Hamana and Ngārimu journeyed to Taranaki, to Hawera, then Okaiawa and finally to Te-Ngutu o te Manu, Titokowaru’s fortified village of many whare and a large marae. They found Titokowaru in the wharenui, just rebuilt after it had been burnt down by Pākehā militia. The village had been driven out in the raid and the people not long returned. Hamana and Ngārimu were immediately drafted into preparing for an imminent second attack.
“They will come again,” Titokowaru said, “the white soldiers, Mc Donnell, Hunter, Manu rau and the kūpapa traitor, Te Keepa.”
“I know of Te Keepa, Major Kemp,” said Hamana, “but who is this Manu rau?”
“Manu rau, Major von Tempsky, a foreign Pākehā soldier, so named Hundred Birds for his great skill in flitting quickly about in bush combat.”
A day passed with fighting drills on the marae under the watchful eye of Titokowaru. Hamana and Ngārimu joined Titokowaru’s warriors in a fierce haka taua in front of the pā. They shouted Kia kutia! Draw together! and they barked, Au! Au! They were the dogs of war. They did not fear death. They were invincible. With powerful incantations they would raise their hands and ward off bullets. Hapa! Hapa! Pass over! Pai Mārire!
Titokowaru stood before warriors assembled on the marae, a commanding figure, despite his unremarkable appearance: average height and build, but wiry with muscle. His face was plain, not even a moko, but battle scarred with a wound from a shell splinter that took out his right eye at Sentry Hill. He raised his tokotoko, wizard-like, and cast his one good eye over the men. He passed Hamana by, a newcomer, but the tokotoko, would not pass over him. It returned to him. It lighted on him. It chose him as one of the Tekau mā rua, of the Hau Hau, the twelve of Titokowaru’s inner circle. The twelve disciples of Titokowaru.
Titokowaru sat in the wharekura in the evening, praying and chanting and saw the coming evil. “Prepare for battle in the morning!” he said.
Titokowaru was well prepared this time. He had envisioned the arena of the coming battle and set his defences, concealed in front of the pā. Hamana waited within a hollow tree. He gathered more strength from the embrace of the tree, the strength of Tāne Mahuta and Tūmatauenga, Tū of the angry face, Tū of hunting and killing. Quietly he chanted:
Taku uaua ko te rangi e tū nei
Taku uaua ko Papa e takoto nei
Whiri kaha, toro kaha te uaua.
My sinew is like the sky above.
My sinew is like the earth below.
Let my sinews gather strength and exert strength.
Nearby, Ngārimu, and forty others in trees and pits, at one with the rākau, the trees, and Papatūānuku, the earth. Another twenty in the pā. They all waited. Hamana thanked the gods who led them there, he and Ngārimu; led them from the defeated refugees in the Rohe Pōtae to the undefeated warriors of Titokowaru in Taranaki, led them there for such a time as this, to stand with Titokowaru at Te Ngutu o te Manu against the invasion of the Pākehā soldiers. To defend the pā with their lives.
The white soldiers came just as Titokowaru had said. Birds rising from the trees heralded their approach and then the waiting warriors heard them bashing the bush. Mc Donnell and his men appeared in the clearing. The soldiers saw only trees and the pā beyond. They did not see the rifles in the loopholes of the trees and the crossfire from the pits in the ground. The warriors cut down many soldiers and rushed out to attack the rest. Ngārimu was at Hamana’s side and he fell as a bullet passed through his upraised hand and through his neck. Did he forget his incantations? Hamana avenged his comrade with a blast of his tūpara and killed another soldier with the other barrel. The breach loading carbines of the white soldiers were faster than the muzzle loading muskets of the defenders, but not fast enough. Hamana drew his pātītī from his belt and rushed a soldier before he could get his rifle to his shoulder. This was the bloody handed, head slashing killing he relished.
