Selected papers presented at the 7th annual conference of the Archives and Records Association of New

Zealand, New Plymouth, 16-19 August 1984.

ARCHIFACTS Bulletin of the Archives and Records Association of New Zealand

1985/2 June 1985

STOP PRESS

A statement has been issued by the National Librariar. concerning Reader services from the Alexander Turnbull Library, 1986-87.

The National Library regrets that an interim move of the Turnbull Library col lect ions and services from the present accommodation at 44 The Terrace cannot be avoided, because the lease w i l l not be renewed by the owners beyond 31 March 1986. While the move of the Library and the Reading Room to temporary premises w i l l cause some inconvenience to regular users and research workers, the National Library is adamant to minimise interrupt ion, and to f ind al ternat ive arrangements.

In 1984, the Government accelerated, by 2 years, the bui lding programme of the new National Library bui lding on Molesworth Street. The new bui lding wi 11 house the Turnbull and other National Library co l lec t ions . The ear l ie r bui lding completion sought to overcome or minimise lease expiry and other temporary accommodation problems, while providing readers with the new f a c i l i t i e s at an ear l ie r date. The target for bui lding completion is December 1986 and the bui lding is l i ke ly to be open for public use about Apr i l 1987.

The landlord's recent confirmation of the decision not to renew the lease means that further temporary accommodation for the Turnbull for the period from 1 Apr i l 1986 to early 1987 is being sought as a matter of urgency.

Some interruption to Turnbull Reader services was inevitable because of the extended preparation required by these special co l lec t ions , pr ior to moving to the new bui ld ing. The period of interruption w i l l now be considerably longer because of these accommodation d i f f i c u l t i e s , par t icu lar ly because of the time necessary for a double s h i f t , and the re la t ive ly short period of time between the two sh i f t s .

A l l users are advised to plan their research to reduce to a minimum their use of the Turnbull from January 1986 to May 1987.

As soon as we know more about accommodation, a statement w i l l be released on the period of c losure, what interim services can be offered from the Turnbul l , and what al ternat ive services can be offered from other elements of the National Library.

29 July 1985.

C O N T E N T S

INTRODUCTION

ARCHIVES OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD IN TARANAKI Rachel Li lburn 2

SOUTH TARANAKI - THE ACCOUNTS OF EARLY TRAVELLERS Ian Church 11

GENEALOGICAL ENDEAVOURS IN NORTH TARANAKI Pat George 15

THE HAWERA CENSUS OF 1881: A RECONSTRUCTION Bruce Ralston 18

POLISH AND GERMAN GENEALOGICAL AND FAMILY HISTORY

RESEARCH Ray Watemberg 21

BACKGROUND TO ST MARY'S CHURCH, NEW PLYMOUTH Margaret Al ington 23

THE ROLE OF STRATFORD COUNTY HISTORIAN D.E. Walter 27 ORAL HISTORY AS BIOGRAPHY : THREE CASE STUDIES

IN MAORI BIOGRAPHY G.V. Butterworth 30

THE ORIGINS OF NGA RAURU KITAHI Ruka Broughton 42

THE MAORI LAND COURT AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION Brian Herl ihy 45

TRANSLATING THE GREY MAORI MANUSCRIPTS FOR THE PUBLIC Jane McRae 49

MAORI POLICING IN NINETEENTH CENTURY NEW ZEALAND Richard H i l l 54

SUPPLEMENT : ANNUAL REPORTS 1984/85 OF THE ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ASSOCIATION

(between pp. 30-31)

PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL REPORT 1984-85 Sherwood Young i

STATEMENT OF INCOME AND EXPENDITURE FOR YEAR ENDED

31 MARCH 1985 Cathy Marr m

A

Archi facts i s the official bulletin of the Archives and Records Association of New Zealand Incorporated. It continues the bulletin of the same title, previously published by the Archives Committee of the New Zealand Library Association, 9 issues of which appeared between April 1974 and October 1976. The successor "new series" contained 24 issues (nos. 4 S 5, 7 S 8 were combined) with consecutive pagination from February 1977 to December 1982. From March 1983, issues of the bulletin are numbered sequentially within the year of publication, with the pagination commencing afresh with each issue. Currently, Archi facts i s published quarterly, at the end of March, June, September and December.

Subscriptions tc Archi facts are through membership of the Association at the current rates. (See inside back cover for details.) Copies of individual issues, however, will be available to non-members at NZ$6.00 per copy.

The membership year begins with the June issue and ends with the March issue.

Enquiries concerning the content of Archi fac ts ''including advertising) , non-receipt of an issue (or receipt of an imperfect copy), and requests for back or single issues should be addressed to the Editor.

All members (and others) are welcome to submit articles, short notices, letters, etc. to the Editor. Copy deadline i s the 15th of the month preceding publication (i.e., 15 May for the June issue, etc.). Book reviews should be sent directly to the Reviews Editor; details of accessions directly to the Accessions Co-ordinator.

EDITOR:

ASSOCIATE EDITORS:

Michael Hodder,

P.O. Box 28-011, Kelburn, Well ington

Cheryl Campbell c / - National Arch ives, P.O. Box 6148,

Te Aro, Wellington

Brad Patterson 20 Khyber Road, Seatoun, Wellington

Mark Stevens c / - National Archives, P.O. Box 2220,

Auckland.

REVIEWS EDITOR:

ACCESSIONS CO-ORDINATOR:

Richard Greenaway 8 Mascot P lace , Christchurch

Kay Sanderson, Manuscripts Sec t ion , Alexander Turnbull L ib rary , P.O. Box 12-349, Wel l ington.

Copyright for articles Sc. in Arch i facts rests with authors and the Association. Permission to reproduce should be sought, in writing, from the Editor.

ISSN 0303-7940

Β

A R C . H I V E S A N D R E C O R D S

A S S O C I A T I O N O F N E W Z E A L A N D I N C .

P.O. BOX 11-553 MANNERS STREET WELLINGTON, N.Z.

PATRON : Sir John Marshall

PRESIDENT:

VICE PRESIDENTS:

SECRETARY :

TREASURER: (ACTING)

COUNCIL

Sherwood Young 22 Taupo Crescent, Plimmerton

John Angus 23 Easther Crescent, Kew, Dunedin

Richard H i l l 53 Moana Road, Kelburn, Wellington

Barry Thomson c / - Pol ice Museum, NZ Pol ice College Private Bag, Porirua

Cathy Marr c / - National Archives, P.O. Box 5148,

Te Aro, Wellington.

EDITOR:

COUNCILLORS:

MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY: (TEMPORARY)

Michael Hodder P.O. Box 28-011, Kelburn, Wellington

Anne Bromell 4 Kathryn Avenue, Mt R o s k i l l , Auckland, 4

Graham Butterworth 83 Gloaming H i l l , Onepoto, Ti tahi Bay

Caroline Etherington c / - National Archives, P.O. Box 1308, Christchurch

Brian Henderson c / - Wanganui Museum, P.O. Box 352, Wanganui

Michael Hoare 58 Beauchamp Street, Tawa

Brad Patterson 20 Khyber Road, Seatoun, Wellington

Mary Reid

c / - Taranaki Museum, P.O. Box 315, New Plymouth

Cheryl Campbell c / - P.O. Box 11-553, Manners Street,

Wellington.

COMMITTEE CONVENORS

Archival education and training

Business archives

Labour archives

Records management

Religious archives

Women's archives

Michael Hodder P.O. Box 28011, Kelburn, Wellington

Kevin Bourke c / - ANZ Banking Group, P.O. Box 1492

Wei 1ington

Cathy Marr c / - National Archives, P.O. Box 6148

Wei 1ington

Rosemary Co l l i e r P.O. Box 11-100, Manners Street, Wei 1ington

Beverley Booth Warden's Lodge, Selwyn Col lege, Castle Street, Dunedin

Kay Matthews Education Dept, University of Waikato, Private Bag, Hamilton

SPOKESPERSONS

Architectural archives

Cartographic archives

Oral archives

Robin Gr i f f i n BNZ Archives, P.O. Box 2392, Wellington

Brad Patterson 20 Khyber Road, Seatoun, Wellington

Graham Butterworth 83 Gloaming H i l l , Onepoto, Ti tahi Bay

BRANCH CHAIRPERSONS

Auckland

Canterbury

Otago/Southland

Waikato

Wei 1ington

Verna Mossong 1 Bruce Road, Glenf ie ld , Auckland

In recess

Peter M i l l e r Hocken Library, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin

In recess

Stuart Strachan 41 Rose Street, Wellington

D

1985/2 June 1985

ARCHIFACTS Bulletin of the Archives and Records Association of New Zealand

Selected papers presented at the 7th annual conference of the Archives and Records Association of New

Zealand, New Plymouth, 16-19 August 1984

The seventh conference of the Association addressed two themes, 'Maori history and resources' and 'Resources for Ta-anaki regional researcn' Most papers presented are included in the fol lowing pages, the exceptions are Frank Rogers who spoke on the now published directory " f archiva repos t o n e s (Archives New Zealand), Jonathon Dennis, who spoke on 'Maori f i lm in the New Zealand Film Archive ' - or ra ther , provided a visual presentation unable to oe reproduced here, and Sharon D e l l , whose paper on the holdings of the Alexander Turnbull L ib ra ry ' s Manuscripts Section re la t ing to Maori topics was not ava i lab le for publ icat ion

I did not get to th is conference But as editor I have had the advantage of having to read a l l the papers o f fered, in much the way that someone attending the conference l i s tens to a l l the speaker1 - I ^ o ^ d n~t p ck înd choose The resul t i s uhat valuable new insights and information comes from papers which, in an optional s i t ua t i on , I might have passed over In add i t ion , of course, there were papers I was eager to read and where I was also stimulated The voice of the genealogist comes over strongly, merging with that of the local h i s to r ian , the academic h i s to r i an , the o f f i c i a l and the a rch iv i s t I did f ind par t icu lar in terest in the ideas of census reconstruction and of a conception r-f f nding aids to embrace a wider cu l tura l range in users but that re f l ec t s my own bias and concerns rather than an object ive assessment of a l l the papers ot^er readers w i l l have d i f fe rent favour i tes and a l l are worth reading

The impact of a conference would be a complex matter But i t i s feas ib le to state some of the ob jec t i ves , since these were aired at the time F i r s t , there was an intention to focus a regional community on the arch iva l resources i t had or which, although held elsewhere, re lated to i t People would ta lk to o thers , formally and informally about these resources - e i ther by recounting some of the i r research (and thereby inc identa l ly or de l ibera te ly saying something of the route they followed in par t icu lar reposi tor ies and in par t icu lar types of mater ia l ) or by discussing the holdings of par t icu lar ins t i tu t ions Both approaches were represented at the conference The second, and a natural consequence of the f i r s t was to establ ish the value of archives and par t i cu la r l y a rch iv i s t s The Sunday Express announced to i t s readers on 1 J u l y 1984

ARANZ wants to dispel the 'kenny Evere t t ' concept of an archive being a musty, dusty place in which antiquated a rch iv i s t s lurk behind stacks of papers and books I t would l i ke to show that a rch iv i s ts are part of the modern age and the i r work plays a relevant part in today's society and the stores of records and manuscripts are not only part of our heri tage but also essent ia l to our development

And th i rd was the desire to strengthen the Associat ion not only by publ ic is ing i t s existence and concerns but also by attract ing more members For u l t imate ly , without support in the community, the Associat ion would f a i l As a national associat ion ARANZ saw the conferences in New Plymouth and Hawke's Bay as a means of widening i t s membership base Of the three object ives i t i s the f i r s t which was most rea l ised and the th i rd which was least

2

ARCHIVES OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD IN TARANAKI

1 Introduction

Did you ever want to know how George St George improperly buried his horse in 1856? J

Maybe not, but there is a record of th i s h is tor ic occasion in the Taranaki provincial archives And chances are you may want to know more about th is oui te special period in New Zealand's and Taranaki 's history whereby, from 1853 to 1876, New Zealand had a system of quasi- federal ism in which government was large ly in the hands of the provinces

1 don't think I need to remind th i s audience how cruc ia l these years were for the European settlement of Taranaki versus the Maori Whatever your in te res t , a l l good researchers should make use of the relevant unpublished sources where they ex is t Once a researcher has made his or her f i r s t incursions into unpublished sources or a rch ives , they do become less fr ightening and, when guided to use them properly, a wealth of infor-mation is found in re la t ion to published textual sources

By archives i s meant those non-current records which are preserved inde f in i te ly for the i r admin is t rat ive, legal and h is to r i ca l value O f f i c i a l records tend to be more l i k e l y to survive and eas ier to locate than pr ivate records because o f f i c i a l records almost invar iab ly have successor bodies and formal arrangements made for the i r preservation National Archives, where I work, is a statutory body cater ing for the o f f i c i a l archives of government and necessar i ly l im i t s what records we hold fo r the Taranaki provincial period But not forgett ing the resources ava i lab le a t , for example, the Taranaki Museum, the New Plymouth Ci ty L ibrary , and the Turnbull L ib rary , I propose to take you on a " t i k i " tour ( i f you l i k e ) through the main groups of archives we have for th i s period from 1852 to 1876 a t a number of d i f ferent l e v e l s , but par t i cu la r l y the Prov inc ia l (or l o c a l ) Government and the General (or cen t ra l ) Government

2 Background

To give you a b i t of background information, the problem between 1846 and 1852 (with the establishment of provincial administrat ion) was that e f fec t i ve centra l ized government was impossible in condit ions whereby there was no regular communication between s e t t l e -ments The solut ion, under Governor Grey 's guidel ines, was to set up a separate govern-ment and miniature parliament in each of the larger towns unt i l New Zealand did become more uni f ied the land populated, trade establ ished and so on Grey did not include New Plymouth in his or ig inal proposals for provinces, possibly on account of the poor harbour i t then had and i t s small area

I t was only added a f te r the Secretary of State in England, S i r John Pakington, said he thought New Plymouth had as good a case for a Provinc ia l Council as the other s e t t l e -ments and gave i t one I t s boundaries were formed by the coast l ine from the mouth of the Patea River in the south to the mouth of the Mokau River in the north, thence up the Mokau River to i t s source and from there south to the Wanganui R ive r , along which the boundary ran for about 30 miles and thence to the mouth of the Patea River 2

I n te res t ing ly , attempts were made between 1856 and 1858 to extend New Plymouth province's boundaries, t ransferr ing to i t the Harbour of Kawhia from Auckland and a portion of the out ly ing d i s t r i c t of Well ington 3 That piece of p rov inc ia l i s t imperialism only resul ted in the changing of the province's name, under the Province of Taranaki Act , to that which we know i t now, Taranaki 4

3 Constitution Act 1852

Anyway, the Consti tut ion Act of 1852 establ ished a General Assembly with two chambers -that i s an elected House of Representatives and a nominated Leg is la t i ve Council I t also establ ished six provinces comprising Wel l ington, Auckland, Nelson, Otago, Canterbury and New Plymouth

The const i tut ion of the province was s imi lar to the others with an e lected Prov inc ia l Council to pass local laws and ordinances and a chief executive o f f i ce r ca l l ed a Superin-tendent e lected by the people a t large also Af ter the provinces were abolished in 1876, the Taranaki provincial archives were placed in the hands of a Mr Lawson (formerly the Superintendent's Clerk) They remained in his custody unt i l 1883 when he was instructed

3

by the Colonial Secretary to t ransfer them to the New Plymouth Lands Off ice They remained there unt i l a portion of them was t ransferred to National Archives in 1928, followed by the remain in 1952 5

4 Provincial Councils

Provinc ia l Councils were to l eg i s l a te for peace, order and good government provided that the i r l eg is la t ion did not con f l i c t with the subjects excepted under the 1852 Con-s t i tu t ion Act But the i r l eg is la t ion was always subject to the Governor's power of veto Their areas of respons ib i l i ty were

planning and construction of public works so l i c i t i ng immigrants and se t t l i ng them on the land maintaining a pol ice force school s prisons and hospitals and health , administering public lands f inancing of local bodies disease prevention amongst l ivestock noxious weed suppression maintenance of f e r r i e s and harbours and the supervision of purchase and survey of Maori land

Thus the Provinc ia l Councils became the forum for a whole host of decisions on matters of v i t a l local importance, par t i cu la r l y as provincial a f f a i r s intruded d i rec t l y on s e t t l e r s ' da i l y l i v e s in th is period The Council consisted o r ig ina l l y of nine mem-bers but, a t the time of abo l i t i on , i t had increased to sixteen

Hence the holdings of minutes and papers for the Provinc ia l Council are very impor-tan t , even more so because Taranaki was too poor to publish i t s Proceedings unlike the other f i v e provinces The Proceedings we hold from 1859 to 1867 are photocopies of a longhand journal held by the New Plymouth Publ ic L ib ra ry , from 1868 to 1873 we hold draf ts of proceedings,6 and from 1872 to 1875 a f a i r copy 7 However, a f i r e which burnt down the Provinc ia l Council Chambers in 1859 destroyed a l l the previous archives of the Council (and the Provinc ia l Treasury) leaving a major def ic iency in the records L i ke -wise, a l l the messages to the Council before 1861 and the great majority of se lect committee report are missing Nor are there any copies of ordinances between 1859 and 1863 in our holdings The printed sets_of ordinances for Taranaki in existence are very few and the i r completeness also var ies

5 Executive Council

An Executive Council of two was set up from amongst the members of the Provinc ia l Council in March 1866 with Thomas Kel ly (a lso Provincia l Secretary and Treasurer) and Wil l iam Mumford Burton The Prov inc ia l Attorney also held a seat "ex o f f i c i o " but withou the r ight to vote 8 The Superintendent should supposedly have acted by and with the ad-v ice and consent of th i s Executive I t may have been seldom ca l led as with other provin-ces l i ke Hawke's Bay but, as the minutes for the period 1866-76 do not surv ive, i t i s d i f f i c u l t to t e l l the extent of i t s functions and re lat ionship with the Superintendent

6 Speaker I

Some Speaker's correspondence, both inwards and outwards, surv ives, the l a t t e r covering from 1861 to 1875 The Speaker was elected by the Prov inc ia l Council and also had a d i rec t l i ne of communication with the Superintendent, although a lo t of the l e t t e r s deal with housekeeping matters for the Council 9

7 Superintendents

Undeniably personal i t ies played a large part in provincial p o l i t i c s whereby some of the best known and most popular men were elected to the Superintendencias The f i r s t Superintendent of New Plymouth province (and l a te r Taranaki province) was Charles Brown, elected in J u l y 1853 He was succeeded by George Cut f ie ld in 1857 but he served another term from 1861 to 1865 when H R Richmond was elected F W Carrington, elected in 1869, was Superintendent unt i l the abol i t ion of the province These men's papers therefore represent a s ign i f i cant part of the Taranaki provincia l papers concerned with provincia l

4

administration There are good sequences of inwards l e t t e r s to the Superintendents for the provincia l period which are divided into subgroups - l e t t e r s from the General ( i e , cen t ra l ) Government, l e t t e r s from local o f f i c i a l s and London Agents, and l e t t e r s from pr ivate indiv iduals 1 0 Herein one f inds gems of l e t t e r s l i k e those from George St George and they are an extremely r ich and probably under-ut i l ized source of information on society in Taranaki then

Topics deal t with are numerous

the growth of new settlements a t Patea, Hawera, Opunake and Waitara

immigration to the province a f te r the war

attempts to exploi t commercially various resources such as f lax and ironsand

the construction of harbour works

the development of communications

education and public health administrat ion

the establishment of local bodies

Notable, too, are those which deal with the mi l i ta ry side of things and the wars with the Maoris and, in par t i cu la r , the re lat ionship between the Prov inc ia l Government, the people of the province and the forces stat ioned there Moreover, because, apart from the Provinc ia l Treasurer 's papers, almost nothing survives in a comparable form from such provincia l o f f i c i a l s as

the Surveyor of Roads and Bridges the Prov inc ia l Attorney the Auditor the Harbour-Master the Storekeeper the Gaoler the Sergeant of Po l i ce the Cat t le Inspector the Inspector of Weights and Measures or the Poundkeeper

the i r correspondence with the Superintendent and v i ce versa becomes extremely valuable also for any h is to r ica l reconstruction

8 Provincial Treasurer

The papers of the Provinc ia l Treasurer include correspondence and o f f i ce papers l i k e cash books, accounts, r ece ip t s , estimates and warrants Although not a complete se -quence for the per iod, also included a^e l e t t e r s to Chilman m his capacity as Prov inc ia l Secretary and Immigration Of f icer 1 1 One needs to be aware of the frequent combination of ro les by provincial o f f i ce rs when researching, say, one facet such as immigration Most of th is correspondence deals with f inanc ia l matters but there are also some miscel lan-eous papers and l e t t e r s such as reports on the state of Maoris in 1856, a few inquests and l i s t s of publ icans' l icenses Accounts of provincia l revenue and expenditure, which were published regular ly in the Taranaki Provincial Gazette, would be supplementary to archival sources for both the Treasurer and Auditor For the l a t t e r , there a r e , for 1865 and for 1872-73, but six l e t t e r s surviv ing

9 Provincial Immigration

There was a Prov inc ia l immigration o f f i ce r from 1854 to 1872 and an Immigration Of f icer fo r the New Plymouth d i s t r i c t from 1872 to 1879 There are rea l l y only fragmentary records, and l i t t l e correspondence other than that to Chilman in h is capacity as Prov in-c i a l Treasurer mentioned before The Immigration records from Taranaki were t ransferred together with the Prov inc ia l Government records but were incorporated into the Immigration Department ser ies of arch ives I t consis ts of three items re la t ing to the nomination of immigrants from England 1 2 At the r i sk of being rude about my home province, the chances

5

of a lo t of people coming to Taranaki in i t s most troubled times are not great and possi-bly explains the seeming lack of documentation extant 1

10 Taranaki Relief Fund

Perhaps people were not coming to Taranaki but they were ce r ta in l y leaving temporarily a t leas t Af ter the outbreak of war in 1860, se t t l e rs in out ly ing d i s t r i c t s abandoned the i r farms and took refuge in New Plymouth or were evacuated for a time to Nelson or ( l ess commonly) Auckland Because so many refugees went to Nelson, the large quantity of adminis-t ra t i ve papers concerning them are in the Nelson provincial archives held by us 13 In addi t ion, National Archives has a microfi lm copy of papers r e l a t i v e to refugees including l i s t s but the o r ig ina ls are held by the Auckland Publ ic L ibrary In the years fol lowing the evacuation, homes were burnt, stock driven off or k i l l e d , the land deteriorated and se t t l e r s faced rum Hence, the Taranaki Re l ie f Fund Commission was establ ished m 1861 (about which more w i l l be said l a t e r ) to hear the claims fo r war damages and losses In the Taranaki Provincia l Archives there are two special sets of papers re la t ing to the a c t i v i t i e s of the Taranaki Re l ie f Fund which, in turn , consist of two d i f ferent Re l ie f Fund Boards The f i r s t set of papers re la te not to the a c t i v i t i e s of Provincia l o f f i c i a l s but to General Government o f f i c i a l s in Taranaki Two Sub-Commissioners were appointed by the Commission for Taranaki R e l i e f , a General Government o f f i c i a l These papers include reports and l e t t e r s from the l a t t e r , and l e t t e r s from the Superintendent giving p a r t i -culars of r e l i e f needed, a l l addressed to the Sub-Commissioners appointed in Taranaki There are a lso accounts and l i s t s of those in receipt of funds 1 4

Bu t , in J u l y 1863, the administration of th is Re l ie f Fund was wound up by the Government and the Province made responsible fo r i t s functions Hence the establishment of a Board of Publ ic Re l ie f to deal with a l l appl icat ions fo r r e l i e f of dest i tute persons The papers in the Taranaki Prov inc ia l Archives include minutes of the Board, appeals from the des t i tu te , l i s t s of appl icants for r e l i e f , and orders issued by the Board for food, c lothing and housing 1 5

Besides the i r in terest from a social h i s to r ian ' s point of view and the i r genealogical va lue, they are also of in terest from an archival point of view Because of the Const i -tut ion Act of 1852, there were some f i e l ds in which provincial government could not l eg i s l a te and which were l e f t to central government Only the General Government was able to

levy Customs dut ies

decide how much money was to go to the provinces

l eg i s l a te on the Supreme Court

l eg i s l a te on marriage, inher i tance, currency, postal se rv ices , weights and measures

and espec ia l ly race re la t ions

These were a l l areas where d i f ferent pract ices within the same colony would produce chaos

11 General Government m the Province

Hence, together with special General Government o f f i c i a l s such as the Sub-Commissioners of the Taranaki Re l ie f Fund, were a whole host of General Government o f f i c i a l s operating in the provincial period a t the provincial leve l maintaining Central Government's laws Except for the Commissioner of Crown Lands they were paid by the Government of New Zealand

This i s where the detect ive work begins as i t represents another v i t a l network in the provincial period of Taranaki Taranaki had, in 1866, for example 1 6

Registrat ion and Returning Of f icers Revising Of f icers a Sub-Treasurer a Court Regis t rar , Sher i f f and Cr ie r

6

an Inspector of Bankruptcy a Resident Magistrate a Coroner a Postmaster various Customs o f f i c i a l s a Regist rar of B i r t h s , Deaths and Marriages a Registrar of Deeds a Receiver of Land Revenue a Commissioner of Crown Lands and a C i v i l Commissioner

Again, as often with Prov inc ia l o f f i c i a l s , more than one post was held by one General Government o f f i c i a l This a f fec ts not only where a researcher would f ind material on them and the i r functions but a lso the i r surv ival rate I f three o f f i ces were combined in one person, then not three groups of papers have been los t but the papers of one person However, one would expect to locate these archives in the D i s t r i c t o f f i ce holdings for the various arch iva l groups such as Lands and Survey, Customs, J u s t i c e , Treasurer or Maori A f f a i r s

12 Commissioners of Crown Lands

For instance, Commissioners of Crown Lands were appointed for each province They were responsible i n i t i a l l y to the Colonial Secretary and, a f te r 1858, to the Secretary fo r Crown Lands While the Commissioner was a General Government o f f i c i a l he was usual ly nominated by the Prov inc ia l Government and paid from the i r funds The Commissioner was "ex o f f i c i o " chairman of various land boards through which the Taranaki province imple-mented the i r own regulations

The Commissioner of Crown Lands issued a l l Crown Grants and kept reg is ters of land sold or leased In the case of Taranaki , he was also involved in the invest igat ion of the New Zealand Company Land Claims Commission and the dispensing of land to mi l i ta ry se t t l e rs His papers include correspondence which i s somewhat incomplete, accounting papers, a l l o t -ment books, Crown Grant books, as wel l as the papers re la t ing to the Land Claims Commission and mi l i ta ry set t le rs ,17 and one Prov inc ia l Government Account Book for 1875 to 1876 1 8

The l a t t e r remains with the Lands and Survey-New Plymouth arch ives , probably being deposited with the Commissioner who took charge of a l l land and survey administration when the province was abolished

The duties for administering the Waste Lands Act of 1858 which set out the general condit ions for provinces dealing with Crown Lands, and control of both land and revenue, remained vested in a General Government o f f i c i a l However, the Land Board Minute Books for Taranaki date only from 1875, when the province was nearing i t s end

13 Receiver of Land Revenue

The Receiver of Land Revenue in the province co l lected a l l ren ts , fees and assess-ments on any land subject to transact ion The D i s t r i c t Of f ice material contains only Returns and Accounts for 1866 and Returns for 1867

14 Customs

However, when one looks at the Customs - New Plymouth mate r ia l , i t becomes apparent that between 1874 and 1878, the Customs Of f ice a lso acted as an o f f i ce for the Receiver of Land Revenue Regarding Customs records which survive for the provincia l per iod, there are outward letterbooks for 1856 to 1863 and 1871 to 1877, and a number of foreign shipping report books for roughly 1851 to 1874

15 Justice

The p lot thickens in the case of the D i s t r i c t J u s t i c e material The one item we have, an outward letterbook covering the period 1853 to 1872, was used by the Resident Magist rate, and the Returning Of f i ce r , and the Regist rar of B i r t h s , Deaths and Marriages, and the Coroner, and the Sub-Treasurer But they were a l l one man - Jos iah F l igh t - up unt i l March-April 1868 when H R Richmond took over and the book seems to have been used exc lus ive ly by the Resident Magistrate unt i l 1872 1 9

7

16 General Government Resources

Separate records, as such, for the Sub-Treasurer or , in pa r t i cu la r , the C i v i l Commissioner, whose papers are a very important ser ies for the Hawke's Bay Prov inc ia l per iod, do not survive

17 Civil Commissioners

C i v i l Commissioners were f i r s t appointed in 1862 by proclamation of the Governor under powers allowed him by the Native D i s t r i c t s Act His job was to ass is t the Maori to regulate the i r own local l i f e v ia "runanga" which existed only in areas of nat ive t i t l e which agreed to th is system and whose regulations over-rode those of the Provinc ia l Council To supplement th is amazing gap, one has to turn to central government records of the provin-c i a l period and use the i r annual s ingle number reg is t ra t ion system with accompanying reg is -ters which would record the a r r i va l of a l e t t e r in the department from a General Government o f f i c i a l The entr ies in the reg is ter usually have the name of theperson wr i t i ng , the date of the l e t t e r , the date of rece ip t , and subject , and usually the reg is ters are indexed e i ther by the name of the wr i te r , or by the subject of the l e t t e r , or by both With help from an a r c h i v i s t , one should be able to sight the or ig inal correspondence Thus, i f records do not survive for General Government o f f i c i a l s , one could maintain the pr inc ip le that they w i l l always have had to have been in contact with the General Government at some stage In turn , the General Government would have had to reply or generate an answer again which can often be traced through outward letterbooks of the department concerned

But , in some cases, t</en General Government records could be fragmentary Certa in ly the amount of Native Of f ice material surviving now has been ser iously prejudiced by a f i r e in the ear ly twentieth century which destroyed almost a l l of the pre-twentieth century registered inwards correspondence Hence, many of the l e t t e r s of Robert P a r r i s , C i v i l Commissioner from 1865 to 1876, 2 0 ex is t only as entr ies recorded in the Registers of correspondence although the outward letterbooks do survive

18 Sub-Treasurers

And so the story goes In contrast , a considerable amount of correspondence sur-v ives in central government Treasury records for the Sub-Treasurer in the provincial period in Taranaki Furthermore, pr ior to 1866, there i s another l i ne of communication between the Sub-Treasurers and the Colonial Secretary v ia special outwards letterbooks the l a t t e r had for replying to the former 2- 1 The Sub-Treasurer's job pr imari ly was to pay the sa la r ies of government o f f i ce rs employed in the areas and any costs incurred by them in the course of the i r duties

19 Provincial Officials and the General Government

At th is stage one might note that the Superintendent for Taranaki province, as other Superintendents, had a d i rec t l i n e of communication with the Colonial Secretary also And as i t would be unusual for provincial o f f i ce rs to correspond d i rec t l y with the General Government, the i r l i ne of communication is going to be through the Superintendent

Therefore a lo t of material re la t ing to the provincial period in Taranaki may be located in the correspondence systems of the Colonial Secre ta ry ' s Of f i ce ( the forerunner of the Department of Internal A f f a i r s ) And as with the Sub-Treasurers there are special outwards letterbooks for the Superintendents, divided a f te r 1863 into North Is land and South Is land to the time of abol i t ion of provincia l governments 2 2

Moreover, the papers of the Taranaki Re l ie f Fund Sub-Commissioners mentioned e a r l i e r in th is ta lk should be read in conjunction with a special set of papers or archives of the Chief Commissioner held in the Internal A f fa i r s Department 2 3 These contain a large amount of material on the claims and awards made, various pet i t ions and memorials from Taranaki s e t t l e r s , and registered f i l e s extracted from the main sequence of the Colonial Secre ta ry ' s Of f ice registered f i l e s I t i l l u s t r a tes very well the need for a researcher on the Taranaki provincial period to be aware of a l l the p o s s i b i l i t i e s , to be able to work out systemat ica l ly , mentally and on paper which organizations or persons (creat ing agencies) are l i ke l y to have made records of relevance to the research, and then to determine i f they have survived and where

8

20 Military Resources

F i n a l l y , no descript ion of the resources ava i lab le at National Archives for the provincia l period would be complete without mentioning those for the m i l i t a ry Although I fee l th is 2s a huge topic in i t s e l f , I ' l l attempt to elaborate as with provincia l and general and centra l government archives how one could approach the records surviv ing

In Taranaki there were operating a confusingly large number of Imperial troops and Colonial t roops, the l a t t e r which also included m i l i t i a and volunteer units To whom they were responsible were quite d i f fe rent The Imperial forces and the i r Commanders-in-Chief had the i r own central m i l i t a ry organization and when they did correspond with the central government i t tended to be through the Governor who had his own special correspondence system for naval and mi l i ta ry o f f i ce rs Often the Governor would re fe r such l e t t e r s in a dupl icate to the Defence Of f ice although the normal channel of communication for Imperial o f f i ce rs would not be as such There are good descr ip t ive l i s t s for these l e t t e r s although not a complete sequence of Governor's outward letterbooks to complement them

In the case of the Colonial Forces, the need to ident i fy the o f f i ce rs who would be corresponding and creat ing records, through the Registers of Commissions in order to use the main correspondence systems of the Defence Department i s impor tan t 2 4 In that way one can f ind out a great deal about the m i l i t a ry operations in Taranaki

I t becomes a more economical process in working from the index to the reg is ter of incoming l e t t e r s to the l e t te rs themselves and to i so la te the corresponding reply A lso , from 1859 to 1865, alongside the Defence Of f ice existed a separate record-keeping for the Deputy Adjutant General who was mainly involved with the housekeeping and administrat ive s ide , including staf f Of f icers of the Colonial Forces in Taranaki would wr i te to both, but the l a t t e r i s very useful in locat ing personal information on men who may have served but whose l ines of communication would be through the i r o f f i ce rs

Another perhaps quicker source of information is contained in the Maori War Medal ser ies of reg is ters and f i l e s , in which are recorded l i t e r a l l y thousands of men, both Imperial and Co lon ia l , who applied for and received a medal for serv ice in the various wars in New Zealand Although not arranged by province, they are indexed by the name of the appl icant or rec ip ient Also included in the Defence Department records i s material on the Taranaki M i l i t a r y S e t t l e r s , a Colonial Force raised outside the province, mainly in Otago and Austra l ia who, as a condit ion of the i r se rv i ce , were to receive a grant of land s imi lar to the Waikato M i l i t a r y Se t t l e r s 2 5

For the Waikato M i l i t a r y S e t t l e r s , there are a r e l a t i ve l y good set of records for the Headquarters and the Paymaster and Nominal and Descript ive R o l l s , Land Registers and fragments of correspondence to the 2nd and 4th M i l i t i a Regiments In cont rast , the Nominal and Descript ive Rol l Book for the Taranaki M i l i t a ry Se t t l e r s s u r v i v e s ^ While that i s not the only re lated a rch ive , in order to gain an impression of how the force operated, one would need to fol low the guidel ines spoken about previously for using archives to the i r f u l l e s t potential

M i l i t a ry se t t le rs were to make a considerable and cumulative impression on the land-scape of Taranaki In both Head Of f ice and D i s t r i c t material for the Lands and Survey are papers re la t ing to m i l i ta ry s e t t l e r s , both Colonial and Imper ia l , who were g iven, when discharged, grants of land by the provincial government of Taranaki , including the Taranaki m i l i t a ry se t t l e rs From s t a t i s t i c s for the per iod, i t i s qui te c lear that the land d i s -posed of to naval and m i l i t a ry men was quite out of proportion to the s ize of the province and that most of that was confiscated land - almost a mi l l ion acres al together

