Parihaka

About

Parihaka is a community in the Taranaki region of New Zealand, located between Mount Taranaki and the Tasman Sea. In the 1870s and 1880s the settlement, then reputed to be the largest Māori village in New Zealand, became the centre of a major campaign of non-violent resistance to European occupation of confiscated land in the area. Armed soldiers were sent in and arrested the peaceful resistance leaders and many of the Maori residents, often holding them in jail for months without trials. The village was founded about 1866 by Māori chiefs Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi on land seized by the government during the post-New Zealand Wars land confiscations of the 1860s. The population of the village grew to more than 2,000, attracting Māori who had been dispossessed of their land by confiscations and impressing European visitors with its cleanliness and industry, and its extensive cultivations producing cash crops as well as food sufficient to feed its inhabitants. When an influx of European settlers in Taranaki created a demand for farmland that outstripped the availability, the Grey government stepped up efforts to secure title to land it had confiscated but subsequently not taken...

The local Parihaka marae now features the Rangikapuia, Te Niho, Toroānui and Mahikuare meeting houses. It is a tribal meeting ground for the Taranaki hapū of Ngāti Haupoto and Ngāti Moeahu.

In October 2020, the Government committed $457,693 from the Provincial Growth Fund to upgrade the Toroānui meeting house, creating 6 jobs.

The Parihaka settlement was founded about 1866, at the close of the Second Taranaki War and a year after almost all Māori land in Taranaki had been confiscated by the Government to punish "rebel" Māori. The settlement was established by a Māori chief and veteran of the Taranaki wars, Te Whiti o Rongomai, as a means of distancing themselves from European contact and association with warlike groups of Māori. The pā was set in sight of Mt Taranaki and the sea, in a clearing ringed by low hills and beside a stream known as Waitotoroa (water of long blood). He was joined by a fellow chief, Tohu Kākahi and a close kinsman, Te Whetu. Later that year King Tāwhiao sent 12 "apostles" to live at Parihaka to strengthen the bonds between the Waikato and Taranaki Māori who were opposed to further land sales to the government or white settlers. Within a year the settlement had grown to house more than 100 large thatched whare (houses) around two marae and by 1871 the population was reported to be 300. The Taranaki Medical Officer visited in 1871 and reported food in abundance, good cookhouses and an absence of disease. It was the cleanest, best-kept pā he had ever visited and its inhabitants "the finest race of men I have ever seen in New Zealand". Large meetings were held monthly, where Te Whiti warned of increasing levels of bribery and corruption to coerce Māori to sell their land, yet European visitors continued to be welcomed with dignity, courtesy and hospitality.

By the end of the 1870s, it had a population of about 1500 and was being described as the most populous and prosperous Māori settlement in the country. It had its own police force, bakery and bank, used advanced agricultural machinery, and organised large teams who worked the coast and bush to harvest enough seafood and game to feed the thousands who came to the meetings. When journalists visited Parihaka in October 1881, a month before the brutal government raid that destroyed it, they found "square miles of potato, melon and cabbage fields around Parihaka; they stretched on every side, and acres and acres of the land show the results of great industry and care". The village was described as "an enormous native town of quiet and imposing character" with "regular streets of houses".

In June 1868 hostilities resumed in Taranaki as a Ngāti Ruanui chief, Riwha Tītokowaru, launched a series of effective raids on settlers and government troops in an effort to block the occupation of Māori land. Te Whiti remained neutral during the nine-month-long war, neither helping nor hindering Tītokowaru. When the war ended with Titokowaru's withdrawal in March 1869, Te Whiti declared the year to be te tau o te takahanga, "the year of the trampling underfoot", during which kings, queens, governors and governments would be trampled by Parihaka. He told a meeting there would be a new era of "fighting peace" with no surrender of land and no loss of independence. He also declared that because they had remained independent during the recent war, the confiscation of their land for being "rebellious British subjects" was unjust, invalid and void. Te Whiti's announcement at the meeting was reported to Premier Edward Stafford by Taranaki Land Purchase Officer Robert Reid Parris, who described him as "this young chief whose influence was strong in the province and with Tawhiao".

In 1872 the Government acknowledged that although all Māori land in Taranaki had been confiscated, most of it had effectively fallen back into Māori ownership because so little had been settled by Europeans. As a result, the Government began buying back the land, including reserves and land given as compensation for wrongful confiscation.

