The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 7 (October 1, 1934)
The Surrender of Te Whiti
The Surrender of Te Whiti.
Bryce invaded the native land, after various proclamations, marched into Parihaka with Constabulary and Artillery, had the Riot Act read to a peaceful and silent assembly of some 2000 Maoris seated in the marae of the village, and called upon Te Whiti and Tohu Kakahi to surrender.
The circumstances of that tragic farce, as it has been described, have often been told. The Maori leaders, and in fact all their people behaved with a calmness and dignity strangely at variance with the military strong hand of the autocratic Bryce. Te Whiti and Tohu were dressed in graceful korowai robes, the classic garb of old Maoridom; they eschewed all pakeha clothes that day. It was a dignified act, that reversion to the “kakahu Maori.”
There was dignity and a patience and resignation, in the pathetic leave-taking of Te Whiti and his people. “Even if the bayonet be put to your breasts,” he had counselled them, “do not resist.” They did not resist when the two leaders had gone, and they were dispersed, and drafted' away in detachments, “just like drafting sheep,” as one of the Constabulary officers described it to me. It was written of the Maori assemblage that day that “such completeness of good temper under circumstances of great provocation has never been paralleled in history.”
The prophet Tohu Kakahi, on his way to New Plymouth, after his arrest, November 5, 1881.
(From a drawing by G. Sherriff. Copyright.)
Te Whiti and Tohu were kept in custody by the Government for about two years—without a trial. Te Whiti repeatedly asked for a trial; his request was ignored. It is extraordinary to think that such things should have happened in New Zealand only fifty years ago. But the strong hand was the only law where the Taranaki “fanatics” were concerned. The Government was influenced throughout by West Coast pakeha opinion, which had assumed a kind of frenzy. One perfectly ferocious newspaper editor wrote, in 1879, when Te Whiti's followers were being arrested in parties: “Perhaps, all things considered, the present difficulty will be one of the greatest blessings New Zealand ever experienced, for without doubt it will be a war of extermination… . The time has come, in our minds, when New Zealand must strike for freedom, and this means the death-blow to the Maori race.” So New Zealand struck for “freedom” in the manner prescribed by the warlike editor, and found a perfectly unarmed, peaceful foe, whose little children carried loaves of bread to the troops, and whose most formidable act was a performance by some poi girls who would not get out of the way of the advancing Constabulary.