The Last Day

AS THE FIRST faint glimmer of coming dawn spread over the battlefield, the chiefs of the beleaguered redoubt held council. Tupotahi, as shrewd a soldier as his cousin Rewi, realized that now or never was the hour to make a dash for liberty, with a fighting chance of escaping in the uncertain light. He proposed to Rewi that the pa should be evacuated at once.

“Let us charge out before it is day,” he said; “if we retreat now we may fight our way through.” Rewi smiled grimly, and bade Tupotahi consult Raureti Paiaka and the other chiefs. When the question was put to Raureti he refused to abandon the pa. Nor would any of the other tribal leaders agree to the proposal. “We shall remain here,” they declared; “we shall fight on.” But many of Ngati-Maniapoto were of like mind with Tupotahi, and voiced their anger at Raureti's stubbornness. They stood by their chiefs, however, and all prepared to resist to the end

Rewi's first order to his people, as early morning came, was to cook food. They roasted potatoes in the excavations on the inner side of the parapets, but the parched throats refused the food. There was not a drop of water in the redoubt. Rewi went from man to man of his tribe questioning him about the meal, and each one returned the same answer, “I cannot swallow the potatoes.” Rewi returned to his quarters in the centre of the pa. “We shall have to go,” he told his fellow-chiefs, “but we shall not go as Waikato did at Rangiriri [as prisoners]. We shall retreat fighting.” He strapped six cartouche-boxes about him—three in front and three at the back—and took two guns. Hone Teri te Paerata suggested that all the best men should be gathered to start the rush through the British lines. But now it was too late; it was clear daylight. The morning haze swept away from the battlefield, and the smoke of heavy musketry took its place.

Major W. G. Mair

Major William Gilbert Mair and his younger brother, Captain Gilbert Mair, N.Z.C., were two of the most distinguished colonial soldiers who fought in the Maori wars. William Mair, after Orakau, was Resident Magistrate and Government Native Agent in various districts. As an officer in command of Arawa and other Maori contingents he fought the Hauhaus in the Bay of Plenty and the Urewera country, 1865–69. One notable success was his capture of Te Teko pa, on the Rangitaiki River, by means of sap, which forced a surrender (described in Vol. II). For many years after the wars he was Judge of the Native Land Court.

The morning grew warm, and the sufferings of the thirst-racked garrison increased. The sappers had been at work all night, and early in the forenoon the trench had reached the post-and-rail fence and was within a few yards of the north-west outwork. Lieut.-Colonel Sir Henry Havelock, D.A.Q.M.G., came in from Pukerimu via Ohaupo, and with him came some of the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry, leading packhorses loaded with hand-grenades. The sap was now close enough to the outwork for the grenades to be thrown over the parapet, and this service was carried out by Sergeant MacKay, R.A., under a page 389 hot fire. Two colonial officers distinguished themselves by their gallantry at the head of the sap—Captain Herford, of the Waikato Militia, and Lieutenant Harrison, of the same corps, both of whom fought at the head of the sap, keeping down the fire of the Maoris with their rifles. Captain Herford, in attempting to cut down a post of the fence later in the day, was shot in the head and lost an eye. The bullet remained in the back of his head, and caused his death some time afterwards at Otahuhu. Captain Jackson, of the Forest Rangers, who was a very good shot, also assisted with his carbine in covering the workers at the head of the sap.

In a short kokiri or rush out of the pa in the morning two old men were killed; one was Te Waro, the warrior-tohunga who had predicted misfortune after the chiefs prevented him from cutting out the heart of the first soldier killed.

At noon General Cameron and his staff arrived from Pukerimu with an escort of the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry. There were now eighteen hundred British and colonial troops surrounding the pa. One of the 6-pounder Armstrong guns was taken into the sap near the head, and opened fire on the outwork, making a breach in the defences. Under the storm of shells, hand-grenades, and rifle-bullets, the garrison now suffered many casualties. Dead and wounded were lying in every trench, but the desperately pressed men and women still held the fort. By noon some of them were quite out of ammunition, but most were reserving one or two cartridges for the last rush. Pou-patate, who was one of the few armed with rifles, was sparing of his ammunition, which could not be replaced. In the first day's fighting, he says, he expended twenty cartridges—a pouchful. On the last day he had ten cartridges left at the close of the fighting; he was reserving them in case the British pursuit was continued. One of the Urewera survivors, Paitini, says that he fired during the siege thirty-six rounds, the contents of two holders, or hamanu. The British, man for man, fired a far greater amount of lead than the Maoris.

The defenders hurriedly buried their dead in shallow graves scooped in the pits and trenches. One man, Matiaha, of Ngati-Tamatea and Ngati-Ruapani (grandfather of Hurae Puketapu, of Waikaremoana), was blown to pieces by the explosion of a shell. The casualties included several of the women.

The first of the hand-grenades (rakete, or “rockets,” the Maoris call them) thrown into the pa from the head of the sap had long fuses, and some daring fellows snatched out the burning fuses (wiki, or “wicks”) and poured the powder out for their own cartridges. Others they threw back into the sap before they had time to explode, and they burst among the men who had page 390 hurled them. One of the warriors who returned the grenades in this way was Hoani Paruparu, of Ngati-Maniapoto; he had become familiar with the action of shells in the Taranaki War. But the Royal Artillery men shortened the fuses, and when Hoani attempted to repeat his performance he was killed by the explosion of one of the bombs.^*

Early in the afternoon General Cameron, impressed by the Maoris' courage, decided to give the garrison an opportunity of making surrender. The buglers sounded the “Cease fire,” and two interpreters of the staff, Mr. William G. Mair (afterwards Major Mair), then an ensign in the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry, and Mr. Mainwaring were sent into the sap with a white flag to invite the natives to capitulate. The din of musketry was stilled, and the Maoris crowded the walls as the interpreters approached the head of the sap, now within a few yards of the north-west outwork. Many of them were suspicious of the flag of truce; the Urewera at first imagined it a piece of deceit on the part of the British. Controversy has raged over the details of this historic interview; many a picturesque fiction has been printed, and artists have depicted Rewi Maniapoto posed in a heroic attitude on the parapets hurling defiance at the troops. The bare facts are sufficiently thrilling and inspiring without the decorations of fiction. The British and Maori versions of the “challenge scene” differ in some details, as will be shown, but the essential facts remain. The men and women of Orakau chose death on the battlefield rather than submission. Another fact which emerges from the many narratives gathered is that Rewi Maniapoto did not personally confront the General's messenger, but remained with the council of chiefs, delegating the delivery of the ultimatum to others.

Raureti Paiaka, the Ngati-Maniapoto survivors state, was the principal intermediary between the council of chiefs, headed by Rewi, and the General's interpreter. A Ngati-te-Kohera account, obtained at Taupo, states that Hauraki Tonganui replied to the first demand for surrender by a refusal, and added, “Hokihoki koutou katoa ki Kihikihi, ka hoki matou ki to matou kainga, me waiho atu Orakau nei” (“Let all of you return to Kihikihi, and we will go to our homes and abandon Orakau”). Te Huia Raureti, son of Raureti te Paiaka, agrees that such a reply was given to the first demand, but says it was uttered by his father, and that it voiced the opinion of Rewi and most of the chiefs. Rewi was at that time sitting inside the parapets, near the north end of the pa. The first message was taken to him by Te Paetai, a man of Ngati-Maniapoto. Rewi himself did not see the interpreter at that time. Some of the chiefs in council proposed to accept the offer of peace, but Rewi and others dissented (they had Rangiriri in their minds), and they proposed that the troops should leave the battlefield, and that the Maoris on their part should evacuate the pa. After discussion it was decided to refuse the General's offer and to continue the defence. Rewi cried, “Kaore e mau te rongo—ake, ake!” (“Peace shall never be made—never, never!”). Raureti returned to the outer parapet, stood up on the firing-step a few yards from Mair, and delivered this decision, and all the people shouted with one voice, “Kaore e mau te rongo—ake, ake, ake!” Rewi came out to the north-west angle when the final decision had been made, and stood in the trench a few yards in rear of Raureti. “As to the reported words, ‘Ka whawhai tonu matou, ake, ake, ake!’” says Te Huia, “I did not hear them uttered.”

