Part 4 (2/2)

An even more heartless piece of brutality was the conduct of a certain captain from Sydney, who took away with him the niece of a Bay of Islands chief, and after living with her for months abandoned her on sh.o.r.e in the Bay of Plenty, where she was first enslaved and finally killed and eaten by the local chief. The result was a bitter tribal war in which she was amply avenged.

Another skipper, after picking up a number of freshly-cured tattooed heads, the fruit of a recent tribal battle, put into the bay of the very tribe which had been beaten in the fighting. When a number of natives came on board to trade, he thought it a capital joke--after business was over--to roll out on the deck a sackful of the heads of their slain kinsfolk. Recognising the features, the insulted Maoris sprang overboard with tears and cries of rage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAORI WAHINe

Photo by GENERAL ROBLEY.]

A third worthy, whilst trading in the Bay of Islands, missed some articles on board his schooner. He at once had the chief Koro Koro, who happened to be on board, seized and bound hand and foot in the cabin. Koro Koro, who was noted both for strength and hot temper,P Land. They were varied by tragedies on a larger scale. In 1809 the _Boyd_, a s.h.i.+p of 500 tons--John Thompson, master--had discharged a s.h.i.+pload of English convicts in Sydney. The captain decided to take in a cargo of timber in New Zealand, and accordingly sailed to Whangaroa, a romantic inlet to the north of the Bay of Islands. Amongst the crew were several Maoris. One of these, known as George, was a young chief, though serving before the mast. During the voyage he was twice flogged for refusing to work on the plea of illness. The captain added insult to the stripes by the words, ”You are no chief!” The sting of this lay in the sacredness attached by Maori custom to a chief's person, which was _tapu_--_i.e._ a thing not to be touched. George--according to his own account[1]--merely replied that when they reached New Zealand the captain would see that he was a chief. But he vowed vengeance, and on reaching Whangaroa showed his stripes to his kinsfolk, as Boadicea hers to the Britons of old. The tribesmen, with the craft of which the apparently frank and cheerful Maori has so ample a share, quietly laid their plans. The captain was welcomed. To divide their foes, the Maori beguiled him and a party of sailors into the forest, where they killed them all. Then, dressing themselves in the clothes of the dead, the slayers made off to the _Boyd_. Easily coming alongside in their disguises, they leaped on the decks and ma.s.sacred crew and pa.s.sengers without pity. George himself clubbed half a dozen, who threw themselves at his feet begging for mercy. Yet even in his fury he spared a s.h.i.+p's boy who had been kind to him, and who ran to him for protection, and a woman and two girl-children. All four were afterwards rescued by Mr. Berry, of Sydney, and took refuge with a friendly neighbouring chief, Te Pehi. Meanwhile, the _Boyd_ had been stripped and burned. In the orgie that followed George's father snapped a flint-lock musket over a barrel of gunpowder, and, with the followers round him, was blown to pieces. Nigh seventy lives were lost in the _Boyd_ ma.s.sacre. Of course the slain were eaten.

[Footnote 1: As given by him to J.L. Nicholas five years afterwards.

See Nicholas' _Voyage to New Zealand_, vol. i., page 145. There are those who believe the story of the flogging to be an invention of George. Their authority is Mr. White, a Wesleyan missionary who lived at Whangaroa from 1823 to 1827, and to whom the natives are said to have admitted this. But that must have been, at least, fourteen years after the ma.s.sacre, and George was by that time at odds with many of his own people. He died in 1825. His last hours were disturbed by remorse arising from an incident in the _Boyd_ affair. He had not, he thought, properly avenged the death of his father--blown up by the powder-barrel. Such was the Maori conscience.]

Then ensued a tragedy of errors. The captains of certain whalers lying in the Bay of Islands, hearing that the survivors of the _Boyd_ were at Te Pehi's village, concluded that that kindly chief was a partner in the ma.s.sacre. Organizing a night attack, the whalers destroyed the village and its guiltless owners. The unlucky Te Pehi, fleeing wounded, fell into the hands of some of George's people, who, regarding him as a sympathiser with the whites, made an end of him.

Finally, to avenge him, some of the survivors of his tribe afterwards killed and ate three seamen who had had nothing to do with any stage of the miserable drama.

Less well known than the fate of the _Boyd_ is the cutting-off of the brig _Hawes_ in the Bay of Plenty in 1829. It is worth relating, if only because it shows that the Maoris were not always the provoked party in these affairs, and that, moreover, vengeance, even in No Man's Land, did not always fall only on the guiltless. In exchange for fire-arms and gunpowder the captain had filled his brig with flax and pigs. He had sailed out to Whale Island in the Bay, and by a boiling spring on the islet's beach was engaged with some of his men in killing and scalding the pigs and converting them into salt pork.

