CHAPTER III: COLLISION WITH THE NATIVES.
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CHAPTER III.
COLLISION WITH THE NATIVES.
EARLY in the year 1840, and before British authority was established in the country, the New Zealand Company's first fleet reached Wellington; and no sooner had their emigrants disembarked, than the want of authority for the preservation of order amongst them began to be felt. Ignorant of the difficulties of the enterprise into which they had hastily engaged, the New Zealand Company had made it their boast that they had undertaken the Colonization of New Zealand in direct defiance of the authority of the Crown; but their first body of Colonists soon found that, whatever may be its form, some governing power is the first necessity of the social state. Before leaving England the emigrants had entered into a formal compact amongst themselves that, when they reached their adopted country, every offender should be punished in the same manner as if the offence had been committed against the law and within the realm of England; that certain members of the colonizing body should constitute a Council of Government; and that in all criminal proceedings, an umpire, assisted by assessors, should decide on the guilt or innocence of the party
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accused. Hardly, however, had their first body of settlers reached the country, when they were officially warned from England, not only that any act of coercion or authority done by them under the agreement would be illegal, but that they would be liable to a prosecution for usurping the functions of the Crown and Parliament in setting up an independent jurisdiction, and that it was the intention of the Government to enforce the strict letter of the law. A serious difficulty was thus experienced by them at a critical period of their adventurous undertaking; and, without some controlling power, the community must soon have been broken up. A prompt and efficient remedy was essential to its very existence. The Colonists, however, were Englishmen, practised in the exercise of political functions: not a few of them equal to any emergency; able, energetic, and determined. Self-preservation was the paramount consideration. They could not carry British law into effect, even by mutual consent; but there was no law to prevent them living in an independent State, enjoying its protection and subject to its laws. A Constitution and laws adapted to the habits of an enterprising body of Englishmen were not, it is true, at that time to be found amongst the wild tribes of New Zealand: this, however, was a small difficulty; for the country had at all events long since been officially declared by the Government to be an independent State. Some years previously, the British residents in New Zealand, for the purpose of providing some means of regulating the increasing commerce of our countrymen, had collected together a number of the
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northern chiefs, who "agreed to meet in Congress at Waitangi, in the autumn of each year, for the purpose of framing laws for the dispensation of Justice, the preservation of peace and good order, and the regulation of trade." And although this attempted Confederation failed to effect the object of its author, it served as a useful hint to the newly-arrived settlers at Port Nicholson; and they at once perceived a means of obtaining the protection of laws of their own framing, without any violation of the laws of their own country. Following the example of the British residents, the Port Nicholson settlers called together "the Sovereign Chiefs" of the district, and went through the form of obtaining from them the adoption and ratification of the Contract of Government entered into by themselves before leaving England. Besides ratifying the Agreement, these "Sovereign Chiefs" conferred upon the Council of Government which had been established by the settlers, all such powers of legislation as they, as Sovereign Chiefs, might themselves exercise and perform. In resorting to these proceedings, however, the southern Colonists had no intention of establishing a permanent independent Republic: it was simply an act of self-preservation --a mere colourable proceeding, to enable them to maintain order amongst themselves, without violating the law of their own parent state. And this ephemeral Constitution answered the object of its founders: it gave them the appearance, at least, of legitimate authority; and it had the effect, too, of hastening the establishment of British rule.
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But the Wellington settlers had yet no conception of the helpless position in which they had been placed by the precipitate proceedings of the Company by whom they had been sent out. For a short time after their arrival, they continued to live on the most friendly terms with the natives, and anticipated no opposition to their peaceful occupation of the country. But the defects in the Company's title soon became apparent. When their surveying parties began to cut the boundary lines, or when their purchasers proceeded to take actual possession of the land, natives from various parts of the country, who had not been parties to the sale, came forward to assert their rights; and, regarding the Company's settlers as unauthorized intruders, actively opposed their occupation of the land: while the Colonists, ignorant of the native law of property, naturally viewed the claims put forward by the natives as but a pretext for acts of violence, and for making extortionate demands. And thus, prevented from occupying the soil, the intending settlers were confined, in a state of complete inactivity, to the strip of land forming the site of the projected town of Wellington. From an early period of the settlement, angry relations sprung up between the Company's settlers and the natives; and during a long period of unprofitable inaction, capital remained idle, or was unprofitably expended; labour remained unemployed, and the best energies of a numerous body of enterprising-colonists were wasted on the Wellington beach.
No long time elapsed, however, before the settlers had reason to believe that the Company had sold
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land to them which they had never in fact purchased from the natives; and the question arose, what were the rights, the claims, and the obligations of the several parties? As to land which they had not sold to the Company, it was clear that the natives not only continued to have an undoubted right to it, but that they had also a claim upon the British Government to be supported in the peaceable possession of it. Before the country was colonized, repeated disclaimers were made by the Queen and her Majesty's predecessor of every pretension to seize upon it. By the treaty of Waitangi, too, "her Majesty the Queen of England confirmed and guaranteed to the chiefs and tribes of New Zealand the exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands." By the Royal instructions the Governor was directed especially to protect them in their persons, and in the free enjoyment of their possessions; and the Secretary of State declared that "her Majesty had distinctly established the general principle, that the territorial rights of the natives, as owners of the soil, must be recognised and respected." Thus, the rights of the natives and their claims upon the British Government did not admit of a question. If the New Zealand Company had been even tacitly allowed to colonize New Zealand, they might have had some claims upon the Government for consideration: but they were distinctly informed by Lord Normanby, before the sailing of their preliminary expedition, that "her Majesty could not recognise the authority of the agents whom the Company might employ," and that "no pledge could be given for the future recog-
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nition by her Majesty of any proprietary titles to land within New Zealand which the Company or any other persons might obtain by grant or purchase from the natives." And, so far from the Company's operations having been conducted under the sanction or with the permission of the Government, it was made a boast by the Company that they colonized New Zealand in spite of the Government. Neither against the natives nor against the Government, therefore, could the Company have any claims to land which they had not purchased. But the settlers themselves, it was urged, had claims, either against the Government or against the natives, because "upon the faith of an Agreement between the New Zealand Company and the English Government, which seemingly recognised and adopted the Company's title, many of the settlers had expended sums of money." Unfortunately, however, for the Port Nicholson settlers, this Agreement contained an express declaration on the part of the Government that "the Company having sold, or contracted to sell land to various persons, her Majesty's Government disclaim all liability for making good any such sales or contracts:" and, to make the case stronger, in answer to an enquiry made on behalf of a number of purchasers of land in the Company's first or principal settlement, and before the first body of settlers sailed from England, the Colonial Minister replied that her Majesty's Government had no connection with that Society, and that he "could not hold out any expectation that her Majesty would be advised to recognise or sanction them." To a similar enquiry made on behalf of
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a "small community of intending emigrants," it was replied that her Majesty's Government had not in any manner recognised the proceedings of the Association, and could enter into no engagement as to the validity of any titles to land which might be derived from that body. Upon the British Government, therefore, it was clear that the New Zealand Company's settlers had no claim. Neither had they any equitable claim against the natives. It is true that, according to our English notions of equity, if the owner permits a stranger, without warning or interruption, to erect buildings or to expend money upon his land, the stranger acquires a right to some consideration; but, in the present instance, the natives by no means acquiesced: they constantly protested: they did more; they in some cases pulled down the buildings erected on the land, and drove off the intruder by force. The first really serious collision, however, between the two races occurred, not where many hundreds of our countrymen had settled themselves in the immediate vicinity of a populous native settlement, but in the thinly peopled Southern Island, and in a district not permanently occupied by the natives. About the middle of the month of July, 1843, the startling intelligence reached the seat of Government that a party of our countrymen belonging to the settlement founded by the New Zealand Company at Nelson, had come into collision with the natives, and had been cut off almost to a man; and that upwards of twenty of them, including nearly all the leading members of the Nelson Settlement had been tomahawked or shot.
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The claims of the New Zealand Company to land in New Zealand amounted to some millions of acres; partly in the Northern Island, and partly in the northern part of the Southern Island: in many instances, however, these claims had been denied, and in some cases openly resisted by the natives, on the ground that the land had never, in fact, been sold by them to the agents of the Company. In order to carry out the plan on which the Nelson Settlement was founded, it became necessary, for want of land in the neighbourhood, after putting the settlers into the possession of their town and suburban sections, to resort to the Wairau valley, a fine district in Cloudy Bay, about seventy miles from Nelson, for the purpose of finding land to supply the original purchasers with their 150 acres' sections of country land; and in the month of April preceding several surveying parties were despatched, on the part of the Company, to survey the district. Almost immediately on their commencing work, the natives, who disputed the sale of that district, ordered off the surveyors, pulled up their ranging rods and stakes, and did everything in their power to prevent the survey from proceeding.