21 End of the Provinces

Without gett ing into a deta i led discussion over the reasons for the abol i t ion of the provinces to end th i s t a l k , su f f ice to say that whi le provincial governments lasted for twenty y e a r s , once central government was f i n a l l y establ ished with the w i l l and the means to control the colony, the former became obsolete

The two main issues in the 1850s and 1860s were the re la t ions with the Maoris and the respect ive powers and r ights of provincia l and general governments A las t ing source of discontent with Taranaki province were the terms of f inanc ia l and land arrangements because, being war- torn, they had l i t t l e land to buy or se l l and hence were always short

9

of funds for colonisat ion and development Therefore, the province also resented central governmment's control over Maori a f f a i r s because of the l a t t e r ' s fears that i f se t t le rs control led the i r own p o l i c i e s , there would be war against the Maoris'

The course of the sevent ies , however, saw Vogel come into power and more was to be gained from central government by Taranaki as i t gradually assumed the responsib i l i ty for colonizat ion and development and so on I t became c lear that , by now, provincial govern-ments no longer carr ied out the i r or ig inal functions and the i r existence was a source of b i t t e r national con f l i c t s In 1875, Parliament agreed to a tota l abol i t ion of the pro-vinces in the fol lowing year and the Prov inc ia l Councils did not meet again

Rachel L i lburn National Archives

REFERENCES

(All references are to National Archives, Wellington)

1 TP 5/12 General inwards l e t t e r s from >private persons, Jan-Dec 1856

2 IA 1 , 1862/1540 Plan drawn by Octavius Carnngton (Prov inc ia l Surveyor) , 29 Apr i l 1862

3 Le 1/1856/33 Taranaki B i l l

4 Statutes of New Zealand, 1858 (session I I ) no XLV

5 ARCH 451/2e NA 4/3/3 Accessioning - provincial archives - Taranaki

6 TP 1/1C

7 TP 1/2

8 Taranaki Provincial Gazette, 1856, pp 15-16

9 TP 2

10 TP 4 , TP 5

11 TP 11/1

12 Im-NP Items 1-3

13 HP 25 (Taranaki Re l i e f Fund) ¡

14 TP 9 (Taranaki Re l i e f Fund Sub-commissioners)

15 TP 10 (Board of Publ ic R e l i e f )

16 AJHR 1866 D-3B Return of o f f i ce rs in the employ of the provincial governments

17 LS-NP 18, 50, 5 1 , 52

18 LS-NP 53

19 JC-NP 1/1

20 MA 25/1 (Index to serv ice in the Native Department)

21 IA 4/243-244

22 IA 4/176-195

23 IA 132 (Taranaki Re l i e f Fund Commissions, 1861)

24 AD 20 (Army l i s t s and reg is ters of commissions, 1862-1930)

25 AD 31/8-10 (Papers re la t ing to the Maori War period)

26 AD 31/8

11

SOUTH TARANAKI - THE ACCOUNTS OF EARLY TRAVELLERS

We are a l l used to the old imbalance of New Zealand history which focussed on the missionary endeavours in Northland and a l l but neglected the seal ing and whaling s e t t l e -ments in the far south, which described the IWakefleid settlements and Auckland while the rest of New Zealand apparently hardly existed In Maori h istory the same imbalance has occurred Areas such as Northland before the 1850s and the Waikato before the 1870s are wel l -covered, the At i Awa, the Tuhoe, and the Ngati Porou a l l have the i r hour upon the stage while other t r ibes get l i t t l e i f any mention This is pa r t i cu la r l y true of the t r ibes of South Taranaki - the area between New Plymouth and Wanganui The Ngati Ruanui have received a somewhat undeserved notor iety for the so-ca l led "Land League1 and involvement in the subsequent wars, the Taranaki t r ibe are known for the i r prophets such as Te Ua Haumene, the Nga Rauru t r ibe never warrant a mention

One reason for th is s i tuat ion i s the apparent lack of source material and i t was th i s problem that I t r i ed to overcome using a l l the accounts 1 could f ind of ear ly t r a v e l l e r s in South Taranaki before 1860

The European explorers Tasman, Cook and Marion du Fresne are quickly dealt with In the i r journals they recorded the i r passage of the Taranaki coast and the few place names they bestowed but they did not land The honour of being the f i r s t European to set food in Taranaki probably belongs to some unknown sealer from Captain Chace's ship the "Pegasus" which sought seals on the Sugar Loaf Islands in l a te 1809 Through the

publ icat ion Of J S Cumpston'S and I Nicholson's Shipping Arrivals and Departures from Sydney 1788 to 1843, i t i s now easier to t race the movements of the ear ly sealers and whalers and i t is c lear that the Taranaki coast was well-known among such men long be-fore John Love and Dicky Bar re t t landed at Nga Motu in 1828 Theirs was pr inc ipa l ly a f lax- t rading stat ion and the i r a c t i v i t i e s af fected the whole coast Other traders from Port Waikato and Kapit i Is land co l lec ted f lax from the South Taranaki t r ibes I t was th is trade which provided them with the weapons to f i r s t r es i s t the Waikato invaders and f i n a l l y to take a decis ive stand against them at Waimate Pa in 1836

Obviously ear ly missionaries were a s ign i f i cant group of t r ave l l e r s but i t i s important to note that Chr is t ian i ty was introduced among these t r ibes as ear ly as 1837 by men released from slavery in the north, notably Wiremu Nera The f i r s t missionary to walk through South Taranaki was Octavius Hadfield in February 1840 The population of about a thousand which had survived the northern ra iders and not sought refuge further south was concentrated in the coastal pas of Ihupuku on the Waitotara R ive r , Haere Ao on the Patea, Waimate a t the mouth of the Kapuni Stream and Otumatua, south of Opunake Hadfield recorded that hundreds assembled for worship a t these places and eagerly wanted instruct ion

The Wesleyan missionaries extended the i r work southward from Kawhia and the Reverends Samuel I rons ide, Aldred and But t le accompanied hundreds of released slaves to the i r homes in South Taranaki in June 1840 I rons ide 's contemporary reports and l a te r reminiscences record that there were chapels with pulpi ts a t both Patea and Waitotara The people he said were "very ignorant, noisy, boisterous" and sometimes asked "the most absurd questions" but "everywhere they were s incerely inquir ing a f te r the t ru th"

Unfortunately just what par t icu lar brand of ' t r u t h ' they adopted was to bedevil the next few years The Wesleyans claimed the west coast of the North Is land as the i r pre-serve and were more than put out when the Anglicans sent the Reverend John Mason to Wanganui Mason, Hadfield and Selwyn were very narrow-minded towards the Wesleyans a t f i r s t and, in Selwyn's two journeys through Taranaki in 1842 and 1843, he raised the f i r e s of re l ig ious schism by claiming that Wesleyan baptisms and marriages were not pro-per and would need to be done again The untutored 'conver ts ' took th is posit ion to extremes and where before both sects had worshipped and studied together, from 1843 they bu i l t separate chapels and in one case divided the v i l l age by a fence between the adherents of the two churches

Al l th is was recorded by the missionar ies, notably by the Reverend Henry Turton, as well as by one of the i r strongest c r i t i c s , young Edward Jermngham Wakefield who recorded in his Adventures m New Zealand h is several walks through the area in the ear ly 1840s The man on the spot who had to t ry to reconci le the fact ions was the Reverend John Skevington whose l e t t e r s to the Wesleyan Mission Secre tar ies in the l i b ra ry of S t John 's

12

College are almost the only record of his labours in South Taranaki between May 1842 and his ear ly death in September 1845 Fortunately h is Anglican counterpart in Wanganui was the Reverend Richard Taylor who never saw eye to eye with Selwyn and helped to dampen the worst excesses of exclusiveness

Tay lo r ' s d ia r ies are invaluable for recording much of what was happening in South Taranaki between 1843 and 1860 In most years he made three or four journeys through the d i s t r i c t , on occasions continuing on through Wai tara, up the Mokau River and down the Wanganui back to Put ik i As a balance to the missionary accounts, surveyors l i k e Robert Stokes, Charles Heaphy and Wi l l iam Deans, land-seekers l i ke John Wade and adventurers l i ke young Wakefield wrote l e t t e r s home, reports for ear ly newspapers and books which t e l l of the i r experiences in and impressions of South Taranaki

Donald McLean as sub-protector of the Aborigines and l a te r as Inspector of Po l i ce a t New Plymouth has also l e f t fragmentary documentation of the 1840s period He was the f i r s t to meet the so-ca l led 'Warea Delusion' - the f i r s t Maori adaptation of Chr is t ian -i t y recorded in Taranaki Most of what we know of th i s movement comes from the Reverend H H Turton's l e t t e r s to the Wesleyan Mission Sec re ta r i es , supplemented by Richard Tay lo r ' s diary The leader of the movement was Hakopa Nikau who preached that he had seen God and his angels and that the Kingdom of God was about to be set up in Taranaki There were obvious borrowings from the scr iptures in the use of 'Amine' as an al l -purpose blessing and Hakopa's intention to div ide the ocean so that h is fol lowers could walk on dry land to England Their knowledge of the B ib le enabled them to counter Turton's quotation that "No man has seen God" with "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God" >

This movement soon died out but i t showed how important i t was to have resident missionaries to explain the true interpretat ion of scr ip ture The Wesleyans soon appointed the Reverend Wi l l iam Woon to replace Skevington a t Waimate with Wi l l iam Hough as catech is t a t Patea The Reverend George Stannard was l a te r appointed to Waitotara and the Lutheran J F Riemenschneider was taken under the Wesleyan wing a t Warea Hough and Stannard l e f t l i t t l e documentation of the i r work but Riemenschneider kept up a valuable correspondence with Donald McLean and Wi l l iam Woon kept up the journal he had begun in 1834 Further information w i l l become ava i lab le when Riemenschneider's reports to the North German Missionary Society of Bremen are t ranslated

From T a y l o r ' s , Woon's and Riemenschneider's wr i t i ngs , i t i s c lear that the l a te 1840s were the peak years for Chr is t ian i ty in South Taranaki Many chapels and churches were b u i l t , reading and wr i t ing became widespread accomplishments, and old pract ices such as in fant ic ide disappeared Wi l l iam Woon made a perceptive ob ject ive judgment in November 1846 when he wrote " I f a great deal of pos i t ive good i s not done a great deal of ev i l i s prevented "

The high point of Chr is t ian i ty must have been the martyrdom of Mamhera Poutama and Kereopa, teachers from Waokena near modern Hawera, who volunteered to take the Chr is t ian message to the i r o ld enemies the Wuwharetoa of southern Taupo On 12 March 1847 the two men were ambushed and k i l l ed in payment for the deaths of the ch ie fs Tauteka and Te Whakarau a t Waitotara in 1841 But the deaths did not lead to a new round of t r iba l wars as they once would have done - rather there was reconc i l ia t ion sealed by the bui lding of a church at Poutu on Lake Rotoaira

Chr i s t i an i t y , however, was soon to have a r i va l for the people's in terest Other t r ibes had sold land and used the money to acquire European clothing and tools Unt i l the l a t e 1840s che people of South Taranaki had used barter to acquire the guns, f i s h -hooks, tobacco and clothing which they wanted The return of the At i Awa from Waikanae to Waitara in 1848 marked the beginning of the commercial s p i r i t among the Maoris of the South Taranaki Only then did some members of the Ngati Ruanui want to se l l land as the Taranaki t r ibe had done the previous year a t Tataraimaka and Omata Through the accounts of government o f f i c i a l s such as G S Cooper, we learn that land was offered a t Patea, Kaupokonui and Cape Egmont But the would-be se l l e r s proved to be a minority and the i r act ions provoked a ser ies of t r i ba l meetings, the f i r s t of wmich was held a t Turangarere ( in land from Hawera) in May 1849 From th i s meeting the ru le that no member of the Ngati Ruanui could se l l land without the consent of the whole t r i be was enunciated This was reinforced by other meetings which brought in the Taranaki and Nga Rauru t r i bes as well - but not the A t i Awa

