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The New Zealand Reader

Parewanui Pa

Parewanui Pa.

Here is Petatone.*
This is the tenth of December;
The sun shines, and the birds sing;
Clear is the water in rivers and streams;
Bright is the sky, and the sun is high in the air.
This is the tenth ol December;
But where is the money?
Three years has this matter in many debates been discussed,
And hero at last is Petntone;
But where is the money?

A Band of Maori women, slowly chanting in a high, strained key, stood at the gate of the pa, and met with this song a few Englishmen who were driving rapidly on to their land.

Our track lay through a swamp of the New Zealand flax. Huge sword-like leaves and giant flower-stalks all but hid from view the Maori stockades. To the left was a village of low whares fenced round with a double row of lofty posts, carved with rude images of gods and men, and having posterns here and there. On the right were groves of karakas—children of Tanemahuta—the New Zealand sacred trees; under their shade, on a hill, a camp and another and larger pa. In startling contrast to the dense masses of the oily leaves, there stretched a great extent of light-green sward, where there were other camps and a tall flagstaff, from which floated the white flag and the Union Jack, emblems of British sovereignty and peace.

page 237

A thousand kilted Maoris dotted the green landscape with patches of brilliant tartans and scarlet cloth. Women lounged about, whiling away the time with dance and song; and from all the corners of the glade the soft cadence of the Maori cry of welcome came floating to us on the breeze, sweet as the sound of distant bells.

As we drove quickly on we found ourselves in the midst of a thronging crowd of square-built men, brown in colour, and for the most part not much darker than Spaniards, but with here and there a woolly negro in their ranks. Glancing at them as we were hurried past, we saw that the men were robust, well limbed, and tall. They greeted us pleasantly, with many a cheerful, open smile; but the faces of the older people were horribly tattooed in spiral curves. The chiefs carried battle-clubs of jade and bone; the women wore strange ornaments. At the flagstaff we pulled up, and, while the preliminaries of the council were arranged, had time to discuss with Maori and with pakeha (white man) the questions that had brought us thither.

The purchase of an enormous block of land—that of the Manawatu—had long been an object wished for and worked for by the Provincial Government of Wellington. The completion of the sale it was that had brought the Superintendent, Dr. Featherston, and humbler pakehas to Parewanui Pa. It was not only that the land was wanted by way of room for the flood of settlers, but purchase by Government was, moreover, the only means whereby war between the various Native claimants of the land could be prevented. The pakeha and Maori had agreed upon a price; the question that remained for settlement was how the money should be shared. One tribe had owned the land from the earliest times; another had conquered some miles of it; a third had had one of its chiefs cooked and eaten up on the ground. In the eye of the Maori law, the last of these titles was the best; the blood of a chief overrides all mere historic claims. The two strongest human motives concurred to make war probable, for avarice and jealousy alike prevented agreement as to the division of the spoil. Each of the three tribes claiming had half a dozen allied and related nations upon the ground; every man was there who had a claim direct or indirect, or thought he had, to any portion of the block. Individual ownership and tribal page 238ownership conflicted. The Ngatiapa were well armed; the Ngatiraukawa had their rifles; the Whanganuis sent for theirs. The greatest tact on the part of Dr. Featherston was needed to prevent a fight such as would have roused New Zealand from Auckland to Port Nicholson.

On a signal from the Superintendent the heralds went round the camps and pas to call the tribes to council. The summons was a long-drawn, minor descending scale—a plaintive cadence, which at a distance blends into a bell-like chord. The words mean, "Come hither! come hither! Come, come! Maoris, come! "and men, women, and children soon came thronging in from every side, the chiefs bearing sceptres and spears of ceremony, and their women wearing round their necks the symbol of nobility, the Heitiki, or greenstone god. These images, we were told, have pedigrees and names like those of men.

We, with the Resident Magistrate of Whanganui, seated ourselves beneath the flagstaff. A chief, meeting the people as they came up, stayed them with the gesture that Homer ascribes to Hector, and bade them sit in a huge circle round the spar.

No sooner were we seated on our mat than there ran slowly into the centre of the ring a plumed and kilted chief, with sparkling eyes—the perfection of a savage. Hatting suddenly, he raised himself upon his toes, frowned, and stood brandishing his short feathered spear. It was Hunia te Hakeke, the young chief of the Ngatiapa. Throwing off his plaid, he commenced to speak, springing hither and thither with leopard-like freedom of gait, and sometimes leaping high in the air to emphasize a word. Fierce as were the gestures, his speech was conciliatory, and the Maori flowed from his lips—a soft Tuscan tongue. As, with a movement full of vigorous grace, he sprang back to the ranks to take his seat, there ran round the ring a hum and buzz of popular applause.

