Tanenuirangi Pā, shown then as being on a high bank, as etched by Henry Stratton Bates in 1858, near were the wool scouring works are now in Whakatu. Photo / Credit: Henry Stratton Bates
Tanenuirangi Pā, shown then as being on a high bank, as etched by Henry Stratton Bates in 1858, near were the wool scouring works are now in Whakatu. Photo / Credit: Henry Stratton Bates
Opinion
Michael Fowler is a contracted Hawke’s Bay author and historian mfhistory@gmail.com
OPINION
Lieutenant Henry Stratton Bates was part of the detachment of the 65th Regiment of 280 men sent to Napier in February 1858.
Napier, almost 4-years-old, hosted the regiment on Onepoto, Mataruahou (Napier Hill).
Twenty-one yearold Henry Bates became proficient at te reo, and became a Māori interpreter, with one of his most significant assignments was to William Fox, Premier (prime minister) of the colony.
This was not the only talent young Henry had – he was an artist who drew in pencil, and painted in watercolours using vegetable dyes and using horsehair for a brush.
Henry Stratton Bates 1836 – 1918, soldier, artist and Māori interpreter. Photo / Credit: National Library of New Zealand
Henry painted around 40 to 50 paintings while on military service, including some while in Hawke’s Bay.
Tanenuirangi Pā was one of his first paintings here, which he did in 1858.
This pā was established on the banks of the Ngaruroro river by Rangitāne around the early 1500s, and was conquered by the arrival of Ngāti Kahungunu around 1550.
Tanenuirangi was the ancestor of Rangitāne at Hawaiki.
After the battle of Te Pakeke in 1824, when Ngāti Kahungunu were attacked at Ahuriri, Tanenuirangi Pā was abandoned, but would be reoccupied on their return from outside Te Matau a Māui (Hawke’s Bay).
Bates’s 1858 sketch shows the Tanenuirangi Pā then on a high cliff, of course necessary to avoid floods and to see approaching enemies. Its location was said to be near the wool scouring plant.
It was clearly an important pā still in 1858, as in October a reconciliation meeting of two divisions of Ngāti Kahungunu tribes – the two opposing parties who had fought at the battle near Te Pakiaka (near Whakatu) took place at Tanenuirangi.
The “fortified pa” Tanenuirangi was mentioned in 1858 by James Grindell, who ironically wrote to the editor of the Hawke’s Bay Herald in defence of Māori who Bates’ regiment had to come to protect the European settlers from. A skirmish between tribes in 1857 had made the settlers nervous as to their security. Grindell argued it was Māori who needed protection from “white men.” He cites examples of property violation, crops trampled by settlers’ cattle, Māori dogs shot and poisoned, and “sacred precincts of the graves of the dead violated.”
Grindell notes that a “poor man (European)” was wanting to cross the Ngaruroro to the side of Tanenuirangi Pā, and need passage. One Māori in canoe said he would transport him if he gave him a shilling.
Other Māori at the Pā saw this occurring, and called out for the man to be brought across.
Upon examining the man that he was shoeless and in rags, Māori brought him into Tanenuirangi Pā.
He was given a boil up of pork and potatoes to eat, and a European who was visiting immediately took off his blue shirt and gave it to the man. A Māori member of the pā, seeing this, produced for the man a pair of boots (which were used on special occasion by him), another quickly followed with trousers, and others gave him a shirt, spare pair of boots, a jacket – and tobacco.
Tanenuirangi Pā was still existing in 1865, and paramount chief, Karaitiana Takamoana was listed as having residence there.
Karaitiana Takamoana would be associated with Pakowhai Pā, across the other side of the Ngaruroro River. So it appears, around 1865 Tanenuirangi Pā was abandoned for Pakowhai Pā.
Before Tanenuirangi Pā was abandoned, Te Waaka is recorded as living directly across the Ngaruroro river at Kohupātiki Pā, establishing there in the early 1860s.
In 1913, a lay reader in the Anglican Church, Te Paea Tiaho, together with her sister, Warihia Ihukino, would build the meeting house/whare karakia named Tanenuiarangi after the ancient pā that had once stood on the hilltop, opposite Kohupātiki, over the Ngaruroro river.
As for Bates, he married Hana Tama of the Atiawa tribe from Taranaki.
One son, Henry David Bates, resulted from the union, and when Hana died when Henry was about 3, he placed him in the care of the Booth family in Whanganui, and sailed to England in late 1863 – never to return.
He died aged 81 in 1918 in Hampshire, and his son Henry passed away in 1929 in Whanganui.
Many of the paintings on Henry Stratton Bates are in the possession of his family in New Zealand.