That is the version of Ngati-Maniapoto. But a different story is given by some of the Ngati-te-Kohera and Ngati-Tuwharetoa. Moetu te Mahia (died 1921), whose home was at Kauriki, near Manunui, on the Main Trunk Railway, declared that it was Hauraki Tonganui who delivered Rewi's reply to Mr. Mair. Moetu fought at Orakau; he was then about twenty years old. He and Hauraki were both of Ngati-Tuwharetoa and Ngati-te-Kohera, and were first cousins. Rewi Maniapoto was a cousin of theirs several times removed. Hauraki was a man with a very powerful voice, and Rewi kept him with him throughout the siege to act as his spokesman. Hauraki's voice, according to Moetu, could be heard at times above the din of battle. Apparently Hauraki was used as a kind of crier or human megaphone for Rewi, and no doubt it was he who called route directions to the page 393

Hitiri Te Paerata
(Ngati-Raukawa and Ngati-te-Kohera, West Taupo)

Hitiri and his sister Ahumai were the only survivors of their family at Orakau. Their father, the old chief Te Paerata, was killed in the retreat on the 2nd April, 1864.

reinforcements in the distance during the siege. If he replied to Mair on behalf of Rewi—and this Ngati-Maniapoto, in their Highlander-like clan jealousy, will not admit—he apparently did not use his leader's exact words, but improved upon them with the phrase reported by the interpreter, “E hoa, ka whawhai tonu ahau ki a koe, ake, ake!”

The request to send the women and children out of the pa was taken to Rewi, Te Huia Raureti believes, by a Tuhoe man; this probably was Hapurona. But the women did not wait for the decision of the chiefs. Ahumai, a tall handsome young woman, daughter of the old West Taupo chief Te Paerata, stood up and made heroic reply, “If the men are to die, the women and children must die also.” It was her husband, Wereta, who all the time had his gun steadily aimed at Mair.

“Wereta,” says Te Huia, “was standing beside me in the trench while my father, standing on the earthwork a little above me, was speaking to the General's messenger. He was a tattooed man, of the Ngati-te-Kohera. He loaded his gun in a furious hurry and, resting it on the parapet, aimed at the pakeha. As the last words were spoken I saw that Wereta was on the point of firing, and I caught hold of him and tried to pull him back, but he pressed the trigger just as I caught him. His aim, however, was bad through his excitement, or else I diverted it, for the bullet only grazed the pakeha, though the range was so close.” It was Te Huia, therefore, who saved Mair's life that day.^*

Now the firing recommenced hotter than ever. The hand-grenades hurled in from the sap-head killed and wounded many. Te Huia says the casualties through the explosion of these bombs numbered scores. The artillery-fire at short range also inflicted losses, besides battering the works. Two attempts to rush the north-west outwork were made by the Waikato Militia and other men, but were repulsed with loss. It was now 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The sap was within a few feet of the outwork. The end was near.

The story of the last day in Orakau imperishably remains as an inspiration to deeds of courage and fortitude. Nowhere in history did the spirit of pure patriotism blaze up more brightly than in that little earthwork redoubt, torn by gun-fire and strewn with dead and dying. The records of our land are rich in episodes of gallant resistance to overwhelming force, but they hold no parallel to Orakau. Suffering the tortures of thirst, half-blinded with dust and powder-smoke, many bleeding from wounds which there was no time to stanch, ringed by a blaze of rifle-fire, with big-gun shells and grenades exploding among them, the grim band of heroes held their crumbling fort till this hour against six times their number of well-armed, well-fed foes. Now they must retreat, but they would go as free men.

