A NOVEL BY
PAULA MORRIS
Rangatira
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Historical Note
The Maori Party
The Pakeha Party
Auckland, New Zealand June 1886
Postscript
Acknowledgements
PENGUIN BOOKS
RANGATIRA
Paula Morris (Ngati Wai) was born in Auckland. She is the author of three adult novels: Queen of Beauty, Hibiscus Coast and Trendy But Casual; two young adult novels, published in the United States; a collection of short stories, Forbidden Cities; and is the editor of The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories. She lives in Glasgow.
ALSO BY PAULA MORRIS
Queen of Beauty
Hibiscus Coast
Trendy But Casual
Forbidden Cities
The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories
For my parents,
Deborah and Kiri Morris
Ránga tíra; A gentleman or lady. Proper name.
From A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of New Zealand Samuel Lee and Thomas Kendall (1820)
rangatira, n. chief.
From First Lessons in Maori
William H. Williams (1862)
RANGATIRA, a chief, whether male or female: Te rangatira o runga i a Tainui—P. M., 72: He wahine pai tera, he rangatira hoki ia—P. M., 128. 2. A master or mistress: Kua takoto hoki he kino mo ta matou rangatira—1 Ham., xxv. 17. 3. Fertile, rich, bounteous: He tane ngaki-kumara, he tau-whenua rangatira—S. T., 159. Cf. ranga, to arrange, to set in order; to set an army in motion; to urge forwards; to raise up, to lift; whakarangaranga, to extol; rangatata, a warrior, a hero; tira, a mast; a company of travellers; ranga, a company.
From Maori–Polynesian Comparative Dictionary
Edward Tregear (1891)
HISTORICAL NOTE
The great Nga Puhi ariki Hongi Hika – tohunga, warrior, master strategist – died of battle wounds in March 1828. As the military commander leading the Northern tribes during the so-called Musket Wars of the 1820s, Hongi gained legendary status in his own lifetime for his brilliance and for his alleged ferocity. Missionaries and other observers reported that many hundreds of Hongi’s enemies were killed during battle – or afterwards, in acts of ritual cannibalism. Thousands, they said, were enslaved. Hongi was often seen wearing the helmet and armour given to him, during a trip to England in 1820, by King George IV.
This image of Hongi as bloodthirsty, merciless and vengeful grew after his death. By the 1860s, few who had fought alongside him remained. Pomare the Great died in battle the same year as Hongi, his body eaten by his adversaries. Men who were still alive – like the veteran campaigner Patuone, by then in his nineties – were seen as legends in their own right.
As a young man, Paratene Te Manu, a Ngati Wai rangatira, fought alongside Hongi, Pomare and Patuone in the Thames region and Central North Island during the campaigns of the early 1820s.
Paratene’s life spanned the nineteenth century. He was one of the final inhabitants (and owners) of Hauturu, Little Barrier Island. Like Patuone, Paratene Te Manu eventually converted to Christianity and ended his fighting days. Like Hongi, he was invited to travel to England – in 1863 – and was taken to meet the reigning monarch.
This is his story.
