Hauhau: Pai Marire Search for Maori Identity PDF
Preview Hauhau: Pai Marire Search for Maori Identity
'HAUHAU' The Pai Marire Search for Maori Identity 'HAUHAU' The Pai Marire Search for Maori Identity Paul Clark Auckland University Press Oxford University Press 1975 ©P. J.A.Clark 1975 First Published 1975 Printed in New Zealand Wright & Carman Ltd Trentham ISBN 0 19 647935 5 Contents Preface Vll 1. The Years of the Prophet I 2. The Gospel and the Tribes 27 3. The Politics of Pai Marire 50 4. The Theology of Pai Marire 76 5. Pai Marire: End or Beginning 102 Appendix 1. Ua Rongopai (Gospel of Te Ua) 113 Appendix 2. Lament for King Tawhiao 132 Abbreviations 138 Notes 139 Glossary 168 Bibliography 170 Index 181 V' Illustrations Page North Island, New Zealand, showing places mentioned in the text. xii Facing page Te Ua Haurnene (1823?- 1866), prophet of Pai Marire, photographed in Auckland, 1866. (Alexander Turnbull Library] 4 Followers of the prophet. 'Hauhau' prisoners, captured in the Waitotara district, imprisoned in a hulk in Welling- ton harbour. (Harding Denton collection, Alexander Turnbull Library) 5 Patara Raukatauri, leader of Pai Marire emissaries to Opotiki and the East Coast. (Alexander Turnbull Library) 20 Kereopa Te Rau, regarded as the murderer of the mission- ary Volkner at Opotiki. (Alexander Turnbull Library) 21 Niu pole at Putahi, southern Taranaki, from the Ua Kongo pai notebook. (Auckland Public Library] 68 Maori drawing from the notebook of Aporo, who was shot by a European soldier in January 1867. It depicts a niu pole, and a reptilian form, probably symbolic of evil. (Alexander Turnbull Library) 69 Drawing from Aporo's notebook showing (on the right) the niu pole as ethe key' to the cglory of the sun' for supplicant Maoris, represented by the upraised hands. (Alexander Turnbull Library) 84 Western technology, time, and the cosmos seen through Maori eyes. Watch design from the Ua Rongopai notebook. (Auckland Public Library) 85 vi Preface "No one really knows or understands me. Some might see me in another way in another world.' Te Ua Haumene, a speech in late-1865^ On 2 March 1865 New Zealand history gained its first martyr and New Zealand historiography her first madmen. The former was Carl Sylvius Volkner, a missionary murdered at his church, decapitated, his eyes swallowed at his pulpit, his blood drunk from his chalice. The madmen were the perpetrators of the deed, the Hauhaus. Almost every New Zealander knows something of the Hauhaus. The most common element in this knowledge is the assertion that the Hauhaus thought they could stop bullets with their hands, and that they killed the innocent missionary. These attitudes are fostered in the education of New Zealanders, and in popular and scholarly writing. Words like fanaticism, reversion, and barbarism abound. It is a wholly negative view, and is false. A school history of the country, speaking of Hauhauism, that is of the Pai Marire movement founded by Te Ua Haumene in 1862, claims that 'wherever it spread, the war took on a new and horrible character. No longer was there clean brave fighting as at Orakau.'2 Travel guides, hardly acclaimed for the accuracy of their factual information, epitomize the popular view of Pai Marire, 'which means, believe it or not, "Good and Peace- vii viil 'Hauhau' ful". ... [It was] surely one of the weirdest of all cults dreamed up by the murky mind of man . . . and a fine example of the tragic silliness of fanatic man.'3 The Anglo-Maori war context dominates such attitudes towards the cult. 'Hauhauism provided the most intense fighting of any phase of the Land Wars, during which its followers fought with a complete disregard for their safety engendered by a belief that bullets could not harm true believers.'4 Scholars have not taken a very different approach. The two most widely-read general histories of New Zealand largely perpetuate the negative attitude to Pai Marire, particularly its origins. 'It arose from the despair of defeat', writes Keith Sin- clair, 'to bring new hope to many rebels. The resistance to the settlers became more savage, more implacable.' W. H. Oliver adds colour to the picture. 'Observance centred in the traditional niu, a tall stake surmounted with the head of an English enemy . . . Pai marire had been too bloodthirsty to last long.'5 There have been three major specific studies of the move- ment : one as part of a general account of Maori-European wars, one a history thesis, and one a by-product of an American student's brief interest in Maori religion. The first was by James Cowan, a publicity officer for the New Zealand Railways Depart- ment in the nineteen-twenties, who often seems more intent on telling a good story for tourists than on ensuring accuracy. Pai Marire is seen as a battle creed, producing 'a kind of holy war [which] imparted to the racial struggle a savagery and a bitter persistence'. The religious revival 'was in the nature of a return to barbarism and superstition'.6 The second study, by a student who later became a theologian, was published in 1937. Like Cowan's work, S. Barton Babbage's draws heavily on published settler descriptions and on three sets of parliamentary papers relating to the movement.7 The emphasis is again on a relapse into barbarism, an approach explained by the cyclical evolu- tionary view, endorsed by anthropologists, that saw ideal Maori acculturation as the almost complete replacement of one set of traditional beliefs by European, Christian ones.8 The most recent, though twenty year old, major study is prefaced by the epigram 'Today is but yesterday coming in by the back-door*. Preface ix Robin W. Winks's tone is frequently condescending. 'When examined by reason, the doctrine of Hau-Hauism is seen to be like a great sieve. . . . However, when dealing with a religious movement, the invoking of reason can not dissuade a Maori from his beliefs.'9 Pai Marire ritual is likened to *an emotional orgy or a foot race', and it therefore exploited 'the Maori men- tality'.10 In effect the religion 'showed few signs of Christian thinking, although a small amount of Christianity did manage to be incorporated into a general revival of ancient practices.'11 Winks based this study of 'the sickness of Hau-Hauism'12 on only Cowan, Babbage, and a collection of newspaper and other published contemporary accounts which even Elsdon Best, an amateur ethnographer and friend of Cowan, condemned as a 'slovenly . . . confused, badly arranged' manuscript.18 The present book is an attempt at a new, more positive approach to Pai Marire, one that emphasizes its adaptive quali- ties. Concepts like relapse and barbarism seem too encumbered with Victorian value judgment and prejudice to offer a useful understanding of a mid-nineteenth-century movement of such significance and popular recognition. Pai Marire can be better approached as an effort to come to terms with European settle- ment, not to drive all Pakehas from New Zealand. Although brief discussions of Pai Marire along new lines have been pro- duced in recent years, they have almost invariably relied on the same sources, the three published studies and the parliamentary papers.14 The extent of the new sources unearthed in the present research has been surprising. Written Maori evidence, including an illustrated record of a number of speeches by the prophet Te Ua himself, and letters by adherents and opponents, proved invaluable. Contemporary Pakeha unpublished sources, includ- ing papers of White and Warre, government officers at Wan- ganui and New Plymouth on the fringes of the Pai Marire heartland, were more useful than the rather selective published contemporary material and offered scope for comparative analysis with the Maori sources. Even records of letters to the government from Maoris and Pakehas, amounting merely to a line or two in a bound register, added to the collective evidence.
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