feeling was thus at the outset engendered between the two races, and boat-loads of the early immigrants were surprised and massacred as they stepped on the beach. Reprisals ensued, and, for a series of years, the northern island was the scene of some of the most sanguinary native wars that stain the annals of colonisation. These were in a great measure provoked by the stupidity and arbitrary conduct of the colonial authorities. On one occasion 200 Maories were seized as suspected persons, and without trial, evidence, or any form of law, banished to a penal settlement on a neighbouring small group, called the Chatham islands. Amongst them was Te Kooti, a young, brave, and daring man, whose name was in after-years a name of terror to the New Zealand settlers.[1] Lieutenant Gudgeon, the historian of the New Zealand wars, candidly declares it as his conviction" that all the after atrocities committed by Te Kooti or by his orders were dictated by a spirit of revenge and retribution against those who had caused his deportation." Te Kooti, by his innate military genius and natural force of character, soon became the leader of the Maori exiles. By a well-planned and skilfully-executed scheme, a Government vessel that had brought provisions for the prisoners, was captured by Te Kooti and his confederates on the morning of July 4th, 1868. He immediately released his fellow-prisoners and placed them on board the vessel. The white men that constituted the crew, were allowed by Te Kooti to take their choice between two alternatives—instant death or the navigation of the vessel to Poverty Bay, the place from
- ↑ "Te Kooti was not committed for trial, but, having been thus arrested without warrant, was shipped off to the Chatham Islands by Mr. Stafford's Government, without writ or authority of any kind, and the wrong done to him was to be written a few years later in terrible characters of blood."—"History of New Zealand," by G. W. Rusden, vol. ii. page 321.
