1859 - Thomson, A. S. The Story of New Zealand [Vol.I] - Part II. History of the Discovery of New Zealand by Europeans - CHAPTER II. NEW ZEALAND FROM 1810 TO 1838.

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CHAP. II.

NEW ZEALAND FROM 1810 TO 1838.

THE evil effects of the massacre of the crew and passengers of the Boyd did not terminate with the murder of Te Pahi's people. It prevented for five years the introduction of Christianity into the country, caused the natives to be denominated the enemies of mankind, and justified in the minds of certain men the cruelties and murders committed by the masters of trading vessels. 1 Several of these actions are so atrocious as, for human nature's sake, to excite a hope they are untrue, or exaggerated. It is related that a European gave a chief corrosive sublimate to poison his foes at a feast held to commemorate peace; 2 that a European

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trader enticed New Zealanders on board his ship, and landed them in the midst of their enemies; and that whalers often forcibly kidnapped natives of both sexes. 3

In 1814, the government of New South Wales tried to suppress these outrages, by appointing Mr. Thomas Kendall, and the chiefs Ruatara, Hongi, and Koro Koro, magistrates for the Bay of Islands' territory. 4 A useless and illegal edict, not confirmed by his Majesty, because New Zealand had already been recognised as an independent state in an act to punish offences committed in places beyond the king's dominions. 5

At this era every vessel approaching the coast had boarding nets, and during the three years ending 1817 one hundred New Zealanders were slain by Europeans in the immediate vicinity of the Bay of Islands. 6 Such murders did not pass unavenged, although the blows given fell on the wrong parties. The brig Agnes of six guns, with fourteen men on board, stranded at Poverty Bay in 1816, and all the crew save John Rutherford were killed and eaten. 7 A whale ship was cast ashore at Wanganui in 1820, and all the crew were killed and eaten but one European and one negro. 8 Personal inquiry along the east and west coasts has likewise convinced me that at this period the capture of European vessels was a trade among them. The idea of extirpating a race of cannibals stimulated Europeans to shoot New Zealanders; revenge and covetousness stimulated New Zealanders to slaughter Europeans. In 1823 Parliament

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tried to stop these inhuman scenes by passing an act giving to the Supreme Courts of Australia and Tasmania jurisdiction over British subjects in New Zealand. 9

How long this war of races would have continued to rage it is impossible to conjecture, had not a change in the mode of conducting native strife rendered fire-arms and gunpowder absolutely necessary for victory.

To New Zealand was now given, for a great purpose, one of those men who produce revolutions and brighten up the page of history. About the year 1777 was born, near the Bay of Islands, Hongi Hika, a scion of the illustrious Ngapuhi nation. In early manhood he distinguished himself in battle; and although influential from his birth, he soon became more so by his deeds. After rendering his name famous in his country's annals, he accompanied Ruatara to Sydney in 1814, lived in the Rev. Mr. Marsden's house, and returned to New Zealand the patron and protector of Christianity and letters. These offices, however, did not restrain him from plunging into war and ravaging the Bay of Plenty, Rotorua, Wangaroa, and Hokianga; when, having subdued every foe he could safely reach, he grew restless from idleness, and announced his intention of visiting England "to see King George and bring back missionaries, carpenters, blacksmiths, Europeans, and twenty soldiers."

In 1820, Hongi and Waikato embarked for England, accompanied by Mr. Kendall, a missionary; and on arriving at London were of great assistance to Professor Lee of Cambridge in the construction of a vocabulary and grammar of the New Zealand language. George IV. gave Hongi an audience, and dismissed him

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with a suit of armour and many presents. While in England, Hongi derived most pleasure from beholding the household troops, the military stores in the Tower, and the great elephant; and in listening to stories of Napoleon's sieges and battles. At this time the talk of the country was the queen's trial, and he was told that "a hated woman, when she is married, is a thing the earth cannot bear," and "that a bad wife is as rottenness to his bones." But Hongi was unable to comprehend why a great man like King George could not manage one wife without calling in the assistance of all his lords, seeing that he himself ruled without difficulty over five.

After a month's residence in England, during which he charmed the religious world by acting the part of a devout Christian, he returned to Sydney. There a New Zealander informed him that during his absence his son-in-law had fallen in battle on the banks of the river Thames. From the grief this news produced he soon recovered, and immediately commenced collecting guns and powder. All the valuable presents brought from England, excepting the coat of mail, were sold to purchase 300 muskets; and with this supply he returned home to revenge his son-in-law's blood.

Early in 1822 Hongi embarked in his war canoes at the Bay of Islands, with 1000 followers, steered up the Houraki gulf, and entered the river Thames. Totara, a fortification standing on its left bank, was taken by stratagem, 500 of the enemy slain, and 300 eaten. He then directed his canoes to a stronghold on the Tamaki river, in the centre of the present pensioner village of Panmure, which place also fell with considerable slaughter. The fugitives from these two forts

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sought safety in Matakitaki, a stronghold on the Waipa river. Thither Hongi pursued them, and slew 1400 out of a garrison of 4000. Rauparaha, who lived at Kawhia, terrified at his deeds, fled southwards. One portion of the army, under Thomas Walker Nene, advanced on Taranaki, and Hongi returned home from the greatest of his campaigns with crowds of slaves. A missionary witnessed the conqueror's disembarkation at the Bay of Islands. The women, who remained at home, rushed out to meet the warriors, and those who had relatives slain during the expedition gave vent to their passions by murdering unarmed and unresisting slaves. During this campaign the enemy were without firearms, while Hongi's warriors mustered upwards of 300 stand of arms. In 1826 he fought a pitched battle at Kaipara, where his favourite son was slain; and, in revenge, he scooped out and swallowed the eyes of several of the prostrate wounded on the battle-field. At this engagement he wore the suit of armour King George had given him, as a protection from the guns the enemy had now obtained. 10 His last and fatal expedition was made in 1827 against his old foes at Wangaroa. During an early part of the conflict a bullet passed close to his ear, and whispered death was at hand: subsequently one penetrated his lungs, for he wore upon this occasion his helmet but not his breastplate, and the wound never healed, although he recovered so far as occasionally to entertain his friends by making the air whistle through the hole in his back. Fifteen months after receiving this wound he died from its effects, aged

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fifty-five years. On his death-bed, which was decked out with instruments of war, he exhorted his followers to be courageous, to protect the missionaries, and not allow these holy men to leave the country; "For," said he, "they have done good and have done no harm." Hongi left a son who lives without a name, and will probably die without posterity.

