Further Resistance: The Fencers
In June 1880 the road reached Parihaka and on Bryce's instruction, the Armed Constabulary broke fences around the large Parihaka cultivations, exposing their cash crops to wandering stock.The New Zealand Herald reported the next Māori tactic as surveying began there: "Our position is a very unhappy one. We assign reserves for natives ... indicate (sites for) European settlement. The natives reply by building houses, fencing, planting and occupying our camping grounds." As soldiers and surveyors cut down fences and marked out road lines across fields of crops, Māori just as quickly rebuilt the fences across the roads. When soldiers pulled them down, Māori put them back up again, refusing to answer questions about who was directing them. When Te Whetu threatened in July 1880 to cut down telegraph poles, he was arrested with eight other men and taken to New Plymouth. For the Government, it was the beginning of a new campaign in which fencers were arrested, often being dragged off by force as they continued work on building fences. According to the Waitangi Tribunal, the arrests were invalid: the land was not Crown land and therefore it was the army, not Māori, who were trespassing. Nor were the actions of the Māori fencers a criminal activity. Yet the number of arrests grew daily and Māori began to travel from other parts of the country, including Waikato and Wairarapa, to provide more manpower. In one incident 300 fencers arrived at the roadline near Pungarehu, dug up the road, sowed it in wheat and constructed a fence, with a newspaper reporting: "They looked like an immense swarm of bees or an army of locusts, moving with a steady and uninterrupted movement across the face of the earth. As each portion was finished they set up a shout and a song of derision."
The Government responded with another Maori Prisoners' Detention Act, and then, in September, an even harsher West Coast Settlement (North Island) Act, which widened the powers of arrest and provided for two years' jail with hard labour – with the offender released only if he paid a surety nominated by the court. Arrests could be made for anyone even suspected of "endangering the peace" by digging, ploughing or disturbing the surface of the land, or erecting or dismantling a fence. Grey applauded the law, which "amounted to a general warrant for the apprehension of all persons ... for offences which were not named at all – in fact they might be arrested for no offence."
By September the adult male ranks at Parihaka were so depleted, the constabulary were manhandling young boys and old men, whose fences were often only symbolic, consisting of sticks and branches. But for Grey, it was a step too far and Native Minister Bryce was ordered to stop taking prisoners. The cost of the operation had grown too much: while the land being taken was estimated at £750,000, the costs of the operation in South Taranaki had already exceeded £1 million. The bloody clashes between armed soldiers and unarmed Māori building fences on their own land, as well as the increasing numbers of deaths in custody in the freezing South Island jails, were already attracting the attention of the British House of Commons and newspapers in Europe. In New Zealand, however, the plight of more than 400 political prisoners – equally divided between ploughmen and fencers – attracted scant press coverage. Only when about 100 prisoners were finally released from South Island jails in November 1880 did newspapers begin to report on the deaths in jail, the terms of solitary confinement and tales of gross overcrowding in cells. Reporters noted that some prisoners at Lyttelton jail were terminally ill, while others were "in a very critical state and scarcely able to walk".
Bryce unsuccessfully sought to impose conditions on the men as they were released, including their acceptance of reserves. The remaining 300 prisoners were released in the first six months of 1881. As they returned to Taranaki they learned that the Government had decided to survey and sell four-fifths of the Waimate Plains and 31,000 acres (130 km2), or more than half, of the 56,000 acres (230 km2) Parihaka block. Parihaka, in fact, was to be carved into three sections, with the seaward and inland on the village marked for pākeha settlement and the Māori left with a strip in between. Bryce vowed that "English homesteads would be established at the very doors of (Te Whiti's) house". In January 1881 Bryce resigned as Native Minister, angry at the lack of government support for his plans to invade Parihaka and close the settlement.
The sell-off of central Taranaki continued, however, and in June 1881, with most of the Waimate Plains auctioned off, the Commissioner of Crown Lands sold 753 acres (3.05 km2) of the Parihaka block for just over £2.10.0 an acre. Despite the sale, Māori at Parihaka continued to clear, fence and cultivate the land, regardless of whether it had been surveyed and sold. By September newspapers were reporting that a scare campaign was being created, suggesting Te Whiti was fortifying Parihaka and preparing to invade New Plymouth, while the Taranaki Herald reported that the settlement was "in a horribly filthy state" and its inhabitants "in a deplorable condition" – a stark contrast to the situation a Wellington doctor discovered when he visited, writing that the place was "singularly clean ... regularly swept ... drainage is excellent".
Read more about this topic: Parihaka