TE UA, PRIEST AND PROPHET
Te Ua and his gods--The _Pai mariré_ faith--"Charming" the
British bullets--Bent's interview with the prophet--His life
_tapu_'d--Preparing for battle--Life in the forest _pa_.
About this time Kimble Bent became acquainted with a man whose name has
passed into New Zealand history. This was Te Ua Haumene, the founder
and high-priest and prophet of the Hauhau religion, or, more correctly
speaking, fanaticism. Te Ua came riding into the Otapawa village one
day with a bodyguard of armed men. Bent describes him as a stoutly
built man of between forty and fifty, attired in European clothing,
and carrying a carved _taiaha_--a chief's halbert or broadsword of
hardwood, flattened at one end in a blunt blade, and sharpened at the
other into a tongue-shaped point, and decorated with tufts of red
_kaka_ feathers; in a plaited flax belt round his waist was thrust a
greenstone _mere_.
Te Ua was the man who taught the Taranaki rebels the _karakia_, or
incantations--some of them a curious medley of Maori and English--which
they chanted in their wild marches round the sacred _Niu_ in their
village squares. These incantations and chants he professed to have
heard from supernatural visitants, the spirits who came on the four
winds, and from the angel Gabriel, who spoke in his ear as he lay
asleep in his _raupo_ hut and bade him go abroad and spread a new
religion, which should band together the tribes of the Maori nation.
Many strange tales Bent had heard about the prophet and his wondrous
_mana_. Te Ua had succeeded in imbuing his fanatic disciples with an
unquestioning Moslem-like faith in the potency of the Hauhau cult and
its accompanying charms and magic formulæ. He was the Mahomet of the
Taranaki people, and exercised an influence over the bush-fighters of
Ngati-Ruanui and allied tribes almost as great as that which Te Kooti,
the Chatham Islands escapee, commanded a few years later amongst the
warriors of the East Coast.
The absolute faith the Hauhaus reposed in Te Ua's precepts and his
pretences to supernatural power has parallels in the records of the
Mahdi's wars in the Soudan, and in other campaigns waged under the
banner of Islam, and more recently still in the Zulu rebellion in
Natal. He assured his followers that when they went into battle the
bullets of the white soldiers would be turned aside in their flight if
they but raised their right hands as if warding the ball off, at the
same time repeating the words "_Hapa! Pai mariré!_" ("Pass over me!
Righteousness and peace!") The expression "_Pai mariré_" was adopted
as one of the designations of the Hauhau religion; and the sign of the
upraised hand became the outward sign and symbol of the warrior faith.
To-day, should you visit the large European-built house of the late
Te Whiti, the Prophet of the Mountain, at Parihaka, you will see a
picture of Te Ua on the wall of the speech-hall, his right hand raised
to his shoulder, palm outwards, as if in the act of invoking his gods
to turn the _pakeha_ bullets aside--"_Hapa! Pai mariré!_" And many a
deluded Hauhau fell to the rifles of the white men before the Maori
confidence in the efficacy of the charm was shaken. But Te Ua had a
very good explanation to offer for any casualties--that if the _pakeha_
bullet refused to be waved aside and insisted on entering the body of a
"righteous and peaceful" son of the faith, it was because the stricken
man had lost faith in the _karakia_--the ritual--and, very properly,
suffered for his unbelief.
A sublimely simple explanation, and one that was perfectly satisfactory
to the prophet and every one concerned, except perhaps the Hauhau who
had happened to stop the bullet.
Even when the glacis of the Sentry Hill redoubt was strewn with the
dead bodies of Hepanaia and fifty of his red-painted braves, the best
manhood of Ngati-Ruanui and Nga-Ruahiné--who fell in a mad attack upon
the walled fort in open daylight chanting their "_Hapa! Pai mariré!
