Solomon's Song (6 page)

With her words and her laughter and her permission to love her free of the constraints of Maggie’s memory, she withdraws and lies beside him and Hawk enters her again and now he releases his sadness and his grief for his sweet Maggie and for Tommo’s death in Hinetitama’s wild and generous loving.

‘Ah, Black Hawk, I was wrong,’ Hinetitama sighs at last. ‘The pakeha woman with the bird in her hair, this Maggie, has taught you well how to please a wahine.’ Her lips brush his face lightly and then she rises and picks up her feathered cloak from beside his rush bed and he watches as she moves silently out into the moonlit compound.

‘Thank you,’ Hawk calls softly after her. ‘Thank you, Hinetitama.’

HINETITAMA

1881-1885

At twenty-one Tommo’s half-caste daughter is a great beauty with skin the colour of wild honey and hair dark as a raven’s wing. She is small, no more than five feet and one inch, but despite her diminutive frame she has a contralto voice of great power and of a most serene beauty. But from all these gifts from a generous God must be subtracted a spirit headstrong and wilful and a nature as wild as her father Tommo’s once was.

Hawk has kept his promise to Tommo that his daughter will be raised to maturity within the household of Chief Tamihana but when she is six years old Hawk’s dear friend and Hinetitama’s Maori guardian dies and Tommo’s daughter is cared for by Chief Mahuta Tawhiao, with the old chief’s daughter given responsibility for the young child’s daily care.

When Tamihana knew he was coming to the end of his life he wrote to Hawk. The letter is unusual because the old chief, in a missive so serious, appended a note mentioning women’s matters, in particular those of a child.

Though Chief Tamihana could well have instructed the letter be sent to Hawk in Tasmania, he wanted his old friend to read it on Maori land while he and his ancestors could look over his shoulder. Hawk was to receive it on his next annual trip to New Zealand to see Hinetitama and to supervise the purchase of more land. The letter, intended for posterity, had been carefully scripted while the note was in the old chief’s mission-taught handwriting.

April 1866

My friend Black Hawk,

We shall no longer sit together by the evening fire or eat again from the same pot. I have now seen sixty summers and it is time for me to join my ancestors.

I am writing this letter to you, Black Maori, so that you will hold my life on the page and be its custodian and then, perhaps some day, history will judge me for what I tried to do and failed.

I have had a long life for a Maori man, who does not often see his hair turn white, and who is usually dead while his seed is still strong in his loins. In my time too many of our brace young men have died for some foolish tribal war fought out of false pride or from seeking retribution for some imagined insult.

When I was a boy my father sent me to the missionaries to learn the white man’s language and his ways. ‘You must see if they have lessons for us,’ he instructed.

I studied hard and learned to read and write and spent much time with the pakeha’s Bible. I learned that it was a good book from a merciful God and I found it so myself. But I was soon to discover that it was the white man’s Sunday book only and all the remaining days of the week the pakeha felt free to disobey the commandments of his own God.

It was then that I first realised that the pakeha’s word could not be trusted, not even on Sunday, for it was not founded in his mana. That his God was good only for births and burials and his word was as worthless as a broken pot.

I knew then that the Treaty of Waitangi was like the white man’s word, and that the Maori would never have justice under the pakeha Queen Victoria or the laws she makes.

When I came to my manhood the Maori people had killed more of their own kind than the pakeha. They had taken the white man’s gun and turned it on their own. We hate killed more than twenty thousand of our people while the pakeha stood by and watched the Maori die, thinking that soon there would be no Maori to come up against them and they could take all our land for their spotted cows.

And so I grew to be a man and I became the peacemaker among the tribes and then the kingmaker, joining all the Maori under King Potatau te Wherowhero so that we could speak with one voice.

Alas, the pakeha did not want us to stop killing our own and they forced us to go to war with them. It was here that you, Black Hawk, became a Maori warrior and gained great distinction, so that you became a rangatira to be forever honoured in the Ngati Haua tribe and among all the Maori people.

Though we fought with honour the pakeha had too many guns and too many soldiers and we forsook the clever ways of our precious guerilla war, the runaway fighting you taught us and we went back to defending the pa and so were beaten, but remained proud in defeat, a worthy opponent.

