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This article was downloaded by: [University of California Santa Cruz] On: 11 November 2014, At: 15:07 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK The Journal of Pacific History Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjph20 A dangerous people whose only occupation is war: Maori and Pakeha in 19thcentury New Zealand Christina A. Thompson Published online: 04 Jun 2008. To cite this article: Christina A. Thompson (1997) A dangerous people whose only occupation is war: Maori and Pakeha in 19thcentury New Zealand , The Journal of Pacific History, 32:1, 109-119, DOI: 10.1080/00223349708572831 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223349708572831 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly

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Page 1: A dangerous people whose only occupation is war:               Maori and Pakeha in 19th‐century New Zealand

This article was downloaded by: [University of California Santa Cruz]On: 11 November 2014, At: 15:07Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

The Journal of Pacific HistoryPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjph20

A dangerous people whose onlyoccupation is war: Maori andPakeha in 19th‐century NewZealandChristina A. ThompsonPublished online: 04 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Christina A. Thompson (1997) A dangerous people whose onlyoccupation is war: Maori and Pakeha in 19th‐century New Zealand , The Journal of PacificHistory, 32:1, 109-119, DOI: 10.1080/00223349708572831

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223349708572831

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information(the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor& Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warrantieswhatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purposeof the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are theopinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed byTaylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylorand Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings,demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation toor arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly

Page 2: A dangerous people whose only occupation is war:               Maori and Pakeha in 19th‐century New Zealand

forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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A Dangerous People Whose Only Occupation is War

Maori and Pakeha in 19th-century New Zealand

In his preface to Islands and Beaches Greg Dening makes the following remark:

Death and Violence should be no surprise to any student of human nature, but I find I do notunderstand them. The (Marquesans'j lives were filled with fear and with an ordinary violenceto one another that seems extraordinary to one possessed of the rhetoric at least of one'sculture about the need for carefulness for individual life.'

This paper is about the European fascination with what one might call 'the ordinaryviolence' of Maori life. It is about how and why a mythology of violence, revolvingaround a figure of the warrior type, developed in the European literature of New Zealandin the 18 th and 19th centuries.

At the simplest level there are two possible explanations. One is that such a mythologyemerged because there is a pattern of Maori culture which is different from that ofPakeha culture, most notably in the prevalence and social acceptability of aggressiveness,or in the forms that aggression is allowed to take and still be socially acceptable. In otherwords, this mythology reflects, in condensed and distorted form, something that actuallyexists; it is, in some useful sense, descriptive.

The second possibility, much less problematic, is that colonial descriptions of this kindrepresent a projection by the people who utter them onto the people they are said todescribe. Insofar as what I am here calling a mythology is, in fact, simply a sort ofnegative stereotyping, it undoubtedly reflects the anxiety and fear felt by a small colonialpopulation in the face of the large native population that it seeks to displace. Imagery ofthis sort is not descriptive but justificatory.

While it seems clear that the second option describes what happened in New Zealandin the late 18th and early 19th centuries, I have never been able to rid myself of theimpression that it is not a sufficient explanation for what went on and continues to go onbetween Maori and Pakeha. I think that there is also something to be said for the firstview — that this is not only a matter of projection, but one of cultural patterning as well.In other words, I think that the early European view of the Maori reveals somethingabout both European frames of reference and Maori attitudes and behaviour. Any argu-ment along these lines will always be speculative, naturally, and the biggest impedimentremains the one-sidedness of the historical sources. It will always be difficult to negate allthe filtering effects of Pakeha reporting. But the view of Maori as 'culturally staunch' hasbeen encouraged by Maori themselves in recent years and the historical material seemsto suggest that the roots of this image lie deep.

Darwin in New ZealandOn the evening of 19 December 1835, the crew and passengers of HMS Beagle sightedNew Zealand. They were four years into a voyage round the world and still one yearaway from England. Charles Darwin, then 26 years old, served as naturalist on thisexpedition.

Entering the Bay of Islands on 21 December, Darwin noted some small villages scat-tered by the water's edge, a couple of whalers lying at anchor and now and then a canoe,passing silently from shore to shore. 'An air of extreme quietness reigned over the whole

1 Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land, Marquesas 1774-1880 (Melbourne 1980), 3.

