Ethnography
(Golder Project subject term)
Represented in
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Wairau:—or Col. W—’s Dirge to the Memory of His Brother in New Zealand Minstrelsy
- The savage may glory in deeds unrepaid, / And cowardly taunt thee,
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Canto Fifth in The New Zealand Survey
- But whence this solitary race of men? / How have they here got planted?—may be asked.— / A race of savages without a date,— / Or record of their early history / To trace their lineage!—They’re ever prone / To deal in wonders, and tradition’s lore / Much mixed with fable, contrary to aught / That’s probable, or may be reckoned true; / Crude fancy’s pictures ever over drawn / On some poetic, but untutor’d mind, / Which would try to expound the reason why / The ancient sires got landed on these shores; / While facts with fictions of the basest kind / Are so comingled, no dependance can / Be placed upon each theory declared: / But what can be expected from such minds, / Whose ignorance was darkness multiplied? / Whose ideas, the shades of wand’ring dreams / Of evanescent nature, hard to hold! / Or like the ignus fatuus wand’ring wide, / And leading the benighted far astray / From the sure path,
- such a sight, of import omenous, / As that great bark to them had ne’er occurr’d / Before,—and was to ancient sires unknown!
- He found upon this island a wild race / “From all the world disjoined!” His visit then, / To them was like the earliest, faintest break / Of greyish dawn, upon the coming day; / And long before the sun, with upward rays, / The eastern sky paints in vermilion hue! / It told them (if such tidings they perceived) / There were elsewhere another race of men / Of more extensive knowledge;—that themselves / Were not the only people of the world;— / That they themselves, compared with what they saw / In all their wonted pride, degraded were!— / For nothing dreamed they of more cultured state, / Or civilization; (if to them such phrase / Intelligible were;) nor could conceive / Such state of mind, so as to feel debased / With that degraded state in which they lived, / When seeing something of a nobler kind; / No more than when they could their great canoes / Compare with that great ship the stranger own’d! / This visit must have given their stagnant thoughts / A quite unwonted stir! another theme / Of converse, of unfathomable depth, / When conjuring fresh conjectures oft,—
- Their instruments of warfare, or of chase, / On sea or land, when hunting for their food, / In absence of what commerce might supply; / Such, shews deep thought in the contrivance formed, / Or happy hit upon the plan pursued, / When urged by stern necessity, by those / Who may have been their sires, put to their shifts, / When like some wreck cast on these shores unknown, / With nothing but their hands, their helpless hands, / To gain a sustenance, though mean, in aught / The nature of their new abode might yield; / And so their offspring train, that they alike / In wildest hardihood themselves might fend!
- Yet nothwithstanding such degraded state, / They shew themselves to claim a kindred tie / To all of Adam’s race, ev’n by their works, / However rude, formed through necessity; / Yet some bespeaking fancy, also skill, / Ingenious in their kinds, with lack of means, / Which others would for similar purpose use:— / All speak a claim, as ardent to support / This their memorial of a brotherhood; / As much, as would, on Jordan’s banks, when reared / The testifying altar of the Jews!
- But this is true,— / They’ve wander’d far from that great parting scene / On Shinar’s plain! Some providential hap / Must have some families brought toward these shores / As forced by tempests from their fishing grounds, / Unable to return; so they’ve become / Mere outcasts from society, as ’twere / To prove to a philosophising world / What man is when apart—left to himself / With nought but corrupt passions for a guide, / With reason overpower’d! Then far below / Civilisation’s standard will he sink / Till scarcely ’bove the level of a brute!— / Thus have they had such dire experience, / As from such stocks they multiplied, and grew, / By numerous generations, into tribes, / Forgetful of all morals, which mayhap / Their sires have held, although however small, / ’Mid ancient social circles in old homes!
- Though much of their traditions in their kind / May bear comparison to what of old / Would Ovid tell, (1)—how things in present form / Had their existence by transforming spells; / Yet the untutored natives, more debased, / Knew not how advantageously to turn / Such ev’n to good instruction, in the guise / Of fiction’s elegance, with morals chaste! / But such in uncouth state have been conceived / As ’mid pollution, so produced unclean, / And told, while such have passed as current coin / Through generations, much transformed and patched / With fresh additions of unseemliness / And horrid shapes; while, upon which the minds / Of infancy were fed, and puerile thoughts / Were cherished, till such in their nature’s wove! / Thus superstition’s canker on them grown / Has gnawed into their souls! Thus prestine truths / Are made extinct, while falsehood bears the sway; / Wild superstition as with reptile’s coil / Have in the bonds of mystery wound their tail!
- Ah poor degraded race! Thus exiled far / From ancient relatives and friendship’s joys, / So long, till true remembrance have been lost / Of such they may have had; from sires forlorn / They’ve sprung a num’rous progeny; and now, / How much through foul distrust and variance strange, / They have asunder parted, and become / To either aliens, reft to separate tribes, / With every tie of brotherhood annulled! / Of common comforts, such that cheer the poor / Of other lands, how much they’ve been devoid!
- Their instruments of warfare, or of chase, / On sea or land, when hunting for their food, / In absence of what commerce might supply; / Such, shews deep thought in the contrivance formed, / Or happy hit upon the plan pursued, / When urged by stern necessity, by those / Who may have been their sires, put to their shifts, / When like some wreck cast on these shores unknown, / With nothing but their hands, their helpless hands, / To gain a sustenance, though mean, in aught / The nature of their new abode might yield; / And so their offspring train, that they alike / In wildest hardihood themselves might fend!
Searching
For several reasons, including lack of resource and inherent ambiguity, not all names in the NZETC are marked-up. This means that finding all references to a topic often involves searching. Search for Ethnography as: "Ethnography". Additional references are often found by searching for just the main name of the topic (the surname in the case of people).
Other Collections
The following collections may have holdings relevant to "Ethnography":
- Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, which has entries for many prominent New Zealanders.
- Archives New Zealand, which has collections of maps, plans and posters; immigration passenger lists; and probate records.
- National Library of New Zealand, which has extensive collections of published material.
- Auckland War Memorial Museum, which has extensive holdings on the Auckland region and New Zealand military history.
- Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, which has strong holdings in Tāonga Māori, biological holotypes and New Zealand art.
- nzhistory.net.nz, from the History Group of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage.