King Tāwhiao was much feted in Auckland, as he had been in his tour of the Waikato. He was taken on tours of modern industries and entertainments and treated to civic receptions, banquets and fireworks. At the end of his two week sojourn in Auckland he met with Premier Hall, but was given little opportunity to discuss matters of real concern to the Kīngitanga. Negotiations regarding the King Country were left to Minister Bryce and Rewi Maniapoto.
Ᾱwhina and Wiremu returned with Tāwhiao to the Rohe Pōtae and later joined a rōpū travelling to Parihaka. Te Whiti himself greeted them on their arrival and Ᾱwhina, especially, received a warm welcome: a hongi and kiss from Te Whiti. “Nau mai. Haere mai, Whaea.” And to Wiremu: “Tēnā koe, e tama.”
“Tēnā koe, Matua,” Ᾱwhina replied. “Ngā mihi nui ki a koe hoki nō Kīngi Tāwhiao.” Greetings from King Tāwhiao.
Te Whiti gave his guests a guided tour around the village and the gardens: fields of potatoes, kumara, cabbage and pens of pigs and bullocks. It was all so well ordered, and unprotected: no fortifications. So many dwellings, Ᾱwhina observed, but not that many people, and those she did see were mostly women and children.
“Yes, we have many tātarakihi here,” Te Whiti said.
“Tātarakihi? Cicadas?”
“Orphans. Many orphans.”
“Where are all the men?” Ᾱwhina asked.
“Many have been arrested and taken away to jail.”
“Has Hamana been taken?”
“Yes and Titokowaru and many others of his rōpū.”
“Where? They can’t all be in New Plymouth. The jail would be overflowing.”
“Indeed it was. And then the men were taken to Wellington and then to the South Island, to Lyttleton and Dunedin.”
“Arrested for what offences?” Ᾱwhina asked.
“The surveyors came,” Te Whiti said, “and put their pegs in the ground to divide our land for their settlements and roads. We removed the pegs each day and escorted the surveyors off our land. We continued farming our land, building fences and ploughing the fields. The Pākehā labourers and the Armed Constabulary tore down our fences and we rebuilt them and this went on for some time. But the arrests started when we ploughed the fields on land they had claimed for their farms. Hundreds of ploughmen have been arrested.”
“What are they charged with?” Ᾱwhina asked.
“No charges. No trials, just two years imprisonment with hard labour.”
“No trials?”
“They say the trials are postponed indefinitely.”
“The Treaty says we have the rights and privileges of British subjects,” Ᾱwhina said.
“The colonial government enacts ‘special legislation for the peace and safety of the colony’,” Te Whiti said, with mock solemnity. “They have been very quick to pass laws that deprive us of the rights we were guaranteed under the Treaty.”
“Do they intend to take all of Parihaka?”
“The surveyors showed us the plans of Parihaka partitioned, sliced up, with a reserve for Māori, for Taranaki iwi, a strip of land, with no access to the sea or the mountain.”
“The government also promised us small parcels of land as reserves,” Ᾱwhina said, “but they seem to forget their promises when it comes to selling the land to the settlers.”
*
Te Whiti was a broad shouldered man of medium height and a quiet demeanour, but a commanding figure as he stood to address the assembly and exhorted his followers to non-violent resistance. His speech was lively and quick witted, while Tohu’s, by comparison, was a dull monotone, though he spoke in different voices when he communed with spirits. Te Whiti was much admired, even by Pākehā for his ardent nonviolence and his agreeably fine European-like features. Even Robert Parris, the Government Land Purchasing Agent, paid him grudging respect for his intelligence and incorruptibility. Te Whiti cared nothing for money and, like Wiremu Tāmihana, could not be bought with offers of land for his own possession.
The fame, or the infamy, of Parihaka spread throughout the land. Many dispossessed Māori continued to flock to Parihaka, from Taranaki and throughout the North Island, some just to attend the monthly hui, and some seeking a place of refuge and some for healing. One of the refugees, Wiremu Hīroki, had fled to Parihaka after killing a surveyor in an altercation over a pig that he owned.
The Māori of Parihaka continued to trouble the surveyors, and the hordes of prisoners continued to trouble the government. Native Ministers, John Bryce and Rolleston, took it in turns to resign from and return to their government posts. Most of the prisoners survived the harsh conditions of their incarceration and were eventually released and reunited with their families.
Hamana marched with about four hundred others, in chiefly procession back into Parihaka, all wearing the raukura, the white albatross feathers, in their hair, which signified their allegiance to Te Whiti. There was much consternation at the sight of so many emaciated and broken men, but Te Whiti, identifying as always with the patriarchs of the Old Testament, honoured them as heroes returning to Israel from the land of Pharaoh. Among the women welcoming their returning husbands, brothers and sons, was Ᾱwhina, who rushed forward to embrace her brother. Her neck became wet with the tears of the battle hardened warrior of Titokowaru’s wars.
