As an example of his energy, it is only necessary to point out that, within five years of his arrival, he founded, built, and got into first-rate working order at Auckland the College of St. John, for the education of youth of both races, and had already instituted those pilgrimages among the islands which later made his name so famous and beloved.
The rejoicings over New Zealand's improved status were barely over before there were ominous signs that contact with his white brother had not yet completely softened the Maori. Moreover, a dispute between two Maori tribes, occurring, as it did, under the very shadow of the new Executive, showed that the chiefs were not yet wholly prepared to acknowledge the sovereignty of Britain, nor to tolerate the interference of the Pakeha in their own quarrels.
Taraia, a chief of a tribe in the neighbourhood of the Thames river, having successfully assaulted the _pa_ of a Tauranga tribe, cooked and ate the bodies of two of the slain chiefs, after the old manner of the Maori at the conclusion of a successful battle.
The Tauranga folk were Christians, while Taraia and his party were not. Returning home, drunk with success--the Maori were not often drunk with the products of grape or corn--Taraia and his people desecrated the small church in their neighbourhood. The Christian congregation were gathered together for evening prayer when, to the horror of all, two hideous objects rolled into their midst, came to rest and grinned up at them. They were the heads of the chiefs who had been slain at Tauranga.
Bloodthirsty as he must appear to those long since emerged from savagery, Taraia's behaviour at the _pa_ of Erongo was neither savage nor illegal from his point of view. He merely claimed _utu_, as his race had done from time immemorial, his contention being that, whatever the law of the white man, the Maori had their own law and meant to abide by it. He actually put his views before the Governor, who was about to despatch a punitive expedition, and demanded by what right His Excellency proposed to interfere in a purely native quarrel. "Your wisest plan will be to let the matter drop," advised Taraia, "considering how very few Maori chiefs in the interior have signed the Treaty of Waitangi and admitted the sovereignty of Queen Wikitoria."