Rangatira
Then there were the two young Nga Puhi from up Wharepapa’s way, Wiremu Te Wana Pou, and his stepbrother, Horomona Te Atua. They were both tall, handsome young men. They were so tall, in fact, that I felt sorry for them having to share a berth. One or other of them always seemed to have his feet dangling over the wooden shelf. Unfortunately, there was a rivalry between them that showed up whenever ladies were around to watch.
‘That Wiremu Pou will be trouble,’ Wharepapa muttered to me on our second or perhaps third night at sea, and he was to be proven right.
So yes, of course, Wharepapa was there. These days he stomps around Auckland, but back then he was still living most of the time deep in the Mangakahia Valley. He was not yet old, but already a widower. Before the ship was clear of the Hauraki Gulf I’d realised that he was determined to become the leader of our group.
The final member of our party was Reihana Te Taukawau. I say that he was the final person, but in fact Reihana was on board before any of us, because he wanted to choose the best berth. Unfortunately, there were no best berths to be had. We Maori were to be crammed together, one bed on top of the next. He had to share his berth with Wharepapa, who was only invited on the trip because Reihana suggested it.
I’ve already talked a lot about Wharepapa, though I will never have as much to say on this subject as Wharepapa himself. Of Reihana Te Taukawau I’ll declare this: certainly he was a Christian, the only true Christian among us. He insisted, in fact, that we always call him Reihana, his Christian name, which means Richard in English. In those days I tried my best to be a Christian, but sometimes I forgot or erred, or grew confused. But Reihana, he was filled with the wrath of God, and the certainty of his beliefs. This I respected.
Well, sometimes I respected it. At other times, I wanted him to stop his fist-shaking. And here I will admit something very unchristian indeed: I wanted him to stop talking about the death of his son. He only agreed to come on this voyage, he said, because his mind was blurred with grief. My son had died, my brother had died, but I didn’t burden everyone else with constant lamentations. I don’t grieve on and on, like a woman. But there was Reihana, always gloomy, his eyes glazed, dragging the darkness of his mood about the ship as though it were a mud-spattered rain cloak.
He was gaunt in the face and not very tall. Because he had no moko of any kind, his face as bare as a Pakeha’s, he looked much younger than I was, even though only a few years separated us. He was related, as I recall, to that foolish woman Tere Pakia, and also to Wharepapa, and also to the tall brothers Horomona Te Atua and Wiremu Pou. He lived in Ohaeawai, in the far North, but you could never speak of the great battle of that name with him. He was off with the missionaries, learning to be pious, when Kawiti was outwitting the British there. Reihana’s father was the chief Tu Karawa, who fought alongside Hongi and died in bloody combat on the beach at Moremonui in 1807, when Reihana was just a baby.
But Reihana wasn’t raised to fight, as I was. He never fought a day in his life, not even when Hongi gathered us all to avenge those deaths at Moremonui. Perhaps that’s why the fight had festered inside smooth-cheeked Reihana all those years, and made him a warrior for God.
So there we were, a group of strangers and relatives, old foes and old allies, stuck for a hundred nights in a room without light or air. Not a deck house, but below deck in steerage, down where they kept the bales of wool, kauri gum, and sperm oil. I, Paratene Te Manu, had my own bed, because I was the oldest person in the group. Above me slept Reihana and Wharepapa. The two married couples had a bed each. As I said, the brothers had to share, with their long legs dangling, and young Hapimana and old Kihirini shared as well. Takarei slept clinging to his precious box, as if he were afraid the Northerners would ransack it in the night. The two unmarried women, Ngahuia and Haumu, shared a bed beyond the door.
Because of the table and forms in the middle of the room, and all our boxes about the place, we could barely move, and not all of us could sit down to eat at the same time. At first the forms were fixed to the floor, but soon we broke them up, so we could move them about. I’m accustomed to a small house, but I was not accustomed to huddling close to so many others, and to eating and sleeping in the same tiny room.
This I did not like at all. I had to cook my own food and wash my own dishes, and I had to eat in the room where I slept. This was something I had never done in my life. In fact, I had never, in my entire life, thought of such a thing as cooking for myself. I’m pleased to say that once I returned to New Zealand, I never cooked or cleaned a dish for myself ever again. But on this voyage I often thought of our old saying: he kuri, he tangata haere. I was a traveller now, and therefore like a dog. I would not be accorded the respect I would command at home.
Down in our dark room the women washed themselves, and we men washed up on deck. There was not supposed to be washing of any kind below deck, we learned – only our hands, at a communal pump. This rule the women ignored. We couldn’t live amid our own slop, like animals. We were also not supposed to walk about the poop deck. We were told that this was for ladies and gentlemen only.
‘We are ladies and gentlemen,’ Wharepapa told Jenkins.
‘I mean the ladies and gentlemen who sleep in the cabins,’ Jenkins explained. In other words, people like him. But who was Jenkins? He wasn’t even an ordained minister. He was just an ordinary Pakeha, a follower of Wesley, from Nelson. He wasn’t a rangatira, or an important missionary like Mr Williams, who didn’t care much for Wesleyans.
So we insisted on walking as often as the weather permitted on the poop deck. If people complained, we decided, we would pretend not to understand. But nobody scolded or frowned at us, and often they were smiling, talking away in English. I didn’t know what they were saying. Unlike Wharepapa, who practised his talking every day, I didn’t want to know English. This was stupid of me. It meant I had to rely on Jenkins, and his associates young Mr Lightband, who spoke quite good Maori, and Mr Brent and Mr Lloyd, who were too old to learn new things, and spoke only a little.
A hundred or so soldiers were on board, a few with their wives and children. They were very happy to be going back to England, even though they too were sleeping below the deck. The children often visited us when they were bored playing in their own quarters. These quarters were separated from ours by a thin wall, and we could hear the rattle of their cups and plates when they sat at table, and the way they coughed or retched in the night. No doubt they could hear poor Hariata Pomare vomiting when the ship lurched and rolled through a storm, not to mention all the carrying-on from Haumu.
Sometimes the soldiers themselves would visit with us, crowding into our small, stuffy room and perching on our boxes. One of them would play the fiddle for us, to drown out the creaking of the ship, and they would bring us gifts of sugar, or delicious raspberry vinegar. The sugar we were supposed to get, to take with our tea and coffee, ran out before we rounded the Cape.
Their sergeant spoke to our steward, a dense lad, about getting us some beer, because we were thirsty all the time – too much salt pork and salt beef. But one thing they couldn’t get us was fresh meat. Even though we’d seen live fowls and pigs and even sheep on board, we were not permitted to buy any, let alone cook and eat them. The fresh meat was only for the Pakeha sleeping in the cabins.
We were given hard biscuits riddled with worms for two entire weeks, and when we sent them away with the steward, he brought them back again and said there was nothing else. There was other food, a certain allowance per person – the salt meat, preserved tripe, potatoes, pickles. Nothing fresh at all, and the amounts every day quite small, so we needed the biscuits. Reihana was feeling sick a lot of the time, because of the endless sway of the boat, and biscuits were all he wanted to eat. He would have been hopeless travelling with a taua.
After we sent the steward away for a second time, I leaned towards Reihana. It was wrong to tease him, I know, but I couldn’t resist.
‘If we complain too much about this, Jenkins w
ill hear,’ I whispered to him. ‘And then he’ll be very angry with us, and have us cast into the water.’
‘Can he do that?’ Reihana looked even more stricken than usual.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Why do you think there are so many soldiers on this ship? They’re here to keep an eye on us, in case we decide to cause trouble like the Maori in Taranaki. They have orders to end any rebellion by throwing us into the waves. No one at home will know the truth. They’ll just be told that we died at sea from some illness, or were washed away in a storm.’
‘I knew it,’ said Reihana. He smacked a hand down on the table, and raised his voice so everyone could hear. ‘Nothing good will come of this trip. We are led into godlessness, by a godless man.’