Whilst this was being done by some of their people, Rauparaha and Rangiaiata, two of the most powerful and least civilized chiefs of that part of New Zealand, who were the original native owners of the district, were at Porirua, on the other side of Cook's Straits, urging the Land Claims Commissioner, Mr. Spain, to hasten over to settle the land claims at Wairau, as they wished the surveyors to be withdrawn; and the
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Commissioner agreed to hear these claims towards the end of June. In the meantime both the chiefs crossed the straits to Cloudy Bay, went up the Wairau with their party, found the surveyors still there, collected a number of them together, their tents and provisions, and told them that they intended to send them all off the land together. Previous to this, they had set fire to Mr. Cotterell's (one of the surveyors) hut; having first assisted him to move all property of value, to prevent its destruction. Early in June, Mr. Cotterell proceeded to Nelson, to inform Captain Wakefield, the Company's agent, of what had taken place: Mr. Tuckett, the Company's chief surveyor, attempting, but in vain, during Mr. Cotterell's absence, to obtain the permission of the chiefs for the survey to proceed. On arriving at Nelson, Mr. Cotterell (on the 12th of June) laid an information before the police magistrate, Mr. Thompson, who issued a warrant against Rauparaha and Rangiaiata for burning Mr. Cotterell's hut; and, accompanied by Captain Wakefield, the New Zealand Company's Nelson agent, and several other officers and men in their employment, shortly afterwards started for the Wairau, with the intention of executing it. Distinguished for his high character, humanity, and courage, Captain Wakefield, the leader of the Nelson Settlement, was esteemed and respected by all who knew him; and the last lines he ever wrote record his belief that in engaging in the ill-fated undertaking he was acting for the benefit of all. "We heard on Sunday," he wrote to his brother, Colonel Wakefield, on the 13th, "that
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Te Rauparaha and Rangi have commenced operations on the Wairau, and have burned one of the surveyors' houses. The magistrates have granted a warrant on the information, and Thompson, accompanied by myself, England, and a lot of constables, are off immediately in the Government brig to execute it. We shall muster about sixty, so I think we shall overcome these travelling bullies. I never felt more convinced of being about to act right for the benefit of all, and not less especially so for the native race."
On the 13th, Mr. Thompson, the police magistrate, Captain Wakefield, Mr. Richardson, Captain England, late of Her Majesty's 12th Foot, Mr. Howard, the Company's storekeeper, Mr. Patchett, merchant, Mr. Cotterell, Company's surveyor, Mr. Brooks, who acted as interpreter, the Chief Constable of Nelson, three constables, and about twenty-five other persons, mostly labourers and others connected with the Company's survey department, started on the expedition. Before reaching the Wairau, they were joined by one of the Company's boats, having on board Mr. Tuckett, and ten or twelve men who joined the party. On Thursday evening, they anchored at the mouth of the Wairau, and remained there: and at a Pah at the entrance of the river, Mr Howard, the Company's storekeeper, served out arms to the men (about thirty-five in number) consisting of muskets, bayonets, pistols, swords, and cutlasses, and several rounds of ball-cartridge; the constables were also armed with guns, muskets, and pistols. One or two of the men
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were sworn in as special constables: some were told they were going to take Rauparaha and Rangiaiata, on a warrant; few knew that they were on a hostile service, and many of the party expressed their intention not to use their arms. In the course of their progress they were joined by Mr. Barnicoat, another of the Company's surveyors, and his man.
Early on Saturday morning, the party, who had left their boats when the river became shallow, and marched up the banks, came up to the place where they expected to find Rauparaha and Rangiaiata and their party; and they found them encamped on the opposite bank of a narrow creek. By the directions of Mr. Thompson and Captain Wakefield, the European party was now formed into two bodies, under Captain England and Mr. Howard; who gave orders to their men not to interfere until directed. As a means of communication with the other side of the creek, where the chiefs were encamped, a canoe was placed across the water, to serve as a bridge. Mr. Thompson, Captain Wakefield, the Chief Constable Brook, and some others, then crossed over. Mr. Thompson, Captain Wakefield, and Mr. Cotterell walked backwards and forwards for nearly half an hour with the natives, and apparently in a friendly manner. 1 Mr. Thompson then showed his warrant,
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directed the constable to execute on it on Rauparaha, and instructed Brooke to explain the meaning of it, Mr. Thompson also stated that he was "the Queen's representative," and that (pointing to the warrant) was the Queen's book; that Rauparaha must go on board the brig with the constable, and that it was for burning Mr. Cotterell's house, and had nothing to do with the land question. Rauparaha told them to sit down and talk, and not make a fight, and to wait till Mr. Spain and Mr. Clarke came, and hear what they would say. Mr. Thompson then inquired of Rauparaha whether he would come or not? to which he replied, he would not; but that if Mr. Clarke or Mr. Spain was there he would. Mr. Thompson then said, if he would not go he would make him. Rauparaha still refusing, Mr. Thompson, pointing to the Europeans, said, "There is the armed force, and they shall fire upon you all if you won't go." Mr. Thompson, it appears, then became "exasperated," and the discussion violent. Rangiaiata called on him not to fire. "For God's sake, Thompson, mind what you are about!" also shouted Mr. Richardson from the other side. Mr. Thompson, however, called to the armed party to fix bayonets and advance; Captain Wakefield, placing the canoe across the stream for a bridge, gave the word, "Englishmen, forward!" A few of them had entered the canoe, when a shot was fired--whether by accident or design is not quite clear --on the side of the Europeans. Upon this, the firing immediately became general on both sides, and several fell. Three of their party having fallen, the Maories
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hesitated whether they should run away; but Rauparaha urged them to pursue. When the firing commenced, Mr. Thompson, Captain Wakefield, and the rest of the party who had been in communication with the chiefs, recrossed the creek to join their own party, who were now retreating up the hill, pursued by the natives. At each step in the ascent, Captain Wakefield again and again attempted to rally the men, and entreated them to make a stand, to fix bayonets and charge.
An irregular firing was still kept up, but the European party continued retreating. "For God's sake, come back, men!" cried Mr. Thompson; "the Maories are coming upon us." But the greater number made good their retreat, and there was running in all directions. Captain Wakefield, finding it impossible to rally the men, then ordered those who remained to lay down their arms and surrender. Brooke, the interpreter, called to the Maories, "Leave off, enough!" But after this, some shots were fired by those in retreat who had reached the top of the hill, and were too far distant to know what was going on below. When signals of surrender had been made, one or two Maories also threw down their arms, and advanced with their arms stretched out, in token of reconciliation. It seems that while the surrender was taking; place by the gentlemen below, and the firing by the stragglers above, Rangiaiata came up enraged: he had discovered that his wife had been shot. "Rauparaha," said he, "remember your daughter!" The dreadful carnage then commenced; and Rangiaiata alone, with
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his own hand, it is said, destroyed the greater number. "Puaha, Puaha!" cried out the wife of a chief from a distance; "save some of the chiefs" (gentlemen) "that you may have it to say that you have saved some." But it was then too late. On the European side, the number of armed men was forty-five; on the Maori side about forty were engaged: their loss was four killed and five wounded. On the Wednesday following Mr Ironsides, the Wesleyan missionary, having heard of the fatal conflict, hastened to the spot, where he found nineteen European bodies. On the Thursday they were buried, Mr. Ironsides reading at the grave the funeral service of the Church of England. On his way to the fatal spot, Mr. Ironsides met Rauparaha and Rangiaiata, and obtained permission to go and bury the dead. They told him that they had no intention to fight: that it was the wrath of the Europeans that made them fight; that the Europeans had fired upon them, and one or two of their number had fallen before they began to fight; and that it was not until the wife of Rangiaiata was shot that "they began to seek for payment."