13

The culmination of th i s movement was the ( great meeting a t Manawapou in May 1854 when representat ives of the South Taranaki tmbes set out the boundaries of the i r lands from Mowhanau in the south to Okurukuru, near|Omata, in the north This was communicated to Major Dune , the Resident Magistrate in Wanganui and the l e t t e r i s s t i l l in the National Archives under the innocuous reference "Two l e t t e r s to the Pesident Magistrate" I t is c lear that the so-ca l led 'Land League' about which McLean and others made so much was a purely South Taranaki a f f a i r Though other t r iba l representat ives were present, including Matene Te Whiwhi and Tamihana Te Rauparahu, th i s was not the beginning of the King Movement

I t was pure coincidence that the troubles in North Taranaki - the Puketapu feud -broke out in August 1854, though McLean was to asser t that the Land League was responsible The Ngati Ruanui did not become involved in the feud unt i l l a te in November when one of the i r number was shot for adultery with t h ° wife of Ihaia te Kinkumara, one of the leaders From then on the Ngati Ruanui were to be ident i f ied with the an t i - l and -se l l e rs of the A t i Awa but th is ' a l l i a n c e ' was ce r ta in l y not a smooth or continuous one and when Te Reí Hanataua's son, P i r i p i , was k i l l e d a t Ninia Pa in Apr i l 1856 the South Taranaki people were incensed and the i r involvement in the Puketapu feud came to an end These events are well-documented in printed Parliamentary Papers and in the Grey Papers at the Auckland Publ ic L ibrary

The Puketapu feud and problems over land general ly interrupted the 'progress' that was being made among the three t r i bes During the l a t e 1840s and ear ly 1850s, new forms of agr icu l ture were taken up, notably wheat growing I t is in terest ing to read Major J C Richardson's account of his journey through South Taranaki in December 1852 where he described the "very f i n e , highly cu l t i va ted" blocks of land around Ohangai and wrote "the whole appearance of the place more c lose ly resembled an English farm than anything we had ye t seen in New Zealand"

Wheat f lour ished in those years and f lourmi l l s were bu i l t from 1846, the Taranaki t r ibe had at l eas t three, the Ngati Ruanui three with another not ye t completed and the Nga Rauru had one They were bu i l t by European mi l lwr ights with Maori assistance and were paid for a t f i r s t with pigs The m i l l s bu i l t in the 1850s were paid for with money and th is is a s ign i f i can t development The missionaries began to f ind that the i r lessons were ignoredias the people's thoughts were nearly a l l engaged in "gett ing money and property"

Some of the teachers began to bui ld larger houses with three rooms, chimneys, win-dows, and fu rn i tu re , some men bought horses which were a l l the rage in the 1850s, sub-t r ibes acquired the i r own c a t t l e , while guns, c lo th ing, iron tools and tobacco continued to be in demand Most income came from the sale of pigs which were driven to New Plymouth, Wanganui and even as fa r as Well ington Other sources of money were the recovery and sale to co l lec tors of moa-bones from old butchery s i t e s , ass is t ing stock-drovers in ferry ing sheep over r i ve rs and hir ing out labour to the At i Awa and to the se t t l e r s a t New Plymouth Trading expeditions to the towns of Wanganu(i and New Plymouth were regular events when not interrupted by the northern feud

Doubtless th is c loser oontact with Europeans had both pos i t ive and negative resul ts From the European point of view surviv ing pol ice reports from New Plymouth record a number of minor incidents which kept the inhabitants wary The few d ia r ies of t r ave l l e r s in th is period re f l ec t the same wariness John Morgan wrote of one family group who took horses and c a t t l e from Tataraimaka to Kai Iwi in 1854 such an expedition "was something other than a picnic - no roads, no br idges, the whole country jus t a primeval wi lderness, the Maoris jus t emerging from a condition of savagery and cannibalism - i t was an enterpr ise only brave women could face"

Despite such reservat ions a large number of European t r a v e l l e r s passed safely through South Taranaki, including such notables as ( Lord Robert C e c i l , S i r Wi l l iam Mart in , Attorney-General Wi l l iam Swainson, and young S Percy Smith In the l a t e 1850s there were some troubles a t Patea over fe r ry charges and the grazing of horses in which Peter Imlay and members of the Treweek family of Kai Iwi were embroiled The resul t ing court cases reported in the wanganui chronicle provide the h is tor ian with a glimpse of what was happening in that d i s t r i c t as tensions between the Maoris and the apparently never-ending flow of European immigrants increased

This growing tension resul ted in the rev iva l of the idea of a Maori King among the

14

Waikato t r ibes Though the idea was i n i t i a l l y re jected i t had secóme accepted by the t r ibes of the central North Is land by 1858 The two pr incipal contenders for the o f f i ce were Te Wherowhero and Iwikau te Heuheu, neither of whom, given past ra ids into South Taranaki , was par t i cu la r l y acceptable to i t s people Though some ind iv idua ls , notably Tauke te Hapimana took part in the se lect ion proceedings around Lake Taupo, the t r i bes as a whole held aloof unt i l January 1859 when envoys were sent to them from Kawhia The Taranaki t r i be had been upset by the act ions of Tamati Wiremu Te Ngahuru of Poutoko, Oakura, who had se t t led minor boundary problems with the Europeans without reference to the rest of the t r i be and they decided at a meeting a t Warea to give the i r a l leg iance to the King

The Ngati Ruanui had held several meetings about jo in ing but had re jected the idea However by ear ly 1859, as the Reverend Whiteley reported they were " f u l l " of the King movement as the only way to preserve the i r land Some of the strongest supporters were a t Patea and the f i r s t f lagpole was noted there by the Reverend Taylor in December 1859

The Nga Rauru t r i be were less enthusiast ic and the attempt to get them to jo in the king had the e f fec t of sp l i t t i ng the Manawapou a l l i ance of 1854 Rather than be to ld what to do with the i r land they decided to se l l the block of land between the Waitotara River and Kai Iwi to the government Surveying th i s block and marking out the extensive t r i ba l reserves was to take four years

The Manawapou a l l i ance suffered another s p l i t when the Ba t t l e of Waireka was fought on 28 March 1860 Far from jo in ing Wiremu Kingi te Rangitake and his people a t Wai tara, which might have seemed the log ica l move to make, or even having a l l the i r forces mobilised in time for the b a t t l e , the South Taranaki t r i bes were f a t a l l y fragmented The pick of the young men of the Nga Ruahine hapu under Tamati Hone Oraukawa were away at Ngaruawahia to give in the i r a l leg iance to the king The rest of the men of the Ngati Ruanui were so unprepared for ba t t le that most of them ar r ived too l a t e to take part in i t I t i s c lear that the prec ip i ta te act ion was the resu l t of long-standing grievances over the Omata Block on the part of some members of the Taranaki t r ibe who saw the troubles a t Waitara as the opportunity to resolve them

The Ba t t l e of Waireka was a d isaster for the t r i bes of South Taranaki , the Ngati Ruanui and Taranaki los t 17 ch ie fs including Te Reí Hanataua Some of Wiremu Nera 's people had hastened up to t r y to stop the f ight and on the i r way home they plundered Taranaki v i l l ages as an expression of the i r displeasure The Reverend Thomas G i lber t l e f t the best account of th is period and th i s can be supplemented from the reports of Riemenschneider and of Well ington Carrington who had married into the Taranaki t r i be

The ba t t le was a d isaster in another sense for the government could claim that the t r i bes of South Taranaki were in league with Wiremu Kingi and the k ing i tes to t ry to dr ive the Europeans into the sea None of New Zealand's governors ever v i s i t ed the t r ibes to ascer ta in the i r t rue fee l ings or to t ry to reconci le them to an i r reve rs ib le s i tua t ion , though both Gore-Browne and Grey had planned such v i s i t s Af ter 1860 the road through South Taranaki was closed to Europeans unt i l reopened by m i l i ta ry force in 1865-66

In th i s br ie f paper i t has only been possible to mention a few of the people I have ca l l ed "ear ly t r a v e l l e r s in South Taranaki" and to indicate the way in which the i r accounts can be put together to throw l i gh t on one of the ' f r inge areas ' of New Zealand's history In the twenty years between 1840 and 1860 over 350 such t r a v e l l e r s have been i den t i f i ed , some l e f t behind only a br ie f mention of the i r journey, others l e f t inva lu-able accounts Doubtless in our a rch ives , and in archives overseas, there w i l l be other d ia r ies and l e t t e r s which could throw l i gh t on th i s period This is part of the f a s c i -nation of working in the archives and records f i e l d

Ian Church

Wanganui Regional Museum

15

GENEALOGICAL ENDEAVOURS IN NORTH TARANAKI t!

My ta lk is on the f i e l d of t ranscr ib ing of Headstone/Cemetery Records and access to o f f i c i a l records

Transcribing headstones in Te Henui cemetery in 1980 was when and where I f i r s t started I drove one sunny morning to Te Henui to meet another group member, and I was armed with penc i l s , paper, c l i p board, dish washing brush, chalk, tea and sandwiches, pushchair and baby I t took us a while to get started as neither had done the job before and only had wr i t ten instruct ions to follow After an hour, we sat on the edge of a grave drinking our morning tea when suddenly out of the blue, "Good morning, Mrs Karu" "Good morning, Mrs Karu" echoed about for ty times as a c lass from the New Plymouth Boys' High School ran past on the i r morning jog through the cemetery My husband i s a Scout leader and some of those boys were his Scouts Karu is his Scouting name The second day we were s t i l l on that same row, when we came across hal f a headstone, we looked around and real ised we were in the spot where a bulldozer had tipped over the bank above "Could i t have broken that headstone and maybe i t ' s been pushed over the bank below towards the r i v e r , " says I We looked through a gap in the hedge and there was part of a headstone, could i t be, down we j scrambled Turned i t over and brushed some of the d i r t off i t Oh1 yes i t is Up t h e ' h i l l we pushed, pul led, grunted, giggled and shoved across the path to the grave and placed the two parts together Now we could transcibe no 60, only 9,940 to go I t read 'Minnie V-ckers 1872 - 1900'

In 1981 Ray Watemberg and I paid a v i s i t to David Lean, the Mayor of New Plymouth requesting the use of students in the holidays to help t ranscr ibe the cemeteries He thought our idea a good one and told us to go along to see the Ύ ' Job Creation Scheme We made an appointment with Des Whelan and told him of our proposal, along with a l e t t e r to make i t a l l o f f i c i a l , in wr i t ing He suggested weh?/e P E P workers or a six month scheme instead of students for six weeks, we agreed and within a month the Labour Department had supplied us with four g i r l s to t ranscr ibe Te Henui Three months l a te r i t was completed We now have 53 cemeteries transcribed in the North Taranaki area which covers Opunake to Mokau along the coast and across to Whangamomona

Transcribing, checking, typ ing, checking, indexing, checking, is slow, tedious work but very rewarding when you see the books complete One amusing incident that happened while the P E P workers ve>e t ranscr ib ing Te Henui was when Joanne was standing on a large concrete grave to read the headstone I t was very hard to see and she was t o t a l l y absorbed in t ry ing to decipher the words when, suddenly, the concrete gave way and th is warm feel ing l i ke a hand went up her leg W e l l , she took off screaming down the path for about a hundred yards before she stopped Everybody rushed over to see what had happened The story was told and then they a l l had a good laugh the warmth was the a i r between the set t led earth and concrete which escaped through the break

While I was concentrating on the cemetery records, another member of our group was busy typing copies of the marriages pre-1915 from the Methodist records s t i l l held in New Plymouth She then presented our group with a copy Not long a f te r that our group had one of i t s meetings in the New Zealand room of the New Plymouth L ibrary , and saw some books wr i t ten by Fred But le r which included baptisms from the Wesleyan Methodist Church We obtained a photocopy of these and then typed cards and eventual ly a book in alpha-bet ical order The worm was s tar t ing to work, I was hooked I f we had these records, then perhaps we could get more

