BACKBLOCK SETTLERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 85, 11 April 1925, Page 27

BACKBLOCK SETTLERS.

EARLY TARANAKI DAYS. (By W. K. HO WITT.) No. XI. Xie first decade of my life was epent . very far from the Maori strongly Id of Farihaka, where Te Whiti and his 'j n Tohu held sway for so long, and ha / a remarkable influence over the minds of their followers. They disturbed this country for a long period of years, whiclj culminated in their arrest in 1881 by the late Hon. John Bryce, who was Vative Minister at the time, and a large force of colonial volunteers who had been brought together from all parts of tbe country to show Te Whiti that he could not go on disturbing the country he was doing, and that the white people were now gathering strength and S-erenot willing that he disturb the peace, and that Queen Victoria's! "nana" was supreme. As boys we were yery familiar with Te Whiti'3 appearance, and when we became old enough to realise his power, and his importance among his own people, he must have been about fifty years of age. He was about s ix feet in height, and perhaps between thirteen and fourteen stone in weight. He had a very high forehead, which did not recede backwards like many of the old-time Maoris, the top of whose heads teemed sometimes to almost reach to a point. He had very heavy eyebrows, from under which he looked out with very keen piercing eyes. He had a big nose inclined to be flat, but taking him all in all he was a good-looking Maori, and jad that square kind of head which Britishers always associate with power and influence. He had very broad shoulders and was of that active nervous temperament which was so common with many of the old Maori leaders. When strength of body is combined with nervous force there is generally something doing, and in Te Whiti's case there was. Te Whiti was not a blood-thirsty old rebel like many of those who lived within the bounds of his pa. It is hard to think, when we consider the methods he used to keep his followers within his power, that he ever fired a shot from afar. We were drawn to him in a way that few Maoris could influence U3, and there is always eomething good in those who attract young. N people. He liked children, and spoilt, in the modern sense, his own son, Willie Tβ Whiti, whose every wish was gratified. Te Whiti was a great reader, and he knew his Bible, and he had read "£he saying of the greatest teacher whomever visited this earth, who said: "Suffer little children to come unto .There was a something about Te Whiti that was attractive, and outsiders believed that he knew of hi-s own magnetic power. Had he practised mesmerism he could have held many people under his sway. When he delivered his long orations on the seventeenth of each month, he commanded' attention and spoke .in parables to those who listened. Hβ had a wonderful influence over women, and they would have died rather than desert him when the hour of his weakness came, but he held up his finger and they obeyed him, and sat still while he was taken away. He used to make men do work which women were accustomed to do and in this, as far as the Maoris were concerned, he was a long way ahead of his time. If there were really prophets amongst the Maoris, Te Whiti was one. He was a mystic, and he was a gtudent, and TTroin 'Xime to time he swayed his followers by , giving expreseion to hi-s concentrated thought. Te Whiti was undoubtedly a very: attractive, if elusive, personality, of great force of character and powers of persuasion, and that is how he gained his power over his followers. One of the worst features of Parihaka was that so many Maoris of bad character were harboured there and were led to believe that the prophet's power was so great that no harm would ever come to them, or that they would ever be taken. Hiroki, the murderer who shot Trooper McLean, was one of the worst amongst Parihaka's inhabitants, and when Bryce made his raid on the pa, one of the first things he did was to secure Hiroki. This rascal was so imbued with Te Whiti'a protecting power that he willingly agreed to arrest, believing that somehow the prophet's miraculous power would, finally liberate him from the bonds of the white people. After Te Whiti and Tohu were taken to the South Island as prisoners of the Government, Hiroki was tried in New Plymouth and was hanged in the gaol there. When Te Whiti' heard of the execution he would not partake of any food during the whole of that day, because, clever man that he was, he realised that Hiroki, the man whom he had promised would never have a hair of his head touched by the pakeha, had had a rope put around his neck and hanged till he was dead. He must have reflected too, how he himself and Tohu, his faithful henchman, were prisoners in the South. Island away from his stronghold and his people were as a lot of sheep without a shepherd. We used to hear the settlers saying that Te Whiti would eventually surmount all his difficulties as far as his own followers were concerned and that he found an answer to all his difficulties and persecutions by turning up the Bible, reading there the persecutions as foretold by the prophets. His teaching was founded on a strange mixture of Maori superstition and Old Testament scripture. When Te Whiti died on Monday, November 18, 1907, it happened that we had not long returned from a sojourn of some years' stay in the Highlands of Scotland, not very far from Balmoral, the King's Highland home, and were living on the southern slopes of Mt. Egmont, about thirty miles from Parihaka. My wife and myself drove to his funeral just Bix days afterwards. Te Whiti was an old man at the time of his death, and it was just 25 years since he had been Teleased from custody and the pa where ne had lived so long wa3 still a place of considerable importance, and I could notice after a lapse of a great many years, that a great many modern conveniences had been provided. Special provision had been made for the Europeans who had gathered to the iunera.l and a splendid repast had been provided for. them, cooked in the large bakers oven which had for rears cooked the food for many a feast, fe Whiti was rofi mUOh State and a w fine dXf \ r en , P rovided - There was no MsH 0U i t,e &*** of bis people "at his death, their mourning was genuine Tos S TJ e L° nl £ a few ? e ™ Piously Tohu had been buried in a bfanket be-, vantP^ti 1 man of th * people, who X P,£ tody t0 miD - le ™ th * he dust was th \ 8 !°° n as P° 3sible - Te Whiti ireat leader ummertESf * a