WHEN THE ENGLISH team took up their “V” formation in response to the All Blacks’ haka I was secretly delighted. For the best part of a decade, the haka performed by the All Blacks has evinced a level of concentrated aggression that seemed to violate the traditional values of fair play and good sportsmanship. Certainly, the incantatory power of the ritual was unmistakable. The black-clad men on the field were indisputably summoning something – or someone – to their aid. Given that, more often than not, they were performing “Ka Mate”, it seems reasonable to suppose that it was the spirit of the haka’s composer – Te Rauparaha himself.
What your average Rugby supporter actually knows about Te Rauparaha just might extend to the hair-raising story explaining the inspiration for the words chanted by the All Blacks. (Along with just about every other group of young Kiwi males both at home and abroad!) But apart from the fact that “Ka Mate” celebrates the way its author evaded his pursuers by hiding in a kumara pit – over which the wife of his host spread her skirts, it’s a pretty safe bet that the rest of Te Rauparaha’s extraordinary career remains something of a mystery.
Imagine if the Bosnian-Serb warlord, Ratko Mladic, the Butcher of Srebrenica, had not only been a ruthless war criminal, but also an inspiring singer-songwriter. That when seated around the campfire with his genocidal comrades, he was well-known for producing a guitar and serenading them with sentimental love songs and inspirational patriotic ballads. Further, imagine that the best of these patriotic ballads so moved his Serb allies that it was adopted as Serbia’s new national anthem. How would the nations of the European Union have reacted, do you suppose, when, hands-on-hearts, Serbian sports teams launched into a lusty rendition of an anthem penned by the military commander responsible for the worst war crime committed in Europe since World War II? A man subsequently found guilty of committing genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia?
Which is probably just as well, because if the rest of the world knew what sort of awful deeds had been committed at Te Rauparaha’s bidding they might not find the All Blacks’ cultural display quite so entertaining.
Te Rauparaha was no less bloodthirsty than Mladic. His raids, particularly the ones he led south, into the territory of the Ngai Tahu people on and around Banks Peninsula, inflicted astonishing (by New Zealand standards) casualties. At Akaroa, in 1839, hundreds of men, women and children were slaughtered in a surprise attack. Equipped with muskets, Te Rauparaha’s warriors easily overpowered Ngai Tahu’s taiaha and patu-wielding defenders. A number of prisoners, taken in the raid, were subsequently consumed by Te Rauparaha’s victorious Ngati Toa warriors at a celebratory feast.
How many New Zealanders, knowing this, would still be happy to have the haka created by Te Rauparaha associated so strongly with our national rugby team? How many of the All Blacks’ millions of admirers around the world would feel comfortable with his words preceding so many international rugby fixtures?
Te Rauparaha’s Ngati Toa descendants would undoubtedly object in the strongest possible terms that what their ancestor did in no way contravened the cultural values of indigenous New Zealanders living at the time. He was merely extracting utu, they would argue, for the murder of a Ngati Toa chieftain by Ngai Tahu assailants. It is quite wrong, they would say, to judge Te Rauparaha’s actions according to the precepts of Pakeha morality and law. What he did made sense to his own people and, more importantly, to the people of Ngai Tahu. Extracting utu by inflicting wholesale slaughter upon one’s enemies was by no means extraordinary. Indeed, the higher the body-count, the greater the mana of the rangitira responsible. Te Rauparaha was not called “The Maori Napoleon” for nothing!
Maybe. But by 1839 the consequences of musket-armed tribes upholding traditional cultural precepts such as utu were assuming truly horrific proportions. Thousands were dying. Clans and family groups were being uprooted from lands they had occupied for centuries. Conflicts flared as these refugees moved into the territory of neighbouring tribes. Historians estimate that between 20,000 and 30,000 Maori perished in the so-called “Musket Wars” of the 1830s. The indigenous population was reduced by roughly a quarter – a death toll greater by several orders of magnitude than the fatalities arising from the New Zealand Wars of 1845-1864.
It is possible, even likely, that the conversion of more and more Maori to the Christian religion was driven by their realisation that the moral efficacy of the old ways had been tested to destruction. Alerted to the presence of a wider world, in which the wanton slaughter of hundreds for the killing of a single individual was regarded as barbarous, an increasing number of Maori may have come to the conclusion that not all the traditions of their ancestors were worthy of preservation.
Perhaps it is time for the New Zealanders of today to undertake a similar moral stocktake? Maybe Te Rauparaha’s “Ka Mate” has reached its use-by date? Clearly, the rugby world (or, at least, the English part of it) is no longer prepared to just stand there and take it. Given that the context of “Ka Mate’s” composition featured what was, essentially, a battle of wizards, and that the incantation that became the All Blacks’ haka prevailed by draining away the power of Te Rauparaha’s adversaries, and boosting his own, not standing there and taking it was actually a pretty good idea.
Certainly, the English team’s magic proved stronger on the day!