As Te Whiti continued to reject the offers, however, European anger towards Parihaka grew, fuelling calls for his "dangerous" movement to be suppressed. Newspapers and government agents that had earlier praised him as peaceful and amiable began describing him as a "fanatic" who gave "rambling", "unintelligible" and "blasphemous" speeches, producing a "baneful influence".

By the mid-1870s, Taranaki was enjoying a rapid growth in immigration, with the founding of Inglewood and other farming towns, the creation of inland roads as far south as Stratford and a rail link from New Plymouth to Waitara. In mid-1878, as the provincial government pressured the Government for more land, Colonial Treasurer John Ballance advocated the survey and sale by force of the Waimate Plains of South Taranaki. Cabinet members expected to raise £500,000 for government coffers from the sale. In June Premier Sir George Grey and Native Minister John Sheehan held a big meeting at Waitara to dispense "gifts" including tinned fruits and jam, alcohol, clothing and perfume to Taranaki chiefs willing to sell. Neither Te Whiti nor Tawhiao attended, so Sheehan visited Parihaka and then the Waimate Plains, where he appeared to have persuaded Tītokowaru to permit land to be surveyed on the proviso that burial places, cultivations and fishing grounds would be respected and that fenced reserves would be created.

Māori unease mounted as the surveying progressed, with little sign of the promised reserves. In February 1879 surveyors began cutting lines through cultivations and fences and trampling cash crops and also ran a road into Tītokowaru's own settlement. Māori retaliated by uprooting kilometres of survey pegs. Sheehan rode to Parihaka to justify the government's actions, but left after being verbally abused by Te Whiti. The next day, 24 March 1879, Te Whiti ordered his men to remove all the surveyors from the Waimate Plains. Though the surveyors would not leave of their own accord, the Māori quietly packed up each survey camp, loaded horses and drays and carted everything back across the Waingongoro River, between Manaia and Hāwera.

Hectored by the settler press, which claimed extra farmland was needed and that "these lands should no longer be retained by turbulent, semi-barbarous people, too idle to put them to any use", the Government on 26 March began advertising the sale of the first 16,000 acres (65 km 2 ) of the Waimate Plains. On 24 April it announced the sale was postponed indefinitely. Sheehan determined to find out what had been promised to Māori and whether this was the cause of the interruption to the survey. Still, however, the Government refused to confirm its promise of reserves.

Monthly meetings at Parihaka attracted Māori from all over New Zealand and let was set aside for each tribe to have its own marae, meeting house and cluster of whares throughout the village. As the population grew, so did the industriousness, with cultivations over a wider area and more than 100 bullocks, 10 horses and 44 carts in use. Yet the gatherings continued to disturb settlers, who in late May called on Grey to boost Taranaki's armed constabulary, claiming they were "living in a condition of constant menace", in fear of their lives and "utterly at the mercy of the Natives". Māori in Ōpunake had begun ploughing up and fencing off settlers' fields, and threatening to take over the flour mill. Residents at Hawera were convinced war would be commenced "at any moment" and the Patea Mail urged a new "war of extermination" be waged against the Māori: "Justice demands these bloodthirsty fanatics should be returned to the dust... the time has come, in our minds, when New Zealand must strike for freedom, and this means the death blow to the Māori race."

On 26 May 1879 those bullocks and horses began to be put to use ploughing long furrows through the grassland of white settler farmers – first at Ōakura and later throughout Taranaki, from Hāwera in the south to Pukearuhe in the north. Most of the land had earlier been confiscated from Māori. Te Whiti insisted the ploughing was directed not against the settlers, but to force a declaration of policy from the Government, but farmers were incensed, threatening to shoot the ploughmen and their horses if they did not desist. Magistrates in Patea County advised Grey that Māori had 10 days to stop "molesting property" or they would be "shot down", while MP Major Harry Atkinson encouraged farmers to enrol as volunteers and militia soldiers. He promised to upgrade their rifles and was reported in the Taranaki Herald as saying "he hoped if war did come, the natives would be exterminated". At Hawera a group of 100 armed vigilantes confronted ploughmen, but were talked out of violence by those they had come to threaten.

