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Story: Hikapuhi

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Hikapuhi

1860–1871?–1934

Ngāti Pikiao tohunga

This biography, written by Angela Ballara, was first published in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography in 1996. It was translated into te reo Māori by the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography team.

Hikapuhi (Te Hikapuhi) Poihipi was born at Rotorua probably sometime between 1860 and 1871. She was the 10th and youngest child of Wiremu Poihipi and Hārete Ngāputu (also known as Hārete Manuhuia). Her mother, and possibly also her father, was of Ngāti Te Rangiunuora, a hapū of Ngāti Pikiao of Te Arawa, whose people lived at both Rotoiti and Maketū. The family had shares in the Paengaroa North block, near Maketū, and in various blocks near Rotoiti. As a young woman, Hikapuhi formed a relationship with Alfred Clayton, a surveyor; they had at least eight daughters and three sons. Their marriage was formalised at Rotorua on 19 May 1906.

Hikapuhi came to prominence as a healer about 1905. For some time she had been living in Ōtaki, and that year she toured the districts of Ngāti Toa and Ngāti Raukawa. She went on to visit places from Rotorua to the South Island, where her healing methods resulted in a lawsuit. She was probably at work in Hawke's Bay in 1906, and her activities were reported unsympathetically in the Anglican Māori newspaper Te Pīpīwharauroa.

Hikapuhi called herself a nurse, not a tohunga. She quickly gathered disciples, both men and women. Her medicine was Three Star brandy – a very potent variety – administered neat, sometimes in large doses, accompanied by the words 'kia ora, kia ora' (be well). She was said to be a disciple of Te Weretā, a tohunga living at Mangatū, inland from Poverty Bay.

Hikapuhi was credited with various miracles, including the curing of a blind person at Wairoa, but she lost credibility when one of her patients, Peka Kerekere, a prominent Gisborne chief, died after treatment. Te Pīpīwharauroa alleged that at Te Pāhou she encouraged people to dance to exhaustion on Sunday, and conducted a ceremony in which men, and women wearing white wedding-style clothing, were wedded to the spirits in the clouds and the water and under the earth. She then prayed for healing power to be bestowed on her 'apostles'.

In 1906 Māui Pōmare, health officer to Māori, attempted unsuccessfully to stop Hikapuhi's operations, by now based in Wairarapa. Local Māori health inspectors reported that her activities were encouraging drunkenness. Even babies were made to drink brandy, and Pōmare reported that children were sent to school with narrow bottles filled with brandy under their clothes from which they took nips at recess. Several of Hikapuhi's followers had been prosecuted for supplying liquor to Māori women, and Pōmare suggested indirectly that Hikapuhi should also be prosecuted.

The antipathetic attitude of officialdom to Hikapuhi's work was not reflected in the attitude of her patients. In August 1906 Hoani Te Rangi-taka-i-waho sent a testimonial signed by over 30 Pāpāwai people to James Carroll, then native minister. He explained that many people had had their wounds dressed and sicknesses cured by Hikapuhi, who had taken no pay – all her work had been done from aroha (compassion). Also, patients were cured who might otherwise have died, and Hikapuhi represented the only medical help available to those unable to pay for medicines or doctors, or who were afraid to visit the European chemist. Te Rangi-taka-i-waho petitioned the government to grant licences to Hikapuhi and her fellow nurses, and asked that her use of brandy as a medicine should not be prohibited by doctors or police.

Nevertheless, the campaign against Hikapuhi continued. During the debate in 1907 on the Tohunga Suppression Bill, A. L. D. Fraser, MHR for Napier, said her influence was more demoralising than that of Rua Kēnana. In July 1908 Taiāwhio Te Tau, chairman of the Rongokako Māori Council and the local Māori health inspector, alleged that three deaths had resulted from Hikapuhi's ministrations. He escorted police sergeant Nathaniel Miller to Te Ore Ore pā; Miller reported overcrowding in primitive conditions at a hui, but found no evidence of excessive drinking. The deaths of four children, all of tuberculosis, could not be attributed to Hikapuhi or her nurses.

Both the Native Department and Pōmare seemed reluctant to assume responsibility for the state of Māori health in Wairarapa, and both put the onus of action onto the Rongokako Council. But Te Tau did not want responsibility either. He suggested that it was the government's responsibility to remove Hikapuhi from his district. In 1909 the influential Wairarapa leader Hoani Parāone Tūnuiārangi alleged that 20 people had died under Hikapuhi's hands, and that she had provoked liquor consumption and quarrelling on visits to Gisborne and Wairoa. However, most of the complaints seemed to be against her followers. Hikapuhi herself had been investigated by the Rongokako Council and acquitted of any wrongdoing. Many Māori had signed a petition asking the Rongokako Council to authorise her work. In July 1909 Apirana Ngata urged that Hikapuhi should be prosecuted under the Tohunga Suppression Act 1907; Carroll's response in May 1910 was 'No action'.

Hikapuhi's activities gradually ceased. The weight of official disapproval had its effect, and her methods lost favour as the number of nurses working in Māori health was increasing. Her work was undermined by the irresponsible actions of some of her disciples. The last mention of her working in Wairarapa was in 1913. When she visited Wellington in 1915 it is clear that her vogue was at an end. Her husband died in Ōhinemutu, Rotorua, on 13 June 1913. Hikapuhi may have returned to her Te Arawa kin at this time; she died in Rotorua on 6 January 1934.

Hikapuhi's powers as a prophet and tohunga put her patients in touch with the Māori cosmogony, healed their spirit and gave them hope. Her achievement was summed up by A. L. D. Fraser in the course of condemning her: she 'went from town to town and from kāinga to kāinga, and as she wandered all through the colony her mana spread with her. She had a halo, a glamour of almost godlike attributes'. To Europeans and to the Māori establishment Hikapuhi was a nuisance and a symbol of their own failure; to many Māori she provided the only medical care they were likely to get.

How to cite this page:

Angela Ballara. 'Hikapuhi', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1996. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3h24/hikapuhi (accessed 20 March 2024)