The Parihaka Woman

by Witi Ihimaera

  The magistrate waited for order to restore itself. ‘Would the prisoner known as Horitana step forward?’

  Erenora began to panic. She saw the magistrate exchange a glance with Piharo. ‘Because of your previous involvement in the Taranaki Wars fighting with Titokowaru,’ the magistrate said, ‘you have had your sentence reserved pending receipt of all the facts pertaining to your actions against the state.’

  Someone shouted, ‘The Maori has a price on his head, Your Honour!’

  The magistrate nodded. ‘Until all charges are brought before this court and a separate trial can be organised, you will join the others imprisoned at Mount Cook.’

  Erenora looked again in Piharo’s direction; he was smiling in triumph. The smile chilled Erenora’s heart. She rose from her seat and cried out to Horitana:

  ‘Taku tane! Horitana! Kia tupato te ’e o te tangata nei! Husband! Horitana! Beware the evil of Piharo!’

  6.

  Ah, Piharo.

  Erenora was right to be concerned. Piharo had been able to subvert the course of justice and, by brilliance and bribery, had taken his revenge against Horitana.

  Let me therefore interpolate another scene as Piharo returns from the trial to his estate. At first he is elated by his triumph, consuming with great gusto the evening meal prepared by his housekeeper. But as the night deepens, so does his excitement diminish.

  Think of him now, brooding through the evening and staring into the fire that has been lit for him in his library. He has a goblet of red wine in his hand and he holds it up to the fire’s light, twirling it by the stem. Then, in a sudden movement, he stands and flings the glass into the flames.

  ‘I thought, Maori warrior,’ he rages, ‘that putting you in prison would give me satisfaction … but it is not enough. It is not … sufficient …’

  Piharo paces back and forth and his shadow is like the dark stone that Erenora glimpsed within him, a crookbacked thing pacing with him.

  He looks around the room for support. Above the fireplace is the family coat of arms. Along one entire wall are Pakeha classics: Machiavelli, de Sade and popular novels by Poe, Dumas père and Hugo. Lining another wall are items in his developing Maori collection: carvings, weapons of war, greenstone mere and ’eitiki — and three tattooed mummified Maori heads of which Piharo is particularly proud. Trafficking in the heads is so brisk that warriors fallen in the most recent Taranaki battles against the Pakeha have been harvested for purchasers with sufficient money to acquire them; Piharo is such a buyer.

  Frustrated, Piharo goes up the stairs to his bedroom. ‘What can I do to punish you, Horitana?’ he asks himself. ‘What will be … what is the Maori word for it … fitting ootoo?’

  Throughout the night, he moans, tosses and turns; he cannot let go of the question. Then, around dawn, he takes up a hand mirror and looks at the scars on his face. And though the doctor says his appearance will improve, actually, the scarring looks rather beautiful … like the Maori facial tattoo.

  He begins to laugh and laugh. That’s it!

  Piharo rings for his foreman. ‘I require a silversmith,’ he says. ‘I wish to give him a particularly intricate and exquisite task. Bring him tomorrow.’

  7.

  Not long afterward, Erenora was able to have a few moments with Horitana before he and the other prisoners were taken away. Among them was Wiremu Kingi Te Matakatea. Too late the government realised the injustice of sentencing ‘The Clear-Eyed One’ and offered him his release; Matakea would accept it only if his men were freed also, a request the government would not entertain.

  ‘Will I ever see you again?’ Erenora asked Horitana.

  ‘I will write from Wellington,’ he answered. ‘Once I know when my court case will be held, I will tell you. Have faith, forget your fears and look to the day when we are reunited.’

  Erenora tried to smile at his gentle comforting, but tears began to stream down her face. ‘I’m sorry, husband, I’m so afraid.’ She didn’t care that Riki and Hori and other prisoners — Te Whao, Ruakere, Rangiora and Whata — were looking on.

