CHAPTER I.
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CHAPTER I.
Retrospect. --Settlement of the Maories in New Zealand. --Occupation of Land. --Tribes and Hapus. --External Relations. --Internal Economy. -- Property. --Sovereignty. --Chieftainship. --Position and Rights of Chiefs.
It would appear that some 400 years since a considerable body of barbarians, originally derived from the Malay race, found their way from the Islands of Polynesia, where they had been temporary sojourners, to the shores of New Zealand, --a country then probably void of inhabitants, --established themselves there, and received accessions to their numbers by fresh immigration from the same source.
They arrived here in canoes, --the pilgrims occupying each canoe being associated by the ties of kindred, forming a number of families with a common name and common ancestry. On landing, they took possession of the unoccupied soil, not in mass, nor in the name of one people or nation, nor individually, but in small aggregations of kindred families, clans, or tribes, some of which, either at the outset, or in process of time, were subdivided again into hapus or septs.
The tribes, not being united together under any common head or sovereign, but being socially and politically--as far as they had any polity--independent of, and often hostile to, one another, each tribe would have, de facto, in a rude way, within the limits of the territory occupied by them, the same sovereignty, substantially, which a civilized nation acquires, according to the law of nations, over an unoccupied country of which it has taken possession; that is to say, they would not admit the right of any other tribe or individual, as long as they were in possession, to interfere with their enjoyment of the land or to meddle with their internal economy; but they would regulate the domestic affairs of the tribe, and their relations with other tribes, according to the will of their own sovereign or quasi sovereign power.
That sovereign power, though vague and undefined, seems to have been vested in the whole body of the freemen of the tribe; for, although various classes of persons were recognised, and much stress laid, socially, on the dignity of birth, there
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does not seem to have been any distinct subordination of rights and duties or privileges of freemen, inter se. (Slaves were the personal property of their captors; that is, their owners could give them away or take their lives without being subject to punishment or censure, and slaves had no kind of civil rights, although they often lived with their captors on a footing almost of apparent equality.)
It would appear that of the attributes of sovereignty, the: administration of justice, (as far as there was any beyond mere reprisals,) and the right of declaring war, as well as the power of temporary alienation of land belonging to the tribe, were all vested in the tribe generally, and, although often exercised by chiefs or tohungas, were so exercised with the consent, either express or tacit, of the whole tribe.
But the original tenure, by occupation, was one which could he maintained by a tribe only so long as they were strong enough to prevent another tribe from depriving them of it; for there was no tribunal, external or common to all the tribes, to which appeal could be made; nor does there seem to have been any compact or understanding, express or implied, that if one tribe should disturb another in its occupation the general body of the tribes should protect the occupier or punish the assailant.
Therefore, the right of occupation was always liable to be superseded by force, and acquisition of territory by conquest was recognised by all the tribes as rightful; possession, (other than by sufferance,) being the evidence of the right.
In speaking, therefore, of the right of a tribe to land, it seems plain that, for all purposes external to the tribe itself, it means its power of keeping possession; and the "interest" of the tribe in the land is neither more nor less than its aggregate possession, through families or individuals, of the lands which they were allowed to enjoy, and, by the whole tribe, of those lands, forests, fisheries, &c, which they all enjoyed in common, such possession not being merely by the sufferance of a conqueror, and having been acquired by occupation or conquest. There seems to have been no recognition of a power of alienation in perpetuum by one tribe, or individual of a tribe, to another tribe, or individual of another tribe; though land seems to have been lent or exchanged for a time by one tribe to another. And when a man of one tribe married a woman of another, he was generally allowed to enjoy the land in which she had an individual interest, within her tribe, during her lifetime.
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There does not appear to have been any mode of making or enforcing contracts or obtaining justice as between different tribes. In short, as between tribes, or individuals of different tribes, might seems to have constituted the only right known to the Maori people.
On looking into the internal economy of the tribe, we find that there were some rights pretty definitely ascertained, while others were very vague. As before noticed, the distinction between the classes of free men do not seem to have been well defined, nor do their distinctive functions.
Much misconception and many fallacious reasonings on this subject, which seem to have been prevalent, may be fairly attributed to mistaken assumptions with respect to the rights, privileges and powers of the persons called "Chiefs." The word "Chief" has been used in a very vague and ambiguous manner. Chieftainship seems, in truth, to have amounted to little more than a prestige accorded by a tribe to individuals, which gave to its possessors an influence and control over the tribe in proportion to the personal respect which they could command. Great stress was laid on birth, and the Ariki, the lord, or head Chief of a tribe, was the person of highest birth, and was estimated accordingly; the Rangatiras following him, according to the distinction of their descent. These were naturally looked to as leaders in war or in council; but, apart from the deference paid to their position, there does not seem, except in time of war, to have been any definite authority, privilege or duty, assigned to them, except that of a species of vaticination and oracular uttering of traditional lore by the Ariki and the Tohunga, accompanied in the case of the Ariki with the painful isolation of the Tapu. Not birth only, but personal superiority also, their physical or oratorical, seems to have been enough to induce a tribe to treat the possessor as a Chief; but the low-born Chief held his honor only for his life, and did not necessarily transmit chieftainship to his posterity. If the man of highest birth proved unequal to his work in time of war, men of lower birth acquired the influence and ascendancy of a Chief, and were acknowledged as such.
A Chief of great influence, and confident of the power he had over his tribe, would often act for it almost without consulting the general body; and if a principal and influential Chief was sure of the assent of the men of the highest birth - and character, he might count upon that of the mass of the people. Chiefs were, then, simply the chief men of a tribe or
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hapu, and their functions in time of peace were few and unimportant. When war began, they naturally became more important, and the Chief had more power. An unpopular Chief of great birth would not be a representative man; and tribes often repudiated the acts of such Chiefs; and, conversely, when a man of no birth or position proposed or did an act for the tribe, they would adopt and ratify it, if it suited their views. In time of peace the relations of the principal, or any other Chief to the tribe was not in any way like that of a Sovereign to his subjects or a feudal lord to his vassals; but in war time, the head Chief-- whether he was the hereditary head or a successful adventurer who had gained prestige, --would necessarily have much of the authority of the Imperator.
The lord Chief, "Ariki,"--who combined the functions of priest and chief, --seems generally to have been allowed by the tribe on acquisition of territory by conquest to take the first choice of land for usufructuary possession; and after him, the Rangatiras, according to their rank by birth; the tutuas, or general body of freemen, getting what they could in the scramble, for their own usufructuary occupation. As families increased and cultivations were exhausted, fresh appropriations of this kind would take place within the general territory of the tribe. The portions of land so adopted and appropriated, at all events after they had been cultivated by the possessors, became the property of the individual occupier as against all other persons of the tribe, whether Chiefs or commoners. This usufructuary right, though not alienable to strangers or to other persons of the tribe, descended by inheritance, as of right, to the children or other kindred of the occupier; and in case of a woman marrying into another tribe, her husband, as has been before remarked, often enjoyed her right for his life.
It has been recently stated that a kind of fiduciary interest in land was sometimes vested in a Chief for the benefit of others, such as widows and orphans belonging to the tribe. But such a practice looks very much like the result of European suggestions and is scarcely consistent with the older habits of the people. If any such custom was generally recognised by the Maories, it probably amounted to no more than this; that some Chief was entrusted with the duty of seeing that land which had been appropriated with the consent of the tribe for the purpose of allowing certain persons to occupy it by the sufferance of the tribe, was used for that purpose; in which case, the occupation of such persons would really be the occupation of the tribe,
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and no title or right would devolve, by inheritance, on the heirs or kindred of the persons so permitted to occupy.
