[Chapter I]
[Image of page 1]
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS of THE NEW ZEALANDERS.
CHAPTER I.
MANNERS, CUSTOMS, HABITS, AND OPINIONS OF THE NEW ZEALANDERS GRADUAL CHANGE AND PROGRESSION TOWARDS EUROPEAN HABITS.--EFFECTS CAUSED BY THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLONIZATION AMONG THE NATIVES--CONTRADICTIONS IN CHARACTER EXPLAINED--IN FLUENCE OF SOCIAL COMPACTS--EARLY MANNERS OF THE PEOPLE CONTRASTED WITH THEIR PRESENT HABITS---OPPOSITION EVINCED TOWARDS THE EARLY VISITORS TO THE COUNTRY--NATIONAL INDUSTRY--ISLAND OF VICTORIA--PHYSICAL CONTRARIETIES EXIST-ING AMONG THE NATIVE POPULATION--THEIR ORIGIN--THE ISLANDERS OF AUSTRALASIA--CONDITION AND MANNERS, AND PECULIAR DlFFERENCE FROM THE NEW ZEALANDERS
THE manners and customs, habits and opinions, of the natives of New Zealand are speedily about to disappear. The present record of their sayings and doings will be among the few mementoes of a state of incivilization that is fast merging into the more refined condition of their European brethren. This moral emancipation arises from the extended intercourse (principally of a commercial nature)
[Image of page 2]
that is hourly taking place between them. The emigrants, about to leave the shores of Great Britain, have been preceded by the unsatisfied settlers of Western Australia (Swan River and King George's Sound), many of whom have quitted that arid and droughty coast for the more genial soil of a country approaching in climate (yet superior) to that of their natal soil; and, since the knowledge of the proposed colonization of the islands of New Zealand by British enterprise has been circulated in the southern hemisphere, numerous merchants from the adjacent colonies of New South Wales, South Australia, and Van Diemen's Land, have purchased large tracts from the willing natives, who, independent of present comfort, feel authorized in disposing of portions of their soil as a guarantee that the remaining portions will be enhanced in value far beyond what a large territory would be worth, if left to native proprietorship, by the proximity of such valuable neighbours; and the assurance that the boundaries of their land, thus guarded, will descend to their children and posterity that otherwise might be wholly wrested from their possession (and every acre of the country affords such examples), from the hostility of neighbouring tribes, that form at periods, from concurring circumstances, a superiority in might or predatory treachery.
Every country and its inhabitants have separately their peculiar characteristics; the former, its climate and scenery, the latter, its government and
[Image of page 3]
laws; but to civilization alone belong those moral characteristics upon which a country and people are dependent for their station in the scale of nations. It has been observed, that to describe the habits and manners of a people just emerging from the deepest barbarism is a task of rare occurrence, and the task is rendered yet more difficult on the score of fidelity, as the reader will peruse circumstances apparently contradictory in the moral character of the people described, which in all probability will be found difficult to reconcile; but it must be borne in mind that the education of the primitive savage is completed at a period when a European child would commence the first step beyond the tuition derived from "Guy's" well-known calf-skin volume, the former taking his share in all the politics of his native village, and for the instruction he receives from the vigorous warrior and hoary politician, communicates in return to the latter, a portion of his own infantile manners, and which peculiarly distinguishes the savage being from the civilized man, to the latest period of his life. It is intended in the following pages to give such an account of the manners, customs, habits and opinions, of the New Zealanders, their social and political condition, as will most interest the general reader, who will discover how rapidly they are emerging from the condition of their ancestors, and preparing to maintain, with credit to themselves, and importance to the British nation, their
[Image of page 4]
allies, the highest rank among the aboriginal nations of the southern hemisphere.
The New Zealanders, when first discovered, were a ferocious and barbarous people, principally delighting in the practices of war, and solicitous to excel in the habit of making such grimaces and contortions of body and features, as would best tend to excite fear and horror in the breasts of their enemies; but an interval of forty years' partial intercourse with their more enlightened visitors, has gradually sapped the supposed indomitable ferocity of the savage warrior, who having once tasted of security and the blessings of peace, now wields with greater satisfaction the implements of agriculture, than ever he did those of war; and confesses that the angry war-speech and wildly exciting dance is attended with infinitely less satisfaction than that of an argument in driving a bargain in commerce and the hakari (dance) of the harvest-home. Until within a very few years, this salutary agency, arising from the intercourse with civilized man, was wholly unseen, but time has discovered that it was nevertheless felt. The earliest signs of the effect of this beneficial intercourse was discovered at Uwoua (Tolaga Bay), where Captain Cook met with much kindness from the natives, who had never seen a European before, rendered the more remarkable as he had met with an opposition (similar to that given to Caesar by the early Britons) from the resident tribes at
[Image of page 5]
Turunga (Poverty Bay), a distance of scarcely forty miles south.