  ‘Don’t fear,’ Horitana answered. ‘Our imprisonment isn’t a sentence of death. There is always the promise of release and of resurrection. Tell the other wives that, won’t you? We’re all orphans in a storm, but, like all things, even storms do pass.’

  The day was darkly lowering when, shackled to each other, Horitana, Paora, Riki and the other men were marched on board the prison transport. Distraught, the three sisters watched as the ship set sail and turned southward. Just as it disappeared into the stomach of the night, strange lights began to illuminate the sky, and seagulls circled and clawed away as if trying to escape. Bitter rain came rushing landward.

  ‘It’s all Horitana’s fault,’ Meri screamed. ‘If he had commanded Riki to stay home, my husband would never have been arrested.’

  Erenora embraced her sister. ‘Our husbands are brothers-in-law and loyal and loving friends,’ she answered. ‘They will protect each other.’

  ‘And who will protect us?’ Ripeka asked. Like Meri, she was looking for someone to blame for Paora’s imprisonment.

  ‘We will protect each other,’ Erenora replied.

  And still Te Whiti would not bow down.

  The next morning at Parihaka he said to the ploughmen, ‘Go, put your hands to the plough, look not back. If any come with guns and swords, be not afraid. If they smite you, smite not in return. If they rend you, be not discouraged — another will take up the good work.’

  It was from that moment that the wearing of three white feathers in the hair was widely adopted as a symbol of honour and remembrance for the men sent to prison. When some Pakeha saw the feathers, they were reminded of the three plumes of Bohemia and thought that they may have referred to the days when Riemenschneider was at Warea.

  No, the feathers had biblical and Maori inspiration: Glory to God, peace on earth and goodwill to all men. Thus, with God at their shoulders and peace and goodwill within them, the ploughmen, straight away, went back on the job.

  And from that time can be dated this fact: all men who were subsequently arrested were gaoled without trial.

  10 Rusden, History, Vol.3, p. 257.

  11 Scott, Ask That Mountain, p. 55.

  12 ‘The Historian’s View’, Taranaki Herald, 27 January 1903, cited in Rusden, History, vol. 3, p229.

  13 Cited in Rusden, ibid, p.271.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Te Paremata o te Pakeha

  1.

  Aue, I now have to go behind the scenes of Erenora’s story for a little bit.

  This is the problem with history. You think it’s one narrative but most often it’s three or four or more, all like a twisted rope, tangled and knotted. But Maori have always known this about history anyway. Look at the way we korero in the meeting house. The talk goes all over the place — backwards, forwards, sideways and circling on itself.

  In particular, I have to take you away from Taranaki to Wellington and to the New Zealand Parliament, Pharaoh’s Te Paremata o te Pakeha.

  Why? From the time the Pakeha gained the upper hand in Aotearoa, the fate of all Maori throughout history has been decided there in that Valley of the Kings, presided over by Pharaoh’s palace, temples, library, stelae and other memorials and, crouching nearby, his judicial sphinx: the High Court. It was therefore at Te Paremata o te Pakeha, in 1880, that the fate of the Parihaka ploughmen was also decided.

  Now, what’s interesting is that Parliament had actually tried to create a voice for Maori by establishing four Maori seats in 1867, albeit, initially, as an experiment for one term only. The seats were the government’s way of fulfilling the third clause of the Treaty of Waitangi — that is, giving Maori the rights of British subjects. During the 1870s and 1880s the Maori parliamentarians included Wiremu Parata, Ihaia Tainui, Hori Kerei Taiaroa, Henare Tomoana, Hone Mohi Tawhai and Wiremu Maipapa Te Wheoro, the Member for Western Maori. Laudable as that was, how much real power did the Maori parliamentar
ians have? Well, Parliament comprised 88 seats. It refused to give Maori a just proportion of seats based on the value of their communal property rights because then Maori would have dominated.

  No wonder Parliament was able to push through legislation about Maori virtually unopposed.

  There were three main legal positions Parliament had to address about Parihaka.

