1830 - Craik, George L. The New Zealanders - Chapter XV

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CHAPTER XV.

From the intercourse between Rutherford and the common people of New Zealand, he had opportunities of observing their characters in the lowest darkness under which the great body of such a nation must live. He affirms that it was the general belief that New Zealand comprised all of the habitable globe, and that the men who came to their country in ships lived always upon the waters. The difficulty in making these people comprehend a thing which they have not seen, has been exhibited in several instances; and Rutherford's statement, therefore, upon this point is not contradicted by the circumstance that many New Zealanders have been both to England and to New South Wales. If this belief be at all general we can easily understand how the natives have been struck with astonishment at many circumstances arising out of our intercourse with them, which are sometimes viewed with indifference by other barbarians. At any rate the belief, whether it be partial or universal, is a proof of the isolated state in which these islanders have lived for many centuries. They have dwelt in a world of their own; and what, therefore, belonged exclusively to a world beyond the waters was calculated to seize with irresistible force upon their natural curiosity. The objects which have excited their surprise are to us 'neither new nor rare;'--but it may be instructive to show under what different aspects they have presented themselves to the minds of savages.

Some of the natives, as we have already had occa-

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sion to mention, came onboard the Active while she was in the neighbourhood of the North Cape, and on her way to the Bay of Islands. Nothing could exceed the astonishment which these people manifested at the various wonders which the ship presented to them. The operation of shaving, which they saw Mr. Marsden perform, seemed in particular to strike them as a most singular exhibition; and one of them stood looking on the whole time so transfixed, that, having opened his mouth as wide as he could on the first impulse of his amazement, he did not shut it till the whole process was finished. The sight of their faces in a looking-glass of course startled them exceedingly at first, and was afterwards a source of infinite amusement. This is a common effect produced by the sight of a mirror upon all savages. When Lee Boo first saw himself in a mirror at Canton, his amazement exceeded all bounds. 1 It is the same, in a degree, with children, and some of the lower animals. What most of all excited the wonder of the New Zealanders, were the cows and horses. One of them asked in great perplexity where the mouth of a cow was, which he saw with its head hanging down. 2 To people who had never beheld any quadruped larger than a hog, the size of these animals must have seemed quite preternatural. When the Active arrived at the Bay of Islands, and the live stock on board were landed, they were viewed with equal astonishment. While an immense crowd of persons were assembled around them on the beach, one of the cows became unmanageable and rushed in among them, which so terrified the whole multitude that they immediately fled in all directions. The cow, however, having been caught and secured, they again collected, and were now

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witnesses to a greater wonder than they had yet seen. The reader will recollect Tupai Cupa's amazement when he first observed a man on horseback in the streets of Liverpool. Not having seen the person mount, he naturally enough took him for a part of the quadruped. In the same way his countrymen, when they first saw a horse and rider in New Zealand, felt as those in all probability did in ancient times with whom the fable of the centaurs originated; or as the Peruvians, when they first looked upon their Spanish conquerors, coming against them, in the splendid terrors of European warfare, to charge "with all their chivalry." On this occasion, although Mr. Marsden got on the animal's back before their faces, their astonishment was unbounded when they beheld the rider fairly mounted on his steed, and afterwards galloping up and down the beach. Duaterra had before this given them some account of a horse; but having, for want of a better word, described it by the term coraddee,their name for the small native dog of the country, he had only excited their ridicule when he told them of its carrying the white men on its back. Some put their fingers in their ears, and begged he would let them hear no more of his lies; while others, in a more philosophical spirit, as they probably imagined, set about bestriding their pigs, that they might ascertain whether or not the thing was really practicable. The result of the experiment, however, soon made these as sceptical as the others. It was therefore, it may be imagined, no small triumph to Duaterra now to point to Mr. Marsden's equestrian performance. 3 We may here remark, by the way, that the New Zealanders, although they had no horses, appear not to have been altogether unacquainted with land-carriages before the arrival of the Europeans in their country. Crozet

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was told that the chiefs of some of the interior districts were wont to be conveyed from one place to another in litters or palanquins, borne on the shoulders of their slaves; 4and Mr. Nicholas, who does not appear to have seen Crozet's account, mentions the same thing.