109 I l u - J m i m t i l »l I'arijl, l l i \ l i m . i l . [ I I ' > ' > ; > .

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1 10 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY

district', he remarked. 'Only a single canoe came alongside. This, and the aspect of thewhole scene afforded a remarkable, and not very pleasing contrast, with our joyful andboisterous welcome at Tahiti.' 'The hovels of the natives are so diminutive and paltrythat they can scarcely be perceived from a distance.' 'The scenery is nowhere beautiful,and only occasionally pretty.' The Maori, while obviously 'belonging to the same familyof mankind' as the inhabitants of Tahiti, were, Darwin thought, 'of a much lowerorder'.2

This melancholy vision suggests various things about the Bay of Islands in 1835. Theappearance of depopulation raises questions about land sales and demographic shifts,the effects of contagious disease and inter-tribal war, while the lack of Maori interest inthe arrival of a European vessel seems to argue for a jaded state of affairs. And indeed, itwas not a period of great happiness or prosperity for the Maori, these years leading up toannexation and colonial war. But was it as grim as Darwin imagined? On the morning ofthe next day Darwin went out walking. 'I was surprised to find', he writes, 'that almostevery hill which I ascended, had been at some former time more or less fortified . . .These are the Pas, so frequently mentioned by Captain Cook.' 'I should think', hecontinues,

that a more warlike race of inhabitants could not be found in any part of the world than theNew Zealanders. Their conduct on first seeing a ship, as described by Captain Cook, stronglyillustrates this: the act of throwing volleys of stones at so great and novel an object, and theirdefiance of "Come on shore and we will kill and eat you all," shows uncommonboldness.1

Reading contact accounts one must ask oneself: what influences are at work here? Isthe informant reporting his own firsthand experience? What knowledge did he bring towhat he sees? How much of what he says is hearsay? Where does it come from and howmany times has it been repeated? How different from the original might this version be?In Tahiti, the Beagle's previous stop, Darwin had made a note on the very subject ofpreconceptions. 'From the varying accounts which I had read before reaching theseislands', he wrote, 'I was very anxious to form, from my own observation, a judgment oftheir moral state, — although such judgment would necessarily be very imperfect. Firstimpressions', he added, 'at all times very much depend on one's previously-acquiredideas'.4

To Darwin, Tahiti was a sublime wilderness of soaring peaks and cascading falls, quietlagoons and mysterious grottoes, peopled by an elegant, exotic race of neo-classicalprimitives. In fact, Darwin's account of the island which, in his words, 'must for everremain classical to the voyager in the South Sea' was itself entirely classical, so classical itmight have been taken from any of a number of earlier journals, so classical it might havebeen written by someone who had never been to Tahiti at all.5 So it should come as nosurprise to find that Darwin's account of New Zealand is equally conventional.

Darwin's conclusion about New Zealand was that, despite its close cultural and his-torical ties with Tahiti, it was an utterly different sort of place. Darwin's New Zealand isalmost an inversion of Tahiti; if Tahiti is paradise on earth (not quite what he says, but hecertainly found it pleasant), then New Zealand must be the other place. And indeed,almost without setting foot on shore, Darwin comes to the conclusion that the Maori are

2 Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839; London 1959), 401-8.3 Ibid., 402-3.4 Ibid., 397.5 Ibid., 387.

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MAORI AND PAKEHA IN lgTH CENTURY NEW ZEALAND 111

probably the world's most warlike race. He has not had enough time to reach thisconclusion on the basis of experience alone, so where does the idea come from?

Darwin's claim that the Maori are the most warlike people on earth rests upon a 65-year-old citation in translation of a sentence shouted by a nameless New Zealanderacross an open expanse of water at Captain Cook. This is further complicated by the factthat the text of Cook's journals from which Darwin took this passage was rewritten byJohn Hawkesworth. And to top it off, Darwin misquotes the phrase. 'Come on shore andwe will kill and eat you all' is not what Hawkesworth said that Cook said that Tupaia hisTahitian interpreter said that the Maori said when they greeted the British ships. Theirgreeting or challenge, as reported by Hawkesworth, was Haromai, haromai, harre uta aPatoo-Patoo oge, translated as, 'Come to us, come on shore, and we will kill you all with ourPatoo-PatoosV'

The proper Maori form of the phrase is probably something like Haere mai, haere ki utaheipatu ake: literally, 'Come here, come to shore to bepatu-ed'J A patu is a short, flat,spatula-shaped hand club with a sharpened edge made from wood, whalebone or green-stone; used as a verb patu means to hit or strike. A patu was typically worn stuck in awarrior's belt, rather the way an 18th-century English gentleman might wear a dagger —part ready weapon, part decorative show. In combat it was attached by a dog-skin thongto the warrior's wrist and used to deliver the death blow to an opponent, first with anupthrust of the sharpened edge to the temple, neck or ribs, followed by a downwardblow with the butt of the weapon upon the enemy's head. Banks described the 'patoopatoo' he was given to examine as weighing 'not less than 4 or 5 pounds' and 'certainlywell contrived for splitting sculls'.8 An early French visitor referred to this implement as a'casse-tete', 'parce qu'ils n'en font pas d'autre usage'.9 The business about being eaten(though it may well have been implied) was textually interpolated by Darwin.