  First, what was the status of Taranaki land: who owned what and where it was confiscated, what had been the instruments enforcing the confiscations? Second, given these questions, was the government legally entitled to send in surveyors? Third, if it wasn’t, shouldn’t the ploughmen sent to prison be released?

  Rest assured there’s ample evidence that the Maori members of Parliament actively tried to resolve the Parihaka problem. They are often maligned today as Uncle Toms or as ineffective but, supported by Maori chiefs throughout Aotearoa, they continued to call for the surveys to be halted. And of course they were not lacking some support from their parliamentary colleagues: some members, acting on their consciences, also protested the process by which the ploughmen had been sentenced.

  Then the Maori members and chiefs threatened to test the government’s right to confiscate by taking it to Pharaoh’s own Supreme Court and, if necessary, all the way to Queen Victoria in London.

  Parliament quickly moved to stop that kind of legal action. Sir John Hall had taken over from Sir George Grey as eleventh premier of New Zealand on 8 October 1879. He had in his Cabinet Harry Atkinson, as an all-powerful Minister of Finance, and John Bryce — two men who, as has already been demonstrated, lost no sleep over Maori. It was Bryce who now, as Minister of Native Affairs, resolved the third big legal position by introducing the infamous Maori Prisoners’ Trial Act. Not only could prisoners be sent to prison without trial, they could have their trials postponed indefinitely.

  Although objections increased in Parliament about denial of justice, conflict with the principles of Magna Carta and suspension of habeas corpus, nothing could overturn the government’s view that such a bill was required to deal with the threat of Te Whiti and Tohu. And after all, were Maori really British subjects?

  Then, to deal with the first question, Bryce also introduced the Confiscated Lands Inquiry, which would investigate Maori grievances over confiscated Taranaki land. There was an added sting, however — to keep the Maori prisoners under lock and key, the Act declared that it was ‘indispensable for the peace and safety of the colony that the ordinary course of law should be suspended, and [the trials] should take place under special legislation’.

  Pharaoh was harsh, keeping the Children of Israel enslaved unto him forever.

  2.

  Even so, Horitana, when he heard the news in his Wellington prison cell, was able to send a message to Erenora.

  ‘My darling,’ he wrote, ‘although the prisoners’ chances of any early justice are bad, the overriding news about the Confiscated Lands Inquiry is good. I urge you to attend the first meeting of the commissioners in Hawera on 11 February. Let me know the outcome of their findings. The fate of the land is more important than my own. I am in God’s hands.’

  Horitana mistakenly assumed that the inquiry would happen quickly. He also expected it to be fair — but let’s face it, how could Maori obtain such a hearing? Wouldn’t you expect the commission, for instance, to go to Parihaka to talk to Te Whiti and Tohu? They were invited to do so but did they take up the offer? No.

  I like the way Rachel Buchanan describes the nature of the hearings:

  The commission was working in one kind of reality, Parihaka in another. In one of its three reports, the commission said: ‘As on the Plains, even more so certainly at the doors of Parihaka, the establishment of English homesteads and the fencing and cultivation of the land, will be a guarantee of peace.’14

  Dream on, commissioners!

  As Horitana had requested, Erenora attended the first hearing. She realised with dismay that the sun would rise and set many times before any outcome would be known.

  Even worse, Bryce was apparently not planning to wait for the commission to complete its hearings. Confident of sanction, the Armed Constabulary began crossing the Waingongoro River to ensure that the surveying and the associated business of roadmaking would proceed. More ominously, the constabulary were actively rebuilding the old beach road, digging trenches and adding blockhouses and a watchtower. By April 1880, as Buchanan describes it, 600 armed police and labourers were on the job. They had a camp and stockade south of the village and another to the north. The intention, so Bryce said, was to link Hawera to New Plymouth, but why then the fortifications?

  Parihaka was in its path.

  3.

  It was during this same time, while incarcerated at Mount Cook, that Horitana was woken in the middle of the night by sounds of consternation and alarm.

  ‘What is happening?’ he shouted.

