TE WHITI ORONGOMAI (1831-1907), son of Honi Kakahi, a Ngati-Awa chief, and Rangi Kawau, a daughter of Te Whetu, of Taranaki, was born at Ngamotu after the battle of Pukerangiora (1831). He was descended from Takarangi and Raumahora, through whose marriage peace was made at the siege of Whakarewa. His grandfather, Te Whiti, was the brother of Rerewha-i-te-Rangi, the father of Te Puni (q.v.). Te Whiti married Whakairi, and their son, Tohu Kakahi, and his wife Rangi-Kawau, were the parents of Te Whiti Orongomai. Rerewha was killed at Rewarewa pa (about 1805-10).

Te Whiti's hapu was Patukai, of Taranaki. Not a chief of high rank, he was brought up at Warea and there at the mission school learned his Scriptures very thoroughly under Riemenschneider (q.v.). On being baptised he took the name of 'Erueti.' In early manhood Te Whiti operated a flourmill at Warea, and it is said that he lost a finger at his work. At the wreck of the Lord Worsley at Te Namu in 1862 he assisted Arama Karaka and Wi Kingi Matakatea to protect the passengers from hostile natives in the neighbourhood. It is questionable whether Te Whiti ever fought against the British. Cowan states that he was at Sentry Hill and at Nukumaru (Jan 1865). He denied in later life that he had done so, but Tohu and others (including Bryce) declared that he took part in the fighting in the early sixties, bearing a tokotoko instead of a gun. Rusden declared (Bryce v. Rusden) that Te Whiti lived on the coast a few miles from Parihaka before 1865 and that the troops several times burned his home; that he then went inland and lived from 1866 at Parihaka, and that neither he nor Tohu (nor any of their people) took any part in the rising. In 1865 he refused to take arms against the Government and in 1868, though he appeared to sympathise with the King movement, he used his influence to prevent his people from fighting. Even some of Ngati-Ruanui remained peacefully with him at Parihaka during Titokowaru's campaign. Parris (19 Jul 1869) said that if Te Whiti had only given the word his people would have taken the field at once, but for a long time he had given substantial proofs of a very different line of action. He was strongly Kingite and his influence was quite equal to that of Tawhiao, who frequently sought his advice. At Parihaka, as in Waikato, there was the same deep-rooted desire for self-government, which was impracticable in the ordinary course of law. For several years Tawhiao was guided by the advice of Te Whiti, but eventually he felt resentment at the pretensions of the prophet, who was apt to identify himself with Jehovah. Wi Kingi te Rangitake frequented Parihaka a good deal, and also Titokowaru after emerging from hiding. Te Whiti was already formulating a doctrine of his own, a vague mystical religion based upon the Scriptures and counselling passive resistance to the pakeha. He gave hospitality to fugitives from Titokowaru's force and invited the disaffected tribes to attend his meetings at Parihaka and to give up fighting, since there would come a Day of Reckoning when the whites would all depart from New Zealand and leave it to the natives. For this occasion a fund was subscribed for many years. Te Whiti at this time was full of superstition and believed in the supernatural. On the 18th of every month the natives visited Parihaka (18 Jun being the red-letter day of the year). Te Whiti at this time adopted the title 'Te Whiti Orongomai.' His brother-in-law Tohu (q.v.) was his junior coadjutor and under their influence the natives were encouraged in sobriety, industry and orderly habits. Parihaka became almost a republic within the state.

