An Old New Zealander; or, Te Rauparaha, the Napoleon of the South.

A new cause for anxiety, in the outbreak of hostilities at Whanganui, now diverted Grey's attention momentarily from the fugitive chief, who improved the respite thus given by refraining from any act of violence. Although no formal peace was declared, Grey wisely decided not to precipitate further trouble by following him into the marshes of Poroutawhao. True, on the very day (April 18, 1847) that the news of the outbreak at Whanganui reached Wellington, the chief made a sensational descent upon Kapiti. In the grey of the early morning a whaler named Brown was awakened by a sound at the door of his hut, and, as he raised himself on his elbow, he saw the tall form of Rangihaeata enter the room with a tomahawk in his hand. The whaler not unnaturally thought he had come to take his life, and, in his subsequent narration of the incident, he indulged in some heroics, telling how he had challenged the chief to slay him on the spot. But Rangihaeata was not in search of a defenceless whaler's blood. He had come to demand some powder which was rightly his, and which he had left there for safe keeping. When he had secured his property, he went harmlessly away, after shaking hands in the most friendly manner with the frightened seaman. Some of his followers, however, were not quite so scrupulous; and, in searching the hut for the powder, they had appropriated a bundle of bank notes and some sovereigns, and secreted them about their persons until they returned to the pa. Here Rangihaeata discovered the theft, and immediately sent back the plunder to the Governor, accompanied by a characteristic note, in which he made it clear that, however much he might be in opposition to the Government, he had no desire to be esteemed a common thief.

With Rangihaeata beaten out of the field, we may now return to Te Rauparaha, whom we left in the hands of his captors. To ensure his greater security, he was, immediately upon the arrival of the Driver at Wellington, transferred to H.M.S. Calliope,186 where he was placed under the watchful eye of Captain Stanley, for whom, we are told, he afterwards acquired a high regard. On board this ship he was detained with some show of liberty for upwards of ten months, visiting the principal ports of northern and central New Zealand, as the duties of the station demanded the presence of the vessel. During all this period no attempt was made to bring him to trial, though no pains were spared by the Governor to secure the evidence which would ensure his conviction. In a despatch written to the Colonial Office on December 1, 1846, Grey endeavoured to explain his position and justify his halting attitude, but, in the trenchant words of one of his critics, his was a justification which itself required to be justified: —

"A number of designing Europeans, who are annoyed at my interfering with their illegal purchases of land, have thought it proper to agitate the question of the justice and propriety of my arresting Te Rauparaha. Some most improper publications have already appeared, and I regret to state that I find a great effect is being produced upon the minds of the native chiefs. The difficulty of my position is that I am not yet quite satisfied whether or not it will be expedient or necessary to bring the old man to trial. In fact, I am rather anxious to avoid doing so, and I fear that, were I to make public the various crimes for which he has been seized by the Government, and the proofs of his guilt upon which the Government justify his detention, a large portion of the European population would be so exasperated against him that it would be difficult for the Government to avoid bringing him to trial; and, if I were compelled to adopt this step from having made known the charges against him, I should probably be accused of having ungenerously prejudiced the public against him previously to his being brought to trial."

The only impression which the unbiassed student can derive from a perusal of this specious reasoning is that the Governor, in seeking to excuse himself for an unjustifiable action, has in reality delivered his own condemnation for a grave breach of trust. If the "various crimes" of which the chief was suspected were as defined as the Governor implies they were, and if "the proofs of his guilt upon which the Government justified his detention" were clear and unimpeachable, obviously then it was his bounden duty to the Colony and to Te Rauparaha that the chief should be brought to trial at the earliest possible moment. But the real fact was that the offences of Te Rauparaha were as imaginary as the proofs of his guilt were mythical, and he was kept captive on a ship of war while the Governor was diligently endeavouring to find Pohi, who was supposed to be possessed of important secrets, or was sedulously filling in the missing links in the chain of evidence which he hoped would establish the fact that certain messengers, who were known to have carried information to Rangihaeata, were indeed sent by Te Rauparaha.

A fruitless ten months was spent in these endeavours to bring home guilt to Te Rauparaha, and at the end of that time Grey was forced to admit that he was still unable to prove the chief guilty in a court of law. He therefore began to consider how far he was justified in longer detaining him, while still refusing to do him the justice of giving him a clear acquittal. He temporised with other reasons, from which it is clear that he regarded the step as one of expediency rather than of right. "The detention of the prisoners," he wrote to Earl Grey, "has caused expense and inconvenience to the Government"; and therefore, to relieve his administration of something which it had forced upon itself, he was magnanimous enough to loose the chains from off the chief. But the Governor was also influenced by other considerations. He believed that the capture and long captivity of Te Rauparaha had completely destroyed his mana, so that he was now incapable of originating any new mischief, even if he were so inclined. But we may also do him the justice of believing that he was genuinely anxious to placate the Ngati-Toa people, who had repeatedly petitioned him for their leader's release, and to allay an ugly suspicion, which had gained credence amongst them, that Te Rauparaha had been murdered, and that his so-called detention was merely a subterfuge to cover a desperate crime.

"Repeated applications," wrote the Governor, "have been made by Te Rauparaha's tribe for his release, and this step seems to be quite justified by his ten months of good conduct. Waka Nene and Te Wherowhero also petitioned for his release, and went guarantee for his good behaviour. Upon the whole, with the larger force that will be placed at my disposal, and after the convincing proofs which the natives have so frequently afforded of their regarding their interests as identical with those of the Government, I entertain no apprehension of Te Rauparaha being able to effect further mischief, even if he were disposed to do so. I therefore determined to order his release, merely requiring Te Wherowhero and Waka Nene to pledge their words for his future good conduct, and although I exacted no conditions either from themselves or from the prisoners, I recommended them to require both Te Rauparaha and Hohepa to reside on the northern portions of the island until I felt justified in stating that I had no objection to them permitting Te Rauparaha to return to his own country."

Under the guarantee of good conduct given by Te Wherowhero and Waka Nene, Te Rauparaha was released at Auckland, and was received as a guest into Te Wherowhero's house, which had been built for him by the Government in what is now the Auckland Domain. Here, though nominally free, he must have felt the bitterness of his exile, for he frequently displayed the humiliation which was surging within his soul by relapsing into periods of deep melancholy, during which he doubtless meditated upon the departed glory of the past and the hopelessness of the future. With him times had indeed changed. From the imperious leader of a victorious tribe, supreme and absolute, his word the word of authority, his very look, his merest gesture, an unquestionable command, he found himself shorn of his power, degraded by captivity, destitute of influence, and little more than a memory – the hoary vestige of a stately ruin. But his path was not all strewn with thorns, and there were not wanting those, both Maori and European, who strove to lighten his burden and salve his wounded soul. Visitors frequently sought to cheer his drooping spirits, and, as a compliment to the conqueror of Kapiti, Te Wherowhero brought the flower of the Hauraki chiefs to do him honour. In September, 1847, two hundred of these warriors, casting aside their tribal prejudices, came and visited him. As the kilted band of strangers advanced, Te Rauparaha, dressed in a dogskin mat and forage cap, went out to meet them. He saluted several of the leading men according to native custom, and then followed the speechmaking inseparable from Maori gatherings. Squatting in a semicircle upon the ground, the assemblage listened with rapt attention to the oration delivered by Te Rauparaha, of whom all had heard, but whom few had previously seen. His speech was a dignified recitation of his past deeds, and while he spoke of his struggles with Waikato, his pilgrimage, and his conquests, he delivered himself brilliantly and dramatically, for the fire of the old warrior seemed to burn again within him and the blood of the victor to pulsate once more through his veins. But when he came to describe his seizure and captivity, the injustice and humiliation of it all bore down his valiant spirit, and he concluded his oration with difficulty and almost in tears. To this great effort of Maori eloquence replies of a lengthy and ceremonial nature were delivered by Taraia, Te Wherowhero, and several members of Hauraki's aristocracy, and then food was served on a sumptuous scale to the strangers. It was, however, noticed that Te Rauparaha ate but sparingly and was ill at ease. He rose and walked to his house, into which he was followed by two of the women, who there sang to him of the deeds of his fathers, and of the heroes of the ancient line from which he had sprung, the lament bringing a flood of tears to the old man's dim eyes. Still under the surveillance of Te Wherowhero, Te Rauparaha spent six months in the country of the Waikatos, the scene of some of his youthful exploits; but, feeling his freedom to be liberty only in name, and himself a stranger in a strange land, he preferred a request to the Governor to be allowed to return to his own people by the shores of Cook Strait, where was centred everything in life that he valued. The Governor granted his request, believing that he had now nothing to fear from the chief, and recognising that his return would have a quieting influence upon Rangihaeata, who, during his uncle's absence, had steadfastly refused to believe that the man by whose orders Wareaitu187 had been executed would be more merciful to Te Rauparaha. Accordingly, in January of 1848, the Governor, Lady Grey, Lieut. – Colonel Mundy, Te Wherowhero, Taraia, Te Rauparaha, and several other chiefs, embarked on board H.M.S. Inflexible and steamed for Otaki. Arrived there, the vessel was immediately boarded by Tamihana Te Rauparaha, who, clothed in the garb of a clergyman, came off to welcome his father.

The morning of January 16, 1848, was the time appointed for the restoration of Te Rauparaha to his people. When the boats had been lowered to row the party ashore, the old chief came upon the quarter-deck dressed in full naval uniform, even to the cocked hat and the epaulets. His surprise and indignation were, however, considerable when he observed that the Governor and his suite had no idea of regarding the event as a State occasion, and were clothed in simple undress coats. Nor was his ill-temper improved when the Governor further robbed the incident of ceremonial importance by refusing to accord to him the honour of a salute from the ship's guns as he left the vessel's side. With eyes flashing and nostrils dilated, he sprang back into his cabin, and, throwing off his brilliant uniform, immediately reappeared wrapped in the sombre folds of an ancient blanket. Wounded in spirit at the absence of those impressive features which would have made his homecoming something of a triumph, he landed on the Otaki beach in no enviable mood; and, as the party proceeded towards the inland pa, he turned away from them, and sitting down in the sand with his face towards the ocean, covered his old grey head with his mat, and for two hours sat and sobbed like a child. During this meditation of tears no one approached him. Maori etiquette forbade his kinsmen breaking in upon his grief, and European courtesy dictated a discreet respect for the feelings of one who had come back to find the times so vastly changed, and for him so sadly out of joint.

In that brief time, as the old warrior sat sighing in sympathy with the sobbing sea, there must have passed before him in vivid picture the whole panorama of his eventful life – his struggles, his schemes, his dreams, the anguish of defeat, the glut of victory, and then the final triumph in which tribe after tribe went down before him, and his name became wonderful and mighty throughout the land. But now, because of the advent of the pakeha, power had melted in his hand like snow. His life, like the wind-swept ruin of his old heathen pa, which stood broken and dilapidated a few chains off, had become but a shadow and a memory of the past; an exemplification of the fallible and transitory nature of mundane things. At length, rousing himself from his reverie, he proceeded to the new Christian settlement of Hadfield, at Otaki, which had been built mainly by the efforts of his son, Tamahana te Rauparaha, and his nephew, Matene te Whiwhi. A motley crowd of five or six hundred people poured out of the little settlement to welcome their chief, the Governor, and Lady Grey; and, as an evidence of the elevating influences which were operating amongst them,188 prayers in the native tongue were read in the open air, before the feast which had been prepared for the visitors was placed before them. A glass-windowed, carpeted whare was the banquet-room, and a clean damask cloth covered the table at which the guests were seated, while a daughter of Rangihaeata courteously discharged the duties of hostess.