A Reputation for InfamyCook was not Darwin's only source of information, however. By 1835, the year ofDarwin's visit, the Maori reputation for infamy was firmly fixed in European minds. Thefirst European to record a visit to New Zealand was Abel Tasman, who in 1642 lost fourmen in a skirmish at Taitapu (called by the Dutch Murderers' Bay) and was chased awaywithout making land. Cook, the next to arrive, met with resistance in his first encounterat Turanga-nui in late 1769 and again at various points along the coast in the course of hiscircumnavigation.

Surville, the first Frenchman on these shores, reached New Zealand in that same yearof 1769 after a long and pointless passage through the Coral Sea with a crew that wasdying of scurvy. After several weeks of uneasy dealings, Surville set fire to a fishing campand kidnapped a man in retaliation for the 'theft' of a sunken yawl. The next to arrive,Marion du Fresne, is sometimes said to have reaped the reward of Surville's reprisals.This is not strictly true (Surville, in any case, got his just deserts: after losing most of hisanchors and cables, one of his boats and most of his crew he was drowned off the coast ofPeru), but there is an element of natural justice in the idea that has appealed to Anglo-colonial historians. In 1771 Fresne and several of his crew were killed and eaten in the

6 John Hawkesworth, An A ccount of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of his Present Majesty for making Discoveriesin the Southern Hemisphere etc., 3 vols (London 1773), III, 467.

7 James Cook, The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery, ed. J. C. Beaglehole, 4 vols (Cam-bridge 1968), I, 281n.

8 Joseph Banks, The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, ed. J. C. Beaglehole, 2 vols (Sydney 1962), I, 406.9 Historical Records of New Zealand, ed. Robert McNab, 2 vols (Wellington 1914), II, 474-5.

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Bay of Islands. Finally, on Cook's second trip in 1773a boatload of men belonging to hiscompanion vessel the Adventure was massacred at Grass Cove in Queen CharlotteSound.

As the years passed and the number of Europeans visiting New Zealand increasedthere were more misadventures. In 1806 the colonial brig Venus was seized by convicts atPort Dalrymple in Van Diemen's Land and taken to New Zealand, where some of thepirates disembarked and some Maori women were kidnapped. The Venus then saileddown the coast, stopping to sell the women outside their own tribal territory (a series ofevents subsequently cited by Nga Puhi as the cause of a retaliatory raid upon Ngati Poroua full decade later). The ship was finally captured and burned and all her crew,reportedly, killed and eaten. A few years later in 1809 the Boyd was sacked by Te Puhi inWhangaroa harbour and most of its passengers, including women and children, killed.Such was the effect of this event that when, shortly afterward, the Rev. Samuel Marsdentried to charter a vessel at Sydney for New Zealand it was three years before he could findanyone willing to risk a passage. In 1810 the captains of five whalers in the Bay of Islandsdecided to revenge the sacking of the Boyd. They massacred the occupants of a smallisland only to discover that they had made a ghastly linguistic error, attacking not TePuhi but Te Pahi, a man who had had nothing to do with the sorry business.

So between Tasman's visit in 1642 and that of Darwin in 1835 a series of widely andsensationally reported contact encounters had reinforced the European view that theMaori were ontologically and peerlessly warlike. As one of Dumont d'Urville's officersput it in 1827:

Thanks to the tales told by travellers, the warriors of New Zealand always come beforeEuropeans enhanced by the terrible reputation for repeated acts of barbarism which theyhave acquired with only too much justification. These very parts that we were visiting exactedfrom the earliest explorers a terrible price for their discovery . . . But however powerful thesememories may have been, our impression at first sight was not unfavourable to our guests. Iftheir rather fierce eyes and formidable rows of dazzling white teeth suggested a few tragicscenes to our minds, we also had to agree that the expression of their faces, their attitude anddemeanour seemed to reveal a certain frankness and decision of character and a prideconscious of its strength.10

With repetition this notion came to have the feel of a self-evident truth; one finds iteverywhere in the literature of the late 18th and 19th centuries. According to Cook, warwas the Maori's 'principle profession', while to Colonel James Alexander, it was the 'dailyamusement of many of the tribes'.'' 'The whole soul of the New Zealander', claimedAugustus Earle, 'is absorbed in thoughts of war, every action of his life is influenced by it'.Both love and war were the subjects of their songs and dances, but 'the details of thelatter passion [are] . . . by far the most popular among them'.12 The language itself,according to Frederick Maning, 'is extremely deficient in terms of art or science ingeneral, yet . . . quite copious in terms relating to the art of war'.13

10 New Zealand 1826-1827 from the French of Dumont d'Urville, trans, and ed. Olive Wright (Wellington 1950),204.

11 A. H. and A. W. Reed (eds), Captain Cook in New Zealand, 2nd ed. (Wellington 1969), 252; Colonel SirJames E. Alexander, Incidents of The Maori War. New Zealand. In 1860-61 (1863; Christchurch 1976), 96-7.