"Governor" Hunia was followed by a young Whanganui chief, who wore hunting-breeches and high boots, and a long black mantle over his European clothes. There was something odd in the shape of his cloak, and, when we came to look closely at it, we found that it was the skirt of the riding-habit of his half-caste wife. The great chiefs paid so little heed to this flippant fellow as to stand up and page 239harangue their tribes in the middle of his speech, which came thus to an untimely end.

A funny old grey-beard—waitere Marumaru—next rose, and, smothering down the jocularity of his face, turned towards us for a moment the typical head of Peter, as you see it on the windows of every modern church—for a moment only; for, as he raised his hand to wave his tribal sceptre, his apostolic drapery began to slip from off his shoulders, and he had to clutch at it with the energy of a topman taking in a reef in a whole gale. His speech was full of Nestorian proverbs and wise saws; but he wandered off into a history of the Wanganui lands, by which he soon became as wearied as we ourselves were, for he stopped short, and, with a twinkle of the eye, said, "Ah, Waitere is no longer young: he is climbing the snow-clad mountain Ruahine; he is becoming an old man"; and down he sat.

Karanama, a small Ngatiraukawa chief, with a white moustache, who looked like an old French concierge, followed Marumaru, and, with much use of his sceptre, related a dream foretelling the happy issue of the negotiations; for the little man was one of those "dreamers of dreams" against whom Moses warned the Israelites.

Karanarna's was not the only trance and vision of which we heard in the course of those debates. The Maoris believe that in their dreams the seers hear great bands of spirits singing chants. These, when they wake, the prophets reveal to all the people; but it is remarked that the vision is generally to the advantage of the seer's tribe.

Karanama's speech was answered by the head chief of the Raugitane Maoris, Te Peeti te Aweawe who, throwing off his upper clothing as he warmed to his subject, and strutting pompously round and round the ring, challenged Karanama to immediate battle, or his tribe to general encounter; but he cooled down as he went on, and in his last sentence showed us that Maori oratory, however ornate usually, can be made extremely terse. "It is hot," he said, "it is hot, and the very birds are loth to sing. We have talked for a week, and are therefore dry. Let us take our share—£10,000, or whatever we can get—and then we shall be dry no more."

The Maori custom of walking about, dancing, leaping, undressing, running, and brandishing spears during the page 240delivery of a speech is convenient for all parties; to the speaker, because it gives him time to think what he shall say next; to the listener, because it allows him to weigh the speaker's words; to the European hearer, because it permits the interpreter to keep pace with the orator without an effort. On this occasion the Resident Magistrate of Whanganui—Mr. Buller, a Maori scholar of eminence, and the attached friend of some of the chiefs—interpreted for Dr. Featherston, and we were allowed to lean over him in such a way as to hear every word that passed. That the able Superintendent of Wellington—the great protector of the Maoris, the man to whom they look as to Queen Victoria's second in command—should be wholly dependent upon interpreters, however skilled, seems almost too singular to be believed; but it is possible that Dr. Featherston may find in pretended want of knowledge much advantage to the Government. He is able to collect his thoughts before he replies to a difficult question; he can allow an epithet to escape His notice in the filter of translation; he can listen and speak with greater dignity.

The day was wearing on before Te Peeti's speech was done, and, as the Maoris say, our waistbands began to slip down low; so all now went to lunch, both Maori and pakeha, they sitting in circles, each with his bowl or flax-blade dish and wooden spoon, we having a table and a chair or two in the mission-house; but we were so tempted by Hori Kingi's whitebait that we begged some of him as we passed. The Maoris boil the little fish in milk, and flavour them with leeks. Great fish, meat, vegetables— almost all they eat, in short, save whitebait—is steamed in the underground Native oven. A hole is dug and filled with wood, and stones are piled upon the wood, a small opening being left for draught. While the wood is burning the stones become red-hot, and fall through into the hole. They are then covered with damp fern, or else with wet mats of flax, plaited at the moment; the meat is put in and covered with more mats; the whole is sprinkled with water, and then earth is heaped on till the vapour ceases to escape. The joint takes about an hour, and is delicious. Fish is wrapped in a kind of dock-leaf, and so steamed.

While the men's eating was thus going on many of the women stood idly round, and we were enabled to judge of page break
Parliamentary Buildings, Wellington.

Parliamentary Buildings, Wellington.

page 241Maori beauty. A profusion of long, crisp curls, a short black pipe thrust between stained lips, a pair of black eyes gleaming from a tattooed face, denote the Maori "belle," who wears for her only robe a long bedgown of dirty calico, but whose ears and neck are tricked out with greenstone ornaments, the signs of birth and wealth. Here and there you find a girl with long, smooth tresses, and almond-shaped black eyes; these charms often go along with prominent, thin features, and suggest at once the Jewess and the gipsy girl. The women smoke continually; the men not much.

