Keeper of the Peace

At Hastings some years ago I met Major Gascoigne and Mr. Hyslop, an old soldier. The former told me that but for the stand put up by the loyal chiefs the white settlers would have been driven into the sea. The stand of the loyal chiefs gave the settlers breathing space, time to organise their meagre forces and time for Imperial soldiers to arrive in New Zealand. Several of those chiefs lie in unmarked graves—forgotten. Mr. Hyslop told me that in an address he gave to the Philosophical Institute at Napier he stressed the services of Mokena Kohere, both in resisting the Hauhau movement on the East Coast and in keeping the peace. Mokena Kohere also paid a visit to the Bay of Plenty, where he told the tribes to study their own welfare by keeping the peace. In another chapter is related his visit to Whakatane to set free chiefs who had been prisoners of war.