History of Australia and New Zealand Part 14

#1. Govenor Fitzroy.#--When Governor Hobson died, his place was taken by his friend Lieutenant Shortland until a new Governor could be sent out.

The English people were at this time very anxious to see that the natives of new lands which they colonised should be fairly treated, and for that purpose they chose Captain Fitzroy to be the new Governor. Up to this time he had been the captain of a ship and had made himself famous in surveying and mapping little known sh.o.r.es in his ship the _Beagle_, in which he had visited New Zealand on a trip round the world, and he was therefore called to give evidence as to its condition before the Committee of the House of Lords in 1838. He was well known to have shown much consideration to native tribes, and his strong wish to deal justly by them had often been shown. This was the main reason for his appointment. He landed in November, 1843, and found the colony in a state of great depression, the public treasury being not only empty but in debt. For many officials had been appointed, judges, magistrates, policemen, customs receivers and so on; and to pay the salaries of these every one had relied on the continued sale of land.

But in 1841 there had come out the first Land Commissioner, William Spain, who began to inquire into the disputes about land which had arisen between white men and Maoris. Out of every ten acres the white men said they had bought he allowed them to keep only one. This was but fair to the Maoris, who had been induced very often to make most foolish bargains; but the settlers ceased to buy land when they were not certain of keeping it. Hence the land sales stopped; the Governor owed 20,000 more than he could pay, and so he was confronted with troubles from his very first arrival.

#2. Wairau Ma.s.sacre.#--Just before he came an incident had happened which deepened the trouble of the colony. At the north of the South Island, not far from Nelson, there was a fine valley watered by the stream Wairau, which Colonel Wakefield claimed, alleging that it was part of the land he had bought with the Nelson district. Rauparaha and his son-in-law, Rangihaeata, claimed it by right of conquest, and they had a couple of hundred stout warriors at their back, all well armed with muskets. Mr. Spain sent word that he was coming to settle the dispute, but, in spite of that, Captain Wakefield sent surveyors to measure out the land for occupation by the settlers. The surveyors were turned off by Rauparaha, who carried their instruments and other property carefully off the land and then burnt the huts they had put up. The Maoris did no violence, and were courteous though determined. The surveyors returned to Nelson, and Captain Wakefield induced the local magistrates to issue a warrant for the arrest of Rauparaha and Rangihaeata. To execute this warrant Mr. Thompson, the police magistrate, himself went in a small vessel, and with him went Captain Wakefield, seven other gentlemen, and forty labourers, in all a party of forty-nine, of whom thirty-five were armed with guns.

When they landed at the mouth of the Wairau River, Piraha, a Christian native, met them and begged them not to go on, as Rauparaha was ready to fight, but they paid no attention, and after marching eight miles up the pretty valley they saw the Maoris about 100 in number standing behind the stream, which though only waist-deep had a rushing current of chilly water. Rauparaha said: "Here am I. What do you want with me?" Mr.

Thompson said he must go to Nelson; and an irritating conversation ensued. Rangihaeata drew up his tall form, his curly black hair setting off a face of eagle sharpness, and from his eye there gleamed an angry light. Behind him stood his wife, the daughter of Rauparaha, and near them this latter chief himself, short and broad, but strong and wiry-looking, a man with a cunning face, yet much dignity of manner.

When the handcuffs were produced by Mr. Thompson, Rauparaha warned him not to be so foolish. The magistrates gave the order to fix bayonets and advance; as the white men were crossing the stream a shot was fired by one of them. It struck dead the wife of Rangihaeata. Thereupon the Maoris fired a volley and the white men hesitated on the brink of the water; a second volley and a third told upon them with deadly effect, and the labourers, who carried arms but had neither martial spirit nor experience, turned and fled.

Five of the gentlemen with four of the labourers stood their ground, and when the Maoris crossed they surrendered. Rauparaha called out to spare them; but Rangihaeata, mad at the loss of a wife he loved, brained them with his tomahawk one after another, while the young men hunted the labourers through the trees and slew such as they overtook. Twenty-seven white men reached the sh.o.r.e and were carried quickly in the boats to the brig, five of them badly wounded. Twenty-two lay dead alongside of five natives whom the white men had slain.

