52 Transactions. 



statesman, gave liim an infliience in the councils of Ngatiawa and Ngatimata, 

 which was of much vahie 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 JSTgatiwhatua, 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 held, 

 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 



