They dressed in cloaks of sealskin. Their only weapon of offence or defence was a club, seldom used except in killing a seal. Tattooing was unknown. No ornaments were in use. The teeth of deceased relatives were burned with their bodies, not worn about the neck and wrist, as in New Zealand, where they commit the absurdity of placing the departed in a sitting posture in wooden boxes, after abstracting their teeth to deck the survivors, in the name of religion. The Tuïti burned their dead to avoid the fearful idea of prolonged decay. Man springs from the earth as the flower springs: they return him to his mother, as the fall fires, sweeping over the plain, return the flower; she drinks in with the rain the ashes of her children, man and flower, and sends them forth again after a season of repose to reign over and to beautify the land. The songs of the women were plaintive and sweet, rivalling those of the honey-eater, the mako-mako, who sang of love, and of the tuïs, or mocking-bird, that mimicked from every tree and bush, and filled the island with its false but beautiful notes.
Thus had lived the race in peace and plenty for centuries beyond their simple means of computation, and thus were living, fearing no evil from without, save the landing of a stray storm-driven canoe from Zealand, when, towards the end of the last century, the sloop-of-war Discovery and its armed tender Chatham, commanded by Vancouver, made a voyage of discovery around the world, by command of his majesty. The Chatham, Captain William Henry Broughton, separated in a storm from her consort, discovered the island on Nov. 29, 1791, and took possession of it with the customary ceremonies, in the name of his majesty, as first discoverer.
Broughton, as he approached the coast, saw a continued white sandbeach interspersed with cliffs of reddish clay, and mixed with black rocks. The country appeared very pleasant, with clearings here and there, and smoke arising above the trees. With his glass he perceived some people hauling up a canoe, and proceeded to the shore in a cutter. The natives, seated on the beach, invited the party to land, and approached and saluted them by meeting noses; and with great noise entered into an animated but unintelligible conversation by signs, gestures, and speech. They were a cheerful race, the conversation of the English frequently exciting them to bursts of laughter. The young wore feathers in their hair, and a few among them a necklace of mother-of-pearl. All were cleanly and neatly dressed. The woods, which grew in a luxuriant manner, afforded delightful shade, free of low limbs and underbrush, and in many places were formed into arbors by bending and interlacing the branches when young. The soil was rich, and the forests and beach alive with birds of various species, which appeared as though never molested.
The surprise of the islanders, their exclamations, and admiration on beholding the strangers, could hardly be imagined. They pointed to the sun and then to Broughton, and inquired if he came from thence. In answer he gave them a dead bird, pointed out the cause of its death, fired his gun, and advanced upon them. All fled to the wood excepting one man, who stood his ground and offered battle. War was proclaimed. The hero was reinforced, and the sailors fell back to the beach, followed by fourteen men, armed with spears or driftwood picked up as they advanced. “When abreast of the boat,” says Broughton, “they became clamorous, talked loud to each other, and surrounded us. A young man strutted towards me in a menacing attitude, distorted his person, turned up his eyes, and made hideous faces and fierce gestures. As the boat came in, they began the attack. We fired. Johnson’s musket was knocked from his hand by a club. Our men were forced into the water, when the boat’s crew opened upon them and they fled, save one who fell on the beach with a ball through his breast. As we pushed off, a man came out of the woods, sat down by the deceased, and in a dismal howl uttered his lamentation.” He explains that in making the boast which brought on hostilities he merely wished to show the natives the superior effect of his firearms. This may be so, or it may be that in the laborious process of confirming his majesty’s title to the island, and in order to make assurance doubly sure, he had emptied more bottles to his majesty’s health than was good for him, and had fired to astonish the natives. Be this as it may, it was deeply to be regretted that the answer to a question indicating such deep respect should have been a warlike demonstration. But the Saxon knows but one way to colonize, and that leads the aborigines “into the blind cave of eternal night.”
The father of Koche told him that as the ship was leaving the shore the atmosphere became dark, sultry, and gloomy, and thunder and lightning descended the mountain and pursued the retreating strangers into the sea. Meantime, the dead man lay on the white beach with a bullet through his heart. Civilization had paid the Tuïti its first visit.
A council was held, and the fact that the slain was not carried off was considered proof that “the children of the sun” were not cannibals, and by some doubts were expressed as to their intent in landing. It was concluded, in the event of their return, to meet them with an emblem of peace. Accordingly, when in after years a sealer entered the bay of Waitangi and its boat touched the sands, the natives laid down their spears and clubs, a man advanced and placed one end of a grass plant in the hands of the captain, and, holding on to the other, made him a speech of welcome, threw over him his own cloak, and thus established a firm and lasting peace; and from thenceforward the fishermen who frequented the coast found them hospitable, cheerful friends, and willing assistants in their labor, and “love between them flourished like the palm.”
On the quarter-deck of an American vessel traversing the Pacific Ocean, and chiefly at night, Koche related the sorrows of his race, the private and public wrongs that had reduced the Tuïti to a handful of slaves. Of his own mistreatment he made little account, relating his personal oppression in a spirit of fun and bravado, relieved occasionally by a flash of hate. In calm weather his broken narrative ran tersely, and was marked by humor and a lack of strong feeling; but when the storm-spirit arose, and washed the lower deck and enveloped the upper in spray, his voice grew hoarse, his eye flashed, and his white teeth from time to time came together with a clash that made the blood tingle.
