The sanitised new history says that from the mid-1860s some Hineuru converted to Pai Mārire and Panapa, the Pai Marire leader amongst Hineuru, established a Pai Marire settlement.
The Hineuru settlement summary says:
In 1866 Panapa and the Hineuru rangatira Te Rangihīroa wrote to the Crown that they would come with a party to coastal Hawke’s Bay in response to a Crown invitation to meet. The Crown viewed this party as a threat to the region’s security. In October 1866, after the expiry of an ultimatum calling for their surrender, Crown forces attacked a group of people, including Hineuru, camped at Ōmarunui. On the same day Crown forces also intercepted and surrounded, and then subsequently attacked, another group led by Te Rangihīroa near Pētane. About 35 Māori, including Te Rangihīroa and other Hineuru people, were killed in the two attacks. Crown forces subsequently pursued Hineuru and other Māori, who escaped the attacks, into the Hineuru rohe and plundered the kāinga at Waiparati as well as the surrounding area. By the end of 1866 Hineuru had abandoned nearly all of their kāinga and cultivations due to conflict with the Crown. (1)However, James Cowan, in The New Zealand Wars: The History of the Maori Campaigns and the Pioneering period, published in 1921, wrote:
THE DISTRICT OF Hawke's Bay south of the Wairoa was not seriously troubled by the Hauhau propaganda until late in 1866. Shortly after the Volkner tragedy at Opotiki in 1865 and the arrival of the Pai-marire prophets in the Poverty Bay and East Cape settlements, Mr. Donald McLean (afterwards Sir Donald) and his colleague Mr. J. D. Ormond took measures to influence the Hawke's Bay native chiefs against the spread of Pai-marire in their territory.The sanitised history gives the impression that the wicked 1860s government attacked a harmless group of people who had asked for a meeting, killed many, jailed many more without trial, and took all their land.
The principal rangatiras of Ngati-Kahungunu—the old warriors Tareha, Te Moananui, and Renata Kawepo, supported by Karauria, Karaitiana Takamoana, and others—agreed to do their utmost to stay the spread of Hauhau unrest, which they admitted had permeated some sections of their people. The subjugation of the rebellious faction among Ngati-Porou and the defeat of the Poverty Bay Hauhaus at Waerenga-a-Hika produced a good effect among the small doubtful sections of Ngati-Kahungunu, and in fact the only menace to European settlement on the plains of Hawke's Bay did not come from that tribe, but from an outpost of Hauhauism in the interior, on the mountain-track to the Taupo country.
At the beginning of October 1866, the Ngati-Hineuru Tribe, a small but war-loving clan whose principal villages were Te Haroto and Tarawera—on the present Napier-Taupo Main Road— page 138 set out for the East Coast with the intention of delivering an attack on the Town of Napier. This bold scheme was due chiefly to the fiery counsels of the old warrior Te Rangihiroa, the hereditary head of the clan, and the Pai-marire preachings of a prophet named Panapa; and it had obtained the approval of Rewi Maniapoto and other Kingite leaders, to whom emissaries had been sent from Te Haroto. Panapa had sent spies down to the coast to gain what information they could regarding the likelihood of success in a raid on Napier Town. These men went through the town in the guise of peaceful visitors, ascertained where the barracks were, where the arms and ammunition were kept, and returned to Panapa and Te Rangihiroa with the information. A few days later the Ngati-Hineuru war-party, numbering about eighty men, marched over the range at Titiokura and descended to Pohue and the plains. The “Tekau-ma-rua” (“The Twelve”), as the Hauhau war-band was called, irrespective of its numerical strength, included some wild spirits from other tribes, as far away as the King Country. Besides Te Rangihiroa and Panapa, there were four chiefs of Ngati-Hineuru named Kipa and Kingita (who were Rangihiroa's half-brothers), Nikora, and Petera Kahuroa; with them came a powerful and savage fellow from the eastern shore of Lake Taupo, a big black-bearded man named Te Rangitahau, of whom a good deal will be heard hereafter; he was the principal man of Waipahihi and Waitahanui, and was of the Ngati-Tuwharetoa Tribe. From the Ngati-Maniapoto country there was a young warrior named Peita Kotuku, who had fought in Taranaki in 1860 and was one of the gallant three hundred who held Orakau pa in 1864.
