HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ZEALAND. 



1071 





not even the decrepitude of age, the distress of women, or the innocence of childhood 

 moving the murderers to compassion. Captain Wilson and Major Biggs were among the 

 first victims. A lad named Charles James escaped to relate the dreadful news. The 

 settlers fled in all directions, the women and children in Gisborne were shipped off to 

 Auckland, and the deserted homesteads of Poverty Bay were given by Te Kooti to 

 the flames. Laden with booty he retired once more to his forest retreat, and the 

 traces of his bloody deeds marked his progress. 

 At length Ropata discovered his hiding-place, 

 perched on the loftiest point of the forest-clad 

 peak of Ngatapa, where he had constructed the 

 most impregnable paJi ever seen in New Zea- 

 land. Without waiting for re-inforcements the 

 heroic Ropata assaulted him there and inflicted 

 a loss of sixty-five men. Lack of ammunition 

 and weakness of support ultimately compelled 

 him to fall back. Then Colonel Whitmore arrived, 

 and the combined forces invested the pah. Ro- 

 pata stormed it with fifty men, and possessed 

 himself of the first line of defence. While a 

 sap was being pushed forward to the second 

 line, Te Kooti, under cover of darkness, drew 

 off his forces and escaped. Ropata pursued him, 

 and captured about one hundred and twenty 

 prisoners, all of whom were summarily shot. 



Three years of guerrilla warfare followed. The name of the fugitive chief became 

 a synonym for rapine and terror. Ever pursued and ever on the move, he emerged 

 from the forests at intervals, swooping down on isolated settlements, plundering and 

 cutting off small parties of Europeans and friendly natives, and in his turn sustain- 

 ing loss at the .hands of his pursuers. Through the highlands of the savage Uri- 

 wera, over Hawke's Bay, and by way of Taupo, he was dogged to the Waikato, 

 where the King would have nothing to clo with him. In despair, he sent word to the 

 Europeans of his desire for peace, but the Government replied by setting a price of 

 five thousand pounds on his head. In 1870, the chase was left almost exclusively to 

 the Maoris under Ropata, Topia, Henare Tomoana, and Kepa te Rangihiwinui. Te 

 Kooti fled back through the Bay of Plenty to the almost impenetrable forests south 

 of Opotiki, where his pah of Maraetahi was besieged in March, 1870, by four hundred 

 friendlies under Kepa, Topia and Wi Kingi. After a desperate action, in which the 

 arch-marauder barely escaped with his life, the assailants carried the pah, recovered two 

 hundred and eighteen captives, and took prisoners thirty-five men and seventy-six women 

 and children. Eighteen of the enemy were killed. Te Kooti now crept from lair to 

 lair in the forest solitudes, tirelessly pursued, and with his followers diminished to a 

 score. Emaciated with hunger, feverish with thirst, unable to rest through fear of 

 capture by the indefatigable Ropata, he regained at last the King country, and there 

 found sanctuary in 1872. Years later he was pardoned, and since then has led a quiet 



MAJOR-GENERAL TREVOR CHUTE. 