A watch, to persons without a notion of machinery, must be a fund of wonder and perplexity. Mr. Berry, in his account of the destruction of the Boyd, states that the first watch seen by the people of Wangaroa was one belonging to a Captain Ceronci, the master of a vessel employed in taking seals, who put in to that harbour in the year 1808. They could form no other conception of it, of course, than that it was alive; and so mysterious did it seem to them, that they speedily agreed among themselves it could be nothing less than an Atuaor God. At last one day, when its owner was shewing it to some of them, it fell into the sea. This circumstance inspired the whole inhabitants of the place with the greatest terror; and, when Ceronci set sail a few days after, they had no doubt he had left his demon behind him to plague them. Shortly after this a violent epidemic carried off their chiefs, and great numbers of the tribe; and this calamity they unanimously attributed to the white man's Atua. Within less than a year after this, Captain Ceronci again arrived at New Zealand, a passenger on board the City of Edinburgh, which put in at the Bay of Islands, and lay there for three months. This was about half a year before the catastrophe of the Boyd. On leaving the country on this second occasion, Ceronci again, by a singular fatality, dropt a watch overboard. On this one of the chiefs, who stood near him, wrung his hands, and, uttering a shriek of distress, exclaimed that Ceronci would be

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the destruction of the Bay of Islands, as he had already been of Wangaroa. Mr. Berry seems to be of opinion that these two unfortunate accidents had a considerable share in stirring up the people of Wangaroa to the act of terrible revenge which they so soon after perpetrated. 5

Mr. Nicholas, in one of his excursions a short way into the interior, came to a village, some of the inhabitants of which had never seen a watch. In like manner they, immediately on hearing it ticking, concluded it to be a God, and regarded it accordingly with the profoundest reverence. The most curious and graphic description, however, that has been given of the surprise manifested by savages on first seeing this wonderful contrivance, is contained in Mr. Mariner's account of the Tonga Islands. We shall transcribe the passage, upon the principle which we have pursued of giving as many illustrations of our subject as are naturally presented in the history of other savages. The reader may compare the story of Mr. Mariner's watch with Swift's narrative, in Gulliver's Travels, of the speculations of the Lilliputian politicians on the time-piece which they found in the pocket of the Man-Mountain.

"One morning, during Finow's stay at this island, some of the natives brought to Mr. Mariner his watch, which they had procured from out of his chest, and with looks of curiosity inquired what it was. He took it from them, wound it up, put it to the ear of one of them, and returned it: every hand was now out-stretched with eagerness to take hold of it; it was applied in turns to their ears; they were astonished at the noise it made; they listened again to it; turned it on every side, and exclaimed, 'mo-ooi' (it is alive!) they then pinched and hit it, as if expecting it would squeak out; they looked at each

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other with wonder, laughed aloud, snapped their fingers, and made a sort of clucking noise with the tongue (expressing amazement). One brought a sharp stone for Mr. Mariner to force it open with; he opened it in the proper way, and shewed them the works; several endeavoured to seize hold of it at once, and he who got it ran away with it, and all the rest after him. In about an hour they returned with the watch completely broken to pieces. One had the case, another the broken dial, and the wheels and works were distributed among them. They then gave him the fragments, and made signs to him to put it together, and make it do as it did before: upon which he gave them to understand that they had killed it, and that it was impossible to bring it to life again. The man who considered it his property exclaimed mow-mow(spoiled!), and made a hissing noise expressive of disappointment: he accused the rest of using violence, and they in return accused him and one another. Whilst they were thus in high dispute there came another native, who had seen and learned the use of a watch on board a French ship; when he understood the cause of their dispute, he called them all cow vale(a pack of fools), and explained in the following manner the use of the watch: making a circle in the sand, with sundry marks about its circumference, and turning a stick about the centre of the circle, to represent an index, he informed them that the use of the watch was to tell where the sun was; that when the sun was in the east the watch would point to such a mark, and when the sun was highest it would point here, and when in the west it would point there; and this he said the watch would do, although it was in a house, and could not see the sun; and in the night time, he added, it would tell what portion of a day's length it would be before the sun would rise again. It would be difficult to convey an adequate idea of

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their astonishment; one said it was an animal, another said it was a plant; and when this man told them it was manufactured, they all exclaimed Fon-nooa boto!what an ingenious people! All this Mr. Mariner collected partly by their gestures, and afterwards more fully when he understood their language, and conversed with this man, who always prided himself upon his knowledge of the use of a watch, calling himself Papalangi (an European)."

The power of machinery, whether it be exhibited in the complicated movements of a watch, or the simple operation of a hand-mill, is peculiarly calculated to arrest the attention of a people whose few tools are of the rudest construction. Tippahee, it will be recollected, burst into tears at the sight of a rope-walk; because the process of spinning, although comparatively simple, impressed him with a humiliating sense of the inferiority of his countrymen. Amongst a people to whom the weaving of a fine mat, in their rude loom of pegs stuck into the earth, is a work of several years, such processes must be full of the deepest interest. Even with nations much more advanced, such as many of the islanders of the Indian Archipelago, the simplest wheel which they use in spinning is distinguished by a name which is at the same time the common term for machinery, as if the mechanic arts could go no farther. 6 The exclusive employment of women in weaving is a proof of the little estimation in which such pursuits are held. And yet, when the benefits of machinery are made obvious to their understandings, even the New Zealanders are not slow to comprehend the advantage they may derive from such inventions. Duaterra valued a small hand-mill for grinding corn as the best of his possessions. Tupai examined carefully the flour-mills of Liverpool, and could

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understand how the great water-wheel was the moving power of the whole erection. His mind, however, naturally shrunk from an attempt to investigate the more complex machines which he had an opportunity of examining;--and, probably, he did not perceive the immeasurable distance between the common wind-mill, or water-mill, and the applications of the steam-engine. Where every thing is new and wonderful, there must necessarily be a very limited sense of the degrees in which objects are curious. Such a discrimination is the result of knowledge and experience. Lee Boo was taken to see a balloon;--but it produced no greater interest in his mind than the sight of a coach. How should it? A New Zealander, as we have seen so often, has a proper regard to his own personal interest in viewing the wonders of civilization. He is not an idle traveller;--he has to learn something that may be useful, and he applies himself to what he can render of practical utility to himself and his tribe. Moyhanger was indifferent to the elaborate splendour of Lord Fitzwilliam's mansion; but he leaped for joy at the stores of old iron in the neighbourhood of Wapping; and he did not forget to observe, that the people of London had water carried to their own houses, without personal trouble, by the aid of machinery. This man had not even a pump or a well at home;-- and he knew what it was to fetch water from the distant river, or to endure all the miseries of prolonged thirst. He doubtless had suffered, too, the severest penalties of hunger, in his own country, where the people were only beginning to study the arts of tillage; his astonishment, therefore, was great, as well it might be, when he beheld the population of London supplied with their daily food, although he could see neither fields nor cattle.

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Tooi saw an iron-foundry;--and there he first discovered how man converts the rough ore, which, in truth, is nothing more than the name it bears, iron-stone, into the various implements which administer to his first necessities. He saw the source whence the spade and the musket, the two great objects of his countrymen's desire, were obtained, and his amazement was unbounded: "Iron run like water--my countryman no believe, suppose I tell him." There are many amongst us who have reason to blush at the intelligent curiosity of these poor savages;--for we are surrounded with wonders which we take no pains to examine. Whether we look around upon the kingdom of nature or of art, every object is full of instruction. To examine, to inquire, to compare, to think, are not processes that suit an indolent mind;--but they are exertions that every member of a civilized community should tax himself to perform. If he neglects to acquaint himself with the ordinary circumstances that make up his existence; if, whilst the corn is grown, the cattle reared, the fleece woven, the elements subdued, the ocean traversed, for his use, he is ignorant how these and other blessings of civilization are obtained by industry and science, he is morally lower in the scale of intellect than the poor savage, who wonders at a cow, who is in ecstacies when meal is procured from wheat, who breaks a watch to pieces to see the living creature within, and who knows nothing of books. The savage uses his opportunities;--the civilized idler does not comprehend their value. For such persons, if there be any in this age, the following anecdote of a barbarian, as the pride of Europeans has denominated him, may have its use:--It is related of the Inca of Peru, whom Pizarro treacherously murdered, that he was amazingly struck with the power which the Europeans possessed of

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communicating ideas by writing. The knowledge of these people was chiefly traditionary; and he at once saw the manifold advantages of establishing a mode of communication and of record, which should enable men to overcome the difficulties of time and space in the interchange of their thoughts. He was anxious to acquire this art; and, that he might make trial of its effects, asked some of the Spanish soldiers to write the name of God upon his thumbnail. When his merciless jailor, Pizarro, approached him, Athabaliba presented the writing to him, by way of experiment upon his knowledge. The rough soldier could not read:--and the contempt which the Inca expressed for a man, who had possessed the opportunity of acquiring such an important power, and neglected to profit by it, was so undisguised, that the conqueror never forgave him, and soon hurried him to a cruel death.