‘I’m led into hunger,’ said Hapimana. ‘By a wormy biscuit.’
’ After that everyone was laughing and not listening to Reihana any more, so he went and sat on a box, his head in his hands. I felt guilty, of course. That was the thing about Reihana. It was difficult to feel inspired by his Christian example, even though he was right most of the time.
The only things cast into the sea, by the way, were the biscuits. The soldiers told us to throw them away, and they would find us good biscuits we could eat. Jenkins was no help at all with this, just as he was no help when we ran out of sugar for our tea. He was up in his fine cabin eating roast beef and fresh eggs, saying his prayers in English with the other Pakeha. Not once did Jenkins come down to read the Bible with us, or say prayers. Not once! I led the group in this every day. I had my Book of Common Prayer, with the prayers written out in Maori, the copy I’ve carried for years. I may not have been a Christian as long as Reihana, but a true rangatira can be both a warrior and a priest, as Hongi showed us, though he was not for a moment interested in the religion of the missionaries.
On days when the weather was fine, Jenkins would ask us to stand up on deck and practise some waiata and haka, which he thought the English might like to hear. He called these our ‘special Maori songs and dances’. In other words, everything the missionaries had made us promise never to perform again.
These things don’t mean much to the younger ones. They were happy to be out in the fresh air, and they liked the attention they got whenever they were singing or chanting. Some of the soldiers and their wives, and the ladies and gentlemen who had their own cabins, they would gather to listen. These people especially liked the haka I would call a ngeri, where everyone is doing whatever they feel like doing, and is a good opportunity for show-offs like Hapimana and Wiremu Pou to strike a pose and play a part.
I didn’t take part in any of this. I didn’t hold with all this practising of what Jenkins called ‘the war dance’ and ‘the welcome dance’. Didn’t the missionaries compel us to choose the treasures of the Gospel over the rituals of the past? Didn’t we renounce the old customs when we were baptised and took on our new names?
In any case, there was no point to all this performance simply for the sake of applause from foreign ladies. A true peruperu is performed with weapons, facing down an enemy, with warriors naked apart from their woven tatua wrapped about the midriff, with weapons tucked into it. The rage we express in a peruperu is the wind that helps us leap high in the air; the fury we muster sustains us through the fight. When we summon up this rage, we’re calling on Tumatauenga, the god of war, to drive us forward into battle and keep our anger burning like a ferocious fire. I don’t think the young ones, like Wiremu Pou or Hapimana, had any true understanding of this. Neither did anyone watching. On the deck of the ship, all we could expect was polite murmurs from onlookers, and Jenkins frowning down at the book Charley Davis had given him, asking us why we all didn’t know the ‘right’ words.
So I said I wouldn’t leap about on deck for no reason, and Jenkins appeared to accept that. In England I could talk to the people of the old customs, and recite some of the old incantations, he told me. I made no objection to this, because I didn’t want to argue with him the way Reihana did. But really, if I were to do as Jenkins asked, the English would be fainting with shock, and none of them would ever have the courage to take up farming or shop-keeping in New Zealand.
The singing up in the deck house outraged our righteous friend Reihana. He not only refused to take part, he tried to stop them altogether.
‘I have never done such things in all my life,’ he told Jenkins. ‘These are old heathen ways. This is wickedness you’re asking of us, wickedness! Brothers and sisters, I beg you. Don’t practise these wrong things.’
No one paid any attention to Reihana, because they were too busy practising pukana, seeing who could make the whites of their eyes the largest and most impressive. I have to admit, that sly Hirini Pakia wasn’t bad at all. He no doubt practised by gazing in the looking glass.
Jenkins was losing patience with Reihana.
‘How else are we to make back the money invested in this venture?’ he demanded. They were standing outside the deck house, and Jenkins’ grey hair was flapping in the breeze. He was a tall man with a long nose. The young ones called him Toko Tikena, Pole Jenkins. ‘Do you have any idea of how much it costs to transport you all across the sea, to feed you, and find you lodgings once we arrive? How are we to take you to the great factories and dockyards and cathedrals of England, without any money in our pockets? How am I to house and clothe you? You’ve already received a considerable sum. You know I have risked my all to bring you on this great trip.’
