[10]: These presents were given to the natives, and, in their matter-of-fact manner, understood to be payment for signing the treaty.
[11]: The Treaty of Waitangi.
[12]: Auckland, the capital of New Zealand.
[13]: After the flagstaff had been cut down, the customs-duties were repealed, and, in consequence, tobacco and other articles on which duties had been levied became cheaper. This fully convinced the natives that there was some mysterious connection between the dearness of different goods and the existence of the flagstaff, which they now thought was the source of all evils, and which will account for their determined persistence in cutting it down so often, at all risks.
[14]: This was really the belief of the natives at the time; I have heard it said not once but fifty times. To tell the contrary was perfectly useless; the flagstaff, and nothing but the flagstaff, was "the cause of all the evil"—and there were not wanting ill-disposed Europeans who encouraged this belief, as I think with the purpose to bring on a war.
[15]: This is a native saying or proverb, meaning that in fact one man is as good as another, or that the best or bravest man is but a man, and therefore not to be too much feared. The speech is a literal verbatim translation.
[16]: Before a war or any other important matter, the natives used to have recourse to divination, by means of little miniature darts made of rushes or reeds, or often of the leaf of the cooper's flag (raupo). This was very much believed in, but of course the chiefs and priests or tohunga (such of them as did not deceive themselves) could make the result favourable or otherwise as they liked. There is an allusion to a custom of this kind (divining by darts) in the Bible.
[17]: It astonished the natives greatly that the soldiers paid no attention to omens, and also to see them every five minutes doing something or another monstrously "unlucky."
[18]: The first man killed in a battle is called the mataika. To kill the mataika is thought a great distinction, and young men will risk themselves to the utmost to obtain it. Many quarrels arise sometimes after a fight, in consequence of different individuals claiming the honour of having killed the first man. The writer knows a man who in different battles has killed eleven mataika.
[19]: This is a very good example of the manner in which a native chief raises men for a war party; they are all his relations with their different connections, and it is this which causes the natives to be so careful to remember all who are, however remotely, related to them. In a word, to be "a man of many cousins" is to be a great chief.