Sleeps Standing: A Story of the Battle of Orakau

by Ihimaera, Witi

  ‘Someone will have to go as a guard with you to the stream,’ Te Paerata, the wizened veteran of earlier battles, said to Moetū.

  ‘I will not take a man from his post,’ Moetū replied. He slipped down the side of the pā and crept through the shadows of the trees to the stream. Three Pākehā riflemen were on patrol there, laughing at some joke. Moetū picked up a clod and threw it downstream. The soldiers, hearing the splash, went to investigate. ‘Who goes there?’ they called. ‘Show yourself or be shot.’

  Moetū began to fill the calabashes.

  There was a rustling sound, and someone put a hand over his mouth to prevent him from crying out. ‘You are foolish to come here by yourself,’ Kararaina said. She had brought more calabashes with her.

  ‘Don’t you tell me who’s foolish and who isn’t,’ Moetū hissed. ‘Get back to the pā.’

  Her eyes gleamed in the night. ‘I’m here now,’ she said. ‘Get used to it.’

  Wordlessly, they filled the calabashes, and then, with Kararaina at the rear, rifle at the ready, they crept back to the pā.

  ‘Next time you venture out,’ Kararaina said, ‘do not go alone.’

  She turned to leave, but Moetū detained her. ‘Why are you here?’ he asked.

  Kararaina looked at him, puzzled. ‘My sister Whetū and I follow our rangatira, Rewi, she said. ‘Our parents died for him when we were fighting at Meremere Pā. Whetū fires the musket, I load it.’

  She said the words simply, as if nothing else needed to be said.

  Chapter Four

  The boy with a protective heart

  1.

  Well, what do you know? Hūhana has let me tell Simon the rest of the story.

  More correctly, she has an appointment at the hairdressers and, well, Simon and I don’t want to accompany her there and wait while she talks to us from under a hairdryer. Would you? Not a good look.

  ‘See you later, Sis,’ I yell as Simon leads the way out of the house. We both need to drive home to the farm anyway, take a shower and get dressed for the pub tonight.

  As we are leaving, Wally comes back in.

  ‘The television is all yours,’ I tell him.

  Boy oh boy, is he glad to get back to the footy.

  It’s not a long drive from Gisborne to the family land. No sooner has the ute pulled up in the driveway of the homestead than Amber comes onto the verandah.

  ‘Are you sure she’s not having twins?’ I ask Simon. She is so big with the baby that she has to lean backwards to counterbalance herself, otherwise she would topple over.

  ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you,’ she says to Simon. ‘How do you expect me to get the suitcases down from the top of the wardrobe when I am like this.’

  She comes down the steps. I try to sneak past and let Simon deal with her.

  ‘Don’t think I’m letting you off the bloody hook, Papa Rua,’ she continues. ‘Simon was supposed to be home ages ago to help me with the packing. And what happens? You boys go fishing.’

  What with her being on the war path, I have to postpone the story of Moetū until a couple of hours later. Simon puts their belongings into the suitcases, massages Amber’s swollen legs, listens patiently to her complaints, gives her some loving, insists that she is still as beautiful to him as she was before she became pregnant, and then persuades her to take a nap before we go out. She is happily snoring when he joins me outside in my man cave where I am tinkering with my pride and joy: a vintage 1960s Chevrolet Impala from the days when I was young and sexy and looked like Elvis Presley.

  ‘Peace in the valley,’ Simon grins. ‘Can you continue Moetū’s story now?’

  First of all, I have to remind Simon of something important. ‘Ngāti Maniapoto have the primary right to tell the story of Ōrākau. Others think they can tell it; historians trample all over their right, and some of the many accounts are despicable to the memory of the dead. Our family story intersects with Ngāti Maniapoto’s history, but is only enhanced by it. Kua pai?’

  ‘Okay,’ he answers.

  ‘Second, some people criticise the Māori warriors at Ōrākau for having their women and children with them; they argue that surely that was putting them at risk. But remember, Simon, the families were led by rangatira — my dad always called them royal families, I can still hear him as plain as day, telling me and Hūhana, “They were royalty, do you hear?” He didn’t care what other people thought. “They travelled together, a sovereign with his court, wife or hoa rangatira and children.” Dad told us that, if there was a battle, the rangatira families would always be in it, leading from the front. “You never saw them sitting on their horses watching from a nearby hillside,” he said.’

