Te Kuiti – The Convergence
Aotearoa
–
Te Kuiti o nga whakaaro e te iwi – The
convergence of thoughts of the people.
Profile Te Kooti
By Leo Fowler
PARDONED
Te Kooti Rikirangi te Turuki at the time of his death
in 1893, had been pardoned for 10 years and lived with his followers at Ohiwa,
in the
Five hundred pounds was a lot of money in those days.
For nearly four years he had pursued by Pakeha and pro-government Maaori forces
had beaten them off, evaded or counter raided them with such effect as to evade
capture.
He retreated to the King Country where Tawhiao,
Taonui, Wahanui and other Waikato-Maniapoto chiefs granted him asylum. In
recognition of this he supervised the carving of the Meeting house near Te
Kuiti. This house named Te Tokanga nui a noho, still standing today.
DENOUNCED
Te Kooti was denounced a rebel, a brigand and a mass
murderer. He was alomose invariably presented as one of the worst “baddies” in
our short island history.
Not much is recorded about Te Kooti. Strangely
enough, a good deal of the recorded fact is in his favour. But there are
presentations of the Te Kooti story.
Most of those who fought against him wrote a story of
the campaign as they saw it affected them. Colonel Porter in his life of Ropata
Wahawaha. Gudgeon Whitmore, Tuta Nihoniho, Gascoyne and Bishop W.L Williams all
wrote their stories many years after the events. None of them was
disinterested.
There is no wish to denigrate the value of these
writings as records of the times and its attitudes. There are valuable sources.
They are not however the only sources and they are not history as historians
understand it.
The bias of the authors is evident in the coloured
language they use – “miscreant,” “fiend,” bloodthirsty scoundrel,”. Lambert in
his “ History of old Wairoa and the East Coast”, is barely able to conceal his
emotive hostility when he writes of the Hauhau and of Te Kooti.
Feelings ran very high a hundred years ago. The
Maaori was not highly regarded by the Pakeha, as one can easily judge from the
terms in even the more responsible newspapers of the day. As far as race
relations were concerned the early new Zealand settler would have found himself
emotionally and ideologically quite at home in Modern South Africa or Rhodesia.
And for the same reason. The well-being and economic
welfare of settlers could not be assured without the acquisition of Maaori land
– the exploitation of thousands of acres of bushland which the Maaori regarded
as economically and traditionally sacrosanct.
TARRED
To speak in favour of Maaori “rights” was to court
disfavour, if not worse. There are published accounts of Pakeha being tarred
and feathered for suggesting that the “rebels” might have some right on their
side.
Yet what we might call the evidence for the defence
was not lacking. The pages of Hansard are richly studded with it. Many
prominent persons and many less prominent both Pakeha and Maaori, protested
against the deportation of Te Kooti without trial.
In the atmosphere of that day, such accounts failed
to gain publicity, but the evidence was survived. I have met many Maaori and
Pakeha people who from their own experiences or stories handed down from their
parents, spoke highly of Te Kooti. If he were on trial today, there would be
ample evidence to acquit him of most of the charges against him.
Nobody will deny or defend the Matawhero or Mohaka
massacres. They were brutal butchery. But they should be seen in the light of
their times.
Both Te Kooti and his famous opponent Major Ropata
Wahawaha, had their childhood and early youth in pre Pakeha and early Pakeha
times. Both had to known and Ropata had participated in tribal warfare wherein
cannibalism was practised and what today would be called atrocities were part
and parcel of everyday behaviour.
MASSACRES
Te Kooti and his followers killed some 30 Europeans
and as many Maaori at Matawhero and some 50 Maaori at Mohaka. Major Ropata
Wahawaha according to his friend and biographer, Colonel Porter, shot 163
prisoners after the storming of Ngatapa. Men women and children, “he stoodthem
on the edge of the cliff and shot them.”
The fiercely partisan accounts of contemporary
writers are not, today taken as literally as they once were. It is generally
conceded that there was wrong, as well as right, on both sides. A modern
assessment of Te Kooti shows him to be a man to whom great wrongs were done and
who accomplished great feats in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.
What is of importance is that the change in the
assessment of a great Maaori nationalist leader came about in the short space
of the lifetime of the late Mrs Piki smith, Te Kooti’s granddaughter, who
passed away in her 83rd year. When the centenary of his
To look around the world today, is to be thankful
that the bitterness of history has left little abiding mark on the present
generation of New Zealanders, whether Maaori or Pakeha. When the centenary of
Te Tokanga nui a noho meeting house is celebrated, leading figures of both the
Pakeha and Maaori world will come together. Were they alive then, it would be a
considerable satisfaction to the great Maaori figures of a century ago, to hear
in what altered terms their accomplishments and ideas are referred to by the
descendants of those who were once their implacable foes.
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