did Hongi conquer till the whole North Island owned his
ascendancy. But in 1827 his career came to an end, for having quarrelled
with his former friends, the tribe of which Tarra was chief, he killed
them all but twenty, but in the fight was himself shot through the
lungs; for that tribe had now many muskets also, and a ball fired when
the massacre was nearly over passed through Hongi's chest, leaving a
hole which, though temporarily healed, caused his death a few months
later. Pomare succeeded him as chief of the Ngapuhi, and made that tribe
still the terror of the island. At one pah Pomare killed 400 men; and he
had his own way for a time in all his fights. But the other tribes now
began to see that they could not possibly save themselves except by
getting muskets also, and as they offered ten times their value for them
in pork and flax and other produce, English vessels brought them over in
plenty. The remnant of the Waikato tribe having become well armed and
well exercised in shooting under Te Whero Whero, they laid an ambush for
Pomare and killed him with almost the whole of the 500 men who were with
him. The other tribes joined Te Whero Whero, and in successive battles
ruined the Ngapuhi. Te Whero Whero held the leadership for a time,
during which he almost exterminated the Taranaki tribe. He was
practically lord of all the North Island till he met his match in
Rauparaha, the most determined and wily of all the Maori leaders. He was
the chief of a tribe living in the south of the North Island, and he
gathered a wild fighting band out of the ruined tribes of his own and
the surrounding districts. Many battles were fought between him and Te
Whero Whero, in which sometimes as many as a thousand muskets were in
use on each side. Rauparaha was at length overcome, and with difficulty
escaped across the strait to the South Island, while Te Whero Whero
massacred and enslaved all over the North Island, cooking as many as 200
bodies after a single fight. And yet the evil was in a way its own cure,
for, through strenuous endeavours, by this time every tribe had a
certain proportion of its men well armed with muskets; and thus no
single tribe ever afterwards got the same cruel ascendancy that was
obtained first by the Ngapuhi and then by the Waikato tribe. But fights
and ambushes, slaughters, the eating of prisoners and all the horrid
scenes of Maori war went on from week to week all over the North
Island.

CHAPTER XXIV