12 Augustus Earle, Narrative of a Residence in New Zealand; Journal of a Residence in Tristan da Cunha, ed. E. H.McCormick (Oxford 1966), 85, 91.

13 F. E. Maning, Old New Zealand: A Tale of the Good Old Times and a History of the War in the North told by an oldChief of the Ngapuhi Tribe (1887; Auckland 1973), 277-8n.

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MAORI AND PAKEHA IN 19TH CENTURY NEW ZEALAND 113

Cook praised the 'great ingenuity and good workmanship' of the canoes, the largestand most ingenious of which, he noted, were 'built wholy for war'.u Surville found Maorivillages well designed for war, but ill-designed for comfort.15 Even Maori cosmology wasthought to reflect this martial obsession. They definitely had some sort of religion,thought Fresne's Lieutenant Roux, for those who stayed on board the French ship rose ata certain hour of the night and prayed, 'muttering various words, amongst which theykept on repeating that of "Mathe" [mate], which signifies "to kill" '."' This was con-firmed by George Craik who observed that 'in the heaven of the New Zealanders thechief employment of the blessed is wa r . . . The idea of any more tranquil happiness hasno charm for them.'17

The Warrior TropeThere are tropes that recur in bodies of literature with telling frequency. British literaturein the 19th century reveals a preoccupation with heroism, honour and chivalry, conceptsthat encoded for Victorian Britons the shift from neo-classical to romantic values and theaspirations of a growing bourgeoisie. They also functioned to legitimate the emergenceof Britain as a global imperial power by glamorising and spuriously historicising a seriesof sometimes rather grubby conflicts. At the time of contact with New Zealand, theBritish had for most of the last hundred years been almost continually at war with otherEuropeans, and the next hundred years would find them at war on several fronts as theyexpanded militarily into almost every quarter of the globe. During this period theinhabitants of the British Isles rediscovered an ancestral age of warrior-heroes in Arthurand his chivalric knights and a heroic and rebellious tribalism in the Scottish Highlands.Anglo-Celtic ideology of the period valorised bravery, stoicism and military skill. Eventhe evangelical Christians of the period described their mission in terms of a holy warwaged against Satan for the salvation of heathen souls.

The prevalence of warrior imagery in European accounts of the early contact period inNew Zealand dovetailed with contemporary domestic concerns, but it also reflected astate of actual physical conflict between European and Maori which waxed and wanedbut was never without tension. Then there was a correlation between Maori culture, asdescribed by early European visitors, and the European sub-culture represented by thosevisitors. They were armed men on a mission of conquest, more or less explicitly acknowl-edged. Is it any surprise that their first impression was of a comparable group of armedmen on a mission of aggressive defence? So, the characterisation of the Maori as awarlike people can be read both as a description of something empirically encountered(aggressive resistance to invasion) and as a displacement of a European ethos of war ontothe Maori people.

I do not mean to suggest that this 'ethos of war' was a simple matter. In differentcontexts 'warlike' could mean quite different things. Augustus Earle, a wanderingdilettante and a romantic, tended to see Maori warlikeness in terms of the heroic bar-barism of Homer's Iliad or the historical epics of Walter Scott. Darwin, on the other hand,with more sympathy for the evangelical project, associated the warlikeness of the Maoriwith the brutish primitivism of heathen darkness. In the early 19th century 'warlike'could mean things at either end of the moral and aesthetic spectrums. It could signify

14 Reed and Reed (eds). Captain Cook in New Zealand, 146.15 John Dimmore (trans, anded . ) , The Expedition of the St. Jean-Baptiste to the Pacific 1769-1770: From Journals of

Jean de Surville and Guillaume Labé (London 1981), 57.16 Historical Records of New Zealand, II, 397.17 James Drummond (ed. ), John Rutherford, the White Chief (Christchurch 1c. 1 9 0 8 , 178.

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1 14 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY

strength when compared with weakness; it could imply dignity, courage and daring. Butit could equally well be used to suggest cowardice, cruelty and moral turpitude. Whatdifferent European writers meant by the claim that the Maori were warlike dependedupon who they were and where they stood in relation to the inhabitants of NewZealand.