THE MAORI PARTY
From the North
Paratene (Broughton) Te Manu, Ngati Wai
Kamariera (Gamaliel) Te Hautakiri Wharepapa, Nga Puhi
Reihana (Richard) Te Taukawau, Nga Puhi
Hare (Harry) Pomare – great nephew of Pomare, son of Pomare II, nephew of Patuone – and his wife, Hariata (Harriet) Tutapuiti, Nga Puhi
Wiremu (William) Te Wana Pou, and his brother, Horomona (Solomon) Te Atua, Nga Puhi
Hirini (Sydney) Pakia, and his wife, Hariata (Harriet) Tere Te Iringa, Nga Puhi
Hariata (Harriet) Haumu, Nga Puhi
From the Thames region
Huria (Julia) Ngahuia, Ngati Whanaunga
From the Central and Western North Island
Hapimana (Chapman) Ngapiko, Te Ati Awa
Takarei (Douglas) Ngawaka, Ngati Tuwharetoa
Kihirini (Kissling) Te Tuahu, Tuhourangi
THE PAKEHA PARTY
William Jenkins, cabinet-maker, upholsterer and native interpreter, of Nelson
William Wales Lightband, tanner and gold prospector; and his father-in-law William Brent, landowner, of Nelson
William Lloyd, gold prospector, of Nelson
In London
Colonel Robert Marsh Hughes, Superintendent, the Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders
Alec Ridgway, Land and Emigration Agent for Auckland Province
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
The missionaries: Elizabeth Colenso, Reverend James Stack (Te Taka), and George Maunsell
The Colonial Office: Henry Pelham Clinton, 5th Duke of Newcastle; and Sir Frederic Rogers
In Birmingham
Thomas Sneyd Kynnersley, Stipendiary Magistrate
Charlotte Julia Dorotea Weale (Mihi Wira), Superintendent, Winson Green Road Home for Girls
For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God; for no man understandeth him …
1 CORINTHIANS 14:2
Ko te kai a te rangatira he korero
Auckland, New Zealand June 1886
At the Native Hostel down on the waterfront, people are always talking. At times I think they don’t have anything else to do. Many of them are in Auckland to appear at the Native Land Court, to say their piece or argue about claims to this and that. Some of them are here to sell something in the market, or buy something in the shops. Some of them spend too much time in the grog shops along Shortland Street. I don’t bother with that any more. Drink is a waste of money, and it steals days, turning them into dreams. I don’t have that many days left to waste on dreaming.
Last time I was in Auckland, when the trees were still bristling with leaves, I was asked to pose for a photograph. I was happy to do this, even though it was quite a to-do. Someone has made pictures of me before, in a proper studio, in a proper city, so I knew what to expect. But this photographer just had a room behind a chemist’s shop, and a blanket hanging on the wall. His hair was slick with oil. He insisted that I wear a peacock feather tucked behind one ear. He stuck it there himself, and his fingers were as greasy as his hair.
This feather was quite ridiculous. Then he covered my jacket with a great cloak, a kaitaka, but he draped it upside down over my shoulders. He wanted the woven border of taniko work to show in the picture, he said. I was an ancient warrior, he told me, as though this would explain why I was wearing a peacock feather and an upside-down cloak.
When I say he told me, I mean to say this – he told my old friend Wharepapa to explain things to me in Maori. I could understand his English, but I didn’t let the photographer know that. I don’t even let Wharepapa know that. People speak more when they don’t think you understand.
One of my eyes doesn’t see too good these days. I stood looking away from the camera.
‘Does the old man think the photograph will insult him in some way?’ he asked Wharepapa. ‘Does he think it will steal his spirit?’
‘Yes,’ said Wharepapa, without a smile, although I’m sure he thought this was a great joke.
‘Paratene Te Manu, the last of the ancient warriors,’ the photographer said, almost to himself, and then Wharepapa grew restless. He fancies himself quite handsome and vigorous still, and likes to tell people of the old days when he too was a great warrior. He doesn’t often say this when I’m there, because we both know that I was fighting with my second taua when he was sti
ll a gurgling baby, strapped to his mother’s back. Almost everything he says about battles are stories he heard from his uncles.
The picture was taken, and there was an end to it, I thought. But this week, at the Native Hostel, one old fool tells me he’s seen my face, pinned to the wall somewhere along Queen Street. I don’t take any notice until Wharepapa comes thudding down the hill from his house in Parnell, seeking me out on the beach where I’m smoking my pipe. The Bohemian painter is back in Auckland, he tells me. He has taken over a small room in Mr Partridge’s building, and is working from the photographs taken in town earlier this year.
‘You should talk to him,’ Wharepapa advises. ‘Otherwise he’ll paint your picture with that peacock feather. People will say you’re an Indian princess.’
Wharepapa thinks this is so funny, he repeats it to everyone in Mechanics Bay. I wish I was back up north on Hauturu, tending my garden, away from the chatter and intrigues of this place.