Within the last twenty years, Europeans, principally Britons, have located themselves throughout the country, even in those inhospitable islands situated to the south of the Island of VICTORIA; 1
[Image of page 6]
yet the greater portion of the natives still retain a considerable stock of original habits as practised in remote periods of their history, and are in most instances strongly addicted to the superstitious observances of their forefathers. Unlike the inhabitants of the various islands in the South Pacific Ocean, who are as indolent a race of beings as exist on the face of the globe, the New Zealanders have ever been from necessity an industrious people, principally agriculturists and fishermen. The nation consists of two aboriginal and distinct races, differing, at an earlier period, as much from each other as both are similarly removed in similitude from Europeans. A series of intermarriages for centuries has not even yet obliterated the marked difference that originally stamped the descendant of the now amalgamated races. The first may be known by a dark-brown complexion, well formed and prominent features, erect muscular proportions, and lank hair, with a boldness in the gait of a warrior, wholly differing from that of the second and inferior race, who have a complexion brown-black, hair inclining to the wool, like the Eastern African, stature short, and skin exceedingly soft. In physical character the two castes differ in a great
[Image of page 7]
degree; and probably, before intermarriages took place between them, the difference was as marked as between that of a European and a negro of the western world. The origin of the former must be attributed to the Malayan race, who are found to inhabit an extensive space of the globe, including the insular countries of the Indian, African, South and North Pacific Oceans. The second and inferior race arc evidently, from their habits and customs, descended from the same original stock that have occupied a portion of the same countries as the Malays, but are regarded by the latter as too abject in the scale of humanity to treat them otherwise than servants or a conquered people. These degraded people arc found in greatest numbers in the insular lands of New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Espiritu Santo, and adjoining groups, the Soloman Islands, Louisiades, and are identified as the Harafouras and Papuans 2 of New Guinea. The relationship between the above races and the New Zealanders is past all doubt, as a more marked re-semblance exists in their political and social institutions, religion, customs, habits, manners and opinions, and even conformity in a physical and moral point of view; and last, not least, language, than will be found between the peasantry of Cum-
[Image of page 8]
berland and Cornwall in England, or Britany and Picardy in France. Without disturbing the oft quoted memories of those popular patriarchs (to antiquaries) Shem and his brethren, the investigations of recent travellers prove, that the isles have been peopled by the colonies that originally emigrated from Asia, and have so far increased, notwithstanding the existence of the most arbitrary of governments, that set no value on the lives of their subjects, and the most degrading domination of priestcraft, that enforced the merits of human sacrifices, as to spread themselves over the countries of the Yellow Sea to the Sandwich Islands, in the vicinity of the north-west coast of America. From the proximity of the vast island of Australia, it might be supposed, a portion, at least, of the people we are treating of had originally descended from its inhabitants; but this opinion is immediately set at rest by any Acquaintance with, the language, customs, habits, and manners of the two people, that differ so essentially as to repudiate the institution of a comparison. To persons inclined to pursue this theme, we would say, that the debased and abject condition of the Australian, the expression of features, form of body, habits of recklessness as to ideas even of social comfort, dissimilarity in language, no single sentence having the like tendency or sound, habits of perpetual migration, and absence of all government, are sufficient data to prove the different descent of the nations in question.
[Image of page 9]
All voyagers and travellers, from the earliest of the Dutch visitors to those of the present day, agree in substantiating the fact of the unmitigated wretchedness and degradation of the Australians that inhabit the several portions of what might be termed an insular continent. 3 The marked difference in caste among the New Zealanders is observable in every country where the Malay and Papuan occupy the same soil, of which we may instance the Moluccas in Asia, and the far-distant Madagascar in Africa, the Andamans and Nicobars in the Bay of Bengal. The head of the brown or mulatto race is ornamented with a profusion of hair, flowing in ringlets on the shoulders, unless tied up at the crown; but in their inferior countrymen, the hair forms itself into spiral twists, dark, close to the skull, brown, when further removed, and ending in a red-brown. The full-flowing beard, incident to Europeans, but rarely adorns the human face divine of the New Zealander. Among the many peculiarities that are
[Image of page 10]
attached to the native inhabitants of warm climates is, the scarcity of hair on the countenance; yet it might be expected that the prevailing heats would be favourable to the growth of this much-valued addition 4 to the human face.