We have already stated that the New Zealanders have not the art of communicating ideas by writing. They are excellent imitators, as we have seen;--they can make a copy of their own amoco with the utmost ease;--they can execute a fac-simile of European penmanship. This is merely the mechanical part of the art;--and, therefore, the power of conveying thoughts by written language, with the same precision as by speech, is to them, as to most other savages, a matter of extreme surprise. To a certain point, the effect of writing can be made palpable even to the rudest barbarian; nor is it difficult to understand how it should strike the most thoughtless with astonishment. The only notion which the natives of a country, in the same state of barbarism in which the New Zealanders are, can be expected to form, in the first instance, of the way in which a man must proceed in an attempt to intimate anything to another, by marks addressed to the eye, is that he must

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endeavour to make his meaning understood in the best way he can, by drawing pictures of the objects to which he wishes to call the other's attention. This, in fact, was in all probability the earliest method of writing; but even when carried to very considerable perfection, as it had been by the Mexicans, it must have been manifestly both a very clumsy and a very imperfect instrument. When the full picture, in the next stage of improvement, was abbreviated into the merely allusive fragment, as in the more ancient species of hieroglyphics, the contrivance was rendered certainly considerably more commodious; --but it remained the same in principle, being still merely a mode of communicating thought, by pictures of the objects referred to. The same remark is applicable to it in the highest state of refinement to which it has been, or is capable of being, carried,-- in that, namely, in which we find it employed by the Chinese of the present day. The marks which with them stand for objects and notions, no longer, it is true, exhibit, either in all or in most cases, intelligible pictures, or even fragments of pictures. That resemblance between the sign and the thing signified, which would originally have been detected by the most uninstructed eye, is now almost wholly obliterated; but the connexion between the one and the other is still, notwithstanding, exactly of the same nature as it originally was. It is still an arbitrary, accidental, independent conjunction in each individual case, only that it is now settled by convention; whereas, in the simpler and ruder state of the art, every man's common sense or ingenuity would enable him, without any teaching, to perceive or guess at it. 7

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Alphabetic probably originated in picture writing; but it is important to observe that we have here altogether a new principle brought into operation. We have now marks, representative, not of things, but of sounds. The vast advantage of this improvement it is impossible to overrate. Things are innumerable-- articulate sounds are very few in number. By twenty or thirty marks for the latter, as much may be accomplished in the art of writing as by a separate mark for every individual in the countless multitude of the former. Things (under which term we include, as indeed the etymology of the word in many other languages as well as our own entitles us to do, whatever is an object of thought) had each obtained its appropriated sound long before writing in any form was ever attempted. Of the two classes, therefore, things and names, the inventor of alphabetic writing had merely to fix upon the latter for representation, instead of upon the former, as his predecessors had done. The analysis of articulate sound, however, and the ascertainment of its elements, of course remained to be accomplished before there could have been an alphabet; and this was doubtless a task of no common difficulty. But to investigate the manner in which it would probably be performed, would lead us too far astray from our present object. Suffice it to remark that the discovery was doubtless arrived at by successive steps, and slowly brought to the degree of necessary completeness. It was not indispensable for the invention and employment of an alphabet in any language that its elementary sounds should be determined with perfect scientific precision; nor have they perhaps in any language even yet been so determined.

