Old New Zealand: Being Incidents of Native Customs and Character in the Old Times

by Frederick Edward Maning

The above is good law: and here I may as well inform the New Zealand public that I am going to write the whole law of this land in a book, which I shall call "Ko nga ture;" and as I intend it for the good of both races, I shall mix the two languages up in such a way that neither can understand; but this does not matter, as I shall add a "glossary," in Coptic, to make things clear.

Some time after this, a little incident worth noting happened at my friend Mr. ——'s place. Our chief had, for some time back, a sort of dispute with another magnate, who lived about ten miles off. I really cannot say who was in the right: the arguments on both sides were so nearly balanced, that I should not like to commit myself to a judgment in the case. The question was at last brought to a fair hearing at my friend's house. The arguments on both sides were very forcible; so much so that in the course of the arbitration our chief and thirty of his principal witnesses were shot dead in a heap before my friend's door, and sixty others badly wounded, and my friend's house and store blown up and burnt to ashes.

My friend was all but, or, indeed, quite ruined; but it would not have been "correct" for him to complain—his loss in goods being far overbalanced by the loss of the tribe in men. He was, however, consoled by hundreds of friends who came in large parties to condole and tangi with him, and who, as was quite correct in such cases, shot and ate all his stock, sheep, pigs, goats, ducks, geese, fowls, &c., all in high compliment to himself: at which he felt proud, as a well conducted and conditioned pakeha Maori (as he was) should do. He did not, however, survive these honours long, poor fellow. He died; and, strange to say, no one knew exactly what was the matter with him: some said it was the climate, they thought.

After this, the land about which this little misunderstanding had arisen, was, so to speak, "thrown into chancery," where it has now remained about forty years. But I hear that proceedings are to commence de novo (no allusion to the "new system") next summer, or at farthest the summer after; and as I witnessed the first proceedings, when the case comes on again "may I be there to see."

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CHAPTER V.

Every Englishman's House is his Castle. — My Estate and Castle. —  How I purchased my Estate. — Native Titles to Land, of what Nature.  — Value of Land in New Zealand. — Land Commissioners. — The Triumphs of Eloquence. — Magna Charta.

"Every Englishman's house is his castle," "I scorn the foreign yoke," and glory in the name of Briton, and all that. The natural end, however, of all castles is to be burnt or blown up. In England it is true you can call the constable, and should any foreign power attack you with grinding organ and white mice, you may hope for succours from without; from which cause "castles" in England are more long-lived. In New Zealand, however, it is different, as, to the present day, the old system prevails, and castles continue to be disposed of in the natural way, as has been seen lately at Taranaki.

I now purchased a piece of land and built a "castle" for myself. I really can't tell to the present day who I purchased the land from, for there were about fifty different claimants, every one of whom assured me that the other forty-nine were "humbugs," and had no right whatever. The nature of the different titles of the different claimants were various. One man said his ancestors had killed off the first owners; another declared his ancestors had driven off the second party; another man, who seemed to be listened to with more respect than ordinary, declared that his ancestor had been the first possessor of all, and had never been ousted, and that this ancestor was a huge lizard that lived in a cave on the land many ages ago: and, sure enough, there was the cave to prove it.

Besides the principal claims there were an immense number of secondary ones—a sort of latent equities—which had lain dormant until it was known the pakeha had his eye on the land. Some of them seemed to me at the time odd enough. One man required payment because his ancestors, as he affirmed, had exercised the right of catching rats on it; but which he (the claimant) had never done, for the best of reasons, i.e., there were no rats to catch: except indeed pakeha rats, which were plenty enough, but this variety of rodent was not counted as game. Another claimed because his grandfather had been murdered on the land, and—as I am a veracious pakeha—another claimed payment because his grandfather had committed the murder! Then half the country claimed payments of various value, from one fig of tobacco to a musket, on account of a certain wahi tapu, or ancient burying-ground, which was on the land, and in which every one almost had had relations or rather ancestors buried, as they could clearly make out, in old times; though no one had been deposited in it for about two hundred years, and the bones of the others had been (as they said) removed long ago to a [ torere ] in the mountains.