Hau!_"--the faith in Te Ua and his charms was but little abated. And,
unlike the Moslem warrior, who fought to the death in the certain
hope of a speedy translation to Paradise, the Maori fanatic expected
no heavenly reward for his faith and his death-despising ferocity.
No _houris_ with welcoming arms; no eternity of fleshly bliss. No,
it was just utter blind bravery, a sheer trust in a mad creed of
Death-to-the-Whites and Maori Land for the Maori Race.
So the visit of the high-priest of Hauhauism was a great event in the
bush _pa_. The prophet was received with a _powhiri_, or chant and
dance of welcome, by the people of the village; then the _tangi_ and
the doleful hum of weeping for the dead. The _tangi_ over, the prophet
addressed his disciples in the meeting-house; and hearing that there
was a white runaway soldier in the _pa_, he sent for Bent.
It was a curious interview. The white man no longer appeared in the
soldier's uniform, which he had worn for some time after deserting,
but had taken to the garb of the savage. He was bare-headed and
bare-footed. His sole garments were a shirt made of pieces of
blanket and a flax mat tied round his waist. He entered the crowded
council-house and stood before the prophet.
[Illustration: PATARA, A HAUHAU PROPHET.]
"_E noho ki raro_" ("Sit down"), said Te Ua, pointing to the floor-mat
in front of him.
By the prophet's side was a flax basket containing some potatoes and
pork, with which he had been breaking his fast after his journey. This
food being appropriated to his use was, of course, _tapu_ in the eyes
of the assemblage. Te Ua took a potato from the basket, broke it into
two pieces, and gave one piece to Bent and told him to eat it; the
other half he ate himself.
"Now," said the prophet, "you are _tapu_--your life is safe; no man may
harm you now that you have eaten of my sacred food. Men of Tangahoé!
This _pakeha_ is my _pakeha_; and if any other white men should come to
us as this man has done, fleeing from their people and forsaking the
_pakeha_ camps for our _pas_, you must protect them, for the gods have
sent them to us."
"You are a Maori now," added Te Ua to Bent, "and you must have a woman
to cook your food for you."
Bent, in his imperfect Maori, informed the prophet that he had already
been supplied with a wife by the Maoris, but, like a prudent man, made
no comment on her imperfections.
"That's all right then," said the prophet. And he gave Bent a large
cloak of dressed flax, called a _tatara_. "Wear this," he said; "it is
a _tapu_ garment and sacred to you; no other man may wear it."
During the next few days, before Te Ua returned to his home at Opunake,
on the coast, Bent had further interviews with the prophet, who treated
him with kindness, and gave him what was to the runaway a very welcome
present--some _pakeha_ tobacco. Though something of a madman, like most
Maori prophets, Te Ua was of more benevolent spirit than his acolytes,
Kereopa and Patara, and their kin, who had been sent to preach the
gospel of _Pai mariré_ to the outer tribes. Had Kereopa, for instance,
come to Otapawa, Bent would, in all probability, have fallen under the
tomahawk as a sacrifice for the savage ritual of the _Niu_, and his
head would have been smoke-dried and carried over forest-trails from
distant tribe to tribe, or stuck up like a scarecrow on a palisade-pole.
Bent learnt a good deal of the personal history of the prophet, and of
his peculiar delusions. Te Ua had fought the white soldiers at Nukumaru
about a year before this, when a force of Hauhaus made a desperate
attack on the camp of two thousand British troops, under General
Cameron, and killed and wounded nearly fifty soldiers before they were
driven off with the loss of about thirty killed.
The outward and visible sign or incarnation (_aria_) of Te Ua's deity
was a _ruru_, or owl. This bird is sacred amongst Taranaki Natives;
they will not kill or harm one; they say it is an _atua_, a god, and
has a hundred eyes.