We have nowhere any precise account of the first

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introduction of a New Zealander to the art of writing; but Mr. Mariner, in his work already quoted, has given us a most curious and interesting description of the surprise and perplexity with which the powers of the invention were contemplated for the first time by some of the natives of the Tonga Islands. Mr. Mariner, shortly after the commencement of his captivity among these savages, had, in the hope of thereby obtaining his liberty, written a letter, with a solution of gunpowder, on a piece of paper which he obtained from one of the natives; and he confided it to the care of a chief, with directions that it should be given to the captain of any ship which might appear on the coast. Finow, the king, however, having heard of this transaction, his suspicions were excited, and he immediately sent to the chief for the letter, and obtained it. "When it was put into his hands," the narrative proceeds, "he looked at it on all sides; but not being able to make anything of it, he gave it to Jeremiah Higgins, who was at hand, and ordered him to say what it meant: Mr. Mariner was not present. Higgins took the letter, and translating part of it into the Tonga language, judiciously represented it to be merely a request to any English captain that might arrive to interfere with Finow for the liberty of Mr. Mariner and his countrymen: stating that they had been kindly treated by the natives, but nevertheless wished to return, if possible, to their native country. * * * This mode of communicating sentiments was an inexplicable puzzle to Finow; he took the letter again and examined it, but it afforded him no information. He considered the matter a little within himself; but his thoughts reflected no light upon the subject. At length he sent for Mr. Mariner, and desired him to write down something; the latter asked what he would choose to have written; he replied, put down me; he accordingly wrote

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'Fee-now'(spelling it according to the strict English orthography); the chief then sent for another Englishman who had not been present, and commanding Mr. Mariner to turn his back and look another away, he gave the man the paper, and desired him to read what that was: he accordingly pronounced aloud the name of the king, upon which Finow snatched the paper from his hand, and, with astonishment, looked at it, turned it round, and examined it in all directions: at length he exclaimed, 'this is neither like myself nor anybody else! where are my legs? how do you know it to be I?' and then, without stopping for any attempt at an explanation, he impatiently ordered Mr. Mariner to write something else, and thus employed him for three or four hours in putting down the names of different persons, places, and things, and making the other man read them. This afforded extraordinary diversion to Finow, and to all the men and women present, particularly as he now and then whispered a little love anecdote, which was strictly written down, and audibly read by the other, not a little to the confusion of one or other of the ladies present; but it was all taken in good humour, for curiosity and astonishment were the prevailing passions. How their names and circumstances could be communicated, through so mysterious a channel, was altogether past their comprehension. Finow at length thought he had got a notion of it, and explained to those about him it was very possible to put down a mark or sign of something that had been seen, both by the writer and reader, and which should be mutually understood by them; but Mr. Mariner immediately informed him, that he could write down anything that he had never seen; the king directly whispered to him to put Toogoo Ahoo (the King of Tonga, whom he and Toobo Nuha had assassinated many years before Mr. Mariner's arrival).

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This was accordingly done, and the other read it; when Finow was yet more astonished, and declared it to be the most wonderful thing he had ever heard of. He then desired him to write 'Tarky' (the chief of the garrison of Bea, whom Mr. Mariner and his companions had not yet seen; this chief was blind in one eye). When 'Tarky' was read, Finow inquired whether he was blind or not; this was putting writing to an unfair test! and Mr. Mariner told him that he had only written down the sign standing for the sound of his name, and not for the description of his person. He was then ordered, in a whisper, to write,'Tarky, blind in his left eye'which was done, and read by the other man, to the increased astonishment of every body. Mr. Mariner then told him, that in several parts of the world messages were sent to great distances through the same medium, and, being folded and fastened up, the bearer could know nothing of the contents; and that the histories of whole nations were thus handed down to posterity, without spoiling by being kept (as he chose to express himself). Finow acknowledged this to be a most noble invention, but added that it would not do at all for the Tonga islands; that there would be nothing but disturbances and conspiracies, and he should not be sure of his life, perhaps, another month."

The few scattered notices, which we have thus collected, of the aspects under which the arts of civilization are presented to the savage, might be easily extended;--but we have given enough to direct the current of thought to this very interesting subject. The objects which strike the savage are upon the surface. He is astonished at the art of writing;--but he knows nothing of the vast treasures which have been laid up for mankind, by the power of perpetuating the thoughts of the wisest and the

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noblest of the human race. He wonders at a horse and a carriage;--but he does not perceive the extent of our communication, not only with the most unpeopled districts of our own country, but with every civilized nation of the earth. He gazes with delight upon a simple wheel;--but he understands little of the astonishing powers of machinery, which have rendered the piece of cloth, which he regards as a robe for princes, accessible to the humblest of the land; and the solitary nail, for which he would barter his best riches, a thing too common amongst us to be picked up by the sweeper of kennels. It is for us to look beyond the surface.