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The bulk of the Maoris escaped, and kept up for a time a guerilla warfare in forests and on mountain sides; but at last the Tauranga tribes, or the miserable remnant that was left, surrendered to the Governor.
Henry Williams passed through a terrible experience when returning from Tauranga in 1832.
In the mission house the child Tarore had learned to read, and had been given a copy of the Gospel of St. Luke. In the middle of October her father took her and a younger brother on a journey to Tauranga. The party consisted of several Maoris, and an Englishman who was connected with the mission.
The cunning warriors always followed up the awe-inspiring fire with a prompt charge in which spear and tomahawk did the work for which panic had prepared the way. Another Ngapuhi chief, the leader of an attack on the men of Tauranga, managed to arm his men with thirty-five muskets, which they used with crushing effect. This was in 1818.
It was decided to attack the Tauranga tribe, which had been aiding them. Tauranga lies on the Bay of Plenty, about forty miles to the east of the Waikato. It was in the campaign which now took place there that there occurred the noted repulse at the Gate Pa.
At the end of the college term there came what may be called a climax of fellowship. At a notable service in the Waimate church on Sunday, September 22nd, Henry Williams and Brown of Tauranga were installed as archdeacons; then followed an ordination, in which many of the lay catechists whose names have come before us in the first part of this work were admitted to the diaconate.
Hamlin and Stack settled at Mangapouri; Brown and Morgan at Matamata; Wilson at Tauranga; and Chapman near Ohinemutu, amidst the hot springs and geysers of Rotorua. It will be noticed that these frontier posts were occupied mainly by the new men who had not acquired much knowledge of the language or of the customs of the Maori.
Williams and his colleagues meanwhile journeyed back into the Thames Valley, and, after promising Waharoa to send him a teacher as soon as possible, passed on to the Bay of Plenty. At Tauranga a large gathering of the inhabitants was held. They had evidently not forgotten the efforts which had been made four years before by Henry Williams to save their settlement from the wrath of the Ngapuhi.
From the middle of 1864, to January, 1865, there was so little fighting that it might have been thought that the war was nearing its end. The Waikato had been cleared, and the Tauranga tribes crushed. Thompson, hopeless of further struggling ceased to resist the irresistible, made his peace with us and during the short remainder of his life was treated as became an honourable foe.
This involved the whole tribe in a war with the people of Tauranga, a war which dragged on for two whole years. Henry Williams and his brethren accompanied the fleets in their boat, and used their influence to stop the war. Partly through his exhortations, and partly through the absence of Hongi's determined generalship, the Ngapuhi fought half-heartedly and with little success.
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