Hamana had nothing to say to Wiremu. When Ᾱwhina had opportunity to speak to Hamana privately she said, “Why will you not accept Wiremu? He is mixed blood like Rāwiri and he chooses his Māori side. He has chosen to be here at Parihaka.”
“When I see him I see the Pākehā soldier who raped Pania,” Hamana said.
“It was not rape,” Ᾱwhina said. “Kelly is a decent man.”
“He didn’t marry her. Not like your husband. You say Kelly is a good man just because he is a Christian, like you. You believe in the Pākehā God.”
“The Christian God is not a Pākehā God. He is the God of all people and He is above race and countries,” Ᾱwhina said. “You can believe what you want but Wiremu is innocent in all of this. It’s not his fault.”
Hamana could find no reply to Ᾱwhina’s final comment.
Hamana had been held in a cramped cell with twenty-seven others on a diet of bread and water, with a single bucket for a toilet. But the worst of his treatment, he said, was solitary confinement. One of the older men in the cell, Tipene Te Rua, was weak with sickness and beaten for not working hard enough. Hamana refused to work, in protest, and the guards kicked and rifle butted him into another cell for solitary confinement where he languished for four weeks. He had never before been deprived of human company and he became very depressed. Others had spent as much as seven weeks in solitary.
*
The New Zealand press did not unanimously support the colonial government’s continuing confiscation of land in Taranaki and some Pākehā were highly critical of their determination to seize the last bastion of peaceful Māori resistance at Parihaka. James Dilworth was one such Pākehā sympathetic to the plight of Taranaki Māori and Finbar Kelly was another. At a company meeting, Dilworth agreed to grant his employee, Rāwiri Quinn, leave to join those of his whānau who were present at Parihaka.
“I hear they need more ploughs,” Kelly said. “Take these on the dray.”
On his arrival at Parihaka, Rāwiri was greeted with some curiosity and suspicion, as a mixed blood Māori-Pākehā. To allay any doubts concerning his allegiance, he recited his pepeha in fluent te reo Māori. With his whakapapa established, he was directed to the whare occupied by his mother, uncle, and cousin. Ᾱwhina hugged her son and Hamana shook his hand with an affected “How do you do Sir,’ in mock deference to Rāwiri’s corporate attire and his success in the Pākehā world.
Rāwiri replied with, “So you’re still alive, you wild rebel.”
Then the hongi – the greeting that mattered.
“Tāwhiao sends his greetings and his aroha,” Ᾱwhina said.
*
The returned prisoners gradually recuperated and went to work when they were able, building more whare and working in the gardens. Those that worked at repairing fences and planting in the road that now extended to the village, were arrested again.
Native Minister John Bryce, now also Minister for Defence, grew increasingly impatient with the impasse at Parihaka and resolved to remove the ‘squatters’, by force if necessary. He assembled a militia of 2,500 conscripts and volunteers with heavy artillery to apply the necessary force. He then issued Te Whiti with an ultimatum to accept the “dismemberment” of their land within fourteen days or it would “pass away from them forever.”
At midnight, on the fifth of November, 1881, at the expiry of Bryce’s ultimatum, 2,500 Māori massed together on the Parihaka marae to await the invasion. Te Whiti addressed the people: “We have our ark, as Noah of old. Let us abide calmly upon the land. Do not flee from the guns or you will fall by them.”
He then sat calmly next to Tohu and their interpreter, the law clerk, Wiremu Pokiha Omahuru, who had been orphaned at the invasion of Titokowaru’s pā and adopted by former Premier, William Fox. Behind Te Whiti sat Titokowaru, with Hamana at his side and Ᾱwhina, Wiremu and Rāwiri next to him.
As the sun rose, in a clear sky, clear even of birds, over the perfect cone of Mount Taranaki, the troops arrived at Parihaka and surrounded the village, running furtively from cover to cover. There were no defence works in sight and the officers suspected a trap. As the first unit advanced on the main entrance their way was blocked by two hundred children, the tātarakihi, dressed in ceremonial shoulder cloaks, singing and playing. Older girls, skipping together, followed by women, offering gifts of freshly baked bread formed the second and third lines of defence. The cavalry tried to force a way through, waving swords and threatening to cut the heads off “the bloody black niggers” but the women and children held their ground. The tātarakihi clapped their hands and took off their cloaks and waved them at the horses. Horses shied and reared and some threw their riders to the ground.
The belligerent, black-bearded Bryce, resplendent in his Lieutenant’s uniform and mounted on his white steed, had the look of a man trying his best to cut a dashing figure. He had a reputation as a straight talking, no nonsense politician and the Europeans called him Honest John Bryce. Māori had another name for him: Kōhuru Bryce – Bryce the murderer, in remembrance of the slaughter of the children at Handley’s Farm. He advanced on his white charger and read the riot act, commanding “persons unlawfully, riotously and tumultuously assembled to disperse or receive a possible jail sentence of hard labour for life.” The people sat in silence and continued to sit for the duration of the one hour they were given to leave. Bugles then signalled for the troops to advance.
