United States or San Marino ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Potatau was an old man, remarkable rather for cunning than bravery; but he had a Prime Minister who was both intelligent and energetic, a descendant of the Ngatihahuas, who occupied the isthmus before the arrival of the strangers. This minister, William Thompson, became the soul of the War of Independence, and organized the Maori troops, with great skill.
These rafts were so satisfactory that they paddled down the stream for some distance, when they were met by a boat containing an Englishman and a younger brother of Te Wherowhero afterwards well known as the Maori King, Potatau. The strangers were friendly, but their remarks were uncomfortably direct. "Why did you not come before?" they asked.
"Let us not take up an unrighteous cause," he urged; "let us search out the merits of the case, that if we die, we die in a righteous cause." The kingdom was not set up for war but for peace; and the aged Potatau, who died in June, repeated with almost his last breath its watchwords, "RELIGION, LOVE, AND LAW."
There would have been no hostility at all if just and considerate treatment had been the rule throughout. In justification of this statement we have only to follow the action of the king-maker, Tamihana, of the old "king," Potatau, and even of his successor, Tawhiao. As long as he lived, old Potatau said Amen at the end of the prayer for the Queen.
The national party among the natives carried on an active propaganda for the election of a Maori ruler. The object was to make old Potatau king, and to fix as the capital of the new kingdom his village, which lay between the Waikato and Waipa Rivers.
Tamihana would not allow himself to be put forward as king: he proposed for that honour the aged Waikato chief, Te Wherowhero or Potatau; but he, as king-maker, was the life and soul of the movement. As Marsden had tried to found a Christian community at Rangihoua, Selwyn at St. John's, and Godley in Canterbury, so Tamihana attempted to set up a Christian State in the interior of the North Island.
Word Of The Day