Other districts were less fortunate.  By the early part of 1865 the Hau-Hau craze was at work on the east as well as the west coast.  It was in the country round the Wanganui River to the west, and in the part of the east coast, between Tauranga on the Bay of Plenty and Hawkes Bay, that the new mischief gave the most trouble.  The task of coping with it devolved on the New Zealand Militia, and the warriors of certain friendly tribes, headed by the chiefs called by the Europeans Ropata and Kemp.  In this loose and desultory but exceedingly arduous warfare, the irregulars and friendlies undoubtedly proved far more efficient than the regular troops had usually been permitted to be.  They did not think it useless to follow the enemy into the bush; far from it.  They went there to seek him out.  They could march many miles in a day, and were not fastidious as to commissariat.  More than once they gained food and quarters for the night by taking them from their opponents.  In a multitude of skirmishes in 1865 and 1866, they were almost uniformly victorious.  Of the laurels gained in New Zealand warfare, a large share belongs to Ropata, to Kemp, and to Militia officers like Tuke, McDonnell and Fraser.  Later in the war, when energetic officers tried to get equally good results out of inexperienced volunteers, and when, too—­in some cases—­militia discipline had slackened, the consequences were by no means so satisfactory.  It did not follow that brave men ready to plunge into the bush were good irregulars merely because they were not regulars.  Nor were all friendly natives by any means as effective as the Wanganui and Ngatiporou, or all chiefs as serviceable as Ropata and Kemp.

The east coast troubles began in March, 1865, with the murder at Opotiki, on the Bay of Plenty, of Mr. Volckner, a missionary and the most kindly and inoffensive of mankind.  At the bidding of Kereopa, a Hau-Hau emissary, the missionary’s people suddenly turned on him, hung him, hacked his body to pieces, and smeared themselves with his blood.  At another spot in the same Bay a trading schooner was seized just afterwards by order of another Hau-Hau fanatic, and all on board killed save two half-caste boys.  A force of militia soon dealt out condign punishment for these misdeeds, but meanwhile Kereopa and his fellow fire-brands had passed down the coast and kindled a flame which gradually crept southward even to Hawkes Bay.  In village after village the fire blazed up, and a rising equal to that in the Waikato seemed imminent.  It was, indeed, fortunate that much the ablest warrior on that side of the island at once declared against the craze.  This was Ropata Te Wahawaha, then and afterwards the most valuable Maori ally the Government had, and one of the very few captains on either side who went through the wars without anything that could be called a defeat.  Without fear or pity, he was a warrior of the older Maori type, who with equal enjoyment could plan a campaign, join in a hand-to-hand