The Parihaka Woman

by Ihimaera, Witi

  ‘Wait!’ Meri cried.

  From inside the walls came a low sighing, like a phantom moaning of the sea.

  Meri’s face was blinded by tears. ‘They are men of Parihaka,’ she said. ‘They will never be lost to us.’ She took out her poi, held them up to the sun and began to sing and dance:

  ‘Takiri te raukura, ’aere koe i runga, ’uri ’aere ra i te motu e! Takiri te raukura, ’aere koe i runga, wai’o te ture kia rere i raro e! Let the raukura dance, go forth the raukura, fluttering above and arise upwards! Throughout the land let the raukura dance, fluttering above while the laws are fluttering down below! Let all know of your travails and be proud of you! Your mountain and your women salute you! If you must bow your head, let it be only to Taranaki!’

  Then she collapsed, and Ripeka embraced her.

  ‘When Kawa was born,’ Meri sobbed, ‘Riki was already in gaol in New Plymouth. My husband has never held his son in his arms.’

  7.

  On their return to Christchurch city, the sisters’ hearts overflowed with gratitude for the kindness Archdeacon Cotterill had showed them.

  He took Erenora aside. ‘Young man, I’ve taken the liberty of purchasing you a railway ticket so that you can travel to Dunedin by train. No, don’t thank me. As diocesan secretary there are some charitable opportunities I’m able to take advantage of and … well … this is one of them. You continue your journey. I’ll see that your sisters are taken into church lodgings and I’ll look after them until the time comes for them to leave. And regarding your men on Ripapa … we know how harshly they’re treated. Our church commission visits them regularly to ensure that the worst excesses of that treatment are minimised.’

  After their evening meal, Ripeka looked at Meri and said, ‘Well, before Erenora goes we had better shear our young man again, eh?’

  Erenora’s hair had grown to shoulder length. As they scissored and snipped, the sisters laughed and joked, but their hearts were breaking. When they had finished the job, however, e ’ika, they had done it with too much love. Erenora had to grab the shears and chop off two large hanks so as to look a bit more ugly and lopsided.

  ‘There, that’s better,’ she said.

  The next day Ripeka, Meri and Archdeacon Cotterill bade Erenora farewell at the railway station.

  ‘Oh, do try to be brave,’ Erenora said to her distraught sisters, ‘and please don’t cry so much.’ But she wasn’t feeling very brave herself and turned to the archdeacon, saying, ‘You will look after them, won’t you?’

  Quickly she boarded the train, not wanting to look back. As the train left the station she kept thinking:

  ‘If Ripeka and Meri can’t even cut my hair properly, how are they going to get back to Parihaka by themselves?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  City of Celts

  1.

  Wellington, Christchurch and now Dunedin.

  It was drizzling when Erenora reached the Octagon where the clock tower was striking the time for midday. The chimes were so loud and sonorous that Erenora had to put her hands to her ears. As she looked around she thought that no other city in New Zealand could be as wealthy or could compare with Dunedin’s commercial and industrial mana, its power. Of all the three Pakeha cities in Aotearoa, Dunedin must surely be the greatest, the mightiest and the largest of them all.

  There was a difference, though. The Pakeha who had built this city were distinctively Presbyterian Scots. They had created the Edinburgh of the South.

  ‘Again, as a Maori, I was the object of curiosity,’ Erenora wrote, ‘but I noticed a strange difference. Perhaps it was because of their own difficult history with the English that the sober Scots citizens appeared to empathise with our own. The men in their suits tipped their hats to me and their women inclined their heads. They appeared to respect the Maori struggle for sovereignty and to acknowledge our mana.’

  Erenora had sensed very quickly the empathy for Maori that came not only from the Scots but also others of Dunedin’s liberal-minded citizens. In the case of the city’s Maori leaders, Hori Kerei Taiaroa, the Maori parliamentary representative for the South Island, was exemplary in providing a lead for his Pakeha colleagues to follow. When, finally, the Taranaki prisoners’ release was announced he actually travelled with them on the SS Luna, on 20 March 1872. The same spirited crowd that had welcomed them was there to give them a rousing send-off. His later speech attacking one of the West Coast Peace Preservation bills is a standout of the era. Among his Pakeha colleagues was Thomas Bracken, author of the words of New Zealand’s national anthem and the originator, some believe, of the term ‘God’s Own Country’. The record shows that several other local MPs argued against the passage of those acts of legislation that gave the government the power to imprison Maori without trial.

  ‘I was therefore grateful to discover this sympathy, and that it appeared to be shared by those whom I met on the street. One gentleman, in response to my request for directions to the Dunedin Gaol, shook my hand and told me he had been at Port Chalmers in 1879 when the first batch of prisoners had arrived from Wellington. “Judging from their powerful builds,” he said, “it was clear that, if your warriors had wished, you could have easily defeated your foes.” Another gentleman said, “I’m so glad that your people were treated separately. You’re a nobler race than the murderers, robbers, conmen and shysters who are deservedly part of Her Majesty’s population.”

  ‘And so I arrived at the imposing main entrance to the brick gaol on Stuart Street. A platform above and just outside the prison walls ran along three sides, and sentries were on patrol. My heart was thudding as a guard looked through the grating. I told him why I had come and he let me into a paved yard, scrupulously clean. Then another guard showed me to the warder’s office. “If you wait here, the warder will attend to you.”

  ‘When the warder arrived, I told him why I’d come to Dunedin. He said, “Oh, but there are no longer any prisoners from Parihaka here.”’

  A huge wave of despondency engulfed Erenora. She could scarcely hear the warder’s words. To have come so far …

  ‘I like to think that your men were treated well by us,’ he began. ‘In Dunedin we regarded them as wards of the state and not as criminals, and, because of that, we practised open incarceration. They were employed on various public works outside the gaol, in particular the Dunedin Botanical Gardens. During the latter part of their sojourn with us, however, they worked further afield, around the harbour. On those occasions they were housed on a scow, the Success, which had originally been used for coastal trading. In the evenings, the local people said you could hear them singing their hymns.’

  Erenora could not help but think of one of those hymns, one that perhaps had given the people courage and hope when they were building Parihaka:

  ‘We trust in God’s eternal aid! Upon the shores of Egypt He granted Moses life! He made the hundred men of Gideon invincible! If we trust in Him we will also be granted life and be made invincible, Glory to Him.’

  Up to this time, Erenora had been buoyed by hope. Had she really come all this way for nothing? She tried to focus and, with a gesture of helplessness, interrupted the warder. ‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘but would you know if there was a prisoner by the name of Horitana among the men here? Was he returned to Taranaki?’

  The warder looked puzzled. ‘I knew all the men,’ he said, ‘and that name doesn’t ring a bell at all.’ He thought for a moment, then stood to consult a register. ‘No, there was no Horitana sent here to Dunedin,’ he confirmed. ‘But …’

  Erenora eyed him eagerly.

  ‘… perhaps you should talk to …’ The warder struggled with the pronunciation ‘… Te Whao? Although the other prisoners returned to Taranaki, he decided to remain in Dunedin among Otago Maori. He met a lovely Maori girl called Katarina. That might have been the reason why he didn’t go back.’

  Erenora’s hopes rose. Te Whao had been one of the younger men chosen by Horitana to ride out of Parihaka and plo
ugh the settlers’ land. ‘Do you know where I can find him?’ she asked.

  ‘Most certainly,’ the warder smiled. ‘At this time of day go to the bay where the Success is … he’s sure to be there. After the prisoners left, he became caretaker of the scow. He takes his job seriously. Take some tobacco with you — that will revive his memories.’

  2.

  ‘I hurried out of the city,’ Erenora wrote. ‘My entire search had now narrowed down to one man. Quickly I sought the place where the Success was anchored in a small bay. I made my way to the mooring and found a lone figure, like an eternal sentinel, huddling against the showery rain.

  ‘I approached him slowly. “Tena koe, Te Whao.” He was still young, but his eyes were old, as if his experiences had forever altered him.

  ‘He looked at me strangely, not recognising me at first. I had to wait until he could see through my appearance. When he realised who I was, tears flooded into his eyes. “Erenora …” He hugged me tight but I was the one who held him up as he grieved for everything that had happened to us all.

  ‘After a while I gave him the tobacco. He tamped some into his pipe, lit it … and the memories came pouring out.

  ‘“They used to give us tobacco all the time,” he began, “the good citizens of Dunedin. When our overseer called for a break and we downed our tools, they’d be waiting at the side of the road. While the overseer and guards turned a blind eye, the women would offer us soup and bread and some old Highland men sneaked us a dram or two of whisky. And, always, someone would offer tobacco.”’

  Let me explain the background to Te Whao’s affecting narrative.

  Although the very fact of imprisonment without trial and being forced to labour — slave labour — around Dunedin was harsh, one should remember that from the very moment the first Maori prisoners from Titokowaru’s War arrived in Dunedin in 1869, they were treated with sympathy and honour. Among those who supported them were Pakeha like Isaac Newton Watt.

  Watt’s story is an interesting one. During the 1860s he had been a captain in the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers at the same time as Harry Atkinson, but whereas Atkinson became malevolently inclined towards Maori, Watt took the benevolent position. He married a Maori woman of the Waitara, Ani Raimahapa Paitahuna. They both left in the mid-1860s and migrated to the Bluff, as far away as Watt could get from the fighting. There, he took up a post as resident magistrate and, because he could speak Maori, he was put in charge of the Titokowaru prisoners.

  Some nine or so years later, as Dunedin’s resident magistrate, Watt did similar sympathetic service for the Parihaka ploughmen. When one named Watene died, it was owing to Watt’s kind intercession that other Maori were allowed at the graveside to attend the service. Watt himself drove three of the prisoners, including the great chief Wiremu Kingi Moki Te Matakatea, from the prison in a hansom cab. Both Watt and Ani Raimahapa Paitahuna were buried in the same urupa as the Taranaki men who died in Dunedin.

  Yet another official sympathetic to the Parihaka ploughmen was Adam Scott, the warder in Dunedin Gaol, perhaps the very one who had attended to Erenora’s enquiry earlier that day.

  The rain was falling, Te Whao making small holes in it with his words.

  ‘We all suffered the bitter weather,’ he continued, ‘but our kindly treatment by the locals carried on and, well, I met my Katarina. And Mr Watt, Mr Scott and other officials, they ensured we had good meals. Not only that but they gave us pounamu to carve so that we would have something of value to take home with us.’

  Erenora asked the question that had been lodged impatiently in her throat. ‘Was Horitana ever in your midst?’

  Te Whao took a long draw, then shook his head. ‘We heard he was brought here from Christchurch by a small coastal vessel. It stopped long enough at Port Chalmers to take on provisions.’

  ‘Where was he taken after that?’ Oh, how Erenora’s heart was beating!

  ‘We think to an isolated island further south,’ Te Whao answered. ‘Rumour has it that there he’s in the charge of a German overseer, kept in the hold of an old French explorer’s ship that was wrecked on the island many years ago.’

  Erenora tried not to show her pain, but Te Whao touched her hand with tenderness. ‘That was long ago, Erenora — almost three years — and since then there has been no further word.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘You must face the fact … with no news of him … and the local people, my Katarina’s people, they would have known … he may be dead.’

  Kua mate? Horitana dead? Erenora refused to consider it. No. Deep inside her, she knew he was alive. She could not give up on that. Never.

  ‘You must come and stay with me and Katarina,’ Te Whao insisted. ‘Stay for as long as you want.’

  For two weeks, Erenora grieved and wondered what to do. She oscillated between hope and depression.

  ‘I won’t give up,’ she said to Te Whao one day while he was on duty. He was feeding a seagull, hoping to tame it. ‘Even if Horitana is dead, well, don’t our people say, “If you die a Maori the one great promise made to you is that your people will find you and bring you home?” Whether Horitana is alive or dead, I won’t rest until I find him.’

