CHAPTER VII. CAUSES OF WAR.
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CHAPTER VII.
CAUSES OF WAR.
IT was a threat uttered by the chief Rerewaka that brought destruction on the Ngaitahu tribe, who at the time held all the land in the provinces of Otago and Canterbury. Rerewaka said, "If Rauparaha dares to set his foot on my land, I will rip him open with a fish's tooth." Rauparaha, hearing this threat, bided his time, and then set foot on the land of Ngaitahu, and killed hundreds of the inhabitants at Kaiapoi and other places, but not without reverses, for that much-belauded chief suffered severely by the hands of Tuhawaiki and his merry men on several occasions, though his own historians always forget to mention the fact. Women and land have also contributed their share towards war. Women, because it frequently happened that girls eloped with men of other tribes, and in such cases blood vengeance was almost certain to follow. Land in all countries has been a bone of contention, and as each Maori tribe had the most intimate acquaintance with the boundaries of its land, and yearly exercised rights of ownership by cultivating small patches at the uttermost corners, not so much for the sake of food, but rather as a challenge, after the fashion of the traditional Irishman, who, dragging his coat through the Fair, exclaimed, "Deny my right if you dare!" The hunting and fishing grounds were also rigidly preserved, and any intruder promptly punished, as the following evidence, elicited in a land court, will more accurately describe:-- Counter-claimant: "Did you ever hear of my tribe having performed acts of ownership on this land? Claimant: "Yes, Ngarangikaputa came to Marekato in the days of Rangikahia; he came to snare birds." Counter-claimant, triumphantly: "Well? Claimant: "Well, we killed him and eat him then and there." Another peculiar custom, very instructive to Maori
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character, has been a fruitful source of war, as, for instance, should a man feel himself injured or aggrieved by his own tribe, or even by any individual member thereof of so exalted a position as to preclude the possibility of direct revenge, he would revenge himself indirectly by killing some person belonging to some powerful tribe, and thus draw down their wrath upon his own people, who would then have to adopt his quarrel in self-defence. Mr. J. A. Wilson tells us, in the "Life of Te Waharoa," that this was done by the Arawa chief Huka, who murdered a relative of Te Maharoa named Hunga, and thus caused the death of hundreds of his fellow clansmen at Maketu, Tauranga, and Rotorua. Another instance is quoted by Mr. J. White, in his lectures on native customs. In this case the Ngatikahukaka tribe were commanded by two brothers, Tamakae and Tamakou. These two chiefs quarrelled, and the younger slew his brother, whereupon the followers of the elder brother, being unable or unwilling to kill their remaining chief, murdered a Waikato man, whose tribe, in their turn, exterminated Ngatikahukaka. It may truly be stated, that ordinary killing was not considered by Maoris as murder; in fact they have no Maori equivalent for the word murder, but in all cases use the word for treachery. No matter how inoffensive the victim might have been, or how friendly with his assassins, it was not murder in Maori eyes, unless some element of treachery entered into the deed. Thus to meet some unoffending member of a friendly tribe away from his village, and kill him, was an extremely praiseworthy act, provided the tribe had not too much work on their hands just then, in which case the manslayer might be censured for his pokanoa (interference); but if the victim had been invited into a friendly village and killed while in fancied security, it would be a kohuru of the worst type, and an act that would produce undying hatred, and a blood-feud for generations. The Maoris of Te Wairoa have not yet forgotten the murder of Karaitiana and others by Te Waru, in 1868, and never will, and if ever that chief visits Te Wairoa or Poverty Bay he will probably never leave it alive. Again, the murder
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of Mr. Chas. Broughton, by the Patea natives in 1865, was a more than usual aggravated case of kohuru, inasmuch as the whole tribe took part in it, and deliberately invited their victim to the pa, with the full intention of killing him; and I am positively certain that the subsequent imprisonment of the Pakakohi tribe, at Dunedin, and confiscation of their land, is looked upon with complacency by all the tribes who know the circumstances of his death, for the genuine Maori does not admire treachery even against an enemy.