At Te Pohue the force appears to have been joined by recruits from other parts, including some from the Wairoa district, for before a move was made on Napier the total strength was about one hundred and thirty. The column was divided, Panapa going on to Omarunui, on the Tutaekuri River, six miles from Napier Town, with the greater portion of the force, while Te Rangihiroa remained with about twenty-five mounted men. The plan of attack was that Te Rangihiroa was to make a night attack on the town by way of Petane (Bethany), the settlement near the sea on the north side, while Panapa, Nikora, and Te Rangitahau were to deal simultaneously with the out-settlements of pakeha and Maori and then join in the sack of Napier. It was expected that at the same time Wi Hapi and Hauhau sections of Ngati-Kahungunu would march on Porangahau and other settlements in the south of the province. In the event of a successful attack on Napier the Hauhaus in other districts were to rise and descend on the pakeha and the friendly Maoris; the Urewera were expected to page 139 make forays to the plains, and the Waikato Kingites were to renew the war on their frontier. A disaster at Napier, therefore, would have involved many other parts of the country in razzias and bloodshed. (2)
Cowan’s more detailed account shows the other story that the current government and claimants don’t want to talk about. The Hauhaus that Cowan referred to are Pai Mariri.
The Volkner tragedy at Opotiki that Cowan refers to took place on March 1, 1864, when Pai Mariri fanatics hanged missionary Carl Volkner, cut off his head, ate his eyes, drank his blood, and used his head in religious rites and as a means of recruiting followers.
Kingites were those who followed the Waikato-Tainui-Maniapoto Maori king who wanted to drive followers of the British Queen into the sea.
Cowan’s account includes an interview with Peita Kotuku who was one of those captured at Omarunui. His matter-of-fact account of the battle contrasts with the tales of victimhood by his descendants angling for a substantial payout, which they got.
One such victimhood lament came from Labour MP Louisa Wall, who told Parliament that many captives including Hineuru were stripped naked, lined up on the edge of a cliff, and executed. This event in which 120 prisoners were murdered took place at Ngatapa pa near Gisborne on January 4, 1869, nearly three years after the battle at Omarunui.
Hineuru captured after fighting at Omarunui and Petane in 1866 were shipped to the Chatham Islands. On July 4, 1868, they, escaped led by another fanatic cult leader named Te Kooti, with 163 men, 64 women, and 71 children.
Te Kooti’s followers, including Hineuru, murdered 70 people (including 20 Maori) at Matawhero near Gisborne, on November 8, 1868. They murdered a further 56 Ngati Pahauwera and seven settlers at Mohaka, north of Napier on the Gisborne road, on April 10, 1869.
To be quite clear, the so-called good and peaceful Hineuru, who were probably not so good and peaceful in Hawke’s Bay in 1866, were not so good and peaceful when they escaped from the Chatham Islands and followed Te Kooti on his murderous campaigns.
Another aspect of the 1860s armed conflict in New Zealand was that inter-tribal conflict became part of the conflict between disaffected tribes and the government. The execution of unarmed prisoners at Ngatapa was as much to do with old grievances as with the current battle.
A key Maori leader on the government side against Te Kooti was Ngati Porou leader Rapata Wahawaha. He had grown up as a slave to the Rongowhakaata tribe, many of whom became Pai Marire, and many of whom fought for Te Kooti.
Rongowhakaata fighters were terrified of Rapata because they knew he was out for revenge. At Ngatapa, Rapata exacted his revenge. His biography stresses that he only executed “male prisoners taken in arms”.
Militia leaders did not sanction the executions and the leader of colonial troops, Colonel George Whitmore, would have been hard pressed to prevent it because nearly all his soldiers at Ngatapa were Maori. Whitmore did try to prevent the killing of the women and children.
Undoubtedly, MP Louisa Wall and Ngati Hineuru claimants sincerely believe their version of history. Unfortunately, when current oral versions of history are allowed to replace accounts written about 100 years closer to the event we end up with distortions that are being passed into law.
Sources
1.Summary of the historical claims by Ngati Hineuru. https://www.govt.nz/treaty-settlement-documents/ngati-hineuru/hineuru-settlement-summary/background/
2. James Cowan, The New Zealand Wars: The History of the Maori Campaigns and the Pioneering period, http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Cow02NewZ-c14.html
3. Wahawaha, Rapata Te Ara Encyclopaedia of New Zealand.http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1w1/wahawaha-rapata
10 comments:
Sanitised NZ history is being taught in schools, particularly primary schools. My granddaughter is shocked by what she has learnt about her white forebears and feels quite sad when we talk about such things.
The practice of publishing official histories in line with the determination of Waitangi Tribunal settlement recommendations is a particularly insidious form of propaganda that is reminiscent of Stalin's historical revisionism. Fortunately, we live in an age where it is impossible to expunge all records and I am sure future historians will judge these settlement histories with the caution they deserve.
I agree with Ray S and Kiwiwit.
Cultural interests have a tendency to wrap preferred history in a nice basket with ribbons, and unsatisfactory history in a black box with Satan.
There are parallels to Mike’s [ and others] work on Maori history.
