Tommo & Hawk (30 page)

For once the governor is feeling the pinch. Only seven of six-and-twenty million acres o' land in the North Island has been purchased by the settlers. So Gore Browne ups and says, 'The Europeans covet these lands and are determined to enter in and possess them, rightly if possible, if not, then by any means at all.' No 'Excuse P or 'By your leave' or 'Does you mind?' What a mongrel bastard he turns out to be!

Well, Chief Wiremu Kingi ain't having a bar of it. He ain't selling and that's bloody that! So Governor Gore Browne starts to do a bit of re-interpreting of the Treaty o' Waitangi. He reckons that if a Maori, what tills or uses a piece of land he has inherited, desires to sell that land to the government, he can do so without the permission of the chief and the tribe. He can even do it over the chief's head, so to speak. It is the first time this be said official-like, by the Crown itself, which means Gore Browne intends it to become the law o' the land.

Soon enough the governor find a Maori turncoat by the name of Te Teira, who offers to sell the governor some land at the mouth of the Waitara. Quick as a flash, His Nibs agrees, provided a title can be made out.

But, with Hawk cleaning it up for the governor's tender ears, Wiremu Kingi sticks to his story. 'Listen, Governor! Notwithstanding Te Teira's decision, I will not permit sale of the Waitara to the pakeha. Waitara is in my hands. I will not give it up - never, never, never! I have spoken.' And he storms off in a proper huff, like Hawk says he should.

Things go from bad to worse when Mr Parris, the governor's district land purchaser, decides that Turncoat Te Teira's title is valid and the governor can buy his land at the mouth of the Waitara any time Te Teira cares to name a price. Parris sends in his surveyors to peg it, and a cove named Octavius Carrington marks it out neat as you like. 'This is the Crown's land now!' he announces, bold as brass to the applause o' the greedy settlers, what soon hopes to purchase it for themselves.

'Oh no it is not!' says Wiremu Kingi. 'This is my land and my people's land and my ancestors' land!' He then sends in the women of the tribe to pull out the surveyors' pegs.

'There's trouble coming, big trouble!' I says to Hawk. 'Time to back off, mate!'

'What?' says Hawk. 'Back off? Tommo, we've got right on our side! Tamihana thinks all the Maori will be willing to come together over this, and if he can persuade Wiremu Kingi to join the King Movement, this would be the first time we are a united front. The governor won't dare to go against all the tribes at once.'

'Just you watch him!' says I. Sure enough, ten days later the governor declares martial law and sends in the troops. 'So much for the king and the united tribes! Queen Victoria, it seems, don't give a fig about the Maori,' I says to me stupid brother with all his high hopes.

But Chief Wiremu Kingi is a man of his word and he don't frighten easy. He builds a pa, a Maori fort, on the disputed land. The governor sends in his troops and the two sides face each other. It be clear that the government has the better forces, with muskets and artillery at the ready.

'We're done for,' Hawk says bitterly. 'I blame myself. I didn't think the governor would go so obviously against the Maori. I have to persuade Wiremu Kingi not to fight or his people will be destroyed. This is a fight we cannot win.'

So Hawk sneaks off and, under cover of night, joins Wiremu Kingi in his pa. I am beside meself when I discovers him gone. Even when the game is up, me stupid brother won't save his own hide. I am all for going after him but Makareta begs me to stay. As she sees it, Hawk's gone to stop a fight and the chief will listen to the Black Maori. I hope she be right, and perhaps I have come to care for my wahine more than I thinks, 'cause I agree to stay with her, to wait and worry. The tribes of the King Movement are on the alert at the threat of war, and are watching the crisis most careful. Their informants be everywhere, so we hears all as it takes place.

With the government and Taranaki fighters facing each other, the governor sends an ultimatum to Chief Wiremu Kingi:

To the chief who obstructs the Queen's road,

You have presumed to build on Her Majesty's land, and to stop the free passage of persons coming and going. This is levying war against the Crown. Destroy the places you have built, ask my forgiveness and you shall receive it. If you refuse, the blood of your people will be on your own head. I shall order the men to open fire upon you if you not obey my order.

