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Chapter XII. The Unparalleled Massacre of Pukerangioro.

The Waikato made an unaccountably protracted stay in the valley of Onairo, a most beautiful and highly picturesque locality, not more than eight miles, in a bee line, from the considered impregnable stronghold of the Ngatiawa, at Pukerangioro, overlooking the Waitara River, and only a few miles off the confluence of that stream with the billows of the mighty Pacific. Beyond but a few desultory skirmishes, wherein each side was about equally successful, and in which it was also recorded that most horrible tortures by both parties were ruthlessly perpetrated on the helplessly wounded, nothing amounting to any marked result was effected. For several weeks subsequent to the northern invasion, Tukaraihu, the Waikato commander, during this inexplicable halt, may have, possibly, been waiting for further reinforcements, or otherwise protracting active operations with a view, perhaps, of getting better acquainted with the configuration of the country. Whatever may have been his object in remaining for weeks comparatively idle, the reason which was freely circulated then was certainly not the correct one. Such was, that Tukaraihu had a retreat at this time in contemplation; and what was thought to give some degree of colour to this alleged rumour was the fact that, at first, the Waikato had actually advanced as far south as the mouth of the Waitara, and then, without any ostensible reason, fell suddenly back on Onairo. However, very possibly it may have been the invader's diplomacy, if not to originate such a tattle, at least, to tacitly lend it countenance in purpose to derive advantage from that delusive recklessness which an unseeming likelihood of danger naturally engenders.

Another consideration of some weight, which has not been by any tradition hinted at, for Tukaraihu's delay, might have been this, that he was a confirmed valetudinarian, and subject to intermittent attacks of pleurisy. Notwithstanding, Tukaraihu was of an astounding height and girth, weighing over a score of stones, and had to be carried all the way hitherward in a sort of palanquin, through quite the opposite of an even country, by four relays of bearers. His son, Waitanui, here accompanying him, had over and over again urged strenuously upon his sire to page 74 abandon the idea of taking the field, and transfer the worry and fatigue of warfare to those more fitting to bear its severe hardships. But all such judiciously given filial pleadings were nothing more than waste of effort; and, unhappily, none of the other chiefs had the nerve to aid Waitanui in his importunate representations—standing afraid of even the mere shadow of this sadly decrepit old bear. Whatever hindered immediate action on the part of the Waikatos on this occasion, it was most certainly not owing to either a defective commissary or to an inefficient land-transport corps. Every day, at this time, from early morning until far advanced in the afternoon, loads of provisions were arriving at the encampment, borne on the backs and shoulders of poor slave women! … The truculent anthropo's complement in this [gap — reason: unclear] are verily with a vengeance constituted a very serviceable quantity. They perpetuate—they nurse—they bear most grievously heavy burdens: till, sow, reap, cook, and finally swaith cerements around their inert carcases ere being assigned to primordial elements. Les gens toujours occupé. However, notwithstanding the multiplex infirmities of age which Tukaraihu laboured under, he must have been, after all is said, of rather a philosophical disposition, inasmuch as he adopted the most effectual way to assuage pain that possibly could be hit upon—that was, by his giving abundance of attractions to the mind. It is just quite possible, savage and all as Tukaraihu was, that he might have had thought, as many more erudite had thought long before him, that there is nothing aggravates suffering so much as perpetually brooding over its poignancy!… Every morning during his lingering thus at Onairo, Tukaraihu caused himself to be removed in his litter to a conveniently situated rising ground, where he watched, with great interest and gratified delight, his merry men all go through their martial evolutions. These may be enumerated as thus: practising the scaling of dizzy elevations, climbing of trees, breasting rapids, and extricating themselves from intricate entanglements of most pertinaceous undergrowths. Then again, during the afternoon, this most celebrated generalissimo would take up some other formidable position, in order to criticise feats of skill and strength with lance, pike, tomahawk and meré. But all these things belong entirely to the practical. By way of diversity, the puissant Tukaraihu engaged himself in more pleasant pastimes, such as would in the French tongue be termed, rather bizarrerie. It was, without a doubt, immensely droll, and therefore, intensely diverting too, to observe this old pursyvisaged reprobate, with his enormously large and square-set, pugnaceous jaws, bolstered carefully up under an awning with sheaves of dried grass and plaits of flax, of a summer evening, with as many as a score of slave girls around him, all studiously affecting tender fondness and abjectly pandering, with enforced geniality, to his carnal weaknesses—his obnoxiously dissolute caprices—doing every one their very utmost to yield this horrible grim tyrant prurient gratification, romping and carrolling, running madly hither and thither about, in order to procure for the capacious glutton, all sorts of toothsome tit-bits, page 75 berries, honey, bivalves: choice steaks from the sun-cured dog-fish, the strengthening taro, the sweet kumeros and the succulent kumikum—holding to the voluptuous, coarse, blue, blobber-lips calabashes brimming with the liquid of the intoxicating and mysterious tutu plant. Then, this “Ancient,” this most woefully decrepit old curmudgeon, would, at times, be observed, puffing and holding his portly sides as if he were about to burst with downright laughter! on his surveying the lewd, supple antics practised by those diligent slaves in their wild and stark abandon, all for his sole and lordly pleasure! Talk about the old legendary Barons and Knights of Europe—why, such, as the phrase goes, couldn't hold a candle to this “King of the Cannibal Islands,” for out and out depravity, who actually could find the very quintessence of gratification at seeing trunkless pericraniums of his own genus tossed among his feet like as many tennis balls. Putting mawkish sentiment, however, aside, these most indefatigable hand-maidens of Tukaraiha's, with their bright, cheerful faces, and variegated stock of motional fantastics, were, despite of all that may be said to the contrary, irresistibly amusing! They practised a game not dissimilar to what is termed by the fairer sisterhood, as “Kiss in the Ring:” the only difference was this—when overtaken and seized hold of, in the place of immediately osculating the person captured, the latter went through a series of rotary calisthenics until the command “tu” [stand] is given, then nimbly bounds towards the besotted conductor of this fulsome melodrama and affects a tender embrace by a reciprocal impact of nose and breast! Every repetition of this exacted homage seemed to yield immeasurable gratification to the voluptuous recipient thereof. This squeezing together of probosces, at times, was supplemented, by those diligent to please wenches, in wild unconscious wantonness, circling around him in Indian file fashion, halting, then, one after the other, throwing their well-rounded, soft arms around the flabby, tattooed trunk of this veritible Sultan-this barbarous Daniel Lambert—who would, sometimes, respond to them with a passive senile smile! At times, a few who stood highest in his grace, would playfully decline his widely expansive back, and, with gentle force, jerk it up again, to impress on the sottish-minded, weak, old fool, an idea of fondling. Bah!

