Isle of Tears (15 page)

And now he had attained a level of skill that made him a very welcome addition to Ngati Pono’s fighting force, a fact that filled Isla with trepidation as well as a reluctant pride.

Round-eyed with awe and consternation, Jamie looked at his brother and blurted, ‘But what will happen if ye go off fighting and ye get kilt?’

The others, including Niel, glared at him. He had said what they were all thinking, and expressing it made the terrible possibility more real.

‘What?’ Jamie knew he’d said something bad, and he reached for the puppy and squashed it against his chest in a vicious cuddle.

‘You’re no’ supposed tae go saying things like that, ye dunder-heid,’ Jean admonished.

‘I’ll no’ get kilt,’ Niel said quietly.

But Isla couldn’t look at him any more.

T
ARANAKI
, 1863

The children did not leave Waikaraka until eight weeks later at the end of February. But the weather would still be good for another month, and word had come that the progress of the Great South Road into the Waikato had stalled on the far side of the Mangatawhiri River. The imperial troops had built a large redoubt at Pokeno, and a stockade above the Waikato River nearby at Havelock’s Bluff, but, providing the travellers from Waikaraka were not delayed, they would have time to traverse the Waikato basin before Lieutenant-General Cameron’s men crossed the Mangatawhiri.

The day the women and children left Waikaraka was a grim one, punctuated by terrible weeping and wailing. Isla had not felt so distraught since Meg had died, and wondered privately how much more sadness her heart could accommodate. The twins had clung to her and Niel, begging to be allowed to stay with them after all. Pare, her baby strapped to her back and weeping copiously herself, had had to prise their fingers open and firmly lead them away while Laddie, held in check by Niel, howled with chilling desolation.

At the village gate Jamie, his face a red, tear-streaked mask of misery, had turned and cried out, ‘Ye promise ye’ll come and find us when it’s o’er, Isla? Ye’ll no’ leave us there?’

And Isla had run to them and pulled the pair of them to her in a last, fierce embrace. ‘I promise ye, mo leannan. I promise both of ye. I’ll no’ leave ye, and I’ll no’ forget ye.’

And then the children were gone, leaving the village feeling empty and robbed of its life. Those who stayed had often grizzled about the noisy and boisterous behaviour of their children and grandchildren, but now wished they were back.

Time seemed to drag very slowly, but in April the situation began to change rapidly; and the change was wrought by Governor George Grey, the man whom many Maori had believed was their ally during his first tenure as governor, in the 1840s. Now he was back, but things were very different. He had seemed poised to finally return the Peka Peka Block to Te Ati Awa, but on the morning of 7 April 1863, three hundred troops marched onto the Tataraimaka Block. This had been occupied two years before by Ngati Ruanui, until Peka Peka was returned. Wira quickly realized what Grey’s intentions were and he called a village council.

‘That Pakeha dog!’ He strode up and down the beaten floor of the wharenui, spit flying and arms gesticulating angrily. ‘That two-faced, conniving, white-skinned
devil!’

His audience gaped at him. Then Te Katate hissed in sudden comprehension, and hurled his pipe across the whare.

Wira spun to face him. ‘You see? You see what he is doing?’

‘Ae, I do,’ Te Katate replied grimly. Elbowing Tai on his right, he ordered, ‘Go and get my pipe, boy.’

For the benefit of everyone else, Wira explained in icy, clipped tones: ‘He knows that we will not tolerate the presence of imperial soldiers on the Tataraimaka Block while the Peka Peka Block is still in the Queen’s hands. So, he makes it known that he is about to return Peka Peka to us, then sends his men to occupy
Tataraimaka so that we will attack them.’

‘So will he then
not
return Peka Peka?’ Kimiora, Pare’s husband, asked.

‘In the end, it does not matter if he does or does not,’ Te Katate replied. ‘By then, it may be too late for us.’

‘Why?’ Isla exclaimed. ‘Why will it be too late?’

Wira said, ‘Because he knows that when Ngati Ruanui retaliate against the British reoccupation of Tataraimaka, they will be joined by their allies. Those allies include all iwi from the Taranaki area.’ He paused. ‘And Ngati Maniapoto.’

There was silence at this, as everyone digested the import of what he had said.

As usual, Te Katate had to have the last word. ‘Ngati Maniapoto are Waikato. If they take up arms again, Grey will use that as his excuse for declaring war on the Waikato, and opening the way for Pakeha invasion of the King Country. And then Taranaki. They will come with their soldiers and guns and their diseases and their dirty English ways. We will be obliterated.’

‘We will not!’ Harapeta declared vehemently, raising his fist. ‘We will fight to the death!’

He looked around, expecting everyone to cheer, but there was only silence.

On 4 May, a Ngati Ruanui taua ambushed a detachment of nine imperial soldiers at Oakura, travelling from the redoubt of Fort St George along the beach to New Plymouth, killing
eight of them. Nine days later the Peka Peka Block was officially returned to Te Ati Awa but, as Te Katate had predicted, it was too late. With almost nine hundred men, Lieutenant-General Cameron drove the Ngati Ruanui from the Tataraimaka Block to two nearby pa—Kaitake on a spur of the Kaitake Range, and Katikara opposite Fort St George—where they were joined by taua from Taranaki and Whanganui. By the beginning of June they had been defeated, and Grey knew he had delivered an insult of sufficient magnitude that Waikato iwi were sure to fight. Immediately, he withdrew to New Plymouth and sent his military reinforcements north, alleging that the Kingite ambush at Oakura was clear evidence of a ‘determined and bloodthirsty’ plot to invade Auckland.

The spark intended to ignite the war in the Waikato had caught.

A
lthough those at Waikaraka did not hear of it until several days later, on 9 July Grey demanded an oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria from all Maori living between Auckland and the Mangatawhiri River—the aukati, or boundary, between Auckland Province and the King Country. Those who refused were immediately evicted from their land. Women, children and the aged moved down into the Waikato in search of food and shelter from the cold, wet winter while their men took to the bush.

Days later Grey issued a proclamation to Waikato rangatira: anyone waging war against Her Majesty the Queen would forfeit the lands guaranteed to them by the Treaty of Waitangi. At daybreak the following morning, on 12 July, and before the proclamation could possibly have reached its intended recipients, Grey ordered Cameron and his fifteen hundred troops to cross
the Mangatawhiri River by boat. Grumbling and stamping their cold feet once they had landed, their white webbing and the dark blue of their uniforms mingling with the mist and shadows of the dawn, they set to digging ditches and piling sodden turf to form the parapets of Koheroa Redoubt, situated on the heights between the Mangatawhiri and the Waikato River. To the east and further downstream on the Waikato, soldiers were busy building Alexandra Redoubt at Tuakau, which would protect military traffic on the river and close it to Maori.

With the fortifications complete, Cameron, in deference to the miserable weather, settled down to wait. The entire area had been thoroughly surveyed, an electric telegraph had been erected along the Great South Road from Auckland all the way to Queen’s Redoubt at Pokeno, and more reinforcements were arriving from England. As well, the Auckland Militia had been mobilized, armoured steamers were under construction in Sydney, and volunteers were about to be recruited from Australia. The Waikato River below the vantage point at Koheroa was empty, bereft of the busy Maori traffic normally on its way to Port Waikato to deliver goods destined for sale at Auckland, and for Australian markets.

Everything was ready.

Isla sat down and eased the peke from her protesting shoulders. They’d been on the march now for a week, on their way up to the Waikato to join the Kingites as they readied for war. Her feet in
their squelching boots were blistered and sore, and she was cold and tired, but then so was everyone else.

They were a taua numbering one hundred: twenty-six women and seventy-four fighting men. Behind them at Waikaraka they had left a core of women, elders and older children to watch over the village and tend to the crops as best they could, while, far away to the east, the Ngati Pono travelling party, or ope, had, they hoped, reached the safe haven of Maketu.

The taua, men and women, carried their weapons, bedding mats, cooking and hunting implements, and enough basic food to last the journey into the Waikato. They had brought with them preserved meats, bird and eel, a small supply of kumara and potato, and had been gathering fern root, berries, herbs and nikau leaves, and snaring birds and rats as they travelled. Laddie hunted his own food. When they reached the Waikato, they knew they would be refurnished with supplies by local Kingite hapu.

The previous night they had camped at Mokau, the first time they had seen the ocean since their journey had begun, and had gathered an abundance of kai moana. This morning, Isla had had an upset stomach from eating too many mussels. It would have been quicker to travel by sea, but the waka were at Kawhia Harbour and they were unsure whether the British were still patrolling the coast.

This morning they had turned inland again, heading northeast for the Ngati Maniapoto stronghold of Hikurangi, near Otorohanga. There, they would prevail upon the people of Ngati Maniapoto to ferry them down the Waipa River to Ngaruawahia,
King Tawhiao’s seat, where it was assumed Cameron and his troops would be sure to attack. But they were worried that they would not reach Ngaruawahia in time: it would take them at least another week to reach Otorohanga, and it was already the middle of July.