When at four o'clock we returned to the flagstaff, we found that the temperature, which during the morning had been too hot, had become that of a fine English June—the air light, the trees and grass lit by a gleaming yellow sunshine that reminded ino of the Californian haze.

During luncheon we had heard that Dr. Featherston's proposals as to the division of the purchase-money had been accepted by the Ngatiapa, but not by Hunia himself, whose vanity would brook no scheme not of his own conception. We were no sooner returned to the ring than he burst in upon us with a defiant speech. "Unjust," he declared, "as was the proposition of great Petatone (Featherston), he would have accepted it for the sake of peace had he been allowed to divide the tribal share; but as the Whanganuis insisted on having a third of his £15,000, and as Petatone seemed to support them in their claim, he should have nothing more to do with the sale. The Whanganuis claim as our relatives," he said; "verily the pumpkin-shoots spread far."

Karanama, the seer, stood up to answer Hunia, and began his speech in a tone of ridicule. "Hunia is like the tea-tree: if you cut him down he sprouts again." Hunia sat quietly through a good deal of this kind of wit, till at last some epithet provoked him to interrupt the speaker. "What a fine fellow you are, Karanama; you'll tell us soon that you have two pairs of legs." "Sit down!" shrieked Karanama, and a word war ensued, but the abuse was too full of Native raciness and vigour to be fit for English cars. The chiefs kept dancing round the ring, threatening each other with their spears "Why do not you hurl at me, Karanama?" said Hunia, "it is easier to page 242parry spears than lies." At last Hunia sat down. Karanama, feinting and making at him with his spear, reproached Hunia with a serious flaw in his pedigree—a blot which is said to account for Hunia's hatred to the Ngatiraukawa, to whom his mother was for years a slave. Hunia, without rising from the ground, shrieked "Liar!" Karanama again spoke the obnoxious word. Springing from the ground, Hunia snatched his spear from where it stood, and ran at his enemy as though to strike him. Karanama stood stock-still. Coming up to him at a charge Hunia suddenly stopped, raised himself on tiptoe, shaking his spear, and flung out some contemptuous epithet; then turned, and stalked slowly, with a springing gait, back to his own corner of the ring. There he stood haranguing his people in a bitter undertone. Karanama did the like with his. The interpreters could not keep pace with what was said. We understood that the chiefs were calling each upon his tribe to support him, if need were, in war. After a few minutes of this pause, they wheeled round, as though by a common impulse, and again began to pour out torrents of abuse. The applause became frequent, hums quickened into shouts, cheer followed cheer, till at last the ring was alive with men and women springing from the ground, and crying out on the opposing leader for a dastard.

We had previously been told to have no fear that resort would be had to blows. The Maoris never fight upon a sudden quarrel: war is with them a solemn act, entered upon only after much deliberation. Those of us who were strangers to New Zealand were nevertheless not without our doubts, while for half an hour we lay upon the grass watching the armed champions running round the ring, challenging each other to mortal combat on the spot.

The chieftains at last became exhausted, and, the mission-bell beginning to toll for evening chapel, Hunia broke off in the middle of his abuse: "Ah! I hear the bell"; and turning, stalked out of the ring towards his pa, leaving it to be inferred, by those who did not know him, that he was going to attend the service. The meeting broke up in confusion, and the Upper Whanganui tribes at once began their march towards the mountains, leaving behind them only a delegation of their chiefs.

page 243

As we drove down the coast, we talked over the close resemblance of the Maori runanga to the Homeric council: it had struck us all. Here, as in the Greek camp, we had the ring of the people, into which advanced the lance-bearing or sceptre-wearing chiefs, they alone speaking, and the people backing them only by a him: "The block of wood dictates not to the carver, neither the people to their chiefs," is a Maori proverb. The boasting of ancestry, and bragging of deeds and military exploits, to which modern wind-bags would only casually allude, was also thoroughly Homeric. In Hunia we had our Achilles; the retreat of Hunia to his whare was that of Achilles to his tent; the cause of quarrel alone was different, though in both cases it arose out of the division of the spoil—in the one case the result of lucky wars, in the other of the pakeha's weakness. The Argive and Maori leaders are one in fire, figure, port, and mien; alike, too, even in their sulkiness. In Waitere and Aperahama Tipai we had two Nestors; our Thersites was Porea, the jester, a, half-mad buffoon, continually mimicking the chiefs or interrupting them, and being by them or their messengers as often kicked and cuffed. In the frequency of repetition, the use of proverbs and simile, the Maoris resemble not Homer's Greeks so much as Homer's self; but the calling together of the people by the heralds, the secret conclave of the chiefs, the feast, the conduct of the assembly—all were the exact repetition of the events recorded in the first and second books of the Iliad as having happened on the Trojan Plains. The single point of difference was not in favour of the Greeks: the Maori women took their place in council with the men.

Sir Charles Dilke

("Greater Britain," 1866).

* [I.e., Dr, Featherston.]