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

by George L. Craik

Then, as for the estimation in which the crime is politically held, this, we need not doubt, will be very much regulated by the relative situation in regard to rank of the two parties. Most of the European visitors who have hitherto given us an account of the country have mixed chiefly with the higher classes of its inhabitants, and consequently learned but little with regard to the condition of the great body of the population, except in so far as it affected, or was affected by, that of the chiefs. Hence the impression they have taken up that theft in New Zealand is looked upon as one of the worst of crimes, and always punished with death. It is so, we have no doubt, when committed by one of the common people upon any of the privileged class. In that case, the mean and despised condition of the delinquent, as compared with that of the person whose rights he has dared to invade, converts what might otherwise have scarcely been deemed a transgression at all into something little short of sacrilege. The thief is therefore knocked on the head at once, or strung up on a gallows; for that, too, seems to be one of the modes of public punishment for this species of crime in New Zealand. This severity is demanded by the necessity which is felt for upholding the social edifice in its integrity; and is also altogether in keeping with the slight regard in which the lives of the lower orders are universally held, and the love of bloodshed by which this ferocious people is distinguished.

But when one "cookee," or common man, pilfers from another, it is quite another matter. In this case, the act entirely wants those aggravations which, in the estimation of a New Zealander, give it all its criminality; and the parties, besides, are so insignificant, that the notion of avenging any injury which the one may have suffered from the other by the public execution of the offender would probably be deemed in that country nearly as unreasonable as we should hold a proposal for the application of such a scheme of government in correction of the quarrels and other irregularities of the lower animals.

It need not, therefore, surprise us to be told, especially when we consider also the trivial value of any articles of property they possess, that thieving among the common people there is regarded, not as a crime, but as an art, in which, as in other arts, the skilful and dexterous practitioner deserves reward rather than punishment; nearly as it was regarded among the Spartans, who punished the detected thief, indeed, but not so much for his attempt as for his failure; or more nearly still as it is said to have been among the ancient Egyptians, by whom such acts were, in all cases, allowed to be perpetrated with impunity.

This view will go far to explain various incidents which we find noticed in the different accounts of New Zealand. The reports of the missionaries, in particular, abound with notices of individuals put to death by the chiefs for alleged acts of theft; but in every case of this kind which is mentioned, the person punished is, we believe, a slave. We have observed no instance, noted, in which the crime in question was punished, either with death or in any other way, when committed by one "cookee" on the property of another; and it is abundantly evident, from many things which are stated, that the natives themselves really do not consider the act as implying, in ordinary cases, that moral turpitude which we generally impute to it.

In one case which Marsden mentions, the brother of a chief, named Ahoudee Ogunna,[^[BA]] conceiving himself to have been improperly treated by one of the missionaries, stole two earthen pots from another of them; but the explanation which the chief gave of the matter was that his brother had not stolen the pots, but had only taken them away with an intention to bring on an explanation respecting the conduct which had given him offence. The man's expectation here evidently was that his theft (if it was to be so called) would merely have the effect of making the missionaries as angry as he himself was, and so of rendering both parties equally anxious for a full discussion of their differences. He had himself, as he conceived, been affronted in a manner not to be passed over; and his stealing of the pots he meant merely as a spirited act of retaliation, which would in some degree throw back the insult he had received upon those who had inflicted it, and make them in their turn feel mortified and on fire for satisfaction.

He certainly did not imagine for a moment that he was at all degrading himself by the method he adopted for attaining this end. The degradation, in his conception of the matter, would be all with the party robbed. He had, however, in his anger, forgotten one thing, which, according even to the notions of the New Zealanders, it was most material that he should have remembered, as his more considerate brother felt as soon as he heard of the transaction, and as even he himself was afterwards brought to acknowledge. The chief, besides having experienced much kindness from the missionaries, was the very person from whom they had purchased the ground on which their settlement was established, and on whose friendship, at least, they had therefore a fair right to count, if they were not even to regard themselves as in some degree under his special protection. That personage felt the force of these considerations so strongly that, in order to show how much he was vexed and ashamed at his brother's conduct, he burned his own house to the ground, and left his usual place of residence, with a determination never to return to it so long as his brother lived.

On the morning of his departure, the high-spirited chief came to take leave of the missionaries, when he told them that he had been on the spot where his house stood before he burned it, to weep with his friends, and showed them how much he had lacerated his face, arms, and other parts of his body, in which his friends had followed his example. His brother, too, at last came to them, quite penitent for his hasty conduct, and offered to restore the only one of the pots which he still had, the other having been already stolen from him by one of his countrymen. Accordingly, he soon after sent his son with the article; and the boy having been presented with six fish-hooks, he immediately brought them back, with a message, that his father would take nothing for the pot.

Such acts of retaliation as that to which the brother of Ahoudee Ogunna here had recourse are often resorted to by the chiefs with something of a similar design, to avenge themselves, namely, for injuries which they conceive they have sustained, or to bring about those ulterior measures by which they may obtain for their grievances complete atonement or redress. In this way, many wars arise. But it is a point of honour with a chief never to touch what belongs to those who have trusted themselves to his friendship, and against whom he has no claim for satisfaction on account of any old affront or outrage. To be supposed capable of doing so would be felt by any of them as an intolerable imputation.