TRANSACTIONS 



OF THE 



NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE, 



18 7 2. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Art I. — On the Life and Times of Te Raui^aralia. 

 By W. T. L. Travers, F.L.S. 



\Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 2lst August, Uh September, 2nd, 9th, 



and 30th October, 1872.] 



Chapter I. 

 The position occupied by the great chief Te Rauparaha in connection with the 

 establishment and earlier progress of the New Zealand Company's settlements 

 in Cook Straits, would alone justify us in recording all that can still be learnt 

 of the career of this remarkable man ; but when, in addition to the interest 

 which his personal history possesses for us in this respect, we find that he took 

 a very important part in the events that occurred in these Islands between the 

 years 1818 and 1840— leading as they did to an immense destruction of life 

 amongst the then existing population, and to profound changes in the habits and 

 character of the survivors— it becomes important, for the purposes of the future 

 historian of the Colony, that we should preserve the most authentic accounts 

 of his career, as well as of that of the other great chiefs who occupied, during 

 the period in question, positions of power and influence amongst the leading 

 New Zealand tribes. As with Hongi, Te Waharoa, and Te Wherowhero in the 

 North, so Te Rauparaha in the South carried on, during the interval referred 

 to, wars of the most ruthless and devastating character, undertaken partly for 

 purposes of conquest, and partly for the gratification of that innate ferocity 

 for which the New Zealanders have long been remarked. His own immediate 

 tribe, the Ngatitoa, though insignificant in point of numbers, when compared 

 with most of the leading tribes of the North Island, had long been celebrated 

 for their prowess as warriors ; and the reliance they placed upon the sagacity 



