Greater Britain Part 21

A shout from the Ngatiraukawa hailed the approach of the Ngatiapa, who deployed from the woods some two hundred strong, all armed with Enfield rifles. They united with the w.a.n.ganuis, and marched slowly down with their rifles at the "charge," steadily singing war-songs. When within a hundred yards of the opposing ranks, they halted, and sent in their challenge. The Ngatiraukawa and Ngatiapa heralds pa.s.sed each other in silence, and each delivered his message to the hostile chief.

We could see that the allies were led by Hunia in all the bravery of his war-costume. In his hair he wore a heron plume, and another was fastened near the muzzle of his short carbine; his limbs were bare, but about his shoulders he had a pure white scarf of satin. His kilt was gauze-silk, of three colors--pink, emerald, and cherry--arranged in such a way as to show as much of the green as of the two other colors. The contrast, which upon a white skin would have been glaring in its ugliness, was perfect when backed by the nut-brown of Hunia's chest and legs. As he ran before his tribe, he was the ideal savage.

The instant that the heralds had returned, a charge took place, the forces pa.s.sing through each other's ranks as they do upon the stage, but with frightful yells. After this they formed two deep, in three companies, and danced the "musket-exercise war-dance" in wonderful time, the women leading, thrusting out their tongues, and shaking their long pendant b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Among them was Hamuera's wife, standing drawn up to her full height, her limbs stiffened, her head thrown back, her mouth wide open and tongue protruding, her eyes rolled so as to show the white, and her arms stretched out in front of her, as she slowly chanted. The illusion was perfect: she became for the time a mad prophetess; yet all the frenzy was a.s.sumed at a whim, to be cast aside in half an hour. The shouts were of the same under-breath kind as in the haka, but they were aided by the sounds of horns and conch-sh.e.l.ls, and from the number of men engaged the noise was this time terrible. After much fierce singing the musket-dance was repeated, with furious leaps and gestures, till the men became utterly exhausted, when the review was closed by a general discharge of rifles. Running with nimble feet, the dancers were soon back within their pahs, and the feast, beginning now, was, like a Russian banquet, prolonged till morning.

It is not hard to understand the conduct of Lord Durham's settlers, who landed here in 1837. The friendly natives received the party with a war-dance, which had upon them such an effect that they immediately took s.h.i.+p for Australia, where they remained.

The next day, when we called on Governor Hunia at his wahre to bid him farewell, before our departure for the capital, he made two speeches to us, which are worth recording as specimens of Maori oratory. Speaking through Mr. Buller, who had been kind enough to escort us to the Ngatiapa's wahre, Hunia said:

"Hail, guests! You have just now seen the settlement of a great dispute--the greatest of modern time.

"This was a weighty trouble--a grave difficulty.

"Many Pakehas have tried to settle it--in vain. For Petatone was it reserved to end it. I have said that great is our grat.i.tude to Petatone.

"If Petatone hath need of me in the future, I shall be there. If he climbs the lofty tree, I will climb it with him. If he scales high cliffs, I will scale them too. If Petatone needeth help, he shall have it; and where he leads, there will I follow.

"Such are the words of Hunia."

To this speech one of us replied, explaining our position as guests from Britain.

Hunia then began again to speak:

"O my guests, a few days since when asked for a war-dance, I refused. I refused because my people were sad at heart.

"We were loath to refuse our guests, but the tribes were grieved; the peeple were sorrowful at heart.

"To-day we are happy, and the war-dance has taken place.

"O my guests, when ye return to our great Queen, tell her that we will fight for her again as we have fought before.

"She is our Queen as well as your Queen--Queen of Maories and Queen of Pakeha.

"Should wars arise, we will take up our rifles, and march whithersoever she shall direct.

"You have heard of the King movement. I was a Kingite; but that did not prevent me fighting for the Queen--I and my chiefs.

"My cousin, Wiremu, went to England, and saw our Queen. He returned....

"When you landed in this island, he was already dead....

"He died fighting for our Queen.

"As he died, _we_ will die, if need be--I and all my chiefs. This do you tell our Queen.

"I have said."

This pa.s.sage, spoken as Hunia spoke it, was one of n.o.ble eloquence and singular rhetoric art. The few first words about Wiremu were spoken in a half indifferent way; but there was a long pause before and after the statement that he was dead, and a sinking of the voice when he related how Wiremu had died, followed by a burst of sudden fire in the "As he died, _we_ will die--I and all my chiefs."

