Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
'The name Rauparaha, he narrated, 'means in Maori a cabbage leaf; a wild cabbage leaf. The tradition was that Rauparaha's father was killed and eaten by some rival chief. While eating him, the other chief mumbled with inward satisfaction, "This man eats like a young cabbage." The son, being told, vowed revenge, and took the name Rauparaha to emphasise the fact.
How the migration was effected with what blending of statecraft, heroism, treachery, and cruelty is a subject which does not come within the purview of a history of the Church. Suffice it to say that, at the date to which our narrative has now arrived, Rauparaha was securely settled in the island fastness of Kapiti, while his Ngatitoas had their habitations on the mainland opposite.
For thirty tons of flax the Elizabeth was hired to take Rauparaha and a war-party, not to Kaiapoi, but to Akaroa, a beautiful harbour amongst the hills of the peninsula called after Sir Joseph Banks. It lay many miles away from Kaiapoi, but was inhabited by natives of the same tribe. Him Rauparaha determined to catch, for no one less august could be payment for Te Pehi.
He looked upon the chiefs as a pair of "travelling bullies" who wanted but firmness to cow them. With hasty hardihood he obtained a warrant for the arrest of Rauparaha on a charge of arson, and set out to arrest him, accompanied by the Nelson police magistrate, at the head of a posse of some fifty Nelson settlers very badly equipped.
Kingi was firm, and declared that it was his intention to live at peace with the pakeha. When daylight came, Rauparaha made one more effort: "At least remain neutral," he pleaded. "I will oppose you with my whole force," said Kingi, and the disappointed warrior steered his canoes northwards. Even now he did not give up his scheme.
Rauparaha made the effort of his life, and the House listened to him in cold and stony silence. From the first he knew that he was doomed to failure, when he saw two or three of his once ardent admirers get up and sneak out of the Chamber; but, with a glance of contemptuous scorn at their retreating figures, he went on speaking.
In New Zealand, thanks to the scarcity of wild food plants and animals, even Maoris suffer cruel hardships if cut off long from their plantations. Rauparaha, now a very old man, was nominally not concerned in these troubles. He lived quietly in a sea-coast village by the Straits, enjoying the reputation earned by nearly fifty years of fighting, massacring and plotting.
Rauparaha, and his hand tightened upon and almost crumpled the paper in his grasp; then he smiled, but with a red gleam in his dark eyes. "'The assault on Maungatabu by the 18th Royal Irish," he read. "The brave Irish," he said, with a mocking smile, raising his head and looking intently into the pale face of the girl; "the brave Irish!
And now the two powers had met, for the young men who had arrived at Paihia were none other than the son and the nephew of Rauparaha, and the cause of their coming was due to the forgotten slave Ripahau himself. This seemingly insignificant person had reached Otaki in the new territory of the Ngatitoas some three years before.
In 1819 he did a remarkable thing. He had been on a raid to Cook's Straits, and when there had been struck with the strategic value of the island of Kapiti steep, secure from land attacks, not infertile, and handy to the shore. It was the resort, moreover, of the Pakehas trading-ships. Like Hongi, Rauparaha saw that the man with the most muskets must carry all before him in New Zealand.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking