CHAPTER IX

THE MAORI WARS

Bishop Selwyn had helped to make peace at Taranaki (New Plymouth) in 1855, but discontent continued to smoulder both amongst the Maoris and the Colonists. The English continued to be eager to acquire more land and not scrupulous enough as to the means used to acquire it. Disputes about title deeds and the right to certain bits of land were frequent. The Maoris were suspicious of the constant encroachments of the British power. They felt that by degrees their country was passing from them into foreign hands. They had no representation in the Parliament which had been set up in New Zealand by the Constitution of 1853, and practically no share in the general government of the country. Colonel Browne, the Governor, was obliged to report to the Colonial Office in England the unsatisfactory state of affairs. The difficulties were increased because the respective powers of the Governor and his executive were not clearly defined, and by the want of sympathy with the natives shown by the colonists. Maori chiefs were often treated with indignities when they went to Auckland. Bishop Selwyn said that “he was quite ashamed to travel with his native deacons, men who dine at his own table and behave there like gentlemen, because he cannot take them into public rooms where a tipsy carter would be considered perfectly good society.”

After the first trouble at Taranaki had been settled for the time, Bishop Selwyn uttered the solemn warning which he was so soon to see justified that “while nothing is more easy than to extinguish the native title, nothing will be found more difficult than to extinguish a native war.” Slowly the country was drifting towards war. In the Waikato country, the Maori chiefs held a conference in 1857, at which both Selwyn and the Wesleyan missionaries were present, and the chiefs chose a king for themselves. No rebellion was meant, for they put up the flag of their chosen king and the Union Jack side by side on the same staff, and the Governor did not think it necessary to take this king movement seriously. In Taranaki, the chiefs had also formed a land league and refused to sell land to the whites. This was very irritating to the settlers along the coast, who saw land, of which they were in great need, lying idle. When one chief of his own accord sold some land to the whites, the chief of the Maori land league refused to allow the sale. The Governor, however, maintained that the sale was legal, and sent troops to the spot to support the rights of the purchasers. This was the beginning of long and disastrous war. At first the Maoris gained some advantage over the troops and the settlers were much alarmed. It was feared that the war would spread to the Waikato, and the general anxiety increased when the irritation of the natives was inflamed by the discovery of a Maori, lying killed by a gunshot wound in the forest thirty miles south of Auckland.

A body of armed Maoris gathered to avenge his death on the settlers, who fled in terror from their homes. Selwyn at once hastened to the spot to make peace. He rode twenty-four miles through the night, and then walked through the wood wading in mud up to his knees to the place where the fighting party were expected to land in their canoes. He wrote to his son:

“We could see at once by the open and bright expression of their countenances, that they did not mean mischief. The afternoon was spent as usual in much talk upon the subject and ended with evening service in a large house, filled with about two hundred men, with their arms piled around the central pillars.... We were glad to find that they were inclined to go back quietly.”

Afterwards he visited and pacified other natives in the district, and encouraged the settlers to return to their homes, promising to remain with them till the danger was past. One of them wrote afterwards:

“And so he did, guarding us with jealous care, never seeming to sleep soundly, for upon any unusual noise in the night, he was up and out in a moment. On the Sunday he conducted in our little schoolroom divine service, and preached a sermon never to be forgotten—inspiring trust and confidence in God.”

Selwyn’s plea which he submitted in a formal memorandum to the Governor, was that the rights of the New Zealanders as British subjects should be considered identical with those of the English, that the rights of the Maoris to the soil where the title deeds had not been extinguished should be recognised; that all native customs in connexion with proprietary right should be respected, that disputes should be submitted to a competent tribunal, and that for the moment there should be an armistice. But he was not listened to, and the settlers denounced his conduct as political interference. They said that “no right to interfere between Her Majesty’s Government and her native subjects could be allowed to any minister of religion.” In his reply to these criticisms he said (1861) “as the earliest settlers in this country—as agents employed by Government in native affairs—as intimately acquainted with the language, customs and feelings of the native race—and above all as ministers of religion having the highest possible interest at stake—we assert the privilege which the Crown allows to every man of laying our petitions before the Crown and the Legislature.”

In this difficult moment Sir George Grey was asked to return as Governor to the Colony which he had administered so wisely and where he was respected by all. For a moment there was peace, but as the soldiers were still in the land there was no sense of confidence or security. The Bishop went on with his efforts for peace, and his consequent unpopularity with the colonists continued to grow. He attended a great assembly of the natives in the Waikato, and from there went on to the English settlement at Taranaki where he was met on the beach by a mob who shouted: “Three groans for Bishop Selwyn,” and followed him with groans till he turned round and faced them saying: “Now it is more English-like to look me in the face and tell me your grievances.” This they did with much frankness, interspersed with rude outcries. They accused him of grasping lands for the Church, of loving power, of reviving all the old abuses of England. From this he went on to discuss matters with the natives, who for the most part received him with much friendliness, though at one place they said that no minister should go through their land. But he slipped off in the dusk to the next village and when he came back, the old chief apologised and said: “Now let us how d’ye do, and henceforth all ministers may come and go as aforetime. You are the great billow that has crushed the canoe; you are the great fish that has broken through the net.” Alone and unarmed he went through all this disaffected district. He knew the people well and sometimes by a joke, sometimes by a serious word, sometimes by a parable could turn aside their anger and win them to listen to him.

The natives at this time were very indignant because the Governor had forbidden them to have arms; and one chief had said to him: “My custom is to give my enemy a weapon if he has not one, that we may fight upon equal terms. Now, O Governor, are you not ashamed of my defenceless hands.” Soon after this an English carter and his boy were murdered by the Maoris. Shortly afterwards, the Bishop, on his travels through the country, was sitting round the fire with a large party of natives, who were telling him some of their national myths. He said: “Now I will tell you a ghost story. There was once a man who dreamt that he was sitting with a large party round the fire, when out of the fire rose the figure of a man who said, ‘O Governor if I had an enemy and he had no weapon, I would give him one before we fought. O Governor were you not ashamed of my defenceless hands?’ The people all applauded, but the dream went further. ‘After a time another figure rose up slowly out of the fire, with a white face, very pale, with blood streaming down; the figure was dressed like an English boy and held a bullock whip. He too stretched out his arms to the Maoris and said, ‘Were you not ashamed of my defenceless hands?’” The Bishop refused to interpret the story, but it was passed on amongst the Maoris, and told by many a camp fire. All knew its meaning.

On one of these walks, the people in a particular village were persuaded not to receive the Bishop, but to offer him a pigstye for his night’s shelter. The Bishop at once set to work to turn out the pigs, clean the stye and make himself a bed of clean ferns. This made the astonished Maoris say: “You cannot degrade that man from being a gentleman.”

For some time an uncertain kind of peace prevailed, but the irritation among the natives was all the time on the increase, and the trouble more and more took the form of hostility on the part of the natives as a whole to the whites. The chiefs in the Waikato began to gather their forces to come to the help of the Maoris in the Taranaki district. Bishop Selwyn, anxious to check the growth of this hostile Maori feeling, went to a Conference of Maoris, where on the Sunday the Maori chief preached to the assembled people on the text: “Behold how good and joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity”; and spoke of the gain it was that the Maoris were now joined together as one brotherhood under a Maori king. When the next day the Bishop was allowed to speak to the people, he said: “Here I am a mediator for New Zealand. My word is mediation. I am not merely a Pakeha (Englishman) or a Maori; I am a half-caste. I have eaten your food, I have slept in your houses; I have talked with you, journeyed with you, prayed with you, partaken of the Holy Communion with you. Therefore I say I am a half-caste. I cannot rid myself of my half-caste; it is in my body, in my flesh, in my bones, in my sinews. Yes, we are all of us half-castes. Your dress is half-caste—a Maori mat and English clothes; your strength is half-caste—your courage Maori; your weapons English guns.... Therefore I say we are all half-castes; therefore let us dwell together with one faith, one love, one law.” He proceeded to implore them to allow the Waitara case about the disputed land to be tried by law; and that all together should set right the wrong which had been done by men on both sides. Finally he turned to the whole assembly and said: “O all ye tribes of New Zealand, sitting in council here, I beseech you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in whom we all believe and hope, agree to the proposals by which we shall all live in peace and happiness.” Some were convinced, but the majority refused to give up the lands. It was not long before hostilities began. Sir George Grey came down to investigate the question of the claim to Waitara, but he brought troops with him and the suspicious Maoris felt this meant war. They ambushed a small party of soldiers consisting of two officers and seven men, and killed all but one. Sir George Grey, though in the meanwhile he had discovered that the Maori title to the Waitara was sound, felt that British authority must be vindicated and the murderers punished, so fighting began.

We are not concerned to follow in any detail the course of the war, but only to speak of Bishop Selwyn’s activities during it. Ten thousand troops had gathered in the country and there was not a single chaplain with them. The Bishop therefore joined the army as chaplain. He hoped thus not only to minister to the troops, but to be in a position to protect his native teachers and Christians. He lived in camp, pitched his own tent and shared the life of the soldiers, who admired him for his courage and endurance. An English officer describes how he first saw him. Looking through his telescope he perceived the figure of a man on foot rapidly making his way to the mission station; after a while he came to a small stream, and was observed feeling for its bottom with a long stick; when it proved too deep to be forded he stript, tied his clothes in a bundle on his head and swam across. Selwyn was on his way to warn a native clergyman of the coming of the English soldiers, and to protect him and his school.

During the trying months of war which followed, he did all he could to help both sides, and thus earned the criticism of both colonists and Maoris, they could not understand his position, nor perceive that his one desire was to mitigate the cruel sufferings of war. “If there must be war,” he said, “our great effort ought to be to debrutalise it, and the army from the General downwards, have shown every willingness that it should be so.” He held constant services for the soldiers, attended to the wounded, buried the dead, and fortunately got permission from the War Office to appoint three other chaplains to assist him. During these days he wrote (December 4th, 1863): to his sons in England:

“It is a strange thing to be moving up the Waikato with an army, after twenty years of an annual visit of a peaceful kind. To see the hills crowned with English forts, and steamers smoking on the river, is a strange and to me a painful subject of reflection.”

He sought for wounded men, both Maori and English, in the swamps after an engagement, fearless of stray gunshots. A naval chaplain, who was helping him, was riding with him one day through dense bush, said to be infested with Maoris, when they came to a part of the road cut up with deep ruts on the side of a steep hill. The Bishop jumped from his horse and proceeded to fill up the ruts so as to save the wagons for provisioning the troops from being capsized. Further on, he found an Irish soldier lying drunk and bareheaded, and got down to drag him into shelter saying: “Those men do not know the danger of sunstroke.”

To the misery of watching these scenes of war was added the bitter disappointment of seeing the conduct of the natives. Selwyn wrote to the Bishop of Adelaide:

“I have now one simple missionary idea before me—of watching over the remnant that is left. Our native work is a remnant in two senses, the remnant of a decaying people and the remnant of a decaying faith. The works of which you hear are not the works of heathens; they are the works of baptized men, whose love has grown cold.”

The Maoris could not understand the Bishop’s presence with the English soldiers and looked upon him with suspicion as having gone over to the cause of their enemies, not recognising that he could not leave the troops without some one to minister to their spiritual needs. The English officers soon learnt to love him and to admire his devotion and courage. On a Sunday he would ride many miles, holding seven or eight services in the day. There was a long ridge of about two miles exposed to the fire from the Maoris below which connected two redoubts. The Bishop rode along it at full canter, and the officers used to watch him through their field glasses. They would see a puff of smoke and then the Bishop still galloping along, and say: “It’s all right, they missed him.”

He was comforted sometimes by hearing of truly Christian acts done by Maoris. One Maori General was an old pupil of the Bishop’s; he himself tended a wounded English prisoner all through one night, and when the man asked for water and there was none in the Maori camp, he crept out through the fern into the English lines and brought back a calabash of water for the dying man. The Maori clergy to the Bishop’s great comfort were faithful all through the war.

Lady Martin thus describes the effect of the war:

“One by one the large flourishing schools on the Waikato and Waiapu rivers had to be closed, with their branch village schools under native teachers, which had become centres of light. The fine country which we had seen covered with wheat and crops became a battlefield—the mills were closed, the churches built by the natives were often used as barracks for the troops ... our bay became deserted. No invalids were brought to be nursed, no canoes heavily laden with produce skimmed across the harbour. It seemed as if the pleasant intercourse with the Maoris, which for twenty years had made our lives so bright was at an end.”

In 1864, a new horror was added to the war by the sudden appearance amongst the Maoris of a fanatical sect, which gathered round an insane chief who professed to have received revelations from the angel Gabriel. His followers called themselves Hau Haus. In a condition of wild excitement, indulging in excesses of every kind, they marched through the land claiming the allegiance of other natives. Infuriated by meeting resistance from some loyal Christian natives, they vowed vengeance to all missionaries. It was in this mood that they reached Poverty Bay, just as two missionaries, Volkner and Grace, arrived in a small schooner bringing medicines and food for the people in the Bay who were suffering from an epidemic of fever. Volkner was seized and murdered next morning in a revolting way, whilst Grace was taken prisoner. As soon as this news reached Bishop Selwyn he hastened to Poverty Bay to try to rescue Grace. At Poverty Bay he found Bishop Williams in whose diocese it was, and with him a great crowd of loyal natives. He described his adventures in a letter to Mrs. Selwyn:

“Went to the Bishop’s house, found all well and thankfully acknowledging the steadfastness of their people, who had gathered from all parts for their protection. Went out to a meeting at which the Bishop’s army appeared in fighting costume, with more of Maori-usage than I liked to see, as I would rather have seen the native clergymen with a hundred quiet men in brown coats than four hundred native warriors in brown skins.”

These men expressed themselves determined not to allow their Pakehas to be touched, but they would not help to attack the murderers of Volkner. They even made conditions about the release of a Maori prisoner before they would write a letter asking for the release of Grace. Selwyn had to send a schooner to fetch this prisoner and then went off with the letter demanding Grace’s release to Opotiki, and sent boats to the shore which brought off Grace and other white people who were there. He then, to his great regret, had to hasten back to Auckland for the Synod; he believed that the English clergy and others in that district were still in great danger. He doubted, however, whether he could have done more to help them as he had now become such an object of hatred and suspicion to the rebel Maoris.

After a year of fighting the Maoris were driven back and dispersed. No regular peace was made but both sides were weary of war, and the English troops were withdrawn. It was many years before the interior of New Zealand was really at peace and safe for settlers.

At the end of the year (1865) the Bishop wrote to an old friend in England:

“How much of the buoyancy of hope has been sobered down by experience! when instead of a nation of believers welcoming me as their father, I find here and there a few scattered sheep, the remnant of a flock which has forsaken the shepherd. I do not know how far it is right to go among my people, though, in former times, peace or war made no difference in their willingness to receive me. At present we are the special objects of their suspicion and ill will. The part that I took in the Waikato campaign has destroyed my influence with many. You will ask then ‘Did I not foresee this? and if so why did I go?’ I answer that I could not neglect the dying and wounded soldiers. Then there were many wounded Maoris brought in from time to time to whom it was my duty to minister. Add to this two of our mission stations had been occupied by a native clergyman and catechist, whom no threats could induce to leave their posts after the English missionaries were advised to retire. It was my duty to see they were not injured when our troops advanced.... This has thrown me back in native estimation more, I fear, than my remaining years of life will enable me to recover.... In the midst of these sorrows we have solid comfort in the sight of the stability of our native clergymen who have never swerved from their duty.... The real cause of war in New Zealand has been the new constitution, and the cause of the greater bitterness of the strife has been the new element of confiscation introduced by the colonists against the will and express orders of the Home Government.... A Maori cares more for his land than anything else.... We have every reason to think that the worst is now past.... We shall probably settle down upon the unsatisfactory basis of the questionable possession of one or two millions of very indifferent land, and of the entire repudiation of the Queen’s authority over the whole interior of the Northern Island. This is the result of seeking first ‘the other things’ instead of the ‘one.’”

The war was drawing to a close in 1864 when Bishop Hobhouse, after accompanying Selwyn on one of his journeys to the camp, wrote the following description of what he saw:

“He was still obliged to provide for the chaplain’s duties, though the army was no longer massed, but was spread into numerous out-posts stretching as far as ninety miles from Auckland. This involved his starting every Friday with such clerical companions as he could get; calling at the various stations throughout Saturday to do any pastoral duty required amongst the troops, and planning with the officers how to make the most of his services on Sunday.... After forty-five miles we reached the Waikato river ... when the steamer arrived it was found to be towing some barges filled with the families of the new Australian settlers, a corps which had been raised in the Australian towns.... The arrival of these families was an opportunity for pastoral work.... The Bishop plunged into the barges.... One woman, the mother of a family was nearing her end. He induced the captain to put her on shore opposite to a wooden church which had been riddled by shot and dismantled in the war. Inside that inhospitable ruin he proposed to stay the night as the comforter of the poor woman, and bade me proceed to the nearest military post and await his arrival. Early on the Saturday morning he arrived after an unbroken night watch, during which he had seen his poor patient’s death, had committed her body to the grave and had made arrangements for the charge of her children. Without any sleep, he then hastened to depart on foot to the missionary station, where we had been expected overnight. During the many hours of the day as we passed over the fields of action with their gloomy records of ruined churches, abandoned paths, down-trodden enclosures, the Bishop poured out his heart to me more freely than was his wont. The scene was sad enough to have overwhelmed him with acute regret and despondency for the future. The Waikato tribe more than 10,000 strong, the most advanced of the powerful tribes in civilization and churchmanship, with churches and a complete set of schools endowed by themselves, were now driven from their fertile valley, estranged from British rule, and perhaps alienated from the Christian faith. The missionary work of forty years seemed all undone and the Bishop himself was regarded as a traitor. Yet all these gloomy reflections were put away, and his only thought was how to minister to the new settlers now pouring in from the Australian towns.... As we passed over the scene of bloodshed he said: ‘I have been in every action I could possibly reach. It was my duty to minister to the wounded natives as well as to the British.... Indeed I always ministered to the fallen Maori first so as to give a practical answer to their charge against me of forsaking and betraying them. It was needful that I should be in the midst of each fray and between two fires; but I was never hurt. I lay on the ground at night and shared soldier’s fare.’”

Whilst recalling all that he had gone through, the Bishop’s missionary zeal still enabled him to make plans for fresh enterprises and to sketch out new work amongst the settlers. But there were thoughts poured out too about what he could do when no longer fit for the active life New Zealand demanded. He thought he might best serve his Master by retiring to Canterbury, and helping to train the next generation of missionaries at St. Augustine’s College. But the time of retirement was not yet, and the next day after a night spent sleeping on the ground, he took eight separate services for the troops.

Many are the stories of his utter fearlessness during the war. One settler years afterwards wrote to an Auckland paper saying that he was sure many of the settlers owed their lives to Bishop Selwyn’s untiring watchfulness. He told how once when returning to their homes at Mauku, after a sudden flight, through fear of a Maori attack, the Bishop appeared and, refusing all refreshment, asked merely to be allowed to leave his horse for the night. He said he must go on at once to Purapura which was some nine miles away, and to be reached only by a bush track; that he needed no food as he had some bread in his kit, but would probably be back next morning. At 4 o’clock next morning he duly appeared, drenched to the skin, having walked all through the night and having had to ford a creek. He then told them that the day before he had heard that a band of the fiercest Maoris were on their way to attack the settlement, and he had gone to see the chiefs assembled at Purapura to persuade them to forbid their war party to go on. This they had promised to do, but said the Bishop, I will stay till all danger from these wild spirits is past. During the night he was up and out in a moment if there was any unusual noise. The following Sunday he held a service in the little schoolroom, preaching a sermon never to be forgotten, inspiring trust and confidence in God.

At the end of the war, Bishop Selwyn was granted the same medal as was given to the soldiers; and the officers and men among whom he had ministered subscribed to give him money to ornament his private chapel.

The prayer which he drew up to be used in all the churches in New Zealand, deserves to be recorded here as showing his inmost mind about the war.

“O Lord whose never failing Providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth, we humbly beseech Thee to receive our prayer for the Governor of this land and for all who are in authority that they may be guided by Thee in all things, that the dominion of our Queen may be established in this land in justice and mercy according to Thy Holy Will.

“We commend to Thee oh merciful Father all our brethren who are gone forth from amongst us to bear arms and to be exposed to the peril of death, all who are thereby hindered from worshipping Thee in Thy house, that Thou wilt keep them from forgetfulness of Thee and of Thy holy law: all who are sick, all who are wounded, all who are drawing nigh unto death; all who are bereaved. And we pray that Thy Holy Spirit may so rule in all of us as to keep us from every unbecoming and unchristian temper; from all cruel, unmerciful and vindictive thoughts.

“And we beseech Thee, good Lord, to restrain the evil passions of men, and to deliver this land from the misery of strife and bloodshed and to pour upon all the people of the land the spirit of concord and obedience and peace. And this we pray through Him who is the Prince of Peace and Saviour of all men, our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is to be noted that he did not bid them pray for victory.