“Let the man Bryce, who raised the war, finish his work today,” Tohu growled. “Let none be absent. Stay where you are, even if the bayonet be put to your breast do not resist.”
Bryce told Mr Hursthouse, the surveyor-interpreter, to order Te Whiti to come forward. “If Bryce and Rolleston want to see me, let them come to me,” Te Whiti replied. “I will remain with my people. I have nothing to do with the trouble this day. It is not my trouble, but the Pākehās’. If you have anything to say I will listen.”
The standoff continued with Bryce demanding a clear passage for his horse and Te Whiti insisting he come on foot lest some of his children get hurt. Finally Bryce ordered the constables to arrest both chiefs on charges of “wickedly, maliciously, and seditiously contriving and intending to disturb the peace”. Te Whiti and Tohu made a dignified exit, under armed escort, wearing korowai cloaks, and encouraged the people to remain steadfast in peaceful works and not to be fearful or dismayed. The chiefs’ wives and Te Whiti’s niece followed and all were taken by gig to Pungarehu blockhouse. One other resident of Parihaka, Wiremu Hīroki, was arrested at the same time, for the murder of a surveyor three years before. The rest of the village remained quietly on the marae till the evening, while the troops set about putting the village under siege. They pitched their army tents around it and built a compound for prisoners.
Rāwiri sought out the two newspaper reporters who had been admitted into Parihaka in defiance of Bryce’s ban on any press coverage. In the whare where they had been concealed to observe the invasion, Rāwiri took the opportunity to exchange information on recent events and the state of the nation with Mr Croumbie-Brown of the Christchurch Lyttleton Times.
Hamana and Wiremu stuck close by Ᾱwhina as the ill-disciplined soldiers went about the village searching for weapons, looting whare and raping women. Rape was tolerated by the army but bestiality was not. Soldiers were court-martialled for copulating with dogs. Syphilis was introduced into Parihaka, which had hitherto not had any venereal disease. A number of guns and swords were found but not the sought after sword of Major von Tempsky.
Bryce had other leaders of the village arrested, those that he could identify. He sought out Titokowaru especially and arrested him for “wilful, unlawful obstruction.” Bryce tried to force all who were not of the Parihaka tribe back to their place of origin but his attempts at drafting the people into their different iwi met with no response, despite the threatening show of bayonets and Armstrong guns. He was eventually able to identify north Taranaki iwi with the aid of the collaborator, Utiku Potaka.
In the days that followed there were mass arrests and whare were demolished. Hamana and Rāwiri were handcuffed together as they refused to give their names when arrested. They were force marched with about two hundred other men, women and children from South Taranaki, spending the night in the open, in pouring rain on the way to the New Plymouth railway station and on to Waitara.
In a little under three weeks the ‘squatters’ of Parihaka were evicted and scattered throughout Taranaki and a road was surveyed through the heart of the village. Homeless and hungry families in North Taranaki sought refuge in the Waimate Plains. The Armed Constabulary had slaughtered pigs on the Parihaka farmland and destroyed crops there and further afield into North Taranaki to hasten the starvation of the natives.
Titokowaru was jailed along with Te Whiti and Tohu in the Pungarehu Stockade. Wiremu Hīroki was convicted of murder and hanged. Titokowaru went on a hunger strike to protest his treatment until he was threatened with force feeding. After six months of imprisonment, during which his poor health further deteriorated, he was brought to trial, acquitted and released. Most of the others detained in the mass arrests at Parihaka were released soon after their arrest. Hamana returned to Te Kuiti with Ᾱwhina and Rāwiri returned to Auckland and resumed his employment on the Dilworth estate, but not before taking Wiremu to his new home in Auckland at Saint Stephen’s Boarding School for Māori Boys.
Te Whiti and Tohu appeared in the New Plymouth court for a trial that failed to bring a conviction and were held on remand for six months and then also acquitted, much to Bryce’s chagrin. At the end of the trial Te Whiti simply said, “We wish to continue to cultivate our land and live on our land peacefully, without quarrel. We do not wish any evil to come to Māori or Pākehā.”
But it was another two years before the two prophets returned to Parihaka, as they were exiled to the South Island by means of a hastily drafted piece of legislation called the West Coast Peace Preservation Bill, whereby “the two aboriginal natives named Te Whiti and Tohu are not to be tried, but jailed indefinitely, and if released they can be rearrested without charge at any time.” It also provided for a fine of £500 for anyone attempting to defeat the effect of said law. When they did finally return to Parihaka it was not to the peace they had hoped for. The village lay in ruins and the people dispersed. With the remnant that remained they again resisted the continuing confiscation of their land, again ploughed and quarrelled with the government and continued to be arrested. Peace and justice were still far off.