Now, as I lie dying, I know that the pakeha, in defeating us, has taken everything from us but one last thing. Our warriors still fight in the hills where no pakeha dare go. They have created a redoubt that holds within it the Maori pride. While we have our pride they cannot destroy our race. I pray that it is always there. Ake ake ake. You must speak for us, you must be my elbow and my backbone, General Black Hawk.

I shall die with a curse on my lips for the white man, for what they have done to my people. But there is one exception, Tommo Te Mokiri, who bought back for us, through your hands, the rivers and the streams, the mountains and the hills, the forests and the glades and the good tilling soil all of which once belonged to our people and which the pakeha conspired to take from us. It is for this that I now decree, having talked through the tohunga to the ancestors, that Tommo Te Mokiri’s daughter shall be made a true princess of the Maori people.

I go to my ancestors knowing that the Maori mana is the spirit of Aotearoa and that it will prevail. Ake ake ake. In our hearts we cannot be defeated until the earth sinks into the sea.

I go to my ancestors now, where I shall watch over you like a father watches over his beloved son.

Wiremu Tamihana,

Chief of the Ngati Haua Maori.

To this formal letter Tamihana penned his own note.

My friend Black Hawk,

I have kept my promise and now I deliver the Princess Hinetitama to the care of Mahuta Tawhiao, who will care for her as I have done and see that she is instructed in the Maori traditions befitting her high rank.

She is a Maori wahine in all things save one. She is yet a piglet barely weaned from the teats but already she is as stubborn as an old sow. On more than one occasion I have instructed that she be beaten by the old women in my household for disobedience, but she will not bend to their will, no matter how severe her punishment. I think she has this from her father, Tommo Te Mokiri.

When the time comes you must find her a strong warrior who will teach her to be a quiet flowing stream as a woman must be to a man if there is to be peace in his household.

Her singing has brought me great delight and her laughter is always among us. I thank you for the pleasure she has brought me in my old age, she will be a worthy princess of our people.

Your friend,

Wiremu Tamihana.

Hawk has kept his pledge to Tommo and visited Hinetitama every year of her life. Now that she has grown to womanhood he wants her to come home to Hobart, to be with Mary, who wishes above all things to have the company of her granddaughter at her side.

However, to his mortification, Hinetitama will hear of no such thing and asserts her independence, telling him she wishes to go to Auckland to become a nurse.

‘But you may do the same training in Hobart, we will find you an excellent opportunity and we will all be together?’ Hawk insists.

Hinetitama is silent, her eyes downcast, then she looks up. ‘I must stay here, Uncle. I want to go to Auckland to be among the poor.’

‘The poor are everywhere, my dear. You will find as many in Hobart as you wish to care for.’

‘Maori poor?’

‘The poor have no nation, or colour or creed, they are luxuries they cannot afford. Poverty is the one universal brotherhood, my dear.’

‘But I am a Maori. I must be with my own people.’

‘Only half, the other is pakeha. Grandmother Mary prays that she might have the pleasure of knowing you, of setting eyes upon your sweet face, before she dies.’

Hinetitama gives a soft deprecating laugh. ‘I cannot bring pleasure to one rich old woman when so many poor suffer for lack of attention.’

Hawk is shocked at the bluntness of her remark. ‘I would not have looked upon it quite like that. Your grandmother has known the worst of poverty and degradation, she will not condemn you for your desire to work among the poor. You must not judge her so harshly, she wishes only to know you as her only grandchild.’

‘Uncle, I mean no impertinence, you have always said I must obey my conscience.’

Hawk sighs. ‘Hinetitama, it is your duty to also obey me,’ he says sternly. ‘I wish you to come to Hobart. Your grandmother wishes it, that is all.’

Hawk sees the stubborn set of her jaw as Hinetitama answers. ‘Uncle Hawk, when we were young and you would come to New Zealand every year and we would take long walks, you told me about my father, how he wished me to remain among the Maori, among my mother’s people, and then when I came of age to make up my own mind.’ She looks defiantly at Hawk. ‘I have decided to work among my own people. My grandmother does not need me, they do.’

‘Your grandmother has promised me she will do as Tommo wished and that you be included in her will. If you obey and honour her wishes you will become a very wealthy lady. You will be able to help a great many more of your people. Be a little patient, my dear,’ Hawk pleads. ‘A few years to be kind to an old woman and then you may do as you wish, I will not stop you.’

