Although she wouldn’t admit it, Horitana was the lord of Erenora’s life. She pushed him reprovingly for teasing her, but her heart betrayed her. It thundered with love for him, ka patupatu tana manawa.
How come he could never hear it?
4.
‘Parihaka’s resistance by peaceful means truly began,’ Erenora wrote.
‘During this period, however, the kainga became sanctuary to a man named Wiremu Hiroki who had killed one of the surveyors, a European named McLean.
‘The story is mangled and confused with conflicting accounts of which side was to blame. The dispute began over the killing of pigs owned by Wiremu and escalated into unreason. I will be honest: neither side was faultless. The killing, however, added to settler fears that our peaceful removal of the surveyors was only a prelude to a violent uprising. Wiremu was pursued by a number of different posses, one of them led by his own chief, to take him back to face Pakeha justice. But Te Whiti intervened and offered Wiremu haven. In doing so, however, the prophet appeared to affirm Parihaka as the centre where criminals were gathering to create a growing rebel stronghold.
‘Te Whiti instructed me and Horitana to take Wiremu into our house and, of course, as a Christian I offered him sanctuary. This, even though he was not a person I was inclined to like — but he had been pursued, shot at, and was wounded. What shocked me, however, was that soon after Wiremu’s chief departed, another posse pursuing Wiremu stormed into Parihaka. When I saw them coming I shouted to Meri, “Get into the house.” As usual she disobeyed me and barely managed to move out of the way.’
The posse was led by a fair-haired gentleman, a settler who was a cut above the others. He wore a red riding jacket and black hat and jodhpurs and looked as if he was on a fox hunt; there was a whip on his saddle.
Erenora stepped in front of the horses. ‘Stop,’ she cried. The horses wheeled and bucked, dust swirling from their hooves. The men riding them cursed her, but she stood her ground until Meri was safely to one side.
‘So this is what a Maori kainga looks like,’ the fair-haired gentleman said. ‘It is more modern than I had expected.’ He looked somewhat bored. The hunt for Hiroki had developed around him and he had agreed to lead the posse only because it would provide a diversion in his day.
Angrily, Erenora stepped up to him. ‘Where is your search warrant?’ she asked. She looked for Horitana to support her but could not see him.
The gentleman looked at Erenora, bemused. ‘This is a pleasant surprise,’ he smiled. ‘What does a Maori wahine like you know about such things?’ The lilt of his accent was playful and slightly aspirated but, beneath, his intonation was inflected with all the assumptions of his class — May-or-ree wah-hee-nee. ‘Is this where the fox has gone to ground?’ He dismounted and pushed Erenora out of the way.
Her anger mounted as he went from one w’are to the next, walking in as if he owned them, as if he had some divine right. When he tried to enter her own house, however, she stepped into his path and barred his way. ‘This is my w’are. Keep out.’
‘You are annoying me,’ he said. This time, he was not smiling.
‘I will not stand aside and let you invade it without a legal document.’
Erenora’s mission-educated accent gave him pause again, but not for long. His eyes widened at her impertinence and he tried to push past her.
Meri, trying as usual to be helpful, came to her aid. ‘No, Meri,’ Erenora cried, concerned that the settler might hit her. The tataraki’i, seeing Erenora struggling with him, tried to get in between, to protect her. At that moment Horitana spurred his horse along the thoroughfare, leapt from the saddle and joined the tussle. ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked.
But the settler would not back away from the doorway and, with a laugh, Horitana slapped him.
The fair-haired gentleman fell backwards to the ground. When he rose, dusting himself off and rubbing his face, he had become a different person.
‘How dare you put your filthy Maori hands on me,’ he whispered, his words carefully enunciated. His growing hysteria was all the more frightening for being so contained. And then he caught a glimpse of Wiremu inside Erenora and Horitana’s house and made an assumption that was clearly motivated by the merest visible connection. ‘You were with Hiroki at the time of the murder,’ he accused Horitana.