On 29 June the armed constabulary began arresting the ploughmen. Large squads pounced on the ploughing parties, who offered no resistance. Dozens a day were arrested, but their places were immediately taken by others who had travelled from as far away as Waikanae. Te Whiti directed that those of the greatest mana, or prestige, should be the first to put their hands to the ploughshares, so among the first arrested were the prominent figures Tītokowaru, Te Iki and Matakatea. As Taranaki jails became full, ploughmen were sent to the Mt Cook barracks in Wellington. By August almost 200 prisoners had been taken. By then, however, the protest action seemed to be having some success, with Sheehan, the Native Minister, telling Parliament on 23 July: "I was not aware...what the exact position of those lands on the west coast was. It has only been made clear to us by the interruption of the surveys. It turns out that from the White Cliffs to Waitōtara the whole country is strewn with unfulfilled promises." A former Native Minister, Dr Daniel Pollen, also warned of the consequences of firmer government action against the Parihaka ploughmen: "I warn my honourable friend that there are behind Te Whiti not two hundred men, but a great many times two hundred men." All the prisons of New Zealand would not be big enough to hold them, he warned.

On 10 August leading pro-government chiefs issued a proclamation to all tribes of New Zealand calling on the government to halt surveys of disputed lands and on Māori to end their action in claiming those lands. The proclamation also proposed testing the legality of the confiscations in the Supreme Court. Te Whiti agreed to a truce and by the end of the month the ploughing ended.

The first 40 ploughmen were brought before court in July, charged with malicious injury to property, forcible entry and riot. They were sentenced to two months' hard labour and ordered to either pay a £600 surety for 12 months' good behaviour following their release or—if they could not raise the money—be imprisoned in Dunedin jail for 12 months. The Government declined to lay charges against any of the remaining 180 protesters, but also refused to release them. Colonial Minister and Defence Minister Colonel George S. Whitmore, who had led colonial forces against Titokowaru in 1868–69, admitted it was necessary to bend the law to keep the protesters incarcerated, fearing they would be released by the Supreme Court if they went on trial. The Grey government was on the point of collapse following a series of no-confidence motions, but to provide a legal backing for its move rushed the Maori Prisoners' Trial Bill through both Houses on the final day of its session in office, Whitmore justifying the haste by claiming the "actual safety of the country and of the lives and property of its loyal subjects" was at stake. No translation of the legislation was provided, despite protests by Māori MPs. The new law provided that the detainees were to be brought to trial anywhere in the colony on a date nominated by the Governor within 30 days of the opening of the next session of parliament.

The new Hall Government was formed in October 1879 and promptly introduced more legislation to deal with the "Parihaka question". On 19 December the Confiscated Land Inquiry and Maori Prisoners' Trials Act was passed into law. The Act provided for an "inquiry into alleged grievances of Aboriginal Natives in relation to certain lands taken by the Crown"—the confiscated territory in Taranaki—and it also enabled the Governor to postpone the trials of the Māori prisoners, who had been scheduled to appear at the Supreme Court in Wellington in late December. John Bryce, the new Native Minister, told Parliament he did not attach much importance to the idea of inquiring into Māori grievances; Sheehan, his predecessor, admitted there were many unfulfilled promises and that the west coast people had enough grievances to justify what they had done, but said it was in their interests to suffer "mild confinement" until the government had settled the question.

A new trial date was set—5 April 1880 in Wellington—but in January 1880 the government quietly moved all the prisoners to the South Island, incarcerating them in jails in Dunedin, Hokitika, Lyttelton and Ripapa Island in Canterbury. The move prompted Hōne Tāwhai, the member for Northern Maori, to remark: "I cannot help thinking that they must have been taken there in order that they might be got rid of, and that they might perish there." In late March the trial date was put back to 5 July; in late June it was moved again to 26 July.

Many of the prisoners had already been in jail for 13 months when, on 14 July 1880 Bryce introduced the Maori Prisoners' Bill designed to postpone their trial indefinitely. Bryce, who prided himself on plain talk, told Parliament it was "a farce to talk of trying these prisoners for the offences for which they were charged... if they had been convicted in all probability they would not have got more than 24 hours' imprisonment. In the Bill we drop that provision in regard to the trial altogether." The new legislation declared that all those in jail were now deemed to have been lawfully arrested and to be in lawful custody and decreed that "no Court, Judge, Justices of the Peace or other person shall during the continuance of this Act discharge, bail or liberate the said Natives".

Sheehan, meanwhile, claimed Te Whiti's people were wavering and would soon break up, while Bryce declared the end game was within sight: "I fully expect, in the course of next summer, to see hundreds of settlers on these plains."