Rauparaha feared the vengeance of the white man. He had few resources in the South Island, while the Nelson settlers could send 500 armed men against him. He crossed in his own war canoes, over a stormy strait in wild weather; weary and wet with spray, he landed in the south of the North Island, roused his countrymen by his fervid oratory, to which he gave a fine effect by jingling before them the handcuff's with which he was to have been led a prisoner to Nelson. A day or two after the ma.s.sacre, a Wesleyan clergyman went out from Nelson to Wairau and reverently buried those ghastly bodies with the cloven skulls. Not one had been mangled, far less had there been any cannibalism.

#3. Effects of Wairau Ma.s.sacre.#--The Maoris were clearly less ferocious than they had been, and more than half of them had become fervid Christians after a fashion, but in some respects they were getting their eyes opened. The missionaries had told them that the white men were coming for their benefit; yet now they began to see that the white men were soon to be the lords of the soil, and that the natives must sink back into the position of servants. If a white man visited a Maori village he was received as a man of distinction and entertained. If a Maori chief went to a white man's town, he was allowed to wander in the street; or if at all accosted it was with the condescension of a superior race to a race of servants. The Maori blood was firing up. The story of Wairau made them change their mind about the white man's courage. The whalers had been hearts of daring; these new-comers had run and bawled for their lives. The natives were anxious also as to the result which would happen when all the lands near the sh.o.r.e should have been occupied by white men, and they themselves hemmed up in the interior.

A special interest was given to these feelings when in 1844 Te Whero Whero gave a great feast, only two miles out of Auckland, partly as a welcome to Governor Fitzroy, and partly as a demonstration in regard to the land question. He displayed a lavish bounty; 11,000 baskets of potatoes and 9,000 sharks, with great stores of other provisions, were distributed. But when the settlers saw a war dance of 1,600 men, all well armed with muskets, and drilled with wonderful precision, they felt that their lives were at the mercy of the native tribes. Not one-fourth of that number of armed men with any training for battle could have been sent forth from the settlement for its own defence. This gave a significance to the Wairau ma.s.sacre that created quite a panic. Fresh settlers ceased to come; many that were there already now left. Those who had taken up farms far out in the country abandoned them and withdrew to the towns.

#4. Honi Heke.#--And yet the great majority of the Maoris seem to have had no unfriendly purpose. When Governor Fitzroy went down to see Rauparaha he had no more than twelve white men with him, when he entered an a.s.semblage of 500 Maoris. He said he had come to inquire about the sad quarrel at Wairau, and Rauparaha told him his story while others supported it by their evidence. Fitzroy stated that the Maoris had been very wrong to kill those who had surrendered, but as the white men had fired first he would take no vengeance for their death. Indeed, at Wellington and Nelson, Fitzroy openly said that the magistrates were wholly misguided in trying to arrest the native chief; and at Nelson he rebuked all those who had been concerned in the affair. This gave great offence to the white men. They asked if the blood of their friends and relatives was thus to be shed and no sort of penalty to be exacted for the slaughter. Many of the magistrates resigned, and a deep feeling of irritation was shown towards the Governor, some of the settlers pet.i.tioning the English Government to recall him.

In the August of 1844 a young chief named Honi Heke, who dwelt at the Bay of Islands, on account of a private quarrel with a rough whaler, entered the town of Kororarika with a band of armed followers. He plundered a few shops and cut down a flagstaff on which the Union Jack floated from a steep hill behind the town. There were then not more than ninety soldiers in New Zealand, and when Heke threatened to burn Kororarika, and do the same to Auckland, there was too good reason to fear that he might be as good as his word, for he had 200 well-armed men at his back, and a comrade of his, named Kawiti, had nearly as many. A chief named Waka-Nene with his men kept Heke in check, while Fitzroy sent to Sydney and received 160 soldiers with two cannon. These landed at the Bay of Islands, but Waka-Nene begged the Governor not to hurry into hostilities. He arranged for a friendly meeting. Fitzroy met nine princ.i.p.al chiefs, who apologised and made Heke send also a written apology. Fitzroy said he would redress some wrongs the natives said they suffered, and having obtained from Heke ten muskets by way of fine and having again set up the flagstaff he returned to Auckland.

