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026
Old New Zealand
by A Pakeha Maori (1876)
This is the first of two tales (026 and 027) reflecting imperialist clashes of the nineteenth century; those like this one describing local adversaries in conflict, and the other, one of the last colonialist imperialist encounters during the Boer War.
Both are tales of brutal warfare and plunder, with the savagery on both sides and amongst local rivals for power. Whether the battlefield was New Zealand or South Africa, that violence is what it most memorable about each. Neither is for the faint-hearted.
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So the guns fired away, and after a few days the fence was completely down in many places, for the shot came like a shower of hail; but not many were killed in the pa, for they had plenty of houses under ground which the shot could not reach; but they were out of all patience, by reason of the pot guns (mortars).
These guns had shot which were hollow exactly like a calabash, and they were full of gunpowder, and they came tumbling into the pa, one after another, and they would hardly be on the ground before they would burst with a great noise; and no sooner would one burst than another would burst; and so they came one after another so fast that the people in the pa could get no rest, and were getting quite deaf.
These guns, however, never killed any one. They are a very vexatious invention for making people deaf, and preventing them from getting any sleep. One good thing about them is, that, whenever one of the shots does not burst, a considerable number of charges of powder for a musket can be got out of it; and whenever one dropped close to any of the men in the pa, he would pull out the wicki (fuse), and then get out the powder. A good deal of powder was procured in this way.
The pot guns are to make people deaf, and keep them from sleeping; the rockets are to kill people and burn their houses. A rocket knocked off the head of a woman in the pa, but did not hurt a child she had on her back at the time. Another took off the head of a young man of the Kapotai; another took out the stomach of a slave called Hi; he belonged to the Wharepapa chief of the Ihutai.
This slave lived till night, crying for some one to shoot him, and then died. One man was killed by a cannon ball which came through the fence and knocked his leg off as easily as if it had been a boiled potato. The man was a warrior of the Ngati Kahununu, from the south; when he saw his leg was off above the knee, he cried out, "Look here, the iron has run away with my leg; what playful creatures these cannon balls are!" When he said this, he fell back and died, smiling, as brave warriors do.
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