Introduction to Old New Zealand

A Background to Old New Zealand

Maning arrived in New Zealand from Tasmania in July 1833, disembarking at Pakanae on the Hokianga harbour. There he was welcomed by Moetara of the local tribe, Ngati Korokoro, an event which was later to provide the basis for the beginning of Old New Zealand. From there he moved to Kohukohu, where he negotiated the purchase of land and a house. While at Kohukohu, Maning engaged in trade and lived as a Pākehā-Māori, apparently fathering the child of a Māori woman. In 1837, however, he returned to Tasmania.

On his return to New Zealand in 1839, Maning purchased land and built a house further up the Hokianga, at Onoke. He also began to live with Moengaroa of Te Hikutu. Maning had four children with her, and he also became close friends with her brother, Hauraki. Maning’s experiences of this time are also reflected in scenes of Old New Zealand. He opposed the Treaty of Waitangi when it was brought to the area in February 1840, seemingly out of fear that the Treaty would lead to curbs on his commercial activities rather than from opposition to government per se; he applied for, but failed to achieve, a government position the following year. He also supported the government campaign against Hone Heke and Kawiti, 1845–6, desirous of protection for settler interests. It was during this campaign that Maning began to write his first book, A History of the War in the North Against the Chief Heke (1862).

Maning began to turn away from Māori society after the deaths of Hauraki (1845) and Moengaroa (1847). He became increasingly estranged from his children, while his expanding business interests transformed him from a trader with Māori to one of the largest employers of Māori in the region during the 1850s. He also began to desire Pākehā company and recognition. Maning therefore brought his business activities to an end in the early 1860s and sought to become more involved in government. Alex Calder argues that both A History of The War in the North and Old New Zealand were thus in part

bids for notice and patronage, and successful insofar as they assisted his 1865 appointment as Judge in the Native Land Court.

(6) Both were published in an environment of conflict between Māori and Pākehā — war had broken out in Taranaki in 1860 and Waikato in 1863 — that inevitably heightened the interest with which Maning’s authoritative words were received.

Some Comments on Old New Zealand

Old New Zealand is dominated from the start by the effusive presence of its narrator. He is prone to digression, has a lively sense of irony and appears to have few moral qualms.  The tale he relates is an attempt

to place a few sketches of old Maori life on record before the remembrance of them has quite passed away

(Preface), and he does this through relating his experience and knowledge of Māori character, customs and behaviour. Thus the narrative is also concerned with the consequences of contact between Māori and Pākehā, evident in the fact that it begins with his arrival on the shore of New Zealand. The mode of this arrival — being carried from ship to shore on the back of a Māori — is however far from triumphal:

I felt at the time that the thing was a sort of failure — a come down; the position was not graceful, or in any way likely to suggest ideas of respect or awe, with my legs projecting a yard or so from under each arm of my bearer, holding on to his shoulders in the most painful, cramped, and awkward manner.

(Chapter 2)

The situation soon becomes more farcical for his bearer slips and leaves him

wrong end uppermost, drifting away with the tide, and ballasted with heavy pistols, boots, tight clothes, and all the straps and strings of civilisation.

(Chapter 2) Such a self-aware sense of absurdity creates a feeling that the narrator may be trusted as an accurate observer, and this is powerfully reinforced by the authority of personal experience:

Pakehas who knew no better, called the muru simply ‘robbery’…. But I speak…

(Chapter 7). Thus, behind the text lies the reader’s knowledge of Maning’s life as a Pākehā-Māori — “A Pakeha Maori”, in fact, being the name under which it was first published — knowledge that lends it credibility.

Yet this self-deprecatory tone endorses a specific and carefully constructed version of Māori culture. This attributes to Māori negative qualities that it claims have become irretrievably ingrained as a result of the environment they live in:

As for the Maori people in general, they are neither so good or so bad as their friends and enemies have painted them, and I suspect they are pretty much like what almost any other people would have become, if subjected for ages to the same external circumstances. For ages they have struggled against necessity in all its shapes. This has given to them a remarkable greediness for gain in every visible and immediately tangible form. It has even left its mark on their language.

(Chapter 6)

Those “external circumstances” have resulted in a society governed by violence, superstition and greed.  Maning’s propagation of this view during a time of war between Māori and Pākehā leads Gibbons to suggest that the popularity of Old New Zealand

in large measure rested on his carefully crafted production of the stereotypical Māori that the settler society wanted to believe in — cunning, shrewd, lacking in compassion, careless of life, unregenerate.

(Gibbons, 46) K.O. Arvidson is also critical of Maning’s portrayal of Māori for similar reasons:

No comparably literate book could have done more to impress upon the minds of literate settlers a picture of Maori savagery, inhumanity, and duplicity, so magnified as to become in sum a portrait of Evil. Maning’s descriptions of the Maori priests, the tohunga, who appear to have obsessed him, continually reinforce this notion of Evil

(273)

Yet it can be argued that the text is more divided in its loyalties than Gibbons and Arvidson allow. For instance, while the narrator

felt a curious sensation at the time, like what I fancied a man must feel who had just sold himself, body and bones, to the devil

(Chapter 8) while the tohunga lifted the tapu upon him, soon after it is

The perfect coolness of my old friend … as well as his reasoning, [that] began to make me feel a little disconcerted.

(Chapter 8) Simon During argues, upon the basis of Maning’s discussion of tapu and mana,

For him there is not even any way of finally judging whether the Pakeha or the Maori ought to win.

(774) Such ambivalence is most clear at the end of Old New Zealand, when the narrator confesses:

I get so confused, I feel just as if I was two different persons at the same time. Sometimes I find myself thinking on the Maori side, and then just afterwards wondering if ‘we’ can lick the Maori, and set the law upon its legs, which is the only way to do it. I therefore hope the reader will make allowance for any little apparent inconsistency in my ideas, as I really cannot help it.

(Chapter 15)

It is the expression and acknowledgement of this “apparent inconsistency” that helps Old New Zealand stand out from its contemporary texts and ensures it is of continuing interest.