The Parihaka Woman

by Witi Ihimaera

  ‘I have a half-brother, Taikomako, living on a block of land there,’ Te Whiti said. ‘He will take us in.’

  Erenora never knew how they managed to get away. All she recalled was the pell-mell flight, the sound of rifle fire, and her shame about one incident: she was with other children, herding the bullocks, when two beasts took flight and there was no time to go back for them. The villagers had to keep on going because if they were caught, what would Major-General Chute do to them? Finally evading the troops, they burst out of the bush. Lungs burning, they flung themselves down to rest in an area sheltered by small hillocks. It was there that Te Whiti and Tohu walked among the people. They could see how tired and distressed everyone was.

  Huhana asked them, ‘Will there ever be an end to our running?’

  Te Whiti hesitated … and then he looked up at Mount Taranaki, arrowing into the sky, and posed the question to the mountain. The mounga began to shine, and it answered him.

  The prophet raised his hand for the attention of the people. ‘Put down your weapons,’ he began. ‘From this time forward, we live without them.’

  There was a murmur of anxiety, but the mountain nodded and blessed his words.

  ‘Enough is enough,’ Te Whiti continued. ‘We will run no longer.’ He bent down and took some earth in his hands. ‘In peace shall we settle here, for good and forever, and we will call our new kainga Parihaka.’

  1 Dick Scott, Ask That Mountain: The Story of Parihaka, Heinemann/Southern Cross, 1975, p. 19.

  2 Michael King, The Penguin History of New Zealand, Penguin, 2003, p. 213. The figure of 3,700 field forces in Te Karopotinga o Taranaki also comes from King, p. 216.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Oh, Clouds Unfold

  1.

  By musket, sword and cannon, Major-General Chute cut a murderous swathe from Whanganui to the Taranaki Bight.

  Just in case he missed Maori standing in his path — whether or not they were warriors or civilians didn’t matter — he smote them down when he turned back to Whanganui. He destroyed seven pa and twenty-one kainga. He also burned crops and slaughtered livestock; if he couldn’t kill Maori, he would starve them to death. ‘There were no prisoners made in these late engagements,’ the Nelson Examiner reported, somewhat chillingly, ‘as General Chute … does not care to encumber himself with such costly luxuries.’

  Astonishingly, although the Angel of Death flew over Taranaki, Parihaka escaped in what some people called the Passover. Instead, as the trumpets and bugles of war faded, a sanctuary was born beneath unfolding clouds and, with the mountain looking on, the pilgrims built a citadel.

  2.

  ‘It was winter and bitterly cold, the wind coming off the flanks of Taranaki, when our prophets put an end to our pilgrimage. The peak was wearing a coronet of snow and the landscape all around was fringed with ice and snow drifts.

  ‘In the beginning, the only cover to be had from the driving rain was provided by the bullocks. The old people herded them to form a circle and then commanded them to lie down. Then they said to us, “Tataraki’i, huddle close to our beloved companions.” Oh, I will never forget the heat coming from those noble animals as they pillowed our heads and blew their steaming warmth over us.

  ‘When the weather was really stormy, the adults had to provide extra shelter by standing and becoming the roofs above us; they were like sentinels, and they sang to each other to keep themselves awake until the storm passed. Why did they do that? Well, as Huhana told me one morning, “Our children are our future. Without you, why keep going?”

  ‘Eventually we erected makeshift tents like the camp we had at Nga Kumikumi, but we couldn’t start raising our kainga quite yet, oh no. From my recollection it was 1867 and the spring tides, nga tai o Makiri, were especially high and strong. At those times when the moon switched from full to new, our people gathered kai moana, our staple diet. You can’t tell the spring tides, “Wait, we’re not ready!” or the fish to stop rising at the most propitious time of all for fishing! We were soon busy harvesting both shellfish and sea fish, like shark, and also trapping eels when they swirled upwards to suck at the surface of the water.