‘Ha! You would bribe me, Uncle,’ Hinetitama says scornfully. ‘I must sit at the feet of an old woman, I must lick her boots so that I may feed the poor. Is that what you are saying?’

‘It is not a sin to be rich and then to spend what you have on those less fortunate than you.’

‘And it is not a sin to be poor with strong hands and a good heart. The Maori do not need the pakeha money, their handouts, what we need is to regain our pride. I will do more for them working among them in torn clothes than strutting around in new boots and with an open purse.’

Hawk sees in Hinetitama the same idealism he himself felt at her age and he secretly admires her for her determination. God knows the poor and the destitute among the Maori in the city have need enough for someone of their own kind to care about them. Since the Maori wars things have gone from bad to worse for the indigenous people of New Zealand and poverty, sickness, malnutrition and drunkenness promise to do as much to eliminate them.

But Hawk also has Mary with whom to contend. Mary has never accepted that her only grandchild should be raised among the savages and has railed against it for years. Now he must tell her that Hinetitama will not be coming into civilisation. Hawk well knows Mary’s hidden agenda, she wants great-grandchildren, heirs to carry on with the business empire she has so brilliantly begun and Hinetitama is her last chance. And so Hawk, putting aside his conscience, tries for several more days to persuade Hinetitama to travel to Tasmania. But Tommo’s daughter is resolute in her decision.

Hawk finds himself between the devil and the deep blue sea. In all conscience he can find no reasonable argument with Hinetitama’s ambition. After all, she has no aspirations to be a white person, a tribe she is deeply suspicious of. Raised under the influence of Chief Tamihana she is steeped in Maori tradition and in the knowledge that the Maori have been cheated and swindled by the pakeha. She simply cannot see any virtue in learning to be a proper lady or adopting European values and ways.

As the days go by, Hawk finds it increasingly hard to counter her defiance. Several times his anger at her unreasonableness has reduced her to tears, but she weeps from frustration that he cannot see her viewpoint. Hawk notes that after each such occasion she seems strengthened in her resolve.

Finally, having exhausted every argument and plea, he agrees that she can stay. He has been warned of her stubbornness by Chief Tamihana, but he always felt that because of his love for Tommo’s daughter over the years and as her guardian, she would obey him without question. It is not the custom for a subservient female member of a family to disobey the wishes of the predominant male in either white or Maori society.

Hinetitama is trained in the Anglican Mission Hospital as a nurse and shortly after she completes her two-year training she leaves the hospital to work among the Auckland poor. She is unusual in this for she is a Maori princess and her bandages and treatments do not come wrapped in a sermon or a plea to repent. Hinetitama brings only her hands and her heart to the slums, together with the songs of her nation, to remind those who have lost their pride, their mana, that they belong to a unique people.

Hawk has now taken to visiting her every two years, for despite his letters pleading with her to visit Tasmania, if only for a period brief enough to satisfy her grandmother, she stubbornly refuses, insisting that her work must come first. Mary, for her part, has grown too old to travel to New Zealand.

Hawk grows increasingly frustrated, but realising the futility of punishing Tommo’s daughter by withdrawing her small allowance, he deposits a monthly stipend in the bank to see that she has income sufficient to maintain a small clinic. It is obvious to him that she spends little on herself and that she is much loved and respected by the Maori slum dwellers, though whether she is able to do any good among the poor is problematic. It is, he concludes, probably sufficient that she is there among them, a princess of their own, and that the bandages and the salves do less for her patients than her cheerful and compassionate nature and the fact that they see her as one of their own.

Alas, unbeknownst to Hawk and no doubt because of fatigue and the ongoing frustration of dealing with the poor who never seem to improve in their circumstances, Hinetitama has begun to drink herself. At first she is a tippler, an ale or two taken after a long day and for the opportunity to have a bit of a laugh among those for whom she cares, but as time goes on she discovers the false seduction of cheap gin and becomes more and more dependent on grog until she is unable to do without it in her life. She has inherited her father’s weakness and his craving.

While Hinetitama continues to work among the disadvantaged, over a period of two years the drink takes possession of her. With her twenty-fifth year approaching, Hawk arrives in New Zealand for his second visit since she came of age only to discover that the clinic has been closed and that Hinetitama has disappeared.