Witi Ihimaera - The Parihaka Woman

There were around 200 of them, a rag-tag bunch of pilgrims: old men — the young having gone to fight — women and children. Te Whiti and Tohu and some of the men scouted ahead, carrying the very few arms they possessed. The main party was in the middle, the old women on horses, but the others on foot pushing handcarts or shepherding a few milking cows, bullocks, horses, pigs and hens before them. The rest of the men brought up the rear.

They were spied by a gunship at sea, probably the Eclipse , which was still in the vicinity. Next moment there was a small puff of smoke from the ship and its first shell exploded close to them.

‘We are too exposed,’ Te Whiti yelled. ‘Quickly, strike inland.’ The sound of cavalry pursuit followed them as, crying with alarm, they ran into the bush and climbed to higher ground where the cavalry’s horses couldn’t go and where they wouldn’t be easy targets for rifle fire.

They were all exhausted by the time they came to Nga Kumikumi, where Te Whiti thought they would be safe from the dogs of war. There they raised a kainga. Well, it was more like a camp really, with the scouts patrolling the perimeter, ready to tell the people to go to ground whenever soldiers were nearby.

The more’u didn’t stay there very long. A small band of other Maori trying to flee a pincer movement of the field forces came across their camp, and it was clear to Te Whiti that the soldiers would not be far behind. ‘Time for us to move again,’ he said.

Huhana woke Erenora. ‘Quickly, rouse the tataraki’i.’ Women were helping the men on sentry duty, and Huhana had a rifle in her hands. ‘We must leave before dawn.’ Her eyes were full of fear.

The word tataraki’i referred to the many orphan children in their ranks. It was the word for the cicada, which rubbed its legs together and made a chirruping noise. The great chief Wiremu Kingi Te Matakatea was credited with the symbolism surrounding the tataraki’i. ‘Watch the cicada,’ he said, ‘which disappears into its hiding places during winter but reappears in the summer.’

The children were the embodiment of Matakatea’s concept, always reminding the people to look beyond their current troubles to when the sun comes out. There must have been about seventy tataraki’i in the pilgrim band.

As the more’u departed Nga Kumikumi, Erenora was given a special job: Huhana told her to take charge of the young ones. ‘If we are attacked,’ Huhana said, ‘take them into the bush, and don’t come out with them until everything is clear.’

Erenora nodded, and crept around the tataraki’i, waking them and warning them. ‘Not a sound, all right?’ She even cocked her head at the dogs. ‘That goes for you too! No barking from any of you either, you hear me?’

Those dogs were good; they obeyed her.

With smoke rising behind them as the cavalry torched the camp, the survivors embarked again on their pilgrimage. This time their convoy included horse-drawn wagons as well as bullock sleds. They set down their belongings at Waikoukou, where they made another kainga, another makeshift camp; this was in 1866. However, their cooking fires gave their position away and when they were attacked there — Major-General Trevor Chute had taken over from Lieutenant-General Cameron in this, the last campaign of the Imperial forces in New Zealand — the running battle through the bush forced them to leave the protective embrace of Mount Taranaki and move to the foothills beside the Waitotoroa Stream.

‘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.’

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.

‘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!