John Rutherford, the White Chief: A Story of Adventure in New Zealand

by George L. Craik

In more recent times, maize has been introduced into New Zealand; and the missionaries have sown many acres in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands, both on their own property and on that of the native chiefs, with English wheat, which has produced an abundant return.

Duaterra was the first person who actually reared a crop of this grain in his native country. On leaving Port Jackson the second time, to return home, he took with him a quantity of it, and much astonished his acquaintances by informing them that this was the very substance of which the Europeans made biscuits, such as they had seen and eaten on board their ships.

"He gave a portion of wheat," says Marsden, "to six chiefs, and also to some of his own common men, and directed them all how to sow it, reserving some for himself and his uncle Shungie, who is a very great chief, his dominion extending from the east to the west side of New Zealand.

"All the persons to whom Duaterra had given the seed-wheat put it into the ground, and it grew well; but before it was well ripe, many of them grew impatient for the produce; and as they expected to find the grain at the roots of the stems, similar to their potatoes, they examined the roots, and finding there was no wheat under the ground, they pulled it all up, and burned it, except Shungie.

"The chiefs ridiculed Duaterra much about the wheat, and told him, because he had been a great traveller, he thought he could easily impose upon their credulity by fine stories; and all he urged could not convince them that wheat would make bread. His own and Shungie's crops in time came to perfection, and were reaped and threshed; and though the natives were much astonished to find that the grain was produced at the top, and not at the bottom of the stem, yet they could not be persuaded that bread could be made of it."

Marsden afterwards sent Duaterra a steel mill to grind his wheat, which he received with no little joy. "He soon set to work," continues Marsden, "and ground some wheat before his countrymen, who danced and shouted for joy when they saw the meal. He told me that he made a cake and baked it in a frying-pan, and gave it to the people to eat, which fully satisfied them of the truth he had told them before, that wheat would make bread." The chiefs now begged some more seed, which they sowed; and such of it as was attended to grew up as strong a crop as could be desired.

In all countries the securing of a sufficient supply of food is the primary concern of society; and, accordingly, even among the rudest tribes who are in any degree dependent upon the fruits of the earth for their sustenance, the different operations of agriculture, as regulated by the seasons, have always excited especial interest. Theoretical writers are fond of talking of the natural progress of the species to the agricultural state, from and through the pastoral, as if the one were a condition at which it was nothing less than impossible for a people to arrive, except by first undergoing the other.

In countries circumstanced like New Zealand, at least, the course of things must have been somewhat different; inasmuch as here we find the agricultural state begun, where the pastoral could never have been known, there being no flocks to tend. Cook, as we have seen, found the inhabitants of this country extensive cultivators of land, and they, probably, had been so for many ages before. Although the fern-root is in most places the spontaneous produce of the soil, and enters largely into the consumption of the people, it would yet seem that they have not been wont to consider themselves independent of those other crops which they raise by regular cultivation. To these, accordingly, they pay the greatest attention, insomuch, that most of those who have visited the country have been struck by the extraordinary contrast between the neat and clean appearance of their fields, in which the plants rise in even rows, and not a weed is to be seen, and the universal air of rudeness, slovenliness, and discomfort which their huts present.

But we must remember that in the latter case we see merely a few of the personal accommodations of the savage, his neglect of which occasions him but very slight and temporary inconvenience; whereas in the former it is the very sustenance of his life which is concerned, his inattention to which might expose him to all the miseries of famine. The same care and neatness in the management of their fields has been remarked as characteristics of the North American Indians; and both they and the New Zealanders celebrate the seasons of planting and gathering in their harvests with festivities and religious observances, practices which have, indeed, prevailed in almost every nation, and may be regarded as among the most beautiful and becoming of the rites of natural religion.

The commencement of the coomera harvest in New Zealand is the signal for the suspension of all other occupations except that of gathering in the crop. First, the priest pronounces a blessing upon the unbroken ground; and then, when all its produce has been gathered in, he "taboos" or makes sacred, the public storehouse in which it is deposited.