The sincerity and patriotism of Te Whiti are generally admitted, though the passive methods adopted for retarding settlement caused much ill-feeling amongst a pakeha population which was clamouring to settle the agricultural lands of south Taranaki. Te Whiti encouraged the belief amongst his followers that the confiscations of the sixties had been reversed, or at any rate abandoned, and that the intrusion of the pakeha on the Waimate Plains ought to be resisted. Like other Maori leaders of his time, he was convinced that the salvation of the race could only come from isolation and that all intercourse with the pakeha should be discouraged. When the surveys were proceeded with in the period 1879-81 Te Whiti countenanced more active objection. Parties of young men ploughed up land in the occupation of Europeans, and later interfered with the surveyors and the roadmakers by erecting fences across the roads and removing survey pegs. His object in directing these activities was to draw the attention of the Government to the question of confiscations, which had left certain tribes quite landless. He claimed all the land between Waingongoro and Stoney Creek. As the tension increased between settlers and Maori the Armed Constabulary were strengthened and redoubts were erected near every settlement in Taranaki-precautions which in themselves were liable to become offensive. Party after party of passive resisters was arrested and imprisoned. Titokowaru (q.v.) and Te Whetu were two of the most aggressive. In May 1881 156 of Te Whiti's followers were in gaol, 161 having been released in the previous month. The Native Minister (John Bryce) who was a frontier-settler with experience in the earlier wars, left the Hall Ministry as a protest against its supine treatment of the native question. He rejoined the ministry in Oct 1881 when it agreed to have a settlement, and in the following month, after giving Te Whiti due warning, a force of 1,600 Armed Constabulary and volunteers (under Lieut-colonel Roberts) accompanied by two ministers (Bryce and Atkinson) advanced upon Parihaka. On the morning of 5 Nov the pa was entered and Te Whiti, Tohu and a number of their followers were arrested without the slightest resistance. Hiroki (a murderer who had sought sanctuary at Parihaka and to try whom Te Whiti had invited the Supreme Court to go to Parihaka) also gave himself up. The two leaders were committed for trial at New Plymouth, but instead of being tried were held as ordinary prisoners at the Governor's pleasure and conducted all over the South Island as honoured guests. They were eventually released in 1883 and returned to their home.

Te Whiti, a man of keen intellectual powers, was deeply interested in everything that he saw during this journey. While he was absent his wife, Hukurangi (who was of distinguished Taranaki blood and a sister of Tohu's wife) died. It seemed at first that Te Whiti's mana had suffered by his imprisonment, but within a year or two it was as great and as far-reaching as ever. Followers all over New Zealand (and even in the Chatham Islands) contributed regularly to his funds and held aloof from all traffic in land or rents. The Te Kau-ma-Rua of Titokowaru's campaign was adopted for the more peaceful purposes of Te Whiti-ism, and the obstructive doctrine of passive resistance occasionally (as in the arrest of Hursthouse, q.v.) and other incidents took a definitely active turn. Titokowaru himself, on emerging from his sanctuary on the Waitara river, assisted Te Whetu in the field work of Te Whiti-ism. In 1886 Te Whiti was again under detention in Wellington, with Titokowaru. He was imprisoned for three months and fined £100 for forcible entry on lands that he claimed as his own by ancestral right. In the early nineties a disagreement between him and Tohu regarding the disposal of the Day of Reckoning Fund caused an estrangement which lasted for the remainder of their lives. Henceforward they were leaders of rival factions in the village (each endeavouring to outdo the other in the construction of roads and the erection of modern houses) and of rival followings throughout the western part of the North Island. Both had adherents in every village on the Whanganui river, all over Taranaki and down the coast to Wellington. There was no further resistance to pakeha settlement.

Te Whiti died at Parihaka on 18 Nov 1907, a few months after the death of Tohu. He was unquestionably a man of high principle, plain living, humble and gentle in dealing with his own people, by whom he was held in deep respect. J. P. Ward in Wanderings with the Maori Prophets says that he was about 5ft 10in in height, broad and strongly built, with an active, nervous temperament. His general appearance was prepossessing. He had a high narrow forehead, small piercing eyes, a square, firm handsome face. He spoke logically, and showed a keen and intelligent interest in everything he saw. Eloquent, subtle, unquestionably patriotic, he exercised a sway which was for the most part beneficial. Peace, industry and sobriety he enjoined upon his people. It was to the economic claims of the advancing pakeha settler that his teaching was obnoxious.

App. H.R.; Gisborne; Polyn. Jour., vol. 17, 188; S. P. Smith, Taranaki; J. P. Ward, op. cit. (p); Stout in Melbourne Review, viii, 164-85; NZ Herald, 18 Jun 1879; NZ Times, 19, 20, 23 Nov 1907; Taranaki Herald, 19, 28 Nov 1907, 17, 20 Mar 1926.

Reference: Volume 2, page 253

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