One of the men in his posse called, ‘They both have a price on their heads for helping Titokowaru.’
The settler strode back to his horse. Erenora thought with relief, He is leaving us. But when he turned to face Erenora and Horitana, he had the whip in his hand.
‘You should never have touched me,’ he said.
The first lash of the whip was aimed at Horitana. It caught him around the legs and he cried out, ‘Aue!’ and fell to the ground. The second lash had an altogether different target, snaking towards Erenora. Had she known, she would have put up her hands to protect herself. And even when she saw the lash approaching she thought, Surely a gentleman would not do that to a woman, even if she were a Maori. But then the whip wrapped itself around her neck and tightened, taking the breath from her. Eyes wide with fear, she backed away but that only made the situation worse, and she was coughing and choking.
She saw Horitana picking himself up and though close to blacking out, retained enough presence of mind to wind herself even tighter into the whip so that the fair-haired gentleman could not use it again. A tug of war began that was somewhat comedic. The settler began to snarl, alarmed that Erenora appeared to possess the greater strength. ‘Let it go, damn you, let it go.’
Horitana realised what Erenora was doing, and he sprang at the Pakeha. ‘You, a man, would whip a woman?’ His neck tendons were popping as he tackled the Pakeha to the dust — and the whip lost its master.
That’s when Erenora unloosed herself from it. Her throat felt on fire as she stumbled away, gasping for air.
Horitana, seeing the settler trying to stand, picked the whip up and used it against its owner. ‘As you do to my wife, I do unto you,’ he cried. No, he had not yet been able to ascend the whirlwind path of Enoch.
One of the lashes caught the settler across the eyes and he called to his men, ‘For God’s sake, help me!’ before falling again to the ground. Another stroke whipped across the planes of his face, the blood beading the skin like moko. But the men were cowards, standing off as Horitana continued to flay their leader, shredding his red riding jacket to the skin beneath. Even when the man attempted to writhe away, Horitana followed, lashing him again and again.
Erenora tried to stop him. She thought, with fear, So this is what it is like when the blood-lust comes upon you. She rushed up to him, grabbing at the whip, her voice hoarse and rasping, ‘Horitana! No …’
Then another voice commanded loudly, ‘Kati. Enough.’
It was Te Whiti. He wrested the whip from Horitana and stopped the song of the lash. For a moment there was silence, except for the groaning of the fair-haired gentleman.
Horitana reached for Erenora, then collapsed at Te Whiti’s feet. ‘Aue, te mamae,’ he sobbed. ‘I am so sorry, rangatira.’
That day marked all three men:
Wiremu would never escape implacable and vengeful justice.
Te Whiti was also marked, for in harbouring Wiremu he gave John Bryce justification for closing Parihaka down.
And Horitana had just made an enemy.
As Erenora watched the fair-haired Pakeha being helped away by his men, she began to feel very afraid. Such men did not like to be humiliated in front of their fellows, least of all by a native.
At some point she knew Horitana would be made to pay.
7 Christopher Woodward, In Ruins: A Journey Through History, Art, and Literature, Pantheon, 2002, p. 5.
8 Rachel Buchanan, The Parihaka Album: Lest We Forget, Huia, 2009, p. 24.
ACT TWO
Village of God
CHAPTER EIGHT
Do You Ken, John Bryce?
1.
; Before I go any further I need to bring on stage a man whom I have already mentioned in this narrative:
John Bryce, enter, sir, and take your bow.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1833, Bryce arrived with his family in New Zealand in 1840, the same year the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between Maori and Pakeha. As a young man in the 1850s, he bought a farm near Whanganui and also went into local and then national politics until ill health put a temporary stop to his career.
