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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 8, Issue 6 (October 2, 1933)

Hursthouse and the Fanatic Prophet

Hursthouse and the Fanatic Prophet.

While Rochfort was preparing to begin his search for a route from the southern end of the long gap between the railheads, Wilson Hursthouse set out from the frontier for a journey to the Mokau, by way of Te Kuiti (then better known as Tokangamutu), making a reconnaissance of the country in view of the projected railway or road from the Waikato to Taranaki. He was accompanied by an assistant surveyor, Mr. Newsham, and escorted by a party of Ngati-Maniapoto men under several of their chiefs, by arrangement with the Native Minister, Mr. Bryce, who had been promised by Wahanui and the other high chiefs that the surveyors would be permitted to carry out their routescouting missions.

However, the Government officers had reckoned without a certain Bad Man of the frontier, a kind of Mad Mullah of the King Country, the prophet Mahuki, otherwise known as Manu-kura (“Red Bird”). Mahuki hated the Pakeha tribe, and he determined to stop this survey and all surveys, and all forms of Pakeha intrusion. The kai-ruri, the surveyor, was the wedge which presently would split asunder the land of the Maori.

So Mahuki and his band of “Angels,” swooping down on the Government party on the hill track above the flat where the present town of Te Kuiti stands, engaged in a furious fight with stirrup-irons—both parties were mounted—and sticks and fists with the surveyors and their escort. The Government escort, outnumbered, were overpowered—fortunately Mahuki had forbidden his men to carry firearms, otherwise murder would have been done—and the two white men, with a Maori assistant, were taken down to Te Kumi, Mahuki's headquarters village on the bank of the Manga-okewa stream, a short distance from Te Kuiti. The present railway passes close to the site of this village of the Hauhau prophet.