United States or Tanzania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He spent a week on a mission to Otaki, and returned to Waikanae with 300 armed and feathered warriors at his heels. But these men had put into his hands full power to treat with the enemy.
At New Plymouth also everything looked bright. This settlement was almost exclusively Anglican, and good sites were at once offered for churches and schools. Having thus visited all the English towns, the bishop took ship down the west coast and again reached Waikanae. Here he prepared for the more arduous part of his journey the visitation of the mission stations throughout the island.
At any rate the old warrior gave a warm welcome to the young missionary, Hadfield, and insisted that he should live at Otaki under his protection. A meeting of a different character was that between Williams and his old scholar, Ripahau. This man had married a daughter of Rangitaake, or Wiremu Kingi, head chief of Waikanae, and had become a person of great influence in the tribe.
The crafty Rauparaha, fearing a terrific act of vengeance on the part of the white men, resolved to forestall any such danger by driving them out of the country. He felt certain of his own Ngatitoas, but between them and Wellington lay Waikanae, where Hadfield's influence was strong, and where Wiremu Kingi, the father-in-law of Ripahau, was chief. To Waikanae accordingly he steered his boat.
Governor Fitzroy began at his first levee at Wellington by scolding the settlers, inveighing against the local newspaper, and grossly insulting Gibbon Wakefield's son when he was presented to him. At Nelson he rated the magistrates after such a fashion that they threw up their commissions. He then went to Rauparaha's pa at Waikanae near Kapiti.
Hadfield was extremely unwell, but pluckily resolved to follow his chief, and together they set off on the morning of Nov. 14 over the steep hills upon which the suburbs of Wellington now stand. Four days of hard walking brought them to Waikanae. At many places on the road the people came out to give them welcome, for the name of Wiremu was familiar to all.
Unfortunately the princes, or chiefs, had not all learned wisdom. There had been a war between Rauparaha's people and those of Waikanae over the distribution of the goods given by Wakefield for the land at Port Nicholson. When Williams arrived at Waikanae the traces of carnage lay all around. Again, therefore, he was called to be a peace-maker.
By this agreement the harbours of Raglan and Kawhia, with the hinterland as far eastwards as the Waikato and Waipa rivers, were definitively included within the Wesleyan sphere of influence. Nothing was said about the coast to the southward, and there was nothing whatever to prevent the settlement of Hadfield at Waikanae and Otaki in 1839, nor that of Mason at Wanganui in 1840.
Thus was white New Zealand saved by Waikanae Christianity; and Waikanae Christianity was due, under GOD, to an invalided Oxford undergraduate, a Maori slave, and a little girl with her Gospel of St. Luke! But what of Rauparaha's son, Tamihana, the man without whom Hadfield would not have come to the district, nor Ripahau been converted, nor Tarore's gospel brought into use?
At every place, too, he was urged to tell them about religion, and at the pa of Waikanae the people "kept me in conversation till I could talk no more." How far this change was sincere may be doubted; it seems to have been partly caused by his fear of Col. Wakefield's ship, which was mistaken for a man-of-war.
Word Of The Day