CHAPTER II. MANGAPOURI
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CHAPTER II
MANGAPOURI
MY MOTHER BRAVES THE ANGER OF A MAORI CHIEF, WHO MAKES AN ATTEMPT ON MY FATHER'S LIFE--WE RETURN TO THE BAY OF ISLANDS.
ON the 24th of September, 1835, my father was very much shocked by the cruel and wicked conduct of a native chief, who lived at a small village about a mile from Mangapouri. This man had amongst his slaves a young Taranaki chief whom he had taken prisoner in battle, when Waikato invaded Taranaki in 1832. The slave discovered that his own wife, to whom he was deeply attached, was in the possession of a neighbour of his master, and the husband and wife, after a few secret interviews, agreed to run off together and make their way back to their own country. But they had not gone far before they were both discovered and recaptured. As soon as the young man's master saw him he seized a loaded gun and levelled it at him, and in spite of his touching appeal to be spared for his wife's sake, the master fired and shot him dead.
New Zealand at that period was a land of murderers, and it was impossible, my father wrote in his journal, "to go far in any direction without finding the remains of some persons who had been lately killed." The very day he heard of the Taranaki chief's murder he was walking along a well-used path between two Maori villages, when he came upon the body of a noted chief of Ngati-maru killed in a battle which took place a short
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SAVAGE SCENES AT MANGAPOURI
time before. The body was lying by the roadside, and with the assistance of a friendly native he made, with great difficulty--having only bits of stick to dig with--a hole, in which he buried the body. A number of Maoris, who witnessed this act of respect paid to the remains of a fellow creature, jeered at my father for taking so much trouble to "cover up a worthless corpse."
Not long before this happened, a very cruel murder took place in the very place where my parents were living. One of the ruling chiefs of the pa was suddenly taken very ill, and not being able to account for his illness, he came to the conclusion that a chief who was his visitor had bewitched him. He sent for his brother, the fierce Awa-rahi, and begged him to kill the visitor. Awa-rahi felt no scruple about killing a guest of the tribe. He went away to sharpen his hatchet, and prayed to the cruel gods he worshipped to help him to kill Horeta. 1 At dawn one morning he rushed into the house where that chief was sleeping, and seizing him by the hair of the head, dragged him outside; and though the man gave the alarm, and shouted "He kohuru" (a murder) his cries were soon silenced in death by the sharp hatchet which the strong arm of Awa-rahi buried in his skull.
You can imagine my dear mother's feelings when this very same chief Awa-rahi opened the door of her room one day when my father was away, and demanded from her a blanket. She said: "I have no blanket to give you."
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MY MOTHER REPROVES AN ANGRY CHIEF
"Nonsense," he said, "what is that I see lying on that bed." And before my mother could stop him, he seized the corner of the blanket and jerked it off the bed. To his surprise a baby fell out of it upon the floor. Fortunately the bed was level with the ground, and the baby had not far to fall. My mother gave a sharp cry of alarm and picked up her infant, and then turned to face the intruder.
"Is this how Maori chiefs treat Englishwomen who trust to them for protection?" she said. "Do they come to rob them when their husbands are away? Leave my blanket, and come for it when my husband is here to protect me."
Awa-rahi, shamed by her words, and conscience-stricken, left the blanket, and went out. Love for her child, and trust in God's protection, nerved my dear young mother to show such wonderful courage and self-control in the presence of that cruel savage, who was soon to give her still further cause for alarm.
On my father's return in the evening, he listened with much concern to the account my mother gave of what had taken place during his absence, because he felt sure that the demand for a blanket would be repeated, and if yielded to, would probably lead to similar demands being made by every bullying fellow about the place There were no police whom he might call in to protect his property. There were no magistrates or government officials nearer than Sydney, twelve hundred miles away, whose protection might be sought. He was alone in the midst of a lawless set of people, who robbed and killed one another, and did just what they pleased. He was far away
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--WHO THREATENS MY FATHER
in the interior of a country where everyone did what was right in his own eyes. It was true that one of the chiefs of the place was friendly to him, but then the man had no real power and could not restrain the ill-disposed persons amongst his countrymen, if they felt inclined to ill-treat missionaries; least of all could he restrain his brother, to whom he was indebted for killing Horeta.
It was necessary, therefore, for every European who in those lawless times ventured to live amongst the Maoris, to be self-reliant, and never to let any native imagine that he could frighten him into doing anything he did not wish to do. So when Awa-rahi followed my father the next day into the storehouse, and began asking him first for a blanket, and then for an iron pot, and lastly for a stick of tobacco, my father politely refused all his requests, and told him that the things in the store were not intended for presents, but for the purchase of food, or for the payment of work done for the missionaries, and that if he wanted anything in the store he must bring its equivalent in food; either a pig, or some potatoes or kumaras. Awa-rahi became very abusive, and flourished his little hatchet in a threatening manner over the head of my father, who took no notice of his threats, but gently pushed him out of the door and locked it, and rejoined my mother. The chief went away in a towering rage, vowing vengeance. In less than half an hour he returned with his head and face smeared with red ochre, which gave him a very diabolical appearance, and with nothing on his body but a small mat fastened round his waist. He carried a gun in his hand, and had
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AWARAHI'S ATTEMPT TO KILL MY FATHER
a cartridge case strapped to his side. With a loud yell he rushed up to the window and cried out, "Come forth, that I may shoot you, and burn your house down." Instead of accepting the invitation, and going outside to be shot, my father kept pacing up and down the little sitting-room, while my mother, with her infant in her arms, sat where she could not be seen from the window. She had hardly seated herself before the whiz of a bullet, followed by the loud report of a musket, sounded through the house. Eight times the infuriated savage fired, and eight times the musket balls flew across the room.