Wearied, in time, even with such titillations, such hollow endearments—meet enjoyments of the old time gods—the temporary satiated roué would put himself in a position for the purpose of courting sleep, then, three of these ministering bondswomen on each side of him, would tranquilly fan him with sprays of plantain and laurel. However, the fact that all their caresses a d blandishments were but simply “put on,” may have been gathered from their sudden change of front on the moment that they were fully assured, by the noisy breathing of the unctuous Titan, that Morpheus had taken fast hold, then it was that they freely indulged in all sorts of contemptuous and derisive epithets: apostrophising “the sleeping beauty” as a selfish, gluttonous, old pig, and scores of more hastily-chosen designations, expressive of their page 76 genuine feeling, and which would be much better left here untold.

One morning, at length, merely to break the monotony, Tukaraihu sent one half of his force, split up into three divisions, as a reconnoitreing expedition, in the direction of the hostile position of the Ngatiawas, at Pukerangioro. However, the said force, in the latter part of the day, were driven back to their head-quarters' encampment, as the phrase has it, “with their tails between their legs.” Four of their leaders had been put hors de combat, besides close upon four-score men. This disaster instantly aroused Tukaraihu from his unaccountable spell of lethargy into vigilant action. It was, indeed, almost beyond belief to see a man with such marked Sybarite tendencies so immediately changed to energy and active life He, as a matter of course, on the first tidings of this loss, stamped, foamed, and raged with vexation: in short, his countenance became so livid and distorted that he scarcely could be taken for any of his kindred species. Oaths, he vehemently swore, unlimited! declaring, by all that was held sacred by the Maori, by all their titular deities, that he would, before many days more were over, pay the Ngatiawa out dearly for their uncalculated upon temerity. But, after his fury had exhausted itself, he reasoned and directed, yea, even like a Cæsar! On the following day, the whole force of the Waikato, upwards of four thousand men, sat down immediately in front of Puke-rangioro, and ere night, all their food and movables had been industriously shifted from Onairo, by their substitutes for beasts of burden—poor women.

For several days then, these two confronting hostile forces tried their very utmost each to outrival the other in the most obscene and licentious epithets: the most gross and the most humiliating mockeries, which language, most happily, has no power to describe. The Waikato gibed and jeered at the Ngatiawa for being guilty of all sorts of cowardly perfidy: told them of the far-back time when they were known to be the most numerous and the most powerful tribe in all Eaheinomawe [North Island] or Tavaipoenamu [South Island]; but now, by their miserable greed, they had become the most degraded and the most despised. The Ngatiawa retorted, telling the Waikato that their impudence was certainly very great, by imputing greediness to anyone, as it was known from one end of the island to the other, they lived upon nothing else but that which they thieved from their neighbours all around them: they were nothing but the swordfish of Eaheinomawe, yet they should find that they had their work all before them, if they thought to drive the Ngatiawa into the sea, let them try it on as soon as ever they had a mind to. Chief after chief of the Waikato advanced to almost within a stone throw of the fortified position, exasperating them with the most aggravating taunts to come out and fight, if not in a body, then by ones and ones. The Ngatiawas never responded, although it took Reretawhangawhanga, their, generalissimo, all he could possibly do to keep several of the fiery spirits under him from rushing out to close with the insolently haughty challengers.