But Bryce was a man on a mission: sort out the Maori and get on with the business of settling Pakeha in New Zealand. During Titokowaru’s War he was a lieutenant in the Kai-Iwi Yeomanry Cavalry Volunteers and, in 1868, his detachment was reported as having successfully attacked Hauhau warriors, killing two and wounding others; some reports actually suggest the ‘warriors’ were unarmed ten- to twelve-year-old boys. He re-entered politics and rose quickly to prominence, mainly because his actions were so swift and effective against Maori opposed to the alienation of their land. Called Honest John by his supporters and, mockingly, King Bryce by his detractors, Bryce became Minister for Native Affairs in 1879, the politician with the highest power over Maori — and he did not hesitate to use it. His face became one of the most recognisable in New Zealand: already large, it was made bigger because of his receding hairline, and the small alert eyes could not hide behind whiskers and beard.
G.W. Rusden found him contemptible. Referring to his earlier life as a dairy farmer he wrote:
The occupation of a cow-herd gives scope for the humane and for the brutal. If the lad be kindly he will reclaim an erring cow in a kindly manner. If he be inhuman he will inflict as much torture as he can by hurling stones at the eyes of the patient beast which unwittingly offends him. His admirers have not cared to record much of Mr. Bryce’s boyish days, but his conduct as Native Minister justifies the inference that he was of the inferior order of cow-boy.9
What did Maori call him? We named him ‘Bryce ko’uru’: Bryce the murderer. How could we expect to obtain justice from a man who called Parihaka ‘that headquarters of fanaticism and disaffection’?
Bryce served under four premiers: Atkinson, Grey, John Hall and Frederick Whitaker. Whether they liked him or not doesn’t matter, and although John Hall privately criticised him, there was implicit condoning of his work.
He was their familiar.
2.
While I’m at it, let me get something else off my chest.
As I mentioned earlier, it wasn’t until the Maori Land March of the 1970s that I woke up to my own history. Josie sometimes liked to say that even though I was a history teacher I had a thick head or, rather, a slow one. You had to go, ‘Knock, knock, is anybody at home?’ a few times before you got an answer.
After I returned from the march I said to myself, ‘Right, I’ll give it a go.’ I decided to present the class with a lesson on the Maori Wars, except that from the very beginning it became problematic. That title, for instance — or ‘Land Wars’ — was a Pakeha definition. What did we call them? The Pakeha Wars!
Can you see my problem?
Now don’t forget this was some forty years ago, and the Maori protest movement was only beginning: clashes with police at Waitangi, Raglan and Bastion Point and the pitching of tents in the grounds of Parliament itself. I should have expected that after the lesson there would be complaints and that I would be called in by the headmaster.
‘Are you going radical on me?’ he asked. ‘What do you think you’re doing! The Land Wars aren’t in the curriculum and, even if they were, it wouldn’t be your version. Go back to teaching British history so that the students can get University Entrance.’
Well, that really got my goat, and I couldn’t have been the only Maori who was pissed off about that other ‘version’ where they won, we lost, end of story. Fortunately, as the decade progressed, other Maori — and Pakeha teachers too — began to make a fuss about the teaching of New Zealand history, including Maori history. Today, thank goodness, it’s now an examination subject. That hasn’t stopped me, however, from spending the rest of my life working out how to rebalance telling the history from a Maori point of view.
Is it difficult? Is it what! Even in this account of Parihaka and my kuia Erenora’s life most of the details that I’m deploying about Parihaka in the narrative are taken from accounts by Pakeha historians. Why? Well, Pakeha wrote things down; Maori didn’t.
Then the problem is exacerbated because of the inadmissibility of oral evidence as historical fact, although that’s changing a bit now. And as far as Erenora’s account goes, some Pakeha historians would question its validity because, although it was written down, there are more reliable sources — apart from which her account is judged subjective, at the very least.
Why should an oral account be suspect? Maori have had hundreds of years to hone the memory. Yes, it’s oral: tough. Get over it. Perhaps the tribes need to resuscitate the old Maori schools of learning with their disciplines of memorisation. Let Maori write the history that we want to, from our own sources and our own perspective, that’s all I’m saying.
3.
