W. T. L. Travers. — The Life and Times of Te Rauparaha. 91 



'cast the bullets, and the Rangihaeata shot them.' Kauparaha was the mind, 

 and his mate the body, on these black-mail gathering rounds. They had both 

 acquired a violent taste for grog, and this, with fire-arms and powder, were the 

 principal articles demanded." 



Such is the account given by a writer, by no means favourable to 

 Rauparaha, of the impressions he had formed of the chief upon their first 

 interview, and although in some respects the picture he draws is not a 

 favourable one, we may clearly see that its worst features are owing to the 

 intercourse of Rauparaha with the class of European traders who then 

 frequented the coast. Master as he was of all the treacherous arts practised 

 by the Maori warrior, and ruthlessly as his designs were carried out, and 

 fearful as the results may have been, it must be remembered that he was 

 doing no more than his great countrymen, E Hongi, Waharoa, Te Whero- 

 whero, and other leading chiefs who, during the same period, carried on wars 

 in various parts of the islands. Those who knew Te Wherowhero Potatau 

 will recall the peculiar dignity of his manner, and certainly no one would 

 have supposed that the tall, graceful-looking man in the full dress of an 

 English gentleman, who conversed with quiet ease with those whom he met in 

 the drawing-rooms of Government House, at Auckland, was the same person 

 as the savage who sat naked on the ground at Pukerangiora smashing the 

 skulls of hundreds of defenceless prisoners, until he was almost smothered with 

 blood and brains. J^or can I believe that Rauparaha was ever guilty of the 

 treacherous conduct towards his own people with which he is charged by Mr. 

 Wakefield. Their love and respect for him were very great, and the influence 

 he acquired with such men as Te Heuheu and Whatanui indicates that he 

 possessed the highest qualities as a chief. T had not intended to carry my 

 story beyond the arrival of the ''Tory," but I think it as well to give 

 Rauparaha's own view of the disastrous affair at the Wairau in 1843, and of 

 its results as related to me by his son. 



" I will now," he says, " leave my account of the battles of Te Rauparaha 

 at this end of the island, and speak of the folly of the Europeans and Maoris 

 at Wairau, where Wakefield met his death. The fight, and death of Wake- 

 field and the other European gentlemen in 1843, were caused by the deceit of 

 Captain Piringatapu (anglice Blenkinsopp). He deceived Rauparaha in 

 giving him a big gun for the purchase of Wairau. He wrote some documents 

 in English, which said that he had bought that land. Rauparaha did not 

 know what was in those documents, and signed his name in ignorance. 

 Captain Piringatapu told Rauparaha that w^hen he saw the captain of a man- 

 of-war he was to show him the documents that he might know that they were 

 chiefs. Rauparaha thought that it was all correct. When Rauparaha 