No accumulation of personal property by a man, beyond the produce of his cultivation and his own handiwork, ever took place, and there was no contract of sale; even barter was carried on by the clumsy mode of reciprocal presents.
Violations of any right of property, or of any right known to the Maories, were punished or remedied either by reprisals or by an award of compensation, enforced either by appeals to, superstitious fears, or persuasion, or force.
There seems to have been no specific tribunal, but the general body of the tribe concurred in an award made by the tohungas, the priestly depositories of the oral traditions of the tribe, or by the Ariki, and enforced by threats of punishment by evil spirits and the tyrannical and embarrassing process of the tapu. The Rangatiras, too, sometimes persuaded the offender to submission by oratorical appeals to the examples of bygone times.
What special authority, if any, the head Chief possessed in a civil capacity, as distinguished from the Rangatiras, does not seem clear; and it is doubtful whether any privilege or right was awarded to him, except the concession in many cases of the first choice of land, and the deference paid to his position, supported by the tapu.
There was a vague idea of power, influence, right, quasi sovereignty or lordship, derived from the tribal acquisition of the land, called the "mana" of the land, --the shadow as distinguished from the substance; --but even if this "mana" was vested in the head Chief, or in other Chiefs, which is improbable, it does not seem to have given them any beneficial rights, or any power of disposal or control over the property in the land without, or contrary to, the assent, express or implied, of the body of the tribe. The customs about this, and many other of the matters referred to, were by no means uniformly the same in all tribes. When a Chief gave slaves, whom he had taken, leave to hold land, he expected from them, and they brought to him, certain produce or work, as tribute, in respect of the "mana"; but though freemen also used to make presents to the Chiefs, these were merely complimentary, were not demandable of right, and were almost always returned.
To sum up, then:-- There was no general government or general intertribal polity among the Maori tribes of New Zealand. They bad no common head, no common tribunal, no common interests. The government of tribes, --if their, customs
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can he called by such a name--corresponded with no known type among civilized peoples. There were some features of monarchy, more of aristocracy, and many of republicanism; but the combination was not definite, nor capable of assimilation to any known constitution of civilized society: nor was the government merely patriarchal. Their notions of property of any kind were the vaguest; nothing approaching to regular commerce existed. The origin of the interest of tribes and individuals in land was communistic, and the enjoyment of it in some degree communistic; --the one acquired by force, the other at the mercy of external force. There was no practice of alienation of land by individuals at all--except, indeed, the indirect alienation for a life, of the usufruct of a portion of land belonging to a woman who married into another tribe--and no "out-and-out" alienation, even by a tribe; but slaves and others were allowed to hold lands by the sufferance of conquerors who retained in themselves the mana of the land, while the usufruct was in the occupier. The customs and practices, the acknowledged rights and duties, were by no means uniform or definitely settled; they differed or were modified by circumstances at different times in different tribes. The existence of customs which were common to all the tribes, and the absence of other customs, such as the ordinary modes of alienation of property in civilized communities, before Europeans come to the country, are to be accounted for by the consideration that the circumstances of the people made the customs they possessed convenient, advantageous, or necessary, according to their narrow views and limited knowledge; while they had never theretofore felt the want, the importance, or the convenience, of those which they lacked.
The character of the people it is not very easy to delineate, both justly and completely, composed as it is of elements so diverse. Brutal and savage to excess during the excitement of war, they were yet capable of actions which would not have disgraced the chivalry of Europe. Grossly immoral with respect to the intercourse of the sexes before marriage, they yet treated the marriage tie with much respect, and its violation with severity. Quick in apprehension and of lively wit, they could yet hardly master the first elements of arithmetic. They were both generous and treacherous, good natured and vindictive. They were very superstitious, and yet had but little imagination. They had little or no fear of death, and yet they seemed to need physical excitement to stimulate their courage to action.
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Their arts were few and rude. They were not nomadic, but much attached to the soil which they or their fathers had occupied or conquered; and all their differences, according to their own proverb, were about women and land.