Hongi was a man of small stature, but he had a large, broad, and high forehead, with quick piercing eyes. Ambition, energy, and revenge, were the three great features in his character; and he was endowed with an undaunted constancy of purpose, neither baffled by disappointments nor wearied out by impediments. Such qualities are rare among his countrymen; and some things he judged with the acuteness of a critic and the spirit of a philosopher. He never became a Christian, although he educated his children at the mission schools. He had a high sense of honour and a tender heart: grief for the loss of two brothers made him attempt suicide; and no insult ever provoked him to take the life of a European. The Rev. Mr. Turner and other missionaries, who measure savages by themselves, have held him up to the world as a bloody tyrant, even among cannibals, and have unjustly accused him of driving away the Wesleyan mission from Wangaroa in 1827; but Hongi, on his death-bed, deeply regretted his followers' conduct on that occasion, which he could not prevent. No New Zealander ever destroyed more of his countrymen than he, but none ever did them more good; his evil deeds are confined to a few of one generation, while his good deeds will descend to thousands. 11

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Hongi's expedition in 1822, showed the whole New Zealand race that the possession of guns and powder were absolutely necessary for self-preservation, that their old weapons were no match against the new, and that a small body of cowards with fire-arms were stronger than numerous bands of brave warriors wielding meris and tomahawks. Every adult male tried to obtain a gun, and European traders were besought to bring arms and powder. Money and industry were now indispensable for success in war. Tribes ceased retaliating on Europeans, and natives living in the interior of the country were obliged to make peace with those living near the sea coast, so as to get access to the ships.

This sudden demand for fire-arms, and the high commercial value of flax, caused several vessels to be fitted out at Sydney for the New Zealand trade. The governor of that colony dreading bloodshed tried to prevent all traffic: finding this impossible, he endeavoured to keep the trade in the hands of government, by chartering several vessels in the year 1824; but as it was soon found that free trade could not be prevented, the attempt ceased.

The result was that in 1830, vessels amounting to 5888 tons cleared out of Sydney for New Zealand; and twenty-six vessels, having an average burden of one hundred tons, arrived there from the latter country laden with flax. 12

From table 8 in the appendix, it will be seen that 135,486l worth of whale oil, wood, flax, pigs, and potatoes, was exported from New Zealand in 1829; and

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30,000l worth of goods was on an average annually imported into New Zealand during the fourteen years ending 1839. But these exports and imports are only a part of the traffic at this period. South-Sea whalers, who kept no statistical returns, now frequented New Zealand in preference to all other islands in the Pacific, and carried on an active trade with the natives.

In 1834, a few muskets purchased from the natives a small ship load of flax: a blanket the best pig in the country, and a fig of tobacco sixty pounds of potatoes. 13 But after this date they began to know the true commercial value of goods. Previously to the year 1840, the munitions of war were almost solely in demand; after this period a market arose for tobacco, blankets, pipes, shirts, cooking-pots, trowsers, gowns, cottons, hoes and spades.

As commerce increased, numbers of Europeans took up their abode among the New Zealanders, acquired their language, and managed the trade between the two races. These men were the pioneers of civilisation, and must not be confounded with the lawless band of Europeans congregated at Kororareka in the Bay of Islands. In a subsequent chapter an account is given of the rise and fall of the influence of the former among the natives. Trade, European dresses, and the almost universal habit of tobacco-smoking, soon began to work important changes on the customs and habits of the natives.

There is, however, no good without an alloy of evil. That very commerce which led to peace between the New Zealanders and their foreign foes rendered war for some time more frequent among themselves; and at no former period in the country's annals were conflicts so

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general as they were during the twenty years preceding the establishment of British rule. The example of Hongi, the novelty of fire-arms, the ambition of Rauparaha and Te Whero Whero, produced these results. In 1824, Rauparaha, having purchased a large stock of powder and muskets from the Cook's Strait whalers, commenced his depopulating wars among the natives residing on the east and west coasts of the North and Middle Islands. No security was felt within a hundred miles of his head-quarters. Portions of the Ngatiawa nation fled from New Zealand, to get from him, in the English brig Rodney, to the Chatham Islands in 1838, and Europeans with half-caste families left the country to avoid his extortionate demands.

During the ten years ending 1840, the Waikato nation waged war against that of Taranaki. At first the Taranaki nation defended themselves valiantly, aided by three English sailors, who worked two ship's guns, and poured British spirit into the war councils of the natives; but when these men ceased fighting under their banners the Taranaki forces were invariably defeated, and at Pukerangiora, in 1834, Te Whero Whero slew with his own arm 200 prisoners. Most of them who escaped from this pa fled to the south, although a few concealed themselves in the caverns around the base of Mount Egmont.

In order to check the overbearing ambition of Te Whero Whero, the warriors of the Bay of Islands, under the leadership of Pomare and Kawiti, deeming themselves invincible, even after the death of Hongi, attacked the Waikato nation. Unfortunately for them, previous success made them despise their enemy, and 300 chosen Ngapuhi warriors were drawn into an ambuscade high

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up the Waipa river, far away from their own supports, and routed. Only ten men escaped, and Pomare's preserved head was kept for years by the Waikato people as a trophy of victory.