An incident which Bent relates as occurring in another bush settlement
where he and Te Ua both happened to be staying is illustrative of the
prophet's peculiar respect for his owl-god. Just at dusk, when the
evening meal was over, and the night creatures began their roamings,
an owl flew softly from the trees and settled above the window of the
house in which Te Ua was sitting. "Ha!" said the prophet, when he saw
it; "there is my _atua_." He recited an incantation, calling the _ruru_
by name, and when the _karakia_ was ended the bird as noiselessly flew
back to the forest. Te Ua said nothing more till the next morning, when
he announced that he would leave the place at once, because his owl-god
had appeared to him as a warning to return to his home.
Soon after the wandering prophet rode out of Otapawa, word reached the
_pa_ by a spy who had been in the British camp that the troops under
General Chute were preparing for an advance against the Hauhaus, and
that it was probable the hill stronghold, being so close to the white
men's base of operations, would shortly be attacked.
All was excitement in the _pa_ when this became known. The palisading
of the _pa_ was strengthened with stout timbers from the forest;
trenches and rifle-pits were dug within the walls. The natives worked
away like mad, and Bent with them. He had caught the fever of the
moment, and in all but skin was a Maori. He was not at all happy,
however, at the news that his old regiment, the 57th, was expected to
march on Otapawa, and he heartily wished himself far away from these
scenes of constant commotion and terror. But for the present he was
safer with the Hauhaus than with the men of his own colour and tongue.
Day after day passed, and the Maoris lay behind their strong stockade
waiting for the attack. The underground food-stores were well supplied;
water was carried in in _taha_, or calabashes, made by scooping out the
soft inside of the _hué_ gourd; bullets were cast and cartridges were
made. Then, as no troops appeared, and the scouts who kept constant
watch on the forest outskirts reported that there was no sign of
immediate action on the part of the enemy, the tension of garrison life
relaxed, and the ordinary avocations of the _kainga_ were resumed.
In a clearing hewn and burnt from the heart of the woods were the
cultivation grounds. Here all the able-bodied men of the fort were
set to work, turning up the rich black soil and planting potatoes,
_kumara_, and _taro_. Planting over, the lengthening days were spent
in hunting wild pigs, and in gathering wild honey, which was plentiful
in hollow trees in the forests; or in strolling, pipe in mouth, about
the _pa_; playing draughts (_kaimu_) on the _marae_ in Maori fashion;
singing songs and narrating old stories and legends. Night and morning
there were long Hauhau prayers, led by the priest of the _pa_, old
Tukino, who was one of Te Ua's apostles.
Life in this bush-fort presented to the lonely _pakeha_ a picture of
barbaric simplicity. Few of the people had European clothing; the men's
working garb was just a rough flax mat hanging from the waist to the
knees. They lived on the wild foods of the forest until their crops
were ready for digging; snared _kaka_ (parrots) and the sweet-tongued
_korimako_, or bell-birds; _tui_, or parson-birds, and the swarming
wood-pigeons, and shot or speared the pigs that abounded in the dense
woods. They lived to a large extent, too, on _aruhe_, or fern-root,
which they dug up in the open patches of fern-land; and in the bush
they gathered the berries of the _hinau_-tree, steeped them in water to
rid them of their astringency, dried them in the sun, and then pounded
them into cakes, which made a sustaining if not very palatable food.
Another food-staple was _kaanga-pirau_, or maize steeped in water until
if was quite decayed. "The smell of this Indian corn," says Bent, with
an emphasis begotten of unpleasant memories, "was enough to kill a dog.
Nevertheless, I had to eat it, and in time I got used to it."
"I had at this time," continues the deserter, recounting his wild days
in Otapawa, "no boots, no trousers, no shirt--just Maori flax mats to
cover me, and a mat and blanket for my bed. I had managed to procure
some needles and thread, together with paper and pencil (I kept up a
sort of diary now and then), and one or two other little things which
I kept in a kit, thinking that, though I had nothing to sew with the
needles and thread, and very little to do with the other belongings,
they might come in useful before very long. One of my greatest troubles
was the want of salt; as for bread, I had not tasted any for many
months."