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Updated: June 23, 2025
He therefore set out for Taranaki, and went amongst the Maori camps, urging the observance of the laws of civilised warfare. His life was often in extreme danger, but the white bands which he always wore usually secured the respect of friend and foe. After much discouragement, he succeeded in gaining the consent of the Waikatos to spare the wounded, to exchange prisoners, and to tend the sick.
The Waikatos sent an embassy to all the other tribes, urging them to join and drive the white men out of the country. Te Waharoa was chosen to command in a grand attack at Auckland, and for that purpose the Maoris in two columns moved stealthily through the forest down the Waikato valley towards the town, threatening to massacre every white man in it.
But he was old and inclined to die in peace, and, dying soon afterwards, was succeeded by his son, a young man of no ability. Many of the Maoris held aloof from these leagues; they were of tribes hostile to the Waikatos, or else they were glad to get the white man's money, and felt that they had still plenty of land for their own use.
Always keeping on good terms with the Waikatos, he made firm allies of the men of Tauranga. Protected, indeed helped, thus on both flanks, he devoted his life to harassing the dwellers by the lower Thames and the Hauraki Gulf. One great victory he won over them with the aid of his Waikato allies. Their chief pa, Mata-mata, he seized by a piece of callous bad faith and murder.
They had a famous chief, named Hihi, a real Vercingetorix, so that you need not be astonished that the war with the English has become chronic in the Northern Island, for in it is the famous tribe of the Waikatos, who defend their lands under the leadership of William Thompson." "But," said John Mangles, "are not the English in possession of the principal points in New Zealand?"
They easily repulsed his first assaults, but hundreds of women and children were among the refugees, and as was the wont of the Maoris, no proper stock of provisions had been laid in. On the thirteenth day, therefore, the defenders, weakened and half starved, had to make a frantic attempt to break through the Waikatos.
When the Waikatos had once more swept down the coast, and had finally withdrawn, it was left empty and desolate. A remnant, a little handful, built themselves a pa on one of the Sugar-Loaves. A few more lurked in the recesses of Mount Egmont. Otherwise the fertile land was a desert.
Nearly all were slaughtered or taken, and Hongi left naught in their villages but bones, with such flesh on them "as even his dogs had not required." To get there he dragged his war-canoes overland across the Auckland isthmus, straightened winding creeks for their passage, and, when the Waikatos felled large trees across one channel, patiently spent two months in cutting through the trunks.
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