History of Otago
Encyclopedia
The history of Otago
in New Zealand
tells the story of human settlement of one of the more isolated outliers of the inhabited earth.
) remains uncertain. Māori descend from a race of Polynesian sea-wanderers who, in some far-off age, moved from East Asia and South-east Asia to the islands of the Pacific. Tradition tells of their further journeyings from Hawaiki
to New Zealand, and some commentators have identified this homeland as Havai'i,
an island in the Society Group. Overpopulation, scarcity of food and civil war forced many of them to migrate once more, and New Zealand became their new home. Māori settled New Zealand between AD 1250–1300, and had learnt to hunt the numerous species of Moa
indigenous to New Zealand. From time to time the people of Tahiti and the Cook Islands continued to make contacts with New Zealand, and migrants arriving in the 14th century knew their precise destination.
The first parts of New Zealand settled by Polynesians were the very far north and the east coast of the South Island where population was initially concentrated. Later the contraction of food sources led to depopulation in the south while the introduction of the kumara led to an expansion in the North Island and the evolution of a different material and social culture. A similar evolution occurred in the south but the greater numbers in the North Island led to migrations from there from late in the sixteenth century.
Tradition speaks of the first inhabitants of the South Island as the Kahui Tipua, a tribe associated with many weird tales and whose members the tales generally classed as supernatural beings, the "Band of Ogres". After these fearsome people came another tribe named Te Rapuwai which has also left very few traces, perhaps because, as Waite suggests, no Māori claim descent from them. On the other hand Anderson has suggested these are names of earlier assimilated groups whose descendants are still with us but have been re-categorised under the names "Waitaha" and "Kati Mamoe" as Kai Tahu have since claimed those groups as integral to a new one, that known now, in modern standard Māori, as "Ngai Tahu".
But Te Rapuwai left many place names to record their presence, and heaps of shells along the beaches as more tangible evidence. The Kaitangata Lake district, in South Otago, was apparently a favourite haunt, and almost certainly there were settlements at the mouth of the Matau
(Clutha).
Researchers know almost as little of the immediate successors of Te Rapuwai, the Waitaha
. Hector suggested that another tribe, the Katikura, an offshoot of the Ngapuhi
tribe of Tamaki Makarau
, lived in Otago at some remote period before the arrival of the Waitaha. But beyond a vague tradition that they burnt off the forest and made the open grassland (E Waka-Papihi), no information survives concerning them.
According to the lore of North Island Māori, the Waitaha
people arrived in the Takitimu canoe captained by Tamatea. The Takitimu, legendarily associated with the discredited theory of a great fleet dated to 1350 AD, made its landfall in the Bay of Plenty
and then sailed down the coast of both islands, even as far as the Waiau River
in Southland, leaving settlers at suitable districts. This voyage of Tamatea became so important a landmark in post-pākehā conceptions of Māori history that the antiquity of any event, such as the great fires which destroyed the forests of Otago and Southland
, have been indicated by saying, "That happened in the time of Tamatea." Stack, one of those who developed this now contested conception, portrayed the Waitaha occupation of Te Wahipounamu
as covering a century, from 1477 to 1577 AD,
a calculation based on the assumption of twenty years to a generation. His conception of what was happening is probably wrong, but his dating, taken broadly is probably about right for this later settlement phase, which may indeed be that of the historical Waitaha. The estuaries, mudflats, sandy beaches of Murihiku provided fish
, seals, sea-birds, mussel
s, paua
s, pipi
s and cockle
s. The dense podocarp forest, including matai
, totara, kahikatea, and rimu
, teemed with weka
s, tui
s, pigeons, and other birds. In the coastal lakes such as Waihola, eel
s abounded. At some point during the first centuries of occupation they discovered pounamu. Thus the South Island also became known as Te Wahipounamu. The southern Māori moved with the seasons to exploit the rich resources of Murihiku.
Tradition attributed to the Waitaha a profound knowledge of incantations (karakia
) and of the science of navigation
. They painted designs in caves and named many of the distinctive features of the Otago landscape, well illustrated in the fictional tale of Rakaihautu, the great digger of lakes.
The Waitaha settlement of the South Island seems to have been the latter part of a period of peace and plenty. Stack said that "they increased and multiplied so rapidly that they are described as having covered the face of the land like ants".
A more credible explanation might be that, on the arrival of the first Waitaha wave in the south, they found it an abundant land and, under such favourable conditions, their numbers greatly increased.
However this time of prosperity was not to last. Already, by the end of the fourteenth century New Zealand's environment was beginning to change. The climate became cooler, the podocarp forest retreated, and the moa population began to decline. The changing environment affected those who relied upon moas and seals for food and forced them to develop more effective techniques for catching birds and fish. The largest settlements of the early centuries lost their importance and declined. The population declined because of emigration north to regions where one could cultivate kumara
(sweet potatoes).
Recent evidence, has led some to identify the Waitaha of Otago with the moa
-hunters of whom so many traces remain. This is not entirely unreasonable, although on Stack's dating of Waitaha, and on modern dating of moa hunter sites, they would only be late arrivals. In reality their name has probably been used in tradition, confusingly, to also comprehend earlier arrivals whose own names for themselves are now obscured in the etymological ghost names of Kahui Tipua and Te Rapuwai. The Waitaha of historical oral tradition may have enjoyed a good food-supply for many years and they were probably some of the later moa hunters of the archaeological record. These latter probably preserved moa-flesh in fat, wrapped up in bands of kelp
, fastened with totara-bark strips and bartered it for such northern products as flax
mats, huia
feathers and kumara. The Waitaha must have hunted the moa with such steady persistence that its complete extermination became merely a question of time, though at what date this occurred is not known. Certain it is, however, that the Moa found its last stronghold in the inland districts of Otago where the most valuable discoveries of Moa remains have been made. Either the birds survived there much longer or else the remarkable preservative quality of the dry air caused the remains to resist decay. Probably both these alternatives apply though it seems more likely that, as its numbers diminished and the attacks of its foes proceeded with unabated vigour, the moa became restricted to the fastnesses of Central Otago, especially to the area between Lake Wakatipu
and the Lammerlaw Range. The moa lingered on in Otago till the beginning of the eighteenth century.
, unused to war, soon succumbed, a considerable amount of inter-marriage took place. The words are Canon Stack's and according to him the "invasion" began about 1477 AD. In fact few records of strife in Otago during this period survive and, as Stack acknowledged, Māori did not accept this construction of their traditions. More likely, as Anderson and others have maintained, this was simply a migration like later ones, accompanied by occasional bloodshed, not an "invasion". Early in the seventeenth century, a hapu of the Ngati Kahungunu
began to infiltrate the Kati Mamoe domain. However they failed to advance beyond Kaikoura
, where a chief of Ngati Mamoe killed the Ngati Kahungunu chief, Manawa, in a skirmish.
But with the arrival of a third hapu of the Ngati Kahungunu, the Ngai Tahu
(or Kaitahu), towards the close of the 17th century, the stormy era of Otago history began. Again it has been said that the desire to possess unlimited supplies of the precious pounamu or greenstone, which occurred only in the South Island, provided a powerful incentive for invasion. But this has been questioned. The combatants don't fall neatly into groups of Kati Mamoe and Kai Tahu and the given reasons for strife don't refer to greenstone. Hostilities were protracted and Kati Mamoe were never "subdued". There were still people of that descent living in the region when the first Europeans arrived and Kai Tahu were just another Māori people also living in the south.
Much of the history of this time centres around the turbulent careers of two chiefs, Te Wera of the Kai Tahu, and Taoka, his bitter enemy, who were cousins. These two men apparently became involved in several episodes featuring a surfeit of bloodshed. One such incident occurred when Te Wera killed and ate Taoka's son, whom he and his men had encountered on the south bank of the Waitaki
. In revenge, Taoka besieged Te Wera's pa
at Karitane
, at that time a Kai Tahu stronghold. The besiegers camped at the southern extremity of the sandspit in Waikouaiti Bay, called Ohine-pouweru, and lived there for six months. Frustrated in their endeavours to seize the pa, Taoka's men uttered the dire threat, "We'll starve you out." But back came the defiant cry, shouted by the Kai Tahu chief above the great gateway, "You shall never reach us! Only by the army of thirst shall we be overcome." Taoka then uttered threats in vain and when at length his food supplies had dwindled, he was reluctantly forced to raise the siege.
Similar skirmishes continued throughout the eighteenth century, waged with a merciless ferocity that must have seriously reduced a once numerous population. On occasion the battles became scenes of bloody carnage. Such conflict occurred in 1750 on the site of the present township of Balclutha
, which saw the triumph of the Kati Mamoe. Some fifteen years later at Kaitangata
, the Kai Tahu avenged this defeat and routed the Kati Mamoe. Eventually the two groups decided to erect a post on a conspicuous hill known as Popoutunoa, near Clinton
: to mark the division of the territory. Thus the Kati Mamoe remained unmolested in the southern portion of the island. Or at least this is Canon Stack's view of the significance of these events. Certainly an end to conflict was brokered at this time which involved marriage across Kati Mamoe and Kai Tahu lines.
This short-lived amity came to an end in 1775 when the sons of Te Wera left Stewart Island to establish a pa between Colac Bay
and Orepuki
. As the Kati Mamoe could not allow this challenge to pass unnoticed, they rose and destroyed the pa. Their triumph was brief, for while they made their way to the Otago Peninsula
, Taihua and his Kati Mamoe party marched into an ambush at Hillend
, near the Pomahaka
, where their enemies butchered them. Before the close of the century, warfare had again broken out at the Otago Heads, Port Molyneux, and Preservation Inlet
. In the vicinity of Lake Te Anau
one of the last and most desperate battles took place. A large number of Kati Mamoe were killed and the broken survivors "disappeared into the gloomy forests and never again man's eye beheld them." About the same time, the coast-dwelling Kati Mamoe at Preservation Inlet were also defeated, a pitiful remnant escaping in the direction of Dusky Sound
. Summing up the warfare in Otago, Beattie states that of the twenty-five battles which took place south of Temuka
, five were family affairs in which Kati Mamoe and Kai Tahu fought among themselves. A feature of the warfare was the monotonous regularity with which the two sides won alternately until the closing phases when the Kai Tahu established ascendancy. According to Beattie, defeated in one battle after another, the dwindling band of Kati Mamoe retreated in various directions, some to the western bank of the Waiau River
, where they took refuge in cave
s, some to the far reaches of Te Anau
and Manapouri
, and some even to the cold shelters of the fiord
s. This has been the traditional European view but it is not borne out by the survival of Kati Mamoe lines of descent into the principal chiefly families of Otago into and beyond the time of the European arrival and it has been disputed in modern times.
, who put Dusky Sound
on the world map. As a consequence, following the settlement of Sydney Cove
in New South Wales
in 1788, visits by several private ventures followed. These saw the first European women to visit New Zealand (in 1792) and to sojourn there (1795–1797), the sojourn of 244 people on an inhospitable shore for several years, and the building of the first European house and ship in New Zealand. Some of these ventures resulted from the pursuit of seal
s and constituted the first sealing
boom. The visitors encountered few Māori (few lived in the relevant areas), and their presents of iron tools perhaps led to those people's demise at the hands of their countrymen. The revival of New Zealand sealing in 1803 saw the detailed exploration of the south west coast and the penetration of Foveaux Strait
from the west. At the same time visitors explored the east coast and the sub-Antarctic islands
: principally American ships, which produced Owen Folger Smith's charting of Foveaux Strait from the east in 1804. From 1805 to 1807 a boom took place at the Antipodes Islands
— territorially part of historical Otago, and probably the source of the Creed manuscript's early European visitors to Otago harbour about 1806/1807. In any case, Sydney sealers operated on the Dunedin coast by late 1809 and had "long" traded for pigs and potatoes at Otago Harbour by 1810, the year in which hostilities broke out there been Māori and Pākehā in the thirteen year long feud called the Sealers' War
.
In 1809 Robert Murray witnessed the cultivation of potatoes in the Foveaux Strait area, and when Captain Fowler anchored at Otago Harbour the locals already grew potatoes — which they wanted to exchange for iron. The pattern of Māori settlement may have changed over time to take advantage of the Tongata Bulla — people of the boats — and the new goods. In 1810 the Sydney Gazette
described the Māori of Foveaux Strait as "particularly friendly" and anxious to swap potatoes for iron tools. The Ngai Tahu
lived around Otago and wanted to trade, but in their inexperience of the Tongata Bulla remained too truculent. Fowler never discovered this. Before coming to Otago Harbour he had visited the west coast, where six of his Lascar seamen deserted. Later, at Stewart Island, he sent an open boat under Robert Brown to search for them. Brown cruised up the east coast, touched at Cape Saunders
on the Otago Peninsula before continuing north to a point eight miles (13 km) north of Moeraki
. There a group of Māori, incensed by an earlier incident on Otago Harbour in 1810, set upon and eventually killed Brown's whole party.
These early contacts left a number of Pākehā (non-Māori people) living in the south: James Caddell an English boy-sealer captured from the Sydney Cove in 1810; three Lascars (Indian seamen), survivors of the deserting six from the Matilda, one of them called by Māori "Te Anu". In 1815 William Tucker
settled at Whareakeake, later Murdering Beach, where he kept goats and sheep, had a Māori wife and apparently fostered an export trade in greenstone hei-tiki
. After a time he left and returned on the Sophia, a Hobart Town
sealer commanded by James Kelly.