Even within the writing of a single observer one can find a remarkable range of views.Cook's journals from the first and last voyages present an interesting case in point. Theethnographic content of Cook's summary remarks from these two voyages is essentiallythe same: the Maori are frequently involved in tribal wars and they practice cannibalism.But the difference in the tone of his remarks from 1770 to 1777 is extraordinary. At theend of his first stay in New Zealand he observed:

Whatever people we spoke with upon the coast, they generally told us that those that were at alittle distance from them were their enemies; from which it appeared to me that they werevery much divided into parties which make war one with another, and all their actions andbehaviour towards us tended to prove that they were a brave, open, warlike people void oftreachery.'1"

But, according to Cook some seven years later, these very same peoplemust live under perpetual apprehensions of being destroyed by each other. . . Their methodof executing these horrible designs is by stealing upon the party in the night, and if they findthem unguarded (which however I believe is very seldom the case) they kill every soul thatfalls in their way, not even sparing the Women and Children, and then either feast and gorgethemselves on the spot or carry offas many of the dead as they can and do it at home with actsof brutality horrible to relate.'''

Generally speaking, the characteristics associated with Maori warlikeness in Europeantexts mirror the evolution of European interests. In the earliest contact period the MaoriWarrior is typically admired by visiting Europeans. But as Europeans begin to take anincreasingly proprietorial interest in the land, there is a perceptible shift toward anattitude of hostility. This climaxes in the middle of the 19th century with the onset of thewars, and then, following the defeat of the Maori rebels, the heroic warrior is nostalgi-cally reinvented as a fit subject for portraiture, poetry and song — a common enoughpattern. The point is, however, that regardless of whether warlikeness was perceived asgood or bad, heroic or depraved, a mark of cultural advancement or a mark of culturaldecline, the ontological validity of the claim that the Maori were, in fact, a warlike peoplewas never in any doubt.

Were the Maori Warlike?A great deal can be learned from studying European representations of Maori — a greatdeal about European society and thought, a great deal about the way in which Europeanshave represented others and themselves. But can anything be learned about Maori, forinstance, whether 'warlike' in any of its senses is a useful descriptive term? I think thisquestion is interesting particularly because the image of the Maori Warrior has almost asmuch currency today — in gang iconography, in the novels of Alan Duff, in pub cultureand rugby — as it had in the mid-19th century. More importantly, it has currency not just

18 Reed and Reed, Captain Cook in New Zealand. 144.19 Beaglehole, Journal of Captain Cook, III, 71. It was remarks such as this that convinced Gananath Obeye-

sekere that Cook should be seen, not in terms of the 'Prospero' myth of the enlightened civiliser, bul in terms ofthe 'Knnz' model ol a civiliser who has lost the plot (Gananath Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook:European Mythinking in the Pacific ( P r i n c e t o n 1 9 9 2 ) , 1 1 ) .

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MAORI AND PAKEHA IN 19TH CENTURY NEW ZEALAND 1 1 5

for Pakeha New Zealanders (who still, I think, see it as complex, that is, good and bad),but for contemporary Maori themselves.

Have Maori absorbed this imagery from European history or is it, in some way, con-tinuous with their pre-European world? Pakeha historians used to claim the latter; now,typically, they assert that the former is true. The work of Maori historians like PatHohepa and Ranginui Walker is so finely judged that I find it difficult to guess how theywould answer this question. I think, however, that the historical record, for all its defects,demonstrates that 18th and 19th century Maori exploited European awe, horror andadmiration for their own ends and by word and deed encouraged Europeans to see themas a dangerous people. Let us consider, by way of example, the case of a rangatira whoseappropriation and recontextualisation of European military culture and whose mercilessraids on his traditional rivals made him a legend in the eyes of Maori and Pakehaalike.

The Hongi Hika StoryIn 1814 the Rev. Samuel Marsden finally succeeded in securing passage from New SouthWales to New Zealand, thereby taking the first steps toward establishing a Christianmission in that country. Marsden's choice of the Bay of Islands as a site for the firstmission was undoubtedly more significant for the local people than for Marsden's littleband of saviours. To the latter it was just a convenient locale; to the various hapu of whatwas to become the Nga Puhi confederation it was the beginning of a new age.