Suddenly the amazed trader saw the canoes of his friendly customers of the week before, headed by their chief ”Lizard,” sweep round and attack the _Hawes_. The seamen, still on board, ran up the rigging, where they were shot. The captain, with those on the islet, rowed away for their lives. The brig was gutted and burnt. The Maoris, perplexed by finding a number of bags of the unknown substance flour, emptied the contents into the sea, keeping the bags.[1]

[Footnote 1: Judge Wilson's _Story of Te Waharoa_.]

Certain white traders in the Bay of Islands resolved to bring ”Lizard”

to justice, in other words to shoot him. They commissioned a schooner, the _New Zealander_, to go down to the scene of the outrage. A friendly Bay of Islands chief offered to do the rest. He went with the schooner. On its arrival the unsuspecting ”Lizard” came off to trade.

At the end of a friendly visit he was stepping into his canoe when his unofficially appointed executioner stepped quietly forward, levelled his double-barrelled gun, and shot ”Lizard” dead.

As a matter of course the affair did not end there: ”Lizard's” tribe were bound in honour to retaliate. But upon whom? The _Pakehas_ who had caused their chiefs death were far out of reach in the north.

Still they were not the only _Pakehas_ in the land. In quite a different direction, in the harbour which Captain Cook had dubbed Hicks's Bay, lived two inoffensive Whites who had not even heard of ”Lizard's” death. What of that? They were Whites, and therefore of the same tribe as the _Pakehas_ concerned! So the village in which they lived was stormed, one White killed at once, the other captured.

As the latter stood awaiting execution and consumption, by an extraordinary stroke of fortune a whaling s.h.i.+p ran into the bay.

The adroit captive offered, if his life were spared, to decoy his countrymen on sh.o.r.e, so that they could be ma.s.sacred. The bargain was cheerfully struck; and when an armed boat's crew came rowing to land, the _Pakeha_, escorted to the seaside by a murderous and expectant throng, stood on a rock and addressed the seamen in English. What he told them to do, however, was to get ready and shoot his captors directly he dived from the rock into the water. Accordingly his plunge was followed by a volley. The survivors of the outwitted Maoris turned and fled, and the clever _Pakeha_ was picked up and carried safely on board.

At that time there was living among ”Lizard's” people a certain Maori from the Bay of Islands. This man, a greedy and mischievous fellow, had instigated ”Lizard” to cut off the _Hawes_. This became known, and Waka Nene, a Bay of Islands chief, destined to become famous in New Zealand history, punished his rascally fellow-tribesman in a very gallant way. On a visit to the Bay of Plenty he bearded the man sitting unsuspecting among his partners in the piracy, and, after fiercely upbraiding him, shot him dead. Nor did any present venture to touch Waka Nene.

The South Island had its share of outrages. On December 12, 1817, the brig _Sophia_ anch.o.r.ed in Otago Harbour. Kelly, her captain, was a man of strength and courage, who had gained some note by sailing round Tasmania in an open boat. He now had use for these qualities. The day after arrival he rowed with six men to a small native village outside the harbour heads, at a spot still called Murdering Beach. Landing there, he began to bargain with the Maoris for a supply of potatoes. A Lascar sailor, who was living with the savages, acted as interpreter.

The natives thronged round the seamen. Suddenly there was a yell, and they rushed upon the whites, of whom two were killed at once. Kelly, cutting his way through with a bill-hook he had in his hand, reached the boat and pushed out from the beach. Looking back, he saw one of his men (his brother-in-law, Tucker) struggling with the mob. The unhappy man had but time to cry, ”Captain Kelly, for G.o.d's sake don't leave me!” when he was knocked down in the surf, and hacked to death.

Another seaman was reeling in the boat desperately wounded. Kelly himself was speared through one hand.

The survivors regained their s.h.i.+p. She was swarming with natives, who soon learned what had happened and became wildly excited. Kelly drew his men aft and formed them into a solid body. When the Maoris, headed by their chief Karaka--Kelly spells it Corockar--rushed at them, the seamen beat them off, using their large sealing-knives with such effect that they killed sixteen, and cleared the decks. The remaining natives jumped overboard. A number were swept away by the ebb-tide and drowned. Next day the crew, now only fourteen in number, repulsed an attempt made in canoes to take the vessel by boarding, and killed Karaka. Emboldened by this, they afterwards made an expedition to the sh.o.r.e and cut up or stove in all their enemies' canoes lying on the beach. This was on Christmas Eve. On Boxing Day they landed and burnt the princ.i.p.al native village, which Kelly calls the ”beautiful city of Otago of about six hundred fine houses”--not the only bit of patent exaggeration in his story. Then they sailed away.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Transactions New Zealand Inst.i.tute_, vol. xxviii.]

What prompted the attack at Murdering Beach is uncertain--like so much that used to happen in No Man's Land. It is said that Tucker had been to Otago some years previously and had stolen a baked head from the Maoris. It is hinted that an encounter had taken place on the coast not long before in which natives had been shot and a boat's crew cut off. As of most occurrences of the time, we can only suspect that lesser crimes which remained hidden led to the greater, which are more or less truthfully recorded.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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