In 1817 Kelly anchored in Otago Harbour. The local chief Korako failed to ferry over Māori from Whareakeake who wanted to receive their share of Tucker's gifts. When Kelly, Tucker and five others later went in an open boat along the coast to Whareakeake, the Māori there attacked them, killing Tucker and two others because of this slight, but also because of the general souring of relations since the incident of 1810. Kelly and the remainder retreated to the Sophia, only to find it occupied by Māori, intent — they believed — on attacking them. Armed with sealing knives, the Tongata Bulla drove the invaders off, resisted another attack, then destroyed "all their navy" and burnt "the beautiful city of Otago". The death toll remains much disputed, but while Kelly probably exaggerated the extent of his revenge, it seems likely he killed several people wholly innocent of the killing of his men.
Māori/Pākehā relations — peaceful from the time of Cook's visit and through the first sealing boom from 1792-1797 — soured with the theft of a red shirt, a knife and other articles by a chief Te Wahia from the Sydney Cove on the Otago Harbour late in 1810 — and by his killing by an angered sealer. From this there ensued the Sealers' War
a series of attacks and counter-attacks, carried out by persons who soon lost sight of the original cause. Māori killed four men from the schooner The Brothers (massacred at Molyneux Harbour); several sailors from the General Gates, and three lascars from the brig
Matilda. The feud continued until 1823 when Captain Edwardson succeeded in ending it, thus sparking a new sealing boom desired by both Māori and Pākehā.
Edwardson, sent from Sydney
in the Mermaid to investigate the prospects for a flax
-industry, explained Māori truculence in terms of their "vindictive", "crafty" and "lying" character which, he opined, made them "sensitive to the slightest offence". But Edwardson realised that the Māori wanted to trade. With the assistance of Caddell, whom he took to Sydney, the parties negotiated a truce. The attacks and lower prices for skins had dampened the trade, but the restoration of peace saw its brief revival.
In the ensuing peace even the "unpredictably ferocious" Otago harbour Māori modified their behaviour in the interests of trade. Their kin at Ruapuke
not only held their traditional monopoly over the sooty shearwater
s, or New Zealand muttonbird
s, but had effectively monopolized te tongata bulla and its wealth. Some 15 to 20 Europeans, many of them with Māori wives, lived on Codfish Island
although they moved freely among the Māori kaiks on the mainland. These Europeans complied with Māori customs for fear of triggering that much-feared "touchiness". The Journal of John Boultbee,
a sealer in the Otago region during the late 1820s, provides ample illustration. On one occasion he went to gather some vegetables which grew wild:
Boultbee did not understand the "strange custom of tabooing", but he recognized that "any willful breach of it considered a serious matter, & in severe cases punishable by death". The security of the intruders depended upon the goodwill of the paramount rangatira
in Murihiku, Te Whakataupuka. The son of Honegai, who had harried the Tongata Bulla wherever he could, Te Whakataupuka proved less truculent and more skillful in manipulating the new arrivals. He became the first to recognize the strategic importance of Ruapuke: he shifted from the mouth of the Matua-a to make his home on the island. Te Whakataupuka impressed John Boultbee as "the most complete model of strength, activity & elegance I had seen combined in any man". He placed the Europeans under his chiefly protection and at times played and joked with them freely. Limits existed to this familiarity. Once, when a group of Pākehā engaged in a mock battle with the chief, one accidentally hit his head with a potato (the head of the chief being tapu). This "excited him suddenly & caused him to seize a tremendous log of wood, which he threw at them...." Cooling quickly, he told them to desist lest he should "perhaps get vexed & hurt them, which he would be sorry to do". When Te Whakataupuka's son, who preferred to live with the Europeans, died, Boultbee and his companions feared that Te Whakataupuka might hold them responsible for the boy's death. Despite his grief the rangatira refused to allow his warriors to exact revenge.
The various hapu at Otago
from the early 1820s until the 1850s had as their chiefs Tahatu, Karetai and Taiaroa. Unlike Te Whakataupuka and his nephew, Tuhawaiki
, who became the paramount rangatira
in 1834, neither Taiaroa nor Karetai earned renown for physical feats or for warrior habits. Tensions existed between them. Karetai functioned as the local chief, but Taiaroa, who had close kinship ties with the Canterbury Ngai Tahu, had been given land on the western side of the harbour where he established a small settlement. When Europeans began visiting regularly he moved his village to the eastern side, close by Karetai's, in order to muscle in on the trade. Trade had increased rapidly. In 1823 Kent noted only three villages within the harbour; in 1826 Captain Herd reported five. The Otago harbour Māori prospered and Boultbee recorded the arrival at Ruapuke of a boat from Otago laden with '2 large fat hogs & 100 baskets of potatoes each weighing 35 lb (15.9 kg)' For this they received two muskets and one adze.
s by the 1820s. Similarly, in the South Island Māori early acquired European firearms which they used on their relations in the Kai Huaka struggle ("Eat-relations" feud). Fortunately for the South, the feud did not spread to what would later become the territory of the Otago Province, and though petty quarrels between the Otago and Murihiku natives occurred from time to time, open warfare never took place. The Kai Huaka troubles began in Canterbury. A woman named Murihaka tried on a dog-skin cloak belonging to Tamaiharanui, a chief. Some members of Te Tamaiharanui's hapu
, exasperated by this sacrilegious act, killed the servant of Hape, a friend of Murihaka's. Hape's whanau, finding the retribution excessive, killed some members of the whanau
which had avenged the original presumptuous act. This whanau took utu
by killing Hape himself. Hape's wife then took refuge with her brothers at Taumutu and they in turn killed three prominent members of yet another whanau. By now, most of the Māori of Banks Peninsula
had become involved. The dynamic is simple enough. If one Māori offended another, the aggrieved party's whanau or hapu was obliged to exact an appropriate penalty. In most quarrels this often ended matters unless, as in this case, the penalty seemed excessive. Meanwhile, Te Tamaiharanui sought aid from kin at Kaiapoi
and successfully attacked Taumutu. The Hapu at Taumutu, which included Taiaroa's sister, sent another woman, Hinehaka, who had close ties with several southern chiefs to ask for help. Taiaroa mobilised a large Taua or war party which headed north in canoes. Taiaroa also had kin among the hapu he intended to attack so he went ahead, warned the enemy, then returned to lead the assault. At Wairewa on Banks Peninsula, the southerners won an unsatisfyingly bloodless victory. Fearful of being met by taunts and jeers on returning home, they killed a kinsman of Taununu, a powerful rangatira from Kaikoura
who had settled near his kin at Kaiapoi and controlled Rapaki, a large pa in Lyttelton harbour. Utu, which involved revenge, was producing a bloodbath.
Taununu led a successful taua south, and Te Whakataupuka now decided to intervene. He and Taiaroa organized a war-party and headed north to seek vengeance. As the southern taua approached their enemy, Taiaroa again went ahead to warn his kin: "Escape! Fly for your lives! Take your canoes out to sea! We have guns." This time the enemy moved too slowly. According to survivors of the vanquished hapu, the southern warriors defeated two canoes overcrowded with helpless fugitives.
The triumphant warriors from Otago, Ruapuke, and the villages around Foveaux Strait proceeded north to Ripapa, Taununu's pa. After destroying the pa the southern warriors evacuated the entire population of Taumutu and brought them south. Te Tamaiharanui later followed and persuaded most of them to return home, where he finally took his revenge. The fighting continued spasmodically until 1828, but the southerners took no further part in it.
to the whaler
, Peter Williams, on payment of sixty muskets, 1000 lb (453.6 kg) of gunpowder
, 1000 lb (453.6 kg) of musket balls, two 12 lb (5.4 kg) cannonades, two air-guns, and a large quantity of tobacco
, pipes, spades and hooks. This increased the armament of southern Māori and facilitated the establishment of the South Island's first whaling station. (In what became the historical province of Otago it was next followed by the Weller brothers
' on Otago Harbour
in 1831.)
By 1830 the old threat of the invasion of the South Island
by the warlike tribes of the north again appeared menacing when Te Rauparaha
, chief of the Ngati Toa
, invaded the South and stormed the Takapuneke Pa at Akaroa
Harbour. A year later he organized a grand attack on Kaiapoi
, the chief centre of the Kai Tahu in Canterbury, and laid siege to it. A strong relieving force of Otago warriors, led by Taiaroa, marched hurriedly into the beleaguered pa, slipped past Te Rauparaha and entered it by night. After a long defence in which he played a leading part, Taiaroa, seeing the hopelessness of the position, escaped with his men to Otago harbour, now the tribal stronghold of Kai Tahu, to prepare a counter-stroke.
In response to Te Rauparaha's first attack in which he conquered and massacred the northern part of the South Island, 350 well-armed warriors, led by Te Whakataupuka and Taiaroa marched northwards and overtook the retreating Ngati Toa warriors at Cloudy Bay
, near Cook Strait. Here Taiaroa and another young chief, Tuhawaiki, seized Te Rauparaha, only to have the wily chief slip out of his cloak and dive into the sea. He then swam to his canoes. The Kai Tahu claimed a victory; the Ngati Toa retorted that they had successfully evaded the ambush. The subsequent skirmish at sea proved inconclusive, except that Te Rauparaha escaped. In 1835 Taiaroa, again accompanied by Tuhawaiki who, on Te Whakataupuka's death in that year, had become the paramount chief of Murihiku, organized another large expedition of four hundred men which once more inflicted severe losses upon the Ngati Toa and their prestige, with that of their chief, had suffered considerably in these encounters with the warriors of southern New Zealand.
Māori belligerence made Pākehā nervous and emphasised the tenuousness of trade. In August 1834, the captain of the Lucy Ann reported in Sydney that the Māori living beside the Weller brothers
' whaling station on Otago harbour now treated the Pākehā there with the greatest contempt, talked of wiping out all Pākehā, and took what they wanted. Their "insolence" grew so much, one captain complained, that "they take from us whatever suits their fancy, such as our clothing. and food from off our very plates — help themselves to oil, in such quantities as they require...". Four captains of whaling vessels complained:
Their own Māori patrons refused to or could not protect them.
Disease now tipped the balance. In September 1835 measles
and influenza
spread among the southern Kai Tahu and carried off, most notably, Te Whakataupuka. It remains unclear how many died. One European said that the hapu at the mouth of the Tokomairiro River
owned nine canoes, but had enough men to crew only one. The whalers often attributed to disease a marked decline in Māori numbers.
But the last act in the inter-tribal war had not yet taken place. In 1836 Te Puoho, a kinsman of Te Rauparaha, tried to persuade the ageing warrior to march once more against the people of Otago harbour and Murihiku. Te Rauparaha refused and said: "It is easy to burst the tree at the root (Kaiapoi), but harder to burst it at the branches (Murihiku)." "He must not expect the people in the south to be sitting in trees with their breasts open like pigeons facing the sun." Te Rauparaha may have given an official blessing, conditional upon victory. At any rate, in the summer of 1836, Te Puoho led his war-party, about seventy in number, down the West Coast
as far as the Awarua River
, toiled painfully and crossed the mountains through today's Haast Pass
— a miracle of endurance — and, half-famished, moved down the valley of the Makarora River
and captured a village at Wanaka
. The invaders then proceeded up the Cardrona Valley, crossed the Crown Range
and the Kawarau River
, using a natural rock bridge, then finally, by following the Nevis
and Nokomai River
s, entered the enemy's heartland, Murihiku. After a short rest to recuperate, they pushed on along the old Māori track that ran over the low hills west of Gore
and, soon after crossing the Mataura River
, the party reached Tuturau and sacked the village. Unfortunately for the invaders, the whole south soon became aware of the invasion, for Te Puoho did not know that the news of his presence had, despite precautions, been taken to Tuhawaiki
at Ruapuke. Nor would he have known that Taiaroa was visiting the island. The two chiefs hastily assembled a force of between 70 and 100 men. The whalers transported the warriors to the mainland. The local Pākehā
, 'in a state of considerable alarm', prepared to flee at a moment's notice. The unsuspecting Ngati Toa
slept at Tuturau while the Kai Tahu surrounded the village. During the night, the Kai Tahu tohunga
summoned up the pulsing heart of Te Puoho, a favourable omen, and in the morning the Kai Tahu quickly defeated the invaders, killing Te Puoho. Taiaroa intervened to save the lives of some of his kin who had helped him to escape Te Rauparaha's clutches during the Siege of Kaiapoi in 1833. At Ruapuke
, Bluff
and Otago
the Pākehā and the Kai Tahu celebrated their triumph with enthusiasm and relief.
Thus ignominiously ended the invasion, memorable as the last act of inter-Māori warfare in the South Island. In January 1838, Tuhawaiki and Taiaroa made a sudden march to Queen Charlotte Sound
, and in December of the following year, led another war-party in sixteen sealing and four whaling boats, but Te Rauparaha, still smarting from his former humiliations, never again faced the southern warriors. Although these excursions constituted little more than a dramatic demonstration of Kai Tahu rights over Banks Peninsula, they proved that, once and for all, the southerners had overcome their fear of the northerners.
), around 1805 as a nephew of Te Whakataupuka, Tuhawaiki had direct descent from Hautapu-nui-o-tu and from Honekai; he also had an impeccable Ngati Mamoe lineage and close kin-ties with such prominent Pākehā as James Cadell and John Kelly. He had won great mana
in both worlds. He had a well-established reputation as a harpoon
er and sailor, he had an intimate knowledge of Pākehā customs, and in the long campaign against Te Rauparaha he had enhanced his mana. Like his uncle he understood the value of the Pākehā presence and placed them under his mana. Even the truculent Taiaroa obeyed. Unlike his uncle, Tuhawaiki realized that his people could only survive the expansion of European society by borrowing more extensively. He owned a trading ship, built himself a Pākehā house, and dressed like a Pākehā. He encouraged agriculture
, traded widely, and appears to have blessed Jones's attempt to colonise the Waikouaiti
region. He must also have recognized that the Pākehā presence afforded additional protection against Te Rauparaha. Most Pākehā agreed that he was shrewd, wily and knowledgeable, 'probably one of the most Europeanised Māori...most correctly and completely dressed in white man's clothes, even to the refinement of the cotton pocket handkerchief.'
Tuhawaiki doubtless realised that whaling had transformed the world of his people. Many kaiks or villages moved to the vicinity of the whaling-stations (although some may represent foundations by refugees from the Ngati Toa). Large numbers of Māori men worked in the whaling stations while many women lived in de facto marriage
s with Pākehā men. These Māori joined one of the lowest strata of European society, characterised by violence and drunkenness. Many observers concluded that Māori wives helped to civilise the whalers. Yet some demoralisation occurred. Perceptive observers like Shortland thought relations between the two races were often very good at the whaling stations. Probably no other tribe in New Zealand was so extensively intermarried with and involved in Pākehā society. Possibly nowhere else was the Pākehā so willing to tolerate or adopt Māori customs. Most of the Māori living in the whaling stations dressed like Europeans and during the 1830s acquired an addiction for tobacco
and alcohol
. But in this they did not differ from the whalers.
Tuhawaiki adopted a threefold strategy for coping with the new world. Firstly, he encouraged the development of skills appropriate to the emergent world of Pākehā and Māori. Secondly, he clearly envisaged the peaceful integration of these two worlds on terms acceptable to the Māori. And thirdly, he recognised the importance of Pākehā religion and the power of the Pākehā Atua
(or God). Tuhawaiki, widely traveled and knowledgeable in the ways of the Pākehā, possibly ascribed to the Pākehā Atua the role of unifying the two peoples. In accepting James Watkin, the Methodist parson
at Waikouaiti
, and yet inviting another missionary
to Ruapuke
, he may have responded to the conversion of his own followers. In any case he traveled to Waikouaiti to hear Watkin's first sermon, asked for a missionary to be sent to Ruapuke, and extended a warm and hospitable welcome to visiting clergy.
During the 1830s Christianity had caught on through much of the North Island. Slaves of the Ngā Puhi in Northland first accepted the Gospel
. The news spread fast. Weariness of war, the mana of the Bible, and a passion for literacy fueled the fire. Māori teachers, often self-taught, carried the Word far beyond the zones of the European missionaries. The magic of literacy most dramatically expressed the power of the Pākehā atua
. Bible
s, or a few pages from any book, represented a new magic which Māori believed could protect its owner from death in battle, bestow eternal life, ward off sickness, and thus complement the power of traditional karakia (or incantations). Ngai Tahu sailors must have heard the Word. Northern converts such as Te Rauparaha's son, brought the new Word south. When Watkin arrived at Waikouaiti he found ready a Māori market for his spiritual wares. A large crowd attended his first service and listened attentively "tho' they could not understand anything that was said. When he printed some Bibles, 'they were eagerly sought after'.
Pākehā magic and the mana that one could win by possessing its secret persuaded the southern Māori to turn, in their own way and for their own reasons, to Christianity
. When Wohlers arrived at Ruapuke the tohunga karakia (or priests) welcomed him as a comrade and explained their theology. The chiefs, led by Tuhawaiki, also adopted the new faith and sponsored traditional Ngai Tahu teachers for baptism. The tohunga karakia quickly accepted certain elements of the Christian faith, but they, like the young men of inherited mana who patronized Watkin's school, wanted to adapt the new Gospel to the old karakia. These men also wanted to achieve mana as teachers of the Pākehā magic and quickly voiced resentment when the Pākehā tohunga started to baptise everyone. Wohlers discovered that both Watkin and Bishop Selwyn had complied with this pressure and for a while the Māori teachers so arranged matters that "applicants [for Baptism
] had to go to them in order to be recommended."
The Pākehā missionaries then realised that their mana as teachers depended on the number of converts they made. Watkin's register of baptisms records the explosive result. In 1841, he baptized two Māori (one of them intended marrying a Pākehā); in 1842 he baptized three Māori; and then in 1843 he baptized 193 and another 158 before leaving in 1844. As many missionaries realised, the Māori transformed Christianity in the process of 'conversion'. To the despair of Watkin, the Māori interpreted the Christian karakia in their own way. Much to the dismay of the practical Wohlers, the strict moral code of the Old Testament
proved infectious. When Selwyn preached a 'sermon on contentment with one's lot' the Māori stopped producing food and trade with American
whaler
s fell off abruptly; "the pigs ate the potatoes, the Māori ate the pigs, and there was nothing left."
At Waikouaiti
and Moeraki
the Māori refused to work on Sundays. Not only did the Māori shape the Christian message to their own beliefs, but they found in the denominational structure a familiar world. The different churches proved perfect instruments for sustaining traditional rivalries and animosities while learning Pākehā ways. Because the Ngati Toa
became Anglican
, most of the prominent Ngai Tahu
joined the Wesleyan
s. Some villages acknowledged the mana of each denomination's Atua. Very small kaiks sometimes built two churches and two schools and the chief at Moeraki made part of his hapu Catholic
, part Anglican, and part traditional. Among the Māori the generosity and mana of the Pākehā tohunga counted for much. The Roman Catholic Bishop
, Jean Baptiste Pompallier visited the south in 1840, and poor Watkin watched his flock transfer allegiance to the Papist. The worried Wesleyan confided in his journal: "Their mode of worship and wonderful legends would lead me to fear that Pope
ry would prevail over Protestantism
." The local Māori, probably with a strong leavening of northern refugees, flocked to the new tohunga. His robes and vestments attracted much favourable comment, the pomp of Catholic ritual and liturgy impressed, and some Māori told Watkin to his face that they regretted his 'plain dress and equally plain mode of conducting religious worship'. Pompallier baptised freely, unlike the prudent Protestants, and responded with tolerance to Māori dance and tattoo
ing. To Watkin's horror, Bishop Pompallier even told the local Māori that Hine, the wife of Maui
, was the Virgin Mary. The Catholic Church lacked the resources to capitalize upon the Bishop's success and the Wesleyan
s, left to themselves, regained the lost ground. But allegiances remained volatile. When Selwyn, walking south, swam a flooded river, an entire village joined his church.
In 1838, Tuhawaiki, accompanied by four chiefs, visited Sydney
and sold enormous tracts of land "with all the solemnity of archaic phraseology and legal circumlocution". Sydney speculators pursued the golden future with an enthusiasm which increased in intensity with the prospect of British annexation of New Zealand. On 14 January 1840, Governor Gorge Gipps of New South Wales
issued a proclamation forbidding future sales, unless to the Crown, and warned that commissioners would investigate all titles already claimed and that, where appropriate, Crown grants would validate them. One month later, on 15 February 1840 during a second visit to Sydney, Tuhawaiki, Karetai and three subordinate chiefs, Kaikoarare, Taikawa and Poneke signed an agreement which "sold" the "Island of Te Waipounamu, also called the Middle Island of new Zealand, also the island called Stewarts island... together with all seas, harboiurs, coasts, bays, inlets, rivers, lakes, waters, mines, minerals, fisheries, woods, forests, liberties, franchises, profits, hereditaments... save and except such portions of the said island as have been already disposed of.. . and also the island of Robuchi". The purchase was made partly by cash payments and partly by annuities. Tuhawaiki signed for "One hundred pounds of lawful British money and an annuity of fifty pounds a year during the term of his natural life.". Hence by February 1840, every acre in Otago and Murihiku, as indeed in the entire South Island, had apparently been alienated by the Māori to hopeful speculators who gambled on receiving from the Crown some title commensurate with the expenses they alleged had been incurred.
The highly questionable nature of these transactions became more evident after Captain William Hobson
arrived at the Bay of Islands
on 29 January 1840 to win from the Māori allegiance to the British Crown. Then followed two proclamations, the second stating that Her Majesty could not acknowledge as valid any titles of land which were not derived from, or confirmed by the Crown. After the northern chiefs had signed the Treaty, Captain Nias set sail for the south in HMS Herald on 29 April and it was not until June that British Sovereignty over the South Island was proclaimed on Stewart Island. On 9 June the HMS Herald called at Ruapuke and Major Bunbury who was collecting signatures for the Treaty of Waitangi
, recorded that "Tuhawaiki, who had recently returned from Sydney enriched by the spoils of commerce, came on board in full dress staff uniform of a British aide-de-camp, with gold laced trousers and cocked hat and plume in which he looked extremely well, accompanied by a native dress sergeant dressed in a corresponding costume." Tuhawaiki signed the Treaty without hesitation, his example being followed by Kakoura and Taiaroa who were also at Ruapuke at the time. Tuhawaiki also had a bodyguard of 20 men, all dressed in British uniforms, although they refused to wear boots.
, took concrete form in Otago in March 1848 with the arrival of the first two immigrant ships from Greenock
(on the Firth of Clyde
) — the John Wickliffe and the Philip Laing. Captain William Cargill
, a veteran of the Peninsular War
, served as the colony's first leader
: Otago citizens subsequently elected him to the office of Superintendent of the Province of Otago
.
Otago
Otago is a region of New Zealand in the south of the South Island. The region covers an area of approximately making it the country's second largest region. The population of Otago is...
in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
tells the story of human settlement of one of the more isolated outliers of the inhabited earth.
Archaic Māori period
The precise date at which the first inhabitants of New Zealand reached Otago and the extreme south (known to later Māori as MurihikuMurihiku
Murihiku is a Māori name describing a region of the South Island in New Zealand. Traditionally it was used to describe the portion of the South Island below the Waitaki River, but now is mostly used to describe the province of Southland. The name means "the tail end of the land" in...
) remains uncertain. Māori descend from a race of Polynesian sea-wanderers who, in some far-off age, moved from East Asia and South-east Asia to the islands of the Pacific. Tradition tells of their further journeyings from Hawaiki
Hawaiki
In Māori mythology, Hawaiki is the homeland of the Māori, the original home of the Māori, before they travelled across the sea to New Zealand...
to New Zealand, and some commentators have identified this homeland as Havai'i,
an island in the Society Group. Overpopulation, scarcity of food and civil war forced many of them to migrate once more, and New Zealand became their new home. Māori settled New Zealand between AD 1250–1300, and had learnt to hunt the numerous species of Moa
Moa
The moa were eleven species of flightless birds endemic to New Zealand. The two largest species, Dinornis robustus and Dinornis novaezelandiae, reached about in height with neck outstretched, and weighed about ....
indigenous to New Zealand. From time to time the people of Tahiti and the Cook Islands continued to make contacts with New Zealand, and migrants arriving in the 14th century knew their precise destination.
The first parts of New Zealand settled by Polynesians were the very far north and the east coast of the South Island where population was initially concentrated. Later the contraction of food sources led to depopulation in the south while the introduction of the kumara led to an expansion in the North Island and the evolution of a different material and social culture. A similar evolution occurred in the south but the greater numbers in the North Island led to migrations from there from late in the sixteenth century.
Tradition speaks of the first inhabitants of the South Island as the Kahui Tipua, a tribe associated with many weird tales and whose members the tales generally classed as supernatural beings, the "Band of Ogres". After these fearsome people came another tribe named Te Rapuwai which has also left very few traces, perhaps because, as Waite suggests, no Māori claim descent from them. On the other hand Anderson has suggested these are names of earlier assimilated groups whose descendants are still with us but have been re-categorised under the names "Waitaha" and "Kati Mamoe" as Kai Tahu have since claimed those groups as integral to a new one, that known now, in modern standard Māori, as "Ngai Tahu".
But Te Rapuwai left many place names to record their presence, and heaps of shells along the beaches as more tangible evidence. The Kaitangata Lake district, in South Otago, was apparently a favourite haunt, and almost certainly there were settlements at the mouth of the Matau
Clutha River
The Clutha River / Mata-Au is the second longest river in New Zealand flowing south-southeast through Central and South Otago from Lake Wanaka in the Southern Alps to the Pacific Ocean, south west of Dunedin. It is the highest volume river in New Zealand, and the swiftest, with a catchment of ,...
(Clutha).
Researchers know almost as little of the immediate successors of Te Rapuwai, the Waitaha
Waitaha
Waitaha is an early historical Māori iwi . Inhabitants of the South Island of New Zealand, they were largely absorbed via marriage and conquest first by the Kāti Mamoe and then Ngāi Tahu from the 16th century onward....
. Hector suggested that another tribe, the Katikura, an offshoot of the Ngapuhi
Ngapuhi
Ngāpuhi is a Māori iwi located in the Northland region of New Zealand, and centred in the Hokianga, the Bay of Islands and Whāngārei.Ngāpuhi has the largest affiliation of any New Zealand iwi, with 122,214 people registered , and formed from 150 hapu, with 55 marae.-Foundations:The founding...
tribe of Tamaki Makarau
Auckland
The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
, lived in Otago at some remote period before the arrival of the Waitaha. But beyond a vague tradition that they burnt off the forest and made the open grassland (E Waka-Papihi), no information survives concerning them.
According to the lore of North Island Māori, the Waitaha
Waitaha
Waitaha is an early historical Māori iwi . Inhabitants of the South Island of New Zealand, they were largely absorbed via marriage and conquest first by the Kāti Mamoe and then Ngāi Tahu from the 16th century onward....
people arrived in the Takitimu canoe captained by Tamatea. The Takitimu, legendarily associated with the discredited theory of a great fleet dated to 1350 AD, made its landfall in the Bay of Plenty
Bay of Plenty
The Bay of Plenty , often abbreviated to BOP, is a region in the North Island of New Zealand situated around the body of water of the same name...
and then sailed down the coast of both islands, even as far as the Waiau River
Waiau River, Southland
Waiau River is the largest river in the Southland Region of New Zealand. It is the outflow of Lake Te Anau, flowing from it into Lake Manapouri 10 kilometres to the south, and from there flows south for 70 kilometres before reaching the Foveaux Strait eight kilometres south of Tuatapere...
in Southland, leaving settlers at suitable districts. This voyage of Tamatea became so important a landmark in post-pākehā conceptions of Māori history that the antiquity of any event, such as the great fires which destroyed the forests of Otago and Southland
Southland Region
Southland is New Zealand's southernmost region and is also a district within that region. It consists mainly of the southwestern portion of the South Island and Stewart Island / Rakiura...
, have been indicated by saying, "That happened in the time of Tamatea." Stack, one of those who developed this now contested conception, portrayed the Waitaha occupation of Te Wahipounamu
South Island
The South Island is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand, the other being the more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, to the south and east by the Pacific Ocean...
as covering a century, from 1477 to 1577 AD,
a calculation based on the assumption of twenty years to a generation. His conception of what was happening is probably wrong, but his dating, taken broadly is probably about right for this later settlement phase, which may indeed be that of the historical Waitaha. The estuaries, mudflats, sandy beaches of Murihiku provided fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
, seals, sea-birds, mussel
Mussel
The common name mussel is used for members of several families of clams or bivalvia mollusca, from saltwater and freshwater habitats. These groups have in common a shell whose outline is elongated and asymmetrical compared with other edible clams, which are often more or less rounded or oval.The...
s, paua
Paua
Pāua is the Māori name given to three species of large edible sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs which belong to the family Haliotidae , known in the United States and Australia as abalone, and in the United Kingdom as ormer shells.-Species:There are three species of New Zealand pāua:New...
s, pipi
Pipi
Pipi may refer to:*Plebidonax deltoides, an edible clam known as pipi in parts of Australia*Paphies australis, a mollusc endemic to New Zealand*Pipi A, a High Priest of Ptah during the Ancient Egyptian 21st Dynasty...
s and cockle
Cockle (bivalve)
Cockle is the common name for a group of small, edible, saltwater clams, marine bivalve molluscs in the family Cardiidae.Various species of cockles live in sandy sheltered beaches throughout the world....
s. The dense podocarp forest, including matai
Prumnopitys taxifolia
Prumnopitys taxifolia is an endemic New Zealand coniferous tree that grows on the North Island and South Island. It also occurs on Stewart Island/Rakiura but is uncommon there....
, totara, kahikatea, and rimu
Rimu
Rimu can mean the following:*Dacrydium cupressinum, also rimu, a tree endemic to New Zealand*Rimu, Southland, a locality in Southland, New Zealand*Rimu, West Coast, a locality in the West Coast region of New Zealand...
, teemed with weka
Weka
The Weka or woodhen is a flightless bird species of the rail family. It is endemic to New Zealand, where four subspecies are recognized. Weka are sturdy brown birds, about the size of a chicken. As omnivores, they feed mainly on invertebrates and fruit...
s, tui
Tui (bird)
The tui is an endemic passerine bird of New Zealand. It is one of the largest members of the diverse honeyeater family....
s, pigeons, and other birds. In the coastal lakes such as Waihola, eel
Eel
Eels are an order of fish, which consists of four suborders, 20 families, 111 genera and approximately 800 species. Most eels are predators...
s abounded. At some point during the first centuries of occupation they discovered pounamu. Thus the South Island also became known as Te Wahipounamu. The southern Māori moved with the seasons to exploit the rich resources of Murihiku.
Tradition attributed to the Waitaha a profound knowledge of incantations (karakia
Karakia
Karakia are Māori incantations and prayers.Karakia are generally used to ensure a favourable outcome of important undertakings. They are also considered a formal greeting when beginning a ceremony...
) and of the science of navigation
Navigation
Navigation is the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks...
. They painted designs in caves and named many of the distinctive features of the Otago landscape, well illustrated in the fictional tale of Rakaihautu, the great digger of lakes.
The Waitaha settlement of the South Island seems to have been the latter part of a period of peace and plenty. Stack said that "they increased and multiplied so rapidly that they are described as having covered the face of the land like ants".
A more credible explanation might be that, on the arrival of the first Waitaha wave in the south, they found it an abundant land and, under such favourable conditions, their numbers greatly increased.
However this time of prosperity was not to last. Already, by the end of the fourteenth century New Zealand's environment was beginning to change. The climate became cooler, the podocarp forest retreated, and the moa population began to decline. The changing environment affected those who relied upon moas and seals for food and forced them to develop more effective techniques for catching birds and fish. The largest settlements of the early centuries lost their importance and declined. The population declined because of emigration north to regions where one could cultivate kumara
Sweet potato
The sweet potato is a dicotyledonous plant that belongs to the family Convolvulaceae. Its large, starchy, sweet-tasting, tuberous roots are an important root vegetable. The young leaves and shoots are sometimes eaten as greens. Of the approximately 50 genera and more than 1,000 species of...
(sweet potatoes).
Recent evidence, has led some to identify the Waitaha of Otago with the moa
Moa
The moa were eleven species of flightless birds endemic to New Zealand. The two largest species, Dinornis robustus and Dinornis novaezelandiae, reached about in height with neck outstretched, and weighed about ....
-hunters of whom so many traces remain. This is not entirely unreasonable, although on Stack's dating of Waitaha, and on modern dating of moa hunter sites, they would only be late arrivals. In reality their name has probably been used in tradition, confusingly, to also comprehend earlier arrivals whose own names for themselves are now obscured in the etymological ghost names of Kahui Tipua and Te Rapuwai. The Waitaha of historical oral tradition may have enjoyed a good food-supply for many years and they were probably some of the later moa hunters of the archaeological record. These latter probably preserved moa-flesh in fat, wrapped up in bands of kelp
Kelp
Kelps are large seaweeds belonging to the brown algae in the order Laminariales. There are about 30 different genera....
, fastened with totara-bark strips and bartered it for such northern products as flax
Flax
Flax is a member of the genus Linum in the family Linaceae. It is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was probably first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent...
mats, huia
Huia
The Huia was the largest species of New Zealand wattlebird and was endemic to the North Island of New Zealand. Its extinction in the early 20th century had two primary causes. The first was rampant overhunting to procure Huia skins for mounted specimens, which were in worldwide demand by...
feathers and kumara. The Waitaha must have hunted the moa with such steady persistence that its complete extermination became merely a question of time, though at what date this occurred is not known. Certain it is, however, that the Moa found its last stronghold in the inland districts of Otago where the most valuable discoveries of Moa remains have been made. Either the birds survived there much longer or else the remarkable preservative quality of the dry air caused the remains to resist decay. Probably both these alternatives apply though it seems more likely that, as its numbers diminished and the attacks of its foes proceeded with unabated vigour, the moa became restricted to the fastnesses of Central Otago, especially to the area between Lake Wakatipu
Lake Wakatipu
Lake Wakatipu is an inland lake in the South Island of New Zealand. It is in the southwest corner of Otago Region, near its boundary with Southland.With a length of , it is New Zealand's longest lake, and, at , its third largest...
and the Lammerlaw Range. The moa lingered on in Otago till the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Classic Māori period
The 19th century European view of this was that Waitaha did not remain in undisputed possession of their hunting-preserves. They fell victim to a misguided generosity. Seized by a friendly impulse, they sent across the straits to their friends, the Ngati Mamoe (or Katimamoe)), some of the surplus stores they had accumulated, and "as their friends smacked their lips over these dainties ... they resolved to wrest the coveted preserves from the Waitaha". Although the WaitahaWaitaha
Waitaha is an early historical Māori iwi . Inhabitants of the South Island of New Zealand, they were largely absorbed via marriage and conquest first by the Kāti Mamoe and then Ngāi Tahu from the 16th century onward....
, unused to war, soon succumbed, a considerable amount of inter-marriage took place. The words are Canon Stack's and according to him the "invasion" began about 1477 AD. In fact few records of strife in Otago during this period survive and, as Stack acknowledged, Māori did not accept this construction of their traditions. More likely, as Anderson and others have maintained, this was simply a migration like later ones, accompanied by occasional bloodshed, not an "invasion". Early in the seventeenth century, a hapu of the Ngati Kahungunu
Ngati Kahungunu
Ngāti Kahungunu is a Māori iwi located along the eastern coast of the North Island of New Zealand. The iwi is traditionally centred in the Hawke’s Bay and Tararua and Wairārapa regions....
began to infiltrate the Kati Mamoe domain. However they failed to advance beyond Kaikoura
Kaikoura
Kaikoura is a town on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It is located on State Highway 1 180 km north of Christchurch.Kaikoura became the first local authority to reach the Green Globe tourism certification standard....
, where a chief of Ngati Mamoe killed the Ngati Kahungunu chief, Manawa, in a skirmish.
But with the arrival of a third hapu of the Ngati Kahungunu, the Ngai Tahu
Ngai Tahu
Ngāi Tahu, or Kāi Tahu, is the principal Māori iwi of the southern region of New Zealand, with the tribal authority, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, being based in Christchurch and Invercargill. The iwi combines three groups, Kāi Tahu itself, and Waitaha and Kāti Mamoe who lived in the South Island prior...
(or Kaitahu), towards the close of the 17th century, the stormy era of Otago history began. Again it has been said that the desire to possess unlimited supplies of the precious pounamu or greenstone, which occurred only in the South Island, provided a powerful incentive for invasion. But this has been questioned. The combatants don't fall neatly into groups of Kati Mamoe and Kai Tahu and the given reasons for strife don't refer to greenstone. Hostilities were protracted and Kati Mamoe were never "subdued". There were still people of that descent living in the region when the first Europeans arrived and Kai Tahu were just another Māori people also living in the south.
Much of the history of this time centres around the turbulent careers of two chiefs, Te Wera of the Kai Tahu, and Taoka, his bitter enemy, who were cousins. These two men apparently became involved in several episodes featuring a surfeit of bloodshed. One such incident occurred when Te Wera killed and ate Taoka's son, whom he and his men had encountered on the south bank of the Waitaki
Waitaki River
The Waitaki River is a large river in the South Island of New Zealand, some 110 km long. It is the major river of the Mackenzie Basin.It is a braided river which flows through Lake Benmore, Lake Aviemore and Lake Waitaki. These are ultimately fed by three large glacial lakes, Pukaki, Tekapo,...
. In revenge, Taoka besieged Te Wera's pa
Pa (Maori)
The word pā can refer to any Māori village or settlement, but in traditional use it referred to hillforts fortified with palisades and defensive terraces and also to fortified villages. They first came into being about 1450. They are located mainly in the North Island north of lake Taupo...
at Karitane
Karitane
The seaside settlement of Karitane is located within the limits of the city of Dunedin in New Zealand, 35 kilometres to the north of the city centre....
, at that time a Kai Tahu stronghold. The besiegers camped at the southern extremity of the sandspit in Waikouaiti Bay, called Ohine-pouweru, and lived there for six months. Frustrated in their endeavours to seize the pa, Taoka's men uttered the dire threat, "We'll starve you out." But back came the defiant cry, shouted by the Kai Tahu chief above the great gateway, "You shall never reach us! Only by the army of thirst shall we be overcome." Taoka then uttered threats in vain and when at length his food supplies had dwindled, he was reluctantly forced to raise the siege.
Similar skirmishes continued throughout the eighteenth century, waged with a merciless ferocity that must have seriously reduced a once numerous population. On occasion the battles became scenes of bloody carnage. Such conflict occurred in 1750 on the site of the present township of Balclutha
Balclutha, New Zealand
Balclutha is a town in Otago, it lies towards the end of the Clutha River on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It is about halfway between Dunedin and Invercargill on the Main South Line railway, State Highway 1 and the Southern Scenic Route...