After a minute or two, Hunia resumed:

"This is another word.

"We are all of us glad to see you.

"When we wrote to Petatone, we asked him that he would bring with him Pakehas from England and from Australia--Pakehas from all parts of the Queen's broad lands.

"Pakehas who should return to tell the Queen that the Ngatiapa are her liegemen.

"We are much rejoiced that you are here. May your heart rest here among us; but if you go once more to your English home, tell the people that we are Petatone's faithful subjects and the Queen's.

"I have said."

After pledging Hunia in a cup of wine, we returned to our temporary home.

CHAPTER V.

THE MAORIES.

Parting with my companions (who were going northward) in order that I might return to Wellington, and thence take s.h.i.+p to Taranaki, I started at daybreak on a lovely morning to walk by the sea-sh.o.r.e to Otaki. As I left the bank of the Manawatu River for the sands, Mount Egmont near Taranaki, and Mounts Ruapehu and Tongariro, in the center of the island, hung their great snow domes in the soft blue of the sky behind me, and seemed to have parted from their bases.

I soon pa.s.sed through the flax-swamp where we for days had shot the pukeko, and coming out upon the wet sands, which here are glittering and full of the Taranaki steel, I took off boots and socks, and trudged the whole distance barefoot, regardless of the morrow. It was hard to walk without crunching with the heel sh.e.l.ls which would be thought rare at home, and here and there charming little tern and other tiny sea-fowl flew at me, and all but pecked my eyes out for coming near their nests.

During the day, I forded two large rivers and small streams innumerable, and swam the Ohau, where Dr. Featherston last week lost his dog-cart in the quick-sands, but I managed to reach Otaki before sunset, in time to revel in a typical New Zealand view. The foreground was composed of ancient sand-hills, covered with the native flax, with the deliciously-scented Manuka ti-tree, brilliant in white flower, and with giant fern, tuft-gra.s.s, and tussac. Farther inland was the bush, evergreen, bunchlike in its foliage, and so overladen with parasitic vegetation, that the true leaves were hidden by usurpers, or crushed to death in the folds of snakelike creepers. The view was bounded by bush-clad mountains, rosy with the sunset tints.

Otaki is Archdeacon Hadfield's church-settlement of Christian Maories; but of late there have been signs of wavering in the tribes, and I found Major Edwardes, who had been with us at Parewanui, engaged in holding, for the government, a runanga of Hau-Haus, or Antichristian Maories, in the Otaki Pah. Some of these fellows had lately held a meeting, and had themselves rebaptized, but this time _out of_ instead of _into_ the church. They received fresh names, and are said to have politely invited the archdeacon to perform the ceremony.

Maori Church of Englandism has proved a failure. A dozen native clergymen are, it is true, supported in comfort by their countrymen, but the tribes would support a hundred such, if necessary, rather than give up the fertile "reservations," such as that of Otaki, which their pretended Christianity has secured. There is much in the Maori that is tiger-like, and it is in the blood, not to be drawn out of it by a few years of playing at Christianity.

The labors of the missionaries have been great, their earnestness and devotion unsurpa.s.sed. Up to the day of the outbreak of Hau-Hauism, their influence with the natives was thought to be enormous. The entire Maori race had been baptized, thousands of natives had attended the schools, hundreds had become communicants and catechists. In a day the number of native Christians was reduced from thirty thousand to some hundreds.

Right and left the tribes flocked to the bush, deserting mission stations, villages, herds, and fields. Those few who dared not go were there in spirit; all sympathized, if not with the Hau-Hau movement, at least with Kingism. The archdeacon and his brethren of the holy calling were at their wits' ends. Not only did Christianity disappear: civilization itself accompanied religion in her flight, and habits of bloodshed and barbarity, unknown since the nominal renunciation of idolatry, in a day returned. The fall was terrible, but it went to show that the apparent success had been fict.i.tious. The natives had built mills and owned s.h.i.+ps; they had learnt husbandry and cattle-breeding; they had invested money, and put acre to acre, and house to house; but their moral could hardly have kept pace with their material, or even with their mental gains.

A magistrate, who knows the Maories well, told me that their Christianity is only on the surface. He one day asked Matene te Whiwhi, a Ngatiraukawa chief, "Which would you soonest eat, Matene--pork, beef, or Ngatiapa?" Matene answered, with a turn up of his eyes, "Ah! I'm a Christian!" "Never mind that to me, you know," said the Englishman. "The flesh of the Ngatiapa is sweet," said Matene, with a smack of the lips that was distinctly audible. The settlers tell you that when the Maories go to war, they use up their Bibles for gun-wadding, and then come on the missionaries for a fresh supply.