In 1830, a battle was fought near Matamata between the Thames and Waikato tribes. During the same year 100 natives were slain in a conflict on the Kororareka beach between two sub-divisions of the Ngapuhi nation. Skirmishes were carried on for three years ending 1832, between the natives of the Bay of Islands and those of Tauranga. From 1835 to 1841 war existed, and occasional combats occurred between the Waikato and Rotorua nations. During the same years wars prevailed among the people living in the Bay of Plenty and Poverty Bay, and at Taupo and Wanganui. In 1837 a native civil war at the Bay of Islands brought Captain Hobson, in H.M.S. Rattlesnake, from Sydney, to protect the European settlement at Kororareka; but not a white man's life was endangered, as the combatants, by mutual consent, moved the scene of action to a distance, lest a settler should even be accidentally injured. 14

Twenty thousand lives were sacrificed directly and indirectly during those twenty years of strife in New Zealand. By the principle of retaliation upon which the natives acted, the rude idea of natural justice, the breach between the combatants was daily widened; new deaths involved distant connections, tribe after tribe became partners in the conflict, truces without alliances occurred, and peace, or rather an intermission of murders, was only produced by exhaustion.

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It may appear a paradox, but it is nevertheless true, that the cause which generated this universal strife ultimately produced harmony. The darkest hour often precedes the dawn. Fire-arms, in the first instance, led to war; but after the whole population had obtained them battles became less frequent and less fatal. Men's passions are less excited in distant than in close conflict. Formerly warriors were maddened by the deadly struggle of man with man, now actions are commenced and maintained at a distance; and while men skilful in fence in ancient fights frequently saved their lives by dexterity, it has now become a proverb among the people that "the blow from a bullet, like a curse, strikes unseen and cannot be warded off." In battles where the combatants were armed with meris and tomahawks, men were almost invariably slain or enslaved; few were wounded. In conflicts with fire-arms, the wounded outnumbered the slain; and these cripples, limping about villages and suffering excruciating agony from unextracted bullets, were sad living spectacles of the calamities of war, and furnished materials which led men to reflect, when their blood was cool, on the the superiority of industry and peace over idleness and strife.

The introduction of European weapons was a blessing, not a curse, to the people, and although evil arose from a knowledge of fire-arms outstripping education in the arts of peace, we must nevertheless enumerate bullets, guns and powder as important aids to their civilisation.

Commercial intercourse could not continue between Europeans and New Zealanders, two races so opposite in their manners and customs, without occasional evil, and two events occurred in 1830 which exhibits the low

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morality of some of the Europeans engaged in this trade.

Preserved native heads were then in high estimation in European museums, and flax-traders purchased these articles for this market. According to the laws of commerce, the supply increased with the demand. Formerly the head of a chief was preserved as a matter of honour; but when it was found a gun could be got for one, a custom arose of preserving those of enemies for sale, and of killing slaves for the sake of their heads. 15

It is impossible to conjecture to what extent this trade might have been carried, had not the following circumstance rendered it illegal and disgraceful. The people of the Bay of Islands were defeated with considerable loss at Tauranga in the year 1830, and the conquerors dried the heads of the slain and sold them to the master of a schooner called the "Prince of Denmark," bound for Sydney, but intending to touch at the Bay of Islands. On the arrival of the vessel at the latter place a number of natives came on board to trade. The master of the ship, in a state of tipsy jollity, brought up a sack containing twelve heads, and rolled them out on the deck. Some of the New Zealanders on board recognised their fathers' heads, others those of their brothers, and friends. Appalling weeping and lamentations rent the air, and the natives fled precipitately from the ship. The master, seeing his dangerous position, put to sea before the news of his cargo spread on shore. Fortunately the scene now described was reported to Governor Darling of New South Wales, who issued a proclamation against this degrading trade, 16 and

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called upon all who had brought heads from the Prince of Denmark to deliver them up, for the purpose of having them restored to the relatives of the deceased parties "to whom those heads belonged."

Governor Darling, after earnestly pointing out the dreadful consequences produced by this inhuman traffic, imposed a fine of forty pounds with the publication of the names of persons detected in such a disgraceful occupation. Public feeling, however, more than the dread of punishment, so completely stopped this trade, that a preserved head was seldom afterwards seen in the country. The United States Exploring Expedition visited New Zealand in 1840, and, after much searching, obtained two heads from the steward of a missionary brig in the Bay of Islands, the very last place, Commodore Wilks observes, he could have expected to find such articles. 17

This commerce in preserved heads indirectly promoted bloodshed, the following sort of traffic did so directly. In 1829 Te Pahi, a chief, of whom an account is subsequently given, was murdered by the natives living about Banks's Peninsula during a friendly visit that travelled warrior made to barter muskets for greenstone. No satisfaction was deemed sufficient for such a man but the head of Tamaiharanui the chief of the tribe, and it devolved on Rauparaha and Rangihaeata, his nearest relatives, to avenge his death. For this purpose Captain Stewart, on the promise of a cargo of flax; conveyed Rauparaha and eighty warriors, in the brig Elizabeth from Kapiti in Cook's Strait to Banks's Peninsula in the Middle Island. When the ship cast anchor, Rauparaha's party hid below, while Stewart falsely represented himself to those who came on board as a flax trader.

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Unsuspicious of treachery from white men, the natives told Stewart that their chief was living in the Wainui valley a short day's journey from Akaroa. Stewart invited him to visit the ship, and three days afterwards Tamaiharanui, his wife, son, daughter, and several of his tribe came on board. Descending into the cabin, Tamaiharanui met Rauparaha face to face; Te Pahi's son drew up the upper lip of Tamaiharanui and cried, "These are the teeth which eat my father." A massacre ensued and all were slain, save Tamaiharanui, his wife, and his daughter who were kept to grace the victors' return. Then Rauparaha's warriors landed, and slew every native they met.