  ‘No wonder their warriors were so loyal to them,’ Simon nods.

  ‘Third, the Māori families throughout Aotearoa, rangatira or not, were all at risk whether they were inside or outside the pā. The council of chiefs already had the example of what had occurred at Rangiaowhia only a month beforehand. Both Pākehā and Māori had agreed that pā was a place of sanctuary for women and children, but that didn’t stop the soldiers from making a dawn raid, burning homes to the ground and shooting a dozen or so of its inhabitants and imprisoning many others. At a recent commemoration, Tom Roa, an elder of Ngāti Apakura, said, “I pāhuatia ō mātou tūpuna i Rangiaowhia; our ancestors were killed unguarded and defenceless.” Can you blame the chiefs who were at Ōrākau that they took their women and children with them? They decided it was better for them to die defended than defenceless. Tom’s tupuna, Paiaka Te Whakatapu, was at Ōrākau.’

  2.

  ‘Came the morning of the second day,’ I continue the story, ‘and just before dawn Moetū was woken up from his guard duty at the kōhanga where the children were sleeping.

  ‘So, it is true then,’ a voice said, ‘you do sleep standing.’

  Whetū, Kararaina’s sister, stood before Moetū, a smile of amusement playing over her face. Kararaina had joined her and they were both dressed in clothing that would blend in with the bush. They looked like bandoleros, carrying their two muskets and holding three hāmanu each for their cross-shoulder cartridge belts.

  ‘I just want to tell you’, Whetū said, ‘that my sister has no time for boyfriends.’

  ‘I hardly know Kararaina,’ Moetū blurted out.

  ‘Good,’ Whetū said. ‘Keep it that way.’ She turned on her heel, and Kararaina, with a shrug of her shoulders, followed.

  Moetū tracked after them. Outside he saw that a fog had enveloped the pā, so thick that the soldiers were hidden in the swirling mist.

  He followed the two sisters as they ran along the rifle pits that dotted the inner ditch. Whetū darted into one of the underground rua, where six armourers were making cartridges. When she gave the men the three hāmanu, they filled only two, counting into them a mixture of real shells and wooden bullets.

  ‘Is this all you’re giving me?’ Whetū asked as the armourers doled out a small measure of gunpowder.

  ‘Don’t waste a shot. And be sure to get back.’

  Whetū and Kararaina were adjusting their belts when Moetū saw Te Haa and the Rongowhakaata warriors surveying the earthworks.

  ‘Looks like the pā survived the bombardment during the night,’ Te Haa said.

  The earthworks were packed with fern, which had enabled the redoubt to recoil and spring back into shape. Te Haa peered into the mist and saw soldiers emerging. ‘What have I brought you to, boy?’

  A sudden wind dispersed the fog enough for Moetū to see that, during the night, Carey had received reinforcements.

  Whetū and Kararaina joined them. They noticed a huge concentration of military personnel at one position. ‘What’s happening over there?’ Kararaina asked.

  ‘The bulldog is digging its own trench, which he calls a sap, though it’s no different from our awarua,’ Te Haa explained.

  I check Simon is still paying attention. I don’t want to bombard him with numbers, but the record says that the
total number of imperial troops at Ōrākau had risen, that first evening, to 1700 with the arrival of 200 more of the 18th Regiment from Te Awamutu. Even still, Carey had decided that the Māori fire was too dangerous for his men to continue to assault the redoubt without cover. He ordered a flying sap to be constructed, ten to twelve feet broad. Engineers had begun work on it during the night when there was no immediate danger of fire. Open to the west, the sap zigged in a northerly direction and zagged easterly. It had many turns and angles and, every few yards, gabions were fixed into the ground above, providing protection when the soldiers peered out from the trench to fire their rifles.

  ‘The bulldog must be stopped,’ Whetū said. ‘Come, sister.’

  She vaulted over the parapet, and Kararaina followed her into the outer ditch. They made rendezvous with other marksmen and, on the run, slithered through the palisade and headed for the trees. A few minutes later, they were climbing up into the foliage.

  Moetū saw Whetū sight on the engineers building the approaching sap; there was a flash from the muzzle as she fired.

  ‘Bullet or peach stone, I wonder?’ he asked Te Haa as he watched Kararaina reload for her sister.

