The Parihaka Woman
Page 28
Te Miringa Hohaia was involved in Taranaki land claims all his life. He was director of Taranaki’s Parihaka Peace Festival when he died on 7 August 2010. Tariana Turia, Maori Party co-leader and local MP said, ‘This is a terrible loss for the people of Taranaki and the nation.’
This would be a good time to also mention Auntie Marj, a great kuia of Parihaka, who died during the writing of The Parihaka Woman. Beautiful and proud, we will always remember you, kui.
‘He hoped, if war did come’ is cited in Dick Scott, Ask That Mountain, p. 56.
The ‘death blow’ comes from Rusden, Vol. 3, footnotes, p. 319 and p. 324. The Taranaki desire to strike a death blow to the Maori race was widely proposed. Rusden references Arthur Atkinson, a large Taranaki landowner, as proposing ‘Extermination’.
‘Gather up the earth’ comes from the Reverend T.G. Hammond’s unpublished typescript, ‘Maori Legends and History, Te Whiti and Parihaka, The Passing of Tohu’, Alexander Turnbull Library; cited in Dick Scott, Ask That Mountain, pp. 55 and 56 (footnotes).
‘My weapon was the plough’ is cited in Hazel Riseborough, ‘Te Pahuatanga O Parihaka’, Hohaia, O’Brien and Strongman (eds), Parihaka, p. 28. The ploughman who said these words was anonymous.
‘If any man molests me’ and ‘Go, put your hands to the plough’ are cited in G.W. Rusden, History of New Zealand, Vol. 3, p. 272.
CHAPTER 10: TE PAREMATA O TE PAKEHA
Bill Dacker provided valuable oral insights into the Maori parliamentarians in the years surrounding Parihaka.
‘… indispensable for the peace’ and the Stewart denunciation are cited in G.W. Rusden, History of New Zealand, Vol. 3, p. 279.
CHAPTER 11: SAGA OF THE FENCES
The political and social contexts for this chapter have been primarily sourced from G.W. Rusden but also Dick Scott, Hazel Riseborough and others mentioned.
‘… every gaol a Bastille’ is after Dick Scott, Ask That Mountain, p. 81. ‘My heart is glad’ is from the same source, p. 89.
‘Though the lions rage’ is from the Wanganui Chronicle, 3 November 1881, cited in G.W. Rusden, History of New Zealand, Vol. 3, p. 412.
CHAPTER 12: 5 NOVEMBER 1881, TE RA O TE PAHUA
The dramatic historical sequence of the invasion of Parihaka has been told most graphically by G.W. Rusden. Subsequent tellings by Dick Scott, Hazel Riseborough, Ruakere Hond and others listed have also been used as a context for Erenora’s own version.
‘The man that is come to kill’ is cited in G.W. Rusden, History of New Zealand, Vol. 3, p. 398. ‘If any man thinks’ is cited in Dick Scott, Ask That Mountain, p. 107.
‘Takiri te raukura’, transcribed and translated by Ngati Mutunga in ‘Historical Account’ in the Deed of Settlement, 31 July 2005, pp. 49–50, is cited in Rachel Buchanan, The Parihaka Album, pp. 25–6.
Details of constabulary and settler camps are taken from Hazel Riseborough, ‘A New Kind of Resistance’, in Kelvin Day (ed.), Contested Ground: Te Whenua i Tohea — The Taranaki Wars 1860–1881, Huia, 2010, p. 248.
‘Be of good heart and patient’, ‘Be not sad’ and ‘Why are you grieved?’ (this last by an anonymous woman) are cited in G.W. Rusden, History of New Zealand, Vol. 3, p. 417.
CHAPTER 13: THE SACKING OF PARIHAKA
The account of looting the Parihaka houses comes from Colonel W.B. Messenger of the Armed Constabulary, as recorded by James Cowan in The New Zealand Wars, Vol. 2, Government Printer, 1922–23, p. 506.
The details of the forcible removals of ‘strangers’ are summarised from Dick Scott, Ask That Mountain, pp. 126–30. The destroying of the wairua incident is cited in Hazel Riseborough, Days of Darkness, p. 170.
‘Prey to kites and crows’ is after G.W. Rusden, History of New Zealand, Vol. 3, p. 324. Don’t you just love that poetic phrase?
CHAPTER 14: A WIFE’S DECISION
‘I am indeed of stout heart’ is a line from ‘Takiri te Raukura’, cited in Rachel Buchanan, The Parihaka Album, p. 91.
Act Three: Three Sisters
CHAPTER 15: THE MURU OF PARIHAKA
The Waitangi Tribunal Report, 1996, was the first historical investigation into confiscations from the 1860s to the present. The Taranaki claims were heard in twelve sittings, involving thirty-three research reports from Maori and Pakeha experts such as Hazel Riseborough, a stalwart in telling the story of Taranaki. By using the word ‘holocaust’ in its report, the tribunal, as Rachel Buchanan writes, inflamed New Zealanders.
‘Ko tama wahine’ is cited in Dick Scott, Ask That Mountain, footnote, p. 181. Miriama Evans similarly offered advice on mana wahine of Taranaki.
CHAPTER 16: THE QUEST BEGINS
Historical and geographical information in this and subsequent chapters has mainly been sourced from Maurice (Moss) Shadbolt, text, and Brian Brake, photography, Reader’s Digest Guide to New Zealand, Reader’s Digest, 1988. This book, which provides comprehensive historical notes and concise details on main cities, towns and important landmarks in New Zealand, as well as stunning photography, kept me on track in endeavouring to imagine Erenora’s, Ripeka’s and Meri’s odyssey to Wellington and thence to the South Island. Like John Caselberg (see notes to Chapter Five), both Moss and Brian were close friends of mine, now gone. Moss was outraged at what had happened at Parihaka; I like to think he was looking over my shoulder as I wrote The Parihaka Woman.
‘Soon arrived at Ohawe’ is cited in Shadbolt and Brake, Guide to New Zealand, p. 138.
On Mete Kingi see Steven Oliver, ‘Te Rangi Paetahi, Mete Kingi — Biography’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Te Ara — The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, updated 1 September 2010. Oliver says, ‘In general, Mete Kingi was in favour of the sale of land, so long as enough was retained to provide for Maori welfare.’
‘The Pakeha is burning the bush’ is from Malcolm McKinnon, ‘Manawatu and Horowhenua Region — Rapid Change, 1870–1880 and 1880–1910’, Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, 22 December 2009.
For further reading on the Kapiti Coast see Wattie Carkeek, The Kapiti Coast, Reed, 1968, and Olive Baldwin, Celebration History of the Kapiti Coast, Kapiti Borough Council, 1988.
CHAPTER 17: EMPIRE CITY
This chapter was originally titled Va Pensiero after the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves sung in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, Nabucco, libretto by Temistocle Solera, 1842. The intention here, as with the interpolation of the aria from Samson et Dalila, is to maintain the subtextual connection of Maori as the children of Israel suffering the oppression of the Pakeha (Egyptians) with the Old Testament parallels, in this case, of the Israelites under oppression by, respectively, the Philistines and Babylonians. Incidentally, when I was a young boy growing up in Waituhi in the 1950s, one of the earliest tunes I ever heard was ‘Va pensiero’, played as a waltz by an orchestral trio with one of our old koroua, Snapper, on the accordion; people danced with great dignity. As an adult, when I heard the chorus again, this time sung on record, I was puzzled: how come an Italian chorus was singing my koroua Snapper’s tune?
Source reading for Wellington included David Hamer and Roberta Nicholls (eds), The Making of Wellington, 1888–1914, Victoria University Press, 1990.
On Te Wheoro I consulted Walter Hugh Ross, ‘Te Wheoro Te Morehu Maipapa, Wiremu’ from An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A.H. McLintock, originally published 1966, Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 23 April 2009.
The sources for information on Mount Cook Prison included James Mackay to the Hon the Native Minister, ‘Maori Prisoners at Mount Cook Prison’, Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1879; and Helen McCracken, ‘National Art Galley and Dominion Museum (Former)’, New Zealand Historic Places Trust/ Pouhere Taonga, 10 September 2008.
‘Fly, our thoughts’ is after ‘Va pensiero’, Chorus of Hebrew Slaves, Guiseppe Verdi, Nabucco, Part 3, Scene 2.
CHAPTER 18: EVER, EVER SOUTHWARD
Grateful thanks to Bill Dacker for assistance and information in creat
ing the context for the story of the Parihaka prisoners exiled to the South Island. For further information see Maarire Goodall, ‘From Prisoners in Our Midst’, Witi Ihimaera (ed.), Te Ao Marama Vol. 2: Regaining Aotearoa — Maori Writers Speak Out, Reed, Auckland, 1993. Like John Caselberg, Maurice Shadbolt and Brian Brake, Maarire Goodall is another of the friends and colleagues who once inhabited an earlier life, and I pay tribute to him.