Captain Stewart immediately afterwards returned to the island of Kapiti. During the voyage, human flesh brought on board in baskets was frequently devoured amidst singing and war-dancing, the violence of which shook the ship. Tamaiharanui, his wife and daughter, a girl aged sixteen named Nga Roimata or the Tears, witnessed these cannibal orgies over the flesh of their relatives and friends. The chief, bound hand and foot, allowed no sign of sorrow to steal over his tattooed face; but the mother, who was not manacled, strangled her daughter by her husband's orders. Rauparaha enraged that this beautiful and high-born maiden should thus be lost, sucked Tamaiharanui's blood, being a murderer, from a flowing vein, ran a red-hot ramrod through his body, and aggravated the anguish of the poor man's awful situation by his bitter jests; but Tamaiharanui died in extreme mental and bodily agony, without affording his tormentor the satisfaction of seeing on his countenance an indication of either. His wife was afterwards killed at Otaki. The instrument which slew

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Tamaiharanui was shown to me in 1849, stained with the chiefs blood, by the Englishman who acted as interpreter to the expedition. Captain Stewart never got the promised flax freight from Rauparaha; he was tried before the Supreme Court of New South Wales for the part he acted in the massacre, and only escaped punishment from want of evidence. Like that of De Surville, Stewart's death was sudden and violent, and occurred not long after his murderous cruise to Akaroa; he dropped dead on the deck of the Elizabeth rounding the iceberg promontory of Cape Horn, and his body, reeking of rum, was pitched overboard by his own crew with little ceremony and no regret. 18

It is a mental relief to turn from the above horrible affair to mercantile transactions, which were, nevertheless, not altogether right, considering some of the parties engaged in the trade. In 1814 emissaries from the Church Missionary Society introduced Christianity and letters into New Zealand. The history of that great work is related in a subsequent chapter. In 1844 a committee of the House of Commons reported that these missionaries first instructed the natives in the rights of landed property; 19 but this statement is not altogether correct, for long before the advent of the missionaries they had fought and bled for their lands. Women and land were in their eyes treasures which last for ever, seeing that women produce children and land food. Every tribe, even in Cook's time, could point out certain districts where they alone could plant and reap, kill birds, snare rats, and dig fern root: and waste lands were to them more valuable than hunting-grounds were to feudal lords; because to deprive a baron of his moor

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only cut off an amusement, while to deprive the New Zealanders of their waste lands cut off an important means of subsistence.

But although the missionaries did not teach them the rights of property in land, they taught them that land was a commodity Europeans highly valued, by giving twelve axes for two hundred acres upon which to erect a mission station. The nature of this transaction was not rightly understood by the New Zealanders, as some of them thought they were getting the axes, not for the land, but for the hieroglyphics or signatures attached to the purchase-deed. Tribes occasionally exchanged pieces of land with each other long before this missionary transaction; in doing so, however, they never relinquished the sovereignty over it, and this exchanged land could not be disposed of to a third party without the consent of the original owner. The wisest of them had never before imagined that white men would value an article thus restricted, and which they could not take away with them on leaving the country; and for several years after this period, the natives, in disposing of their lands to white men, did not believe they were relinquishing all right to the soil for ever.

The seed thus planted by the missionaries soon ripened. 20 In 1821 Mr. William Fairburn, a Church Missionary Catechist, purchased 400 acres of land for ten pound's worth of merchandise. In 1822 Baron de Thierry bought, through Mr. Kendall of the Mission Society, 40,000 acres of land on the Hokianga river for thirty-six axes. This purchaser is styled in the deed Baron Charles Hippolytus de Thierry, in the county of Somerset, England, and of Queen's College,

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Cambridge. One million of acres were purchased between the years 1825 and 1829 by settlers and merchants in Sydney. Twenty-five thousand acres were bought during the five years ending 1835 at Kaitaia, the Bay of Islands, and Hokianga; 17,000 acres of which, or twenty-seven square miles, were purchased by missionaries.

Curious to relate the missionaries, after this transaction, grew terrified; unscrupulous Europeans would buy up the whole country and reduce the natives to beggary. To prevent this misfortune, the Rev. Henry Williams forwarded, in December 1835, "a deed of trust of land belonging to natives," to the governor of New South Wales, and to the secretary of the Church Missionary Society, requesting that the missionaries at the Bay of Islands should be appointed trustees for lands which the New Zealanders wished them to preserve "from the intrigues of designing men." Some surprise was expressed at the quarter from which this proposition came, and neither the governor nor the Church Missionary Society would sanction such a singular arrangement. 21 Before the year 1839, 20,000,000 acres of land were claimed as having been purchased by white men.

Hongi's visit to England, the flax plant, Major Cruise's ten months' residence, Dr. Shaw's drawing of a kiwi, one of the island's wingless birds, and the above-mentioned land purchases, drew the attention of Englishmen to New Zealand as an eligible place for a colony, during the emigration movement created by Mr. Wilmot Horton. Several paragraphs to that effect appeared in the papers, and two or three projects were started and abandoned, chiefly on account of that great stumbling-block -- the cannibal propensities of the

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natives, and the total indifference about colonisation in England at this period.

With much difficulty one scheme surmounted these impediments, and in the speculative and suffering year of 1825 a company was formed in London of highly influential men, among whom was Lord Durham, to colonise New Zealand. Mr. Huskisson, the President of the Board of Trade, approved of the project. A vessel was fitted out, sixty settlers embarked, and late in the year 1826 they arrived in New Zealand. The place chosen for the settlement was near the mouth of the Hokianga river; and here Captain Herd, the company's agent, purchased a quantity of land, since found to be only one square mile, and two islands in the Houraki gulf. Unluckily for the success of the colony, the Hokianga natives were at war with those of the Bay of Islands when the settlers disembarked; and the sight of a war dance, and alarming reports of battles won and lost in the neighbourhood, so terrified the colonists that most of them left the country after a short residence. Twenty thousand pounds were squandered on this ill-managed affair, and its failure was described by some persons as a death blow to the colonisation of New Zealand; while others, who had acquired land in the country, prophesied that the formation of a British colony was only deferred, not abandoned.

