CHAPTER I. PURIRI AND MANGAPOURI
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EARLY MAORILAND ADVENTURES of J. W. STACK
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CHAPTER I
PURIRI AND MANGAPOURI
I AM BORN IN A NEW ZEALAND PA--HOW THE MAORIS WELCOMED US TO MANGAPOURI.
BEFORE I begin the story of my childhood I must tell how it was that my parents went to live in New Zealand.
At the beginning of last century, New Zealand was inhabited only by Maoris. They were a very ferocious people, always fighting with one another, and ready to kill any stranger who landed upon their shores. In spite of their ferocity they possessed many attractive qualities. 1 They were brave, intelligent, and very enterprising.
Some of them got employment as sailors on board the European vessels which frequented the coast of New Zealand in search of whales and seals, and so made their way to Sydney. There they met the Rev. Samuel Marsden, who was Colonial Chaplain at that time. He noticed how superior the Maoris were both in appearance and intelligence to the "blacks" of Australia, and how quickly they conformed to civilized ways when they lived amongst Europeans. He felt sorry thai such a fine race of people should have no higher
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MY FATHER ARRIVES IN NEW ZEALAND
object in life than trying to kill one another. He made friends with some of them, and got them to stay with him at his house in Parramatta, a short distance from Sydney, where he tried to persuade them to give up the heathen law of hate, and to adopt, instead of it, the Christian law of love.
Mr. Marsden induced the Church Missionary Society of London to send missionaries to teach the Maoris, and he himself went with the first who were sent out, to introduce them to the natives whom he had already made friends with. He preached at the Bay of Islands, on Christmas Day, 1814, the first Christian sermon ever delivered in New Zealand, from the text "I bring you good tidings of great joy."
About the time that Mr. Marsden was drawing public attention to the pitiable condition of the Maori race, my father, James Stack, arrived in Sydney, having gone there with the intention of farming the piece of land granted to him as a free emigrant by the Government. He was not long in the country before he became so deeply interested in the welfare of the Maoris, that he resolved to devote his life to teaching them to be better men and women. Finding that a great friend of his was going with a party of missionaries to try and christianize the natives of Whangaroa, where the crew of the ship Boyd were killed and eaten in December 1809, he decided to go with him, and arrived there in 1823. 2
The tribe of Maoris amongst whom the missionaries settled proved to be a fickle and ferocious set of people, treated them with great harshness,
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MY FATHER BECOMES A C. M. S. MISSIONARY
and ended a long series of insults and injuries by burning down the mission station early in 1827, about three years after it was established.
My father and his companions--amongst whom were a lady and her three young children--had to fly for their lives. A friendly Maori guided them, in the night time, through fern and bush to a place of safety, by a narrow track which they found very hard to follow in the darkness. 3
Though so badly treated, the missionaries did not lose heart, but continued to do all in their power to benefit the Maoris, and soon established another mission station 4 amongst a better disposed tribe, who lived nearer the Bay of Islands.
There my father continued working for some years, and then he returned to England, where he entered the service of the Church Missionary Society in 1833.
While he was preparing for ordination, such urgent appeals for more helpers reached the Society from New Zealand that my father felt it his duty to go back there at once. Fortunately he did not do so alone, but was accompanied by his young wife, to whom he was married on the 6th of November, 1833. The two sailed from Gravesend on the 28th of the same month in the ship Sovereign, commanded by Captain Baker. The voyage to Australia was long and tedious, and they did not reach Sydney till the 26th of May, 1834.
As their ship did not go beyond Sydney, they were obliged to wait there till a vessel could be
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APPOINTED TO MANGAPOURI
found going to New Zealand. It was many weeks before that happened, and my mother, who had suffered severely from sea-sickness on the outward voyage, was glad of the delay, which gave her time to recover strength before encountering, on board the little vessel which carried her to New Zealand, greater discomforts than any she had yet experienced at sea.
My parents arrived at the Bay of Islands at a turning point in the religious history of the Maori people. It was the time when they were just beginning to realize the meaning and value of the message from God, proclaimed by Mr. Marsden in 1814. For twenty long years a few brave English Christian men and women had continued to repeat that message and to press its importance upon the attention of unwilling hearers, who did everything they could to terrify and disgust the missionaries, and to make them stop protesting against the abominable practice of cannibalism. Then, all at once, a change came over the Maori people, and from tribes in every part of the country applications for Christian teachers to be sent to them reached the headquarters of the Church Mission at Paihia.
In response to one of these appeals, the Managing Committee decided to send my father and mother, and Mr. and Mrs. Hamlin, 5 to Mangapouri, 6 a settlement of some importance on the upper Waikato. To reach that place it was thought
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I AM BORN AT PURIRI
advisable to go by way of the Thames, where the natives were specially friendly to the Williams brothers.
As soon as my dear mother was strong enough to travel from the Maori pa at Puriri, where I was born on 27th March, 1835, bearers were hired to carry her in an amo, 7 something like an ambulance stretcher.
The distance in miles between Puriri and Waikato was not very great, but owing to the entire absence of roads and bridges the journey occupied some days.
The path they travelled along was as narrow as a sheep track, and had to be widened on entering a forest, or when passing through scrub, to allow the amo and baggage to pass. Every stream which crossed their path, if it happened to be in flood, detained them till its waters subsided.
On nearing their destination a number of armed men came out of the stockade to meet them, and commenced a dance of welcome. They stood in a row for some moments, and jumped up and down in time to a chanted tune; finally, with a loud yell, they rushed forward, brandishing their weapons and firing their guns, just as if they meant to kill the advancing party of travellers. But before reaching them they turned round and ran back into the pa. Then a number of women came out, waving their mats and crying, "Welcome, welcome, welcome."
My dear mother felt greatly relieved when the women appeared, and knew what their cries indicated. But her embarrassment was very great
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WE ARRIVE AT MANGAPOURI
when they crowded round her and began to examine her features and her dress, and above all her precious baby. Many of the women were very dirty and very ugly, and cruel looking, but they all valued and admired a pretty face, and were very outspoken in their admiration for the wahine pakeha (white woman) who was quite a kotiro (girl--she was only twenty) and so very good-looking.
The tent was soon pitched, and my mother was glad to get inside, but it was useless for her to expect to have it to herself. A crowd of women kept by the door, and watched everything she did with wonder and interest. She did not understand much of what they said, and got very tired of the incessant chatter; but till darkness set in, and the Maori bedtime arrived, she could not get rid of them.
There were at Mangapouri several hundred Maoris, who were ruled by two brothers. One was a cruel man, and the other, who was the missionaries' protector, a more kindly disposed person, who was tired of the incessant fighting, and welcomed the teachers of a religion of peace.
As my father expected to remain for some years at Mangapouri, he got the natives to put up a house for him. The walls and rafters consisted of broad slabs of totara, which were covered on the outside with raupo and toetoe. There was no chimney, as neither bricks nor mortar could be procured to build one. When it was cold, and the home required warming, an iron pot, called a
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OUR HOUSE AT MANGAPOURI
kohua by the Maoris and a "go-ashore" 8 by the whalers, was brought in and filled with glowing embers.
The house consisted of two rooms, a sitting-room and a bedroom. The kitchen (Maori kauta) was detached, because Maoris thought it as shocking to cook food in a dwelling-house as we should to do so in a church. A small storehouse, in which the provisions were kept, and such goods as were required to buy food and to pay wages, completed the establishment.
