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Chapter III
The Maori and the Musket

Not until one hundred and twenty-seven years after Abel Tasman and his crew left New Zealand did another white man touch its shores. On his way home from Tahiti in 1769, hoping for discovery, Captain Cook sighted the distant hills of New Zealand, and remained in the area for about six months exploring and charting its coast. Like Surville and Dufresne, the French explorers who quickly followed him, Cook on his first voyage and on his subsequent visits in 1773, 1774 and 1777, succeeded in contacting the Maoris, with some maintaining friendly relations, whilst, with others, experiencing or witnessing frightening clashes which terminated in cannibalism. He left pigs, goats and fowls which increased in the forests. To many tribes he gave potatoes, which later became an important part of Maori food supply. When Cook's story was published in England and on the Continent, Europeans conceived a deep horror of the man-eating Maoris. New Zealand again became a neglected land.

After the English founded Sydney as a penal colony in 1788, eyes began to look towards the land to the east, but it was not until four years later that New South Wales first made contact with New Zealand. A sealing gang was left at Dusky Sound for about a year and collected the first fruits of the Australian seal trade which proved so lucrative to New South Wales. Sydney merchants soon discovered from visitors that kauri timber could be disposed of at a profit in India and at the Cape of Good Hope and that New Zealand flax proved a good substitute for Indian hemp when used for rope-making, sacking and cloth. Two Maori lads belonging to the tribe of which Te Pahi was chief were forcibly seized in 1793 and taken to Norfolk Island in order to teach the convicts the manner in which the flax should be woven. European whalers also found the seas around New Zealand well stocked with whales. Scores of vessels came out to carry on a profitable business of catching them and taking their oil to Europe and to New South Wales.

Each successive industry established in New Zealand required the presence of white workmen on shore for considerable periods of time, thus establishing friendly relations between the Europeans and the natives. For fuel for their stoves and for fresh water, vessels called in at Queen Charlotte Sound, Dusky Sound and especially at the Bay of Islands, near the extreme page 23 north of the North Island. There they also bought fish, pork and potatoes and paid for their food, sealskins, flax and timber, as well as for labour, with knives, blankets, tobacco and rum, and later with the natives' most prized acquisition, muskets and powder. From olden times, the various Maori tribes warred continually and fiercely with each other, this accounting for the comparatively small native population of about one hundred thousand in the two islands. Successful tribes carried the vanquished into slavery, eating the enemy dead and slaying any delectable or desirable captive. The natives soon learned the value of the musket, realizing that the man with the gun could easily overcome his foe. The Maoris also began to find out the advantage of having a white man dwelling near or amongst them. He acted as interpreter and agent to the ships which brought trade and articles which the Maoris began to desire. The natives seldom slew a white man, although from time to time quarrels did break out and deaths took place on both sides.

In the full flush of the whaling and sealing trade, over one hundred ships called in at the Bay of Islands in one year, the local native chief keeping ninety-six slave girls, who formed temporary unions with the visiting sailors. Some of the more adventurous seamen, charmed with the prospect of a semi-savage life, needed little persuasion to throw in their lot with the Maoris, joining their tribes and living according to native custom. The first "pakeha Maori" who lived in a native fashion was a young Englishman, George Bruce. When Governor King came to New South Wales he sent gifts to Te Pahi, the chief from whose tribe the two lads had been forcibly taken to Norfolk Island. Anxious to see the sender of the presents, Te Pahi and his four sons sailed to Sydney, where they were feted by all and entertained at Government House. On his return, Te Pahi induced Bruce, who had been kind to him during an illness, to return to New Zealand, to marry his daughter, tattoo his body and conform to the custom of his tribe. Bruce was the first of quite a number of "pakeha Maoris".

On the other hand, some of the natives, when they saw that the English did not harm them, shipped for voyages on board the whalers. They made good sailors and navigators. In 1805 a Maori sailed with an English surgeon all the way to London, and the English were as much astonished at the sight of a cannibal as the native was surprised at all he saw of London and other parts of England. Other natives also journeyed to England, one, Ruatara, returning in 1809 with the Rev. Samuel Marsden, the Senior Chaplain at Port Jackson.

