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Chapter IV.
A Fatal Mistake.

Morethan a hundred years have passed away since Cook discovered and took formal possession of New Zealand. During that long period the romantic interest in the islands, which was excited by the genius of the great navigator, has not ceased to animate the English nation. Neither the lapse of time, nor a long succession of untoward events, has removed New Zealand from the circle of English sympathies. The theories of colonization, the systems of government, the noble Christian efforts, and the stirring and warlike events of which New Zealand has of late years been the arena, may account for much of the painful interest with which it continues to be regarded by the philosopher, the statesman, and the philanthropist.

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By steadfast efforts, civilization is raising its trophies amongst us. Farms, ships, and cities are to be seen on every hand. Yet, if civilization has its victories, it has its victims also. Sad as the statement may be, it can hardly be denied that civilization rarely assimilates the aboriginal element. To be degraded, to be enslaved, or to be exterminated, has too often been the hard fate of barbaric races, when they have come in contact with modern civilization. To remove this great reproach, to civilize, to Christianize, and to save the Maori race, has been a great work which all good men have desired to see accomplished. Many plans have been tried, many mistakes have been made; but the work is not yet done. We have not secured success. If we have acquired experience, if we have drawn lessons from the weary past, and if manfully and at all cost we are determined wisely to apply these lessons, we may yet look for a brighter and more successful future.

The conditions under which the Crown assumed the Sovereignty of New Zealand were on the whole favourable. The imitative faculties of the Maori led him to adopt many of the habits and wants of the Europeans. His trading propensities enabled him to obtain readily the means of satisfying his desires. They also furnished a lever of no mean power wherewith to raise him out of the grim den of barbarism in which he had dwelt so long.

In common with all the races of mankind, the Maori is a religious animal. Call it superstition, call it devil-worship, call it what you will, that feeling of page 27weakness, of helplessness, which lies at the threshold of all religious sentiment, existed in the people we found here, and was either a power for evil, or a power for good. Whilst the ships and the arms of the white traders secured the respect of the natives, the simple truths of the Gospel won his admiration. Up to this point, the bright visions of English philanthropists seemed about to be realised. The hideous deeds of the long dark night of heathenism began to disappear before a brighter morn, before the golden precepts of a purer faith.

In 1840, the confederated chiefs ceded the sovereignty to England. That great power, whose steps were on every sea, whose achievements in arts and arms had been celebrated in every quarter of the globe, made its appearance in New Zealand. The Missionary had told of the great and good deeds of Britain. The runaway sailors had narrated to the warrior chiefs, stories of the deeds, by sea and land, of warriors greater than themselves. Both had an unwavering faith in the prowess of their race. Not only did the sentiment that

Britannia rules the waves,

echo through many a Maori Pah, but the prestige of England became one of the chief articles in the new creed of the Maori.

Thus did commerce, religion, and law unite their forces to rescue the Maori race from the blighting influence which the white man's presence had too often exerted on his dark-skinned brethren.

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Such were some of the conditions under which the sovereignty was assumed.

When a great nation like England attempts to rule a little one in the peculiar circumstances of New Zealand, it is not surprising if many grave mistakes are made. From the first, a dire fatality attended our movements, whether military or civil. From within the charmed circle of a famous prestige, one would have thought that we might have exorcised the evil spirit from the Maori. And so we could, but for one fatal mistake.

When the Missionaries arrived in New Zealand they found the primitive Maori language, though abounding in Aryan words sufficient for the simple wants of the savages they ventured amongst, altogether incapable of conveying the new ideas of Christianity and civilization. They proceeded to make this primitive language fit the new conditions. They set to work in this way:—

The English name of the Capital City of the Colony was 'Auckland.' To obtain a corresponding word, a Maori was invited to pronounce the word 'Auckland.' The nearest approach the Native could then make to it, was 'Akarana,' and that became the Maori name of the City. In like manner 'Pork' became Poaka, the Maori word for 'pig,' and so on.

By making and retaining this degraded, hybrid language, the Missionaries may have hoped to retain control of the Maori people, to have kept them under tutelage, till they had Christianized them. In the mean time, many European waifs and strays located page 29about the coasts and in the interior, had acquired a knowledge of the Maori language, and there grew up a class of men known as 'Pakeha Maories,' many of whom lived in Maori Kaingas (villages), and became more or less Maori in habits and ideas. There was however another class who, possibly from having the 'gift of language,' acquired a knowledge of Maori, amongst whom were many bright examples of upright gentlemen.

From these two classes sprung the 'Interpreters,' who naturally became the chief medium of communication between the two races. The 'Bible,' 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and 'Robinson Crusoe,' with a few others, were translated into the hybrid language, and formed the sole literature of the Maori people.

By this course a great opportunity was missed. The Saxons conquered our Celtic ancestors, not so much by their arms, as by their language. Had the Missionaries ignored the imperfect Maori language, and boldly taught the Natives the English tongue, they would doubtless have found their initial labours much more difficult, but they would have brought the Maories into direct lingual communication with the English Colonists, and into contact with English literature. The Maories would not then have been left in the hands of people, whose interest lay in retaining their influence over the native race, by being the sole means of communication between them and the white men, so keeping the two races apart, to the irreparable injury of both.

Disputes, trifling in themselves, would have dis-page 30appeared, if every Maori disputant could have talked over his grievance with the first Colonist he met. Misapprehensions would never have hardened into wrongs, if they could have been explained at once.

If the Maories and Colonists could have directly traded together, could have been taught together in the same schools, could have worshipped together in the same churches, without any 'go-betweens,' the twenty years' war would never have occurred; millions of treasure would have been saved, and the blood of both races, instead of being shed like water, would have mingled in the Britain of the South, as the blood of the Celt and the Saxon had mingled in the long ago in the Britain of the North; and two branches of the Aryan family, after a separation of thousands of years, and of thousands of miles, would have been reunited in these remote Islands of the Sea, and the Making of a new Nation would have proceeded under happier conditions.

The English nation earnestly desired to rescue the Maori race from destruction. Few enterprises since the abolition of slavery have been undertaken in our time with more ardour. The overthrow of Mexico and the conquest of Peru by the Spaniards, and our own occupation of the North American continent in later times, had been attended with results which had alarmed and outraged Christendom. The silver-shod cavalry of Pizarro had banished the Inca from the gilded palace of his fathers, just as our western trappers had driven the Red Indian from his hunting grounds. Are aboriginal races always to disappear page 31before the inroads of the white man? If civilization is inexorable in recording sentence of death against the dark-skinned races, it certainly matters little, whether the executioners be the homespun back-woodsmen of our own time, or the splendid buccaneers of an earlier age.

Could England have rescued the Maori from a similar doom, she would have raised a proud testimony against the homage that civilization pays to mammon. She sought to rear a temple to philanthropy. She has left instead an edifice in ruins.