Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 6, 2025
He soon had a force of a thousand warriors, whom he embarked on board a fleet of canoes, and took to the southern shores of the Hauraki Gulf, where the Ngatimaru lived, ancient enemies of the Ngapuhi, who, however, felt secure in their numbers and in the strength of their great pah Totara. But Hongi captured the pah, and slew five hundred of the unfortunate inmates.
For the first time the Maoris used firearms. Probably a fourth of their race perished in this ill-starred epoch. Hongi, the chief of the Ngapuhi tribe, before referred to, is usually spoken of as the first to introduce the musket into the tribal wars. This was not so.
I took the liberty of presenting her with a bracelet, with which she seemed highly delighted; when Hongi, perceiving that I was in a giving mood, pointed to his beard, and asked me for a razor. Fortunately, I had put one in my pocket on setting out, and I now presented it to him, by which gifts we continued on terms of great sociability and friendship.
Hongi had been quick to discern the road to conquest, which musket, gun-powder, and bullet would give him in New Zealand against the native weapons. He chortled to himself as did Lamech: 'I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. 'Landing with his battery of muskets, Sir George had the tale, 'Hongi lost no time in carrying slaughter through Maoriland.
The spear-armed Maoris could do nothing in defence while he shot at them from the lake; and when he assaulted the island, though they came down to the water's edge to repel him, again there was victory for the muskets. Thus did Hongi conquer till the whole North Island owned his ascendancy.
At last they emerged into a beautiful park-like country, where stood Matamata, the pa of Waharoa. The old man was very gracious. Though his career had been almost as bloodstained as was that of Hongi, he made a favourable impression upon the missionaries, and "asked many significant questions about religion." He was keenly desirous of a mission settlement in his pa.
This man, Hongi, was a most extraordinary character, and a person I had long had a great curiosity to see, his daring and savage deeds having often been the subject of conversation in New South Wales. In his own country he was looked upon as invulnerable and invincible.
Now Hongi was brave as man could be, but, like all Maoris then, he was intensely superstitious, and held all the Maori gods and devils in the very highest respect. "Hongi and his principal warriors were led across the field of battle by the lucky slayer of the Ngatewhatua chief, in order that they might insult and taunt Tuwhare's head, as was their custom.
Determined to carry out the threats he had made in Sydney, Hongi began his campaigns by sailing southward with a great fleet of war-canoes. Passing to the head of the Hauraki Gulf he sat down before the pa of Totara, the chief fortress of the Thames tribes the men whom he had doomed in Sydney. The place was well garrisoned, and commanded by the head chief, Trembling-Leaf.
Like Waharoa and Hongi he was small, spare and sinewy; an active man even after three-score years and ten. In repose his aquiline features were placid and his manners dignified. But in excitement, his small, keen, deep-sunken eyes glared like a wild beast's, and an overhanging upper lip curled back over long teeth which suggested to colonists his enemies the fangs of a wolf.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking