74 TUTIRA 



tohungas reciting ceaseless incantations so that the enemy might not 

 be disturbed and wakeful. The manning of the canoes and the retire- 

 ment were successful : no single male of the Ngai-Tatara remained on 

 Tauranga-koau. In the darkness they escaped, passing through the 

 narrows of Ohinepaka, landing on the east edge of Waikopiro, and there 

 sinking their canoes in deep water. At last, safely on the heights of 

 Te Puku, facing about and looking towards their island, they exclaimed, 

 " Hei konei ra e kid ma e hine ma" "Farewell to our women, our 

 daughters farewell." 1 



After the departure of the warriors of the Ngai-Tatara, the attack- 

 ing party seized the island and made prisoners of the womenfolk, old and 

 young, who were taken ashore at a spot known as Te Papa-o-Waiatara. 

 As most of the attacking party were from Te Urewera, the women 

 were carried captive in a northerly direction. During the retreat, 

 according to ancient custom, large fires were lighted at nightfall, for 

 illumination and warmth. Te Amohia, a woman of high rank amongst 

 the prisoners, visited nightly each of these fires, her purpose being to 

 discover how her people fared, to study the situation, and to disarm 

 any suspicion that escape might be attempted. For three successive 

 nights this was done. On the fourth evening, when the party was not 

 far distant from Mohaka, Te Amohia whispered her plans to her 

 particular cronies her "aunties" as Te Hata-Kani delighted to call 

 them, Whangawehi and Mohu. Towards midnight the three made 

 their escape. 



The leader of the Urewera people, whose name has been forgotten 

 one of the very few lapses of memory on the part of Te Hata-Kani 

 noticed after a time that Te Amohia and her companions had not 

 returned to their accustomed place. He thereupon called out, " Te 



1 In explanation of this act of desertion I cannot but quote from a book of mine, 

 ' Mutton Birds and other Birds,' published years before I had heard of the retreat from 

 Tauranga-koau : " Some readers will have noted with surprise and some with pain that the 

 conduct of the male tit during the cuckoo episode stands forth in no very noble light. Those 

 who have done so are thinking in terms of man and not of bird. His concealment of himself 

 in the thicket we should designate by such foolish words as ' cowardly,' ' unmanly,' and 

 ' unchivalrous ' ; but the verdict of male tits would consider that his proceedings were wise, 

 eminently proper, and that he could not have acted otherwise and yet done his duty. What 

 man calls chivalry, which ordains that the male shall perish under all circumstances to save the 

 female, has no place in the working of the minds of male animals. If we can imagine in a 

 community of tits some disaster analogous to that of insufficient boat accommodation in a sinking 

 liner, the male birds would firstly save themselves, not for themselves but for the race, for their 

 future broods." The males of the Ngai-Tatara hapu were no doubt subconsciously actuated by 

 a similar instinct. 