Whilst in England, Marsden had enlisted the aid of the Church Missionary Society in establishing a mission settlement in New Zealand. His hopes, however, were dashed by an ugly incident. On his return to Sydney he heard of the Boyd which had sailed from Sydney to England. The captain page 24 had twice flogged a Maori sailor who, when the ship returned to the Bay of Islands to take on kauri spars, slipped ashore and informed his tribe of the insult proffered him by the white man. Revenge was agreed upon, which resulted in the slaughter of sixty-six persons who were duly eaten. The horror of the disaster provoked high indignation and retaliation. The whalers indiscriminately shot the Maoris wherever they found them, over one hundred being killed out of hand in three years, while the natives slaughtered any white persons caught off their guard. Thus, in 1816, the Maoris slew and ate all the crew except one of an American brig, the Agnes, which was wrecked on their shores. The man who was kept alive was tattooed and served as a slave for twelve years. Marsden, therefore, had to postpone his venture, as did the New Zealand Company of New South Wales, which had made preliminary arrangements to open mercantile establishments in the land of the Maori.

Undaunted, Marsden tried once again to establish his mission. To help him, Governor Macquarie directed every vessel leaving Port Jackson for New Zealand to deposit £1000 in bonds to guarantee that no ship's crew would interfere with the sacred places of the natives or carry the Maoris off. Marsden's men contacted Ruatara, persuading him and his uncle Hongi, the chief of the Nga Puhi tribe, to visit Sydney to discuss the establishment of the mission. It resulted in the purchase of 200 acres of land on the shores of the Bay of Islands for the price of twelve axes, and the erection of rough houses as a station. The mission opened on 25 December, 1814, when Marsden preached from a pulpit built by Ruatara to a crowded Maori audience who did not understand one word of what he said. Marsden returned to Sydney leaving catechists behind in the belief his mission had succeeded. The position was far from satisfactory. Around the station, liberated convicts, who formed the bulk of the crews of the sealing and whaling ships, treated the natives coarsely and roughly. Murders, revengeful retaliation, thefts and quarrels resulted, and the crews and the traders did more harm than the missionaries did good. Hongi, the converted Christian, was also most dissatisfied, for the missionaries would not permit him to purchase guns and powder to slaughter the Maoris of the other tribes.

Hongi, however, did obtain his guns and powder. When the catechist Kendall returned to England in 1820, Hongi went with him, accompanied by another Maori chief, Nene. His guides pointed out to him the sights and might of England and introduced him to George IV who showered him with gifts, including an ancient suit of shining armour. He went to Cambridge, where he helped Professor Lee to compile a dictionary of the Maori language. All London, including the Jews of the East End quarter, came to see the chief who had eaten dozens of men. Hongi returned to Sydney loaded page 25 with gifts which he later sold, buying instead three hundred muskets and plenty of powder which he took with him to New Zealand. "There is but one king in England," he told his tribe, "and there shall be only one king amongst the Maoris." Within a few days he had defeated a rival tribe in battle, killing one thousand men and feasting upon their bodies, Hongi tearing out the eyes of the rival chief and swallowing them on the battlefield. Another thousand captives were taken to the tribal village where they were slain and cooked to provide a feast for the women.

The cannibal chief did become predominant in the North Island, slaughtering and feasting as he warred, but in 1827 he quarrelled with his friends. They also now had muskets, and in a fight Hongi was shot through the chest, from which wound he died a few months later. Pomare succeeded Hongi and adopted his warlike ambitions. The other tribes realized that they could only save themselves by the purchase of muskets, for which they offered the traders ten and twenty times their value in flax and other produce. Te Wherowhero ambushed Pomare and killed him, and Te Whero-whero in due course was challenged by the most determined and wiliest of Maori chiefs, Te Rauparaha, from Kawhia. Te Rauparaha, however, was defeated, and barely escaped with his life. Every tribe was now well supplied with muskets, none gaining the ascendancy. Slaughter and cannibalism and all the terrible scenes of Maori warfare continued day by day; the Maoris suffering horrible losses, the whites gaining trade and merchandise at little cost in comparison with the profits they made by selling abroad the goods so obtained.