I started to research a cemetery ca l led Koru, on Plymouth Road between Okata and Oakura, part of a monastery with the same name I did research in the Library and Museum, went to see the farmer who now owns the property, and to the Cathol ic Church in New Plymouth ca l led St Joseph ' s , to t r y and f ind the names of the people buried there and any records from the monastery They could only f ind one person at that time buried there whose name was Brother E l i a s Regis , but there are eight graves The farmer had given me a couple of names and the papers I was slowly accumulating on the monastery indicated some more, then a l e t t e r from a lady in F i j i brought another name S t i l l the church could not help me as i t was in the period where there is a gap in the i r records I asked i f these were the only copies of the books and they said yes I mentioned what had been done with the Methodist records and perhaps they would be interested in some P E P workers copying the i rs They agreed and so we employed more P E P g i r l s to copy S t Joseph's baptisms, bur ia ls and marriages along with Te Kenui cemetery burial records, to make i t a six month scheme

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Meanwhile, I was s t i l l stuck with confirming the people buried in Koru, so off I went to the New Plymouth Court House and a very helpful ass is tant and myself went through the books and found out eight names Success By th is time I had accumulated over 50 pages of information on Koru from previous researchers and so I wrote an a r t i c l e describing the dwell ing and surroundings, pointing out there i s nothing l e f t due to the bui lding being burnt in a f i r e in the ear ly 1900s and a bush f i r e destroying the wooden headstones, and a young g i r l using the picket fence surround to the cemetery for k indl ing wood

Again that worm was wiggl ing, and I spoke to Lewese Davies who was then the secre-tary of the New Plymouth Genealogical group, " I f only we could get the Court House records on b i r t hs , deaths and marriages " Off we went to see Mr Franklyn at the New Plymouth Court House At that time he was thinking of rewr i t ing the indexes as he knew they had errors He would check with the Registrar-General and l e t us know We f loated out of there on cloud nine with f ingers crossed A week l a t e r , YES, we could use P E P workers there , i t was to be a p i l o t scheme for the whole of New Zealand We went back to the Ύ ' armed with a wr i t ten request for more P E P workers This time we had one s t ipu -l a t i o n , they were not to be adopted g i r l s as they may see the i r own records and not know about themselves The names were submitted for the proposed team, checked against the records, given the a l l c lear and away they went on the scheme Mr Franklyn gave the layout that was to be used and what was to be allowed and we just followed A l l the P E P workers and the members of the Genealogical group work wi thin the O f f i c i a l Information Act For our recordings, adoptions and change of name by deed po 1 did not ex is t and we copied the or ig ina l entry only We started with 1848 - 1900 b i r t hs , 10,000 names in a l l Typing them from date order, checking, cutt ing them into s t r ips and then sort ing them into alphabetical order and s t ick ing them onto scrap paper, then typing them 39 entr ies per page and then f i n a l l y checking them Our group has been allowed a copy of the indexes for genealogists ' use and i f they want fur ther de ta i l s then they can go to the Court House to obtain a sight ing for $2 00

Gaining the Court House records then helped us to obtain permission to copy Waitara Post O f f i ce , b i r ths , deaths and marriages which our group members and Waitara sub branch members copied This scheme became an experiment a s , due to t r ave l l i ng to Waitara from New Plymouth and the local members only being able to give a few hours a week, we could see the project continuing for several years I asked, i f we could provide the funds and machine, could we photocopy the records and take them away to be typed and then return the photocopies for destruct ion Permission was given The New Zealand Genealogical Society provided us with the necessary funds We arranged to h i re a photo-copier and were a l l set to s ta r t on a Monday morning, only to f ind a snag The Post-master had changed his mind because of a l l the adoptions, he did not want the copies to go out But a f te r a long discussion and some reassurances, the project was under way I t took us six days to photocopy a l l the records, 2,500 pages to be cut and sorted ready for typing The Waitara group worked on the deaths and marriages and the New Plymouth group met every Tuesday night at my house for weeks sort ing the bi r ths I typed a l l the pages, over 250 By the time we had got to the f ina l checking stage, I had another P E P scheme and they did a l l the checking, i t was then photocopied and f i na l pages presented to the Post Of f ice As soon as the checking was completed, the or ig inal photocopied pages were returned to the Waitara Post Off ice to be destroyed The expense of photocopying was $140 00 I t would have cost a lo t more in petrol t rave l l i ng 10 miles to Waitara and back over a few years to copy the records The whole job was completed in less than s ix months

We have gained permission to copy the Inglewood Post Off ice b i r ths , deaths and marriages Unfortunately, records prior to 1894 were destroyed by f i r e The Inglewood sub branch have copied the deaths and marriages ( I should note here that the marriages mentioned in Court and Post Of f ice records are c i v i l marriages and not any church marriages ) These have been typed, and work then commenced on the bir ths which had more records I gained permission from the Inglewood Postmaster and from the Court House for the P E P workers to copy the Inglewood records in the New Plymouth Court House f i r s t run only The Inglewood sub branch then cu t , co l la ted and typed them This gave the P E P g i r l s more time to work on the las t book of b i r ths for New Plymouth Court House which we had run out of time for on a previous scheme

Another church we approached to copy the i r records was St Mary's Anglican Church in New Plymouth - a very important church to us as i t was establ ished in 1842 with records dating back to then We arranged a meeting where three of our group, Karen Crowe,

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Lewese and myself met three from the i r Par ish Committee I t took quite a long d i s -cussion to even s ta r t convincing them of our genuine concern for the i r records, and that what we would copy would not be passed on to the Lat ter Day Saints Church, but in the end they agreed to a team of Ρ Ε Ρ workers going there and copying the i r baptisms, deaths and marriages They also had a volume with an 1842-44 male census for NewPlymouth which records the de ta i l s of place of marriage in England We wanted to copy the records in a card version and present th is to the Church to use and keep g lo r i f i ed indexing for ourselves At that stage of d iscussion, they only agreed to a book version for them-selves and us Since then the r a m has managed to creep into the i r safe and damaged some of the books, so they are now making a card vers ion, extract ing every b i t of information, and as long as th is copying is accurate, then the books should never need to be used again

This year we have been concentrating on the Inglewood records and have so far received the Sacred Heart Cathol ic Church, United Church, Post O f f i ce , Catholic School and Primary school records The only church we could not obtain the records was for St Andrew's Anglican Church as they send the i r registers to the diocese as soon as they are completed A setback but not a major one Next year I hope to concentrate on Waitara Church registers

Another f i e l d we have branched into are the school r o l l s , but th is is not jus t my project I have talked J i l l Harvey into being our School Records Arch iv is t and she is doing a grand job 1

We f i r s t paid a v i s i t to the Taranaki Education Board with a wr i t ten request in hand asking i f i t was possible to copy the school ro l l s for the past and present schools for Taranaki We gave them a l l the reasons why we wanted them, they gave us permission to copy the i r registers but, despite t h i s , we had to approach the pr incipals and head-masters ind iv idua l ly for the current schools They also gave us a l i s t of schools for Taranaki with the dates they commenced and where necessary when closed I think there were 132 l i s ted and we have completed about 25 at present

The ro l l s include not only the date the ch i ld commenced and ceased, but the i r date of b i r th and the locat ion they came from and the i r dest inat ion I f you f ind your ancestor was a pupil at a par t i cu la r school and you want to take your in terests further, the log books are s t i l l kept for most schools and they have some lovely s tor ies in them They can help with incidents l i ke a school closing down for three months because of a polio scare and the chi ldren then did the i r schooling by correspondence - no such luck as a three month holiday

My aim i s to build a central record for the genealogist researching in th is area Instead of wasting valuable time and money contacting each church court , council o f f i ce or school, to t ry and t race the i r ancestors, they can go to one place and s i t down a l l day, week or month i f needs be and go through a l l the records extract ing the i r personal data Even now i f the fami l ies stayed in New Plymouth, Inglewood or Wai tara, for 50 or 60 yea rs , we are able to t race several generations I f the ancestors came out in the ear ly 1840s and were good breeders, they could have around 2,000 descendants by now Our biggest drawback at present i s the lack of church marriages to t race the change of name of the female descendants they can prove very hard to t race And, of course, my ult imate aim is to buy a computer with a memory capacity large enough to carry a l l my indexes on a personal data scale So, when somebody wr i tes to me with a query, instead of rummaging through over 70 indexes taking about 2 hours per l e t t e r , then typing the answers, I could press the appropriate key and, in 3 seconds, hey presto 1 the name we are looking for A l l the d e t a i l s , a quick copy l e t t e r (about 5 minutes work), leaving me wi th more time to research and record and therefore more data to answer more le t te rs

Without the help of Ρ Ε Ρ workers over the past three and a hal f years I would probably s t i l l be working my way through Te Henui cemetery, but they have by no means done a l l the work I spend, on average, 20 hours a week on typing and wr i t ing at home, then on top of that I make a l l the negotiations and also oversee the Ρ Ε Ρ workers even though they have a supervisor

I

I have no set speeches to o f fe r to those of you who might be interested in obtaining records in your own areas but a good s ta r t i s , i f you are on a school committee, or parish committee or even a regular attendant at your local church, then s ta r t by asking there I f they know the sort of person you are and feel they can t rus t you, then you have gained

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another valuable record for research This then gives you material to go armed with to the next i ns t i t u te you choose and then beware, you are another a rch iv i s t besides being a genealogist

Pat George New Plymouth

T H E HAUERA C E N S U S O F 1 8 8 1 A R E C O N S T R U C T I O N

Genealogists achieve a rare insight to the l i v e s of the i r B r i t i s h ancestors through the enumeration books of the census returns of the l as t century Unfortunately, the cor res-ponding records in New Zealand appear to have been systemat ical ly destroyed up to 1966 The B r i t i s h enumeration books, which record the names, re la t ionsh ip , age, occupation and bir thplace of every resident on census night, are more than a mine of genealogical fac ts They are a lso a valuable source for socia l and local h istor ians Since they are arranged in geographic or spat ia l order, i t i s possible to see fami l ies and indiv iduals in re la t ion to the i r neighbours and the rest of the community I t i s then possible for example to study the growth of par t i cu la r loca l indus t r ies , or the migration of workers, or the composition of households over the period from 1841 to 1881

Two things have spurred the invest igat ion to determine whether i t i s possible to reconstruct a New Zealand census for a community I was shown a copy of A colony detailed the first census of Western Australia, 18321, an annotated version of the or ig ina l manuscript census, l i s t i n g a l l European inhabitants of the colony There are comparable, although less detai led New Zealand equivalents such as the Auckland Po l i ce Censuses 1842-462, Clendon's Census of the Far North 1846^, the Nelson Census of 18494, and the Wanganui Population Returns 18435 An a r t i c l e en t i t l ed 'Census making and local history in quest of the people of a revolut ionary v i l l a g e ' s , was the other The author had a par t i cu la r in terest in the New Jersey town of Chatham during the la te nineteenth century, for which there were no census returns extant pr ior to 1830 He argues that a h istory of the town could not be wr i t ten without knowing who had l i ved there , and spent three years in the reconstruction of a census using exist ing local h i s t o r i es , tax records, parish reg i s te rs , probate records

The decision to chose Hawera as the basis of my project comes d i rec t l y from a fami l i a r i t y with the area (although without deta i led knowledge of i t s h i s t o r y ) , since i t was obvious that some l im i t to the task must f i r s t be establ ished, and I could imagine where the borders of the 'enumeration d i s t r i c t ' might l i e At f i r s t , the present Hawera D i s t r i c t (formerly County) boundaries were a guide, but i t was necessary to amend th is once the period had been decided The year 1881 was chosen as the census date for several reasons