These purchasers of land, in order to promote their own ends, stated that the French were about to form a colony in the country, and several circumstances gave support to such a rumour. Marion's melancholy fate had linked New Zealand and France together by a mysterious chain, the consequence was that few French vessels of war ever visited the Pacific without

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touching there. Numerous whaling vessels belonging to that nation hovered round the islands, and in 1827 Captain D'Urville, of the French navy, spent two months in the Astrolabe, surveying the coasts of the Middle Island. It is therefore not surprising that when in 1831, the French ship of war La Favorite anchored in the Bay of Islands, it was next day gravely announced that the French government was about to take possession of the country, which rumour spread to England. La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, the author of this project, died, otherwise the design might have been carried into execution.

The New Zealanders at the Bay of Islands, who have distrusted the French ever since Marion's days, consulted their friends the missionaries on the subject of the French occupation of the country, and these men fanned the flame, for thirteen Ngapuhi chiefs, styling themselves "the chiefs of the natives of New Zealand," prayed King William the Fourth to protect them from the "tribe of Marion," and prevent strangers from depriving them of their lands. 22

Much about the same time as this memorial was transmitted to the "Gracious Chief of England," the governor of New South Wales suggested to the Secretary of State that a British Resident should be appointed to live at the Bay of Islands, for the purpose of protecting the Europeans and natives from each others' evil ways, of acquiring information, and obtaining influence over the natives.

To meet the wishes of both parties, Mr. James Busby, a well-known settler in Australia, was appointed by his Majesty's ministers to proceed to New Zealand as British

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Resident, an officer the East India government have living at all native courts; he was likewise the bearer of a royal answer to the memorial of the chiefs. 23 In that letter, the Secretary of State, in the king's name, expresses sorrow that the New Zealanders should have suffered injury from any of his subjects, announces his determination to prevent similar outrages, and bespeaks for the resident the zealous support of all chiefs.

Mr. Busby arrived at the Bay of Islands in May 1833, and at an assembly of natives presented the Minister of State's letter, and delivered the presents with which he was entrusted. The aborigines received the Resident with respect, but the English settlers characteristically denominated him a man of war without guns; and the governor of New South Wales appears to have formed a similar opinion of his powers, for he warns Mr. Busby of his anomalous position, impresses on him that he must be careful of bringing offenders to justice, that if a murder occurred he should send competent witnesses of the deed to Sydney, and if the evidence was sufficient, a bench warrant for the murderer's arrest would be transmitted. The truth was, Mr. Busby was not a Resident, only a government agent with a salary of 500l. a year, and 200l. for annual distribution in presents among the natives; and his real duty was to promote peace, watch the proceedings of other European powers in the country, furnish returns of New Zealand's progress, and support the missionaries with his countenance. 24

The performance of these duties were not sufficient to occupy the Resident's active mind, and Mr. Busby with more imagination than judgment, originated a scheme to

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magnify the importance of his office. Cortez was the first man who employed a sovereign as a tool for the government of his own kingdom, and Mr. Busby was the first who proposed ruling the New Zealanders by a parliament of chiefs. As a step towards this object he suggested to the Governor of New South Wales, that New Zealand should have a national flag, and that ships owned by New Zealanders should be registered.

His Excellency Sir Richard Bourke, a soldier more than a diplomatist, readily fell into the snare, and ordered his Majesty's ship Alligator to the Bay of Islands with three pattern flags for the chiefs to select one from. Prompted by some Yankee whaler these warriors chose an ensign adorned with stars and stripes, which flag afterwards altered was inaugurated with a royal salute from the Alligator's guns. An account of this ridiculous farce was transmitted to the Colonial Secretary of State who approved of it in the king's name, and the Lords of the Admiralty instructed their officers to acknowledge and respect New Zealand's national flag. 25

The twenty-four pounders which inaugurated this standard were soon afterwards turned against the people. In April 1834 the bark Harriet, J. Guard, master, bound for Cloudy Bay, was wrecked at Taranaki, near to the spot where the English settlement now stands. For six days the shipwrecked mariners were treated as friends; but from some unexplained cause a quarrel arose in which twelve sailors and twenty-five natives were slain, and Mr. Guard, two children, and ten seamen were made prisoners. Guard and several sailors were allowed to depart, on promising to return with powder as a ransom for the others.

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In consequence of Guard's personal representations, the government of New South Wales sent his Majesty's ship Alligator, Captain Lambert, and a company of the 50th Regiment, to rescue the prisoners. On the arrival of the force at Taranaki, the captured sailors were delivered up, and the two interpreters who were sent on shore promised that a payment should be made when the woman and children were released. The soldiers were then landed, and as they formed in battle array on the beach, two unarmed and unattended natives came down to meet them. One introduced himself as the chief who had got the woman and children, rubbed noses with Guard in token of ancient friendship, and told him that Mrs. Guard and the children were well, and that they would be surrendered on the natives receiving the promised payment. The officer in charge of the boat attributing evil motives to this man, seized him, dragged him into the boat, and stabbed him with a bayonet.

A few days afterwards, Mrs. Guard and one child were released, and the wounded chief was restored to his friends. The other child was subsequently brought down to the strand on the shoulder of the chief who had fed it, and he requested to be allowed to take the child on board ship in order to receive the promised ransom. When told none would be given, he turned away; but before getting many yards he was shot, and the infant was taken from the agonising clutch of the dying man, to whom it clung as to a friend. The dead man's head was then cut off, and kicked about the sand; and Mrs. Guard afterwards identified it as the head of their best friend. In consequence of a shot discharged, by whom and at whom none knew, the ship's guns and the soldiers commenced firing, and after destroying two villages

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and several canoes, and killing many natives, the troops reembarked and the expedition returned to Sydney.

The government of New South Wales then urged on his Majesty's government the necessity of supporting the British Resident with an armed force, as that officer was placed in a position neither creditable to himself nor to the English he represented.