In addition to the nineteen bodies found dead upon the field, five of the party were severely wounded, and four were missing. In defence of the survivors, who fled early in the conflict, it was urged that many of them were common labourers on the Survey-staff of the New Zealand Company, not hired to risk their lives in fighting with the natives; that they had no interest in the contest; and that they had wives and families depending on them for support. But in
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answer, it was said that they ought, in the first instance, to have refused to take up arms; or, having taken them up, to have manfully used them: but that they took up arms, advanced and fired, and entered into the conflict under the direction of leaders, and thus undertook to support and obey them; and that if they had done so, the most revolting features of the case would have been spared, and many valuable lives; but that, as far as it was possible for them to do so, they damaged the British character in the estimation of the Maories; and, having entered so far into the conflict as to fire upon a body of people guilty of no offence as far as they were concerned, they then, heedless of the rallying cry of Captain Wakefield, and deaf to the entreaties of Mr. Thompson for support, left their comrades in the hour of need to the savage fury of those whom they had themselves provoked. But, be that as it may, the disastrous encounter affords a mournful lesson of the fatal folly of putting arms into the hands of men who are not both able and willing to use them. Before the affray commenced, the prestige of our countrymen stood high; and, if they had shown a steady front, and made a determined stand, the natives would probably have given way: we should certainly have been spared the appalling horrors of the closing scene.
Immediately after the fatal conflict, Rauparaha and Rangiaiata crossed over Cook's Straits, and with a strong party took up their position at Waikanae and Otaki, about fifty miles from Wellington. Anticipating retaliation from the English, they were medi-
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tating an attack upon the town; and the Wellington people, not without reason, became seriously alarmed. At that time, no troops were stationed there: the whole military force in the Colony, stationed at Auckland nearly five hundred miles distant, did not exceed one hundred men; and they could not be brought down to Wellington in less than a month.
As a precautionary measure, it was resolved, at a meeting of the magistrates in Wellington, that Mr. Spain, the Commissioner of Land Claims, should be requested to go and communicate to the native chiefs their determination not to make, or sanction, any attempt to take vengeance for the death of the white men at the Wairau, but to leave the whole matter to the decision of the Queen's Government. Few men at that moment would have sought the commission; but Mr. Spain was not the man to shrink from the honour thus conferred upon him by his brother magistrates: and he at once proceeded up the coast, when he met Rauparaha himself, and addressed a large assemblage of the natives, informing them that it was not the policy of the English law to punish the innocent for the guilty; that the statements both of the Maories and the white men engaged in the conflict had been sent to Auckland to the Governor, who would decide upon the steps to be taken; and that, in the mean time, no act of aggression would be committed upon them by the English.
At the conclusion of his address, Mr. Spain was asked by Rauparaha if his object in coming amongst them was not, first to quiet them, in order that the
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English might have time to get troops, and when they came, if the English did not intend to attack them? "Rauparaha," says Mr. Spain, "seemed to feel the difficulty of my situation. 'I hope, at all events,' said he, 'you will act as gentlemen, and that if the Governor should decide upon sending soldiers to take me and Rangiaiata that you will send and let us know when they arrive: you need not take the trouble to send up here for us. If you will only send, I will come down to Wellington with 1,000 Maories, and have a fight with the white men: if they beat us they shall have New Zealand, and we will be their slaves; but if we beat them, then they must stand clear.'"
Rauparaha, whose name had for many years been a terror to the country, was a most powerful speaker and a crafty, able man. He told the natives that the English in retaliation would certainly make an attempt to kill all the Maories: that they had already sent for soldiers, and were preparing at Port Nicholson; and that now was the time to attack the white people before they were prepared. Happily for the peace of the country, the people of the district had for some time been living under the ministration of one of the most devoted and influential Missionaries in New Zealand; and it is hardly too much to affirm that Wellington owed its safety at that moment to a single individual, the Reverend Octavius Hadfield. 2
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Yet a single false step on the part of the Government would have been fatal. If the natives had then attacked Wellington, in force, probably not even the patrimony of God would have been spared; but "the smoke of the town would have gone up like the smoke of a furnace," and, like Kororarika, the New Zealand Company's "first and principal settlement," would have been totally destroyed.
On the side of the Maories it was complained by Rauparaha that the attack made upon them was unjust; that the English first took away his land, and then wanted to take himself and Rangiaiata into custody for having destroyed a hut built upon his own land of toe-toe and wood grown upon it: and "is this," said he, "the justice the Queen of England promised to the Maories?"
