1840 - Polack, J. S. Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders [Capper reprint, 1976] - Chapter V

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CHAPTER V.

SLAVES and slavery have existed in New Zealand from the earliest reminiscences of the people, and consist principally of persons captured and taken in war or predatory excursions, children born from parents in slavery, and remnants of shattered tribes, who find a precarious existence by dwelling in the forests near the deserted scenes of their happier days, and seek repose in becoming servants to a powerful neighbour, whose protection they solicit, in return for which their services are devoted to a new master.

A slave or taurekareka has not the miserable being the British public are inclined to think is inseparable from the Africans bearing that term in our colonies. To the northward of the river Thames, the slave is treated in the same manner as the in-

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ferior freedmen of the villages; and with the exception of drawing water, hewing wood, flax-dressing, and cooking; the freedmen, and personages of the highest rank, assist in every other occupation, whether it be cutting or drawing out timber from the forest for exportation or domestic sawing, preparing land, planting, paddling, fishing-net and sail-making, house, platform, fort, or canoe-building. Slaves are permitted to take part in a war, and though undertaken against the tribes they have been originally severed from, yet no fear of desertion, or jealousy at the possibility of their joining with the enemy they are related to, would appear to disturb the equanimity of their masters. Slaves are often mutually exchanged, and as often sold; but instances are not wanting where humanity induces the master to emancipate his slave from thraldom, and raise him to his friendship and even relationship by marriage. The price of a slave is as fluctuating as an overstock or scarcity, extreme youth or senility, love or avarice, times ancient or modern, can effect. A slave in the north island is probably worth four of those in the south island.; again a slave in lat: 34 deg S., may be worth four of his station in lat: 37 deg; and three degrees further their value has been rated on the appearance they may have presented to the anthropophagi, their masters. 1 In the Island of VICTORIA, they have

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generally been found at a discount. A child born of a slave mother to a chief scarcely loses its attaint, but the bar sinister wholly disappears, if the mother be a freed woman and the father a slave. Such intercourse is not uncommon. Female slaves are given as handmaids, as among the Syrians and Asiatic nations of old, and are given to Europeans on marrying Chief wives, but the sale may scarcely be said to be warranted, as their native masters entice them to quit the service of the European, and foster their disobedience afterwards.

Slave children are much caressed by their masters and mistresses, and are often adopted, and of course, emancipated. A child captured in battle is accounted a favourite present from a chief to his daughters. No outward mark distinguishes the slave from the freeman or even chief in New Zealand. They often sleep within the same hut, eat from the same basket, and enter alike in the pleasures of the dance, chorus, &c., yet the actual life of the slave is in continual jeopardy, as an offence, even a supposititious one, or a fit of vexation, in

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which the slave has had no share, or a wrong act committed by a distant party, that has connexion with the master, but not the slave, in any of these occurrences, the poor wretch is often killed by the savage master. One celebrated chief, in order to indulge his brutal fancy and appetites, was in the habit of trying every new musket he obtained on one of his slaves, not forgetting to add a ball-cartridge within the barrel. The usual method of killing a slave in time of peace, is for the cowardly masters to slip behind their backs while engaged in any work, and with a tomahawk despatch them at once, or lying in wait, and just projecting the barrel of a piece between the rushes of a house or bush, while the unconscious victim may be sitting outside, scraping flax or potatoes, with his back towards the instrument of destruction. Chiefs who have tasted of slavery, are often taunted by their friends, by whom they may have been ransomed, as having been slaves; and should they prefer remaining with the tribe by whom they have been captured, are allowed to marry chief women 225 of the

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tribe, but are often reviled by their children as having been slaves. 3 The cruelty of the women towards their slaves is often appalling; and when they become objects of jealousy, on any attention being paid to a female slave by the husband, revenge 4 of a most cruel nature is performed, which admits not of description.

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The most dreadful moment for a slave is when at the close of an engagement they are made to witness the horrible orgies that take place on the lifeless and often dying bodies of their relatives; the agony and horror of the miserable parents or children, husbands, lovers, or wives, at such a sight is inconceivable. They pour forth the most piteous lamentations, and with shrieks and sobs lament the dreadful fate their relatives undergo, the conquerors in the mean time, breaking forth in the most insulting expressions to the headless trunks that lie around. Yet strange to say, when once the piercing ebullitions of grief are expressed, time leniently interferes with its soothing hand, and the vanquished turn their affections on the victors, and after a very few years, an escape is rarely attempted, and on visiting the village of their birth and their relatives, they rarely evince any desire to make a permanent stay; intermarriages, children, &c., having arisen to break the former connexion.

If a slave attempts to make an escape, he is outlawed, and any person may capture and retain him as a prisoner, or kill him; if a female, she is at the mercy of her captor. If one slave apprehends another, the captured belongs of right to the master.

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This class of people have often made their escape, and congregated together in appointed districts in numbers. The suffering of such beings would be thought next to impossible for human nature to undergo by many Europeans, taking to the bushes and branches of trees for shelter at night, and the many caves, which the sea has imbricated in the coast. When they have received as many additions to their corps, as to make their number sufficiently formidable, they commence gathering poles and stakes for a fort, which is the first proceeding in the formation of a village, and secure themselves from the attacks of their enemies, of whom they never discover a want. Slaves are invariably eaten, unless they may have died from disease, on which they are hastily thrown in a hole, or lightly covered with earth, in which case the dogs discover the graves and feed on the offensive body. Such as have died from putrid diseases are carried out to sea, or the river, and flung in, after the precaution has been taken of making fast a bag of stones to sink it. Debarred from the sight of their relatives, they become reckless of moral feeling, and to the commercial trader have been the causes of serious quarrels with their masters. They are kept in no discipline, and foster within them the worst traits of the native character. Slaves who have experienced the bitterness of their condition, and afterwards become masters and influential men in council and battle, are among the worst of tyrants,

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visiting with additional severity, the punishments they may have suffered when similarly situated, on the persons of their slaves. 5 Obscenity and lying are among the practices most persisted in by the slaves, and to their demoralized state may be attributed the greater part of the wars and dissensions of this irritable people; they may be justly regarded as the greatest drawback to the prosperity and civilization hitherto of the New Zealanders.