On the following day Te Rauparaha presented himself before the people, and was received with the usual evidences of Maori jubilation – interminable speeches, wild and barbarous dances, and endless feasting. Almost immediately he exercised the prerogative of his freedom by visiting Rangihaeata, who was hovering in the neighbourhood of Otaki, but with what intent no one knew. Te Rauparaha was accompanied by Te Wherowhero and some of the visiting chiefs, and the korero lasted several days. What the precise nature of their discussions was will never be known; but that they were not of a treasonable nature may be inferred from the fact that the Governor, hearing that Rangihaeata was at that time harbouring a notorious murderer, whom he refused to deliver up to justice, sent a letter to Te Rauparaha calling upon him and his compatriots to show their displeasure at Rangihaeata's conduct by instantly withdrawing from his presence. At the time the letter arrived, the chiefs were on the point of sitting down to partake of Rangihaeata's hospitality; but without hesitation they rose and left, though not before telling the obdurate chief their reason for doing so.189

This evidence of unfailing loyalty to the Crown was as gratifying to the Governor as it must have been aggravating to Rangihaeata, who, when he met His Excellency at Otaki, roundly abused him and all the pakehas for their presumptuous interference with his affairs. He declared that he was not tired of war, but evidently men and women had changed with the times, and now preferred to fight with the tongue rather than the mere or the musket. His contempt for the Europeans and all their doings was still as vehement as ever,190 and in his violent denunciation of their encroachment upon his privileges as a chief, he declared that he wanted nothing of them, and he wore nothing of their work. He was then standing before the Governor, a tall and picturesque figure arrayed in a lustrous dogskin mat, with adornments in his hair; and when Grey quietly exposed his inconsistency by pointing to a peacock's feather dangling about his head, he angrily muttered, "True, that is pakeha," and cast it scornfully from him.

Though Rangihaeata never accepted the Christian faith, in course of time his feelings mellowed and his attitude somewhat modified towards the occupation of the land by the white people. He not only acquiesced in the policy of road-making, which he had at first so strenuously opposed, but in 1852 he constructed two lines at Poroutawhao at his own expense. A school was even established at his pa, and subsequently his declared principles not to use British goods were so far modified that he purchased and drove in an English-made buggy along roads made by British soldiers. His feelings, too, towards the Governor considerably softened, and when, in 1852, Sir George Grey was about to proceed to England for a holiday, the chief wrote to him in terms of genuine friendship, which gave proof of the surprising change which had come over the hitherto untamable spirit of "the tiger of the Wairau": —

"O Governor! my friend, I send you greeting. I need scarcely call to your remembrance the circumstances attending my flight and pursuit: how it was that I took refuge in the fastnesses and hollows of the country, as a crab lies concealed in the depths and hollows of the rocks. You it was who sought and found me out, and through your kindness it is that I am at this present time enjoying your confidence and surrounded with peace and quietness. This, then, is the expression of my esteem for you, which I take occasion to make now that you are on the point of leaving for your native land."

The release of Te Rauparaha was the signal for a furious outburst of hostile criticism against the Governor, and Colonel Wakefield led the agitation in one of the biased and bitter effusions usual with him where Te Rauparaha was concerned.191 But the anticipation of the Governor that the chief could, or would, cause the authorities no further trouble, appears to have been amply justified. So far as is known of him from this time until his death, he lived quietly and unostentatiously at the Otaki settlement. It would seem that he accepted with as good grace as he might the new order of things, and even sought to assist his people in reaching a higher plane of civilisation than at his advanced years he himself could ever hope to attain. It is at least accounted unto him for righteousness by his son, Tamahana, that it was at his suggestion the Ngati-Raukawa people built the now famous church192 at Otaki, wherein the tribe has so often heard the glad tidings of "peace on earth and goodwill towards men," so strongly contrasted with their old heathen doctrine of blood for blood. A striking feature in the architecture of this church is its central line of large totara pillars, which rise to a height of 40 feet, carrying the solid ridge-pole above. These wooden columns were hewn out of the forest on the banks of the Ohau, which in those days ran into the Waikawa, forming one large stream. The trees were felled in the bush, floated down the river to the sea, and thence dragged along the coast, one native standing on the tree with pole in hand to guide it through the surf, while a string of stalwart men tugged at the heavy tow-ropes, as they marched along the sandy beach. Column after column was, in this way, eventually landed at Waitohu, near Otaki, and then hauled across the sandhills by hundreds of brawny arms to the site where the church now stands. There the trees were, with infinite labour, dressed and prepared with native adzes, which are still kept in the church as interesting mementoes. No machinery of any kind was available to assist in the construction of the sacred edifice. Hand labour was everywhere brought into requisition, and only the most cunning workmen were employed, men of reputed skill being brought from the Manawatu to design and execute the carvings of the interior, while the reed lacework round the walls was also dexterously woven by these same masters of Maori art.

