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The victors carried the bodies of their fallen chiefs back to Wanganui, where the settlers for whom they had died lined the road, standing bareheaded as the brave dead were borne past. That three such blows as Sentry Hill, Moutua, and Te Rangi had not a more lasting effect was due, amongst other things, to the confiscation policy.
In a Maori pah, when a little boy behaves rudely to his parents, he is sometimes warned that he is 'as bad as cruel Tutenganahau. If he asks who Tutenganahau was, he is told the following story: 'In the beginning, the Heaven, Rangi, and the Earth, Papa, were the father and mother of all things. "In these days the Heaven lay upon the Earth, and all was darkness. They had never been separated."
"Shall we slay them, or shall we separate them?" "Go to," said Tumatuenga, "let us slay them." "No," cried Tane Mahuta, "let us rather separate them. Let one go upwards, and become a stranger to us; let the other remain below, and be a parent to us." Last rose the forest- god, cruel Tutenganahau. He severed the sinews which united Heaven and Earth, Rangi and Papa.
In these woods I observed camphor trees, two species of oak, maranti, rangi, and several other timber-trees. About a quarter of a mile from that place, on the opposite side of the river, is a Batta kampong, situated on the summit of a regular and very beautiful little hill, which rises in a pyramidical form, in the middle of a small meadow.
Eternal life was the lot of only the select few who ascended to Rangi. Yet once upon a time there was going and coming between earth and the place of darkness, as the legend of the origin of the later style of tattooing shows. Thus the story runs. The hero Mata-ora had to wife the beautiful Niwa Reka.
Of these the case of the old man, Rangi, is notable through his being the first of his race to be received into the Church of Christ by baptism . A much more striking conversion was that of Taiwhanga, one of Hongi's chief warriors, in 1829. His struggles against the fascinations of the old life were severe and prolonged.
Hearing that the Tauranga warriors were entrenching themselves at Te Rangi, Colonel Greer promptly marched thither, caught them before they had completed their works, and charging into the rifle-pits with the bayonet, completely routed the Maoris.
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