It would have been well for the honour of the English name had the government of New South Wales been, like the Resident in New Zealand, powerless; for the Taranaki campaign resembled the operations of insulted buccaneers more than an expedition of his Majesty's forces. A committee of the British Parliament expressed its disapprobation of this affair; pointed out that the New Zealanders fulfilled, while the English broke, their original contract; and stated that this opinion was drawn even from the one-sided evidence of the culpable parties, the chief witness being Guard, an old convict, who said a musket ball for every New Zealander was the best mode of civilising the country. 26

There were royalists who now that New Zealand possessed a recognised national flag deemed it worthy of a king. None of the adventurous Europeans in the numerous islands in the Pacific aspired to the throne, because they knew the adoption of a flag by the people was a delusion. In Europe, however, Baron de Thierry, the son of a French emigrant resident in England, grasped at the sceptre, and thought the present a favourable opportunity for clothing his family in purple. This nobleman met Hongi at Cambridge in 1820, and

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with that chiefs approval--according to his own account--he gave Mr. Kendall a thousand pounds worth of merchandise to purchase all New Zealand north of the isthmus upon which Auckland now stands, but he only bought for him forty thousand acres. 27

Baron de Thierry was by birth and education a gentleman. In early life he was attached to a Portuguese embassy, and at the Congress of Vienna, established a high reputation as an amateur musician. Subsequently he obtained a commission in an English regiment of horse, but finding life in a cavalry regiment stationed in England ill suited to scanty means, he turned his attention to his New Zealand estates, the title deeds of which, signed by three chiefs, he held in his possession. Disliking to disembark in the island in the usual humble way of an emigrant, the Baron informed the British Resident, in the year 1835, of his intention of establishing, in his own person, an independent sovereignty in the country; and announced that he had already declared his intentions to their Majesties the kings of Great Britain and France and to the President of the United States.

This declaration was dated from the island of Tahiti, where, according to the proclamation, "Charles, Baron de Thierry, Sovereign Chief of New Zealand, and King of Nuhuheva," -- one of the Marquesas Islands, -- "was awaiting the arrival of an armed ship from Panama to enable him to proceed to the Bay of Islands with strength to maintain his authority, 28 To the settlers and the missionaries King de Thierry was graciously pleased to forward an elaborate exposition of his in-

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tended system of government, signed with a crown seal; and promised salaries to those missionaries who would act under his authority as magistrates. The whole production resembles the vagaries of those unfortunate beings who are confined in asylums, and labour under the delusion that they are kings and emperors.

The British Resident, although evidently confounded at the Baron's proclamation, lost no time in appealing to the loyalty and good sense of the English settlers against what he denominated the "schemes of an adventurer;" and announced his intention of assembling the natives to inform them of this attempt on their independence; and to instruct them in what should be done to demonstrate its utter hopelessness.

Mr. Busby saw this was a good opportunity for advancing another step towards establishing an independent native government under the British Resident; and in October 1835, with the Resident's sanction, thirty-five hereditary chiefs and heads of tribes in the northern part of New Zealand declared their independence, under the designation of the "United Tribes of New Zealand;" and proclaimed that they would meet annually in congress to pass laws for the dispensation of justice and the preservation of peace. Southern chiefs were invited to join the confederacy, and this aboriginal parliament begged the King of England to be their patron and protector. 29

The United Tribes of New Zealand in congress assembled approved of the following constitution. All sovereign power and authority within the New Zealand islands, was to reside in the hereditary chiefs and heads of tribes in their collective capacity. A provisional

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government was to be established, which was to be presided over by the British Resident, and one half of the council were to be aboriginal inhabitants. Justice was to be administered by European and native judges, and English and native laws were to be amalgamated. An ecclesiastical establishment was to be supported from funds derived from the sale of lands. Financial arrangements were to be vested in congress, but a money advance was to be obtained from the British Government. A military force of Europeans and natives was to be maintained for protection and obedience. Lands not occupied by natives, or sold to Europeans, were to be declared, by a resolution of congress, public property. New Zealand was to be divided into districts, to be presided over by a chief and a European high sheriff. Towns with a thousand inhabitants were to have charters. The country was to be divided into counties with charters, to be managed by councils composed of Europeans and natives elected by the people.

This provisional government was to continue in force twenty-one years; afterwards, each incorporated county and town was to send deputies to form a House of Assembly, to make laws for the future government of New Zealand. 30

No person who has lived in New Zealand can peruse the United Tribes' Declaration of Independence, and the above complicated constitution, without being at once struck with the absurdity of the whole affair, and the boldness of the European who manufactured the charter. The very idea of the southern tribes associating with the northern to make laws for the preservation of peace

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at this period was an unparalleled tax on the credulity of the Colonial Office, De Thierry's assumption of sovereignty was a sort of monomania; and Mr. Busby's Declaration of Independence and the subsequent events which occurred, were described by Sir George Gipps, the governor of New South Wales, as "a silly and unauthorised act, a paper pellet fired off at Baron de Thierry."

Unfortunately for Mr. Busby's military fame, the sovereign chief of New Zealand did not arrive at the Bay of Islands in his armed vessel; but in March 1837, Baron de Thierry issued another address to the white inhabitants of New Zealand, dated from Sydney, in which, while announcing his intention, of visiting the country in a peaceable attitude, he moderated his claim to sovereignty.

Colonists who have the pleasure of knowing the baron may probably think the above an exaggerated account of his early career, but it is not. Every ship which touched at the Bay of Islands after his declaration, was expected to have him and his fillibusters on board; and the arrival of Captain Fitzroy in his armed surveying vessel threw the whole settlement into a panic. Early in 1838, Baron de Thierry landed in his dominions at Hokianga, with ninety-three Europeans, the majority being men picked up in the streets of Sydney. Here he unfurled a silken banner, ordered his subjects to back out of his presence, and offered to create the master of the ship which conveyed him to his kingdom an admiral. In the midst of his greatness King de Thierry was startled with the intelligence that the thirty-six axes given by Mr. Kendall to the natives for the land did not purchase it, but were merely a

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deposit. He commenced cutting a carriage-road to the Bay of Islands, but his exchequer being soon exhausted, his subjects threw off their allegiance, and took up their abode in Kororareka. The natives, pitying a king without subjects or dominions, allowed him to squat on a piece of ground, for which he promised to give them some blankets at a future day.

In 1839, a visitor at Hokianga found the baron living in a humble way for a sovereign prince. His harp and musical instruments were the only emblems of his better days, and he had no retainers to obey his command but his own family. 31 When war broke out in the north part of New Zealand in 1844, it was announced in a London journal that, Baron de Thierry had been killed and eaten by his own subjects; an untrue statement, as he has gone through many adventures on Pitcairn's Island and the Sandwich Islands since then, and still lives at Auckland, usefully employed in trying to discover a mode of cleaning the flax fibre of its gum.

De Thierry's French name and his continental and obscure origin, revived in 1836 the rumour that the French were about to form a colony in New Zealand. It was indeed whispered that Louis-Philippe supported the baron's pretensions; and the appointment of a French nobleman as Roman Catholic Bishop of New Zealand, by the Pope in 1836, converted the rumour, according to the Protestant missionaries, into a fact. Some of these holy men, dreading the approach of a Roman mission, and anxious, probably on account of their lands, that the country should remain under England's protection, transmitted in 1836 a petition

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"from the British settlers in New Zealand" to King William the Fourth, praying for the crown's protection, as British subjects. This memorial was laid before parliament, and the missionaries were accused of meddling in politics. The Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, in explanation, stated that the missionaries signed the petition not as missionaries, but as private individuals. The charge was frivolous, but the defence was one more suited to a college of Jesuits than to a Protestant mission. 32

Intercourse with civilised men induced New Zealanders to travel abroad. Between 1810 and 1838 many Maori men visited Sydney, Europe, and America; but no New Zealand woman had yet seen the civilised world. These men, on returning home, were like published books of travels circulating in the country, for while sailing round the world they had not neglected looking into it. They were sages in their respective districts, and several of them, like Job, preferred learning to pearls. Some of their sayings and doings promoted civilisation, and all afford indications of the mental history of the race.

Tooi and Te Tere, from the Bay of Islands, visited England in 1818, and on leaving this country addressed to their friends farewell letters lavishly filled with scriptural quotations and the phraseology of piety. This must not be adduced as evidences of hypocrisy, but as proofs of scholarship, as they inserted Scripture in their letters in the same spirit in which young collegians quote Greek and Latin. Both Tooi and Te Tere plunged with delight into wars and cannibalism on their

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return, although they attended the evening prayers of the missionaries. 33 Both died soon after.

Te Pehi, the chief, whose murder caused Rauparaha's bloody expedition to Akaroa, visited England in 1826, to obtain fire-arms. He procured a passage to Liverpool by secreting himself on board a whaler until the vessel got out to sea. An attack of measles in England, made him acquainted with Dr. Traill. 34 Everything connected with smith's work and agriculture interested him; steam machinery was beyond his comprehension, but the propulsion of a water-mill he readily comprehended. A bow and arrow gave him pleasure, a man on horseback surprise, and he seemed confounded when the man dismounted. A regiment of dragoons excited his admiration, a small New Zealand flax plant recalled his native land to his memory, and he laughed at seeing it cultivated in a flower-pot. He was gratified at the crowds who flocked around him in the streets of Liverpool; things useful he valued more than things ornamental. Next to fire-arms he wished for agricultural implements. Dr. Traill gave him many presents, but he leaped with joy when presented with some old muskets and a musketoon. He knew nothing about Christianity. When his likeness was taken he insisted that the tattoo marks should be carefully copied. He wept over Dr. Traill's children, because they reminded him of his own. Te Pehi's son, Hiko o te rangi, or "the Lightning of Heaven," became a great leader in Cook's Strait; he carefully treasured up a few relics of his father's visit to England, and highly valued a volume

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of the Library of Useful Knowledge which contained his parent's portrait. 35

The crowds which followed Te Pehi in the streets of Liverpool caused an English showman to bring two tattooed New Zealanders to England as a commercial speculation. In 1830 they were exhibited in different parts of the country, and terrified and instructed the numerous spectators who flocked to see them by war dances, and by displaying how their countrymen got fire out of wood. During an attack of measles their showman deserted them; but the contributions of the benevolent enabled them to return to New Zealand in good health.

Two Cook's Strait natives, named Jacky and Nayti, worked their passages to Havre in 1837, in a French whaler, to see Louis-Philippe. From France the agents of the New Zealand Company brought them to England. Jacky died in London of consumption; and Nayti, who assumed the rank of a prince, lived with Mr. E. Gibbon Wakefield for two years. His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex invited him to his assemblies, he rode in the park, skated on the Serpentine, paid visits, attended church, had troops of friends, and gave evidence about his native country before the committee of the House of Lords. Nayti was laden with presents on his departure from England, and accompanied Colonel Wakefield in 1839 to New Zealand. Here he was soon discovered to be no prince, but a mere whaler's boy from Cloudy Bay. Laughed at for his vanity, he was stripped by his countrymen of his presents, and died of consumption in a pure native condition in 1842. Poor Nayti experienced

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vicissitudes which few men have done in this world--the rough treatment of Cloudy Bay whalers and attention from the royal family of England. 36

The manifold circumstances related in this chapter drew much attention to New Zealand, and two committees of the House of Commons reported the islands a noble field for a colony. In 1837 an association was formed to collect information about the state of the country; and the Church Missionary Society, in opposition to the House of Commons, urged the English government to protect the natives from the influx of Europeans, whom they described as undoing all the good their missionaries had done: this representation caused the House of Lords in 1838 to appoint a select committee to inquire into the state of New Zealand, and the expediency of regulating the settlement of British subjects in the country. The evidence collected and printed covers three hundred and sixty-seven folio pages. Twenty witnesses were examined, six of whom had resided in New Zealand for a short time, and two for several years; the result was that the committee suggested that his Majesty's ministers should assist the New Zealanders in their rapidly advancing civilisation, but no prohibition against the settlement of Europeans unconnected with the missionaries was recommended.