, which saw the triumph of the Kati Mamoe. Some fifteen years later at Kaitangata
Kaitangata, New Zealand
Kaitangata is a town near the coast of South Otago, New Zealand, on the left bank of the Clutha River ten kilometres south east of Balclutha. The town is known to its residents simply as Kai....
, the Kai Tahu avenged this defeat and routed the Kati Mamoe. Eventually the two groups decided to erect a post on a conspicuous hill known as Popoutunoa, near Clinton
Clinton, New Zealand
Clinton is a small town in South Otago, in New Zealand's South Island. It is located on State Highway 1 approximately half way between Balclutha and Gore , and the Main South Line railway passes through the town.Clinton was named for Henry Pelham-Clinton, 5th...
: to mark the division of the territory. Thus the Kati Mamoe remained unmolested in the southern portion of the island. Or at least this is Canon Stack's view of the significance of these events. Certainly an end to conflict was brokered at this time which involved marriage across Kati Mamoe and Kai Tahu lines.
This short-lived amity came to an end in 1775 when the sons of Te Wera left Stewart Island to establish a pa between Colac Bay
Colac Bay
Colac Bay is a small township on the Southern Scenic Route, 10 minutes from Riverton. Surrounding areas include Longwood, Tihaka, Waipango, Round Hill, Wakapatu, Ruahine, Pahia and Orepuki....
and Orepuki
Orepuki
Orepuki in Southland, New Zealand is a small country township on the coast of Te Waewae Bay some 20 minutes from Riverton, 15 minutes from Tuatapere and 50 minutes from Invercargill that sits at the foot of the Longwood Range...
. As the Kati Mamoe could not allow this challenge to pass unnoticed, they rose and destroyed the pa. Their triumph was brief, for while they made their way to the Otago Peninsula
Otago Peninsula
The Otago Peninsula is a long, hilly indented finger of land that forms the easternmost part of Dunedin, New Zealand. Volcanic in origin, it forms one wall of the eroded valley that now forms Otago Harbour. The peninsula lies south-east of Otago Harbour and runs parallel to the mainland for...
, Taihua and his Kati Mamoe party marched into an ambush at Hillend
Hillend
Hillend is a small hamlet in Midlothian, just outside the Scottish capital Edinburgh, best known for the Hillend Ski Centre, an artificial ski slope...
, near the Pomahaka
Pomahaka River
The Pomahaka River is located in South Otago in New Zealand's South Island. It is a tributary of the Clutha River, flowing south for 80 kilometres from the Old Man Range of mountains to join the Clutha just north of Balclutha...
, where their enemies butchered them. Before the close of the century, warfare had again broken out at the Otago Heads, Port Molyneux, and Preservation Inlet
Preservation Inlet
Preservation Inlet is the southernmost fjord in Fiordland National Park and lies on the southwest corner of the South Island of New Zealand.-Geography:...
. In the vicinity of Lake Te Anau
Te Anau
Te Anau is a town in the South Island of New Zealand. It is on the eastern shore of Lake Te Anau in Fiordland. Lake Te Anau is the largest lake in the South Island and second only within New Zealand to Lake Taupo. The 2001 census recorded the town's population as 1,857...
one of the last and most desperate battles took place. A large number of Kati Mamoe were killed and the broken survivors "disappeared into the gloomy forests and never again man's eye beheld them." About the same time, the coast-dwelling Kati Mamoe at Preservation Inlet were also defeated, a pitiful remnant escaping in the direction of Dusky Sound
Dusky Sound
Dusky Sound is a fiord on the south west corner of New Zealand, in Fiordland National Park.-Geography:One of the most complex of the many fjords on this coast, it is also one of the largest, 40 kilometres in length and eight kilometres wide at its widest point...
. Summing up the warfare in Otago, Beattie states that of the twenty-five battles which took place south of Temuka
Temuka
Temuka is a town on New Zealand's Canterbury Plains, 15 kilometres north of Timaru and 142 km south of Christchurch. It is located at the centre of a rich sheep and dairy farming region, for which it is a service town.-History:...
, five were family affairs in which Kati Mamoe and Kai Tahu fought among themselves. A feature of the warfare was the monotonous regularity with which the two sides won alternately until the closing phases when the Kai Tahu established ascendancy. According to Beattie, defeated in one battle after another, the dwindling band of Kati Mamoe retreated in various directions, some to the western bank of the Waiau River
Waiau River, Southland
Waiau River is the largest river in the Southland Region of New Zealand. It is the outflow of Lake Te Anau, flowing from it into Lake Manapouri 10 kilometres to the south, and from there flows south for 70 kilometres before reaching the Foveaux Strait eight kilometres south of Tuatapere...
, where they took refuge in cave
Cave
A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. The term applies to natural cavities some part of which is in total darkness. The word cave also includes smaller spaces like rock shelters, sea caves, and grottos.Speleology is the science of exploration and study...
s, some to the far reaches of Te Anau
Te Anau
Te Anau is a town in the South Island of New Zealand. It is on the eastern shore of Lake Te Anau in Fiordland. Lake Te Anau is the largest lake in the South Island and second only within New Zealand to Lake Taupo. The 2001 census recorded the town's population as 1,857...
and Manapouri
Manapouri
Manapouri is a small town in Southland / Fiordland, in the southwest corner of the South Island, in New Zealand. Located at the edge of the Fiordland National Park, on the eastern shore of Lake Manapouri, close to its outflow into the Waiau River, tourist boat services are based in the...
, and some even to the cold shelters of the fiord
Fiordland
Fiordland is a geographic region of New Zealand that is situated on the south-western corner of the South Island, comprising the western-most third of Southland. Most of Fiordland is dominated by the steep sides of the snow-capped Southern Alps, deep lakes and its ocean-flooded, steep western valleys...
s. This has been the traditional European view but it is not borne out by the survival of Kati Mamoe lines of descent into the principal chiefly families of Otago into and beyond the time of the European arrival and it has been disputed in modern times.
Whalers, sealers and traders
In the late 18th century several European naval expeditions visited southernmost New Zealand, notably the three of Captain James CookJames Cook
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...
, who put Dusky Sound
Dusky Sound
Dusky Sound is a fiord on the south west corner of New Zealand, in Fiordland National Park.-Geography:One of the most complex of the many fjords on this coast, it is also one of the largest, 40 kilometres in length and eight kilometres wide at its widest point...
on the world map. As a consequence, following the settlement of Sydney Cove
Sydney Cove
Sydney Cove is a small bay on the southern shore of Port Jackson , on the coast of the state of New South Wales, Australia....
in New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
in 1788, visits by several private ventures followed. These saw the first European women to visit New Zealand (in 1792) and to sojourn there (1795–1797), the sojourn of 244 people on an inhospitable shore for several years, and the building of the first European house and ship in New Zealand. Some of these ventures resulted from the pursuit of seal
Pinniped
Pinnipeds or fin-footed mammals are a widely distributed and diverse group of semiaquatic marine mammals comprising the families Odobenidae , Otariidae , and Phocidae .-Overview: Pinnipeds are typically sleek-bodied and barrel-shaped...
s and constituted the first sealing
Seal hunting
Seal hunting, or sealing, is the personal or commercial hunting of seals. The hunt is currently practiced in five countries: Canada, where most of the world's seal hunting takes place, Namibia, the Danish region of Greenland, Norway and Russia...
boom. The visitors encountered few Māori (few lived in the relevant areas), and their presents of iron tools perhaps led to those people's demise at the hands of their countrymen. The revival of New Zealand sealing in 1803 saw the detailed exploration of the south west coast and the penetration of Foveaux Strait
Foveaux Strait
Foveaux Strait separates Stewart Island/Rakiura, New Zealand's third largest island, from the South Island. Three large bays, Te Waewae Bay, Oreti Beach and Toetoes Bay, sweep along the strait's northern coast, which also hosts Bluff township and harbour. Across the strait lie the Solander...
from the west. At the same time visitors explored the east coast and the sub-Antarctic islands
New Zealand sub-antarctic islands
The five southernmost groups of the New Zealand Outlying Islands form the New Zealand Sub-Antarctic islands. These islands are collectively designated as an UNESCO World Heritage Site....
: principally American ships, which produced Owen Folger Smith's charting of Foveaux Strait from the east in 1804. From 1805 to 1807 a boom took place at the Antipodes Islands
Antipodes Islands
The Antipodes Islands are inhospitable volcanic islands to the south of—and territorially part of—New Zealand...
— territorially part of historical Otago, and probably the source of the Creed manuscript's early European visitors to Otago harbour about 1806/1807. In any case, Sydney sealers operated on the Dunedin coast by late 1809 and had "long" traded for pigs and potatoes at Otago Harbour by 1810, the year in which hostilities broke out there been Māori and Pākehā in the thirteen year long feud called the Sealers' War
Sealers' War
The Sealers' War, also known as the "War of the Shirt", was a conflict in southern New Zealand started in 1810 by a Māori chief's theft of a red shirt, a knife and some other articles from the sealing vessel the Sydney Cove in Otago Harbour, and the excessive revenge of unidentified Europeans from...
.
In 1809 Robert Murray witnessed the cultivation of potatoes in the Foveaux Strait area, and when Captain Fowler anchored at Otago Harbour the locals already grew potatoes — which they wanted to exchange for iron. The pattern of Māori settlement may have changed over time to take advantage of the Tongata Bulla — people of the boats — and the new goods. In 1810 the Sydney Gazette
Sydney Gazette
The Sydney Gazette was the first newspaper in Australia. Governor King authorised the publication of what was initially called 'The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in 1803. Subsequently the first edition was published 5 March...
described the Māori of Foveaux Strait as "particularly friendly" and anxious to swap potatoes for iron tools. The Ngai Tahu
Ngai Tahu
Ngāi Tahu, or Kāi Tahu, is the principal Māori iwi of the southern region of New Zealand, with the tribal authority, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, being based in Christchurch and Invercargill. The iwi combines three groups, Kāi Tahu itself, and Waitaha and Kāti Mamoe who lived in the South Island prior...
lived around Otago and wanted to trade, but in their inexperience of the Tongata Bulla remained too truculent. Fowler never discovered this. Before coming to Otago Harbour he had visited the west coast, where six of his Lascar seamen deserted. Later, at Stewart Island, he sent an open boat under Robert Brown to search for them. Brown cruised up the east coast, touched at Cape Saunders
Cape Saunders
Cape Saunders is a prominent headland on the Pacific Ocean coast of the Otago Peninsula in New Zealand's South Island. It is home to the Cape Saunders Lighthouse....
on the Otago Peninsula before continuing north to a point eight miles (13 km) north of Moeraki
Moeraki
Moeraki is a small fishing village on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It was once the location of a whaling station. In the 1870s, local interests believed it could become the main port for the north Otago area and a railway line, the Moeraki Branch, was built to the settlement...
. There a group of Māori, incensed by an earlier incident on Otago Harbour in 1810, set upon and eventually killed Brown's whole party.
These early contacts left a number of Pākehā (non-Māori people) living in the south: James Caddell an English boy-sealer captured from the Sydney Cove in 1810; three Lascars (Indian seamen), survivors of the deserting six from the Matilda, one of them called by Māori "Te Anu". In 1815 William Tucker
William Tucker (settler)
William Tucker was a British convict, a sealer, a trader in human heads, an Otago settler, and New Zealand’s first art dealer....
settled at Whareakeake, later Murdering Beach, where he kept goats and sheep, had a Māori wife and apparently fostered an export trade in greenstone hei-tiki
Hei-tiki
The hei-tiki is an ornamental pendant of the Māori which is worn around the neck. Hei-tiki are usually made of pounamu which is greenstone, and are considered a taonga . They are commonly referred to as tiki, a term that actually refers to large human figures carved in wood, and, also, the small...
. After a time he left and returned on the Sophia, a Hobart Town
Hobart
Hobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Founded in 1804 as a penal colony,Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney. In 2009, the city had a greater area population of approximately 212,019. A resident of Hobart is known as...
sealer commanded by James Kelly.
In 1817 Kelly anchored in Otago Harbour. The local chief Korako failed to ferry over Māori from Whareakeake who wanted to receive their share of Tucker's gifts. When Kelly, Tucker and five others later went in an open boat along the coast to Whareakeake, the Māori there attacked them, killing Tucker and two others because of this slight, but also because of the general souring of relations since the incident of 1810. Kelly and the remainder retreated to the Sophia, only to find it occupied by Māori, intent — they believed — on attacking them. Armed with sealing knives, the Tongata Bulla drove the invaders off, resisted another attack, then destroyed "all their navy" and burnt "the beautiful city of Otago". The death toll remains much disputed, but while Kelly probably exaggerated the extent of his revenge, it seems likely he killed several people wholly innocent of the killing of his men.