(1) 1881 was a census year anyway, and at least some s t a t i s t i c s are a v a i l a b l e , (2) the Hawera d i s t r i c t was jus t being developed, so the s ize of the population should

be a reasonable s ize to work with (about 1300), (3) the Hawera and xormanby star had been establ ished the year before, and I imagine

that newspapers might provide valuable information about the res idents , (4) 1881 was an e lec t ion y e a r , and there should have been a f a i r l y comprehensive

e lec tora l ro l l 7

I t was th is l a t t e r source which I knew would form the basis of the census coverage, since the e lec tora l r o l l s are probably the largest l i s t s of residents for a place at the one time Unfortunately, enfranchisement of women was s t i l l twelve years away, and these ro l l s include males only I scanned the Egmont e lec tora l ro l l for 1881 plus i t s two supplements for a l l references to residents or owners of property wi th in the supposed enumeration d i s t r i c t In 1881 Hawera was s t i l l in Patea County, and because European settlement of the Waimate P la ins ( including Manaia) and the St ra t fo rd area had only recent ly commenced i t is l i ke l y that the enumeration d i s t r i c t would have included those small settlements

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The 1881 Census was taken in Apr i l 8 The most useful breakdown of f igures showing the d is t r ibut ion of the population is set out by county and county r id ing Short of the f u l l enumeration de ta i l s th is i s l i k e l y to be the best guide as to how many people l i ved in the d i f ferent parts of the census area , I have not ye t worked with what should be a major source of spat ia l information, the cadastral maps Some of the ear ly land maps ac tua l ly indicate the name of the owner, and i t should be possible to recreate an out l ine of the landed occupants of the area from a study of the reg is ters of land deeds Of course, the e lec tora l r o l l s give the descript ion and s i tuat ion of property for the pro-perty qua l i f i ca t ion to be entered on the r o l l , so that these people could be plotted onto a cadastral map

However, I do not consider that putting the inhabitants in geographical order is a p r io r i t y More important i s the reconstruction of family groups or households, and a var ie ty of sources can be used The Hawera and Normanby star, establ ished in Apr i l 1880, has been recent ly indexed, or rather the b i r t hs , marriages and deaths recorded there have been transcribed and indexed, pr imari ly as a genealogical source Although these events a f fec t such a small proportion of the population around the census date, i t must be remembered that de ta i l s of bir ths and marriages before the census date and deaths after i t may establ ish a re lat ionship with someone already known to be a r e s i -dent in 1881 I t i s obvious that not a l l residents in 1881 would have been part of a local fami ly , but many of the sources used to document b i r ths , marriages and deaths can be also used, anachromst ica l l y , to establ ish the ident i ty of those who, in 1881, had yet to be part of a family grouping Such information w i l l help to pick up more remote family relat ionships and may also be ind ica t ive of social and other groupings wi thin the community beyond the family

The burial regis ters and headstones of the Hawera and other d i s t r i c t cemeteries have been transcribed and provide another valuable source of information about re la t i on -ships 9 Other sources which can be used are school admission reg is te rs , rate books, m i l i t i a r o l l s , d i rec tor ies and almanacs, l o c a l , school and family h is tor ies

Each person within the supposed enumeration d i s t r i c t who appears in the 1881 e l ec -tora l ro l l and supplements has been entered on a card I t i s c lear that the majority of the people who were already in the d i s t r i c t were not represented on these ro l l s when compared with the o f f i c i a l census f igures for the same year (approximately one-sixth of the to ta l population are l i s t ed ) Robson, m New Zealand the deveiocrert of -ts lawslP notes that manhood franchise was introduced in 1879 An adult male could qual i fy by having freehold land to the value of i 25, or by having resided in the colony for twelve months and in the e lec tora te for six This l a t t e r disenfranchised many unmarried workers who t rave l led from job to job Robson states that 24 of the population appeared on the r o l l s α wise's New Zealand Post office directory 1880-81 represents even fewer of the res idents, but a number of extra names l i s t ed there considerably increased the record of indiv iduals

One other source used has been the Intention to Marry registers held at National Archives These reg i s t e r s , containing the three-monthly returns compiled by the local reg i s t ra rs , record some information not found on the reg is t ra t ion of marriage, most par t i cu la r ly the length of resident in the d i s t r i c t I have extracted references to marriages in the South Taranaki area from 1879 to 1884, although in the l a t t e r years I was concerned only with those appl icat ions in which one of the part ies indicated r e s i -dence from at least 1881 Twenty-four indiv iduals applied for marriage l icenses in 1884, and of the fourteen who indicated they had been resident a t leas t three yea rs , six only were represented personally or by a parent in the 1881 e lec tora l r o l l

Local school admission reg is ters w i l l provide de ta i l s of the younger members of the community, some of whom w i l l not have been born loca l l y

Newspapers should not be undervalued in terms of providing names of a l l manner of addit ional residents Nineteenth century local newspapers tended to provide a lo t more information about the a r r i v a l s , departures and a c t i v i t i e s of the readers than do the i r modern descendants The Hawera and Normanby star mentions the a r r i v a l of new businessmen, the departure of se t t l e rs who were looking for better pastures ( l i t e r a l l y ) , the drunks, the en ter ta iners , the sports teams, and the advertisements mention many more of the characters who provided a wide range of serv ices in a very promising serv ice town

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The sources looked a t so f a r pr imari ly out l ine the European population The census s t a t i s t i c s 'exclude Maor i s ' , and the separate Maori s t a t i s t i c s ava i lab le for 1881 are arranged by t r i ba l l oca t ion , so i t i s much harder to gauge how many were resident around the Hawera d i s t r i c t Although Maori males had been enfranchised in 1868 (and because of the land ownership structure a greater proportion were allowed to vote than were contem-porary Europeans), no e lec tora l r o l l s fo r the Maori e lectorates appear to ex is t before 1949 Regist rat ion of Maori b i r t hs , marriages and deaths did not become compulsory unt i l a f te r 1910 So the source of names i s much reduced To some extent th is dearth can be compensated by land court records, baptism reg is t ra t ions and school admission reg is ters

This exercise may be seen as no more than antiquarian indulgence, I make no pre-tensions to knowledge of demography and population dynamics I t is most regret table that we do not have something comparable to the B r i t i s h census re turns, because I bel ieve they could be a tremendous boost to the study of society in the history of New Zealand I s i t possible that many of the ear ly se t t l e r s from around Hawera came up from the Rangit ikei d i s t r i c t 7 I f not, from where did they come and why7 Why did the se t t l e r s a t Whakamara c a l l themselves gentlemen7 No one e lse in the d i s t r i c t so label led themselves I f nothing e l s e , I hope th is paper introduces or reminds researchers that there are wide ranges of ava i lab le sources for h is to r ic and social s c i e n t i f i c study

Bruce Ralston Alexander Turnbull L ibrary Well ington

REFERENCES

1 A Colony detailed the :+zst census of Western Australia, edited & annotated by Ian Berryman (Perth Creat ive Research, 1979)

2 Return of a l l the houses cottages and warn es with the names of the i r owners and pr incipal occupiers (one in each case) in the d i s t r i c t of Auckland [Auckland Po l i ce Census 1842-46] Auckland Publ ic L ibrary

3 'Return of the muster of Europeans in the North, May 1846', in James R Clendon's "Jou rna l " Auckland Publ ic L ibrary - indexed by June and Randal Springer, Bu l l s

4 Ν Ζ Department of Internal A f fa i r s Centennial Branch census for the year 1849 of town of ve -sc - A part typescr ipt (indexed) of the nominal ent r ies in Superintendent of the Southern D iv i s ion , 1849 Nelson Census National Arch ives, Well ington SSD 3/2

5 Wanganui populatior returr: 1343 - [1853] - or ig inal in Wanganui Museum, copy at Alexander Turnbull L ibrary - includes a l i s t of the nat ive population of Taranaki, 1843, the European se t t l e r s

(marr ied, unmarried, chi ldren under 14 yea rs , landowners), 1843, the nat ive population of the Wanganui River

6 Prologue, vol 14, no 3 ( F a l l 1982), pp 157-168

7 New Zealand e lectora l r o l l s 1865-1957 are ava i lab le on microfi lm through LDS Genealogical L i b ra r i es , and can also be viewed at Alexander Turnbull L ibrary

8 Results of a census of the colony of New Zealand taken for the 3rd April 1881 (Well ington Government P r i n te r , 1882)

9 The Central Taranaki Group, Ν Ζ Society of Genealogists, Inc has transcribed and indexed most of the South Taranaki cemetery headstones and burial r eg i s te rs , and has also transcribed and indexed b i r t h , marriage and death not ices from the Hawera star 1880-1982

10 New Zealand the development of its laws and constitution ed J L Robson, 2nd ed

(London Stevens, 1967), ρ 44

11 ibid ρ 45

21

P O L I S H A N D G E R M A N G E N E A L O G I C A L A N D F A M I L Y H I S T O R Y R E S E A R C H

My f i r s t introduction to Pol ish family history was from my l a te Pol ish qrandmother, Martha Watemburg (nee Neistrowski) who delighted in ta lk ing of her childhood, f i r s t in West Prussia then in Taranaki in the 1870s She widened my knowledge by ta lk ing of the vast Pol ish "extended family" to which we belonged, and her marriage to Joseph Watembach from the Polish/German settlement of Marshlands (Christchurch) with the l inking of two Kassubian fami l ies gave me both more Pol ish ancestry and a male l i ne to German or ig ins I was as confused as many ear ly New Zealand demographers - what were my ancestors -Germans or P o l i s h 7 The Pol ish s ta te had existed for over 700 years before i t was invaded and part i t ioned by Pruss ia , Russia and Austria-Hungary in the 1790s The portion my ancestors came from had been under Prussian ru le for about 80 years and my ancestors considered themselves P o l i s h , though the law both there and in New Zealand considered they were Germans, even i f unwil l ing Germans

When my grandmother died the f i ve generations of family photos she had saved, did not arouse in terest in my fa ther ' s generation, but I acquired them and when in 1976 I helped organise a Centennial celebrat ion for descendants of Pol ish se t t l e r s in Taranaki , I was one of the few with old photos In the year preceding the centennial ce lebrat ions, I plagued l i b ra r i es and archives throughout New Zealand for information, and the most conspicuous f inding was the scarc i ty of information Some New Zealand b i r t h , marriage, death ce r t i f i ca tes were he lp fu l , some were not I f the "Place of B i r t h " in Europe was required and the wr i ter could not understand the informant, then they simply put "Germany" Church records were s imi lar ly unhelpful unt i l about 1900 when su f f i c ien t German/Polish immigrants or the i r chi ldren became l i t e r a t e , and ended the mass mis-spel l ing of surnames Examples of these mis-spel l ings are e g Czablewski to Shaplesky and Shapl i fsk i in New Zealand a hardly recognisable var ia t ion My own Wattenbach changed to Watembach somewhere in Europe then to Watemburg in New Zealand Ear ly immigrants to New Zealand from Europe were i l l i t e r a t e , Poles from West Prussia knowing both Pol ish and German languages, but spoke a very broken and aut tura lEngl ish I f they could read and wr i te they would have had to go to schools which only taught German, as from the 1860s onwards there was a programme of forced Germanisation of Poles In the f i ve months immediately preceding the Centennial ce lebrat ions, we had a booklet wr i t ten Family memories comprised about 90 of source mater ia ls , church sources about 7% and o f f i c i a l archives about 3" This gives some indicat ion of the d i f f i c u l t i e s based on scarc i ty of records of ethnic minori t ies in New Zealand, and to the unimportance of minor i t ies to the majority of B r i t i s h stock We endeavoured to extend our research to Europe but were discouraged to be told that a l l the records were destroyed during the Wars, so th is l i ne was not pursued further Years l a t e r , I found out that the records were not destroyed, although some were Most were scattered Others of European descent also faced th is problem, but there was no help ava i lab le as New Zealand Genealogy and Family History soc ie t ies inevi tably led only to the B r i t i s h I s les 1

I t was not unt i l 1980 that I took up ser iously European research and i t was only a chance meeting with a German doctor and h,is wi fe in the Taranaki Museum, who gave me the address of the German equivalent of the Registrar-General of B i r t h s , Deaths and Marriages, in B e r l i n , and hundreds of do l lars la te r I started receiv ing ce r t i f i ca tes About th is time a number of researchers in the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, rea l i s ing tna< the largest group of non-Br i t ish immigrants had no centra l ised source of assistance for genealogical research started a section of the New Zealand Society to remedy th is I t was ca l led "The German Group"