Tai had fretted all the way from Waikaraka, saying several times, ‘We will miss the battle at this rate.’

Kakama, Tai’s father, had told him to be quiet, but Wira was not so concerned. ‘If we arrive at Ngaruawahia too late and the British have been sent back across the Mangatawhiri, then well and good. That part of the battle will have been won. But if not, we will surely clash with them somewhere.’

Privately, though, Wira was worried that, in their enthusiasm to once again face the British army in battle, Ngati Pono had committed too many fighting men. No matter how the war was progressing, some Ngati Pono warriors would have to return to Waikaraka to tend to the gardens and the seasonal food-gathering, lest the village be left with no food for next year. He did not talk of this, but his men all knew that for many of them their time on the battlefield would be limited and their opportunities to acquire mana as warriors fewer than they might have liked.

Isla was not unduly disconcerted by Tai’s eagerness to rush into battle. He had been trained from a young age to be a warrior, and had barely been blooded during the first Taranaki war. Niel’s enthusiasm, however, concerned her more. She wondered whether her mother and father would even recognize their elder son now, so grown-up and fierce.

On their journey they had passed groups of Maori, mostly women and children, moving as quickly as they could down from the Waikato and deep into the heart of the King Country to avoid the fighting. Surely if victory against the British were assured, people would not need to flee their homes and lands? But everyone was quietly aware of the possibility of defeat, even though talk around the fires at night was of the glory and mana of battles to be won.

But to talk openly of defeat was to invite it, and Isla understood this as well as anyone else. So she said nothing when Tai whispered to her, as they lay together at night, of his desire to confront the British army, knowing that it was part of the mental ritual of preparing for battle. She herself was prepared, having learned to fire a rifle and a shotgun with some skill, and to move about the bush as though invisible, making no sound and leaving no trace of her presence. Maori women did not usually fight alongside their men, although they often accompanied them to war, but it had happened in the past and, as Mere had warned, it could happen again. If it did, Isla must be ready.

News of the Battle of Koheroa reached the Ngati Pono contingent two days before they arrived at Hikurangi. On 17 July, one hundred and fifty Ngati Mahuta warriors, digging in at an old pa named Te Teoteo on the heights south of Koheroa Redoubt, clashed with three times that number of Cameron’s soldiers: Ngati Mahuta retreated, still fighting, then fled back to Meremere. Each
side lost a dozen or so men. But the same day, well behind the British lines, an imperial convoy was attacked by a Ngati Paoa taua on the Great South Road between Drury and Pokeno. The convoy and its escort lost sixteen men, but only one or two Ngati Paoa warriors were killed.

So when the Ngati Pono party finally reached Hikurangi, weary from their gruelling march, their mood was reasonably buoyant. They were welcomed warmly—although Isla and Niel were at first viewed with some suspicion until it had been explained that they were Ngati Pono whangai, and as such Kingites—and immediately given food and the latest news. Those Ngati Mahuta who had retreated from Koheroa had been busily, and hurriedly, fortifying the heights at Meremere, on the right bank overlooking the Waikato River, and building new fortified pa at Paparata to the east between the Waikato and the Firth of Thames, and to the west at Pukekawa. Wiremu Tamihana himself was coming to take command, and a large Ngati Maniapoto taua was preparing to leave Hikurangi for Pukekawa within the week, although they would have to abandon the waterways at Meremere because of the imperial blockades downriver, and continue to Pukekawa across country. In response, Cameron and his troops were moving south, evidently throwing up redoubts all over the place, and it was assumed—with some glee—that he would have to set up camp in the water-logged swamps surrounding Meremere.

Wira immediately volunteered his people to accompany the Ngati Maniapoto taua that was about to leave for Pukekawa.

On the last day of July, Isla climbed out of the long waka in which she had been uncomfortably crouched for the past eighteen hours and, her boots filling with cold water, waded to the shore and pulled herself up onto the riverbank. Laddie, delighted to be released from the confines of the waka, bounded joyfully past, splashing her. Laying aside her peke, she stretched until her spine cracked, then vigorously rubbed her knees and buttocks, bruised and sore from sitting so long.

Tai and Niel had already disembarked and were helping to haul the waka—one of eleven—up onto dry land, and Mere and the other women were unloading the supplies and putting them into some sort of order. Wira and his entourage had gone with the Ngati Maniapoto to greet the waiting reception party.

