The Treaty of Waitangi; or, how New Zealand became a British Colony. Thomas Lindsay Buick
Although it has been a popular sport on the part of many writers to throw darts of sarcasm at the labours of the Missionaries, they, too, must be accounted a tremendous influence for good, not so much, perhaps, in checking the licentiousness of the Europeans, as in preventing the natives from becoming contaminated by it. Destructive internecine wars had been waging "with fiendish determination" for many years under the conquering leadership of Hongi, Te Wherowhero, Te Waharoa and Te Rauparaha, by which whole districts had been depopulated, and tribe after tribe practically annihilated. Still the Maori people were a numerous, virile and warlike race, capable of deeds of blackest barbarism, or equally adaptable to the softening influences of Christianity and civilisation.
So far as the darker side of their history is concerned, we have it on the irreproachable authority of the Rev. Samuel Marsden that the tragedies in which the natives made war upon the Europeans were in almost every instance merely acts of retaliation for earlier outrages.[3] The killing of Marian du Fresne and the massacre on board the Boyd were unquestionably so; and the dread of the natives which for several years after these events almost suspended the sea trade with New Zealand was the natural fruit of that cruelty which trusting Maori seamen had suffered at the hands of unscrupulous captains, who had either inveigled them or forced them on board their whalers. Dark as the history of New Zealand was during these Alsatian days, there is no chapter quite so dark, or which redounds less to the credit of the white race, than the story of the sea-going natives who were taken away from these sunny shores,[4] and abandoned in foreign countries, or driven at the end of the lash to tasks far beyond their physical strength, resulting in the premature death of many, while the poison of undying hatred entered into the souls of the survivors.
The position on shore was scarcely less disgraceful, for the natives resident in the seaward pas were cruelly ill-treated by the crews of the European vessels who visited them; and it is stated in the records of the Church Missionary Society that within the first two or three years of the arrival of the Missionaries not less than one thousand Maoris had been murdered by Europeans, the natives unhappily not infrequently visiting upon the innocent who came within their reach revenge for crimes perpetrated by the guilty who had evaded their vengeance.
But apart from the commission of actual outrage there was debauchery of several kinds, and always of a pronounced type. "They lead a most reckless life, keeping grog shops, selling spirituous liquors to both Europeans and natives, living with the native females in a most discreditable way, so that the natives have told me to teach my own countrymen first before I taught them. They have called us a nation of drunkards from their seeing a majority of Europeans of that stamp in New Zealand." Such was the testimony of an erstwhile Missionary, Mr. John Flatt, when giving evidence before the House of Lords regarding the northern portion of the colony; and not less unsatisfactory was the position in the South Island, where the whalers were the preponderating section of the white population.
At both Cloudy Bay and Queen Charlotte Sound there was, in 1837, a considerable white settlement, each man being a law unto himself, except in so far as he was under the dominion of the head man of the station. This at least was the opinion formed by Captain Hobson when visiting those parts in H.M.S. Rattlesnake. In describing the result of his enquiries to Governor Bourke, he dismissed the probability of these settlements being attacked by the natives, because they were so confederated by their employment; but he significantly added: "The only danger they have to apprehend is from themselves, and that is in a great measure neutralised by the contending influences of their own reckless and desperate character."
The Rev. Mr. Stack, then labouring in the north, in writing home to the parent Society, complained bitterly of the unprincipled white men who had escaped from the chain gangs at Sydney, and who had recently shown themselves so desperate that two were seized and taken to Sydney to be tried at the Assizes on a charge of attempted robbery and murder.[5] Mr. Stack pleaded for the intervention of the British Government, which he hoped would not leave the country at the mercy of the escaped convicts, or the natives to the influence of a commerce carried on with so many circumstances destructive to the moral health of the people, that if unchecked, would effectually do the work of depopulation. "We have no law or justice," wrote Mr. Stack, "no punishment for crime but private revenge."
In the beginning of the year 1840 Kororareka, the settlement at the Bay of Islands which had the greatest right to claim the dignity of a township, contained about three hundred inhabitants of all ages, exclusive of the numerous sailors, whose nightly revels constituted the only interruption to the peace and harmony which generally prevailed. These gentry resorted in great numbers to the native village at the inner anchorage, where the principal chief carried on the lucrative business of grog-selling, besides another of a still more discreditable kind, for the convenience of his reckless customers—French, English, and American. "Here," according to Dr. Jameson, "might be seen the curious spectacle of a still savage chief enriching himself at the expense of individuals who, although belonging to the most civilised and powerful nations in the world, were reduced to a lower degree of barbarism by the influence of their unbridled licentiousness."
Contact with such social degenerates was not calculated to inspire the natives with a high ideal of European morality, nor with a conspicuous example of rectitude; but where the influences destructive of decency and order were less virulent the Missionaries had a more hopeful tale to tell. "The door is opening before us in every direction, and the people are pressing and entreating us to enter. Had we only more help, where we have now a hundred natives under our care, we would soon have a thousand." Such was the report of the Rev. Mr. Turner, one of the Wesleyan Missionaries[6] at Hokianga, in urging his Society to send more workers to this corner of the human vineyard. The attendance and attention of the natives at Divine worship were regular and fixed, while it is recorded that their responses to the reading of the Litany were particularly devout.
The sincerity of many of these early converts was one of the most remarkable features of the evangelising of the Maori; and the Rev. Dr. Beecham, in giving evidence before the Lords' Committee in 1838, quoted this eloquent passage from one of the letters of the Rev. Mr. Hobbs to illustrate the warmth of Maori piety. "The beauty of the Liturgy, as translated by our brethren at the Bay of Islands into the Native tongue, is most exquisite, and to me hardly loses any of the force of original composition, and, I have no doubt, has been made a great blessing unto many by putting words of prayer into their mouths, and thus teaching them to pray. Many times has my heart gloried within me while repeating the 'Te Deum Laudamus,' and especially that part—
Tapu tapu tapu rawa E Ihowa te Atua o nga mano tuauriuri whaioio,
that is—
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth,
and hear them respond—
E kiki ana te Rangi me te whenua i te kahanga o tou kororia
Heaven and Earth are full of the majesty of Thy Glory.
"I have been informed," continued Dr. Beecham, "by those who have witnessed the celebration of public worship in the principal church at Mangungu, that to hear 700 or 800 of the Christian natives correctly and promptly utter the responses, and then sing the praises of the True God, is highly affecting. Another feature of their character is their strict observance of daily social prayer. At dawn of day all the inhabitants of the villages assemble together in the chapel at the sound of the bell, or some piece of metal used as a substitute, to read the scriptures and to pray. The same order is observed in the evening. When the evening approaches the whole of the population moves to the house of God, and close the day with devotions. Their reverence for the Sabbath is remarkable. Those who come from a distance to attend Divine worship at Mangungu do not travel on the Sunday, but on the Saturday, and return on the Monday. They refrain from all work on the Lord's Day. So strict are their views on the sanctity of the Sabbath they do not even prepare their food on that day. The arrival of a vessel is always a matter of considerable excitement to the natives