40 Transactions. 
days anyone might retire unmolested from the pa, but on the fifth day 
Hauwhenua, with all it contained, would be taken and destroyed.” No 
answer was returned, but during the interval a multitude of all ages and sexes 
issued forth from the pa, and marched in close order along the road by 
Matamata to the Thames. That night Te Waharoa’s ranks were recruited by 
many slaves, who deserted, under cover of darkness, from the retreating 
Ngatimarus, and on the following day the pa was assaulted and taken. The 
fall of Hauwhenua, which occurred about 1831, terminated the residence of 
the Ngatimaru on the Waikato; and was followed by operations, from a 
Waikato basis, which were successfully conducted against them, on the line of 
the Piako. 
Whilst the earlier of these events were proceeding, the Ngatimaru chief, 
Takurua, maintained his position at Matamata; but about that time he 
appears, after much fighting, to have judged it advisable to accept terms of 
peace proposed by Te Waharoa. They were to bury the past in oblivion, 
and both parties were to live at Matamata, where, it was said, there was 
room for all. These terms were practically ratified by Te Waharoa and 
Takurua living side by side, in the utmost apparent friendship, for a period of 
about two years. Waharoa then, however, committed an act of perfidy, 
condemned even by the opaquely-minded savages of that day, by which he 
obtained sole possession of Matamata, and so turned the balance of power in 
his own favour, as greatly to aid him in his ultimate designs. One 
afternoon he left Matamata on pretence of a necessary journey to Tauranga— 
a circumstance rather calculated to lull suspicion than otherwise—and during 
his absence, his tribe at midnight rose, and massacred, in cold blood, the 
too confiding Takurua, and nearly every man of his tribe. Their bodies 
were devoured, and their wives and property were shared by the ruthless 
Ngatihauas. 
This Maori St. Bartholomew’s day occurred about 1827, and so weakened 
Ngatimaru, that Te Waharoa was enabled, after the fall of Hauwhenua, to 
push his conquests to the foot of the Aroha, and it is difficult to say where 
they would have ceased, had not his attention been unexpectedly diverted by 
the casual murder of his cousin Hunga, at Rotorua, in the latter end of the 
year 1835.” 
I make no apology for citing these instances of atrocity, which exhibit, 
in the strongest light, the dreadful character of the wars carried on by the great 
chieftains in the North, during the twenty years succeeding Hongi’s return 
from Europe. Indeed, this period has been well characterized by Mr. Colenso 
“as a fearful period in New Zealand.” “The Ngapuhi,” he says, “ being well 
armed with muskets, revelled in destruction, slaying thousands. At Kaipara, 
Manukau, Tamaki, the Thames, the interior of Waikato on to Rotorua, and 
