Alexander Sutherland - The History of Australia and New Zealand from 1606 to 1890

But before the year was ended Heke approached the town once more with 100 armed men. He insulted it from the hills, cut down the flagstaff again, and then withdrew to the forests. Fitzroy published a proclamation offering £100 for his capture, and Heke replied by offering £100 for the head of Fitzroy. The Governor now caused a new flagstaff to be set up, all sheathed with iron at the bottom, and with a strong wooden house attached to it, in which a score of soldiers were always to keep guard. A block-house or small wooden fortress was set up at a little distance down the hill towards Kororarika. Nevertheless, Heke said he would come and cut down the flagstaff again. Then the inhabitants of Kororarika began to drill in order to give him a warm reception if he came. Lieutenant Philpott, the commander of the Hazard ship of war, came ashore to drill them, and to mount one or two cannon. Yet Heke, lurking among the hills, contrived by a sudden dash to capture Lieutenant Philpott. However, after dealing courteously with him, he released him.

5. Kororarika Burnt.—On 11th March, 1845, at daylight, Heke with 200 men crept up to the flagstaff, surprised the men in the house attached, and when twenty men came out of the lower block-house to help their friends on the top of the hill, he attacked them and drove them down to the town in the hollow beside the shore. Close to the beach was a little hill, and on the top of this hill stood a house with a garden surrounded by a high fence. Behind this the soldiers and all the people of Kororarika took refuge. From the rocky high ground round about the Maoris fired down upon them, while the white men fired back, and the guns of the Hazard , which had come close in to the shore, kept up a constant roar. For three hours this lasted, ten white men being killed as well as a poor little child, while thirty-four of the natives were shot dead. The Maoris were preparing to retreat when, by some accident, the whole of the powder that the white men possessed was exploded. Then they had to save themselves. The women and children were carried out boat after boat to the three ships in the harbour. Then the men went off, and the Maoris, greatly surprised, crept cautiously down into the deserted town. They danced their war dance; sent off to their parents in the ships some white children who had been left behind, and then set fire to the town, destroying property to the value of £50,000.

Heke’s fame now spread among the Maoris. When the settlers from Kororarika were landed at Auckland, homeless, desperate, and haggard, a panic set in, and some settlers sold their houses and land for a trifle, and departed. Others with more spirit enrolled themselves as volunteers. Three hundred men were armed and drilled. Fortifications were thrown up round the town, and sentries posted on all the roads leading to it. At Wellington and Nelson also men were drilled and stockades were built for defence.

6. First Maori War.—But Honi Heke was afraid of the soldiers, and when Colonel Hulme arrived from Sydney with several companies he withdrew to a strong pah of his, eighteen miles inland. Hulme landed at the nearest point of the coast, with a force of 400 men; these were joined by 400 friendly allies under Waka-Nene, whose wife led the tribe in a diabolic war dance, not a little startling to the British soldiers. The road that was to lead them to Honi Heke was only a track through a dense forest. Carts could not be taken, but each man carried biscuits for five days and thirty rounds of ammunition. Under four days of heavy rain they trudged along in the dripping pathway, all their biscuits wet and much of their powder ruined. At last on a little plain, between a lake and a wooded hill, they saw before them the pah of Honi Heke. Two great rows of tree trunks stuck upright formed a palisade round it. They were more than a foot thick, and twelve feet high, and they were so close that only a gun could be thrust between them. Behind these there was a ditch in which stood 250 Maoris, who could shoot through the palisades in security.

The British slept that night without tents round fires of kauri gum, but next morning all was astir for the attack. A rocket was sent whizzing over the palisades. It fell and burst among the Maoris, frightening them greatly, but succeeding discharges were failures, and the Maoris gathered courage to such an extent that a number under Kawiti came out to fight. The soldiers lowered their bayonets and charged, driving them back into the pah. During the night while the white men were smoking round their fires, the sound of the plaintive evening hymn rising in the still air from the pah suggested how strong was the hold that the new faith now had on the Maori mind. Next day Colonel Hulme, seeing that a place defended on all sides by such a strong palisade could not be captured without artillery, dug the graves of the fourteen soldiers killed, and marched back carrying with him thirty-nine wounded men.

There was dismay in Auckland when this news arrived. What could be said when 400 English soldiers retreated from 250 savages? But, on the other hand, the Maoris had learnt a lesson. They could not fight against English bayonets in the open, but while taking aim from behind palisades they were safe. Therefore they began in different places to strengthen their fortresses, and Honi Heke added new defences to his pah of Oheawai, which stood in the forest nineteen miles from the coast.

7. Oheawai.—More soldiers were sent from Sydney, and with them, to take the chief command, Colonel Despard, who had seen much fighting against hill tribes in India. He landed 630 men and six cannons; but these latter, being ship’s cannons on wooden carriages with small wheels, stuck in the boggy forest roads. The men had to pull the guns, and they were assisted by 250 friendly Maoris. On the evening of 22nd June, 1845, they spread out before the pah during the gathering dusk. It was a strong place. In the midst of a deep and gloomy forest, a square had been cleared about a third of a mile in length and in breadth. Great trunks of trees had been set up in the earth, and they stood fifteen feet high; between their great stems, a foot or eighteen inches thick, there was just room enough left for firing a musket. Three rows of these gigantic palings, with a ditch five feet deep between the inner ones, made the fortress most dangerous to assault; and in the ground within hollows had been dug where men could sleep secure from shells and rockets. Two hundred and fifty warriors were there with plenty of muskets and powder.

On the second morning the British had got their guns planted within a hundred yards of the palisade, but the small balls they threw did little harm to such huge timber. The whole expedition would have had to retire had not a heavier gun come up. This threw shot thirty-two pounds in weight, and after twenty-six of these had struck the same place, a breach was seen of a yard or two in width. Colonel Despard ordered 200 men with ropes and hatchets and ladders to be ready for an assault at daybreak. In the still dawn of a wintry morning, the bugles rang out and the brave fellows gathered for the deadly duty. They rushed at the breach, and for ten minutes a wild scene ensued. The place was very narrow, and it was blocked by resolute Maoris, who shot down exactly half of the attacking party. Many of the soldiers forced their way through, but only to find a second and then a third palisade in front of them. Then they returned, losing men as they fled, and the whole British force fell back a little way into the forest. That night the groans and cries of the wounded, lying just outside the pah, were mingled with the wild shouts of the war dance within. Two days later the Maoris hoisted a flag of truce, and offered to let the white men carry off the dead and wounded. Thirty-four bodies lay at the fatal breach, and sixty-six men were found to have been wounded.