HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ZEALAND. 1037 



and the British rushed in. The Maoris made a desperate attempt to recapture the pah, 

 but were driven back. The British lost thirteen killed and thirty wounded. After the 

 fall of Ruapekapeka the rebel forces, through lack of provisions, began to disperse, and 

 Heke therefore wrote to the Governor proposing peace. His Excellency, perceiving that 

 the time was now opportune for an honourable reconciliation with a fallen enemy, 

 responded with the proclamation of an unconditional pardon to all who should quietly 

 return to their homes ; two hundred soldiers were left at the Bay of Islands and the 

 remainder recalled to Auckland. 



Thus ended the first and only war between our people and the natives of the 

 district north of Auckland. Thanks to the chivalrous character of Heke, it was singularly 

 free from acts of barbarism. Still, there is the grave suspicion of one act of wanton 

 cruelty at Ohaeawai. On the night after the unsuccessful assault upon that pah, it is 

 said that the chief Pene Taui lit a kauri-gum fire on the breast of a wounded soldier, 

 and that his cries of anguish were heard in the British camp. In Judge Manning's 

 book, however ("History of the War in the North of New Zealand"), the Ngapuhi 

 chief who supplied the narrative says : " As the people were mending the fence by torch- 

 light, there was a dead soldier lying near, and they put a torch of kauri-resin on the 

 body to light their work, which burnt the body very much, and caused the report to 

 be spread afterwards, when the body was found by the soldiers, that the man had been 

 tortured ; but this was not true, for the man was dead before the fire was thrown on 

 the body." On the same night a toknnga, or priest, caused the dead body of Lieutenant 

 Philpott to be scalped, and a portion of the hip to be cut from Captain Grant's corpse, 

 to be used in divination for the purpose of ascertaining how the war would end. These 

 acts appear to have been committed without the knowledge of Heke. 



Shortly after the termination of the war, Heke met and breakfasted with the 

 Governor at the residence of one of the missionaries (the Rev. R. Burrowes), who had 

 arranged the meeting at his Excellency's request. The chief was ailing at the time ; he 

 fell into a slow decline, and some four or five years later he died of consumption. 

 Kawiti survived him by some years, and gave no further trouble to the Authorities. 

 Tamati Waka Nene received a pension of one hundred pounds per annum for life, and 

 lived at Kororareka, now Russell, until his death in 1871. The monument, raised by 

 the Government over his grave, bears an inscription setting forth that it was erected to 

 the memory of this chief of the Ngapuhi "sage in counsel, renowned in war" by the 

 Government of New Zealand, which he was the first to acknowledge, and which, for 

 upwards of thirty years, he had faithfully served. 



THE HUTT DISTURBANCES. 



Hardly had peace been re-established in the extreme North, than the smouldering 

 embers of disaffection in the far South of the same Island were fanned into flame. The 

 trouble there was agrarian. Colonel Wakefield alleged that he. had purchased the fertile 

 valley of the Htitt, nine miles from Wellington, on behalf of the New Zealand Company, 

 but some of the principal chiefs who had interests in it maintained that they had in 

 nowise been consulted in the transaction, and refused to waive their rights. Governor 

 Eitzroy paid over three hundred pounds to the chief Rauparaha for the purpose of 