The white soldiers were in confusion. Hunter shouted to attack the pā. McDonnell ordered them to fall back with the wounded. Manu rau ordered his Forest Rangers to take cover and he openly stood his ground. Did he think he could ward off bullets with his curved sword? It did not take long for a bullet to find him. One of his men rushed to his dying leader and was also shot. Then another and another till they were lying in a heap. Hamana finished Manu rau himself with a blow of his patītī. Now he had his sword and revolver. The white soldiers fled into the bush. The warriors gave chase and killed more.
Many lay dead on both sides but only three of Titokowaru’s own. The warriors laid the white bodies on the marae. Titokowaru called out, “Fetch my Pākehā, Tu nui a moa.” They brought the white slave from the hut where he had been incarcerated for his own protection. He walked along the line of corpses and stopped at the feet of one wearing long leather boots. He looked into the pale face shrouded in long, curly hair, matted with blood, and declared, “It is Major Von Tempsky.”
Hamana jumped to his feet and shouted, “Yes, it is Manu rau!” and he fired the major’s revolver. Titokowaru had taken away his sword.
Let us cook Manu rau, someone shouted. Let us eat his heart, another shouted. But Titokowaru forbade it. Manu rau’s mana was too great for such indignity. “But feast on these others,” he said. “Take one body for each iwi. Consume them. Excrete them from your body. Destroy their mana. Remember your first king. Remember his name: Pōtatou Te Wherowhero Kai Tangata. Kai Tangata, Man Devourer. Forget his son, Tāwhio. Forget the Kīngitanga. They have lost their appetite for fighting.”
Two Ngā Rauru warriors dragged a body to the hāngī pit and cooked it on the hot stones. They served the meat in flax kete. Some ate the man meat. Some did not. But the whole body was consumed. Hamana ate one of the hands, with its fingers clawed from the roasting. Titokowaru did not partake. His mana was too great to be defiled by human flesh. They piled the other bodies into a heap, starting with Manu rau, and burnt them. The air was filled with smoke and the aroma of cooking and burning flesh and bodies exploding in the flames.
With the white soldiers gone back to Whanganui the Tekau ma rua spread out on the land and raided the settler farms. They were the twelve tribes of Israel, repossessing the land. They were the scourge of Taranaki. Governor Bowen placed a bounty of a thousand pounds on the head of Titokowaru. Titokowaru placed a bounty of two shillings and six pence on the head of Governor Bowen.
Titokowaru’s mana increased and he was joined by more warriors: the fearsome Big Kereopa and more Ngā Rauru warriors. He abandoned Te Ngutu o te manu and built a new pā at Moturoa. He commanded all the Taranaki grassland to the coast and drove the Pākehā settlers off his land. McDonnell came from Wairoa with his soldiers and Te Keepa with Whanganui Māori. Titokowaru defeated them again as he did at Te Ngutu o te manu.
The Pākehā of Whanganui lived in fear of Titokowaru. McDonnell had failed them. Major General Whitmore came to defend Whanganui and defeat Titokowaru, the Whitmore who failed to catch Te Kooti in the Ureweras. The soldiers of Whanganui grew stronger with more officers: Lieutenent John Bryce, Captain Newland, and Sergeant Maxwell, a farmer whose house the Takau ma rua had burnt to the ground.
The tribe did not remain at Moturoa to be attacked again. They moved to Taurangaika and built their greatest pā yet. They cut and set poles upright in a trench and lashed them together for a palisade. Tu nui a moa, wearing only a loincloth, was working alongside Hamana. The sun had darkened his skin but it was still the skin of a Pākehā. There were stripes and welts across his back.
“I see you have the scars of a slave,” Hamana said.
“It’s true, I am a slave,” Tu nui a moa said, “but Titokowaru treats me kindly. I got my lashings from my masters in the Queen’s army for being a deserter.”
“You want to help us kill Pākehā?” Hamana said.
“I don’t want to help them kill more Māori to take more land.”
“Don’t you want to go back to your own people?”
“You are my people now. If I went back, they would kill me for being a traitor.”
“Better to be a live slave, eh,” Hamana said. “You are a Pākehā but you speak te reo Māori and you have a Māori name. What is your Pākehā name?”
“Kimble Bent. I was Kimble Bent. Now I am Tu nui a moa.”
