Postscript

The niu at Kuranui stands as a monument to Pai Marire in the eastern Waikato and Tauranga. It is also a monument to the efforts by military and civil authorities in the 1860s to stamp out a religious and political movement which here, more than anywhere else, was essentially pacifist. It is clear that the pacifist intentions of Pai Marire were not perceived by Europeans, although the evidence was there. In August 1865, the Resident Magistrate at Whatawhata, R.C. Mainwaring, was told by the Native Minister to go to Tamihana to follow up his submission to the government, to persuade him to join the government side, “ heart and soul ” . This memorandum (AJHR E14, 1865) stated:

The line the Government will take is this. They will not interfere with the Hauhaus so long as they confine their operations to the harmless expression of opinion, or the practice of ceremonies within the law; but they are resolved, so soon as in any case that opinion shall appear in the form of open crime, or even a conspiracy to commit crime, to arrest the criminals at once, at any cost and at any risk.

Tamihana, grieving and disillusioned by the bitterness of the war waged against his people and the confiscation of their land, replied to Mainwaring ’ s advances (AJHR El4, 1865):

Let not the Government think that I am now a man of influence, I have no men, all are dead. The people are angry with me for making peace. I am made the subject of songs amongst the men, women and children… The anger of those who have lost relatives is intense.

Mainwaring continued his report of his meeting with Tamihana in September 1865:

He openly told me that neither he nor any other Native approved of the confiscation, and that the subject was never conversed upon amongst themselves… “ We have stood on Maungakawa, we looked down on Horotiu and shed tears, and now the pain is constantly gnawing at our hearts. ”

On Pai Marire, Mainwaring reported Tamihana ’ s attitude:

He told me there was nothing at all in the Pai Marire karakia or service to instigate or encourage men to commit murder or any other crime. That on the contrary the very name of the sect meant nothing more than living quietly and peaceably together. That the outrages recently committed did not originate in the Pai Mari re religion…

Pai Marire was certainly an integrating force in the social disruption and dislocation following the war. There is no doubt that the message of peace and goodwill and its millennial qualities appealed to Tamihana and other Maori leaders of the Waikato and Tauranga. At a meeting at Okahukura, a Ngati Tamatera settlement on the lower Waihou River, attended by Tamihana and other Ngati Haua, E.W. Puckey reported (AJHR E4 1865, p.7) a chief stood up and said: