Pai Mārire spreads

Te Ua Haumēne, the founder of Pai Mārire, was born into the Taranaki tribe at Waiaua, in South Taranaki, in the early 1820s. Captured with his mother in a Waikato raid about 1826, he was taken as a slave to Kāwhia, where he learned to read and write in Māori and came to know the New Testament, especially the Book of Revelation. He was baptised by the Wesleyan missionary John Whiteley and later served at the Waimate mission station in Taranaki. A supporter of the Kīngitanga (Māori King movement), he fought against the government in 1860. On 1 September 1862 the mail steamer Lord Worsley was beached at Te Namu, inside the aukati, the boundary of land under the King's mana, where Kingite law made enemy trespass punishable by death. The wreck strained Te Ua's loyalty both to Christian love and to that law. On 5 September he had a vision in which the archangel Gabriel announced that the last days foretold in Revelation were at hand, chose him as God's prophet, commanded him to cast off the yoke of the Pākehā, and promised that the Māori people, like Israel, would be restored to their land.

Te Ua saw his teaching as Christianity purified of missionary error. Its guiding principle was pai mārire, goodness and peace. Worship centred on the niu, a mast hung with flags, which believers circled while speaking in tongues and prophesying. By 1863 he had composed Ua Rongopai (the gospel of Ua), a book of ceremonies and prayers, and in 1864 he took the name Haumēne, 'wind man'. The faith drew official attention after 6 April 1864, when Pai Mārire followers attacked a small British force at Te Ahuahu, near Ōakura, and the soldiers' heads were preserved. Te Ua apparently saw the heads as a token of the conquest of evil by righteousness, but both sides widely read them as a symbol of military victory. Attacks led by other prophets followed: on the British redoubt at Te Mōrere (Sentry Hill) in April, and on 14 May at Moutoa Island in the Whanganui River, where lower-river Māori defeated a Pai Mārire war party. Te Ua blamed both defeats on misreadings of his instructions. In August 1864 he baptised the second Māori King, Matutaera, as Tāwhiao.

In December 1864 Te Ua sent Kereopa Te Rau and Pātara Raukatauri to the East Coast, with instructions to go in peace and not to interfere with Pākehā; the DNZB biography of Te Ua says the party disregarded this and incited militant action, particularly against missionaries. At Ōpōtiki the Church Missionary Society missionary Carl Völkner, who had sent information to Governor George Grey, arrived back on 1 March 1865, ignoring warnings from members of Te Whakatōhea. The next morning he was hanged by members of his own congregation, and Kereopa swallowed his eyes. Sources frame the killing differently. Te Ara's New Zealand Wars entry says Völkner was hanged after being accused of spying by Pai Mārire adherents, and its entry on Māori prophetic movements says the execution was incited by Kereopa. The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (DNZB) entry on Völkner calls the evidence that he acted as a spy 'well documented' and says Te Whakatōhea executed him as a man they had adopted who had betrayed them; the DNZB entry on Kereopa says he agreed to the killing but did not take part in the hanging. Pākehā saw the death as martyrdom. The faith was also called 'Hauhau', after a refrain at the end of its prayers, and from this time Pākehā used the word for any Māori who opposed the government.

Colonial troops were sent to Ōpōtiki in September 1865, and land from Matatā to east of Ōpōtiki was later confiscated. Pro-government Ngāti Porou saw Völkner's death as the event that brought war to the East Coast, where Māori fought on both sides and fighting went on at intervals until 1872 (see The siege of Waerenga-a-Hika). Prisoners from those campaigns were held without trial on the Chatham Islands. Te Ua himself turned towards peace. He signed a declaration of allegiance at Ōpunake on 2 January 1866, submitted to Major-General Trevor Chute on 2 February and was taken to Auckland as a prisoner, before being allowed home in June. He died at Ōeo in October 1866. Te Ara says Pai Mārire continued as the faith of the Kīngitanga under Tāwhiao, and the Taranaki leader Riwha Tītokowaru drew on it. The DNZB describes Te Ua as the religious thinker who separated Māori Christianity from dependence on the missionary church, beginning a tradition of biblical prophecy that all later Māori religious leaders drew on.