Rewi and the chiefs sent round the word. Those who still had cartridges loaded their guns for the last time; others gripped long-handled tomahawks. The sap had been connected with the trench of the outwork, and Ngati-te-Kohera fell back into the main work. The women and children were placed in the middle of the massed warriors, and with the best men in advance to fight a way through they broke down a part of the earthwork on the south-east angle of the pa and rushed out. Only one unwounded man remained in the pa. This was the lay reader, Wi Karamoa Tumanako, of Ngati-Apakura, who stayed to surrender, holding up a stick with a white cloth.^*

“Haere! Haere!” shouted Rewi when he ran out from the pa. It was the Maori “Sauve qui peut.” But the people preserved a solid formation for some distance, going at a steady trot, as a survivor narrates, and there was some firing from both flanks. By this time the soldiers in the sap-head had rushed into the pa, and some were firing at the retreating Maoris from the parapets. The last to leave the fort encountered the bayonet, and the troops on either side closed in towards the natives; but here the hesitation to fire for fear of hitting each other was the salvation of many of the Maoris.

The main body of the fugitives made for the dip in the lower end of the ridge, just to the east of the hill on which the Orakau blockhouse was afterwards built. Here there was a steep fall of 20 or 30 feet to the fern flat at the edge of the manuka swamp. Along the lower face of the ridge there was a scarped bank with a ditch, made by the Maoris to keep the wild pigs out of the cultivations. Immediately below this was a thin cordon of soldiers, men of the 40th Regiment, under Colonel Leslie; others were employed at the edge of the swamp cutting manuka for sap-gabions. Before the leading men had reached the edge of the dip the close body of fugitives had been broken up into groups and the pace became a run.

Yelling and shouting in pursuit came the soldiers, the various corps all mixed up, eager for a final shot at their enemies. Down over the gully-rim poured the fugitives. The surprised 40th were unable to stay the rush, although they shot or bayoneted some of the leaders. A man named Puhipi was killed in penetrating the line, and the foremost men momentarily hesitated; but Raureti Paiaka and his comrade Te Makaka dashed at the nearest soldiers and broke through, and the rest of the fugitives followed them. As the leaders leaped down over the scarped bank Raureti shot two soldiers, one with each barrel, close to the ditch. He received a slight wound in this dash for freedom. Another man who distinguished himself was the half-caste Pou-patate, a tall, athletic young man (his figure is stalwart to day, but he is quite blind). “Pou-patate was a hero that day,” says Te Huia. “He was a very quick, active man in breaking through the line of troops.” Another warrior, Te Kohika, uncle to Te Huia, was armed with a gun, but his ammunition was all expended. Glancing back as he rushed through the cordon for the swamp, he saw a Maori fall, shot dead, and thinking it might be his brother he stopped and turned back. He was surrounded by a group of soldiers, who tore his gun from him and tried to bayonet him, but, leaping aside, he escaped. His knee was badly hurt by a blow with the butt of a rifle. A shot at very close quarters missed him, but so narrowly that the powder scorched his bare shoulder. He reached the swamp, where he lay concealed in the manuka until night, and then he hobbled along to the Puniu, suffering great pain from his injured knee, and joined the survivors on the south side of the river. As for Rewi, his retreat through the swamp of death was safeguarded by a devoted body-guard consisting of twelve of his kinsmen, including Raureti Paiaka and his son Te Huia, Pou-patate, Matena te Paetai, Rangi-toheriri, and Tamehana.

Pou-patate, describing the flight, gave a dramatic narrative page 397 of his retreat with Rewi to the gully and through the swamp from which the Manga-ngarara Stream flows to the Puniu. “The bullets,” he said, “were flying all around us; they whistled whi-u! whi-u! about my ears. When we were in the manuka the tops of the bushes were cut off by the bullets, swishing like a storm through the swamp. Yet not one touched me. I saw Hepi Kahotea shot dead there. The soldiers were massed all along the Karaponia ridge, firing down into the manuka and raupo. There were hundreds of rifles blazing into us. Then, on the other side of the swamp were more foot soldiers and some mounted men hurrying round to cut us off.”

Rewi escaped unwounded. He and his tribe suffered less than the Urewera and the Ngati-te-Kohera, whom he had vainly tried to dissuade from the building of the challenge fort at Orakau. Many years after the war, standing on the sacred soil of Orakau pa, he gave a narrative of the siege. His story of the last day and the flight to the Puniu reveals the curious mingling of ancient and modern religious beliefs in the Maori mind, and the reversion to the ancient faith in hours of peril when the soul of man is laid bare.