Among the chiefs who established close though not always cordial links with Marsdenand his 'lieutenants' was Hongi Hika of Waimate. John Nicholas, who visited NewZealand with Marsden in 1815, described him as a man who 'had the reputation of beingone of the greatest warriors in his country, yet his natural disposition was mild andinoffensive, and would appear to the attentive observer much more inclined to peacefulhabits than to strife or enterprise'.20

Over the course of the next few years, and much to the dismay of the ChurchMissionary Society, Hongi engaged Thomas Kendall, one of Marsden's catechists, as anintermediary in the gun trade. In 1820 Hongi accompanied Kendall on a visit to England.It is often said that his primary intention was to acquire an arsenal of guns, but it wouldbe a mistake to discount the curiosity factor, or the status that travel conferred on theMaori and other Polynesians who risked it. Hongi did not actually manage to procureweapons in any great numbers in England, but he did receive a variety of other giftswhich he reportedly traded for guns and ammunition at Sydney on his way backhome.

While still in Sydney he encountered Hinaki of Ngati Paoa and Te Horeta, two of hislong-standing rivals. Before them Hongi laid out his newly acquired possessions: '£ marama\ O friends! O Te Horeta! and Te Hinaki! Behold! this gun is "Te Wai-whariki," this is"Kaikai-a-te-karoro," this is "Wai-kohu," this is "Te Ringa-huru-huru," this is "Mahu-rangi" ', he said (according to turn-of-the-century historian S. Percy Smith), naming theNga Puhi defeats that he planned to avenge with his new weapons.-1 Upon his return toNew Zealand, it is furthermore said, Hongi's attitude toward the mission establishmentwas decidedly contemptuous. Those who had been preaching the gospel of peace to him,

20 Q u o t e d in Jeffrey Sissons, W i r e m u Wi H o n g i , a n d Pat H o h e p a , The Puriri Trees are Laughing: a PoliticalHistory of Nga Puhi in the Inland Bay of Islands (Auckland 1987), 13.

21 S. Percy Smith, Maori Wars of the 10th Century, 2nd ed. (Christchurch 1910), 183-4.

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a doctrine he in any case had considered unfit for warriors, were now revealed to be rankslaves of the English Warrior King.

Shortly after his return in 1821, Hongi set out on an expedition of war with 2,000warriors, 1,000 guns and a fleet of more than 50 canoes. This was the beginning of theMusket Wars, a period of internal crisis which resulted, over a 10-year period, in some30,000 to 40,000 Maori deaths and large scale tribal reorganisation. European historianshave no doubt exaggerated the role that Hongi Hika played in what was ultimately awidespread phenomenon, and may have made a Napoleon of a man who neither had norsought that degree of authority over his troops or anyone else and whose aspirationsmay or may not be considered imperial. I think it would be difficult, however, to exag-gerate the significance of the conflicts in which Hongi played a pivotal role, conflictswhich exceeded, in scale, in casualties and in the extent to which they warped the socialfabric of Maori society, anything in the cultural memory.

Hongi's campaigns precipitated what Walker describes as an 'arms race', not betweenMaori and Pakeha, but between tribe and tribe.22 The European record is replete withaccounts of the Maori fetishisation of guns, but it was patently more than that. Thesuperiority of musketry over traditional weapons, as demonstrated by Hongi and his kinas they proceeded down the North Island exacting retribution for old wrongs, rapidlyconvinced other tribes that, whatever the cost, they must acquire guns for their owndefence. The cost was enormous.

The cultivation of food was neglected in favour of the labour-intensive work of dress-ing flax, the principle commodity of European exchange. Whole tribes sometimesrelocated to swamps where flax grew in abundance but where it was decidedly unhealthyto live. The taking of slaves increased — slaves who could be put to work dressing flax, ortraded with other tribes for guns, or even tattooed and killed and their heads traded formore weapons. The emergence of a lucrative trade in heads illustrates, quite graphically,the effect of the musket upon Maori custom. Traditionally the heads of importantenemies were preserved and displayed as a mark of derision (sometimes the heads ofrevered family members were privately preserved). But the discovery that Europeanshad a fondness for these heads and would trade valuable muskets for them radicallyaltered the practice. Any head would satisfy a European buyer so long as it was tattooed.This inspired not only the indiscriminate taking of heads in battle, but the tattooing ofslaves to be killed specifically for this purpose.

Both the Musket Wars and Hongi's involvement in them were interpreted by Euro-peans in the 19th century as evidence of innate warlikeness. This is clearly an inadequateexplanation for something that might be better described as the effect of new tech-nologies upon a culture with traditions of competitive rivalry. The mana, or spiritual andpolitical power and prestige, of a rangatira like Hongi Hika was genealogically derived,but it was also subject to fluctuations, depending upon the outcome of events. A spell ofgood fortune, a strategic alliance, a successful raid against an old enemy might con-tribute to an increase in Hongi's standing and, by extension, that of his kin. So,conceivably, might the introduction of a new technology, a new product, a novelty withrecognisable value with which he, or they, were uniquely associated. With an increase inmana would come greater access to resources and a larger population base with which toexploit them, power to take utu for insults and hurts and increased spiritual prestige andpolitical clout for the hapu or iwi.