Māori/Pākehā relations — peaceful from the time of Cook's visit and through the first sealing boom from 1792-1797 — soured with the theft of a red shirt, a knife and other articles by a chief Te Wahia from the Sydney Cove on the Otago Harbour late in 1810 — and by his killing by an angered sealer. From this there ensued the Sealers' War
Sealers' War
The Sealers' War, also known as the "War of the Shirt", was a conflict in southern New Zealand started in 1810 by a Māori chief's theft of a red shirt, a knife and some other articles from the sealing vessel the Sydney Cove in Otago Harbour, and the excessive revenge of unidentified Europeans from...
a series of attacks and counter-attacks, carried out by persons who soon lost sight of the original cause. Māori killed four men from the schooner The Brothers (massacred at Molyneux Harbour); several sailors from the General Gates, and three lascars from the brig
Brig
A brig is a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts. During the Age of Sail, brigs were seen as fast and manoeuvrable and were used as both naval warships and merchant vessels. They were especially popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries...
Matilda. The feud continued until 1823 when Captain Edwardson succeeded in ending it, thus sparking a new sealing boom desired by both Māori and Pākehā.
Edwardson, sent from Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
in the Mermaid to investigate the prospects for a flax
Flax
Flax is a member of the genus Linum in the family Linaceae. It is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was probably first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent...
-industry, explained Māori truculence in terms of their "vindictive", "crafty" and "lying" character which, he opined, made them "sensitive to the slightest offence". But Edwardson realised that the Māori wanted to trade. With the assistance of Caddell, whom he took to Sydney, the parties negotiated a truce. The attacks and lower prices for skins had dampened the trade, but the restoration of peace saw its brief revival.
In the ensuing peace even the "unpredictably ferocious" Otago harbour Māori modified their behaviour in the interests of trade. Their kin at Ruapuke
Ruapuke Island
Ruapuke Island is one of the southernmost islands in New Zealand's main chain of islands. It lies to the southeast of Bluff and northeast of Oban on Stewart Island/Rakiura. The island covers an area of about . It guards the eastern end of Foveaux Strait...
not only held their traditional monopoly over the sooty shearwater
Sooty Shearwater
The Sooty Shearwater is a medium-large shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. In New Zealand it is also known by its Māori name tītī and as "muttonbird", like its relatives the Wedge-tailed Shearwater and the Australian Short-tailed Shearwater The Sooty Shearwater (Puffinus griseus) is...
s, or New Zealand muttonbird
Muttonbird
Muttonbird, mutton-bird or mutton bird refer to seabirds – particularly certain large shearwaters – whose young are collected for food and other uses before they fledge ....
s, but had effectively monopolized te tongata bulla and its wealth. Some 15 to 20 Europeans, many of them with Māori wives, lived on Codfish Island
Codfish Island
Codfish Island or Whenua Hou is a small island located to the west of Stewart Island/Rakiura in southern New Zealand. It reaches a height of close to the south coast. Following the eradication of possums and weka, it is a predator-free bird sanctuary and the focus of Kakapo recovery efforts...
although they moved freely among the Māori kaiks on the mainland. These Europeans complied with Māori customs for fear of triggering that much-feared "touchiness". The Journal of John Boultbee,
a sealer in the Otago region during the late 1820s, provides ample illustration. On one occasion he went to gather some vegetables which grew wild:
- But my cannibal friends told me they were taboo (TapuTapuTapu, tabu or kapu is a Polynesian traditional concept denoting something holy or sacred, with "spiritual restriction" or "implied prohibition"; it involves rules and prohibitions...
, meaning sacred), and I had to throw them away as they had been gathered from a place where a house had been built. Another time I happened to lay my knife on Tiroa's cap [Tiroa being Taiaroa, a chief from the Otago harbour area], on this he took the knife & kept it 2 or 3 days, saying it was taboo taboo. I was therefore obliged to eat with my fingers.
Boultbee did not understand the "strange custom of tabooing", but he recognized that "any willful breach of it considered a serious matter, & in severe cases punishable by death". The security of the intruders depended upon the goodwill of the paramount rangatira
Rangatira
Rangatira are the hereditary Māori leaders of hapū, and were described by ethnologists such as Elsdon Best as chieftains . Ideally, rangatira were people of great practical wisdom who held authority on behalf of the tribe and maintained boundaries between a tribe's land and that of other tribes...
in Murihiku, Te Whakataupuka. The son of Honegai, who had harried the Tongata Bulla wherever he could, Te Whakataupuka proved less truculent and more skillful in manipulating the new arrivals. He became the first to recognize the strategic importance of Ruapuke: he shifted from the mouth of the Matua-a to make his home on the island. Te Whakataupuka impressed John Boultbee as "the most complete model of strength, activity & elegance I had seen combined in any man". He placed the Europeans under his chiefly protection and at times played and joked with them freely. Limits existed to this familiarity. Once, when a group of Pākehā engaged in a mock battle with the chief, one accidentally hit his head with a potato (the head of the chief being tapu). This "excited him suddenly & caused him to seize a tremendous log of wood, which he threw at them...." Cooling quickly, he told them to desist lest he should "perhaps get vexed & hurt them, which he would be sorry to do". When Te Whakataupuka's son, who preferred to live with the Europeans, died, Boultbee and his companions feared that Te Whakataupuka might hold them responsible for the boy's death. Despite his grief the rangatira refused to allow his warriors to exact revenge.
The various hapu at Otago
Otago
Otago is a region of New Zealand in the south of the South Island. The region covers an area of approximately making it the country's second largest region. The population of Otago is...
from the early 1820s until the 1850s had as their chiefs Tahatu, Karetai and Taiaroa. Unlike Te Whakataupuka and his nephew, Tuhawaiki
Tuhawaiki
Tuhawaiki — often known as Hone Tuhawaiki, John Tuhawaiki or Jack Tuhawaiki, or by his nickname of "Bloody Jack" — became a paramount chief of the Ngāi Tahu Māori iwi in the southern part of the South Island of New Zealand...
, who became the paramount rangatira
Rangatira
Rangatira are the hereditary Māori leaders of hapū, and were described by ethnologists such as Elsdon Best as chieftains . Ideally, rangatira were people of great practical wisdom who held authority on behalf of the tribe and maintained boundaries between a tribe's land and that of other tribes...
in 1834, neither Taiaroa nor Karetai earned renown for physical feats or for warrior habits. Tensions existed between them. Karetai functioned as the local chief, but Taiaroa, who had close kinship ties with the Canterbury Ngai Tahu, had been given land on the western side of the harbour where he established a small settlement. When Europeans began visiting regularly he moved his village to the eastern side, close by Karetai's, in order to muscle in on the trade. Trade had increased rapidly. In 1823 Kent noted only three villages within the harbour; in 1826 Captain Herd reported five. The Otago harbour Māori prospered and Boultbee recorded the arrival at Ruapuke of a boat from Otago laden with '2 large fat hogs & 100 baskets of potatoes each weighing 35 lb (15.9 kg)' For this they received two muskets and one adze.
The campaigns in Canterbury
European contact seems to have played a role in the resumption of internecine warfare. In the North Island tribes in close contact with Pākehā had acquired musketMusket
A musket is a muzzle-loaded, smooth bore long gun, fired from the shoulder. Muskets were designed for use by infantry. A soldier armed with a musket had the designation musketman or musketeer....
s by the 1820s. Similarly, in the South Island Māori early acquired European firearms which they used on their relations in the Kai Huaka struggle ("Eat-relations" feud). Fortunately for the South, the feud did not spread to what would later become the territory of the Otago Province, and though petty quarrels between the Otago and Murihiku natives occurred from time to time, open warfare never took place. The Kai Huaka troubles began in Canterbury. A woman named Murihaka tried on a dog-skin cloak belonging to Tamaiharanui, a chief. Some members of Te Tamaiharanui's hapu
Hapu
A hapū is sometimes described as "the basic political unit within Maori society".A named division of a Māori iwi , membership is determined by genealogical descent; a hapū is made up of a number of whānau groups. Generally hapū range in size from 150-200 although there is no upper limit...
, exasperated by this sacrilegious act, killed the servant of Hape, a friend of Murihaka's. Hape's whanau, finding the retribution excessive, killed some members of the whanau
Whanau
Whānau , is a Māori-language word for extended family, now increasingly entering New Zealand English, particularly in official publications.In Māori society, the whānau is also a political unit, below the level of hapū and iwi, and the word itself also has other meanings: as a verb meaning to give...
which had avenged the original presumptuous act. This whanau took utu
Utu (Maori concept)
Utu is a Māori concept of reciprocation, or balance.To retain mana, both friendly and unfriendly actions require an appropriate response - hence utu covers both the reciprocation of kind deeds, and the seeking of revenge....
by killing Hape himself. Hape's wife then took refuge with her brothers at Taumutu and they in turn killed three prominent members of yet another whanau. By now, most of the Māori of Banks Peninsula
Banks Peninsula
Banks Peninsula is a peninsula of volcanic origin on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It has an area of approximately and encompasses two large harbours and many smaller bays and coves...
had become involved. The dynamic is simple enough. If one Māori offended another, the aggrieved party's whanau or hapu was obliged to exact an appropriate penalty. In most quarrels this often ended matters unless, as in this case, the penalty seemed excessive. Meanwhile, Te Tamaiharanui sought aid from kin at Kaiapoi
Kaiapoi
Kaiapoi is a town in the Canterbury region of the South Island of New Zealand, located close to the mouth of the Waimakariri River, and approximately 17 kilometres north of Christchurch....
and successfully attacked Taumutu. The Hapu at Taumutu, which included Taiaroa's sister, sent another woman, Hinehaka, who had close ties with several southern chiefs to ask for help. Taiaroa mobilised a large Taua or war party which headed north in canoes. Taiaroa also had kin among the hapu he intended to attack so he went ahead, warned the enemy, then returned to lead the assault. At Wairewa on Banks Peninsula, the southerners won an unsatisfyingly bloodless victory. Fearful of being met by taunts and jeers on returning home, they killed a kinsman of Taununu, a powerful rangatira from Kaikoura
Kaikoura
Kaikoura is a town on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It is located on State Highway 1 180 km north of Christchurch.Kaikoura became the first local authority to reach the Green Globe tourism certification standard....
who had settled near his kin at Kaiapoi and controlled Rapaki, a large pa in Lyttelton harbour. Utu, which involved revenge, was producing a bloodbath.
Taununu led a successful taua south, and Te Whakataupuka now decided to intervene. He and Taiaroa organized a war-party and headed north to seek vengeance. As the southern taua approached their enemy, Taiaroa again went ahead to warn his kin: "Escape! Fly for your lives! Take your canoes out to sea! We have guns." This time the enemy moved too slowly. According to survivors of the vanquished hapu, the southern warriors defeated two canoes overcrowded with helpless fugitives.
The triumphant warriors from Otago, Ruapuke, and the villages around Foveaux Strait proceeded north to Ripapa, Taununu's pa. After destroying the pa the southern warriors evacuated the entire population of Taumutu and brought them south. Te Tamaiharanui later followed and persuaded most of them to return home, where he finally took his revenge. The fighting continued spasmodically until 1828, but the southerners took no further part in it.
The Ngati Toa invasions
In 1829, Te Whakataupuka sold 60 acres (242,811.6 m²) of land at Preservation InletPreservation Inlet
Preservation Inlet is the southernmost fjord in Fiordland National Park and lies on the southwest corner of the South Island of New Zealand.-Geography:...
to the whaler
Whaler
A whaler is a specialized ship, designed for whaling, the catching and/or processing of whales. The former included the whale catcher, a steam or diesel-driven vessel with a harpoon gun mounted at its bows. The latter included such vessels as the sail or steam-driven whaleship of the 16th to early...
, Peter Williams, on payment of sixty muskets, 1000 lb (453.6 kg) of gunpowder
Gunpowder
Gunpowder, also known since in the late 19th century as black powder, was the first chemical explosive and the only one known until the mid 1800s. It is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate - with the sulfur and charcoal acting as fuels, while the saltpeter works as an oxidizer...
, 1000 lb (453.6 kg) of musket balls, two 12 lb (5.4 kg) cannonades, two air-guns, and a large quantity of tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
, pipes, spades and hooks. This increased the armament of southern Māori and facilitated the establishment of the South Island's first whaling station. (In what became the historical province of Otago it was next followed by the Weller brothers
Weller brothers
The Weller brothers, Englishmen of Sydney and Otago, New Zealand, were the founders of a whaling station on Otago Harbour and New Zealand’s most substantial merchant traders in the 1830s.-Immigration:...
' on Otago Harbour
Otago Harbour
Otago Harbour is the natural harbour of Dunedin, New Zealand, consisting of a long, much-indented stretch of generally navigable water separating the Otago Peninsula from the mainland. They join at its southwest end, from the harbour mouth...
in 1831.)
By 1830 the old threat of the invasion of the South Island
South Island
The South Island is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand, the other being the more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, to the south and east by the Pacific Ocean...
by the warlike tribes of the north again appeared menacing when Te Rauparaha
Te Rauparaha
Te Rauparaha was a Māori rangatira and war leader of the Ngāti Toa tribe who took a leading part in the Musket Wars. He was influential in the original sale of conquered Rangitane land to the New Zealand Company and was a participant in the Wairau Incident in Marlborough...
, chief of the Ngati Toa
Ngati Toa
Ngāti Toa , an iwi , traces its descent from the eponymous ancestor Toarangatira. The Ngāti Toa region extends from Miria-te-kakara at Rangitikei to Wellington, and across Cook Strait to Wairau and Nelson....