Sources for the ‘roistering township’ of Hokitika included Philip Ross May, Hokitika: Goldfields Capital, published for the Hokitika Centennial Committee by Pegasus Press, 1964. The description of Hokitika Gaol comes from Colin P. Townsend, Misery Hill: Seaview Terrace, Hokitika, 1866–1909: The Home of the Dead, the Mad and the Bad, Leon G. Morel, 1998. I located Mr B.L. O’Brien as the Hokitika gaoler via a long search through http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz.
‘Great Lord, you who flies’ is from Verdi’s Nabucco, Part 1.
CHAPTER 19: THE COURAGE OF WOMEN
The main descriptions of Arthur’s Pass are drawn from Shadbolt and Brake, Reader’s Digest Guide to New Zealand, pp. 268–70 and Wikipedia, ‘Highway 73’. Descriptions of Christchurch are based on James Cowan, The City of Christchurch, New Zealand City Series, Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd, 1939.
The section involving Erenora’s emotional breakdown in Addington is taken from Howard McNaughton’s superb essay, ‘Re-inscribing the urban abject: Ngai Tahu and the Gothic Revival’, New Zealand Geographer 65, 2009, pp. 48–58. Some of the themes and wording in The Parihaka Woman take their inspiration from McNaughton’s work.
After a frustrating hunt for a book titled Addington Prison (all I had to go on was that it was softback, 119 pages), in the end the detail for the gaol in the 1880s was obtained from a number of small references such as Mike Crean, ‘Addington Jail’s Strange History’, The Press, 5 August 2002, Howard McNaughton’s essay (see above) and other general references on Christchurch itself.
Te Whiti’s encouragement, ‘Aue, Erenora’, comes from one of the passages of the Bible, Isaiah 60. The passage provided the words for a Parihaka poi chant.
Archdeacon Canon George Cotterill, the Reverend John Townsend and Samuel Charles Phillips were all real people. Their roles in Christchurch and Lyttelton were deduced from investigation on http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz. It took quite a while.
For information on Lyttelton Harbour, Lyttelton Gaol and Ripapa Island I read John Johnson, The Story of Lyttelton, Lyttelton Borough Council, 1952; W.H. Scotter, A History of Port Lyttelton, Lyttelton Harbour Board, Christchurch, 1968; David Gee, The Devil’s Own Brigade: A History of the Lyttelton Gaol, 1860–1920, Millwood Press, 1975; ‘Ripapa — an ideal pa site’, www.doc.govt.nz, accessed 14 October 2010. Prisoner conditions also extrapolated from descriptions in Dick Scott, Ask That Mountain, p. 84, citing a Press report and, pp. 85-86, a New Zealand Times report.
‘Oh, Taranaki!’ and ‘Oh, what joy’ are after ‘Va pensiero’, Verdi, Nabucco, Part 3, Scene 2.
‘Here in this void’ is after ‘Gott! Welch Dunkel hier!’ from Beethoven’s Fidelio, Act 2, Scene 1.
For ‘Takiri te raukura’ see the notes to Chapter Seven. The final lines are interpolated as Meri’s. I felt that at an emotional moment of farewell like this, she would want to utter something powerful.
CHAPTER 20: CITY OF CELTS
Grateful thanks again to Bill Dacker who, via email correspondence, provided me with many details for this chapter and ensured its accuracy. For information on Dunedin, David Stewart and Robin Bromby’s Dunedin, Historic City of the South, Southern Press, c.1974 was the main source, but other texts also assisted in assembling the setting.
L.C. Tonkin’s Dunedin Gaol in the 1870s: some notorious inmates, L.C. Tonkin, c.1980, reprints a series of articles published in the Otago Guardian, 1873, possibly written by W.J. Perrier or J.J. Utting.
‘The rain was falling, Te Whao making small holes in it with his words’: this is an allusion not a quote, to a line in Hone Tuwhare’s famous poem, ‘Rain’, from Come Rain Hail, University of Otago, 1970; Hone lived in Dunedin for some years. While I’m at it, I could mention another allusion to this same poem at ‘Embers from the beach fire burnt tiny holes in the dark’ Chapter Seventeen. Other allusions exist throughout the novel, e.g. to William Blake’s And did those feet in ancient time, 1804, (best known as the anthem Jerusalem, composed by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916), and so on.
‘We trust in God’s eternal aid’ is after Verdi’s Nabucco, Part 1.
