Feature
The flight of Te Kooti
by Sid Marsh
Continued from page 1...
While Kepa and Ropata were deep within the interior, 100 Ringatu fighters staged a raid on the coast, taking 170 prisoners, 30 to 40 stands of arms, a substantial amount of powder, general goods and killing two Arawa scouts, before moving up the Waioeka River to Maraetahi. Upon having this news relayed to them, Ropata and Kepa returned to the coast, then set off for Maraetahi, which they attacked forthwith, killing anyone who resisted, but also taking more than 300 prisoners in the process.
The Ringatu were routed, and about 20 of those unlucky enough to have been taken alive were summarily executed. Ropata’s adjutant Captain Thomas Porter observed that: “It was horrible to see the manner in which some of the dead were hacked about. One man was partly in and partly out of the river, his head was smashed to atoms, and the brains floating about upon the water … When returning, in the bed of the creek where the dead Hauhaus [Ringatu] were, we found a number of them buried, and others half-eaten by dogs; also two dogs hanging upon a tree close by, evidently done by the Hauhaus.”
Te Kooti and a score of the Ringatu inner-core escaped by working their way further upstream towards the little-known region of Te Wera. As Kepa and Ropata withdrew with their prisoners to Opotiki, Te Kooti treated his wounded and dying and he sent off orderlies with written messages to his allies. Somehow he rallied the surviving dispirited Ringatu.
At this time two companies of the newly formed Arawa Flying Column became operational, patrolling the western borders of Te Urewera. Number One Company under Captain Gilbert Mair NZC was based at Kaiteriria and Number Two Company under Captain George Preece NZC was stationed at Te Teko. From this time until December, several Tuhoe, Whakatohea and Ngati Kohatu hapu emerged from the Urewera forests to surrender to the AFC and other government units in the Bay of Plenty.
Yet another 250-strong Kawanatanga expedition attacked the eastern Tuhoe settlements at Lake Waikaremoana in May/June of that year. Ngati Kahungunu, with some attached Pakeha soldiers and civilian scouts, at last accomplished what no previous government force had: overrunning and defeating the lake-dwelling Tuhoe tribes in a number of waterborne operations, thereby seizing the military initiative in this region.
Today, the foreshore around Lake Waikaremoana is still clothed by the same jungle-like forest that witnessed the various Kawanatanga assaults of yesteryear. For two seasons, totalling 12 months, I lived and worked in the bush at Waikaremoana as a kiwi-tracker, and in the course of my day-to-day work stumbled on a number of the lake’s geological and historical wonders.
The formidable Panekiri Bluff rises from the southern end of the lake. Panekiri wears its pitted and etched rockface like a form of mokomokai, and glares down upon a number of well-hidden taonga and historical sites pertaining to the period.
Still existing are the overgrown Maori whare pits and earthwork defences at Pukehuia, Tikitiki and Matuahu Pa garrisoned by Tuhoe during the above Ngati Kahungunu assault. There is the sentry rock at Te Onepoto, close to the AC Redoubt site, which is covered by soldiers’ graffiti dating back to 1869. The former Onetapu Beach, where Te Kooti raced his horses after the Mohaka raid, can still be traced out beneath its cover of regenerating manuka forest.
Underwater lie the shadowy outlines of two 12m clinker-built longboats deliberately sunk by a Kawanatanga army before it withdrew from the area in an earlier military foray.
By July, Te Kooti had organised another strike force of 28 fighting men, which attacked the Ngati Porou settlement at Tolaga Bay, but things did not go as planned and they encountered stiff resistance. Low on powder, shot and percussion caps, the Ringatu retreated in disarray, followed up by a composite body of 100 AC and Ngati Porou.
Over the next 12 months, additional NC patrols rampaged through Te Urewera and the adjacent fernlands. During one tense Ngati Porou encounter with belligerent Tuhoe in early 1871, Porter made this observation: “A notorious character, known as the brave of Tamaikowha, was pointed out to me by the name of Te Patu Toro [scout killer], who is famed among the Urewera tribes for the number of men killed by him; he is also remarkable for the number of weapons carried about his person … he was a perfect model of a man, being above middle height, symmetrically built, handsome in feature, with regularly formed lines of tatu, his hair in top-knot surmounted with feathers, feathers also in his ears, an athlete all over … He was armed with a naval officer’s gold-hilted sword, taken in one of the fights in Waikato or Tauranga. The name of the Scout Killer speaks for itself.”
Operating from a network of bushcamps, Te Kooti and his main force of Ringatu managed to elude the Kawanatanga. It was not to last, however, as the unrelenting pursuit columns systematically criss-crossed ever closer. On a wintry August morning in 1871, the AFC under Mair and Preece at last struck Te Kooti’s well-beaten trail in the Waipaoa, which led them straight to where Mair first spied Mere Maihi next to the small waterfall.
