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| ISBN-13: | 9781775580829 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 196 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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'Hauhau'
The Pai Marire Search for Maori Identity
By Paul Clark
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 1975 P. J. A. ClarkAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77558-082-9
CHAPTER 1
The Years of The Prophet
In 1858 a census of population in New Zealand recorded that for the first time the European settler community outnumbered the indigenous Maori population. The census confirmed that New Zealand was to become increasingly dominated by the Pakeha colonists. But the place of Maoris in the new nation was a question raised not only by the statistician's tables but also by growing tension between the two societies.
At the heart of conflict between the races was an economic resource vital to both, land. To European settlers a secure dominion over land was essential for the progress of their community. Settlement had begun in earnest in 1840. Coming from industrialized Britain, colonists had anticipated unrestricted access to what they imagined was a fertile, extensive land ideal for farming. In the North Island they found the indigenous community in possession of the most attractive coastal flats, apparently not interested in extending cultivation to the bush-covered hills, and often unwilling to sell their landed birthright to the foreigners.
European contact from 1840 onwards was not new for most Maoris. Missionary activities had begun over two decades earlier and by the fifties a substantial proportion of the Maori population had given nominal allegiance to the seemingly more powerful Christian god. However, their concept of the new deity was usually not the same as that cherished by the Pakeha preachers. Maoris incorporated many of the new religious ideas and ritual into their own, largely undefined tradition. Missionary endeavours were a challenge to Maori souls; colonization was a challenge to the land which nurtured these souls. Whether Maoris could adapt as successfully to Pakeha settlers as they had done to the existence of the Pakeha god was a question that was to be answered out of the barrel of a gun.
Maori resistance in the fifties to the Pakeha challenge had taken the form of a search for new patterns of social solidarity and political leadership. Tribal and inter-tribal meetings expressed a determination to achieve unity within Maori society as a pre-requisite to meeting the encroaching European economic and cultural frontier. Almost two generations of contact with Western technology had meant considerable change in Maori politics. Intercourse with traders or missionaries offered particular tribes and chiefs new means of settling old scores or expanding tribal territory. In the twenties muskets in the hands of Northland peoples brought inter-tribal war on an unprecedented scale to most coastal areas of the North Island. Mass evacuation in response depopulated some tribal districts. The Maori communities which Pakeha colonists encountered in the forties and fifties were undergoing considerable change. But European contact was not simply destructive. Positive use was still being made of new ideas and weapons brought by the foreigners. Tribal meetings in the fifties attempted to incorporate Pakeha concepts of local government to strengthen traditional chiefly leaders of an older generation in alliance with younger, mission-educated Maoris. Out of these moves towards what the settlers saw as 'land leagues' arose a confederation of central North Island tribes who chose as their figurehead in 1858 a Maori King.
Potatau Te Wherowhero was invested with control of the land of the Kingite tribes in the hope of a united front against land selling to the Pakehas. Assisting him was a State Council of important chiefs principally from the two major peoples in the confederation, Waikato and Ngatimaniapoto. Executive power was largely in the hands of a brilliant modern leader Wiremu Tamihana. Local runanga (councils), magistrates, even customs officers were established by the King movement in its efforts at finding new means of reinforcing Maori unity. Most peoples of the North Island, principally in the Bay of Plenty, East Coast, Hawkes Bay, Wairarapa, and Manawatu districts were associated, often only by indirect acknowledgement of Potatau's mana, with the Kingite endeavours.
Two years after the election of the King fighting in Taranaki began between Maoris and settlers. That the Anglo-Maori wars of the sixties should start in northern Taranaki was not surprising. The situation on both sides was an extreme illustration of the condition of the two societies.
Unlike other large-scale Pakeha settlements in New Zealand, New Plymouth, on Taranaki's north coast, did not have a safe harbour and was also some distance from main shipping routes. Accordingly, the colonists, perhaps to a greater degree than elsewhere, turned their backs on the sea and looked inland and to agriculture for livelihood. The settler future in Taranaki demanded land with secure access to its title.
Maori resistance to Pakeha land hunger in Taranaki was bitter. In the south the Ngatiruanui had a reputation for intractable hostility towards Pakehas and had been active in the fifties in the anti-land-selling movement centred on a huge meeting-house erected at Taiporohenui. In north Taranaki the Atiawa people had fled in the twenties from the muskets of northern tribes. They returned to their homeland at the time British settlers were establishing themselves at New Plymouth. Tribal cohesion was accordingly weak in north Taranaki.
War began in 1860 when, against the wishes of a superior chief and most of the tribe, a minor Atiawa chief offered land to the Governor, who was eager to assuage the land-hunger of the settlers. The government denied the right of the more senior chief to prevent land alienation, an issue that went to the heart of Maori social and political difficulties at mid-century. Hostilities began when a survey of the offered land was attempted at Waitara, east of New Plymouth. They soon involved British troops, some fresh from the Indian Mutiny, in a new colonial war.
The Anglo-Maori war of the sixties was not a continuous or general conflict, but rather a series of wars starting in Taranaki, the focus later moving to the Waikato and Bay of Plenty, and returning to Taranaki. The first Taranaki war, beginning over the Waitara purchase, lasted until mid-1861 when an uneasy truce was arranged by the Kingite leader Wiremu Tamihana. In southern Taranaki Maoris were divided and tense over how to act. It was during this truce period that a new Maori movement began there, unrecognized by Europeans until 1864. The leader of the Pai Marire cult, Te Ua, received his prophetic visions as a result of circumstances surrounding a shipwreck in September 1862. Tribal acrimony over the fate of the passengers and cargo reflected the tensions of the district and formed the background to the prophet's experience. Incidents continued in Taranaki despite the truce, with war resuming in the province in mid-1863.
Although some subjects of the Maori King participated in the first Taranaki war they did so against their monarch's wishes. However the King movement later had the need for armed resistance forced upon it. In July 1863, soon after the war had restarted in Taranaki, troops marched south from Auckland into the Waikato homeland of the King. The invasion of the Waikato was in deliberate defiance to the King's proclamation of boundaries against military contact. The King movement, despite being succoured by supporters from elsewhere in the North Island, could not halt the march of Pakeha military power. The Waikato campaign ended with defeat at Orakau and the King withdrew into the fastness of the central North Island. Military resistance had proved impossible. A military solution to the problem of Maori identity in the new nation was decidedly unfavourable to the indigenous population.
Only a few days after the battle at Orakau in April 1864, the new Maori movement, Pai Marire, became known to the settlers back in Taranaki. It seemed to offer an alternative, religious solution to the difficulties of enforced acculturation which the now out-numbered Maoris faced in the 1860s.
The Pai Marire movement had begun in 1862 and can be considered to have ended with the death of its founder four years later. Starting in Taranaki it gained impetus in 1864 with the conversion of the second Maori King, Tawhiao. Early in 1865 emissaries, either from the Kingite Waikato or despatched by the prophet himself, travelled through most of the North Island preaching the new faith. Worshipping flag-staffs, niu poles, were erected in Maori settlements and converts performed the ritual and recited karakia around them. Arising at a time of colonial war between the settlers and Maoris, the peaceful intentions of the prophet to unite all of his people in the new creed were often subsumed beneath local and personal issues. Frequently therefore the response to Pai Marire was largely secular. The settlers, alarmed at the unorthodoxy and alleged barbarity of the movement, responded also, usually with arms.
At its height the movement embraced perhaps 10,000 of over 50,000 Maoris, a good proportion of the total population. By 1866 however the influence of its founder had weakened. The force of his initial vision had been blunted, his teachings sometimes reinterpreted. But his message, however it was preached, gave hope and a religious reinforcement for much that Maoris did during the war in defence of their land, their culture, their identity.
Te Ua Haumene Horopapera Tuwhakararo, the prophet of Pai Marire, was about forty years old when in September 1862 he first received his divine inspiration. He was born into the Taranaki tribe at Waiaua on the coast south of Mount Egmont, but at about the age of three was made captive during a Waikato invasion of the region. He and his mother were carried to Kawhia. Here the boy was baptized Horopapera (Zerub-babel) by the Wesleyan missionary John Whiteley. The prophet denied having gone to the missionaries' schools as was usual before baptism. Rather, he claimed he was taught by Kawhia Maoris to read and write his own language well enough to read the Testament. As with other Maori prophet movements the Bible proved a rich mine for much of Pai Marire belief. Te Ua's favourite book was reputedly a translation of Revelation.
Horopapera was able to return to Taranaki soon after British sovereignty was extended to New Zealand in 1840 and as a result of the Waikato desire, as good Christians and loyal subjects, to liberate their slaves. Here the youth served at the bottom of the Wesleyan hierarchy as an assistant monitor in the charge of the missionaries Creed and Skevington. In this role he gained experience as a religious adviser and preacher, for sometimes in the absence of accredited teachers he had to conduct services himself. Te Ua made a careful study of the Bible: 'My heart was moved to search the Scriptures, and I took particular notice of that passage which says, "Search the Scriptures, for in them we think we have eternal life".'
When war between European settlers and Maoris eventually began in the province in 1860, Horopapera became involved in the assertion of Maori ownership of land. 'All the religious teachers went with the people, and we continued to pray and hold services.'
Te Ua, while still performing his role as religious leader, became a supporter of the Maori king. 'I became a minister in the past years when the sword was wielded. It was in the last year of the encounter that I began to speak out and argue, my chief concern being my love for my homeland, in the hope that the peoples or tribes of Taranaki and Ngatiruanui would support the King movement.'