But before the year was ended Heke approached the town once more with 100 armed men. He insulted it from the hills, cut down the flagstaff again, and then withdrew to the forests. Fitzroy published a proclamation offering 100 for his capture, and Heke replied by offering 100 for the head of Fitzroy. The Governor now caused a new flagstaff to be set up, all sheathed with iron at the bottom, and with a strong wooden house attached to it, in which a score of soldiers were always to keep guard. A block-house or small wooden fortress was set up at a little distance down the hill towards Kororarika. Nevertheless, Heke said he would come and cut down the flagstaff again. Then the inhabitants of Kororarika began to drill in order to give him a warm reception if he came. Lieutenant Philpott, the commander of the _Hazard_ ship of war, came ash.o.r.e to drill them, and to mount one or two cannon.

Yet Heke, lurking among the hills, contrived by a sudden dash to capture Lieutenant Philpott. However, after dealing courteously with him, he released him.

#5. Kororarika Burnt.#--On 11th March, 1845, at daylight, Heke with 200 men crept up to the flagstaff, surprised the men in the house attached, and when twenty men came out of the lower block-house to help their friends on the top of the hill, he attacked them and drove them down to the town in the hollow beside the sh.o.r.e. Close to the beach was a little hill, and on the top of this hill stood a house with a garden surrounded by a high fence. Behind this the soldiers and all the people of Kororarika took refuge. From the rocky high ground round about the Maoris fired down upon them, while the white men fired back, and the guns of the _Hazard_, which had come close in to the sh.o.r.e, kept up a constant roar. For three hours this lasted, ten white men being killed as well as a poor little child, while thirty-four of the natives were shot dead. The Maoris were preparing to retreat when, by some accident, the whole of the powder that the white men possessed was exploded. Then they had to save themselves. The women and children were carried out boat after boat to the three ships in the harbour. Then the men went off, and the Maoris, greatly surprised, crept cautiously down into the deserted town. They danced their war dance; sent off to their parents in the ships some white children who had been left behind, and then set fire to the town, destroying property to the value of 50,000.

Heke's fame now spread among the Maoris. When the settlers from Kororarika were landed at Auckland, homeless, desperate, and haggard, a panic set in, and some settlers sold their houses and land for a trifle, and departed. Others with more spirit enrolled themselves as volunteers.

Three hundred men were armed and drilled. Fortifications were thrown up round the town, and sentries posted on all the roads leading to it. At Wellington and Nelson also men were drilled and stockades were built for defence.

#6. First Maori War.#--But Honi Heke was afraid of the soldiers, and when Colonel Hulme arrived from Sydney with several companies he withdrew to a strong pah of his, eighteen miles inland. Hulme landed at the nearest point of the coast, with a force of 400 men; these were joined by 400 friendly allies under Waka-Nene, whose wife led the tribe in a diabolic war dance, not a little startling to the British soldiers. The road that was to lead them to Honi Heke was only a track through a dense forest.

Carts could not be taken, but each man carried biscuits for five days and thirty rounds of ammunition. Under four days of heavy rain they trudged along in the dripping pathway, all their biscuits wet and much of their powder ruined. At last on a little plain, between a lake and a wooded hill, they saw before them the pah of Honi Heke. Two great rows of tree trunks stuck upright formed a palisade round it. They were more than a foot thick, and twelve feet high, and they were so close that only a gun could be thrust between them. Behind these there was a ditch in which stood 250 Maoris, who could shoot through the palisades in security.

The British slept that night without tents round fires of kauri gum, but next morning all was astir for the attack. A rocket was sent whizzing over the palisades. It fell and burst among the Maoris, frightening them greatly, but succeeding discharges were failures, and the Maoris gathered courage to such an extent that a number under Kawiti came out to fight. The soldiers lowered their bayonets and charged, driving them back into the pah. During the night while the white men were smoking round their fires, the sound of the plaintive evening hymn rising in the still air from the pah suggested how strong was the hold that the new faith now had on the Maori mind. Next day Colonel Hulme, seeing that a place defended on all sides by such a strong palisade could not be captured without artillery, dug the graves of the fourteen soldiers killed, and marched back carrying with him thirty-nine wounded men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STRONGHOLD OF THE MAORIS AT RANGIRIRI.]