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“What is the good,” instilled this chief of chiefs, “of single bees bumming at each other when the object is to remove the whole swarm? Wait upon a good opportunity, and then use all your strength, without exhausting it with kicking, as it may be called, against shadowy smoke!”

Tired out, at length, Tukaraihu thought it high time to try on a little bit of strategy practice, a little cunning finesse, just as a sort of break to the tiresome monotony that had now for too long a time prevailed. He, therefore, betook himself, with all his force, from the view of those, he facetiously said, who did not fully appreciate their near neighbourly presence. “They might be anxious,” he added sarcastically, “to see how the taros, kumeras, and food which they had planted around were thriving this unusually dry season. We shall certainly not debar them from having a good look around: whether they will reap them or not, is quite a different matter: that,” he chucklingly added, “I would not be inclined to become surety for.”

O, foolish Ngatiawa! Thrice foolish Ngatiawa! Why, sharp-set by hunger and thirst as, undoubtedly, by this time you must have been, was it not better for a little while longer to suffer, than, so fatuitously to play into the hands of your crafty, scheming foe? Did not they, the Waikato, more than four times outnumber you? Had not they, the Waikato, while you were pent up and getting emaciated with insufficient nourishment, been living on the very juice of the land? O, foolish Ngatiawa, to rush into open space into the very jaws of perdition! to be confronted by such overpowering advantages held over you by your implacable enemies! your lynx-eyed despoilers!

The Ngatiawas, it needs not to be told, immediately they imagined that the coast was all clear, unrestrainedly rushed from their defences like mad bulls, in troops of twenties and thirties, to pick up, as best they were able, sufficient food to keep the wolf, as it is phrased, away a little longer from their doors. At the first—the old story—they were a little circumspect and chary; but, good fortune invariably begets increased confidence. They extended, indiscreetly, the radius from their works: the more they gathered in the more they wished to gather in. But really, after all, they must not be condemned too severely None know well the force of hunger save those who have poignantly suffered its knawing pangs. It will make its appeal be attended to, whenever or wherever the slightest shadow of a chance presents itself to have its cravings stifled. The Ngatiawas had now been, be it remembered, on short commons for a protracted time: yea! so much so, that the limb of a half-starved rat constituted a choice morsel: many had gone days without having oven so much as that by way of aliment!

Like that of the first cloud of dust raised by a rising sirocco, like that of a fresh in the valley from a mountain torrent, the Waikato was suddenly perceived by the above too-eagerly employed out-foragers, sweeping swiftly on towards them. Heavily-weighted with the provisions they had gathered, and, naturally, tardy in relinquishing them, page 78 thereupon the Ngatiawa were speedily overtaken. There were a few fiercely contested hand-to-hand combats, in which the brave Ngatiawas most unquestionably showed signal prowess; but, alas, alas! with no other result in their favour than causing a temporary check: no more effective such was, than a bundle of straw would be in staying an impetuous avalanche. Pinched and weakened as the beseiged were, with gaunt want's ravishes—still, again and again, with indomitable pluck, they turned round on their pursuers, and nobly and bravely contest ground with them! Their feet are on their native soil, and their spirit within them cannot brook their being subdued and trampled upon by such hordes of rascally, vile cut-throat plunderers. They are close now to the entrance of their fortified pah: the gates are wide open to receive them. But, lo! to get in and shut out their cruel and numerous foe—that, O, woeful plight—O, lamentable fate, is now utterly impossible. They are at their heels ! They commingle! Lo! assailed and assalants, pursuers and pursued, pell-mell! helter-skelter! rush into the illfated stronghold, both at the same time, together!… A vigorous, life and death conflict is a brief while sustained, until once that they, the Waikato, are backed by overwhelming numbers. In sheer desperation, a body of the Ngatiawa make a gap through the palisading, and escape thereby. But such, alas, was the signal for as dark a deed, as pitiless an action, as ever blackened the pages of either civilised or barbarian history. Great Pluto, who guides, it has been said, the reins of Destiny, how was carnage so revolting suffered to be done? ‘Tis sickening, agonizing even to contemplate upon! All that remained of the Ngatiawa, inside of Pukerangioro, amounting to several hundreds, men, women, and children were, without compunction, hurled headlong over the cliff, two hundred feet in altitude, and dashed into scattered, lifeless fragments on the scraggy boulders at the bottom of the Waitara River!!!

The pangs of war make ever life the rougher.
Ah! it is the living, not the dead, who suffer.
The Ngatiawa still, with unabating sorrow,
The head let's droop, at thought of Pukerangioro.