, invaded the South and stormed the Takapuneke Pa at Akaroa
Akaroa
Akaroa is a village on Banks Peninsula in the Canterbury region of the South Island of New Zealand, situated within a harbour of the same name—the name Akaroa is Kāi Tahu Māori for 'Long Harbour'.- Overview :...
Harbour. A year later he organized a grand attack on Kaiapoi
Kaiapoi
Kaiapoi is a town in the Canterbury region of the South Island of New Zealand, located close to the mouth of the Waimakariri River, and approximately 17 kilometres north of Christchurch....
, the chief centre of the Kai Tahu in Canterbury, and laid siege to it. A strong relieving force of Otago warriors, led by Taiaroa, marched hurriedly into the beleaguered pa, slipped past Te Rauparaha and entered it by night. After a long defence in which he played a leading part, Taiaroa, seeing the hopelessness of the position, escaped with his men to Otago harbour, now the tribal stronghold of Kai Tahu, to prepare a counter-stroke.
In response to Te Rauparaha's first attack in which he conquered and massacred the northern part of the South Island, 350 well-armed warriors, led by Te Whakataupuka and Taiaroa marched northwards and overtook the retreating Ngati Toa warriors at Cloudy Bay
Cloudy Bay
Cloudy Bay is located at the northeast of New Zealand's South Island, to the south of the Marlborough Sounds. The area lends its name to one of the best known New World white wines although the grapes used in production of that wine are grown in the Marlborough wine region further inland.The bay...
, near Cook Strait. Here Taiaroa and another young chief, Tuhawaiki, seized Te Rauparaha, only to have the wily chief slip out of his cloak and dive into the sea. He then swam to his canoes. The Kai Tahu claimed a victory; the Ngati Toa retorted that they had successfully evaded the ambush. The subsequent skirmish at sea proved inconclusive, except that Te Rauparaha escaped. In 1835 Taiaroa, again accompanied by Tuhawaiki who, on Te Whakataupuka's death in that year, had become the paramount chief of Murihiku, organized another large expedition of four hundred men which once more inflicted severe losses upon the Ngati Toa and their prestige, with that of their chief, had suffered considerably in these encounters with the warriors of southern New Zealand.
Māori belligerence made Pākehā nervous and emphasised the tenuousness of trade. In August 1834, the captain of the Lucy Ann reported in Sydney that the Māori living beside the Weller brothers
Weller brothers
The Weller brothers, Englishmen of Sydney and Otago, New Zealand, were the founders of a whaling station on Otago Harbour and New Zealand’s most substantial merchant traders in the 1830s.-Immigration:...
' whaling station on Otago harbour now treated the Pākehā there with the greatest contempt, talked of wiping out all Pākehā, and took what they wanted. Their "insolence" grew so much, one captain complained, that "they take from us whatever suits their fancy, such as our clothing. and food from off our very plates — help themselves to oil, in such quantities as they require...". Four captains of whaling vessels complained:
- "a powerful tribe of one or two thousand natives from the Southward, under a chief called Taiaroa... are at war with the tribes of the straits, and last year destroyed fifty tons of barrels, and some oil with the huts and the property..."
Their own Māori patrons refused to or could not protect them.
Disease now tipped the balance. In September 1835 measles
Measles
Measles, also known as rubeola or morbilli, is an infection of the respiratory system caused by a virus, specifically a paramyxovirus of the genus Morbillivirus. Morbilliviruses, like other paramyxoviruses, are enveloped, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA viruses...
and influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
spread among the southern Kai Tahu and carried off, most notably, Te Whakataupuka. It remains unclear how many died. One European said that the hapu at the mouth of the Tokomairiro River
Tokomairiro River
The Tokomairiro River is located in Otago, New Zealand. It flows southeast for some 50 kilometres , reaching the Pacific Ocean at Toko Mouth 50 kilometres south of Dunedin...
owned nine canoes, but had enough men to crew only one. The whalers often attributed to disease a marked decline in Māori numbers.
But the last act in the inter-tribal war had not yet taken place. In 1836 Te Puoho, a kinsman of Te Rauparaha, tried to persuade the ageing warrior to march once more against the people of Otago harbour and Murihiku. Te Rauparaha refused and said: "It is easy to burst the tree at the root (Kaiapoi), but harder to burst it at the branches (Murihiku)." "He must not expect the people in the south to be sitting in trees with their breasts open like pigeons facing the sun." Te Rauparaha may have given an official blessing, conditional upon victory. At any rate, in the summer of 1836, Te Puoho led his war-party, about seventy in number, down the West Coast
West Coast, New Zealand
The West Coast is one of the administrative regions of New Zealand, located on the west coast of the South Island, and is one of the more remote and most sparsely populated areas of the country. It is made up of three districts: Buller, Grey and Westland...
as far as the Awarua River
Awarua River, Southland
The Awarua River is a river of New Zealand. It flows south into Awarua Bay, an indentation in the northern shore of Milford Sound, in Fiordland....
, toiled painfully and crossed the mountains through today's Haast Pass
Haast Pass
Haast Pass is a mountain pass in the Southern Alps of the South Island of New Zealand. It is named for Julius von Haast, a 19th century explorer who was also geologist for the Provincial government of Canterbury...
— a miracle of endurance — and, half-famished, moved down the valley of the Makarora River
Makarora River
-Geography:The headwaters are in Mount Aspiring National Park, on the eastern flanks of the Southern Alps near Haast Pass, which is the saddle between the Makarora and Haast River valleys. The Makarora flows south into the northern end of Lake Wanaka after passing the small community of Makarora...
and captured a village at Wanaka
Wanaka
Wanaka is a town in the Otago region of the South Island of New Zealand. It is situated at the southern end of Lake Wanaka, adjacent to the outflow of the lake to the Clutha River. It is the gateway to Mount Aspiring National Park. Wanaka is primarily a resort town but has both summer and winter...
. The invaders then proceeded up the Cardrona Valley, crossed the Crown Range
Crown Range
The Crown Range mountains lies to the east of the Wakatipu Basin in Otago, New Zealand. It is noted for two features, the Cardrona Alpine Resort, on the slopes of the 1900 metre Mt. Cardrona, and a highway, known as the Crown Range Road, which winds steeply between Arrow Junction, south of...
and the Kawarau River
Kawarau River
Kawarau River drains Lake Wakatipu, in northwestern Otago, New Zealand. The river flows generally eastwards for about 60 km and passes through the steep Kawarau Gorge until it joins Lake Dunstan near Cromwell. The Shotover River enters it from the north; the Nevis River enters it from the south...
, using a natural rock bridge, then finally, by following the Nevis
Nevis River
The Nevis River is located in Otago, New Zealand. It flows north for 40 kilometres through rough country before meeting the Kawarau River, of which it is a tributary. A prominent rock outcrop close to this junction is known as the Nevis Bluff....
and Nokomai River
Nokomai River
-References:...
s, entered the enemy's heartland, Murihiku. After a short rest to recuperate, they pushed on along the old Māori track that ran over the low hills west of Gore
Gore, New Zealand
Gore is a town, surrounding borough, and district in the Southland region of the South Island of New Zealand.-Geography:The Gore District has a land area of 1,251.62 km² and a resident population of...
and, soon after crossing the Mataura River
Mataura River
The Mataura River is in the Southland Region of the South Island of New Zealand. It is 190 kilometres in length.The river's headwaters are located in mountains to the south of Lake Wakatipu. From there it flows southeast towards Gore, where it turns southward...
, the party reached Tuturau and sacked the village. Unfortunately for the invaders, the whole south soon became aware of the invasion, for Te Puoho did not know that the news of his presence had, despite precautions, been taken to Tuhawaiki
Tuhawaiki
Tuhawaiki — often known as Hone Tuhawaiki, John Tuhawaiki or Jack Tuhawaiki, or by his nickname of "Bloody Jack" — became a paramount chief of the Ngāi Tahu Māori iwi in the southern part of the South Island of New Zealand...
at Ruapuke. Nor would he have known that Taiaroa was visiting the island. The two chiefs hastily assembled a force of between 70 and 100 men. The whalers transported the warriors to the mainland. The local Pākehā
Pakeha
Pākehā is a Māori language word for New Zealanders who are "of European descent". They are mostly descended from British and to a lesser extent Irish settlers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although some Pākehā have Dutch, Scandinavian, German, Yugoslav or other ancestry...
, 'in a state of considerable alarm', prepared to flee at a moment's notice. The unsuspecting Ngati Toa
Ngati Toa
Ngāti Toa , an iwi , traces its descent from the eponymous ancestor Toarangatira. The Ngāti Toa region extends from Miria-te-kakara at Rangitikei to Wellington, and across Cook Strait to Wairau and Nelson....
slept at Tuturau while the Kai Tahu surrounded the village. During the night, the Kai Tahu tohunga
Tohunga
In the culture of the Māori of New Zealand, a tohunga is an expert practitioner of any skill or art, religious or otherwise. Tohunga may include expert priests, healers, navigators, carvers, builders, teachers and advisors. The equivalent term in Hawaiian culture is kahuna...
summoned up the pulsing heart of Te Puoho, a favourable omen, and in the morning the Kai Tahu quickly defeated the invaders, killing Te Puoho. Taiaroa intervened to save the lives of some of his kin who had helped him to escape Te Rauparaha's clutches during the Siege of Kaiapoi in 1833. At Ruapuke
Ruapuke
Ruapuke is a small farming community in the Waikato region on the slopes of rocky mountains, between Raglan and Kawhia in New Zealand. It comprises a handful of families, some of whom have lived there for many generations. The residents, predominantly sheep and cattle farmers, all traverse Ruapuke...
, Bluff
Bluff, New Zealand
Bluff is a town and seaport in the Southland region, on the southern coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It is the southern-most town in New Zealand and, despite Slope Point being further to the south, is colloquially used to refer to the southern extremity of the country...
and Otago
Otago
Otago is a region of New Zealand in the south of the South Island. The region covers an area of approximately making it the country's second largest region. The population of Otago is...
the Pākehā and the Kai Tahu celebrated their triumph with enthusiasm and relief.
Thus ignominiously ended the invasion, memorable as the last act of inter-Māori warfare in the South Island. In January 1838, Tuhawaiki and Taiaroa made a sudden march to Queen Charlotte Sound
Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand
Queen Charlotte Sound is the easternmost of the main sounds of the Marlborough Sounds, in New Zealand's South Island. It is, like the other sounds, a drowned river valley , and like the majority of its neighbours it runs southwest to northeast before joining Cook Strait.The town of Picton, the...
, and in December of the following year, led another war-party in sixteen sealing and four whaling boats, but Te Rauparaha, still smarting from his former humiliations, never again faced the southern warriors. Although these excursions constituted little more than a dramatic demonstration of Kai Tahu rights over Banks Peninsula, they proved that, once and for all, the southerners had overcome their fear of the northerners.
The Ngai Tahu and Christianity
Tuhawaiki had become the paramount rangatira of the Ngai Tahu and played a decisive role in shaping the future of his people. Born at Taununu, at the mouth of the Matua-a (or CluthaClutha River
The Clutha River / Mata-Au is the second longest river in New Zealand flowing south-southeast through Central and South Otago from Lake Wanaka in the Southern Alps to the Pacific Ocean, south west of Dunedin. It is the highest volume river in New Zealand, and the swiftest, with a catchment of ,...
), around 1805 as a nephew of Te Whakataupuka, Tuhawaiki had direct descent from Hautapu-nui-o-tu and from Honekai; he also had an impeccable Ngati Mamoe lineage and close kin-ties with such prominent Pākehā as James Cadell and John Kelly. He had won great mana
Mana
Mana is an indigenous Pacific islander concept of an impersonal force or quality that resides in people, animals, and inanimate objects. The word is a cognate in many Oceanic languages, including Melanesian, Polynesian, and Micronesian....
in both worlds. He had a well-established reputation as a harpoon
Harpoon
A harpoon is a long spear-like instrument used in fishing to catch fish or large marine mammals such as whales. It accomplishes this task by impaling the target animal, allowing the fishermen to use a rope or chain attached to the butt of the projectile to catch the animal...
er and sailor, he had an intimate knowledge of Pākehā customs, and in the long campaign against Te Rauparaha he had enhanced his mana. Like his uncle he understood the value of the Pākehā presence and placed them under his mana. Even the truculent Taiaroa obeyed. Unlike his uncle, Tuhawaiki realized that his people could only survive the expansion of European society by borrowing more extensively. He owned a trading ship, built himself a Pākehā house, and dressed like a Pākehā. He encouraged agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
, traded widely, and appears to have blessed Jones's attempt to colonise the Waikouaiti
Waikouaiti
Waikouaiti is a small town in East Otago, New Zealand, within the city limits of Dunedin. The town is close to the coast and the mouth of the Waikouaiti River....
region. He must also have recognized that the Pākehā presence afforded additional protection against Te Rauparaha. Most Pākehā agreed that he was shrewd, wily and knowledgeable, 'probably one of the most Europeanised Māori...most correctly and completely dressed in white man's clothes, even to the refinement of the cotton pocket handkerchief.'