I know little enough about the Ho Chi Minh character except that he has been sanitised. The Vietnamese people know only the created myth. He was a communist war monger, likely a paedophile, and created civil war on his own people after the south fell. There are plenty of records of his activity, but the myth of Uncle Ho lives on..
Further back in time we have Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the most sanctified sociopath in all history. He had a cold indifferent personality, rejected his primary family, had mad dreams, and without becoming President he would have just been another psychopath with delusions of grandeur. He also created war on his own Continent to take the independent States by force, inventing on the way an excuse, slavery. He feigned humility,
In an article entitled “ The myth of Abraham Lincoln” author Melford Bradford wrote
it continues to be almost impossible for us to ask certain basic questions about the role of Abraham Lincoln in the formation of a characteristically American politic. At every appropriate point of inquiry, the Lincoln myth obtrudes. Since 1865 no one has denied the extraordinary purchase of that imaginative construct upon the idiom and character of our public life … The truth about the life and death of Lincoln seems to matter very little when it is confronted by the myth
Our Western society is tearing itself apart within the creation of its own myth.
This myth which is in the words of another President we are on the side of history
When in fact he is on the left regressive side of history misusing immigration and his own grandiose imagination.
All praise to Mike Butler and those who write the facts as they are.
Facts to a blinkered nanny State, providing resources for massive historical fraud.
The spade of the Archaeologist and the electronic wizardry of tis technical age are the real improvements to history.
This revisionist is typical of those minorities who are intent on their ideology being accepted. There should be more checks on the schools, to stop this indoctrination which is a repeat of the way Communism infiltrated society.
How anyone can describe Maori as civilized when it was one of the most primitive societies, violent and abusive and virtually for centuries in a Stationery State is beyond being creditable.
That the National Party uses their vote is a disgrace to that Party, and contrary to what we as a people know as democracy.
Brian
"Sanitize" - to make clean and wholesome. This concept is far removed from that of "propaganda" and is often unwisely used in the context of challenging blatant b... s... Otherwise, I am greatly edified by Mark's detailed research.
My great grandfather James Howard Nash Strong was a storekeeper near Matawhero at that time and only narrowly survived the massacre when Te Kooti landed from the Chathams. He was part of the force at Nagatapa lead by Whitmore but actually under the command of Ropata. The idea that a small number of local militia could have stopped the deaths of those of Te Kooti's men captured being executed by Ropata and the Ngati Pouro is just laughable. This was to a large degree an inter-tribal matter.
There is a letter from my great-grandfather in the back of Vol.2 or James Cowan's book with regard to this whole incident. Cowan spoke Maori fluently and was able to talk to all of the survivors involved and his book although sneered at by historians like Belich can be regarded as reliable in my opinion.
The TOW tribunal ruled on this matter and condemned both sides saying the Europeans present could have stopped the incident and that both sides were at fault in not observing the Treaty! Shows how out of touch they really are.
Democracy requires the electorate to get informed before they vote. Unfortunately New Zealand has one of the most ignorant,naive,apathetic electorates in the world. Thanks to a foreign owned mass media and any form of real journalism in the main stream. Most kiwis will literally run from you if you try to inform them of anything political.
This is the problem with having the Waitangi Tribunal hearing these claims under the Treaty of Waitangi and worse still, the Principles of the Treaty.
The Treaty of Waitangi only gave Britain sovereignty over all the Island of New Zealand and tangata Maori the same rights as the people of England. No more, no less!
Queen Victoria and/or Lt. Governor Hobson did not have the power or authority to give tangata Maori any special rights or advantages in the Treaty that were not already enjoyed by all the people of England and none were give.
The Treaty of Waitangi had achieved its purpose by the 21 May 1840, five months after it was first signed at Waitangi on the 6 February 1840 when New Zealand came under the dependency and laws of New South Wales and it was filed away where it should have remained.
Queen Victoria Royal Charter/Letters Patent dated the 16 November 1840 authorised New Zealand to separate from New South Wales with its own Governor and Constitution to form a Government to make laws with courts and judges to enforce those laws, irrespective of race, colour or creed. The Royal Charter our 'true' Founding Document and 'first' Constitution came into force on the 3 May 1841 when New Zealand became an independent British Colony.
Any claims by Maori against the Crown can only be breaches of the laws of New Zealand, not the Treaty of Waitangi as tangata Maori became British Subjects under English law.
Unfortunately, Queen Victoria's Royal Charter/Letters Patent has been completely ignored by the Crown, the Government, our Minister, legislators and historians and the reason why the New Zealand Crown continues to allow Maori to claim under the Treaty of Waitangi in the Waitangi Tribunal and not in the courts where all the facts would be laid before a judge and the public could participate and appeal a decision.
pakeha should have their own paid advocates
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