Although he favoured an end to enmity through the physical separation of Maori and Pakeha settlement, Te Ua did bear arms during fighting over the Waitara purchase, until in February 1861 the Waikato Kingite leader Wiremu Tamihana negotiated an uneasy truce.
In September 1862 the Angel Gabriel spoke to Horopapera Tuwhakararo. The circumstances of this visitation might have lent themselves to the foundation of a cargo cult, rather than the Pai Marire movement. For on 1 September the inhabitants of Te Namu village on the south-west coast of Taranaki found the Royal Mail Steamer Lord Worsley grounded but upright and over sixty passengers and crew on shore. The passengers on the beach presented an interesting assortment. It included three members of the House of Representatives, a captain of the Madras Infantry, his two Indian servants and a French Sister of Charity.
The vessel's cargo would have been enough to excite any materialist millenarian. The lading included 180 tons of coal, substantial provisions, 4,500 feet of deck planks, sixty kegs of shot, eight bales of wool and 3,000 ounces of gold dust.
The leaders at Te Namu experienced a conflict between the requirements of hospitality towards the Europeans and obligations to their Maori followers. For the arrival of the Lord Worsley within the Kingite boundaries (aukati) during Tamihana's peace brought into focus the range of attitudes held by the Taranaki Maoris towards Pakehas.
The problem was compounded because Te Namu was in the territory of Wiremu Kingi Matakahea, who had not joined the Kingite banner and had before the war enjoyed a reputation of friendship towards European travellers. Kingi's people in the Opunake region were however surrounded by Kingites whose agreement was necessary for the passengers to travel to the provincial town of New Plymouth. The question of the fate of the passengers and cargo illustrated these political divisions, and the threat to chiefly authority in such unusual circumstances. Of the chiefs at Te Namu Wiremu Kingi in particular was torn between his responsibilities to the passengers and to his people, many of whom questioned the policies adopted. This atmosphere of tension and ambivalence, unresolved by either outright hostility or complete friendship and assistance, formed the background to Te Ua's personal experiences.
At this time Te Ua was living a few miles from Te Namu. He later described to a reporter what happened to him: 'When the Lord Worsley had been five days on shore in the days of September, I was one night seized with an illness (or affliction), and felt as if some one were shaking me. I heard a voice saying, "Who is this sleeping? Rise up! rise up!" I then became porewarewa (under mesmeric influence).' The tensions at Te Namu between commitment to European and Maori interests had characterized Te Ua's own activities during the earlier Taranaki fighting. The future prophet had himself encountered the difficulties of reconciling his continued loyalty to the teachings of the Pakeha missionaries and his overwhelming concern for the plight of his own people. 'Those days were days of controversy, disbelief which beset the people. I urged that the ship and its cargo be guarded so that the news might be taken and reach the Councils of the Kingites. However, this was not agreed upon. Who indeed would listen to the words of one whose bones have been silenced?'
On the first night at Te Namu a runanga, attended by William Butler and Robert Graham, members of the House of Representatives, and by Heremia, a newly arrived Kingite magistrate, was called by the two local leaders Kingi and Arama Karaka. It was hoped to ascertain Kingite feelings, draw up a concerted plan and gain at least Kingite acquiescence in their actions. A general policy was worked out and subsequently endorsed by the main Kingite leader Erueti, who some years later, as Te Whiti o Rongomai, founded his own cult as the prophet of Parihaka. The policy stressed the accidental nature of the passengers' arrival. As long as they agreed to submit to the King's laws and surrender any articles of war, they could proceed to New Plymouth. The Pakehas accepted the policy, although the fate of the cargo does not seem to have been decided.
Uncertainty and ambivalence remained, for there were those who were unwilling to disregard the war context of settler-Maori hostility. The threat to chiefly authority and the absence of consensus at Te Namu is illustrated by the placing of Kingite guards in the houses the Europeans were using, according to Graham to prevent theft or quarrelling. Throughout the incident Kingi was reluctant to accept responsibility for the Pakehas unexpectedly in his charge, or, more importantly, responsibility for the actions of his own people who appeared divided on how to deal with the passengers. At all times he was anxious to avoid any provocation for those hostile towards the Europeans among the Kingites and his hapu. Karaka was in a similar position. Butler reports a heated argument between him and a Kingite, whom Karaka accused of wanting to kill the leaders of the passengers at the meeting the previous night.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from 'Hauhau' by Paul Clark. Copyright © 1975 P. J. A. Clark. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,1. The Years of the Prophet,
2. The Gospel and the Tribes,
3. The Politics of Pai Marire,
4. The Theology of Pai Marire,
5. Pai Marire: End or Beginning,
Appendix 1. Ua Rongopai (Gospel of Te Ua),
Appendix 2. Lament for King Tawhiao,
Abbreviations,
Notes,
Glossary,
Bibliography,
Index,