ans after a fashion, but in some respects they were getting their
eyes opened. The missionaries had told them that the white men were
coming for their benefit; yet now they began to see that the white men
were soon to be the lords of the soil, and that the natives must sink
back into the position of servants. If a white man visited a Maori
village he was received as a man of distinction and entertained. If a
Maori chief went to a white man's town, he was allowed to wander in the
street; or if at all accosted it was with the condescension of a
superior race to a race of servants. The Maori blood was firing up. The
story of Wairau made them change their mind about the white man's
courage. The whalers had been hearts of daring; these new-comers had run
and bawled for their lives. The natives were anxious also as to the
result which would happen when all the lands near the shore should have
been occupied by white men, and they themselves hemmed up in the
interior.

A special interest was given to these feelings when in 1844 Te Whero
Whero gave a great feast, only two miles out of Auckland, partly as a
welcome to Governor Fitzroy, and partly as a demonstration in regard to
the land question. He displayed a lavish bounty; 11,000 baskets of
potatoes and 9,000 sharks, with great stores of other provisions, were
distributed. But when the settlers saw a war dance of 1,600 men, all
well armed with muskets, and drilled with wonderful precision, they felt
that their lives were at the mercy of the native tribes. Not one-fourth
of that number of armed men with any training for battle could have been
sent forth from the settlement for its own defence. This gave a
significance to the Wairau massacre that created quite a panic. Fresh
settlers ceased to come; many that were there already now left. Those
who had taken up farms far out in the country abandoned them and
withdrew to the towns.

#4. Honi Heke.#--And yet the great majority of the Maoris seem to have had
no unfriendly purpose. When Governor Fitzroy went down to see Rauparaha
he had no more than twelve white men with him, when he entered an
assemblage of 500 Maoris. He said he had come to inquire about the sad
quarrel at Wairau, and Rauparaha told him his story while others
supported it by their evidence. Fitzroy stated that the Maoris had been
very wrong to kill those who had surrendered, but as the white men had
fired first he would take no vengeance for their death. Indeed,