Witi Ihimaera - The Parihaka Woman

Bloody surveyors!

You know, whenever I’m driving around Taranaki and I see any surveyors standing by the side of a road, I want to run them over. They provoked the conflict everywhere in Aotearoa. And they had no business here in Taranaki, stabbing their theodolites into the ground in the Waitara, pinning out the whole land as if it was an animal skin.

I’m sorry, I apologise … Sometimes it is difficult for me to restrain my rhetoric and passion.

The Grey administration became really worried about Te Whiti. Its concern developed because under the prophet’s leadership Parihaka was becoming the centre of a new Maori republic. It had already become the largest and most prosperous kainga in the land and its many tribal meetings were forever increasing in size, sometimes past the usual 3,000 to, at times, 5,000.

The figures won’t mean much unless I give you a couple of reference points from the 1881 census, even though it was still three years away. For instance, the census listed the total number of Pakeha in New Zealand at 489,702 and the total number of Maori at 44,099. That meant that up to 9 per cent of Maori in the country were meeting at Parihaka whenever there were significant ’ui. And if we look at the population of Taranaki, which was 14,852, any comparison with the figures of Maori living at the citadel must have made for alarming reading. After all, the population of New Plymouth itself was only 3,326.

The large gatherings could mean only one thing: Parihaka was also becoming a Maori ‘parliament’ and — the news just kept getting worse — a diplomatic precinct for Maoridom. A comparison with the Holy See of Rome wouldn’t be inappropriate. Waikato sent twelve apostles to live at the kainga. Other tribes stationed emissaries to function as ambassadors at the court of Parihaka; there were at least nine such diplomatic missions, with their own meeting houses and dwellings.

I’ll make no bones about it: merely mentioning the citadel was enough to sound loud alarm bells among the Pakeha populace. Thus Parihaka began to be demonised as the greatest threat to Pakeha progress in Aotearoa, ever . Why, it even had its own bank because, remarkably, Te Whiti had turned the citadel from a self-sustaining economy into an income-generating kainga.

The main item of trade was flax, the swamps were full of it, and gangs went daily to harvest and sell it to flax mills — in the 1870s there were over 160 mills nationwide and most in nearby Manawatu. The mills made the flax into rope and other fibre products for export to the UK and Australia; there was also huge demand from Maori tribes, who bought the flax for clothing and other domestic purposes.

Te Whiti and Tohu also built on the model of Warea by reestablishing trade in agricultural produce to both Maori and Pakeha. After all, they now had a vigorous horticultural industry centred on their plantations. Not all Pakeha were against them and, if they were, they turned a blind eye because the prices were competitive. The quality of the kainga’s agricultural produce was often better than that of other suppliers.

Further money for Parihaka’s coffers came from villagers’ contributions by way of regular tithe. March, for instance, was a month when they would work on farms outside Parihaka, and all the wages they earned were given to support the citadel.

And of course ko’a — voluntary monetary funds — from the many Maori visitors added to Parihaka’s wealth. Outside tribes like Whanganui Muaupoko raised funds for Parihaka, and among individual contributors were Taare Waitara and Raniera Erihana, from Dunedin. The latter, also known as Dan Ellison, was a cousin of Te Whiti and, unusual for the time, a wealthy Maori. He had made his money when he and Hakaraia Haeroa discovered gold on the Shotover River. Te Whiti gave Erihana a white feather, which he wore in his hat and, because he travelled so frequently on the ferry from the South Island to Taranaki and back, he became known as ‘The Man with a White Feather in his Hat’.

The press went into hysteria mode, voicing fears about ‘The Enemy Within’. Inflammatory rumours abounded that armaments, ammunition and gunpowder were being stored for the sole purpose of creating a Maori Nation within the nation. And, of course, Te Whiti and Tohu were labelled deluded fanatics; all prophets, no matter where they were in the British Empire, were dismissed in this way. After all, if they were reasonable men, surely they would embrace all the benefits of British citizenship? They were called ‘dangerous’, ‘a disturbing element’, ‘madmen’, ‘monomaniacs’.

There was no way in which Te Whiti or Tohu would have known the full extent of the Pakeha paranoia. They may have heard the disquiet and alarm but, as far as they were concerned, they were simply living on their own land. And there in that world, their followers continued to enshrine and elevate them as mangai, mouthpieces of God.

What a world it was! Ancient, temporal and spiritual, Maori and biblical and, as Rachel Buchanan has splendidly put it, ‘saturated in the divine’. She has written that there the prophets practised:

a righteous non-violence backed by divine authority and protected by a sacred emblem, the raukura or albatross feather. The albatross feather had at least two meanings. According to one account, Tohu had a vision in which Melchizedec, the biblical prince of peace, appeared before him, anointing him as leader. In other stories, many Parihaka people saw a great albatross descend on the village and when it took off, it left a feather behind. [8] Rachel Buchanan, The Parihaka Album: Lest We Forget , Huia, 2009, p. 24.

The Holy Spirit had come down from heaven and sanctioned the development of Parihaka as a citadel of peace and sacredness. As had been written in the Book of Revelation, Maori would maintain rightful occupancy of their promised land.

Was the government’s — or rather Native Affairs Minister John Bryce’s — action in sending in surveyors intentional? My oath it was!

By responding to the provocation, were Te Whiti and Tohu playing into Bryce’s hands, giving him the excuse to get rid of them?

Possibly, but what alternative was there?

‘I remember the evening’, Erenora wrote, ‘when Te Whiti came to our w’are to talk with Horitana about the invasion of the Pakeha surveyors.

‘It was raining softly and I was making the evening meal when he arrived. It was always an honour to have the prophet in our house. I took his coat and hat and motioned him into the warmth. “Won’t you stay and have dinner with us?” I asked him. He looked in the pot, sniffed the stew and said yes.’

Erenora ladled out the stew. Te Whiti said grace and then began to eat.

‘The Pakeha are cutting their lines in the ground,’ he said after a while, looking squarely into Horitana’s eyes. ‘If that is a challenge, I shall accept it. I want you to take a squad and stop them. Only men of mana are to go with you.’

Since his baptism, Te Whiti had elevated Horitana to a position as a protector of Parihaka. All the men in the village had rejoiced in the decision because not only could Horitana look after himself; he would look after them . And he had experience in handling dangerous situations.

‘The land is mine and I do not admit the Pakeha’s right to survey it,’ Te Whiti continued. ‘My blanket is mine! Think you it would be right for them to try to drag it from my body and clothe themselves with it?’

Listening in, Erenora could only agree with the prophet. ‘The Pakeha doesn’t care that the Maori moko has been tattooed here long before they came,’ she began, laying her spoon down. ‘We can’t let them continue to engrave their own moko over ours.’