I need not have come down, you see, after all. I sailed here with a Mr McGregor, who is here in Auckland to make deals for his timber and gum. Tenetahi, my nephew, used to bring me here in his cutter, Rangatira, whenever I had to speak before the land court. But the Rangatira was smashed to pieces in a storm a few years ago, on the rocks off Aotea. This is the island that people now call the Great Barrier. Tenetahi and his wife, Rahui, live on Hauturu, or the Little Barrier. Everything has two names these days – a Maori name, and a name that Captain Cook thought of and the Pakeha can remember. These Aucklanders here, I’m certain they were happy to hear that the Rangatira lay in pieces, because Tenetahi was always winning too many races in the Auckland regatta.
He and Rahui almost drowned that day, off the shores of Aotea. After the Rangatira was stuck on the rocks, and they saw that nothing could be saved, they found a whaling boat and began to row home. Another storm turned the waters of the gulf grey and angry, and tipped the whaling boat upside down. Rahui had to swim out to fetch a lost oar. Every time they righted the boat, it filled with water again. A man travelling with them was washed away. A boy they’d taken to Aotea to teach him how to strip blubber from a whale, he died later from the cold. They took more than half a day to row back to Hauturu. People staying at the hostel said it was makutu, some sort of spell, because of all the bad will in the land court.
The argument is over who owns Hauturu. Whoever owns Hauturu has the right to sell it, and someone or other has been trying to claim the island, and sell the island, for the past forty years – Nga Puhi, Te Kawerau, Ngati Whatua. And us, Ngati Wai, the ones who have kept our fires burning there for as long as I can remember. And who in Auckland can remember longer than I can? The court tries to make it complicated when it isn’t.
In 1881 the judge agreed that we Ngati Wai were the owners, naming five people. Each of us represented one hapu of Ngati Wai. But not long after the sinking of the Rangatira, the judgment at the land court was given to Kawerau. That’s when people started saying things were turning against us.
For us Ngati Wai, all of our mana comes from the water. Now Tangaroa was angered and Tenetahi’s boat, with its boastful name, was so many pieces of driftwood. Tenetahi’s mother was Ngati Kahungunu ki Wairoa, from the East Coast, and his father was a Pakeha, people said, perhaps a Portuguese sailor. He was only the adopted grandson of Te Heru and had no rights to Hauturu on the basis of descent. They said that Rahui’s rights were through her father, Te Kiri, and their Te Kawerau lineage, or their Ngati Whatua lineage, nothing to do with Ngati Wai. They would say that, wouldn’t they?
I’m tired of all this. I just want to live there in peace. Some years ago, I said that we should sell the island to the Queen, to end this matter once and for all. We’ll live there without constant summons to court by this or that person. I wrote many letters to the court saying so, because every time we stand before a judge, he chooses a different group, and then years go by with more bad will and more arguments. More appeals, my nephew says, because he knows all the language of the court.
So this is why I travelled down to Auckland this week, for yet another appeal. If the judge restores our claim, we have decided to ask for £4000 to be shared among us all, and for Tenetahi and Rahui to keep a small piece of the island. Just a hundred acres, where we live most of the time, so we can continue growing crops and grazing, and cutting timber to ship down to Auckland. We’re all agreed on this.
But now my nephew says that this is not a good week to stand before the court. If we wait until later this year, the rules are about to change. We can have a Pakeha lawyer to help us present our argument and no one can wring their hands about it, as they did last time when Mr Tole helped us. Perhaps things will be better by the end of the year, he says, because now the government is saying that times are hard. The gold rush is over. The stock market has collapsed. They don’t have any money these days. We should come back to Auckland in the spring, in October.
He may be right. Matariki has risen, but the first new moon of our new year brought a tohu, a very bad sign. This is what people at the hostel are talking about today. Down on Lake Rotomahana there have been sightings of a spirit waka, its ghostly warriors paddling through the mist. Many more people talk of a strange wave surging across the lake, and of the Pink Terrace, which people travel across oceans to see, spitting mud.
