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In 1865 militant
Hauhau began fighting to regain land stolen from them by the colonists.
Te Kooti was accused of spying for the Hauhau and exiled with Hauhau prisoners
on the Chatham Islands.
He managed
to become their leader and organized a mass escape, seizing a schooner
and sailing back to North Island to begin a series of raids, using violence
as utu for the government-sponsored theft of ancestral lands.
From 1868 to 1872 Te Kooti and his followers raided throughout the central
North Island while being pursued by their colonial and Maori enemies.
Te
Kooti's Wars.
He
then withdrew to the King Country where he spent the next decade under
the protection of the Maori King. In 1883 Te Kooti was pardoned by the
government and began to travel throughout New Zealand.
He received
the support of Scottish and Irish immigrants whose ancestral lands had
also been stolen by the British government, including the composer of
the song above, Alan Clyde, and also Thomas
Bracken, O'Connor
& Firth, and Arthur
Desmond. In 1889 Desmond wrote...
The
Pakehas came with their rum and their gold,
And soon the broad lands of our fathers were sold,
But the voice of Te Kooti said: HOLD THE LAND! HOLD!
Exult for Te Kooti, yo-hoo!
They falsely accused him, no trial had he,
They carried him off to an isle in the sea;
But his prison was broken, once more he was free-
Exult for Te Kooti, yo-hoo!
He plundered their rum stores, he ate up their priests,
He robbed the rich squatters to furnish him feasts -
What fare half so fine as their clover-fed beasts?
Exult for Te Kooti, yo-hoo!
In the wild midnight foray whose footsteps trod lighter?
In the flash of the rifle whose eyeballs gleamed brighter?
What man with our hero could clinch as a fighter?
Exult for Te Kooti, yo-hoo!
They boast that they'll slay him -they'll shoot him at sight,
But the power that nerves him's a giver of might;
At a glance from his eye they shall tremble with fright -
Exult for Te Kooti, yo-hoo!
We won't sell the land - 'tis the gift of the Lord -
Except it be bought with the blood-drinking sword;
But all men are welcome to share in its hoard -
Exult for Te Kooti, yo-hoo!
Exult for Te Kooti, Te Kooti the bold,
So sage in the council, so famous of old,
Whose war-cry's our motto -- 'tis HOLD THE LAND! HOLD!
Exult for Te Kooti, yo-hoo! |
But eighty
years were to pass before action against the theft of Maori land began
again, with Nga Tamatoa in 1970, Dame Whina Cooper's hikoi in 1975, the
Waitangi Tribunal in 1977, Bastion Point in 1978....
Since then, Maori have received millions of dollars in compensation, but
they still haven't got all their land back.
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