  ‘At the same time as this was happening, Te Whiti and Tohu were also concerned to get some seeds into the ground. If we missed the planting time, there would be no food in the coming year. Not until we had some cultivations under way were the two prophets satisfied. “Now we raise Parihaka,” Te Whiti said. And so we began the work of clearing the site. We were so happy to start building the kainga. Even the tataraki’i, how they chirruped!

  ‘Meanwhile, Huhana had fully taken me to her breast as my mother. She also took in two other orphans, Ripeka and Meri, as w’angai or adopted daughters. She said to Te Whiti, “If I have to take in one it might as well be three”, which was her way of saying that she had an embrace that could accommodate us all.

  ‘I can remember only hard-working but happy times through that warming weather. Ripeka and Meri and I helped the adults smooth down the earth and take the stones away so that the houses could be built. Ripeka was the pretty one, with her lovely face and shapely limbs. As for Meri, she always tried to please, and that endeared her to everyone.

  ‘Both my sisters were older than me but somehow they were followers rather than leaders. For instance, we had a small sled on which Ripeka and Meri would pile the stones, but I was the one who pulled the sled from the construction sites. Even in those days, although I was always slim, I was strong. Ripeka would follow my instructions but Meri was often disobedient. One time she thought she would give me a rest and pull the sled while I wasn’t looking, but she took it to the wrong place and unloaded it there. “I was only trying to help,” she said to me plaintively as I reloaded the sled. “Please, Meri, don’t try,” I answered.

  ‘It took us the best part of the season and then the summer to raise Parihaka. I think one of the reasons why it happened so quickly was that Te Whiti discouraged the carving of meeting houses or any such adornment on other w’are. He was more concerned with us concentrating on food-gathering and sustaining ourselves. He also wanted to discourage any competition between the various tribal peoples who came to live with us.

  ‘The days turned hot, and we sweated under the burning sun. Te Whiti ordered the men to build the houses in rows and very close together. Those men were out day and night selecting good trees to cut down for all the w’are. They sawed the trunks into slabs of wood, two-handed saws they used in those days, one man at each end. When a w’are’s roof was raised, we would cheer, sing and dance in celebration!

  ‘My sisters and I graduated to helping the women thatch the roofs with raupo, which the men brought from the bush. Huhana was always yelling to me, “Erenora, hop onto the roof.” Men mostly did the thatching but, sometimes, they were busy on other heavier work — and Huhana knew I had good balance and was not afraid of heights. The women threw the thatch up to me and I laid it in place. After that, my sisters and I helped the women as they made the tukutuku panels for the walls of the houses: I sat on one side pushing the reeds through the panels to my sisters on the other side; they would push the reeds back and, of course, Meri’s reed kept coming through at the wrong place. Why was she so hopeless?

  ‘Everybody was vigorous with the work. Later, my sisters helped to make blankets, pillows and clothing, but I had no patience with such feminine tasks and preferred to work outside with the men. Te Whiti and Tohu had marked out the surrounding country for cultivations and there were a lot of fences to construct, and small roadways and pathways between them. As we worked, we sang to each other and praised God for bringing us here. There could have been no better place really. The Waitotoroa Stream was ideal as a water supply, and it would have been almost impossible to sustain ourselves without it.’

  ‘It must have been around this time, as autumn descended and the leaves began to fall, that Te Whiti had word from the South Island that the Reverend Johann Riemenschneider had died. Apparently, after he and his wife had
left Warea in 1860, Rimene had spent two years in Nelson. Then he accepted an invitation from a society in Dunedin to do mission work among the Maori people in the city. He lived four years there, and his body was committed to the earth in Port Chalmers.

  ‘Te Whiti mourned the German missionary, telling us, “Rimene did not achieve great victories but he sowed the seed of God so that the harvest was sure. What more can you ask from a servant of Christ?”

  ‘We all said a prayer for him. Now he was forever with the Lord. And I found my own karakia for him from the German phrasebook:

  ‘“Selig sind die Toten. Blessed are the dead.”’

  3.

