52 Transactions. 
statesman, gave him an influence in the councils of Ngatiawa and Ngatimata, 
which was of much value and importance to him, in the furtherance of his 
immediate projects, whilst they ultimately led to his example being followed 
by those tribes, after the severe losses inflicted upon them by Te Wherowhero 
and the Waikatos at Puke-rangiora. It appears, indeed, that long before this 
blow fell upon them, Te Rauparaha had pointed out the danger to which they 
would be exposed at the hands of the Waikato chief, when he and his people 
no longer stood between them and the latter, but the united Ngatiawa and 
Ngatitama were at that time a very powerful tribe, their ancient mana as 
warriors extending through the length and breadth of the land, and they 
ridiculed the possibility of serious defeat or disaster befalling them, and even 
urged Te Rauparaha himself to abandon his design, as unnecessary, and as 
being incompatible with the honour of his tribe. But the sagacious chief of 
the Ngatitoa had seen the change produced in the relative positions of the 
Ngapuhi and Ngatiwhatua, on the one side, and of Ngatimaru and other 
Thames people on the other, owing to the opportunities possessed by the 
former of acquiring, in abundance, the powerful European weapons, and he 
had early appreciated the fact, that in all future contests in New Zealand, the 
party which could only bring the wooden spear and battle-axe into the field, 
against the musket and the bayonet, must eventually be destroyed. On this 
point, very decisive testimony is given by Major Cruise, of the 84th Regiment, 
in his account of his residence in New Zealand in 1819 and 1820. He 
mentions that, on the arrival of the “ Dromedary” store ship at the Bay of 
Islands, for the purpose of taking in a cargo of kauri spars, they found the 
people of the Bay daily expecting the return of a numerous war party, which 
had started some months previously for the purpose of attacking the natives 
at the River Thames. Shortly afterwards, in effect, this party arrived at the 
head of the bay, and he and some of the other officers of the “ Dromedary,” 
went to meet it. The returned party occupied a fleet of about fifty canoes, 
many of them seventy or eighty feet long, and few less than sixty; all of them 
were filled with warriors, who stood up and shouted as they passed the 
European boat, holding up numbers of human heads as trophies of their 
success. The barter of powder and muskets, he says, carried on by the 
whalers, had already distributed some hundred stand of arms amongst the 
inhabitants of the Bay, and as the natives at the Thames were unprovided 
with similar weapons, they made little opposition to their more powerful 
invaders, who, in that instance, told him that they had killed 200, whilst 
they returned with the loss of only four men. Tui, one of the principal chiefs 
of the Bay, in a conversation with Major Cruise on this occasion, made one 
` continued boast of the atrocities he had committed during an excursion to the 
-same place about two months before, and dwelt with marked pleasure upon 