  ‘Anything,’ Te Haa answered, ‘as long as it slows down the digging. The sooner the sap reaches the pā, the quicker the soldiers’ assault will come. They will pour down the trench and into Ōrākau and nothing will stop them breaching the palisades.’

  Suddenly, someone from the pā shouted, ‘Look! More reinforcements have come from our own people.’

  A war party, having travelled a long way from Taranaki, had appeared on the east side of the pā and was endeavouring to reach the rangatira families within. Hope rose among the defenders; but von Tempsky and his Forest Rangers wheeled to confront the latecomers. A fierce skirmish ensued between horsemen and warriors, sabres and taiaha clashing in the sun.

  ‘Our allies cannot break through,’ Rewi said. He led his fighters in the redoubt in a haka of defiance against the British troops, their feet stamping the ground, their voices breaking the air apart.

  ‘He kau rā, he kau rā, ū – ū

  He kau Kāwana koe

  Kai miti mai te raurēkau

  A he kau rā, he kau rā, ū – ū –’

  The Māori reinforcements responded with volleys of musketry, and endeavoured again to penetrate the thin red line.

  3.

  ‘Try as they might,’ I tell Simon, ‘the Taranaki warriors could not get by the Forest Rangers.’

  He watches as I take out some of the books and newspaper clippings that are in Dad’s folders. Hūhana let me bring them from her place on strict instructions that I would look after them: my life depended on it.

  I show Simon one clipping from the Taranaki Herald, 9 April 1864, just a week after Ōrākau had fallen. ‘“During the course of Friday the firing on the part of the Maoris considerably slackened,”’ I read to him, ‘“and as sensibly increased on our side, owing to the protection afforded by the gabions enabling the soldiers to fire at close range at the pa.” Of course it slackened,’ I say to Simon. ‘The warriors were rapidly running out of ammunition.’

  Simon is looking through other clippings. ‘It says here, Papa Rua, that the soldiers were supplied with Enfield rifles and that on one day of the battle some 40,000 rounds were issued as well as ample supplies of hand grenades and high-explosive shells. What did the Māori defenders have?’

  ‘Not much. Some double-barrel guns, a number of flintlock muskets and a few rifles, plus hand-held tomahawks, taiaha and mere — that was it. Lucky for us, Carey and Cameron didn’t know how desperate our situation was. They also didn’t know how many men were in the pā, which was another advantage on our side. But, on the second day of the siege, the manpower situation became grave as constant shelling and firing killed another forty or so of our number. The wounded and the women were dragooned into fighting alongside those who were left.’

  ‘Pūhia a waho, fire the outer line,’ came the constant call.

  Takurua and his rangatira wife Rāwinia sat beside each other; Takurua’s face was bandaged and he could not see, so Rāwinia was firing the rifle for him.

  Close by, Hineatūrama was trying to bandage her beloved consort Rōpata, and screaming with anger because he had been wounded; her daughter Ewa was helping her.

  ‘Pūhia a roto, fire the inner line.’

  The water had run out. The greater part of the ammunition had been fired away. One of the warriors, Tūpōtahi, made a request of Rewi and the other chiefs that they should abandon the redoubt under cover of the fog. Tūpōtahi was one of Rewi’s main lieutenants, and his advice was given as a tactician: live to fight another day.

  ‘Whakarongo mai te rūnanga, me ngā iwi,’ Rewi answered. ‘Ko te whawhai tēnei i whāia mai ai e tātou, ā i oma hoki hei aha? Listen to me, chiefs and warriors all, it was we who sought this battle, why then should we retreat? Ki tōku mahara hoki, me mate tātou mate ki te pakanga, ora tātou ora ki te marae o te pakanga. Let us abide by the fortune of war. If we are to die, let us die in battle. If we are to live, let us live defending the pā.’

  The sun leapt high, burning the fog away.

  All at once, the Tūhoe defenders made a kōkiri, a charge against the troops on the eastern flank.

  ‘Whakaekea, whakaekea,’ Rewi cried. He made attacking gestures with his taiaha and brandished his whalebone club.

  The warrior Te Huirama was shot dead in the Tūhoe rush. The wall of Pākehā soldiers, with their superior numbers, could not be breached and the attackers fell back to Ōrākau.