22 Ranginui Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou: Struggle Without End (Auckland 1990), 83.

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Ruatara, Hongi's relation, by whose sufferance Marsden's mission was first estab-lished at Rangihoua, appears to have pursued similar ends through the introduction ofagricultural technology. Muskets were not, after all, the only innovation of the contactera. Agriculture, like warfare, was an established part of Maori life in the pre-Europeanperiod, and it was therefore a relatively simple matter to adapt European agriculturalproducts and methods to Maori use. But what Ruatara hoped to achieve with the intro-duction of European agriculture or, indeed, through the sort of large-scale venture hereputedly proposed — whereby he would export surplus wheat to Europeans at PortJackson — probably had nothing to do with the 'civilizing visions' Marsden attributed tohim.M What is more probable is that he, like Hongi, saw this as an opportunity toenhance the status of his own hapu and those closely related to him in the context ofpressing rivalries at home.

The revolutionary developments of this period were influenced by European ideas,practices and technology, but in an important sense they had nothing to do with Euro-peans at all. They were Maori affairs, instigated by rangatira who, through accidents ofhistory and geography and their own strategic abilities, found ways to exploit andmanipulate what Europe had supplied.

Hongi's DeathBy about 1828 most of the tribes in the North Island had reached saturation point as faras the distribution of guns was concerned (though it would be the middle of the nextdecade before the major inter-tribal fighting was over). Gradually the demand for mus-kets began to slacken, the balance of firepower between tribes to equalise and the peopleto grow weary of war. Meanwhile the Pakeha population was growing. This was the yearthat Hongi Hika died of wounds received in battle. According to Marsden,

He spent his last moments on the morning of the 6th inst. exhorting his followers to bevaliant, and to repel any force, however great, which might come against them, telling themthat this was all the utu, or satisfaction, he desired . . . His dying lips were employed in uttering'Kia toa, kia toa!' (be brave].-4

Some decades later F. E. Maning recounted this same deathbed scene. According toManing, Hongi said:

If ever there should land on this shore a people who wear red garments, who do not work,who neither buy nor sell, and who always have arms in their hands, then be aware that theseare a people called soldiers, a dangerous people whose only occupation is war. Then, O mychildren, be brave! Then, O friends, be strong! Be brave, that you may not be enslaved, andthat your country may not become the possession of strangers.-'

Maning's reference to redcoats is undoubtedly as fanciful as Darwin's to anthropophagyin the passage with which we began. For it is far more likely that Hongi was, as Marsdensuggests, referring to his traditional rivals — of whom, after the depredations of theprevious 10 years, there were now more than ever. Marsden notes that Hongi's exhor-tation 'intimates that he had had the question proposed to him, "Who is to be killed as asatisfaction of your death!" ', adding that the 'abominable principle still exists in New

23 Marsden quotes Ruatara as having said, 'I have now introduced the cultivation of wheat in New Zealand.It will become a great country, for in two years or more I shall be able to export wheat to Port Jackson inexchange for hoes, axes, spades, and tea and sugar.' John Rawson Elder (ed.), The Letters and Journals of SamuelMarsden 1765-1838 (Dimedin 1932), 70.

24 Elder, The Letters and Journals, 443. It is hard not to think here of Kurtz's dying words, 'the honor, thehorror'.

25 M a n i n g , Old New Zealand, 2 1 5 - 1 6 .

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Zealand, of honouring the dead by human sacrifice'. Maning's account, on the otherhand, was composed in the 1860s at the height of the Colonial Wars and seems to projectcontemporary conflicts between Maori and Pakeha back onto the earlier period. But, likeDarwin's interpolation, Maning's is highly suggestive. There is no little irony in hisdescription of British soldiers as 'a dangerous people whose only occupation is war', forthis is precisely how Europeans (including if not especially Maning himself) were given toportraying the Maori.

I interpret Maning's story as an example of the sort of ethnographic insight thatpeople who cross cultural boundaries often have. Both Maning and Hongi experiencedNew Zealand at a time of intense cultural exchange (or entanglement to borrow NicholasThomas's apt and useful term), when the balance of power between Maori and Pakehawas shifting and unstable and the outcome of any given encounter was not a foregoneconclusion. It is not hard to imagine that Hongi Hika would have understood quite wellthe danger presented by British soldiers, even if he did not make the remark attributed tohim by Maning. He had, after all, made a 10-year study of British weaponry, he had beento England and seen the King's guard and returned to dispute the missionary claim thatthe English were ruled by a Prince of Peace.26 It was Hongi's knowledge and use of Britishmilitary culture — the technology, the techniques, the scale, even the commodificationof the spoils of war — combined with his own strategic abilities and knowledge of Maoriwarfare that made him what he was. Maning, for his part, was a speaker of Maori and wasmarried into a Maori family on whose side he had fought in tribal battles. He, too, knewwhat war meant in both languages.