  The next few years flew by. Sometimes when Erenora looked back on them, it was as if the raising of Parihaka, so that it would stand triumphant in the sun, had taken place on one long day. Of course it hadn’t, but certainly Parihaka grew as Maori fled from the British soldiers in Taranaki.

  ‘From 200 people we increased to 500. Word got around, you see, that Te Whiti and Tohu were building a city, a kainga like the Biblical city of Jerusalem. We therefore mushroomed to over 1,000 as refugees poured in, driven by the encirclement of Taranaki. They were all hungry and thirsty, and some were grievously wounded. Once they had been fed and recovered, however, they had to pitch in straight away — no mucking around and having a rest! The consequence was that we were building all the time, and Parihaka was quickly forced to become a large kainga.

  ‘Still the refugees sought us out. Sometimes we would see a cloud of dust and know they were painfully making their way to salvation. Or the rain would part like a curtain and there they were, ghost-thin, crying out to us from the space between. At night, we lit a bonfire so that the flames would show those who were searching for us. During the day, a pillar of smoke, like the sword of an angel, revealed the gateway to Eden:

  ‘“Here be Parihaka.”

  ‘And when the pilgrims arrived, nobody was turned away.’

  ‘Depending on our skills, Te Whiti organised the iwi into working groups to ensure a continuous food supply. Farmers tilled the cultivations mainly of potato, pumpkin, maize and taro to the north and between us and the sea. The sea, of course, remained the source of our primary sustenance; whenever nga tai o Makiri came, down we would go to harvest the kai moana as it rose to the surface of the sea. Some men even ventured in waka out to the deep water to fish, but usually we kept close to shore. You could drown so easily in those dangerous seas; the weather could change even as you were watching it.

  ‘At the beginning Te Whiti didn’t like us to eat meat but, rather, to use our oxen and cattle as our beasts of burden. He wanted us to be self-sufficient but later we began to run sheep, pigs and poultry.’

  ‘One day the villagers were all busy storing kumara and kamokamo carefully away for the winter. Huhana happened to notice that some tataraki’i, bored with helping us, were baiting each other. She gave me a shrewd look and said, “Erenora, the children have stopped chirruping and are pulling each other’s wings off. Go and teach them something.”

  ‘I was astonished! After all, I must have been only eleven. Te Whiti was passing by and he said, “Yes, you go, Erenora. Plenty of others can store food but not many have your brains.” My sisters were affronted by Huhana’s remark that I was “too clever” and even more by Te Whiti’s acknowledgement of it. They were practising a poi dance, their poi going tap tap tap, tap tap tap. Ripeka sniffed and said, “You may have the brains but we have the beauty.” And Meri said, “I can do anything that Erenora can do,” which was true, but she always did it wrong.

  ‘Now, about Te Whiti, don’t forget that he himself was not without Pakeha education and knew the value of such learning. He was a scholar, had been a church acolyte at Waikanae and Warea; later he became a teacher, and he even managed the flour mill. Both he and Tohu were good organisers too. As Parihaka grew even larger, they were the ones who promulgated the regulations every person had to comply with; we all knew our civic duties. As well, they organised the daily and weekly timetables by which we conducted our work.’

  ‘Parihaka continued to grow and I grew up with it, leaving childhood behind. Apart from farm, forest and fishing teams we also had village officials, kitchen workers and maintenance staff. Teams regularly swept the pathways, collected the rubbish every day, kept the drains clear and cleaned the latrines. We still had scouts patrolling our perimeters but, now, we also had our own police! They were on duty day and night ensuring law and order. You don’t think that Parihaka became a great citadel by accident, do you?

  ‘I was so proud of Huhana. She was appointed the kai karanga, the strong-voiced woman, who would call us all awake before first light. She would call again at the end of the day to finish our labours.

  ‘Meanwhile, the refugees always brought news of what was happening in the rest of Taranaki. One of them sought me out.

  ‘“Are you Erenora? I have a message for you from Horitana.”

