The Parihaka Woman

by Witi Ihimaera

  Meantime, Parihaka had, indeed, become a sanctuary. And Erenora was a young woman now, certainly no longer a girl.

  5.

  ‘As young as I was, I had become a good teacher. I loved the children and enjoyed teaching them the English language, knowing it would enable them to converse with Pakeha and understand European ways.

  ‘My greatest thrill, however, was taking time off from my teaching duties to help the men break in the bullocks so that they would accept the yoke of the plough and pull the scythe cleanly through the dirt. With so much acreage to plough, the village needed good teams of strong, obedient beasts and, for some reason, I was able to calm their fears. I would stroke them, saying, “Thank you for being our beloved companions on our journey through the vale of the world. Will you not continue to be partners with us as we go further together?” Then I would introduce them to the yoke and command them, “Pull now.”

  ‘Huhana wasn’t too sure how to take my masculine habits. “Oh, Erenora!” she would sigh, “I don’t know what to make of you! And if I feel this way, you must be a puzzle to the young men too!” I think that was why she began to get a bit more persistent in pushing me, and, to a lesser extent, Ripeka and Meri, towards attachments with suitable male candidates. “We need men in our family,” she would chastise me, “and babies for the future.”

  ‘My sisters were not backward in taking up our mother’s prodding, especially Ripeka, who loved flirting. I might not have been as pretty as them but I wasn’t without suitors. None of the boys, however, like one called Te Whao, were at all desirable to me — and some of them couldn’t even plough a straight line.’

  Then, in the summer of 1873, when Erenora was seventeen, while she and her sisters were carrying calabashes of water from the stream they heard someone coming towards them. As the stranger drew nearer, they saw that it was a young man. Around him a few excited tataraki’i were buzzing.

  He happened upon Ripeka first, no doubt because she had seen him approaching and wanted to flirt accidentally on purpose. But she wasn’t fast enough in pretending to slip and fall at his feet because Erenora felt his shadow cutting the sunlight across her path. One moment the sun had been hot and spinning, the next, Erenora was shivering, not because of the sudden eclipse of the light but because she knew her destiny had arrived.

  ‘May I have some of the cool, sweet water that you carry from the stream?’ the young man asked.

  Erenora could not look up at first; she knew immediately that the stranger was Horitana, and her heart leapt because he was still alive and had finally returned home. Thank goodness, as he had a price on his head for fighting with Titokowaru. However, when she appraised Horitana her heart sank. Although there was some sadness about him, he still had his shining eyes and he was so handsome now, and, well, her sisters had always been the attractive ones — surely he’d be more interested in them. His hair was thick, long and matted, and he looked as if he’d been walking for years. Across his back was a haversack and slung in a pouch across his chest was an Enfield rifle; it was a sharpshooter’s weapon, now his favoured gun, which he had looted from a dead British soldier.

  Heartsick, she nodded. ‘Yes, you may have some water.’ She didn’t even bother to try to push her hair back or wipe the sweat from her brow. What would be the use? She gave him the dried pumpkin shell.

  The tataraki’i pressed closer, wanting to look at Horitana’s rifle. ‘’aere atu,’ Erenora said to them. She began to motion them away and would have followed except that Horitana reached out a hand and stopped her.

  ‘No, don’t go,’ he said. Despite his war-weary appearance, he was attentive and polite. ‘It would be even nicer if your lovely hands would tip the calabash so that the sweet water can pour between my waiting and eager lips.’ His voice was low, thrilling and slightly teasing.

  Erenora had never liked being addressed in such a familiar manner, so she said petulantly, ‘I do no man’s bidding! Tip the shell yourself or ask one of the other women to do it for you!’ Ripeka would have loved to do that.

  Horitana didn’t take offence. Instead he laughed, ‘Don’t be angry with me.’ In a softer tone he said, ‘I haven’t had the opportunity in my life to know what is appropriate to say to women, and what is not.’

  Erenora gave him a look of acceptance. She watched as he lifted his face, opened his mouth and held the calabash above it. Some of the water splashed down his neck. If he only knew how she wanted to lick the water. And the masculine smell of him: it was like the musk of the bullocks.

  For a while, there was silence. Then Horitana coughed. ‘You waited for me?’

  ‘For someone who has a reward posted for him?’ Erenora retorted, her usual sense of independence returning. ‘Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. And you should know better than to bring a rifle into Parihaka.’

  His eyes clouded, as if the memories of the wars were painful to him. Then he looked her up and down. ‘You’ve grown as tall as me,’ he said, as if that were a problem, ‘and you sound very proud. Perhaps I should reconsider the plans that have always been in my heart to make you mine.’

  He had the gall to wink at Ripeka in Erenora’s presence. Ripeka was lapping it up.

  ‘Alas,’ he sighed, ‘I am a man of honour …’

  ‘You had better be!’ Erenora said. Was he deaf? Could he not hear the loud beating of her heart: ka patupatu tana manawa? ‘As for my height,’ she continued, ‘the problem is easily solved … you must get used to it.’

  Of course Ripeka was jealous but, really, she was never in the running.

  Erenora was finally reunited with the orphan boy she had always loved, but she wasn’t an apple that fell too readily off a tree. Yes, she was proud and she knew her own worth. Horitana would have to do much more than simply profess his love to win her.

  After a suitable time of wooing, throughout which Huhana was a vigilant duenna, Erenora and Horitana finally tied the knot. Although it was difficult to retain her virgin status in the face of Horitana’s persistent ardour, she was a virgin when she married him; he was twenty-two.

  Te Whiti himself presided over their wedding and led them to their marriage bed.

  ‘My love for you is like a cloak of many feathers,’ Erenora said to Horitana. ‘Let me throw it around your shoulders.’

  His voice was full of gratitude. ‘Erenora …’

  ‘And now, let me plait and weave the flax of our desire into each other’s heart and tighten the tukutuku so that it will never break apart.’

  This time, Horitana’s voice flooded with urgency. ‘Erenora.’

  3 James Belich, ‘Titokowaru, Riwha — Biography’, from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 18 April 2010.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Parihaka

  1.

  PARIHAKA.

  Taranaki Prov. Locality in Egmont County. Farming. Twenty-six miles south-westward by road from New Plymouth. Access by side road from a turn-off three-quarters of a mile below Pungarehu. About two miles eastward from the main highway between Pungarehu and Rahotu. This village, now a curious mixture of the ancient and modern, was once a celebrated Maori centre, but is chiefly remembered as being the headquarters of Te Whiti and Tohu, who taught the doctrine that the Maoris were Israel and that the British were Pharaoh and the Egyptians who enslaved Israel … Name means, perhaps, ‘Dancing on the cliff ’.

  I quote from The New Zealand Guide, published by H. Wise, noting the date: 1962. Up to the mid-1960s, when I was studying at training college, there was very little mention of Parihaka at all: G.W. Rusden’s History of New Zealand (1883), James Cowan’s The New Zealand Wars (1923) and then thirty years of virtual silence until Dick Scott’s booklet, The Parihaka Story (1954), and Bernard Gadd’s 1966 article on Te Whiti in the Journal of the Polynesian Society.

  Erasure from the official histories and memories seems to have been the order of the day. With some disgust I record that the first edition of the New Ze
aland government’s Descriptive Atlas of New Zealand, published in 1959, went as far as to expunge Parihaka entirely and overprint it with a Pakeha name.

  2.

  I wouldn’t be surprised, therefore, if you haven’t heard of Parihaka or its remarkable history. From the very beginning, Te Whiti and Tohu practised conciliation, and in Parihaka they set up a kainga on land which they truly believed the government had acknowledged as theirs. They also went one step further and set themselves up as negotiators for the return of other lands in Taranaki that had been confiscated without proper legal basis.

  This is my interpretation, of course, and the situation on the ground is murky only because the Pakeha made it so. For instance, despite the New Zealand Settlements Act, the Crown didn’t exercise ownership over the great tract of land that amounted to almost half of the Taranaki Bight.

  Let’s look at a map of the time as that might show more easily what Pakeha occupied as Te Karopotinga o Taranaki continued, and what, for want of a better description, was still Maori territory. This is the Taranaki Bight, ne? Josie will dislike my comparison with a woman’s breast but think of the top side of the right breast at the armpit as the location for the Stoney River. Now draw a line across the breast, across the top part of the nipple, Mount Taranaki, like so, and continue it down to the centre of the chest to this place, the Waingongoro River: all the land to the north-east of the line was in the process of being taken by the Pakeha. But all the w’enua, the land to the south-west, was still ours! Indeed, ex-rebels had been allowed to return to it, and an area of 70,000 acres given back. Surely this was a sign that the government was honouring the prior ownership of this territory by Maori?

  And here, immediately west of the mounga, was Parihaka and the land that became known as the Parihaka Block. Within, as it were, a demilitarised Maori zone. Indeed, some people say that Te Whiti actually told Robert Reid Parris, the government’s land purchasing agent, in words that brooked no argument, ‘You stay behind.’

  Do you get the picture now?

  Thus, with the Pakeha wars — at least the effective fighting — to all intents and purposes over in the Taranaki, Te Whiti and Tohu moved swiftly. They formally established themselves as the owners of ‘Maori territory’ and facilitators for the return of disputed Maori land.

  Why did they take up this leadership role?

  The answer was that the wars in the Taranaki had taken a huge toll on Maori tribal leadership. This may sound cynical, but there was a reason why European generals sat on their white horses and sent younger soldiers onto the battlefield: if they became cannon fodder or fell to withering enemy fire, the generals could carry on, no matter how bad they were as leaders. Not so Maori chiefs.

  Thirty Maori leaders were killed in one battle alone, at Waireka in 1860, and Te Karopotinga o Taranaki harvested many others. But Te Whiti and Tohu’s strategy was not to continue leading by the sword. In 1869, therefore, they summoned all Taranaki tribes to meet at Parihaka and, there, they unfolded a new plan.

  The proposition was unveiled on the day that we call ‘the first Ra’. It was the day of prophecy, the Takahanga, marking the occasion when the two prophets stepped up to the plate and took upon themselves the roles as leaders of our eventual resurrection as tangata w’enua, the original people of the land. On that day the world held its breath as the prophet Te Whiti proclaimed Maori freedom from Pakeha authority.

  ‘This land is ours,’ he said.

  Clouds had gathered above Taranaki and from the guts of the earth came a sudden quake — a quivering of anticipation. Birds arrowed sharply through the air and the bullocks were bellowing.

  Then Te Whiti made an astounding proclamation. Certainly there would continue to be struggles with the Pakeha, but Maori would participate unarmed.

  ‘We will hold the land by passive resistance,’ he said.

  Te Whiti and Tohu’s positions may have been firm, but the government had given itself wriggle room.

  Hazel Riseborough cleverly puts it this way:

  The Government had confiscated the land on paper, but it did not have the means to enforce confiscation on the ground, and for the time being the people at Parihaka were left in peace to cultivate their land.4

  I don’t like the sound of that ‘for the time being’, do you?

  3.

  Yes, for the time being.

  During that peaceful interval, Erenora and Horitana settled into married life. He was astounded at the growth of Parihaka and the great leadership skills of Te Whiti and Tohu.

  ‘When I left you,’ he said to Erenora, ‘I was just a young boy and you were still at Warea.’ He was sitting with her, watching the tataraki’i as they sent kites dancing into the air. ‘And now, from out of the ground where once there was nothing, has arisen Parihaka.’

  Horitana was welcomed into the village with open arms. From the very moment he returned, Te Whiti sought him out too, even though the prophet was, initially, cautious. ‘You have been fighting so long with Titokowaru,’ he began. ‘Parihaka might not be for you.’