There was dismay in Auckland when this news arrived. What could be said when 400 English soldiers retreated from 250 savages? But, on the other hand, the Maoris had learnt a lesson. They could not fight against English bayonets in the open, but while taking aim from behind palisades they were safe. Therefore they began in different places to strengthen their fortresses, and Honi Heke added new defences to his pah of Oheawai, which stood in the forest nineteen miles from the coast.

#7. Oheawai.#--More soldiers were sent from Sydney, and with them, to take the chief command, Colonel Despard, who had seen much fighting against hill tribes in India. He landed 630 men and six cannons; but these latter, being ship's cannons on wooden carriages with small wheels, stuck in the boggy forest roads. The men had to pull the guns, and they were a.s.sisted by 250 friendly Maoris. On the evening of 22nd June, 1845, they spread out before the pah during the gathering dusk. It was a strong place. In the midst of a deep and gloomy forest, a square had been cleared about a third of a mile in length and in breadth. Great trunks of trees had been set up in the earth, and they stood fifteen feet high; between their great stems, a foot or eighteen inches thick, there was just room enough left for firing a musket. Three rows of these gigantic palings, with a ditch five feet deep between the inner ones, made the fortress most dangerous to a.s.sault; and in the ground within hollows had been dug where men could sleep secure from sh.e.l.ls and rockets. Two hundred and fifty warriors were there with plenty of muskets and powder.

On the second morning the British had got their guns planted within a hundred yards of the palisade, but the small b.a.l.l.s they threw did little harm to such huge timber. The whole expedition would have had to retire had not a heavier gun come up. This threw shot thirty-two pounds in weight, and after twenty-six of these had struck the same place, a breach was seen of a yard or two in width. Colonel Despard ordered 200 men with ropes and hatchets and ladders to be ready for an a.s.sault at daybreak. In the still dawn of a wintry morning, the bugles rang out and the brave fellows gathered for the deadly duty. They rushed at the breach, and for ten minutes a wild scene ensued. The place was very narrow, and it was blocked by resolute Maoris, who shot down exactly half of the attacking party. Many of the soldiers forced their way through, but only to find a second and then a third palisade in front of them. Then they returned, losing men as they fled, and the whole British force fell back a little way into the forest. That night the groans and cries of the wounded, lying just outside the pah, were mingled with the wild shouts of the war dance within. Two days later the Maoris hoisted a flag of truce, and offered to let the white men carry off the dead and wounded. Thirty-four bodies lay at the fatal breach, and sixty-six men were found to have been wounded.

A week later another load of cannon b.a.l.l.s for the heavy gun was brought up, and the palisades were further broken down. A second a.s.sault would have been made, but during the night the Maoris tied up their dogs, and quietly dropping over the palisades at the rear of the pah, got far away into the forest before their retreat was known, for the howling of the dogs all night within the pah kept the officers from suspecting that the Maoris were escaping. The British destroyed the palisades, and carried off the stores of potatoes and other provisions which they found inside.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR GEORGE GREY.]

#8. Governor Grey.#--Fitzroy was preparing to chase Heke and Kawiti into their fastnesses, when he was recalled. The English Government thought he had not acted wisely in some ways and they blamed him for disobeying their instructions. They had more faith in that young officer, George Grey, who, after exploring in Western Australia, was now the Governor of South Australia. He arrived in November, 1845, to take charge of New Zealand; and at once went to Kororarika, where he found 700 soldiers waiting for orders. But he did not wish for fighting, if it could be avoided. He sent out a proclamation that Maoris who wished peace were to send in their submission by a certain day. If they did, he would see that the treaty of Waitangi was kept, and that justice was done to them.

Honi Heke sent two letters, but neither of them was satisfactory; and as more than a year pa.s.sed without any signs of his submitting, Colonel Despard was directed to go after him. Heke was at a pah called Ikorangi; but Kawiti had 500 Maoris at a nearer pah called Ruapekapeka.

#9. Ruapekapeka.#--Despard took his men sixteen miles in boats up a river; then nine miles through the forest, and on the 31st December he had 1,173 soldiers with 450 friendly natives in a camp 800 yards from the pah. It was like the other pahs, but bigger and stronger, for behind the palisades there were earthen walls into which cannon b.a.l.l.s would only plunge without doing any harm. Three heavy guns, however, were mounted, and when the Maoris sent up their flag, the first shot was so well aimed as to bring its flagstaff down amid the ringing cheers of the white men.