Tuhawaiki doubtless realised that whaling had transformed the world of his people. Many kaiks or villages moved to the vicinity of the whaling-stations (although some may represent foundations by refugees from the Ngati Toa). Large numbers of Māori men worked in the whaling stations while many women lived in de facto marriage
Common-law marriage
Common-law marriage, sometimes called sui juris marriage, informal marriage or marriage by habit and repute, is a form of interpersonal status that is legally recognized in limited jurisdictions as a marriage even though no legally recognized marriage ceremony is performed or civil marriage...
s with Pākehā men. These Māori joined one of the lowest strata of European society, characterised by violence and drunkenness. Many observers concluded that Māori wives helped to civilise the whalers. Yet some demoralisation occurred. Perceptive observers like Shortland thought relations between the two races were often very good at the whaling stations. Probably no other tribe in New Zealand was so extensively intermarried with and involved in Pākehā society. Possibly nowhere else was the Pākehā so willing to tolerate or adopt Māori customs. Most of the Māori living in the whaling stations dressed like Europeans and during the 1830s acquired an addiction for tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
and alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
. But in this they did not differ from the whalers.
Tuhawaiki adopted a threefold strategy for coping with the new world. Firstly, he encouraged the development of skills appropriate to the emergent world of Pākehā and Māori. Secondly, he clearly envisaged the peaceful integration of these two worlds on terms acceptable to the Māori. And thirdly, he recognised the importance of Pākehā religion and the power of the Pākehā Atua
Atua
Atua are the gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori. The Polynesian word literally means power or strength and so the concept is similar to that of mana...
(or God). Tuhawaiki, widely traveled and knowledgeable in the ways of the Pākehā, possibly ascribed to the Pākehā Atua the role of unifying the two peoples. In accepting James Watkin, the Methodist parson
Parson
In the pre-Reformation church, a parson was the priest of an independent parish church, that is, a parish church not under the control of a larger ecclesiastical or monastic organization...
at Waikouaiti
Waikouaiti
Waikouaiti is a small town in East Otago, New Zealand, within the city limits of Dunedin. The town is close to the coast and the mouth of the Waikouaiti River....
, and yet inviting another missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
to Ruapuke
Ruapuke
Ruapuke is a small farming community in the Waikato region on the slopes of rocky mountains, between Raglan and Kawhia in New Zealand. It comprises a handful of families, some of whom have lived there for many generations. The residents, predominantly sheep and cattle farmers, all traverse Ruapuke...
, he may have responded to the conversion of his own followers. In any case he traveled to Waikouaiti to hear Watkin's first sermon, asked for a missionary to be sent to Ruapuke, and extended a warm and hospitable welcome to visiting clergy.
During the 1830s Christianity had caught on through much of the North Island. Slaves of the Ngā Puhi in Northland first accepted the Gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
. The news spread fast. Weariness of war, the mana of the Bible, and a passion for literacy fueled the fire. Māori teachers, often self-taught, carried the Word far beyond the zones of the European missionaries. The magic of literacy most dramatically expressed the power of the Pākehā atua
Atua
Atua are the gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori. The Polynesian word literally means power or strength and so the concept is similar to that of mana...
. Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
s, or a few pages from any book, represented a new magic which Māori believed could protect its owner from death in battle, bestow eternal life, ward off sickness, and thus complement the power of traditional karakia (or incantations). Ngai Tahu sailors must have heard the Word. Northern converts such as Te Rauparaha's son, brought the new Word south. When Watkin arrived at Waikouaiti he found ready a Māori market for his spiritual wares. A large crowd attended his first service and listened attentively "tho' they could not understand anything that was said. When he printed some Bibles, 'they were eagerly sought after'.
Pākehā magic and the mana that one could win by possessing its secret persuaded the southern Māori to turn, in their own way and for their own reasons, to Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. When Wohlers arrived at Ruapuke the tohunga karakia (or priests) welcomed him as a comrade and explained their theology. The chiefs, led by Tuhawaiki, also adopted the new faith and sponsored traditional Ngai Tahu teachers for baptism. The tohunga karakia quickly accepted certain elements of the Christian faith, but they, like the young men of inherited mana who patronized Watkin's school, wanted to adapt the new Gospel to the old karakia. These men also wanted to achieve mana as teachers of the Pākehā magic and quickly voiced resentment when the Pākehā tohunga started to baptise everyone. Wohlers discovered that both Watkin and Bishop Selwyn had complied with this pressure and for a while the Māori teachers so arranged matters that "applicants [for Baptism
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
] had to go to them in order to be recommended."
The Pākehā missionaries then realised that their mana as teachers depended on the number of converts they made. Watkin's register of baptisms records the explosive result. In 1841, he baptized two Māori (one of them intended marrying a Pākehā); in 1842 he baptized three Māori; and then in 1843 he baptized 193 and another 158 before leaving in 1844. As many missionaries realised, the Māori transformed Christianity in the process of 'conversion'. To the despair of Watkin, the Māori interpreted the Christian karakia in their own way. Much to the dismay of the practical Wohlers, the strict moral code of the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
proved infectious. When Selwyn preached a 'sermon on contentment with one's lot' the Māori stopped producing food and trade with American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
whaler
Whaler
A whaler is a specialized ship, designed for whaling, the catching and/or processing of whales. The former included the whale catcher, a steam or diesel-driven vessel with a harpoon gun mounted at its bows. The latter included such vessels as the sail or steam-driven whaleship of the 16th to early...
s fell off abruptly; "the pigs ate the potatoes, the Māori ate the pigs, and there was nothing left."
At Waikouaiti
Waikouaiti
Waikouaiti is a small town in East Otago, New Zealand, within the city limits of Dunedin. The town is close to the coast and the mouth of the Waikouaiti River....
and Moeraki
Moeraki
Moeraki is a small fishing village on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It was once the location of a whaling station. In the 1870s, local interests believed it could become the main port for the north Otago area and a railway line, the Moeraki Branch, was built to the settlement...
the Māori refused to work on Sundays. Not only did the Māori shape the Christian message to their own beliefs, but they found in the denominational structure a familiar world. The different churches proved perfect instruments for sustaining traditional rivalries and animosities while learning Pākehā ways. Because the Ngati Toa
Ngati Toa
Ngāti Toa , an iwi , traces its descent from the eponymous ancestor Toarangatira. The Ngāti Toa region extends from Miria-te-kakara at Rangitikei to Wellington, and across Cook Strait to Wairau and Nelson....
became Anglican
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...
, most of the prominent Ngai Tahu
Ngai Tahu
Ngāi Tahu, or Kāi Tahu, is the principal Māori iwi of the southern region of New Zealand, with the tribal authority, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, being based in Christchurch and Invercargill. The iwi combines three groups, Kāi Tahu itself, and Waitaha and Kāti Mamoe who lived in the South Island prior...
joined the Wesleyan
Methodism
Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...
s. Some villages acknowledged the mana of each denomination's Atua. Very small kaiks sometimes built two churches and two schools and the chief at Moeraki made part of his hapu Catholic
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
, part Anglican, and part traditional. Among the Māori the generosity and mana of the Pākehā tohunga counted for much. The Roman Catholic Bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
, Jean Baptiste Pompallier visited the south in 1840, and poor Watkin watched his flock transfer allegiance to the Papist. The worried Wesleyan confided in his journal: "Their mode of worship and wonderful legends would lead me to fear that Pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
ry would prevail over Protestantism
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
." The local Māori, probably with a strong leavening of northern refugees, flocked to the new tohunga. His robes and vestments attracted much favourable comment, the pomp of Catholic ritual and liturgy impressed, and some Māori told Watkin to his face that they regretted his 'plain dress and equally plain mode of conducting religious worship'. Pompallier baptised freely, unlike the prudent Protestants, and responded with tolerance to Māori dance and tattoo
Tattoo
A tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
ing. To Watkin's horror, Bishop Pompallier even told the local Māori that Hine, the wife of Maui
Maui
The island of Maui is the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands at and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is part of the state of Hawaii and is the largest of Maui County's four islands, bigger than Lānai, Kahoolawe, and Molokai. In 2010, Maui had a population of 144,444,...
, was the Virgin Mary. The Catholic Church lacked the resources to capitalize upon the Bishop's success and the Wesleyan
Methodism
Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...
s, left to themselves, regained the lost ground. But allegiances remained volatile. When Selwyn, walking south, swam a flooded river, an entire village joined his church.
Land-sales and the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi
In the 1830s and 1840s the Māori of Otago and Murihiku, possibly anxious for a strong Pākehā presence, agreed to sell many of their traditional lands. Back in 1833, a further sale of Murihiku land had taken place when Joseph Weller acquired from Te Whakataupuka the whole of Te Picamoke (Stewart Island) and two adjacent islands for one hundred pounds.In 1838, Tuhawaiki, accompanied by four chiefs, visited Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
and sold enormous tracts of land "with all the solemnity of archaic phraseology and legal circumlocution". Sydney speculators pursued the golden future with an enthusiasm which increased in intensity with the prospect of British annexation of New Zealand. On 14 January 1840, Governor Gorge Gipps of New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
issued a proclamation forbidding future sales, unless to the Crown, and warned that commissioners would investigate all titles already claimed and that, where appropriate, Crown grants would validate them. One month later, on 15 February 1840 during a second visit to Sydney, Tuhawaiki, Karetai and three subordinate chiefs, Kaikoarare, Taikawa and Poneke signed an agreement which "sold" the "Island of Te Waipounamu, also called the Middle Island of new Zealand, also the island called Stewarts island... together with all seas, harboiurs, coasts, bays, inlets, rivers, lakes, waters, mines, minerals, fisheries, woods, forests, liberties, franchises, profits, hereditaments... save and except such portions of the said island as have been already disposed of.. . and also the island of Robuchi". The purchase was made partly by cash payments and partly by annuities. Tuhawaiki signed for "One hundred pounds of lawful British money and an annuity of fifty pounds a year during the term of his natural life.". Hence by February 1840, every acre in Otago and Murihiku, as indeed in the entire South Island, had apparently been alienated by the Māori to hopeful speculators who gambled on receiving from the Crown some title commensurate with the expenses they alleged had been incurred.
The highly questionable nature of these transactions became more evident after Captain William Hobson
William Hobson
Captain William Hobson RN was the first Governor of New Zealand and co-author of the Treaty of Waitangi.-Early life:...
arrived at the Bay of Islands
Bay of Islands
The Bay of Islands is an area in the Northland Region of the North Island of New Zealand. Located 60 km north-west of Whangarei, it is close to the northern tip of the country....
on 29 January 1840 to win from the Māori allegiance to the British Crown. Then followed two proclamations, the second stating that Her Majesty could not acknowledge as valid any titles of land which were not derived from, or confirmed by the Crown. After the northern chiefs had signed the Treaty, Captain Nias set sail for the south in HMS Herald on 29 April and it was not until June that British Sovereignty over the South Island was proclaimed on Stewart Island. On 9 June the HMS Herald called at Ruapuke and Major Bunbury who was collecting signatures for the Treaty of Waitangi
Treaty of Waitangi
The Treaty of Waitangi is a treaty first signed on 6 February 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and various Māori chiefs from the North Island of New Zealand....
, recorded that "Tuhawaiki, who had recently returned from Sydney enriched by the spoils of commerce, came on board in full dress staff uniform of a British aide-de-camp, with gold laced trousers and cocked hat and plume in which he looked extremely well, accompanied by a native dress sergeant dressed in a corresponding costume." Tuhawaiki signed the Treaty without hesitation, his example being followed by Kakoura and Taiaroa who were also at Ruapuke at the time. Tuhawaiki also had a bodyguard of 20 men, all dressed in British uniforms, although they refused to wear boots.
The Scottish settlement scheme
The Otago Settlement, sponsored by the Free Church of ScotlandFree Church of Scotland (1843-1900)
The Free Church of Scotland is a Scottish denomination which was formed in 1843 by a large withdrawal from the established Church of Scotland in a schism known as the "Disruption of 1843"...
, took concrete form in Otago in March 1848 with the arrival of the first two immigrant ships from Greenock
Greenock
Greenock is a town and administrative centre in the Inverclyde council area in United Kingdom, and a former burgh within the historic county of Renfrewshire, located in the west central Lowlands of Scotland...
(on the Firth of Clyde
Firth of Clyde
The Firth of Clyde forms a large area of coastal water, sheltered from the Atlantic Ocean by the Kintyre peninsula which encloses the outer firth in Argyll and Ayrshire, Scotland. The Kilbrannan Sound is a large arm of the Firth of Clyde, separating the Kintyre Peninsula from the Isle of Arran.At...
) — the John Wickliffe and the Philip Laing. Captain William Cargill
William Cargill
William Walter Cargill was the founder of the Otago settlement in New Zealand, after serving as an officer in the British Army. He was a Member of Parliament and Otago's first Superintendent.-Early life:...
, a veteran of the Peninsular War
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
, served as the colony's first leader
Leadership
Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". Other in-depth definitions of leadership have also emerged.-Theories:...
: Otago citizens subsequently elected him to the office of Superintendent of the Province of Otago
Otago Province
The Otago Province was a province of New Zealand until the abolition of provincial government in 1876.-Area:The capital of the province was Dunedin...
.