  I tell Simon, ‘Some people say that when they arrived at Ōrākau, the Tūhoe warriors had already decided among themselves to be a kamikaze squad; they had no intention of returning to their mountains.’

  After that, the day became scorching hot. Up to this moment in the siege the rangatira women, under the command of the woman called Ariana, had ground flour from wheat and baked bread. They had cooked potatoes on fires in the excavations to feed everyone in the pā. Now the remaining kai was rationed to the fighting men. Very soon the only food left was uncooked and, without water, the warriors were unable to swallow it. They quenched their thirst by sucking on raw potatoes and kamokamo.

  Down in the kōhanga, Moetū watched in despair as visiting parents grieved that the children did not have water. In desperation, he called Ngāpō to come with him on his second mission to get water, this time in daylight. They made it with calabashes to the stream – a few quick fills of water before they were spotted – and then they dashed back to the pā.

  ‘You have been foolish again,’ Kararaina reprimanded him. ‘You let your heart rule your head. What if you had been killed?’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘But if you had, who would have looked after the children?’

  Moetū didn’t want to admit he was wrong. ‘They needed water,’ he said stubbornly, before softening. ‘And you would have been here to care for them.’

  He turned away, not wanting Kararaina to see how much he thought of her – but couldn’t she hear his pounding heart? Soaking a cloth in the water, he squeezed droplets, one by one, into the mouths of the children.

  ‘I do it,’ Patu said, taking over. He kept a sharp eye on Moetū, who clearly had no intention of taking water himself. At the end, Patu brought the cloth to him. His stern look would brook no argument: Five drops of water for everybody, including you, you hear?

  Moetū went to report to Te Haa that the children were holding out well. He found Rewi talking to him.

  ‘Very soon, the British will see that our numbers are depleted: it won’t take them long to guess the situation. Once they have the scent of victory they won’t wait for their sap to be completed.’

  The women, mainly the newly widowed, came up with an idea.

  Moetū realised something was happening when Whetū came to the kōhanga and gestured to Kararaina to follow her. Intrigued, he left Ngāpō on guard duty and followed them. The two siste
rs darted into one of the underground rua and, when he entered, he saw it was already filled with women. Ahumai Te Paerata was there and it was clear that she had organised the women for some purpose. Fallen warriors were lying to one side, awaiting burial. Under Ahumai’s instruction, the women were reverently removing the warriors’ outer clothes and dressing themselves in their tunics and trousers.

  ‘What is happening here, e kui?’ Moetū asked Ahumai.

  ‘We are farewelling our men and asking the dead for permission to change ourselves into the men.’

  ‘In my case,’ Whetū explained, ‘I ask my cousin Te Huirama’s consent.’

  Indeed, as each woman knelt to her husband or father or brother or cousin, she gave the hongi to the tūpāpaku and breathed into herself the mana, the strength that still remained. Witnesses who saw them later said only that ‘the women dressed as men’, but it was more than that. No tribal woman would take the clothes of a dead man and put them on herself unless there was consent.

  Kua whakatāne rātou i a rātou: the widows became their husbands, the sisters became their brothers, the daughters became their fathers and cousins became their whanaunga.

  ‘One thing more,’ Whetū said. She motioned to Kararaina to become the example and to stand in front of her. She lifted Kararaina’s glorious hair off the nape of the neck. With two strokes of her knife, she cut the tresses at the place where they were usually tied back with her red ribbon. As Kararaina held the locks in her hands, tears sparkled in her eyes. Her hair had been her one great vanity. She kissed the ribbon and let it fall to the ground.

  ‘My hair will grow again,’ she said.

  She felt a tug at her skirt and saw the young child Rāwinia standing beside her. ‘Not you, Rāwinia,’ she smiled.

  For the rest of the siege, the women paraded back and forth so that the British soldiers were fooled into thinking that the pā was still at full strength.

  4.

  ‘You know,’ I say to Simon, ‘my sister was correct to point out that no matter how young Moetū was, and although he didn’t look like a warrior, he had his own skills. Looking at the pā, the reduced warrior manpower, he knew it was time for the children to join the women in supporting the able-bodied men.’ I couldn’t stop the twinkle in my eye: ‘He went straight to the top, to Te Haa, and asked to speak on behalf of the children to Rewi.’