the sky; We search for light, The perfect light of day. The black smoke soared straight lip iij a tall and awful pillar from the burning pyre, and as every now and then the bursting of a body would send up the flames and smoke in thicker volume, the j bushman would laugh fiendishly, and cry,» "Haere, haere, e koro!" (Go, depart, old man!) Like the smoke from a burning Viking dragon-ship, the funeral boat, so rose the corpse-smoke, black, in the midst of the green forest. And so, in that fiery breath, in true heroic fashion; farewelled by the pagan scalds and the savage tatooed braves, passed the fallen white men of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu. THE SWORD OF "MANU-RAU." ' One day in the early 'eighties, long' after the war, Kimble Bent was in Parihaka. He paid a visit to some acquaintances of his who were living there, in a whare by the side of the road which led through the village. As he entered the house, stepping over the high paepae or threshold, one of the men seated within the house said to him: "You have crossed a very rich threshold." (He paepae whai-taonga). "What do you men?" asked Bent. "Beneath that beam of wood," replied the Maori, "there lies the sword of 'Manu-rau.'" Which was the truth. The owner of the whare had become possessed of Von Tempsky's sword, which was preserved as a sacred relic, a "taumahatanga," an offering to the gods. It was not displayed in public, but placed beneath the threshold, to which in Maori eyes a kind of sanctity attached and beneath which valuable rfelics were often placed, t* add to the security of the house and occupants. The sword was carefully greased and wrapped in flannel, in order to preserve it, before it was laid- in its rest-ing-place. And there, as far as I know, it lies to this day.