When the missionaries arrived at Rangihoua in 1814, they needed a form of Māori suitable for translating and teaching the Bible. A group at Cambridge University, led by the linguist Samuel Lee, with assistance from chiefs Hongi Hika and Waikato, and the missionary Thomas Kendall, developed a written form of the language. Literacy spread within the next few decades: “It was estimated that about half the adult Māori could read Māori and a third could also write it by 1859.” (34) There are thousands of documents written in Māori dating to the 19th century. These letters, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, and petitions remain little known and poorly understood. Kinds of Peace—Keith Sinclair’s last work of history before his death in 1993—is a summary of that literature, with particular attention given to the ways in which Māori adapted to the new circumstances in which they found themselves in the world after the Land Wars.

Most Māori still lived on tribal land under the leadership of chiefs. These kāinga sat beyond the reach of Pākehā law, but they were not entirely insular. Māori were aware of what was happening in the rest of New Zealand. They travelled around the country and abroad and could be found working as assessors in courts, as land surveyors, storekeepers, publicans, goldminers, and gumdiggers. They crewed ships and worked in gangs to clear bush, build roads, and shear sheep. Some of the country’s first flour mills and farms were built and operated by Māori.

In 1858—the year the Kingitanga was established—the populations of Māori and Pākehā were roughly equal. Settlements were connected by river or sea and travel was difficult. A massive influx of settlers came in the 1860s and 1870s, assisted by a government immigration scheme and massive investments into public roads, railways, and telegraph lines. Growth slowed—but did not stop—during the economic depression of the 1880s, by which time the Pākehā population had already increased ten-fold. By the end of the century, there were 15 Pākehā for every Māori. Huge amounts of land—Māori land—was wanted for settlement. Private enterprise, hand-in-fist with the settler government, dispossessed Māori of their land in various ways, prompting the three strands of reaction that Keith Sinclair focuses on: the Kingītanga in Waikato; Parihaka in Taranaki; and the rūnanga of Hawkes Bay.

The Kingītanga

The country’s most dramatic fighting occurred between 1860-1863 during the invasion of the Waikato by the British army. This was the heart of the Kingītanga (King movement), formed to unite Māori against the threat of land alienation. After their defeat, large tracts of land were confiscated. An aukati was set down, a border marking where settler country ended and King Country began. King Country stretched from the Waikato River in the east to Aotea Harbour in the west. King Tawhiao of Waikato-Tainui, having lost his primary lands, based himself at Tokangamutu, near Te Kuiti, in Maniapoto territory.

European law ended at the aukati; any who crossed the border did so under the threat of death. Several Europeans were killed in the 1870s and 1880s, usually illegal surveyors. These incidents heightened fear among the settlers, who lived in war-like conditions, with every man armed and a series of blockhouses dotting the countryside. Yet nobody actually wanted another war. The government did not want to upset the steady influx of immigrants and investors, while the Kingites had no power—nor desire—to fight beyond their borders. Indeed, they were already beginning to fracture in the 1870s.

Tawhiao, who had been converted to the Pai Marire religion in 1864, established his own prophetic movement in 1876, claiming descent from King David. Knowledge of the Old Testament was widespread, and Māori often identified with the Jews of the Bible, a similarly tribal and landless people. Tawhiao preached peace, love, and faith. He identified himself with the poor and dispossessed—including Pākehā. At one time he claimed extraordinary powers: “I am the source of the flood waters and the low waters and I am the one to wipe out the things of the earth.” (47)

The government maintained only sporadic contact with the Kingītanga, often through kūpapa chiefs. The word kūpapa is now a slur, used by Māori against Māori who are deemed to be too Pākehā in thought and action, who do not have the interests of their own at heart (it’s akin to calling someone a race traitor or an Uncle Tom). I once attended a lecture in which Monty Soutar offered the following origin for the term. The literal meaning of “kūpapa” is to crouch down to the earth in a surreptitious manner. Kūpapa are those who refused to take a side when the shooting started, and instead just ducked down and hid where they were. In truth, these chiefs had a variety of motives and interests. Some fought with the government. Others stayed neutral. They were also called “friendly chiefs” or “Queenites” (as in the British Queen, as opposed to the Māori king). These terms don’t all mean exactly the same thing, but they are used more or less interchangeably to refer to chiefs who cooperated with the settler government.

Te Wheoro, a relative of King Tawhiao, was one of the most well-known friendly chiefs in his day, often serving as the government’s go-between. In 1876 he provided a lengthy account of his negotiations with the Kingites for Premier George Grey. Successive governments had sought a permanent peace with Tawhiao. They were willing to set aside some land for him, to recognise his authority, to give him a stipend, and to build a house for him. In exchange, Tawhiao had to hand over those who had killed the surveyors.

Tawhiao refused these offers. To hand over the killers would be “an abandonment of his sovereignty and an acknowledgement of the superior claims of the government and its laws.” (51) He did not want to become a pensioner. He certainly didn’t want some random block of land somewhere else: he wanted the lands across the Waikato river, lands he had once occupied, to which he had ancestral claim. But the government couldn’t accommodate this: settlers were already moving into the area of modern Hamilton, Pirongia, and Cambridge.

