A DARING ENTERPRISE.
THE ATTACK. UPON lIUIRAXGI FIFTY-THREE YEAIiS AGO. The attack -upon •Jhiirangi redoubt, in Taranaki, which took place just- fifty years ago, was one of the very few inilanccK of a .Maori war party attempting 1 to storm a British fortilied post (says the Lyttelton Times), it was a particularly daring enterprise. About a hundred and forty Natives, armed chiefly with tomahawks, crept, unseen into the outer trench of the redoubt, and were partly up the. face of the parapet before they were discovered in the early dawn. Then there was a desperate hand-10-haiid light, and the Maoris very ncarlrf succeeded ill capluring the work. Had the white sentries been less vigilant. Uewi and (lapurona, the chiefs of the attacking party, would have had their own way with the small garrison. But they were beaten oil', leaving fortyfive dead bodies in the trenches and main - others outside.
This post, known as Xo. •! Redoubt, was one of a chain of square entrenchments which were built parallel with General Pratt's celebrated sap—the longest and slowest on record as it was contemptuously styled by the general's critics —which the patient and cautious commander constructed above the banks of the, Wailara River in the direction of the Maori stronghold of Te Arei. The remains of two of these redoubts are still to be seen close to the roadside, but Xo. ?> has given place to the green lawns and fruit trees of a, pretty farm A pioneer settler built his homestead on the spot where the tatooed warriors lay in the ditch t'hat morning waiting until the first glimmer of light in -fie cast gave them the signal for attack, It: is a ipiiet peaceful spot now, and two cannon-balls, tired in 1801, from General Pratt's artillery, which are fixed on the gate-posts at Hie. entrance to the farm, are the only reminders of the lighting davs now visible on the s!te of* the redoubt. At Sentrv Hill in 188-1 and at, Tuni-luru-Alokal'iu ISIIS the Taranaki Maoris again attempted to rush white redoubts in the earlv dawn, their favorite tim? for attack,' but failed as at iliiirangi. leaving large nuni'bers of their men dead on the slopes in front of the hill posts. At Turuturu-Mokai they very nearly succeeded in capturing the redoubt, a verv small one. and killed and wotiudeii two-thirds of the garrison, only a score |of colonial soldiers in all. The Waikalu iKingitcs did not share in these later affairs, bill at Iliiirangi it. was undoubtedly P.ewi. with his Ngati-Mauiapou, men from the Iqiper Waikato. who war. the leading spirit, and the Natives sav Hint he displayed far more daring there than he did 'three years later in U": famous defence of the Arakntl pa. where the deeds of chivalry and defiance with which popular history credits him. and which have ' inspired more than one pakehu pool, were performed in reality by a chief of his allies from Tanpo. But as the Maoris explain, a man is not equally brave at all li s. Orakau was not Rewi's 'lighting day": Iliiirangi was.
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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 184, 3 February 1914, Page 6
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512A DARING ENTERPRISE. Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 184, 3 February 1914, Page 6
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