Maori and Settler: A Story of The New Zealand War

by G. A. Henty

"Will you tell me, Mr. Jackson, what all the trouble in the north has been about," Wilfrid asked that evening, "for I have not been able to find out from the papers?"

"It is a complicated question, Wilfrid. When New Zealand was first colonized the natives were very friendly. The early settlers confidently pushed forward into the heart of native districts, bought tracts of land from the chiefs, and settled there. Government purchased large blocks of land, cut off by intervening native territory from the main settlements, and sold this land to settlers without a suspicion that they were thereby dooming them to ruin. The settlers were mostly small farmers, living in rough wooden houses scattered about the country, and surrounded by a few fields; the adjoining land is usually fern or forest held by the natives. They fenced their fields, and turned their cattle, horses, and sheep at large in the open country outside these fences, paying rent to the natives for the privilege of doing so.

"This led to innumerable quarrels. The native plantations of wheat, potatoes, or maize are seldom fenced in, and the cattle of the settlers sometimes committed much devastation among them; for the Maori fields were often situated at long distances from their villages, and the cattle might, therefore, be days in their patches before they were found out. On the other hand, the gaunt long-legged Maori pigs, which wander over the country picking up their own living, were constantly getting through the settlers' fences, rooting up their potatoes, and doing all sorts of damage.

"In these cases the settlers always had the worst of the quarrel. They either had no weapons, or, being isolated in the midst of the natives, dared not use them; while the Maoris, well armed and numerous, would come down waving their tomahawks and pointing their guns, and the settlers, however much in the right, were forced to give way. The natural result was that the colonists were continually smarting under a sense of wrong, while the Maoris grew insolent and contemptuous, and were filled with an overweening confidence in their own powers, the result of the patience and enforced submission of the settlers. The authority of the queen over the natives has always been a purely nominal one. There was indeed a treaty signed acknowledging her government, but as none of the chiefs put their name to this, and the men who signed were persons of inferior rank with no authority whatever to speak for the rest, the treaty was not worth the paper on which it was written.

"The Maoris from the first exhibited a great desire for education. They established numerous schools in their own districts and villages; in most cases accepted nominally if not really the Christian religion, and studied history with a good deal of intelligence. Some of them read that the Romans conquered England by making roads everywhere through the island, and the natives therefore determined that no roads should be constructed through their lands, and every attempt on the part of government to carry roads beyond the lands it had bought from them was resisted so firmly and angrily that the attempt had to be abandoned. The natives were well enough aware that behind the despised settlers was the power of England, and that if necessary a numerous army could be sent over, but they relied absolutely upon their almost impassable swamps, their rivers, forests, and mountains.

"Here they thought they could maintain themselves against any force that might be sent against them, and relying upon this they became more and more insolent and overbearing, and for some time before the outbreak in 1860 every one saw that sooner or later the storm would burst, and the matter have to be fought out until either we were driven from the island or the natives became thoroughly convinced of their inability to oppose us.

"At first the natives had sold their land willingly, but as the number of the European settlers increased they became jealous of them, and every obstacle was thrown in the way of land sales by the chiefs. Disputes were constantly arising owing to the fact that the absolute ownership of land was very ill defined, and perhaps a dozen or more persons professed to have claims of some sort or other on each piece of land, and had to be individually settled with before the sale could be effected. When as it seemed all was satisfactorily concluded, fresh claimants would arise, and disputes were therefore of constant occurrence, for there were no authorities outside the principal settlements to enforce obedience to the law.

"Even in Auckland itself the state of things was almost unbearable. Drunken Maoris would indulge in insolent and riotous behaviour in the street; for no native could be imprisoned without the risk of war, and with the colonists scattered about all over the country the risk was too great to be run. In addition to the want of any rule or authority to regulate the dealings of the natives with the English, there were constant troubles between the native tribes.

"Then began what is called the king movement. One of the tribes invited others to join in establishing a central authority, who would at once put a stop to these tribal feuds and enforce something like law and order, and they thought that having a king of their own would improve their condition—would prevent land from being sold to the whites and be a protection to the people at large, and enable them to hold their own against the settlers. Several of the tribes joined in this movement. Meetings were held in various parts in imitation of the colonial assemblies. The fruit of much deliberation was that a chief named Potatau, who was held in the highest esteem, not only by the tribes of Waikato, but throughout the whole island, as one of the greatest of their warriors and wisest of their chiefs, was chosen as king.

"The movement excited much apprehension in Auckland and the other settlements, for it was plain that if the Maoris were governed by one man and laid aside their mutual enmities they would become extremely formidable. At the great meeting that was held, the Bishop of New Zealand, the head of the Wesleyan body, and several other missionaries were present, and warned the Maoris of the dangers that would arise from the course they were taking.