This production still from Rudall Hayward's 1925 film, Rewi's last stand, depicts Ahumai Te Paerata responding to the suggestion at the battle of Ōrākau that women and children should leave the besieged pā. She is reported to have said, 'Ki te mate ngā tāne, me mate anō ngā wāhine me ngā tamariki’ (if the men die, the women and children die also). Hayward shared with historian James Cowan a deep interest in the New Zealand wars and believed, like Cowan, that they offered events and stories which could compete with tales of the American frontier. However, neither Cowan's two-volume history, the New Zealand wars (1922–23) nor Hayward's films were hugely successful.