There ain't no road and there ain't no need for free passage. The land is not the queen's but is in dispute. Until this is resolved, it belongs to the Maori people, according to the treaty. But the governor's guns are pointed at Chief Wiremu Kingi's pa and Hawk, we hear, is desperate for the chief not to fight. Wiremu Kingi be no coward and it takes great persuasion. But at last he agrees and he leaves the pa swearing an oath of revenge as he watches the governor's troops destroy his fortifications.

*

In the six months what follow, Hawk tries to convince Chief Wiremu Kingi to meet with the governor. Ever the peacemaker, he argues that a forceful case may be made by the Maori, using the Treaty of Waitangi as evidence. They might yet save the day if they appeal to the colonial office in London or directly to Queen Victoria herself.

But Wiremu Kingi ain't in the mood to listen to Hawk's advice or any other. Instead he declares war against the pakeha. He explains his position in a most powerful letter to a chieftainess of his own blood:

Peace will not be made, I will continue to fight and the pakeha will be exterminated by me, or by my younger brother Te Hapurona… It is well with your children and us, we die upon the land which you and your brothers left us… We are here eating the English bullets - My friends, my parents, this shall be my work forever. What though my people and I may die, we die for Aotearoa.

'Can we go now?' I beg Hawk when I hears of it. 'There's no more need for the Black Maori to stay. The war is declared and we has no part in it!'

As much as I care for Makareta, I'm afraid - afraid for my own skin, but more for me brother's. There is talk among the settlers of the Black Maori what be seven foot tall and speaks English well enough to trap the tongues of the governor's men. Hawk is thought to be a Maori of an extreme dark colour, for his tattoos are most correct and he is of the rangatira and so assumed to be high born. But his identity is a mystery. No one knows his true name and when he speaks to translate for any of the Maori chiefs or even for King Potatau himself, he's introduced only as the Black Maori. King Potatau has decreed that it is tapu to talk of Hawk to the pakeha, so his secret be well kept.

And so the rumour has begun amongst the pakeha that the Black Maori is the true power behind the tribes. It is he what threatens to destroy them, a new general who will come silent in the night and murder their women and children while they sleep.  Hawk reads  aloud from the Auckland Herald to me:

Black is the colour of the devil and the Black Maori has all the appearance and characteristics of Satan himself! His hair is black and close grown to his head and is easily likened to the devil's cap. His nose is large and his eyes dark as pitch and evil in every malevolent glance. If he lacks a pointed beard, it is only that his cunning has caused it to be shaved from his chin. His ears cannot be so well disguised and are pointed like a goblin's. He speaks with a most acerbic tongue, enough to burn the ears of any gentleman and not to be tolerated in the presence of the fairer sex. If a child should perchance come upon him unexpectedly, it would ever after be in a state of dreadful fright, the image of the devil burned into its memory forever!

'Hawk, you know what they says of you! They think you a danger to them and they will try to get you. Let's go now while we still can!' I plead when I hears this.

But Hawk ain't gunna be swayed. Tommo, I must see this through or I am a coward. I have done everything I can to avert war but the pakeha will not relent and are determined they should have land in the Taranaki, land the Maori do not wish to sell. If Wiremu Kingi relents it will not end there. This is the beginning, not the end, of the settlers' true rapacity!' He stops, scratches his noggin, then adds, 'Besides, there is something else.'

'What? Ain't you done enough?'

'It is the way the Maori plan to fight, the organisation of the pa.'

'The pa? But it looks like a most excellent fortification.' The Maori pa is a fort, usually built upon a hill with palisades o' logs, trenches, earth ramparts and underground chambers, as well as a river or some natural defence on one side. It is most difficult to attack and I don't know what Hawk could be on about.

'The pa is about defence. This is fine for tribal war, but in these battles, the Maori are often outnumbered by their British attackers, who also have superior arms and artillery.'

'But it has stood them well in the past. They talk of great battles won, of fighting the British troopers to a standstill from the pa.'

'Sometimes, yes,' Hawk agrees. 'But how well they remember the victories and how soon they forget the defeats. In the end, most attacks against the Maori pa were victorious for the British. The Maori are brave men who would willingly die for their land, but they are constantly under siege when they fight from a pa. If not beaten at arms, they can eventually be starved out.'

'But it be their way of protecting their women and children. How else should they fight?'