  ‘My heart skipped a beat. “How is he?”

  ‘“He is alive and still fighting,” was the answer.

  ‘“Where is he?” I asked.

  ‘“He is now defending the land with Titokowaru’s guerrilla army.”’

  4.

  Ah, Titokowaru.

  All you have to do is mention the name and Maori throughout Aotearoa will recognise it as belonging to one of the greatest warrior prophets our world has ever known. He was perhaps seven or eight years older than Te Whiti and, like him, as a young man had become a Christian of the Methodist persuasion. The four prophets — Te Whiti, Tohu, Titokowaru and Te Ua Haumene — created an astounding Old Testament framework for Maori in Taranaki.

  Titokowaru’s warrior ways began when, along with everyone else, he took up the fight against the Pakeha’s continuing predations upon our land. Under military provocation, he led a raiding party near New Plymouth in protest. From that time onward, he became a dreaded presence, waging an increasing number of attacks against the Pakeha in the lands south-west of Parihaka.

  You can’t pinpoint Titokowaru. He was both civilised and savage, peacemaker and rebel. He bestrode both the spiritual and temporal worlds. He was a man about whom Maori wove legends, but he was not invincible. At his army’s assault on Sentry Hill in April 1864, a Pakeha bullet took the sight from the old leader’s right eye. It was Horitana who, along with Titokowaru’s lieutenants, treated the wound. From that moment, the young man became like a favoured son to the great chief.

  While Te Whiti was raising Parihaka, Titokowaru was rebuilding Te Ngutu-o-te-manu, just north of the Waingongoro River. Sixty houses were centred on an imposing marae in front of the awe-inspiring meeting house called Wharekura. Like Te Whiti, Titokowaru wanted to live in peace. The trouble was that his lands, too, continued to be encroached upon by Pakeha and, in 1868, his defining moment arrived.

  And all his previous military actions paled against what was to come: the campaign known in history as Titokowaru’s War.

  For two years, Pakeha New Zealand trembled before Titokowaru’s military genius and brilliance. The narrative of his army’s astonishing field tactics, fought with a blend of intelligence and savagery, makes the hair stand on end; and Horitana fought with him in five do-or-die campaigns.

  Historian James Belich describes the encounters in this way:

  At the outset, the odds against Titokowaru were immense, twelve to one in fighting men, and the chances of victory minuscule. Yet Titokowaru and his people destroyed one colonist army (at Te Ngutu-o-te-manu on 7 September 1868); comprehensively defeated another (at Moturoa on 7 November 1868); and scored several lesser victories (including Turuturumokai on 12 June 1868, and Te Karaka and Otautu on 3 February and 13 March 1869). Their least successful tactical performance was a drawn out battle at Te Ngutu-ote-manu on 21 August 1868, and it could be argued that even this was a strategic success.3

  Belich goes on to point out that at Turuturumokai, on 7 September 1868, Titokowaru deployed his fearless lieutenants against th
e best that the Pakeha military could offer; it was at this same battle that the great Prussian general, Gustavus von Tempsky, fell.

  What a life von Tempsky had lived. Adventurer, artist and newspaper correspondent, he had fought twice in Central America, mined gold in California and Australia and, in New Zealand, his name was attached to the Forest Rangers. So great was his mana that when he was killed both Pakeha and Maori honoured him.

  Titokowaru’s victories ‘brought the colony to its knees’, Belich says. However, inexplicably, the tide turned against the warrior prophet. At Tauranga-ika he built a fortress — but his own army abandoned it before any attack by colonial troops. Some people say that he fell out of favour with whatever gods supported him; as easily offended as any of the Greek deities of Olympus, they lightly tapped his knees and his stride began to falter. What was the reason? Nobody knows. But soon, with £1,000 on his head, Titokowaru was on the run. His followers melted away from him and by the time he returned to his homelands in 1871, he was a different man. He was older and less turbulent in his ways. With his own dream fading, he established a close liaison with Te Whiti and Tohu and their dreams at Parihaka.