Richard Barrett
Pakeha-Maori

(By A. J. Waldie ).

In a grassy reserve bordering the sea-shore at New Plymouth-near those queer conical mounds which guard the coast-stands an old gravestone. The inscription gives this as the last resting-place of one Richard Barrett. He was aged forty at the date of his death-in 1847.

It was with a thrill of emotion that one realised that here one had idly stumbled upon the grave of that great and jovial soul whose name is familiar to every student of early New Zealand history.

A pakeha-Maori, “Dicky” Barrett had lived in New Zealand for over ten years before his momentous meeting with Colonel Wakefield. Edward Jerningham Wakefield writes of him in his “Adventure in New Zealand” thus:-

“Dressed in a white jacket, blue dungaree trousers and round straw hat, he (Barrett) seemed perfectly round all over; while his jovial, ruddy face, twinkling eyes, and good-humoured smile could not fail to excite pleasure in all beholders.”

First flax-trader, then head-man of the Taranaki or Egmont whaling-station, Dicky lived with a small tribe of Ngatiawa Maoris near these same Sugar-Loaves on the Egmont coast. The weakness of the tribe tempted the Wai-kato chief, Te Whero Whero, to a siege. “But among the defenders,” says W. Pember Reeves, “were eleven white men, pakeha-Maori. They were Englishmen, and had four old ship's guns. Dicky Barrett was the life and soul of the defence, and he and his comrades kept anxious watch. The stormers came at dawn and were soon over the stockade. But after a desperate tussle, the assailants were cut down or driven out. With heavy loss the astonished Waikato recoiled in disgust and their retreat did not cease until they reached their own country.”

The Ngatiawa tribe decided to abandon their much-harried land, and with them went Dicky to Cook's Strait, where, in 1839, the Wakefields found him at a whaling-station at Te-awaiti. He it was who directed the “Tory” to the harbour known as Port Nicholson. In consequence of this, Barrett may be regarded as the guide who pointed out to the pioneers of the New Zealand Company the future capital of the Dominion.

“The acquaintance and assistance of Dicky Barrett promised to be most advantageous to us,” says Jemingham Wakefield, “as he was related by his wife to all the influential chiefs living in Port Nicholson. He was delighted at the prospect of a regular English Colony which might cherish and benefit the Maori.”

When Colonel Wakefield and his party followed Dicky into his house, or whare, “a superior edifice,” at Te-awaiti, they found a long room, half full of natives and whalers. “His wife Rangi, a fine, stately woman, gave us a dignified welcome; and his pretty half-caste children laughed and commented on our appearance in their own language. He had three girls of his own, and had adopted a son of an old trader and friend of his-Jacky Love-who was even then on his death-bed.”

Barrett agreed to act as interpreter, and explain the views of the New Zealand Company to the chiefs at Port Nicholson. How well he accomplished this is evidenced by the cordial reception these chiefs later accorded the settlers as they arrived.

The newcomers soon found that Barrett was respected by all-even by drunken whalers-and adored by the natives. “The friend of Maori and pakeha alike, he befriends all who seek bis aid, and has the largest heart of any man I know in New Zealand,” writes Mr. Partridge of him. “His house is always full of castaway sailors and fat-bellied Maoris who are snuffling the grateful smell from his iron pot.”

Greatly daring, Barrett, in 1840, bought and erected on the beach a large wooden building which Dr. Evans had brought out with him on the ship “Adelaide.” This historic house, erected on the present site of the Hotel Cecil, Wellington, immediately became the

(Photo., J. D. Pascoe.)
Mt. Haidinger, from Glacier Dome, South Island, New Zealand.

page 39 page 40 rendezvous for the principal residents of the new settlement. Within its hospitable walls were held banquets and balls. It contained a billiard-room and a Freemason's Hall. The upper story was later used by Sir George Grey as a Council Chamber. Up to the year 1853 the lower story constituted the general Government Offices of New Zealand, while the main building was used as the Supreme Court, etc. How many of us to-day, in passing, pause to think how much of New Zealand's history was made in the old hotel known as “Barrett's,” on this historic site?

But, as must happen to every public-spirited man, Dicky had his traducers. In 1843, he had been giving evidence before the Court of Lands Claims, and E. J. Wakefield records with some heat the treatment meted out to his old friend by Mr. Clarke, Jr., a youth of some twenty years of age, newly appointed as Protector of Aborigines. “I was much hurt,” says E. J. W., “by the pains which Mr. Clarke took to sneer at him and his unsophisticated narrative of his doings as interpreter at the different land sales. He was not an educated man, but had a broad honest way of speaking.”

This unfortunate incident seems to be the last we hear of Dicky. Perhaps confounded by the new way of life, by the bustle and progress which accorded ill with his increasing girth and easy habit of life; and longing again for his former home on the beloved Egmont Coast, the lovable and jovial Dicky seems to have retired to the shadow of the Sugar-Loaves.

And there, to-day, within sight and sound of the sea he loved, we find his simple monument.

Stressing nothing of his great heart and generous nature, nor of his strange and adventurous life, neglected and overgrown, the time-worn stone above his head nevertheless calls forth from those who carry into the affairs of today a thought for the stirring days that are past—a tribute of remembrance to a great and simple soul.

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Historic Ceremony at Ngaruawahia.
On 18th March, at Ngaruawahia, the Governor-General, Viscount Galway, formally opened the new house, “Turonga,” which was built for the Maori King Koroki. The illustrations feature: (1) The war-canoe Te Winika—the largest yet seen on the Waikato River. (2) Special train arrives at Ngaruawahia. (3)King Koroki's house. (4) A Maori Haka. (5) Another war-canoe on the Waikato River. (6) Watching the Ngaruawahia regatta.