I was standing nearby when all this was going on, sharing some of my tobacco with the soldiers who were walking on the deck. These were the best times on board the ship, when I could watch it slicing through the water, and fill my lungs with fresh air. The sails of this cutter were vast, and we were speeding along, flying so fast that it seemed we would cross all the oceans in no time.
At the time I didn’t understand what Jenkins was talking about. How was there a connection between singing a lament for a dead tupuna and Jenkins shouting about the cost of things? A waiata doesn’t spirit coins out of the air.
As for this considerable sum we’d all received, I suppose he meant the eight pounds Charley Davis had handed over to each of us. From that we had to buy all our own clothes for the trip. In Auckland I’d bought some shirts, and trousers, and two coats, and a blanket. I should have bought sheets, for there were none for us on board the ship, and a pair of trousers had to serve as my pillow. Jenkins and his associates had bought us all mattresses, but no other bedding. I had given some of the money to my sister, because I was sure I’d be given more, as soon as we reached England.
Two coats may seem excessive, but I remember what Hongi said about his journey to England in 1820. He and Waikato arrived in the summertime, and he said it was nothing at all like our summertime. They had to get greatcoats and flannel caps. The sky was grey, and they were miserable every day. The stones of the street were too cold for their feet, and Mr Kendall, the missionary with them, had to find them boots so they could walk about. As their feet were too big for most English boots, this took some time. Hongi was very ill while he was there, and for a time was afraid that he wouldn’t survive the journey home.
Jenkins had also asked us to bring cloaks with us, our Maori cloaks. Mats, the Pakeha called them. We would need to wear these cloaks when we spoke at churches and schools, Jenkins said, because no one in England would pay to see us wearing our usual coats and trousers. Takarei had three in that box of his. I knew this for a fact, because Horomona and his brother Wiremu Pou went through it one day when Takarei was up on the deck.
It’s strange, I think, that the clothes of our ancestors were so desirable to the Pakeha – so desirable that Jenkins went red in the face when he discovered that there were no cloaks of any kind in Reihana’s box – but the things our ancestors believed were utterly contemptible to them.
On his first night on board the ship, Reihana had a premonition while he lay sleeping. He lay on his back, his hand on his chest, whimpering and twitching like a dog. We co
uld all hear him, but no one thought much of it until the next morning, not even Wharepapa who had to put up with sharing his berth.
‘Brothers,’ Reihana said to us in the morning, when we were chewing on the foul biscuits, the tea sloshing from our mugs. ‘Brothers, listen to me.’
‘Brothers and sisters,’ said Tere Pakia, who had no patience for Reihana even then, when we were still somewhere in the Pacific. ‘Aren’t we good enough to hear your story?’
‘It’s not a story.’ Reihana was glum. ‘I dreamed of something last night, and it was a sign. A very bad sign.’
‘It would be,’ Tere muttered. She walked away, staggering because of the rocking of the ship. I thought she was going to tend to Haumu, who was crying in the small room, but she stood with her back to the door, listening.
‘Last night,’ Reihana said, ‘I knew that I would have a premonition, and discover the meaning of this voyage. I lay down with my left hand in a certain position on my chest. This is how I always sleep.’
‘He does,’ confirmed Wharepapa.
‘So I lay there with my eyes closed. My body was asleep, but my heart was awake. It was waiting for a sign.’
He paused to slurp his tea.
‘And?’ Horomona Te Atua demanded. The faces around our table were serious. Even Horomona’s brother, the cocky Wiremu Pou, was listening. We all wanted to hear the end of Reihana’s premonition.
‘I dreamed that my left hand was twitching,’ said Reihana. ‘I couldn’t move it away from my chest, or stop it from jerking and shaking. I was very afraid. You know what this means. Some harm will come to us.’