Probably in 1828 the Pakeha would not yet have mattered to Hongi as much asManing's account makes out. But what the story does suggest is that warfare was thelanguage of mutual understanding, the medium of exchange, the paradigmatic contactencounter in early colonial New Zealand. For Maning this was the charm of a place'where every man was a fighting man or nothing'.27 And as this extract from a con-versation between Hongi and some members of the Church Missionary Society in 1825suggests, for Hongi too there was a meaningfulness and a glory in fighting and war.

Hongi: I suppose you are come to endeavour to hinder us from going to fight . . .Missionaries: We are afraid some of you will be killed. In the last fight Charley was killed,Toutiri was killed, with many others. If you go to kill your enemies, are you not likely to bekilled yourselves?Answer: Yes, indeed.Missionaries: Are you sure that neither of you here present will be killed if you go tofight?Hongi: Can you tell which of us will be killed?Missionaries: No: but in going to war do you not rush into the arms of death, as from afrightful precipice?

26 Bruce Mason's 1968 radio play, Hongi, makes good use of this material . O n his r e tu rn from EnglandHongi says to the Rev. J o h n Cutler: 'You are a good m a n and I like you, but your doct r ine is false. I saw it, Omissionary! I have talked with your King and we unders tood each o the r well. He has only Tu to guide him. W h oguards his house? W h o holds his power? Is it your Gospel? Is it your Prince of Peace? Is it your precious Lordand His blood? Is it the cross on the hill at Jerusalem? You are a m a n only of words , and they scat ter like sandthrough a net . Your Church is only for Sundays and singing. I have seen the great T o w e r where heads were onceput on stakes. I have seen the posts where you flog a m a n until he is a river of blood. I have seen the dirty houseswhere you shut m e n away from the light for year on year on year . Is that the counsel of Christ? There is only theLord Tu, and Hongi, his servant . All else is fraud.' Howard McNaughton (ed.) , Contemporary New Zealand Plays(Well ington 1974)', 145-6.

27 M a n i n g , Old New Zealand, 81 .

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Hongi: A man that hath a large loving heart for his friends who have been killed, will bid theworld farewell, and jump from the precipice.-s

An Ambiguous LamentThe history of colonialism encourages us to associate dominance with the European side.But there is a sense in which we are looking through the wrong end of the telescope whenwe reconstruct historical events; we bring too much knowledge of outcomes to ourinterpretation. If instead we could travel through time, we would probably view thingsquite differently. There is an interesting lament composed on the occasion of Hongi'sdeath by Tamarehe of Ngati Whatua, a tribe that had suffered much at Nga Puhi's hands,which suggests just how ambiguous — how far from black and white — relationshipsbetween contesting factions in early New Zealand actually were.

By whom, O Hongi, was the deed performed,That sent me here, an exile?There in affliction lives Ngati-WhatuaThe people that in former times did eatHou-wawe and Hou-moka, northern chiefs,At the bloody field of Kai-a-te-karoro,"Curses on thy head, thou stranger from afar,"That brought hither to this landThe strange and powerful weaponsThat felled the mighty of this landAnd laid them low in death.ZJ

Percy Smith interprets this as 'a curse upon the white man, who brought here guns and powder'.And who could doubt that there was reason enough to curse the Pakeha, who came uninvited andrefused to go away? But by whom indeed was the deed performed? Who was the' "stranger fromafar,"/that brought hither to this land/The strange and powerful weapons'? Was it not Hongi Hikahimself, Hongi who travelled to England for guns, Hongi who massacred the people of NgatiWhatua and Ngati Porou and Arawa? Perhaps contact in New Zealand was a matter of twodangerous peoples, both very largely preoccupied with matters of conquest and war.

CHRISTINA A. THOMPSON

28 John Caselberg, Maori is My Name: Historical Maori Writings in Translation (Dunedin 1975), 35-6.29 Elder, The Letters and Journals, 444n. The text in Maori is given as follows:

Kowai au, E Hongi, e i?/ I riro mai a konei, e, i,/ Tera Ngati-Whatua, e, i,/ Te tangata nana i kai atu,/Hou-wawe, Hou-moka,/ I Kai-a-te-karoro na, i,/ 'To upoko ra, te Tupai-tawhiti!'/ Nana rawa i homai/ Ko tekaha tuarangi,/ Hei tua i te motu./ Ki'hinga ki raro ra-e.

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