  He saw guards turning up the gaslights and, carrying lanterns, moving swiftly from cell to cell, rousing the prisoners and shackling them together. ‘We’re to be shipped to the South Island,’ Paora cried to him, ‘either to Hokitika, Dunedin or Christchurch.’

  Suddenly, Horitana’s own cell door was opened and a visitor was admitted, a distinguished fair-haired gentleman. Horitana leapt at Piharo but his chains held him back. ‘You have finally come to kill me?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh no,’ Piharo said, ‘that would be altogether too easy a punishment. Here,’ he continued, ‘I have brought you a gift.’

  In his hands he held an object that Horitana at first could not recognise: it possessed a terrible beauty. Then he realised that it was a mokomokai, a tattooed head, plated with silver. It flashed in the light and Horitana put his hands to his eyes to prevent being blinded.

  The silversmith who had fashioned the mokomokai must have been a craftsman of the highest order. He had duplicated the mummified face beneath, finely layering it and etching it with the filigree of the original moko. There were no eye apertures and only an open gash for the mouth.

  There was a sinister refinement. The skull of the mokomokai had been entirely hollowed and scraped out. It had been hinged so that it could be worn. Once the wearer’s face was enclosed, it would be padlocked tight.

  ‘You cannot do this inhuman thing,’ Horitana said.

  Piharo’s revenge had twisted into something beyond human pity. He called five guards into the cell to restrain Horitana.

  ‘No. No,’ Horitana cried as the guards pinned him down.

  And Piharo wrapped his whip around Horitana’s neck and forced him so close they could have kissed. ‘I vowed you would pay for what you did to me,’ he said. ‘You not only touched me, you marked me forever.’ His words hissed out. ‘You inflicted me against my will with your moko. Now, against yours, wear mine.’

  The mokomokai was surprisingly heavy. The silversmith had been required to reinforce the skull with an iron plate. As it was fitted onto his face Horitana groaned at the weight; the bottom edge of the mokomokai cut into his shoulders so that they bled.

  And when it was padlocked into place, immediately the temperature inside the mokomokai increased so that Horitana’s face streamed with sweat. How will I be able to live in this eternal darkness? As fear overtook him, his heart accelerated, racing out of control. He began to gasp for air, pressing his lips against the mouth aperture.

  Lesser men would have died from terror within an hour or two. Somehow, Horitana managed to calm himself. ‘Oh, valiant heart,’ he cried, ‘practise the art of forbearance.’

  ‘Still alive, are we?’ Piharo was disappointed at first, hoping for a quick harvest. Then he smiled with joy. ‘All right, live as long as you wish. I will have you imprisoned until you die and then you will be mine. You will never see your wife again.’

  From that moment, Horitana disappeared off the face of the earth.

  And now the question:

  Why, in all the prison records of the time, was there no mention of the mokomokai? You’d think, if it we
re true, that we would all have heard of a dead man’s face being used to cover that of a living man? Perhaps Piharo’s silver didn’t just cover the mokomokai but also the palms of a few warders to ensure their tongues remained silent.

  Another question:

  Where did the inspiration come from? Well, I have earlier mentioned some of the authors in Piharo’s library. One of those was Alexandre Dumas père, and it is most likely from L’Homme au Masque de Fer (begun in 1847), the final part of his Three Musketeers trilogy, that Piharo got the idea — or stole it. Other romans of the time relating to torture and cruel imprisonment include Edgar Allan Poe’s The Premature Burial and Dumas père’s Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (both published in 1844) and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862).

  Whatever the influence, the rumour grew among Maori prisoners of the man who lived within the face of another, dead warrior. Just to look upon that face, which sometimes flashed blindingly in the light, was to bring you to your knees in awe at the abhorrent nature of the punishment — and at the prisoner’s great agony.

  They called him the man with the face of silver.

  Te tangata mokomokai.

  14 Buchanan, Parihaka Album, p. 44. The quotation cites an opinion in the third and final report of the commission, 4 August 1880.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Saga of the Fences