Hawk looks serious. ‘I do not love war but have read much of it. Perhaps there is something to be learnt from the wars of England and their military procedure in battle.'

'You're gunna teach the Maori to wage war from books?' I ask. 'Hawk, they's warriors what come to it from generations! And you hates violence!'

'Sometimes there is no other way but to stand and fight. If we must do so, we might at least fight prepared with a knowledge of the enemy. The Maori do not have this. They have not designed the pa against the use of artillery. For their own wars, where they use spears and fighting sticks, it fares well. It may even be somewhat effective against the musket. But it is defenceless against an artillery piece which can pound away remorselessly for as long as the pakeha likes, day and night.'

'So what is they to do?'

'They must avoid pitched battles,' Hawk answers.

'You means they should run away?'

'Well, yes, in a manner of speaking.' Hawk clears his throat and I resigns meself to one o' his lectures. 'During the Peninsular War under the Duke of Wellington - you know, the general who led the British and won at Waterloo where Mary's medal comes from?'

'Yes, I know who you means,' I say impatient. 'Mount Wellington be named after him.'

'Well, the Spaniards, fighting in their own country which they knew well, devised a new way of fighting Napoleon Bonaparte's troops. They engaged in "little wars", guerrilla wars, as they called it.

'The idea is to strike by surprise and then withdraw so the enemy never knows when you'll strike or where you are. You ambush them, keep on the move, never fight a pitched battle. In this way, much smaller forces can oppose much larger ones. Artillery is rendered ineffective and the battles are waged with muskets and hand-to-hand combat.'

'Hand-to-hand fighting?' I'm thinking of me fighting axe.

'Yes, small fast units that can do a maximum of harm in a very short time. The Maori have shown that with their fighting stick, they can combat the British bayonet. If they can be persuaded to fight this way, I think they will prove most effective.'

'With a fighting axe, too!' I says, excited. 'It be an ideal weapon for this kind o' war!'

Hawk nods. 'Yes. But I don't know if I can make Wiremyu Kingi agree to my ideas. The Maori are stubborn in their ways of fighting. I worry that their ancestors, speaking through the tohunga, could forbid it.'

He scratches his brow. 'You see, the Maori do not like to leave their land to fight. They think that they must hold the ground itself, defend it under their feet. I must persuade them that they might win the war with these tactics. That they can take their fight onto the lands the settlers have stolen, then return in peace to the land they still hold.'

Hawk's eyes shine as he thinks of how all this might be done. 'If the Maori adopt these tactics, they should attack the settlers on their farms and drive them into the towns, make them afraid to venture back onto their land. Then the Europeans would be under siege with no crops to harvest or livestock to slaughter.

'The troops would have to come out after the Maori to regain vacated territory and they would be ambushed, never knowing where the enemy was going to strike next. There are not sufficient of them to protect the pakeha farmers, to guard every farm, as well as the army's lines of communication. The Maori irregulars will strike wherever the governor's forces are not to be found. This will not be a war the British can win with artillery, using accustomed fighting tactics.'

Suddenly I see that what Hawk says makes sense. The Maori know the land and can move fast and silent across it. Their great war canoes can creep up the coast, attack and be away again. They be proven at close fighting. By drawing the British into the mountains, they could easily ambush them. If the troops remain on the plains, they could attack them at night, coming down from the mountains, where they hold their women and children safe.

'You think if the Maori do this, they can win?'

Hawk shakes his head. 'No, in the end, they cannot win, because the pakeha are not willing to leave New Zealand and there are as many of them now as there are Maori.'

'So, whatever method o' war the Maori use, it be a waste o' time!' I sigh, shrugging me shoulders.

'No, not at all. That is the whole point, Tommo. The Maori must resist, or they lose everything. If they fight from the pa, they will soon be defeated and their land confiscated by the government and given to the white man.

'They must harass the settlers, chase them with their women and children off their farms and into the towns. If the British troops can never engage them in pitched battle, then the war can continue, until the settlers' lands fall into decay and cannot be ploughed or harvested, until all their livestock is killed or captured, and until the towns are brought to the edge of starvation. When this happens, the government will call a truce.' Hawk grins and spreads his hands. 'This time the Maori will have power on their side in the negotiations, and the government will have to listen with some humility. This time we will hold most of the aces.'