[In this karakia Rewi besought his Maori gods to remove from him all sins or transgressions of which he or his male relatives might have been guilty.]

[This karakia was used by the Maoris when after a battle the defeated warriors were being pursued by the victors. A chief singled out one of the enemy for pursuit, and this charm had the effect of causing the pursued one to fall or stop to page 398 be captured. Rewi used it here with the object of stopping the pursuit by the soldiers. The translation of the expression beginning “Kei kona koe tu mai ai” is “Remain there where you are. I will flee on from here, fly like a bird, rising high towards the heavens.”]

“I went on across the fern slope towards the swamp,” continued Rewi. “I was not yet clear of the soldiers. There were three parties of them. My only weapon was a short-handled tomahawk. I had dropped my two guns when I fell down; my younger brother took them. I called out to some of my people who were a little ahead of me and who had guns, ‘Come here; one of you fire there’; to another, ‘Fire over there’; to one who was standing close to me I said, ‘You fire right in here.’ We descended the hill and jumped down over the bank. We were fired upon here, but although the soldiers were close they did not hit us, as we were over them and they had to fire upwards. At my call one of my companions shot a soldier who had fired at me. The soldiers gave way before us, and we rushed down into the swamp. My comrades kept firing as we went on. The troops were on either side of us, on the high ground, firing across at us as we fled through the manuka. Now I prayed again. I uttered the words, ‘Matiti, matata!’ That was all my prayers.^*

The Forest Rangers and the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry with some of Rait's Royal Artillery troopers had pushed on along the line of steep-faced hills on the south-eastern side of the long swamp in order to cut off the retreat. Von Tempsky was at his post in the valley on the eastern side of the pa when the loud cheering from the hill and the intensified volume of rifle-fire told him that at last the Maoris had broken cover. The pa ridge was thickly veiled in gunpowder-smoke, and the heavy rattle of musketry was uninterrupted. The Rangers, led by Von Tempsky and Lieutenant Roberts, dashed off southward along the Ngamako ridge, crossing small gullies and swamps, and came within shot of the fugitives as their foremost men ascended a sharp spur of fern land called Ti-kiore. The Armstrong gun on the Karaponia ridge threw some shells into the body of fugitives. The cavalry headed the Maori leaders off into the swamps again by a rough cross-country gallop, but as the first of the troopers, Rait's men, to come up with the natives had only revolvers besides their swords, they were compelled to stand off when the fugitives turned on them with their double-barrel guns, killing one or two horses and wounding some men. The Rangers by this time, having taken a short-cut across the broken ground, began to drop Maori after Maori with their accurate carbine-fire. Many warriors were shot down after delivering their last barrel. The troopers were out-distanced by the strong runners of Von Tempsky's and Jackson's corps. “There was Roberts ahead of us all,” wrote Von Tempsky in his journal, “with Thorpe, of Jackson's company, and two or three others, the fleetest of the corps. That day I christened Roberts ‘Deerfoot’ as I panted behind him, bellowing my lungs out in shouting to the men and directing the pursuit.” The Rangers followed their game for several miles; some of them crossed to the south side of the Puniu in the eagerness of the chase. About a hundred men of various regiments who had followed the escaping garrison through the swamp, using their Enfields, joined in the pursuit along the ridges to the Puniu, but they could not keep up with the Rangers, who could load their breech-loading carbines as they ran. It was dusk when the pursuit ended, at the sound of the distant bugles, and the Rangers, on recrossing the Puniu, met Colonel Havelock collecting the troops for the return to camp.

As the straggling pursuers marched back across the broken country they found several of their victims. One mortally wounded Maori, raving with thirst and fear, they tended and carried along till he died. Another was borne campward till he, too, expired from his terrible wounds. Some of the 3rd Waikato Militia were also succouring the wounded, and they and the Rangers carried into Orakau a warrior with a broken thigh.

