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Further Maoriland Adventures
of J. W. and E. STACK
Edited by
A. H. REED
Author of Marsden of Maoriland
Foreword by
ARCHBISHOP AVERILL
Primate of New Zealand
A. H. and A. W. REED,
DUNEDIN and WELLINGTON
NEW ZEALAND
LONDON: G. T. FOULIS & CO. LTD.
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Set up, printed and bound in Australia by Halstead Press Pty Limited, 9-19 Nickson Street. Sydney 1938
First published in 1938
Publishers: A. H. and A. W. Reed, 33 Jetty Street. Dunedin and 182 Wakefield Street. Wellington, New Zealand
London Agents:
G. T. Foulis and Co. Ltd. 7 Milford Lane, Strand
[FOREWORD]
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FOREWORD
My knowledge of the Rev. Canon J. W. Stack and his good wife during my early days in Christchurch, and my sincere appreciation of the efforts of Messrs. A. H. and A. W. Reed in publishing the Recollections of these two great missionary-hearted people, makes the writing of a short foreword to the third volume of Canon Stack's Maoriland Adventures both a pleasure and a privilege.
As the third volume deals particularly with Canon Stack's work amongst the Maoris in Canterbury, it will serve as a valuable contribution to the better understanding of the South Island Maoris and the missionary work of the Church amongst them. Much has been written about the work of the Church amongst the Maoris in the North Island, where, of course, the majority of them have always lived, but the wonderful story of the evangelisation of the Maoris cannot be complete without the knowledge which this present volume contains.
Many of us are constantly regretting the fact that so many of our pioneers and early missionaries "pass on" without recording in any tangible way the stories of their self-sacrificing labours and the fruits of their ripe
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experience. Modesty, no doubt, is the cause of their silence, but can the present and future generations afford to lose the inspiration of the men and women who laid the foundations of religion and civilization in this country, and were instrumental in training the Maoris to take a worthy part in the social, political and religious life of Maoriland? To-day we can see things in truer perspective, and many things which were commonplace to them are heroic and creative to us.
The present volume, in recording many of the experiences of Mrs. Stack, is particularly valuable, for she was an excellent type of that noble band of missionary wives and workers who played such an important part in the evangelisation of the Maori people. In Pasadena, California, there is a beautiful monument to the brave women of the covered wagon days, and should not New Zealand have its monuments to the noble women of the missionary days? Perhaps the present volume will help its readers to appreciate more fully the debt which New Zealand owes to its brave pioneering women.
A. W. New Zealand.
24 February 1938.
[PREFACE]
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PREFACE
The gratifying reception accorded to the earlier volumes of the Stack Manuscripts--Early Maoriland Adventures and More Maoriland Adventures--seems ample warrant for the publication of a third volume. The present instalment contains, in addition to the further recollections of Canon J. W. Stack, a portion of the Journal of his wife, written in 1857-1860, before their marriage. The material selected from Mrs. Stack's (Eliza Jones) Journal has been brought together with the object of giving variety of incident. There still remains in reserve ample material for a fourth volume, should it be called for, including visits to Wellington and Nelson; the Hot Lakes region; a second expedition to the Waikato, where she first met James W. Stack; and some of her experiences in Canterbury, subsequent to her marriage. Awaiting publication are also some interesting occasional papers of J. W. Stack.
As in the case of the preceding volumes of the series, I have received generous help in the editing of this book. To His Grace the Primate of New Zealand--one of the rapidly diminishing band of those who were personally acquainted with the Stacks--my best thanks are due for his Foreword.
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Mr. Louis J. Vangioni, whose knowledge of people and places on Banks Peninsula is both extensive and intensive has, amongst other services, contributed some informative footnotes.
To my wife, in this as in preceding volumes, I owe more than words can express; and my nephew and partner, Mr. A. W. Reed, has again rendered invaluable services including, once more, the compilation of an index.
After the publication of More Maoriland Adventures Rev. A. H. Norrie was kind enough to send me a rare, and by me hitherto unknown, lithograph of the Kohanga mission station.
For much information of value and interest relating to Poverty Bay in the fifties, when Miss Jones visited Bishop Williams, I am indebted to Mrs. Douglas Blair, of Gisborne.
It is not possible adequately to acknowledge numerous services freely accorded, but I must at least express my thanks to Mrs. E. J. Wilson, Mr. Henry Wily, Mr. Herbert Maunsell, Mr. James Cowan, Mr. Eric Ramsden, Mr. H. M. Crispe, Mr. J. T. Paul, Mr. Herbert Chapman, Rev. M. A. R. Pratt, Mr. William Paterson, Mr. Johannes Andersen, Rev. A. C. Lawry, Mr. W. J. Cotterill, Mrs. Tiripa Te Hauraraka Pitama, Mr. R. E. Tripe, and the Turnbull Library, for various courtesies, and to Mr. A. W. Taylor, Christchurch, for useful information and photographs.
Two of those from whom I received generous help are no longer with us--Bishop Herbert Williams, the distinguished Maori scholar, and Mr. Horace Fildes,
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whose knowledge of early New Zealand may be said to have been encyclopaedic. Both have passed on, and by their passing New Zealand is the poorer.
It would be ungrateful to omit to acknowledge, in this volume as well as in preceding ones, the indebtedness of myself and all readers to Canon Stack's daughters--Mrs. F. Coxon, Mrs. W. E. Scaife and Miss Dorathea Stack --for the preservation of the manuscripts and for facilitating their publication.
A. H. REED.
155 Glen Avenue, Dunedin, N. Z.,
2 May 1938.
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[CONTENTS]
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CONTENTS
FOREWORD........v
PREFACE.........vii
INTRODUCTORY...xiii
BOOK I
JAMES WEST STACK'S STORY.....1
BOOK II
MRS. STACK'S JOURNALS OF THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES....75
ILLUSTRATIONS
JAMES WEST STACK....... Frontispiece
MRS. JAMES WEST STACK...74
THE COLLEGE CHAPEL....208
INTRODUCTORY
JAMES WEST STACK
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[INTRODUCTION]
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INTRODUCTORY
JAMES WEST STACK
A somewhat extensive memoir of James West Stack will be found in the first volume of the series (Early Maoriland Adventures) of which this is the third, but it seems desirable to preface this continuation of his Recollections by a brief sketch of his life.
The association of the Stack family with New Zealand goes back to 1823 when James Stack, influenced by Samuel Marsden, joined the Wesleyan Mission at Whangaroa. In January, 1827, the mission station was blotted out of existence by marauding natives, and in that time of peril James Stack bore a man's part. He it was who made a hazardous night journey of twenty miles to Kerikeri, in search of assistance at the Church Mission, which he was later to join.
The subject of this brief memoir was the eldest son of James Stack, and was born at the Maori pa, Puriri, Thames, on 27th March, 1835. His early boyhood was spent on his parents' mission stations, successively at Mangapouri, Te Papa (Tauranga) and the East Cape. When he was about twelve years of age the strain of isolation, and the difficult conditions that had for so long been valiantly faced, caused a complete breakdown in
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the father's health. The family removed to Sydney, and after a few months sailed for England.
In 1850 the mother died in London, and James West, resolving to take up in New Zealand the work that his father had been compelled to lay down, entered the Training College of the Church Missionary Society in London. In 1852 he was sent out as assistant to Dr. Robert Maunsell at the Lower Waikato, and there, on the Kohanga mission station, he remained until 1859, when he accepted the appointment of missionary to the Canterbury Maoris.
Early in 1861, after his ordination by Bishop Harper, he went to Auckland, where Bishop Selwyn married him to Miss Jones, whom he had first met during her visit to the Kohanga mission station in 1858. Returning to Canterbury with his wife, they made their headquarters at the Maori pa near Kaiapoi. For many years Stack carried out the duties of his office with singular devotion, and came to be recognised as the leading authority on the South Island Maoris.
In later years he ministered to a European congregation, and at the close of the nineteenth century, after spending about sixty years in New Zealand, mainly living amongst, and ministering to, the Maoris, he and his wife, and an unmarried daughter, went to reside in Italy. In 1907 they removed to England, where they settled for the evening of their life at Worthing. Here it was that he set down, from written records and his own memory, the fascinating story of his eventful life in early New Zealand.
Canon Stack died at Worthing, on 13th October, 1919,
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aged eighty-four, and his wife passed to her rest a few weeks later at the age of ninety.
Amongst Stack's published works--apart from these Recollections--are South Island Maoris, The Sacking of Kaiapohia, Kuru, Through Canterbury and Otago with Bishop Harper in 1859-60. He also collaborated with H. C. Jacobson in Tales of Banks Peninsula.
In the immediately preceding volume--More Maoriland Adventures--Stack's autobiography was carried to the close of the year 1860, when he accompanied Bishop Harper on an overland journey across the roadless and unbridged wilds of Canterbury and Otago, to the southernmost limits of the island.
A. H. R.
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