We’re not supposed to believe in things like omens any more. We’ve put aside the old ways, the old beliefs, the old fears. We have our new Christian names, the Maori words for John, and William, and my name, Paratene, which is our word for Broughton. But we still have our old names. How can we forget the knowledge of our ancestors? For a long time I tried to tell myself that they were wrong and that only the ways of the missionaries were right. But as I grow older, in my mind I can’t unpick the two. I do know that a lot of what we were told by the missionaries wasn’t true.
I’d like to go home now, to be far away from all this talk of restless lake spirits, and bad omens. But Mr McGregor is down here for another five days. I might find this Bohemian painter and see what he’s going to do with the picture of me pinned to his wall. At another time in my life I was expected to wear a costume, to be on display, and this made me very unhappy.
If he’s going to make a painting, the Bohemian has to take away the peacock feather. I’ll tell him this in English, so there can be no mistaking what I’m trying to say.
So I set off down Queen Street, walking towards Mr Partridge’s shop. The street is crunchy with mud and stones, and rain starts falling again. The first time I saw this city, when my son was a small boy, none of these buildings were here. It was a settlement, not even daring to call itself a city. None of these docks or wide roads – just tracks cut into a deep bed of fern, the sea lapping up. This wide road, and the hill where horses haul the big trams up to the ridge, that was all water. Some parts of it were a stream, clogged with clumps of flax, and some parts of it were just a swamp. All you could see was the thatch of ferns and clusters of manuka trees, with their spindly arms and legs, whispering in the wind.
In later years, when it started calling itself a city, things weren’t much better in Auckland. There was a church and a fort up on the point, but the whare were only replaced with shops and houses that a gust could blow down. Whenever it rained, the track along the stream turned into a bog, and to climb it was to walk in treacle. We used to laugh at them, those Pakeha, trying to press their town into the soggy hill and moving dirt and rocks to fill in the sea. We always camped down by the bay, where the Native Hostel and market stand now. Easier to get in and out.
They also tried to build a fort around the stream, to make it a canal. I say canal, but really it was a dirty gully where people emptied their piss-pots, and it looked and smelled like the prickled mud around mangroves at low tide. You had to cross it by walking on planks. At night, when people were drunk and nobody could see anything, they’d fall in. This was the best show going in Auckland for years, Wharepapa always said – that, and people tumbling off the
rickety wharf they built, the one that collapsed a few years ago. Not to mention visiting the stocks and the gallows, of course, though they don’t have those anywhere near Queen Street any more.
I don’t usually buy my tobacco from Mr Partridge, but I know his shop. On a day like today, when it’s raining, the place is crowded, and smells like a wet dog. A whey-faced boy in a stained apron points the way to the Bohemian’s room, up the stairs and at the back of the building. I knock on the door with my stick, and there’s a long pause before someone inside coughs and tells me to come in.
Because of the rain pelting the window, the room is quite dark. The only light is from a kerosene lamp, and a small, ashy fire in the grate. I know I’m in the right place, because it smells of paint in here, and many Maori faces are pinned to the wall. The Bohemian, sitting in a chair in the corner, is drinking from a teacup. He’s peering at me through small round glasses, and with his sharp face and his hooded eyes, he looks like a bird at night, huddling in the darkness.
He places the cup on the floor and stands up to shake my hand. He knows my name, which surprises me at first, but of course he must recognise me from the photograph that was taken. I can’t see the picture myself. There are so many up on the wall.
‘I thought you will come,’ he says. His English sounds worse than mine. ‘Your friend tells me.’
Wharepapa. He has the biggest mouth in Auckland.
The Bohemian pulls papers off a low chair so I can sit down as well, and finds the photograph to show me. I look angry in the picture. My white whiskers stick through the ridges of my moko, so my face is like a frayed mat. I’m staring off to the side, my left eye milky, fuming about the peacock feather. I should never have agreed to it.