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Updated: June 6, 2025
Thither accordingly the bishop moved his family and his collegiate establishment in the spring of 1844. With part of the Whytehead bequest, he had bought several hundred acres of land at Tamaki, about six miles from the town, and not far from Mokoia, the scene of the great battle between Hongi and Hinaki.
Marsden was loth to refuse the request of some disconsolate relatives of the slaughtered Hinaki, but he thought it wiser to bestow the favour upon one who had been with him at Parramatta, even though the chief himself was at the moment on the warpath with Hongi.
Hinaki would grant no satisfaction; a general assault took place, and after a desperate contest the pa was taken. Hongi swallowed his rival's eyes, and drank the blood that welled from his throat. The taste of blood seemed to rouse the tiger in his nature, and he proceeded to sweep the country with fire and sword.
Its chief, Hinaki, was particularly friendly, and in him Marsden hoped to find a second Ruatara, and in his village a basis for mission work further south. In fact, all the people of this district seemed more accessible to the appeal of religion than were those of the Bay of Islands.
Among these was Hinaki of Mokoia, who wished to continue his journey to England. They were still in the house when, in the following May, Hongi and Kendall arrived on their return journey. It was the month of the death of the great Napoleon at St. Helena, and it would almost seem as though a portion of his spirit had passed into the Maori chief on his passage through the Atlantic.
Hongi and Hinaki had become reconciled on the ship, but a new act of aggression soon called for reprisals, and at the head of an immense naval armament Hongi set out for the waters of the Waitemata. Clad in his helmet and coat of mail, he declaimed his wrongs before his enemy's stockade at Mokoia, and was only saved by his armour from sudden death by a treacherous bullet.
With more reason might that grim form have been supposed to lurk now in the hold of the ship in which Hongi and Hinaki sailed together to their native land. They arrived there in the July of 1821, and the missionaries of Kerikeri soon realised that they had a different Hongi to deal with. For a time he held aloof from them, and when he did speak he showed great reserve.
At any rate Hongi began now to disclose his purposes: "Do not go to England," he said to Hinaki at Marsden's table; "you will surely be ill there. Better go home and see to your defences. I shall come to visit you before long." A legend of his race told how when the Maoris came from Hawaiki they were followed by an invisible canoe in which sat the figure of Death.
On the site of the Mokoia pa, where Marsden had so often received the hospitality of Hinaki, they could see nothing but fern and fuchsia bushes, with here and there an axe-cloven skull. Proceeding down the Hauraki Gulf, the same scenes presented themselves, until at last a little smoke was noticed on the Coromandel coast.
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