The Nelson people, on the other hand, sent a deputation to wait upon the Government to express their views of the catastrophe. "We have no hesitation in stating," said the deputation, "that it is the general opinion of the settlers at Nelson that our countrymen who were killed at the Wairau plain, lost their lives in endeavouring to discharge their duty as magistrates and British subjects, obedient to British law; and that the persons by whom they were killed are murderers in the eyes of common sense and justice." On the part of the Colonial Government it was replied that for the recent bloodshed an awful
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responsibility had assuredly been incurred; but what was the degree of criminality of those concerned in the fatal conflict, and on whom that criminality chiefly rested, were questions on which no opinion could then be given, as the transaction might become the subject of judicial inquiry; but that whatever might be the crime and whoever might be the criminals, it was but too clear that the event had arisen in consequence of some of the New Zealand Company's surveyors, without the knowledge or concurrence of the Government, proceeding to take possession of, and to survey a tract of land in opposition to the original native owners, who had uniformly denied the sale of it.
Fortunately for the safety of the country, the Government were so far removed from the scene of action as to be able to form a dispassionate judgment of this most deplorable calamity. After the most anxious and careful consideration of all the evidence before them they arrived at the conclusion that the proceeding, so far as Mr. Thompson the police magistrate was concerned, was illegal in its inception, and in every step in its execution, up to the moment of the attack itself; that it was unjustifiable in the magistrate and the four constables, and that it was criminal on the part of the rest of the attacking party: and the British Government, still further removed from all disturbing influences, arrived at the same conclusion. "So manifestly illegal," wrote the Secretary of State, "unjust, and unwise were the martial array and the command to advance, that I
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fear the authors of that order must be held responsible for all that followed in natural and immediate sequence upon it... Whether I try the proceedings of Mr. Thompson and his followers by general principles, or the narrower rules of the law of England, I am compelled to adopt the same conclusion: I adopt and I record it with that serious concern with which alone we can contemplate the errors of our fellow-countrymen, when expiated by the most lamentable sufferings, and even, as unhappily in this case, by death. But my regard for the memory of the deceased (among whom were several gallant and meritorious men, and eminent benefactors of the colony) does not acquit me of the obligation of stating explicitly my judgment of their proceedings. It is a painful duty: but that judgment is that they needlessly violated the rules of the law of England, the maxims of prudence, and the principles of justice." The attempt has been made by the New Zealand Company to fix upon the Local Government "the Massacre of the Wairau, and the crime of having, by unjust and ill-judged proceedings, involved first the Northern and then the Southern districts in insurrection and bloodshed." But ten years after the fatal event, when all excitement had entirely passed away, a Committee of the House of Representatives, composed of the leading members from every Province, and having certainly no leaning in favour of the executive Authorities by whom the Colony had been governed, thus recorded their judgment on the subject: --"It is with great pain and reluctance that
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your Committee refer to the melancholy affair at Wairau in 1843; nor is it with the smallest intention of casting any reflection upon the memories of the men who fell there: whom they believe to have been men of high and generous character, and actuated by honest motives; although, from their ignorance of the native character, almost necessarily mistaken. But your committee cannot admit that the responsibility of the Massacre of the Wairau rests with the Local Government, or that it has any necessary connection with the selection of the site of the Nelson settlement. There can be no doubt of the fact that the Massacre of the Wairau was caused by the agents of the Company attempting to take possession of a district with regard to which the natives always denied that they had sold it; and although the Local Government may seem to be implicated in the matter, inasmuch as its representative, the Police Magistrate, headed the expedition, it is nevertheless perfectly notorious that the Company's agent was the real instigator of that expedition which led to such lamentable results. The native war in the north, there is every reason to believe, was occasioned by the success of the natives in the conflict with the white men at the Wairau. In consequence of that success, the superstitious feeling with which the natives had previously regarded the power and the law of the white man was destroyed; the jealousy of the natives on the subject of their territorial possessions was indefinitely stimulated, and a feeling was created which prompted the restless and turbulent among a race of savages fond of the ex-
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citement of war, to seek to emulate in another field what they considered to be the triumph of their countrymen. In fact, instead of deducing the native wars from the proceedings of the Local Government as their sole or principal cause (the position assumed by the New Zealand Company) there appears to your Committee greater reason to say that the first conflict between the settlers and the natives was precipitated by the conduct of the Company and its agents."