At the camp-fires were told some of the episodes in the first rushing of the pa. Dead and wounded lay about the pa. Among the wounded were several women, and even these did not escape the bayonets of the maddened Imperials. The colonial troops behaved better. In the flight to the Puniu a half-caste girl, shot through the arm, was on the point of being bayoneted by a soldier when a Forest Ranger saved her; and Von Tempsky's favourite scout, Sergeant Southee, protected another. In the pa, however, there was a pitiful tragedy. Mr. Mair, rushing in with the stormers, found some Regulars about to bayonet a wounded woman who had scraped away the light layer of earth covering the body of her slain husband for a last look at him, weeping as she brushed the soil from his face. Mair tried to beat the men back with his carbine, and knocked one of them into the ditch; then he turned to attend to the poor woman. She was Hine-i-turama, a high chieftainess of the Arawa people, ninth in direct descent from Hinemoa, and celebrated as a composer of songs; she had been the wife of Hans Tapsel, the trader of Maketu, and on coming to Orakau to visit her daughter, the wife of Dr. Hooper, had been detained by the Kingites, and married another man, Ropata, who fell in the siege. Mr. Mair carried her to an angle, and then went to attend to another wounded woman; but when he returned Hine-i-turama had been bayoneted to death by some brutal soldiers in avengement of fallen comrades.^*

The British casualties in the three days battle were seventeen killed or died from wounds and fifty-two wounded. The dead were buried in the English Mission Churchyard at Te Awamutu.

More than half the gallant Maoris lay dead when the sun went down that night of the 2nd April. Out of a very few more than three hundred, quite one hundred and sixty were killed, and of the survivors at least half were wounded. Of the twenty-six prisoners taken nearly all were wounded, and several died in the field hospital at Te Awamutu. Brigadier-General Carey reported 101 killed, besides eighteen to twenty stated by the Maoris to have been buried in the pa. The total killed was, however, heavier than this estimate. Forty were buried by the soldiers in the

^* Captain Gilbert Mair, N.Z.C., narrates another incident of heroism in this retreat from Orakau. In the year 1888 he was interpreting an account given by Hitiri te Paerata in Parliament House, Wellington, describing the Battle of Orakau. Major Jackson, M.H.R. for Waipa, who at Orakau commanded No. 1 Company of the Forest Rangers, asked, “Who was the Maori in the white shirt whom I was chasing?” It was stated that this Maori was assisting a young woman who was wounded to escape. Hitiri remembered the incident. The young Maori warrior described succeeded in helping this girl, who was wounded in the thigh, through the cordon of soldiers, and through the swamp and scrub to the Puniu. He kept his pursuers in check by repeatedly turning, kneeling down, and aiming his gun at them, while the girl hobbled on towards the river and safety. At last the pair crossed the Puniu, and in the Maori country they came to a sheltered place where there was a grove of peach-trees. There they remained, resting, and living on the peaches, until the girl was able to travel to her people.

“Well, what happened?” Hitiri was asked.

“Oh, nothing happened; but what I was going to tell you was that the Maori's gun was unloaded all the time. He had not a charge left when he knelt down and kept the troops off with his levelled tupara.”

page 402

Winitana Tupotahi

Tupotahi, who was cousin to Rewi Maniapoto, was one of the leading men in the defence of Orakau, and was severely wounded in the retreat. His narrative is given in these chapters.

trenches on the northern side of the pa (the spot is just within the farm-fence on the north line of the present main road). As many more were buried on the edge of the swamp near the place where the fugitives broke through the lines of the 40th Regiment, and many were laid to rest on the spur on the opposite side of the swamp, near Ngamako, and further along the line of retreat to the Puniu. The dead at the pa were buried in their own trenches on a beautiful sunny morning, and so near the surface that one clenched hand rose above the surface, and a soldier trampled on it to press it under.

Ngati-te-Kohera and the Urewera suffered the heaviest casualties. Hitiri te Paerata and his sister Ahumai were the only survivors of a family. Their father, the old warrior Te Paerata, his son Hone Teri, and several others of the house fell in the retreat. Ahumai—she who declared that the women would remain in the pa and share the fate of the men—was wounded in four places. She was shot through the body, the page 403

From a drawing, at Taupo, by Captain T. Ryan]
Ahumai Te Paerata

Ahumai was the woman who made the heroic reply at Orakau that the women would die with the men. She was very severely wounded in the retreat. In the following year she saved the life of Lieutenant Meade, R.N., who was in danger of death at the hands of the Ngati-Raukawa Hauhaus, near Taupo.