The material on Isaac Newton Watt builds on an email exchange with Bill Dacker and that on Adam Scott is from Stuart C. Scott, The Travesty of Waitangi — Towards Anarchy, Campbell Press, 1995, p. 117. The author, Adam Scott’s grandson, writes, ‘The Scott family was in no doubt but that the attitude of their father to his Maori charges was entirely benevolent, as was that of the Dunedin community as a whole.’
D. Harold, Maori Prisoners of War in Dunedin 1869–1872: Deaths and Burials and Survivors, Hexagon, 2000, provides further information on the earlier Taranaki prisoners. See also Edward Ellison, ‘The Northern Cemetery’, Southern Heritage Trust, Historic Event, Parihaka, 2003.
Rocco is the name of Florestan’s Kerkermeister, or gaoler, in Beethoven’s Fidelio; he has the same function in The Parihaka Woman. I have given him a surname, Sonnleithner, after Joseph von Sonnleithner, who wrote the opera’s German libretto. The original French libretto, which had been used for two previous versions of the story, Pierre Gaveaux’s Leonore, ou L’amour conjugal (1798) and Ferdinando Paer’s better-known Leonore (1804), was written by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly.
Act Four: Horitana
CHAPTER 21: HORITANA’S LAMENT
This is the Fidelio act. In Beethoven’s opera, set in late eighteenth-century Spain, the heroine Leonore has been searching for her husband, Florestan, whom she knows is imprisoned somewhere for his political activities. Thinking that she has found him in a fortress near Seville, she takes on the guise of a young man and obtains employment as a prison guard. Her sole objective is to rescue him. Although I did, indeed, set the libretto of Erenora in a prison, for the purposes of The Parihaka Woman I placed the action on Peketua Island.
‘Aue, e Atua’, ‘Here in this void’, and ‘In the springtime of my life’ are from Florestan’s aria, ‘Gott! Welch Dunkel hier!’, from Beethoven’s Fidelio, Act 2, Scene 1.
CHAPTER 22: MARZELLINE
The Anna Milder is named after the 19-year-old soprano who sang the role of Leonore at the premiere of Beethoven’s Fidelio, on 20 November 1805. Captain Demmer is named after Friedrich Christian Demmer, who sang Florestan in the premiere.
Marzelline’s entry into The Parihaka Woman completes the parallel with the main cast of Beethoven’s Fidelio: Leonore, Florestan, Pizarro, Rocco and now Marzelline, Rocco’s daughter, ‘seine Tochter’.
Walküre is the German for Valkyrie, the mythological warrior women who choose proud warriors, slain in battle, and take them to the hall of death.
Jack is named for Jaquino, listed as doorkeeper in Beethoven’s cast of Fidelio.
CHAPTER 23: HISTORY AND FICTION
Donald Sonnleithner is based on a dear friend and librarian whom I met during my time as Burns Fellow at the University of Otago in 1975.
CHAPTER 24: ISLAND AT THE END OF THE WORLD
The topography of the island is modelled after descriptions of the various outlying islands as detailed in ‘Offshore Islands and Conservation: New Zealand’s Subantarctic islands’, www.doc.govt.nz and other sources.
For the Pharos of Alexandria see Michael Lahanas, The Pharos of Alexandria, the first Lighthouse of the World, Hellenica, 2010, especially for its imaginative illustrations. Also useful is Jimmy Dunn, Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria, Tour Egypt, 2010.
The Peketua lighthouse is modelled on the Dog Island and Centre Island lighthouses, built in 1865 and 1877 respectively to mark the dangerous water in Foveaux Strait between the South Island and Stewart Island. Maritime New Zealand is the source for description
s of the lighthouse and its operation in such articles as ‘Lighthouses of New Zealand and History of Lighthouses in New Zealand’, maritimenz.govt. nz. I could not have imagined what life might have been like for Rocco, Marzelline and Erenora on a lighthouse island had it not been for Helen Beaglehole’s superb Lighting the Coast: A History of New Zealand’s Coastal Lighthouse Systems, Canterbury University Press, 2006.
CHAPTER 25: A WALK TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ISLAND
Le Vicomte de Bragelonne is the title of the trilogy by Alexandre Dumas, père. The third novel is L’Homme au Masque de Fer.
CHAPTER 26: ROCCO AND MARZELLINE
The New Zealand-German back-story for Rocco and Marzelline comes from research I conducted while writing my previous novel, The Trowenna Sea (2009). It is a fascinating story, worthy of a novel of its own. For further information, see Joy Stephens, ‘German Settlement in Nelson’, the prow.org.nz and ‘The Settlement of Nelson & German Immigration to Nelson’, ancestry.com.