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The pish-quit pahs may be considered as hunters as well as fishermen as they Spend the fall & winter months in that occupation. they are generally pleasently featured of good Statue and well proportiond. both women and men ride extreamly well. their bridle is usially a hair rope tied with both ends to the under jaw of the horse, and their Saddles Consist of a pad of dressed Skin Stuffed with goats hair with wooden Sturreps. almost all the horses I have Seen in the poss ession of the Indians have Sore backs.
The natives were numerous; on the river banks their villages were frequent, and up on the hills, that rose all around like an amphitheatre, the palisades of their fortified pahs were easily visible.
Te Kooti.# When the last of these pahs was captured an English officer declared that one of the friendly chiefs named Te Kooti was playing false and acting as a spy.
The whole district was green; and the figures of Maoris in the grassy streets, their canoes bringing in vegetables to market, their pahs seen far off on the neighbouring hills, gave the scene a charming touch of the romantic. A company of six soldiers with four officers came from Sydney to defend the settlers, and barracks were built for them.
On this hill there are abundant evidences still left of the native fortifications, but of the large Maori population that once covered the peninsula and lived in these pahs, or fortified villages, not a soul remains. The harbor is one of the best in Australasia, having ample depth and good wharf facilities, besides being quite sheltered.
But General Pratt having arrived from Sydney with fresh soldiers, and prepared to sap the pahs and blow them up, the Maoris became afraid, and Te Waharoa proposed that peace should be made, which was done in May, 1861. Second Maori War.# Governor Browne then called upon the Waikato tribes, who were then in arms, to make submission and take the oath of obedience to the Queen's laws.
Volkner was seized, and, after some savage rites had been performed, was hanged on a willow tree as a victim. More fighting followed, in which a large share was taken by a Maori chief named Ropata, who, clad in European uniform and with the title of Major Ropata, fought stoutly against the Hau Haus, and captured several pahs.
But in the heart of the North Island, some 4,000 or 5,000 Maori warriors nursed a wild project of driving the English out of the country. They gathered muskets and powder; they strengthened their pahs and filled them with potatoes and yams. Governor Browne took no steps to check them, and suffered several thousand muskets to be bought from English ships along the coasts.
"The Maoris are to some extent ancestor worshippers, and adorn their pahs and temples with large wooden images of immense size, supposed to represent some renowned fighting ancestor. These images are worshipped as gods, and are believed to be visited by the spirits, who ascend to converse with them by the hollow roots of a pohutukawa tree, which descends into the Maori nether regions.
This wood was much used in the construction of the pahs which, in 1845, under the Maori chiefs Heke and Kawiti, long resisted the attacks of disciplined forces, aided by artillery. Returning to the road by a path which avoided the swamps our guide had taken us through, in little more than half an hour we reached Mr.
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