The noise of the firing soon brought together a large concourse of Maoris, who began yelling and shouting at the top of their voices. Fortunately they were giving expression to their disapproval of Awa-rahi's inhospitable behaviour towards their missionary guests. But their remonstrances would have had little weight with the cruel murderer of Te Horeta, and my father's life would doubtless have been sacrificed but for the courage and devotion of one of the converts, who was a near relative of the chief, and who succeeded, after a violent struggle, in wresting his gun from him, and with the help of others diverted Awa-rahi's attention, while one or two friendly disposed natives entered our house and induced my father and mother to make their escape and seek refuge with Mr. Hamlin, the other Church missionary who was sharing with them the labours and dangers of the Mangapouri outpost. His house was not far off, and, under cover of the brushwood, they succeeded in reaching it without
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MY FATHER WRITES UP HIS JOURNAL
being observed by the crowd who were clamouring around Awa-rahi. When that chief discovered that my parents had escaped, he yielded to the solicitations of the natives who were friendly to them, and consented to give up his murderous designs, and not only did he keep his word, but from that time forward constituted himself their special protector.
This attack on my father was made on the 18th of December, 1835, when I was just nine months old. On the 26th of the same month my father made the following entry in his journal: "Mr. Hamlin and I examined my house to-day where Awa-rahi had struck it with the balls. Most of the bullets were embedded in the thick totara slabs which formed the framework of the house. I managed to extract four of them, which will serve me as a remembrance of Mangapouri in time to come, when I may be far away from the place. The lowest ball mark I found in the rush partition of the sitting-room, about four feet above a rough kind of sofa on which Mrs. Stack generally sits. Seven balls entered the house, and one struck the ridge of the roof."
The balls which my father extracted from the posts of the house were carefully treasured for many years, and were in my possession at St. Stephen's, Kaiapoi, and were lost there, when my house was burnt down in 1870.
My mother brought with her from England a pet goldfinch, which was the only thing about her at Mangapouri to remind her of her own home in the Old Country. During her enforced absence
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THE SHEDDING OF A CHIEF'S BLOOD
from the house it was not properly attended to by the native woman sent to feed it, and to my mother's great grief, it died. My father skinned it, and preserved it so well with chemicals, that it was in perfect preservation twenty-five years afterwards. It perished with so many other things precious to me, in the fire at Kaiapoi.
Before my parents had time to recover from the alarming attack upon them they received another serious shock to their nerves. A chief of high rank belonging to the place was making a canoe, in a forest not far away from the mission station. He had nearly completed the canoe when he was visited by one of the Christian natives in the employ of the missionaries, a man of very low rank, but a very skilful canoe-builder. This man, on seeing the chief's work, pointed out how the shape of the canoe might be improved, and asked to be allowed to make a few alterations. The chief agreed, and handing him his adze, squatted on the ground close by and watched him while he chipped away. All at once the adze glanced off the side of the canoe and struck the chief's head, inflicting a scalp wound, which bled profusely.
For a man of inferior rank to spill the blood of a chief was reckoned a capital crime amongst the Maoris, and the unfortunate perpetrator of the deed was in great terror, and tried to staunch the wound; at the same time he dispatched his wife, who fortunately was the only other witness of the accident, to fetch my father and Mr. Hamlin to his assistance. They came with all speed to the spot, and succeeded in stopping the bleeding and in plastering up the wound. The old chief
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CAUSES GREAT CONSTERNATION
acknowledged that the blow he got was purely accidental, and said that he bore no ill-will towards their servant for what he had done, but that he could not tell how his own people might regard the matter; they might demand satisfaction for the spilling of his blood. In the meantime, all traces of it were removed from his person and clothes, and anything used to staunch the bleeding was carefully burnt under the old man's direction, and he promised to say nothing about it to his friends. For some time the missionary party were in hourly dread of what might happen, but the old chief kept his promise, and the danger passed away.
Though delivered for the moment from their fears, my parents were constantly hearing of atrocious acts of violence perpetrated amongst themselves by the natives in their immediate neighbourhood, and the following entry made at the time occurs in my father's journal: "One of the Uriokoro, a tribe living close by here, whom Mr. Hamlin and I are in the habit of visiting regularly for the purpose of giving instruction, has just been proved guilty of killing his wife and hiding her body in the fern. But no punishment will be inflicted upon him. A man's life and that of a dog seem to be of equal value in the estimation of these bloodthirsty people."
The unsettled state of the natives, who were always fighting and quarrelling amongst themselves, caused such constant interruption to the work of teaching them the truths of the Christian religion, that the Directors of the Mission decided to remove my father and Mr. Hamlin from Mangapouri to some part of the country where
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WE ARE RECALLED FROM MANGAPOURI
their services would be of more use to the Maoris, and our next home was fixed somewhere on the south side of Manukau Harbour, but only for a short time, as my father removed to the Bay of Islands before the end of 1837. What I have told you so far was either related to me by my parents, or extracted from letters written by them to friends, during the period of my infancy; but from this point onwards I shall give you my own recollections of the places I visited, the people I saw, and the things that happened during my childhood.