  With this resolve, Erenora remained in Dunedin. Sometimes she wandered about the city, searching through the great number of public houses for clues to Horitana’s whereabouts. ‘Have you ever heard of a German sailor?’ she asked. ‘Do you know an island where a French ship was wrecked?’

  One day she made a special visit to Port Chalmers, where she asked directions to the cemetery. She found it as a storm burst overhead. Regardless of the sleet, she soon located the grave she was looking for. In this southern earth lay the Reverend Johann Friedrich Riemenschneider, born Bremen, Germany, August 1817, died Dunedin, New Zealand, August 1866. He had come from one side of the world to another and fashioned himself as much as possible into a faithful servant of God.

  And only forty-nine when he died? Too young, too young!

  Erenora sat down beside the grave and thought of her childhood in Warea. And then she patted the earth, ‘Thank you.’ All her life, Rimene’s last words to her had been like a blessing, a feather cloak that he had cast across her shoulders. ‘Leb wohl, mein Herz,’ he had said. ‘Go well, sweetheart.’

  She made her way back to Dunedin and the Success. As soon as Te Whao saw her, he began to wave vigorously. ‘Erenora! Erenora!’

  She knew immediately that he had received news of Horitana. ‘What is it? she asked. ‘What is it?’

  His eyes were shining. ‘The German,’ he began, ‘the German, Erenora! One of Katarina’s people saw him! He has arrived back in the port.’

  3.

  Erenora hastened to the waterfront and went from pub to pub asking about the German, without success. Perhaps he had already left or, maybe, Te Whao’s informant had been incorrect. Had there ever been a German in the first place? Or had the whole story been a fanciful notion?

  She was losing hope when, by chance, she saw a group of sailors clustered around the shipping office. Drawing nearer, she read the advertisement posted on the wall:

  WANTED: PEKETUA ISLAND

  A labourer is sought to assist the keeper in lighthouse duties on Peketua Island. No previous experience required. Suitable for a single man accustomed to his own company. Be warned: once the post is accepted there is no return to the mainland for a month. Apply at Imperial Hotel, Octagon. Rocco Sonnleithner

  The name sprang out to her: Sonnleithner.

  ‘Where the fuck’s Peketua Island?’ one sailor asked.

  ‘The end of the bloody world,’ another answered.

  ‘I hear tell the German’s a hard taskmaster,’ said a third sailor. ‘A big bugger like that, he’d whip you good if you slacked on the job.’

  ‘But the money’s good, mateys,’ said the second sailor, ‘and I hear that he has a beautiful daughter …’

  Erenora’s mind was in turmoil. What should she do? What if Rocco Sonnleithner wasn’t the German rumoured to be
Horitana’s overseer? But what if he was!

  The next morning, Erenora presented herself at the Imperial Hotel where she was shown to a large upstairs room. Fifteen other men, including the three sailors she’d heard talking the day before, were already seated. One aspect of the room struck her as being curious: all the curtains had been opened save one. The window it covered must have been ajar because every now and then the curtain shivered and billowed.

  ‘Here comes the German,’ one of the men whispered.

  Erenora turned to look and, through the glass doors, saw a bald man of massive girth approaching along the hallway. As he opened the doors, the glass panels flashed. Next moment he strode past her in a cloud of body sweat. His clothes were ill-fitting, as if a tailor had thrown up his hands in despair but had tried to stitch together a suit that would cover that enormous bulk. He took one look at all the men including Erenora and spat out a curse, ‘Ach herrje! What a useless-looking bunch.’

  With a surly glance, he sat down on the other side of a desk. ‘My name is Rocco Sonnleithner, but you can call me Rocco.’ His voice was deep and thickly accented. ‘You must all be rogues or vagabonds if you are so hard up that you want the job, eh? I will give a contract to the right man, a man who is willing to work hard, follow my orders, do shift work with me on the lighthouse six hours on, six hours off from dusk to dawn, and keep to his own company. You do your work and mind your own business and we will get along fine.’

  Erenora’s gaze was distracted by the curtain moving in and out.