The Traffic in Maori Heads.

The murdering of white men around Molyneux and Foveaux Straits was a matter of “tit for tat.”

Let us see how some of the civilised people behaved.

It soon becomes obvious that the understanding which now exists between Maori and pakeha was—apart from the missionaries, some settlers, and a few traders—not greatly manifest, even as late at 1839.

Many of the visiting whalers had little respect for either the customs or the material possessions of the Maoris. Even the lives of the Natives were not considered of value—but their heads, even their skins, were!

Trade was the god of these early sailormen, who had to make the voyages pay somehow. And even if whale oil and sealskins were in ample supply, sidelines, such as dried heads, always meant lashings of rum in Sydney.

page 9