In three days and nights they built the stockades, trenches, bunkers, parapets and rifle pits. The fighting force grew with more Ngā Rauru from Perekama. They welcomed the warriors onto the marae with pōwhiri and hākari. Their children mingled with those of the pā. Three of the younger boys, not yet warriors, Ihaka Takarangi, Kīngi Takatua and Akuhata Herewini led new boys around the pā and out to hunt for pigs and geese at an abandoned farm. While the men were still preparing the hangi they heard shots in the distance and ran with their weapons to find the boys. It was at the remains of Handley’s Farm where they saw the mounted soldiers, led by Bryce and Maxwell and they fled as the warriors approached. Then they found the boys: Akuhata, shot in the back, Ihaka shot in the thigh and wounded with a sabre slash, but still alive; Kingi with his head split by a sabre from the top to his neck.
The warriors burned for utu to avenge the slaughter of their children but Titokowaru would not be drawn into attacking in the open away from the pā. The Tekau ma rua rode out raiding, killing, looting and burning settler farms on their confiscated land. Whitmore’s soldiers, likewise attacked undefended Māori villages.
Titokowaru wrote a letter to Whitmore:
Salutations to you. This is a question to you. To whom does this upon which you stand belong? This is my word to you. The heavens and the earth were made in one day, and man and all things bearing fruit therein were made in one day. If you know that God made these it is well. A covenant was entered into with those people. You were made a Pākehā, and the name of England was given to you for your tribe. I was made a Māori and New Zealand was the name given to me. You forgot there was a space fixed between us of great extent – the sea. You, forgetting that, jumped over from that place to this. I did not jump over from this place to that.
This is my word to you. Move off from my places to your own places in the midst of the sea. Move away from the town to those other places. Arise that you may be baptised, that your sins may be washed away, and call upon the name of the Lord. Sufficient.
From Titokowaruwaru
The two warriors he sent to deliver the letter were seized and imprisoned.
Hamana agreed with Titokowaru. “The missionaries came with their bible and their god,” he said. “They told us to look to the heavens while the Pākehā stole the land from under our feet. Ᾱwhina says the missionaries are men of God and men of peace. She has embraced the Pākehā God and turned her back on our gods, our atua. She married a Pākehā soldier and had his baby, a half blood, neither Māori nor Pākehā.”
Titokowaru grew ever stronger with support of many chiefs and many warriors within his fortress. But in one stroke he lost his mana and lost his allies by taking the wife of another chief to his bed. Hamana saw her himself leaving his tent at night. It was Titokowaru’s cousin, Puaraurangi. There was much kōrero from Puaraurangi’s husband and his men that Titokowaru was a fornicator and betrayer, no longer a prophet, no longer their military leader. They said they would execute him but after more kōrero, they abandoned Titokowaru and the pā. Men fight wars over land and lose them over women.
*
Whitmore was building an army with the Whanganui warriors of that ruthless bastard Te Keepa to attack the pā and Titokowaru knew the balance of power and fortune had shifted against him. They that were left followed Titokowaru’s orders to abandon the pā when the shelling began at dawn. In two groups, they fled into the bush at the back of the pā. In the first group, women and children and Tu nui a moa, with his Māori wife, Rihi. Rihi’s sister, Ngahuia, fled carrying her newborn baby.
Hamana stayed close by Titokowaru with Big Kereopa in the second group to ambush the soldiers Whitmore sent after them, Whitmore shouting, “Five pounds per head of Hauhau warriors and ten pounds for the head of a chief.”
The fugitives made their way through the bush to the Waitōtara River and set an ambush in a peach grove. Hamana shot a soldier reaching for a ripe peach and tomahawked another. They retreated further into the bush. Titokowaru retreated further into himself. They were tired. Even Big was exhausted. Hunger gnawed at empty stomachs. They survived on whatever bush food they could find, mainly fern roots. They hacked their way through the undergrowth, through tangles of supplejack and clinging vines of barbed bush lawyer. Some lost their way in the trackless bush and probably some deserted. The group of survivors were cold and wet in heavy rain, hiding in a makeshift camp near the Pātea River.
Hamana went off on his own in the morning to the river and crept along the bank till he spotted an eel slithering languidly in the dark water shaded by overhanging trees.Wading stealthily and groping under the bank, he managed to grab two eels and toss them up onto the bank, where he decapitated them with his patītī. He followed the river upstream to a wider, shallower run, where he spotted a Pākehā crouching over the water. The Pākehā could not hear him approach above the sound of the running water. He raised his patītī ready to strike when he saw the scars on his back. It was Tu nui a moa snatching at freshwater crayfish. He slipped his patītī back into his belt and said, “Not much of a feed in those little kōura.”
“I hope to eat Maine lobsters again one day,” Tu nui a moa said.
“Where are the others?” Hamana said.
“Somewhere in the bush. We’ve become scattered. Only Rihi and Ngahuia and her baby are still with me,” he said, and they appeared at his side. They consumed the eels back at the camp and Tu Nui used the eel bladders for cartridge cases, in place of the usual newspaper wrappings. He was still Titokowaru’s manufacturer of ammunition.
Whitmore and his soldiers passed close by the camp and the fugitives cowered in silence. Ngahuia’s baby cried and she put it to her breast but she had no more milk to give so she smothered her baby to stifle its crying, and sobbed silently herself. Whitmore drove his soldiers on relentlessly. Hamana thought Whitmore had a demon driving him. He felt the presence of Whiro, darkness and death, and in his weakness, prayed to Tūmātauenga for strength and Haumia-tikitiki for sustenance. He feared his body would return to Papatūānuku, to the earth, and his spirit to Te Reigna Wairua. The soldiers passed by and Big declared, “Ka ora. Ka ora. We will live.” The survivors rested in the camp for the day and overnight, huddled together on beds of ferns on the cold damp ground.
*
Shots were fired into the camp at dawn and those who were not killed fled again into the bush. It was Te Keepa, tracking them like a dog, and the Whanganui kūpapa bounty hunters. The dead were decapitated, not only by Te Keepa’s men but also by the Pākehā Armed Constabulary, eager for trophy heads and bounties.
Titokowaru addressed his band of survivors: “Do not despair. We will find sanctuary at Otautu and continue to Te Ngaere.”
They were given food and shelter for the night in Otautu. Hamana woke with the light of dawn, an eerie half-light of heavy, malevolent mist. Titokowaru crawled through the low doorway of the whare and stood outside sniffing the air. “Death lurks in the mist,” he said.
Whitmore and Te Keepa descended on the village with their troops, still hunting their prey. The fugitives ran from the village through the mist to the edge of the cliff face above the Pātea River. Big pulled Hamana down below a ledge. “Stay low,” he said. “The soldiers shoot into the mist and their bullets pass over our heads. We shoot back and hold them in the village.”
The standoff went on for over two hours, while the women took exhausted children and wounded down the cliff to the river. Ngahuia still carried her dead baby. Those who could not swim across were ferried in a single waka. As the fog lifted, the rearguard, made their escape. The trek to Te Ngaere was beyond the endurance of some and their numbers grew fewer. At Te Ngaere they came to a vast swamp and only Titokowaru knew the safe route to the three villages on solid ground in the heart of the wetlands.
Whitmore and Te Keepa finally left off the chase but returned when they learned of Titokowaru’s whereabouts. They were confounded by the impenetrable swamp and Whitmore ordered his men to construct fascines to lay a path to traverse the boggy ground. While the soldiers slogged their way to the village, the last hundred or so of Titokowaru’s followers, made their way back to Taranaki with replenished ammunition.
But they had no need of bullets now. Whitmore was gone, ordered to New Plymouth, where the Pākehā feared an invasion from Ngāti Maniapoto. Titokowaru had finally had enough of war and returned to the way of Pai Mārire. He answered the call of the pacifist prophets, Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi, who were building a citadel, as the new Jerusalem, a refuge for the dispossessed. The remnant, the lost tribe, followed Titokowaru to Parihaka, where all who wished to live in peace were welcome.