The Polynesians, when Christianity is first presented to them, embrace it with excitement and enthusiasm; the "new religion" spreads like wildfire; the success of the teachers is amazing. A few years, however, show a terrible change. The natives find that all white men are not missionaries; that if one set of Englishmen deplore their licentiousness, there are others to back them in it; that Christianity requires self-restraint. As soon as the first flare of the new religion is over it commences to decline, and in some cases it expires. The story of Christianity in Hawaii, in Otaheite, and in New Zealand, has been much the same: among the Tahitians it was crushed by the relapse of the converts into extreme licentiousness; among the Maories it was put down by the sudden rise of the Hau-Hau fanaticism. A return to a better state of things has in each case followed, but the missionaries work now in a depressed and saddened way, which contrasts sternly with the exultation that inspired them before the fresh outbreak of the demon which they believed they had exorcised. They reluctantly admit that the Polynesians are fickle as well as gross; not only licentious, but untrustworthy. There is, they will tell you, no country where it is so easy to plant or so hard to maintain Christianity.

The Maori religion is that of all the Polynesians--a vague polytheism, which in their poems seems now and then to approach to pantheism. The forest glades, the mountain rocks, the stormy sh.o.r.es, all swarm with fairy singers, and with throngs of gnomes and elves. The happy laughing islanders have a heaven, but no h.e.l.l in their mythology; of "sin" they have no conception. Hau-Hauism is not a Polynesian creed, but a political and religious system based upon the earlier books of the Old Testament; even the cannibalism which was added was not of the Maori kind. The Indians of Chili ate human flesh for pleasure and variety; those of Virginia were cannibals only on state occasions, or in religious ceremonials; but the Maories seem originally to have been driven to man-eating by sheer want of food. Since Cook left pigs upon the islands, the excuse has been wanting, and the practice has consequently ceased. As revived by the Hau-Haus, the man-eating was of a ceremonial nature, and, like the whole of the observances of the Hau-Hau fanaticism, an inroad upon ancient Maori customs.

There is one great difference which severs the Maories from the other Polynesians. In New Zealand caste is unknown; every Maori is a gentleman or a slave. Chiefs are elected by the popular voice, not, indeed, by a show of hands, but by a sort of general agreement of the tribe; but the chief is a political, not a social superior. In the windy climate of New Zealand men can push themselves to the front too surely by their energy and toil, to remain socially in an inferior cla.s.s. Caste is impossible where the climate necessitates activity and work. The Maories, too, we should remember, are an immigrant race; probably no high-caste men came with them--all started from equal rank.

Like the Tongans, the Maories pay great reverence to their well-born women; slave women are of no account. The Friendly Islanders exclude both man and woman slave from the Future Life; but the Maori Rangatira not only admits his followers to heaven, but his wife to council. A Maori chief is as obedient to the warlike biddings, and as grateful for the praising glance or smile of his betrothed, as a planter-cavalier of Carolina, or a Cretan volunteer; and even the ladies of New Orleans cannot have gone further than the wives of Hunia and Ihakara in spurring on the men to war. The Maori Andromaches outdo their European sisters, for they themselves proceed to battle, and animate their Hectors by songs and shouts. Even the scepter of tribal rule--the greenstone _meri_, or royal club--is often intrusted to them by their warrior husbands, and used to lead the war-dance or the charge.

The delicacy of treatment shown by the Maories toward their women may go far to account for the absence of contempt for the native race among the English population. An Englishman's respect for the s.e.x is terribly shocked when he sees a woman staggering under the weight of the wigwam and the children of a "brave," who stalks behind her through the streets of Austin, carrying his rifles and his pistols, but not another ounce, unless in the shape of a thong with which to hasten the squaw's steps.

What wonder if the men who sit by smoking while their wives totter under basketsful of mould on the boulevard works at Delhi are called lazy scoundrels by the press of the Northwest, or if the Shoshones, who eat the bread of idleness themselves, and hire out their wives to the Pacific Railroad Company, are looked upon as worse than dogs in Nevada, where the thing is done? It is the New Zealand native's treatment of his wife that makes it possible for an honest Englishman to respect or love an honest Maori.