[CHAPTER V]
TE UA, PRIEST AND PROPHET
Te Ua and his gods—The Pai mariré faith—"Charming" the British bullets—Bent's interview with the prophet—His life tapu'd—Preparing for battle—Life in the forest pa.
About this time Kimble Bent became acquainted with a man whose name has passed into New Zealand history. This was Te Ua Haumene, the founder and high-priest and prophet of the Hauhau religion, or, more correctly speaking, fanaticism. Te Ua came riding into the Otapawa village one day with a bodyguard of armed men. Bent describes him as a stoutly built man of between forty and fifty, attired in European clothing, and carrying a carved taiaha—a chief's halbert or broadsword of hardwood, flattened at one end in a blunt blade, and sharpened at the other into a tongue-shaped point, and decorated with tufts of red kaka feathers; in a plaited flax belt round his waist was thrust a greenstone mere.
Te Ua was the man who taught the Taranaki rebels the karakia, or incantations—some of them a curious medley of Maori and English—which they chanted in their wild marches round the sacred Niu in their village squares. These incantations and chants he professed to have heard from supernatural visitants, the spirits who came on the four winds, and from the angel Gabriel, who spoke in his ear as he lay asleep in his raupo hut and bade him go abroad and spread a new religion, which should band together the tribes of the Maori nation. Many strange tales Bent had heard about the prophet and his wondrous mana. Te Ua had succeeded in imbuing his fanatic disciples with an unquestioning Moslem-like faith in the potency of the Hauhau cult and its accompanying charms and magic formulæ. He was the Mahomet of the Taranaki people, and exercised an influence over the bush-fighters of Ngati-Ruanui and allied tribes almost as great as that which Te Kooti, the Chatham Islands escapee, commanded a few years later amongst the warriors of the East Coast.
The absolute faith the Hauhaus reposed in Te Ua's precepts and his pretences to supernatural power has parallels in the records of the Mahdi's wars in the Soudan, and in other campaigns waged under the banner of Islam, and more recently still in the Zulu rebellion in Natal. He assured his followers that when they went into battle the bullets of the white soldiers would be turned aside in their flight if they but raised their right hands as if warding the ball off, at the same time repeating the words "Hapa! Pai mariré!" ("Pass over me! Righteousness and peace!") The expression "Pai mariré" was adopted as one of the designations of the Hauhau religion; and the sign of the upraised hand became the outward sign and symbol of the warrior faith. To-day, should you visit the large European-built house of the late Te Whiti, the Prophet of the Mountain, at Parihaka, you will see a picture of Te Ua on the wall of the speech-hall, his right hand raised to his shoulder, palm outwards, as if in the act of invoking his gods to turn the pakeha bullets aside—"Hapa! Pai mariré!" And many a deluded Hauhau fell to the rifles of the white men before the Maori confidence in the efficacy of the charm was shaken. But Te Ua had a very good explanation to offer for any casualties—that if the pakeha bullet refused to be waved aside and insisted on entering the body of a "righteous and peaceful" son of the faith, it was because the stricken man had lost faith in the karakia—the ritual—and, very properly, suffered for his unbelief.
A sublimely simple explanation, and one that was perfectly satisfactory to the prophet and every one concerned, except perhaps the Hauhau who had happened to stop the bullet.
Even when the glacis of the Sentry Hill redoubt was strewn with the dead bodies of Hepanaia and fifty of his red-painted braves, the best manhood of Ngati-Ruanui and Nga-Ruahiné—who fell in a mad attack upon the walled fort in open daylight chanting their "Hapa! Pai mariré! Hau!"—the faith in Te Ua and his charms was but little abated. And, unlike the Moslem warrior, who fought to the death in the certain hope of a speedy translation to Paradise, the Maori fanatic expected no heavenly reward for his faith and his death-despising ferocity. No houris with welcoming arms; no eternity of fleshly bliss. No, it was just utter blind bravery, a sheer trust in a mad creed of Death-to-the-Whites and Maori Land for the Maori Race.
So the visit of the high-priest of Hauhauism was a great event in the bush pa. The prophet was received with a powhiri, or chant and dance of welcome, by the people of the village; then the tangi and the doleful hum of weeping for the dead. The tangi over, the prophet addressed his disciples in the meeting-house; and hearing that there was a white runaway soldier in the pa, he sent for Bent.
It was a curious interview. The white man no longer appeared in the soldier's uniform, which he had worn for some time after deserting, but had taken to the garb of the savage. He was bare-headed and bare-footed. His sole garments were a shirt made of pieces of blanket and a flax mat tied round his waist. He entered the crowded council-house and stood before the prophet.