  ‘Rangatira,’ Horitana answered, his eyes haunted, ‘I have witnessed many dreadful things and I myself have killed men in the name of war, I acknowledge that. I have shot them and seen them fall in the battlefield without knowing who they were. And yes, I admit that the bloodlust has come upon me when I have witnessed terrible acts of butchery: soldiers taking heads from our warriors because of the beauty of their moko. That has only made me rage all the more, and to fight at close quarters with them, kano’i ki te kano’i, face to face.

  ‘But always, when I have slid my bayonet into their hearts and their blue eyes have gone white, I have realised just what it means to take the life of another. How I have clasped them to my breast and grieved for them.’

  ‘Are you therefore able to put that life behind you and ascend the whirlwind path of Enoch?’ Te Whiti asked.

  Horitana swayed, cried out in great pain and nodded. ‘I am still a young man. If God will forgive me, I will work for Him.’ He kissed Te Whiti’s hands. ‘Let me serve Him here in Parihaka and ensure that the kainga truly becomes the citadel where peace can reign.’

  So it was that, one bright morning, Te Whiti took Horitana to the stream. Erenora, Huhana and other villagers stood on the banks to watch the baptism.

  ‘Look!’ Huhana gasped pointing. Eels were swirling around the two men.

  Dressed in white, Te Whiti baptised Horitana, submerging him in the water. ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ he intoned, ‘arise from the water washed of your sins.’

  When Horitana came out of the stream he sat on the bank, weeping. Then, crying out with passion, he walked swiftly to his and Erenora’s house, where the Enfield rifle was hanging in its pouch. He took it out into the front yard and swung it by the barrel against a fencepost, slamming it until the stock splintered and broke.

  ‘Husband, calm yourself,’ Erenora said to him as he stood, panting.

  ‘How was I to know, Erenora?’ he asked, grief-stricken. ‘Nobody as young as I was should ever go to war.’

  She cradled him in her arms, soothing him.

  Let me show you a photograph of Erenora and Horitana.

  I’m not sure what year it was taken — it must have been after their marriage — and it gives a good indication of what they looked like when they were young.

  The photographer is anonymous, but he could have been one of the Burton brothers, though if that were the case, why is the photograph not listed in their collection at Te Papa Tongarewa? That question aside, the photographer was like many others of his profession, compelled to capture pictures of the bold villagers who would eventually stand against the might of the Pakeha world.

  The subject of the photograph is actually Parihaka itself, but the photographer has managed to inveigle a large group of villagers to pose for him just outside the settlement. It looks like he has found a rise outside the village — or he’s taken the photograph while standing on a
tall ladder — on the outer side of the road leading to Parihaka. From this vantage point, the photograph shows the fence perimeter of the village, broken by a large gap that was one of the entrances to Parihaka. It’s not a gateway — there’s no gate — but I’ll call it a gateway anyhow, and the villagers are standing in front of it: eighteen of them in the foreground, six men and twelve women, three holding babies in their arms. There are eight more villagers in the middle distance, standing in a thoroughfare that runs between thatched houses, and way at the back are two men.

  Most of the subjects in the photograph are women. The two in the front are Erenora’s sisters, Ripeka and Meri. You can tell, by her overflowing beauty, that the one on the left is Ripeka; on the right, looking at her sister for reassurance, is Meri, always a little uncertain of herself, holding poi in her hands, tap tap tap, tap tap tap.

  All the villagers, with the exception of Meri, are looking into the camera. They appear to be saying, ‘Tenei matou, this is us.’ They aren’t taciturn and they don’t look belligerent. Most of the men are wearing light-coloured trousers and shirts or jerkins, dark jackets, and all have hats. The women wear blouses and long, full skirts to their ankles. It must be cold as a few have wrapped blankets around their shoulders — and the babies have shawls to protect them from the wind. Like the men, some of the women wear hats too.

  Of course the photograph doesn’t show the entire village, only nine good-sized sleeping w’are. It presents a very tidy appearance indeed. Look: down one of the thoroughfares is a streetlamp. Beyond, there’s scrub and a few tall trees. The rest is sky, so the photographer must be looking westward to the sea. Note the village is unfortified.