All New Year's Day was spent in pouring in cannon b.a.l.l.s by the hundred, but they did little harm. Next day the Maoris made a sally, but were driven back with the bayonet. Meantime, Heke came in one night with men to help his friend, and heavy firing on both sides was kept up for a week, after which two small breaches appeared near one of the corners of the palisades. The next day was Sunday, which the Maoris thought would be observed as a day of rest, but the soldiers, creeping cautiously up, pushed their way through the breaches; a number of the Maoris ran to arms and fired a volley or two, but before the main body could do anything several hundred soldiers were in the place. A stout fight took place, during which thirteen white men were killed. The Maoris, now no longer under cover, were no match for the soldiers, and they fled, leaving behind them all the provisions that were to have kept them for a whole season. This discouraged them, and Heke and Kawiti saw their men scatter out and join themselves to the quieter tribes for the sake of food. They therefore wrote to Grey asking peace, and promising to give no further trouble. Grey agreed, but left 200 soldiers at Kororarika in order to keep the Maoris of the district in check.

#10. Rauparaha.#--During the eighteen months while Heke's war was going on, troubles had been brewing at Wellington, where Rauparaha and Rangihaeata kept up an agitation. The latter declared his enmity; he plundered and sometimes killed the settlers; and when soldiers were sent round to keep him in order he surprised and killed some of them. But Rauparaha pretended to be friendly, though the Governor well knew he was the ringleader in the mischief. Grey quietly sent a ship, which by night landed 130 soldiers just in front of Rauparaha's house on the sh.o.r.e.

They seized him sleeping in bed, and he was carried round to Auckland, where for some months he was kept a prisoner, though allowed to go about. Rangihaeata fled into the wildly wooded mountain ranges of the interior. Once or twice he made a stand, but was driven from his rocky positions, with the slaughter of men on both sides. At last he and his followers scattered out as fugitives into lonely and savage regions into which they could not be followed.

Thinking that good roads would do much to keep the country quiet, Grey offered half a crown a day to Maoris who would work at making roads.

Quite a crowd gathered to the task, and for a while white men and Maoris toiled happily together, making good carriage roads into the heart of the country. But at w.a.n.ganui, in May, 1847, land disputes roused a tribe to bloodshed. They killed a white woman and her four little children; they attacked the town, and when the inhabitants withdrew to a stockade they had made, a fight took place which lasted for five hours, after which the Maoris burnt the town and retreated, carrying off all the cattle. Two months later, Governor Grey reached w.a.n.ganui, with 500 men.

He chased the Maoris up the valley and fought them, gaining a decisive victory over them with the loss of two white men killed. He gave them no rest till the chiefs applied for peace, and early in the next year a meeting was held, and the princ.i.p.al chiefs of the district promised to obey the Queen's laws. The war had lasted five years, had cost a million pounds, and the lives of eighty-five white men, besides those of perhaps a hundred Maoris.

The English Government withdrew the larger part of the soldiers from New Zealand; but the colonists, to make themselves safe, enrolled a body they called the New Zealand Fencibles. They were all old soldiers who had retired from the British army, and who were offered little farms and a small payment. Five hundred came out from England on these terms, and were placed in four settlements round Auckland for the protection of that town. They were really farmers, who were paid to be ready to fight if need should arise. With their wives and children they made a population of 2,000 souls.

In this same year Rauparaha was allowed to go home. He was surprised at the permission and grateful for it; but he was an old man and died in the following year. In 1850 Honi Heke died, but Rangihaeata lingered on till 1856, giving no further trouble.

Governor Grey dealt fairly with the Maoris. He paid them for their lands. He hung such white men as murdered them. He set up schools to educate their children, and distributed ploughs and carts, harrows and horses, and even mills, so that they might grow and prepare for themselves better and more abundant food than they had ever known before.

CHAPTER XXVI.

NEW ZEALAND, 1843-1890.