Soon, the ripples and bow waves they had brought with them had been reclaimed by the river’s currents, and the Waikato was calm again, its rags of mist rising in silence. It was as cold off the river as it had been on, and Isla coughed, her throat protesting at the raw air. The opposite shore was densely forested, and to the east a huge swamp extended until it, too, was subsumed by forest.

The journey from Hikurangi, which had taken only a day and a half as the rivers had been full and swift, had been an endless series of such vistas—mile after mile of bush bordering first the Puniu River, then the Waipa and then the mighty Waikato itself as the two rivers merged at Ngaruawahia. To Isla, in the waka, it had seemed as though the region’s forests were impenetrable, but here and there had been deep, fern-filled gullies running back
from the river and into the hills and, more and more frequently, flood plains where smaller rivers flowed into the Waikato and where bracken and fern dominated. It was beautiful country, but rugged and forbidding, and gloomy in the thin winter light.

And it had been so very quiet, except for the splash of paddles and the rhythmic chant of each waka’s kai-hautu as he kept time, that Isla could almost believe that the land was empty of all other living people. But Mere assured her that the people of the Waikato would simply have gone south—those who would not be fighting—or moved inland from the river in case the imperial troops suddenly appeared on it one day. And eventually Isla began to see evidence of habitation near the riverbanks—crops and gardens, although these were mainly fallow for winter, palisades and, here and there, clusters of whare that suggested villages. But no smoke from fires, not a single person on shore and no river traffic at all.

Meremere pa, above the river, seemed to be very busy, however. Isla peered up at the hill on which it perched, and at the spurs that ran off it to the east. The hill itself and each spur were terraced with row after row of trenches and palisades, even on this side, which faced away from the direction from which the British would probably attack.

As Ngati Pono were greeted, she and Niel were again initially regarded as objects of curiosity, but it seemed that there were one or two other Pakeha-Maori Kingites in the area, so they were not a complete novelty. But still, it was vaguely unnerving to be stared at by so many people, not all of whom bothered to disguise their
suspicion. Isla refused to react and merely stared back, her head high and her gaze steady.

Meremere was teeming with people—mostly men, but a number of women, too—whose hapu Mere was able to name by the moko and kauae some of them wore. And, occasionally, simply by the shapes of their faces.

‘Ngati Haua from Maungatautari are here, of course, although I have not yet seen Wiremu Tamihana. Many of these people are from Waikato tribes such as Ngati Raukawa, and Ngati Mahanga from the coast. And those women are Ngati Paoa, from Hauraki.’ She pointed. ‘But those men there are Ngati Tuwharetoa, from the Taupo region. And I see some Ngai Te Rangi from Tauranga. And Ngati Pou, they are from around the Tarawera River. That group there are Ngati Maru. From Hauraki, I mean; not my people.’

Isla said, ‘I dinnae see anyone else here from Te Ati Awa. Is it only us come up from Taranaki?’

‘For now. But Wira says that most of our other hapu, and many of our allies, are to send taua within the month. Some are already on the march.’

Isla nodded, relieved, but not at all sure where they would all fit when they did arrive: Meremere pa, large though it was, already seemed fully occupied.

After they had been fed, the Ngati Pono contingent was escorted en masse to the top of the hill to witness the spectacular view from the fortified pa proper. To the south was the lush, green heart of the Waikato; to the west stretched low bush and fern-clad hills beyond which lay Port Waikato, where the river met the
sea; and to the east, across an ancient flood plain cloaked with bracken and toetoe and currently wreathed in low-lying mists, was the Firth of Thames. To the north, though, the air was clear and the Hunua Ranges, forming a barrier between the Waikato and Auckland, stood dark against the bright sky.

A mile or so north of Meremere pa, the Whangamarino River joined the Waikato at a sharp angle, and just north of that Cameron’s army was plain to see. There were neat lines of conical white tents—many, many hundreds—and tiny soldiers scuttling busily about beneath the redoubt they had named Whangamarino. In the distance, it was just possible to see Koheroa Redoubt on the heights, and, on the far side of the Mangatawhiri River, the southern end of the Great South Road, winding out of the bush.

Behind palisades part-way down the hill on the river side, Niel spied a pair of artillery pieces, and noted another sited further up the spur behind them. All three were trained on the river.

‘Have you been here long?’ he said in Maori to a man standing nearby.

‘Over a week.’

‘Are those ours?’ Niel asked, pointing.

The man looked at him. ‘You refer to the cannon? Ae.’

‘Really?’ Niel was surprised.