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Updated: June 6, 2025
Greater expeditions were prevented by a variety of obstacles. The missionaries were "settlers," and a settler is tied to his home duties. The land route from the Bay of Islands southwards had been devastated by Hongi. The clerical missionaries were few in number, and the schools absorbed all their energies.
Even the three hundred musketeers found the pa too strong for open assault, though those inside had but one gun and no ammunition. Hongi fell back upon fraud and offered honourable peace, if a certain sacred greenstone mere were handed to him as a trophy. It was solemnly handed over, and the principal invaders were feasted in the pa.
Little did we then think he would be the first victim; although his unusual depression of mind brought to my remembrance the prophecy of Hongi, and, spite of my endeavours to banish my forebodings, I felt convinced that the prediction would in all probability be fulfilled.
Hongi was before Sir George's time, but he heard all about him from contemporaries. New Zealand, when Hongi had the guidin' o't, was still a land remote from the concern of the Old World. Missionaries had begun to spread light in the country; runaway convicts from Australia arrived stealthily, seeking refuge.
Ruatara received them with open arms, and they returned to Sydney after a peaceful visit, bringing with them not only their enthusiastic host, but two other chiefs Koro Koro and Hongi, the last-named fated to become the scourge and destroyer of his race. At last Marsden was permitted to sail to New Zealand.
Then he had an audience from George IV., who gave him many presents, and among others a complete suit of ancient armour. For a whole season, Hongi was a sort of lion among London society. People crowded to see a chief who had eaten dozens of men, and so many presents were given him that when he came back to Sydney he was a rich man.
Rauparaha, fierce among the fierce, cunning among the cunning, was not only perhaps the most skilful captain of his time, not only a devastator second only to Hongi, but was fated to live on into another era and to come into sharp and fatal collision with the early colonists. One result among others is that we have several portraits of him with both pen and pencil.
After being admitted there by treaty to dwell as friends and fellow-citizens, his warriors rose one night and massacred their hosts without compunction. Harried from the north by Hongi, the wretched people of the Thames were between the hammer and the anvil.
But our unhappy friend, who seemed particularly marked out in this unfortunate affray, soon after received another bullet, which struck him on the throat, and terminated his existence; thus dying before a week had passed since the death of his rival Hongi.
In readiness to receive new ideas, and in the power to assimilate them, he and his kinsmen, Ruatara and Hongi, were striking examples of the height to which the Maori race could attain.
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