In 1881, Tawhiao and some 500 of his followers came into the town of Pirongia—then called Alexandra—and lay down their guns in the streets. It was a gesture of peace. Other figures in the King movement were beginning to accept government offers. Ngāti Raukawa and Ngāti Tūwharetoa allowed for land to be purchased and roads to be built. Rewi Maniapoto had a house built for him at Kihikihi, where he ran a gunshop. Manuhiri—also known as Ngapora—took a pension. Tawhiao, meanwhile, continued to reject all offers of compensation on principle. He passed away the next year.

Rūnanga and Repudiation

In theory, Māori had always had the right to vote since the establishment of self-government in 1852, but since voting was conditional on owning freehold land, and most Māori land was held in communal title, few met this qualification. In 1867, Native Minister Donald McLean introduced universal male Māori suffrage for the election of four (later five) Māori members of the House of Representatives.

The Māori members were of limited effectiveness for their first few decades. Most could not speak English to the level needed for parliamentary debate, and speeches were not translated for them. When they spoke Māori, translations into English only became available some weeks after the fact, and were of dubious quality. Some Pākehā politicians could in fact speak Māori, but they did not have a strong grasp of Māori issues, which were anyway of tertiary concern to their (Pākehā) constituents. The Pākehā members could always outvote—hence ignore—any motions put forward by the Māori members.

A vote was still a vote though, and the Māori members did sometimes play crucial roles. When Edward Stafford was returned to the Premiership in 1873, he promised a ministerial position to Wi Parata, as well as the return of confiscated lands in Taranaki. When this didn’t happen, Wi Parata crossed the house to join Julius Vogel’s vote of no confidence, ending the 3rd Stafford Ministry after only a month.

Then—as now—most Māori politics happened outside parliament, in the endless meetings held around the country in pāremata (parliaments), komiti (committees), rūnanga (a tribal assemblies), and hui (meetings, gatherings, or congregations). The idea of inter-tribal cooperation was an old one, but it came and went in different forms, and now a modern form of rūnanga was emerging as the most promising vehicle of political action. The best attested are those of the East Coast, in particular the komiti of Henare Matua, a chief from Porangahau. It had a Māori language periodical called Te Wananga which had been set up and funded by a wealthy Pākehā sympathiser, Henry Russell. Henare Matua was so influential that locals began referring court cases to him. His komiti began to issue fines, seize property, and issue land titles. Though the government shut this down, attempts were made to formally incorporate rūnanga into the structure of local government, and Henare Matua went on to become an influential figure in the Repudiation Movement.

The Repudiation Movement started in Poverty Bay in the 1850s when Māori attempted to return money paid for land in order to get it back. It sought redress and justice for unfair land sales and corrupt institutions. The rūnanga were very successful at mobilising Māori opinion. They sent dozens of petitions to parliament every year, and in 1872 the government finally agreed to establish a commission consisting of Pākehā and Māori (among which Te Wheoro) to examine over 300 complaints.

The report highlighted numerous issues with how the Native Land Court operated. It was supposed to establish who owned which blocks of land, gradually bringing Māori land under the protection of British law and facilitating its sale. Instead, it became the instrument by which Māori were dispossessed. Pākehā who wanted to buy land would apply to the Court. The Court would permit up to ten names to become holders of a piece of communal title, effectively removing the customary rights of the others. All ten had to present evidence before the court to establish title; failure of any to show could result in its forfeiture. Hearings were held in faraway European towns in the English language, which was not widely spoken among Māori in this period. Travel and lodging cost huge amounts. Lawyers and surveyors would extend them credit, but the result either way was that Māori often went into debt and had to sell their land to escape it. Interpreters, chiefs, lawyers, and surveyors were also offered commission from land sales, incentivising them to work on behalf of prospective buyers.

These findings did result in some changes to the law, but the Commission refused to pass judgement on the ethics or legality of any past sales. It had no power to do anything about those anyway, only parliament did, and then—like now—parliament could simply ignore any petitions it didn’t like.

The Native Committees Act 1883 did attempt to integrate the komiti and rūnanga into the Native Land Court by establishing seven advisory boards. The system was ineffectual. In the first place, the Court could simply ignore this advice, but the fact that there were only seven boards brought hapū into conflict with each other. The interests and claims of hapū weren’t always aligned, which meant they had to first navigate their own people onto the regional board, and only could they attempt to influence the Court’s opinion on future land sales. By then, the komiti and rūnanga had already lost most of their momentum. Henare Matua channelled his local influence into a run for the Eastern Māori electorate; he only came third. Despite their vigour and interest, rūnanga did not achieve their political objectives. They were all steam, no hāngī.

Taranaki Hardcore

The Land Wars kicked off in 1859 with the disputed sale of the Waitara block in Taranaki. Conflict flared up again in 1863 and 1868. The government crushed the “rebel” Māori and seized 1.2 million acres of land. These confiscations were indiscriminate: land was taken regardless of whether it belonged to rebels or friendlies. In the case of Ngāti Rāhiri, they complied with the government in temporarily evacuating their land; on returning home after the war, they found that it had been given away to military settlers.