bullet going in on her right side and coming out on the left, through the shoulder, and through the wrist, hand, and arm. Yet she survived that terrible flight and recovered from her wounds; she died at Mokai, near Taupo, in 1908. The Urewera lost thirty killed, and a great many were wounded; they sustained probably over 50 per cent. of casualties. Paitini te Whatu, who was badly wounded, and whose father was killed, gives the following list of the principal people of the contingent of Urewera and their kin who fell at Orakau; the killed, he states, included three out of the six women who were with the company: Piripi te Heuheu and his wife Mere, Te Kaho, Rakuraku, Te Parahi, Wiremu Tapeka (Paitini's father), Paiheke, Te Teira, Penehio, Kaperiere, Hoera, Reweti te Whakahuru and his wife Marata Kopakopa; also Matiaha, page 404 of Ngati-Tamatea, and Raharuhi Tamatea, of Ngati-Kahungunu.

Paitini, describing his experience in the retreat, said: “I fired a shot and brought down a soldier as we descended the steep bank above the manuka swamp. In fact, I dropped down the bank on to the man I shot, and I could not recover my double-barrel gun. A soldier shot me in the left thigh, causing a very bad wound. I managed to reach the cover of the manuka and went slowly along toward the Puniu, bleeding very much and in great pain. Many of our wounded lay out in the swamp all that night and next day. My father was killed in the retreat, outside the pa. He was behind me; I did not see him fall. Our chief Piripi te Heuheu was killed in the pa. Paraki Wereta, now living at Te Umuroa, escaped from Orakau unwounded.”^*

Peita Kotuku, who is part Ngati-Maniapoto and part Patuheuheu, was a member of the Urewera contingent. He narrates that a pora, a thick shaggy shoulder-cape of flax, which he was wearing deflected one or two bullets that struck him. Four of his mother's people, the Patu-heuheu, were killed in the battle; one was his uncle Peita, whose name he took in memory. The old chief Paerau, of Tuhoe, escaped, and, like Peita, became a strong Hauhau partisan.

Ngati-Maniapoto did not suffer so severely as the other clans—at any rate, none of their leading chiefs was killed. Tupotahi had his collar-bone broken by a bullet when he was leaving the pa. The wiry old chief, a small-framed man like Rewi, narrated that the bullet went out at the back of his right shoulder, and the arm hung helpless. He picked up his gun in his felt hand, and ran on after his comrades, supporting his right arm by clenching the fingers between the teeth. At last he had to drop his gun and support his right hand and arm with his left, and so hurried on to the swamp. Men fell all around him, but he was not hit again. Half-dead with pain and loss of blood and tortured with thirst, he lay in the manuka for some time unable to move. At last, when it was dark, he rose and struggled on through the scrub to the Puniu. With many of the other wounded he was taken to the Otewa Village, on the Waipa, where his hurt was tended. Some of the survivors gathered at Korakonui and Wharepapa, a few miles south of the Puniu; others of Ngati-Maniapoto returned to Hangatiki.

The Urewera survivors collected at Ara-titaha and Waotu, and made their way home to their mountains, travelling slowly because of their many wounded. Harehare, of Ngati-Manawa,

^* Statement by Paitini te Whatu, to the writer, at Omakoi, Urewera country, 23rd January, 1921.

page 405

From a photo by G. Bourne]
After Fifty Years

Ngati-Maniapoto survivors of the war, at the jubilee gathering on the battlefield of Orakau, 1st April, 1914. All but Hekiera shared in the defence of Orakau pa, and fought through to the Puniu River in the retreat.

page 406 says: “We who had remained at home at Tauaroa (on the Rangitaiki) waited anxiously for news of our relatives and friends. One of our old men had a premonition of disaster. He beheld a wairua—an apparition—which he interpreted as a message from the dead, and he told us that misfortune had befallen our people in the Waikato. A few days later the morehu—the survivors—began to arrive, among them my brother Takurua and his wife, both wounded, and then we found that the Battle of Orakau had been fought just about the time the vision appeared to our old seer.”