Let me now add a few words about the fair-haired gentleman.
Had he not ridden into Parihaka that day he, Horitana and Erenora might not have met as foes — and things might have developed differently between them.
This settler was building a large two-storeyed country house from which he planned to rule his estate. The fact that it was grander than most other houses did not bother him; he could afford it. The architecture was typically colonial, square and white with verandahs top and bottom, standing in the middle of a flat expanse that he was planting with English trees and a garden. A drive of loose pebbles led to a turning circle in front, where a flight of steps rose to double doors. Above the doors was emblazoned the motto, ‘Fais ce que tu voudrais, Do what thou wilt.’
Of course I know who he was: Pakeha of the times tell us that he was a man of wit, charm and sophistication. He was single, and it was hoped, among the matrons of Taranaki, that he might marry one of their daughters. As to his personal history, he was the second son of an English lord whose estate had gone to his elder brother, and he had emigrated to Taranaki in the 1860s to the promise of land, riches and prosperity. His desire was to establish his own colonial demesne and breed horses.
Among the settler’s hobbies were two that were highly desirable for a Victorian gentleman to pursue: science and collecting. In New Zealand he had begun to put both to use in the study of the Maori as an anthropological subject and in the collection of our tribal artefacts. Already he had submitted papers to learned British journals on the Taranaki Maori, believing that, in the light of their forthcoming extinction, it was more appropriate to write about them while they were alive and not when they were dead.
I hope you’ll forgive my not giving you his English name; my research on him is unfinished, and I don’t want to unmask him until I’ve completed it.
Erenora, however, had a name for him. In the encounter in Parihaka she had glimpsed the man beneath, the real person glossed over in reliable sources. She called him Piharo, from the Maori word pi’arongo, a very hard black stone, because what she had seen of his i’i, his life force, had been so dark and sinister.
Because she called him that, I shall call him that also.
Let me interpolate a scene from my own imagination as Piharo returns to his estate.
Thunder is booming overhead and lightning cracks the sky apart as he arrives at his house to await the arrival of a doctor who will stitch the places where the lash cut deep.
He still cannot believe the marks on his face are from his own whip. How could this have happened? Not three men but four have been marked on the day that the fugitive Hiroki was pursued into Parihaka.
The fourth is Piharo himself.
While the doctor’s needle criss-crosses the cuts in his face, Piharo’s rage mounts. He groans with pain as the doctor sews together the torn flaps of his left eyelid. When the w
ork is finished, he looks in the mirror at the cicatrice of stitches and waves away the doctor’s apologetic gestures.
‘No,’ Piharo says gallantly, ‘it will be all right.’
All right? Nothing will ever be all right. From this day, for every day henceforth, people will look at his face and know that something happened to him, someone had got the better of him.
Piharo’s obsession grows. The wounds to his face will eventually heal but not the black place the lash has uncovered where unforgiveness dwells. He will make the Maori named Horitana pay — have his pound of flesh — even if he has to wait years to exact it.
9 Rusden, History, Vol. 3, p. 286.
CHAPTER NINE
The Year of the Plough
1.
The fugitive Wiremu Hiroki remained in Parihaka under Te Whiti’s protection. Meanwhile, the predations of the Pakeha surveyors continued, and Te Whiti decided that he had to step up the defensive measures against the Pakeha incursions.
Of these deliberate provocations, G.W. Rusden had this to say:
Confident that the Maoris could easily be crushed by the available forces, the despisers of Maori rights were not displeased at the prospect of collision which might at last sweep away the hated guarantees of the Waitangi treaty.10
2.
‘Despite our attempts to dissuade them,’ Erenora wrote, ‘the surveyors still kept unlawfully crossing the river into Maori territory, there being no evidence of its legal government purchase. Indeed, when James Mackay asked Te Whiti to cease preventing the surveyors from doing their work, the prophet answered, “You had better go to the government and fix their side first. They are the active parties in the matter, not me. I am living quietly on my land.”