Friendly Māori were supposed to be compensated with money and land set aside for reserves, but after 15 years not one dollar had been paid out. It was only in 1880, when a Royal Commission was established to investigate discontent among Taranaki Māori, that the government began to act on its promises. Their offers of compensation failed for numerous reasons. First, Māori didn’t want to relocate to random, uneconomical blocks of land far away from their actual homes. Effective government control did not exist in the area between Waingorongoro river and New Plymouth, so some of the land offered to friendly Māori was occupied by rebel Māori who weren’t going to budge. The offer of post-hoc payments for confiscated land also confused the matter. It lead Māori to believe that their former territory had been restored—why else would the government be paying them money for it? The result was a massive unlanding of Māori and the rise of two brothers at the settlement of Parihaka.

Te Whiti and Tohu established Parihaka in 1867 with the public endorsement of Te Ua Haumene, the prophet of the Pai Marire movement. Unlike the Pai Marire, the people of Parihaka did not gather around flagpoles, nor perform chants, nor pray. The brothers did acknowledge the existence of God, adopting the manner of Old Testament prophets in teaching that Māori were “the lost sheep of the House of Israel”, soon to be restored to the Promised Land by the Lord. As in the days of the Bible, Māori were oppressed, but they had a great destiny ahead of them as God’s Chosen People.

Parihaka drew in about 1,300 inhabitants from across the land, mostly Māori who had become landless. Even more came to the public meetings held every month on the 17th. Various independent written sources give us a pretty good idea of what was said there. Of the two brothers, Te Whiti was the finer orator. He often spoke in poetic language not easily understood:

Look for the fog the Darkness the smoke
Look It shall shoot forth form these
It shall not come when the sea is smooth but when its water are troubled then it shall strike the Shore
The sign of the Son of God...
(73)

Though the brothers frequently denounced the government and identified it with Satan, they were not racist. They always advocated peace: both had cautioned their followers not to fight the Europeans during the Taranaki war, and they taught that God had ordained a universal peace between the two races. Their community was simple and self-sufficient. They taught sobriety and simple-living. They refused to be moved onto reserves and rejected the authority of Pākehā laws over Māori communities.

Parihaka scared settlers, who believed another rebellion was brewing. Yet the influence of the brothers in South Taranaki was such that no deal could be reached without them. Governor Arthur Gordon, a Māori sympathiser, tried to arrange a meeting with the brothers in 1880, but Te Whiti rebuffed him, cryptically remarking: “Kua maoa e taewa” (the potato is already cooked/ripe). The Governor took this as a no, but couldn’t figure out what it actually meant.

Sinclair’s best guess is that it simply meant that it was too late for negotiations. A similar metaphor was used in 1873 at a meeting of Ngāti Ruanui and Taranaki Māori where the “raw” portion of the potato referred to lands not yet settled by Europeans. Hazel Riseboroug suggests the same meaning, pointing out that raw food is tapu, whereas cooked food is not. Her reasoning misses the fact that the potato, as a European import, was not subject to the same ritual prohibitions as the kūmara: tūtūā and mōkai (commoners and slaves) were permitted to freely grow and handle potatoes. Indeed, the association of the potato with people of lowly status likely explains why Te Whiti—who identified his movement with the poor and the dispossessed—so frequently invoked it. He once styled himself as “Te Whiti who eats potatoes.”

Te government were keen to press on with opening up the Taranaki for settlement. They gave the go-ahead to sell off sections of the Waimate plain. Te Whiti responded with an impressive campaign of passive resistance in which his followers removed the surveyors’ pegs and ploughed up the land. They did not carry weapons. Over 200 were arrested and jailed without trial; special legislation was passed to keep them indefinitely detained.

On 17th September 1881, Te Whiti made a speech which was reported in the Pākehā press as a threat of war. The word he used, “pakanga”, can mean war (Vincent Malley’s book on the New Zealand Wars is called “Ngā pakanga o Aotearoa”). The word can also have a more general meaning, as in the words “struggle”, “strife”, and “conflict” (Te Aka dictionary cites a usage from 1923 in which it was used to refer to the “fighting” of a court case). Though Te Whiti clarified that he had meant “pakanga” in the sense of verbal debate or advocacy, even though he had a history of non-violence, the government took it as a threat, and seized the opportunity to take down Parihaka. Governor Gordon—so reviled for his Māori sympathies that one newspaper dubbed him “His Niggerosity”—was out of the country at the time.

On the 5th of November (Sinclair mistakenly writes “December”), Native Minister John Bryce entered Parihaka with 1,600 armed men. The inhabitants were sitting down, awaiting them. An officer in the Armed Constabulary, Stewart Newall, recorded in his diary that day that the soldiers were greeted by skipping girls. John Bryce summoned Te Whiti, who stepped forward. Bryce demanded that he acknowledge the Queen’s supremacy. When Te Whiti refused, he and Tohu were arrested and detained without trial for the next year and a half. Curiously, Sinclair skips over the fate of Parihaka. The town was burned down, its residents evicted, its contents looted. Hundreds were imprisoned without trial. Parihaka, like this essay, was at its end.