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Overview
This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).
This carefully posed studio photograph depicts three remarkable Māori figures at a tense moment during the New Zealand Wars. The location is Napier, where photographers Swan & Wrigglesworth had a studio, the date is March 1866, and are two allies and one adversary.
On the left sits Hōri Kīngi Te Ānaua, a battle-hardened Whanganui leader, veteran of inter-tribal warfare and ally of the colonial forces of Major-General Trevor Chute in the current conflict. In the middle stands Hōri Kerei Paipai, secretary, aide-de-camp and Māori namesake of the governor, Sir George Grey, his hand resting on his relative Hōri Kīngi’s shoulder. To the right sits the detached figure of Te Ua Haumēne, founder and prophet of the millenarian Hauhau church, whose anti-missionary followers had ritually killed Anglican priest CS Völkner at Ōpōtiki the previous year. Defeat of the Hauhau at Moutoa by Hōri Kīngi and Hōri Kerei had followed.
By the time of this photograph, Te Ua was a broken man who had submitted to the government and was in Grey’s custody, en route to Auckland. While biographical accounts stress that the custody was lenient, Grey was obliged to be protective of Te Ua, as (according to the North Otago Times) ‘a number of natives seemed much excited and offended’ by his presence and ‘some proposed to kill him’. Within months he was dead, possibly of tuberculosis.
We cannot hope to reconstruct the thoughts and feelings of the three men: there is no obvious triumphalism in Hōri Kīngi or Hōri Kerei, though they appear self-confident and purposeful, particularly the latter; while Te Ua seems grimly reflective, staring away from the photographer. The dress of all three is far removed from classically contrived representations of Māori: it is emphatically 1860s European, featuring high-buttoned jackets, high waistcoats and baggy trousers, while Hōri Kerei cuts a more dashing figure with his bow-tie and fob watch. The unseen figure, whose authority had made this meeting possible, is Grey himself. A man of legendary complexity and contradiction — his opponents would say deviousness — he personified the colonial power struggle and the simultaneous, well-nigh impossible, accommodation of settler, Māori and British interests.
Lissa Mitchell, Matiu Baker, Mark Stocker