CHAPTER V
TE UA, PRIEST AND PROPHET
Te Ua and his gods—The Pai mariré faith—"Charming" the British bullets—Bent's interview with the prophet—His life tapu'd—Preparing for battle—Life in the forest pa.
About this time Kimble Bent became acquainted with a man whose name has passed into New Zealand history. This was Te Ua Haumene, the founder and high-priest and prophet of the Hauhau religion, or, more correctly speaking, fanaticism. Te Ua came riding into the Otapawa village one day with a bodyguard of armed men. Bent describes him as a stoutly built man of between forty and fifty, attired in European clothing, and carrying a carved taiaha—a chief's halbert or broadsword of hardwood, flattened at one end in a blunt blade, and sharpened at the other into a tongue-shaped point, and decorated with tufts of red kaka feathers; in a plaited flax belt round his waist was thrust a green-stone mere.
Te Ua was the man who taught the Taranaki rebels the karakia, or incantations—some of them a curious medley of Maori and English—which they
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