He said that one summer, about eighteen years before, a vessel in search of seal anchored in the small oval bay of Pohaute, overlooked by the Maunga Wakai Pai, a volcanic pyramid, the loftiest on the island, at the base of which he lived. With his family and friends, he went down to greet the new-comers, when, to the surprise of every one, there landed among the white men a New Zealand chief armed to the teeth. His hair, carefully combed and oiled, was tied up on the crown of his head, and surrounded by a fillet of white feathers, and from his ears protruded bunches of soft down. Evidently a man of power, accustomed to command, he inspired a mysterious dread, and would have been slain but for the protection he was under. The future darkened as he walked the beach, questioning the people on their politics and religion, manners and customs; and it was long remembered that he highly commended the veneration they entertained for sacred places, and walked off musing when in answer to his inquiry one was pointed out. It was Mate-oro, chief of the Nga-te Motunga, who had lately been defeated in battle by the Waï Kato, and driven with his tribe from the valley of the Komimi to the coast of New Zealand, from whence he had embarked for Ware-kauri, and appeared among the simple inhabitants as Satan in Paradise—the forerunner of troops of fiends.
A red bluff beetled over the bay—a conglomerate of particles of colored clay, cemented by a carbonate of lime, embedded with dark shining nodules of iron, and traversed by dikes of basaltic lava. Its summit was sacred. One morning before sunrise, a native ascended to offer his devotions, and was horror-struck on beholding in the holy field an iron pot. He sped down to communicate the startling intelligence, and returned with a party of thirteen to verify the reported sacrilege. Koche, who was of the number, threw off his cloak, tore up a fragment of rock, and dashed the profane utensil to pieces. A party of sailors, with a couple of bull-dogs, guided by Mate-oro, pursued and overtook them. He shot dead one who turned and attempted an explanation; the remaining twelve were bound and hung by the feet from a tree, head downward, until nearly dead. The chief returned to New Zealand, assembled his people, represented the island as fertile and full of unarmed slaves, and recommended its subjugation. The brig Lord Rodney, taking her pay in pigs, potatoes, and flax (and flame, later on!), in two trips landed the tribe, numbering eight hundred, on the fated isle. The natives offered no resistance to their fierce invaders armed with firelocks, and were duly parcelled out among their conquerors, and condemned to hard labor for life. No idea of moderation in the amount exacted was entertained. In a short time, they furnished thirty vessels annually with supplies. But the race began rapidly to run out, with bent backs and paralytic limbs. Skulls on the beach, pierced by musket balls or battered by clubs, told a tale to visitors their tyrants could not deny. Valuable as was their labor, in drunken orgies they were slain for food.
Once cheerful, full of mirth and laughter, they became morose and taciturn. Koche, with many others, persistently refused to work; some died under, others yielded to, the lash; and he, who had been dragged by a rope to the field, and beaten in vain, and would neither yield nor give up the ghost, was taken by the chief to his house to break in. He continued moody, and maintained his independence so far as to execute only such commissions as pleased him, frequently courting death by mutely and stubbornly refusing to obey orders. Mate-oro seemed to respect his attitude to some extent, and employed him to supply his table with sea-fish, giving him a canoe furnished with nets and lines for the purpose. The struggle between them now ceased, for this occupation gave Koche solitude and freedom when afloat, and opportunity to muse over the condition of himself and people. He soon came to the conclusion that it was useless to attempt an insurrection, the population being unarmed, dispirited, and under an iron subjugation. But for his single self, he was resolved on resistance to the last, and, as his boat tossed on the wave, he brooded over many schemes for the destruction of his would-be master. A personal conflict was most in accordance with his disposition, and many a time he was tempted, unarmed as he was, to close in a death-struggle, out of which, doubtless, he would have come victorious, if uninterrupted; for though but little above the middle height, he was broad and deep-chested, with sinews of iron, and capable of immense exertion; and, above all, was animated by a spirit that would have revelled in the fight. But followed as the chief was, fair play was not to be looked for, and he reluctantly abandoned his favored purpose. His thoughts often wandered to the cradle of his race, now uninhabited, to which he had made a visit with his father in youth, where he felt assured he would find a harbor of refuge, if Mate-oro could be first despatched. Whilst in the midst of such reflections one afternoon, he drew up from the ocean a fish seldom taken—the mo-eeka, pleasant to the taste, but a virulent poison, a small portion of which when eaten producing a deathly sickness, and a full meal, death. His massive face beamed with satisfaction, and his dark eye glistened as he unhooked and dropped it into the boat, contrary to the custom, which was to kill and throw it back into the sea. On landing, he placed his dangerous prize in a small salt-water pool near the beach, into which, as he caught them, he placed others, until a large mess was collected. This he brought home one night when the wind blew from the northwest, and persuaded the cook to serve up for the morning meal. Directing her to throw the offal to the wood-hogs, he disappeared, and soon after midnight reached the east coast, seized a canoe, and put to sea. The cook, who had her more immediate grudge to gratify, regaled the favorite dogs with the heads and entrails; and this deviation from orders frustrated the amiable purpose of her co-conspirator. The howls of his four-footed companions in the night, followed by their death in the morning, told the suspicious Indian a tale of poison, which a visit to the kitchen confirmed. A portion of the breakfast thrown to a stray dog promptly finished him.