#1. Otago.#--Meantime the New Zealand Company had not been idle, and E. G. Wakefield's busy brain was filled with fresh schemes. In 1849 an a.s.sociation had been formed at Glasgow in connection with the Free Church of Scotland, to send Scottish families out to New Zealand. Not knowing anything of the country, the new a.s.sociation asked the help of the New Zealand Company, which was readily given, as the new settlers proposed to buy land from the company. In 1844 an exploring party was sent out, and, after some inquiry, chose a place on the east coast of the South Island, called Otago. With the consent of the Governor 400,000 acres were there bought from the natives, and it seemed as if a new colony would soon be formed. But the news of the Wairau ma.s.sacre and the unsettled state of the natives frightened intending settlers for a time.

It was not till November, 1847, that the _John Wycliff_ and the _Philip Lang_ sailed from Greenock with the first company of settlers. They reached their new home in March, 1848, under the guidance of Captain Cargill, an old soldier, who had been chosen as leader of the new settlement. At the head of a fine harbour, which they called Port Chalmers, they laid the foundations of a town, to which they gave the patriotic name of Dunedin, Gaelic for Edinburgh. It was in a fine district, troubled by few natives, and it steadily grew. Less than a year later, it had 745 inhabitants, who could boast of a good jetty, and a newspaper. The life of pioneers cannot be very easy, but these were of the right sort and prospered, and more would have joined them but for two circ.u.mstances. First came the news of the rich gold discoveries in California; and the most adventurous spirits hurried thither. Not only did this keep settlers from coming to New Zealand, but indeed a thousand of those she possessed left her sh.o.r.es for the goldfields. Then in this same year, 1848, a violent earthquake took place, which knocked down 15,000 worth of buildings in Wellington, and killed a man with his two children.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KNOX CHURCH, DUNEDIN.]

#2. Canterbury.#--Yet these unlucky accidents only delayed the progress of the colony by a year or two, and in the year 1850 a new settlement was formed. Seven years before this, Wakefield had conceived the idea of a settlement in connection with the Church of England. A number of leading men took up the notion, and among them was the famous Archbishop Whately. An a.s.sociation was formed which bought 20,000 acres of the New Zealand Company's land, to be selected later on. The settlers paid a high price for this land, but the greater part of the money so received was to be used for their own benefit, either in bringing out fresh settlers or in building churches and schools. A bishop and schoolmasters were to go out; a n.o.bleman and other men of wealth bought land and prepared to take stock and servants out to the fine free lands of the south. Wakefield had enlisted in the new scheme a gentleman named John Robert G.o.dley, who became very ardent, and under his direction three ships were filled with 600 settlers and their property, and left England on their long voyage to the Antipodes. They reached their destination, the east coast of the South Island, on 16th December, 1850, and gladly felt the soil of a lovely land under their feet. In their enthusiasm they sang the National Anthem, and scattered out to view their new homes. A high and rugged hill prevented their seeing inland till they climbed to its brow, and then they perceived long plains of fertile soil, watered by numerous streams of bright and rapid water. They resolved to found their city on the plains, making only a port upon the sea-sh.o.r.e. Governor Grey and his wife came over from Wellington to welcome them, and they found that much had been done to make them comfortable. Large sheds had been put up in which they could find shelter till they should build their own homes. A pretty spot by a river named the Avon was chosen for the town, which was laid out in a square; and a church and schoolroom were built among the first erections. In keeping with the religious fervour that lay at the basis of the whole undertaking, the town was called Christchurch; while the name of Lyttelton was given to the seaport, a road being made between the two and over the hill.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHRISTCHURCH CATHEDRAL.]

During the next year 2,600 settlers arrived. Some of these were young men of birth and fortune, who brought with them everything needed to transplant to New Zealand the luxuries of England. A large proportion of the settlers were labouring men of a superior cla.s.s, who were brought out as servants at the expense of the wealthy settlers. There was a good deal of disappointment. Many of the labourers crossed over to Australia, where the gold discoveries offered every man a chance of fortune, and where wages were very high. The wealthiest people therefore had to do their own work, and few of them liked it. The result was that many left the settlement and never came back to it. But from Australia came relief. For some of the squatters who had been dislodged by the inroad of diggers to Victoria, hearing of the great gra.s.sy plains of Canterbury, with never a tree to be cleared from the natural pasturage, crossed with flocks of sheep, and bought land in the new settlement. In 1853 Canterbury had 5,000 people; it produced 40,000 worth of wool a year, and seventy vessels reached its seaport. For a place in its third year such progress was wonderful.