The evil deeds of some of the Kororareka settlers in the Bay of Islands were the chief causes of this missionary opposition to the immigration of Europeans. Ever since the commencement of the century, whale ships frequenting the northern island touched at the Bay of Islands in preference to all other places, in con-

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sequence of the excellence of its harbours, the abundance of pigs and potatoes, and the numerous native population living on the banks of the many rivers falling into the bay. In 1825 a few Europeans had peaceably located themselves in the bay, and in 1830 Mr. Benjamin Turner opened the first grog-shop. In these days the settlers lived apart in remote inlets, until experience taught them that the most convenient place for erecting huts was around the deep-water beach at Kororareka, in close proximity to the native village.

In these beautiful inlets the freetrading flax schooners and whalers rode out gales in safety, and their crews, although leading a piratical sort of lives themselves, objected to all intruders. One morning, in 1827, a Sydney vessel anchored in the bay with eighty men on board. An old New Zealand trader, named Duke, invited the captain on board, and discovered that he and his crew were convicts who had overpowered the guard, and seized the vessel, during their voyage from Sydney to Norfolk Island. Duke hoisted two guns out of the hold, and with the aid of several Maori war canoes he commanded the convicts to surrender; this being refused, an engagement ensued, which ended, after considerable loss to the convicts, in Duke's victory. The vessel was taken back to Sydney, where nine of the mutineers were hung, and the others again shipped to Norfolk Island. 37

In 1832 there were one hundred white settlers permanently located in Kororareka, and the place was then described as the Cyprus of the Southern Ocean, in which life was one unceasing revel. Chiefs in the neighbourhood lived in affluence by pimping for the crews of whale

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ships, and Pomare kept a harem of ninety-six slave girls for this pandemonium. The missionaries in the immediate vicinity of Kororareka magnified and widely circulated glowing accounts of the scenes which daily occurred; and stated that the Resident, although he had the British flag flying over his house, had no power to put down the floating brothels which polluted the bay under its protection.

Meanwhile Kororareka prospered. In 1838 it was the most frequented resort for whalers in all the South Sea Islands; and its European population, although fluctuating, was then estimated at a thousand souls. It had a church, five hotels, numberless grog-shops, a theatre, several billiard tables, skittle alleys, finishes, and hells. For six successive years a hundred whale ships anchored in the bay, and land facing the beach sold at three pounds a foot. Thirty-six large whale ships were anchored at Kororareka at one time in 1836; 38 and in 1838 fifty-six American vessels entered the bay, twenty-three English, twenty-one French, one Bremen, twenty-four from New South Wales, and six from the coast.

It was impossible that a community composed of sailors of different nations, runaway and liberated convicts, traders, beach-combers, sawyers, and New Zealanders could live together, either drunk or sober, without quarrelling, more particularly when revelry and brawling are what British sailors come on shore to enjoy. Disputes between white men and natives were often settled by the missionaries; quarrels confined to white men generally ended in combats which occasionally terminated in bloodshed. There was no authority to grapple

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with these disturbances, although George Doyle was executed at Sydney in 1837 for a breach of the peace at the Bay of Islands; but this human sacrifice was made at too great a distance from the spot where the crime was committed to have any beneficial effect.

One day after an unusually serious brawl on the Kororareka beach, the want of some sort of law nearer than Sydney was felt even by bad men to be a public calamity,and a meeting of the inhabitants was convened to form some plan for the administration of justice and the protection of property. The result was the formation in June 1838 of the Kororareka Association, which was governed by a president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer, with a committee of management elected by the inhabitants. These united officers formed a judicial, legislative, and executive council. The Association's jurisdiction was a well defined portion of the Bay of Islands. Cases were heard on evidence before several members of the committee of management, whose decision was final. Trifling offences were punished by money fines; grave misdemeanours, including the refusal to pay just debts, involved expulsion from the settlement; and aggravated offenders were further disgraced and tortured by being tarred and feathered. One of their laws recognised the power of the British Resident to punish men found guilty by the committee of management; but Mr. Busby, who was estranged from the settlers by his haughty manners and caustic wit, having refused all recognition of the association, the executive council reserved to itself the power of punishing culprits. The British Resident failed to perceive how this new power might be engrafted on his own scheme for governing New Zealand. There were fifteen laws in the

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code all partaking of the character of Lynch law; and an indication of the spirit of the whole proceeding may be drawn from the thirteenth rule, which commanded every member to provide himself with a good musket, a bayonet, a brace of pistols, a cutlass, and twenty rounds of ball cartridge. 39

The Kororareka Association, which was in the spirit of the United Tribes' declaration of independence, committed a few unjust acts; but it did more good than evil, as the worst law is better than none. On two occasions offenders were tarred and feathered; and a description of this extreme punishment was given to me by a New Zealander who witnessed it, and he frequently burst into fits of laughter at the very remembrance of the exhibition. The culprit, a white man, already nearly suffocated from being secured all night in a sea-chest, was first denuded of his garments, then smeared thickly over with tar, and covered with the white feathery flowers of the Raupo plant, for want of true feathers. He was then marched along the beach, preceded by a fife and drum playing the Rogue's March, and accompanied by drunken white men and astonished natives to its termination: then the criminal was put into a canoe with the musicians, and landed on the opposite side of the bay, beyond the Association's jurisdiction, with an assurance that his re-appearance in the settlement would be followed by another tarring and feathering. As tarring and feathering was no comedy to the principal character, it is not remarkable no man ever sustained it twice.

His Majesty's ministers were startled on hearing of this new declaration of independence in New Zealand,

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and the Secretary of State now saw that British authority must henceforth be established, to prevent the Kororareka Association growing into a republic, and perhaps ultimately governing the country through the fictitious aid of the United Tribes. In December 1838 Lord Glenelg suggested that a British consul should be sent out; but no steps were taken towards the appointment of that officer until the New Zealand Company's expedition had actually sailed for the purpose of laying the foundation of a republican settlement in Cook's Strait. Then Captain Hobson, an officer of the Royal Navy, was ordered to New Zealand as a consul with a lieutenant-governor's commission in his possession. 40