Some attempt has been made, but with dubious success, to prove that Te Rauparaha ordered the building of this church because he had become deeply and genuinely religious, and his son has given us the pious assurance that he spent these last of his days "continually worshipping."193 "I saw," says an intelligent but newly arrived clergyman, who visited him at this time, "amongst the other men of note, the old and once powerful chief, Te Rauparaha, who, notwithstanding his great age of more than eighty years, is seldom missed from his class, and who, after a long life of perpetual turmoil, spent in all the savage excitement of cruel and bloody wars, is now to be seen every morning in his accustomed place, repeating those blessed truths which teach him to love the Lord with all his heart and mind and soul and strength, and his neighbour as himself." This amiable picture, drawn in a spirit of enlarged charity, is unfortunately dimmed, and the sincerity of the chief's religious convictions discounted, by the story related of him by a conscientious, if unfriendly, critic. "A few days before his death," says this writer,194 "when suffering under the malady which carried him off, two settlers called to see him. While there, a neighbouring missionary came in and offered him the consolations of religion. Rauparaha demeaned himself in a manner highly becoming such an occasion, but the moment the missionary was gone, he turned to his other visitors and said: 'What is the use of all that nonsense? – that will do my belly no good.' He then turned the conversation on the Whanganui races, where one of his guests had been running a horse." Such an incident, if true, leaves behind it the impression that the chief was shrewd enough to observe that the Christian faith had taken root amongst his people, and conventional enough to adopt it for fashion's sake, without realising any real spiritual change. But we will not attempt to pass judgment upon one who was at so manifest a disadvantage in grasping the mysteries of a faith which centuries of science and learning have left still obscure to many more fortunately circumstanced. But, whatever the chief's spiritual condition may have been, it was not vouchsafed to him to witness the completion of his building scheme. He had long passed man's allotted span, and life's last stage was closing in upon him. He was in his eighty-first year, and was stricken with an internal complaint, the precise nature of which has not been ascertained, but which necessitated his taking much rest. His last days were therefore spent in enforced inactivity, and, while practically an invalid, his greatest delight was to recount to those capable of appreciating his narrative the stories of his early campaigns. The late Bishop Hadfield was especially favoured in this respect; and when he grew weary of the company of his own people (of whose intellectuality he had so small an opinion that he once remarked that they could talk of nothing better than dogs and pigs), he would send for the missionary, and regale him with stories of the past, told with a native force which aroused astonishment and admiration in the mind of his hearer. His descriptions of former fights were generally dramatic, frequently graphic, and always eloquent, for his vocabulary was rich in words and phrases which were far beyond the linguistic capacity of the natives by whom he was surrounded. It is to be regretted that these recitals have perished with the good Bishop. Until quite late in his life a vivid impression of them remained in his memory, and his constant readiness to refer to them confirms the claim that Te Rauparaha was a man of superior intellect, in so far as that term may be applied to a Maori of his day.

Towards the end of November, 1849, the complaint from which he was suffering begun to assume a more malignant form. On the 24th of that month he received a last visit from Rangihaeata, and bade farewell to his erstwhile comrade in arms. Three days later he was dead; the event was consummated for which Colonel Wakefield so devoutly wished when, ten years before, he wrote: "It will be a most fortunate thing for any settlement formed hereabouts when he dies, for with his life only will end his mischievous scheming and insatiable cupidity." Had Te Rauparaha been asked to pen his opinion of the promoters of the New Zealand Company, he might have couched his judgment in much the same terms. But now that he was dead there was no need, and little desire, to keep open the floodgates of vituperation, and there were many who in his lifetime could find no kindly thought for him, but were willing to bury the bitterness of racial misunderstanding in the grave wherein the chief was so soon to be laid.