THE GERMAN OR CENTRAL EUROPEAN GROUP

The New Zealand researchers who founded th is group were led by Mrs El izabeth Barlow of Matamata, and her cousin Miss Joyce Fe iss t of Hamilton and in under four years have produced a remarkable co l lec t ion of h is to r ies and aids The aim of the German Group i s to promote and encourage the study of Genealogy and Family History and kindred subjects concentrating on people of German ethnic , o n g i n , or coming from t e r r i t o r i e s under German control or language This covers present day Austr ia and the two Germanys, together with parts of Poland, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, France and Switzerland The Group's a rch i v i s t gives advice to enquirers but does not undertake extended research, i s responsible for co l lec t ing and loaning books and mater ia ls , compiles an index of New Zealand se t t l e rs of central European or ig in and keeps a reg is ter of names of in teres t to

22

researchers registered with the group Af ter less than four yea rs , and s ta r t ing with a zero budget, the co l lec t ion of books and aids whi le not very large i s very helpful I t ' i s not complete by any means, but i t s s ize enables i t to be taken around the North Island on " f i e l d days" for researchers use

Recently the German 'e thmcness ' was found to be a l imi t ing factor Researchers were often an amalgam of a t leas t two, sometimes f i v e or six ancestral na t i ona l i t i es Others could not accurately say what they were o n g i n a l l y , a s national f ron t ie rs in central Europe shi f ted and changed so o f ten , whi le some states disappeared en t i re l y German minor i t ies married into fami l ies of indigenous peoples, or other migrants from elsewhere and moved about inside national boundaries and across f ron t ie rs ,seas and continents Consequently, as the German Group was the only one providing help for researchers doing continental European ances t r i es , other ethnic groups came to be included in the area from Switzerland to the B a l t i c Sea In establ ishing th is Group resource, some quite considerable d i f f i c u l t i e s have been met and continue The main ones are -

1 Finance Shortage of funds needed to copy/purchase materials scattered around New Zealand, and to purchase/copy mater ia ls in overseas countr ies l i ke Aus t ra l i a , Canada, U S A and in Europe 2 Lack o f material in the English language of European people and p laces , family and national h is to r ies of use to researchers 3 Translat ion of materials co l lected from European sources including l e t t e r s received from o f f i c i a l reposi tor ies There are few people outside the main centres who are pro f ic ient in an European language and Eng l ish , and who are prepared to give the time In remote places l i ke Taranaki the d i f f i c u l t y in gett ing l e t te rs t rans la ted , accurate ly , i s almost an impossibi l i ty

The researcher who does not know the language of the country where he i s research-ing r e a l l y needs to employ a qua l i f ied researcher in that country, but i t i s d i f f i c u l t to estab l ish sui table connections and regardless whether one i s employed or not, costs of arch iva l research are high e g in Germany DM 48 per hour are common Nevertheless, the l a s t few years has seen the acquis i t ion of material on German, Czech (Bohemian), Swiss , Pol ish in New Zealand, Germans in New South Wales, Queensland, South Aus t ra l i a , among which are the essent ial l i ke b ib l iographies, passenger l i s t s , genealogies, plus s tor ies of settlements and the i r peoples and family history books Another essent ia l for researchers in New Zealand is the Register of Alien Friends ( i e a l iens natura l ised) covering 1843-1925, as the vast majority o f non B r i t i s h stock were natural ised in order to vote and take fu l l part in New Zealand l i f e There are a number o f theses on non-B r i t i s h immigration and a r t i c l e s

German material There are the f i v e volumes Of The Atlantic Bridge to Germany s e r i e s , books giving guides to German research, l i s t s of Evangel ical communities in East and West Pruss ia , Pomerania and Posen (pre World War I ) , the "Prel iminary Survey of the German Col lec t ion" which gives 600 pages of the Genealogical Society of Utah references to microfilms of church and state records in Germany ( h i s t o r i c a l , b i r t h s , deaths, marriages) Tms data i s extremely important fo r people researching northern and western Poland, as wars and f ron t ie r changes have led to the serious scat ter ing of records, somtimes one town's records are in eight d i f fe rent towns and in four d i f fe ren t countries There are anadian and U S A reference sources, L D S research papers on German Church records, boundary and l o c a l i t y name changes, Hamburg passenger l i s t s , the expulsion of the Bohemian Germans during 1945, a guide to East German and Czech research, and an elaborately cross-indexed genealoqical research d i rectory known as Glenzdorfs Internationales Genealogen - Lexicon, mainly from contr ibutors 1Π Germany

Swiss material consists of a quide to Switzerland and L iechenste in, a modern Swiss Postal Code d i rec tory , L i s ts of Swiss communities showing where the re levant C i v i l Registrars Off ice is found and a good basic guide to Swiss genealogical records

Austrian material includes L D S Research papers giving background information on social and economic a f f a i r s , re l ig ion and h is to ry , as i t a f fec ts genealogical research, Austria-Hungary empire boundary changes and the i r e f fec t on research, a handy guide to Austrian records

Polish material includes a number of publ icat ions put out by U S A researchers of Pol ish extract ion The most valuable being a Bibl iography for Genealogical Research

23

with a large l i s t i n g of books ava i lab le in il) S A apparently ava i lab le to New Zealand readers through New Zealand Library inter loan system There are four of the f i ve volumes of Po l ish Family Tree Surnames covering thousands of surnames from present and former Pol ish t e r r i t o r i es In terest ing ly enough, many fami l ies in New Zealand of Pol ish descent have a t rad i t ion ,o f the i r ancestors being separated by agents of New Zealand Government from re la t i ves / fam i l i es emigrating to U S A , and from these four volumes I picked a minimum of 112 surnames which I know occur here in New Zealand which U S A researchers are working on There are also Newsletters of the Pol ish Genealogical Society of America, modern s t a t i s t i c a l books of Poland, and a small booklet on Pol ish music, songs, dances, rec ipes , qames and customs

On Czechoslovakia there arebooks on t racing Czech and Slovak roots including a large section on references to U S A resources, a genealogical guide to S i l e s i a , and a German language volume on the Bohemia region of Mies There i s also a 235 page l i s t i ng of a l l the v i l l ages in the above publ icat ion with the i r inhabitants

There are basic guides to genealogical records in Italy and Hungary, Russian material is on German minori t ies who l i ved there , pr ior to emigrating to U S A

For general European research there i s an excel lent reference work in volume 7 of Continental European Family and Local History - which are papers presented at World Conference on Records in 1980, L D S Research Papers giving major genealogical record sources in Aust r ia , Germany, Hungary, Poland and Swi tzer land, there i s a book on Central European genealogical terminology, material on research in Europe, addresses of archives in Germany, Aus t r ia , Swi tzer land, l i b ra r i es in Europe and U S A , genealogical and h is to r ica l soc ie t ies in Germany, Switzer land, Austria and other European Countries There are a numuer of handouts and beginners ' k i t s ' , for which a small charge is made which summarise sources and give addresses

Ray Watemburg Taranaki

B A C K G R O U N D T O S T M A R Y ' S C H U R C H , NEW P L Y M O U T H

St Mary's owes i t s beginnings to f i v e men in par t icu lar In the 1840s, Bishop Selwyn was great ly at t racted to New Plymouth His f i r s t v i s i t , in October 1842, was overland from Wel l ington, and thereaf ter on his sea journeys he took the opportunity of ca l l i ng in whenever he could, even i f only for a few hours He took serv ices for both Maoris and Europeans in whatever building was ava i lab le down near the shore and when the time came, in 1843, to appoint the f i r s t v i c a r , he chose Wi l l iam Bol land, one of his more able r ec ru i t s , educated at Oxford, known as a scholar and a gentleman, i n te l l i gen t , conscient ious, able and w i l l i ng As we l l ' a s his parish duties organising the building of S t Mary 's , ra is ing the money and coping with labour disputes among the stonemasons, Bolland was required by the Bishop to make the journey once very two months, on foot , to the Maori settlements along the coast to the south His strength was overtaxed, and fol lowing an attack of typhoid fever , he died a t the age of 27 a f te r only 3^ years in New Plymouth

His place was taken by his cousin, Henry Govett , a lso a scholar and a gentleman with an Oxford degree, who remained as v ica r for 50 years He was well-connected and had a "n ice" pr ivate income, which he used to the ever last ing benef i t of S t Mary's His g i f t s included £400 to the east end extension,£600 which was the cost of the f i r s t vicarage on the s i t e of the present one, add to th is the cost of i t s removal across the road some 38 years la te r when he r e t i r e d , and t h i rd l y , he donated to the endowment fund the whole of his pay as chaplain to the Imperial f o rces , which amounted to almost £1000 In addit ion there were numerous smaller g i f t s towards the cost of additions to the church, to the organ ( m c l ornamental p ipes ) , and l ight ing (corona) He was an unassuming, shy man, not prepossessing in manner (H i r s t ) but committed to his work, t rave l l i ng long distances on foot or on horseback to reach d is tant parts of his vast archdeaconry (he became archdeacon in 1859), and going onto the ba t t l e f i e lds in the sad decade of the 1860s to act as in terpreter or to minister to the Maoris, men of the B r i t i s h regiments, or the local m i l i t i a and volunteers, as a lso did other ministers in

24

the town For 10 y e a r s , Govett was chaplain to the regiments which occupied the barracks on Marsland H i l l , and every Sunday a specia l serv ice was held for them in S t Mary's The church was enlarged three times during his years as v i c a r , and the fourth enlargement was made as a memorial to him

At the end of 1843, the arch i tec t Frederick Thatcher arr ived in New Plymouth from England, where he had already met Bishop Selwyn, and had at l eas t two buildings bu i l t in stone He soon became f r iend ly with the Bollands and eventual ly married Mrs Bol land 's s i s te r He moved to Auckland a f te r a year in New Plymouth, and held a va r ie ty of pos i t ions, including pr iva te secretary to Governor Grey He was genial and e f f i c i e n t , and found the time to help Selwyn with a number of churches and buildings for S t John 's College Selwyn put him on to drawing up a church for New Plymouth, and the form of the f i r s t two addit ions was Thatcher 's as wel l He a lso designed The Gables at Brooklands and an extension to the Henui v icarage

Amongst the f i r s t immigrants to New Plymouth from Plymouth were George Robinson and his family He was an experienced and competent bui lder who had worked on the p ic ture ga l le ry of the Duke of Northumberland's house in London In New Plymouth he was arch i tec t and bui lder for many ear ly bu i ld ings, including St Mary's and the colonia l hospital (The Gables) , and his c lear spec i f i ca t ions were highly valued by bui lders He was espec ia l l y proud of S t Mary's where a l l the woodwork was his - a l l rimu including the roof trusses He had his 50th birthday whi le he was working on S t Mary's and he celebrated the event with a j ub i l ee feast a t which most of the se t t l e r s were present

ECCLESIOLOGY

In looking at any Anglican church of the l as t century from the 1840s on, we have to take into account the inf luence of a powerful society that grew up at Cambridge Univers i ty and spread throughout tne English-speaking world, wherever these Cambridge men and others in sympathy with the i r ideas went in that strongly missionary era The Cambridge society was known i n i t i a l l y as the Cambridge Camden Soc ie ty , but as the i r inf luence broadened, they became known as the Ecc les io log ica l Society General ly speaking, the i r aims were to bring back into the Church of England, a f te r the s t e r i l e Georgian period with i t s box-l ike churches, something of the g lor ies of medieval Gothic forms and worship To th is end, they studied meticulously the exist ing medieval churches and developed a set of precepts and rules which were well and widely received even by arch i tec ts of the per iod, and consequently we f ind large numbers of 19th century Gothic churches not only in the B r i t i s h I s l es and the B r i t i s h co lon ies , but a lso wi thin English-speaking communities in foreign countries - Japan , North America, Egypt, S imla, Tr is tan da Cunha Selwyn and Bishop Abraham of Well ington were both members, Thatcher by proxy and colleagues in London, and a study of Old St Pau l ' s shows how c lose ly i t adheres to the pr inc ip les

St Mary's i s no exception, and a f te r i t s f i r s t add i t ion , i t presented a f in ished church " r e a l " mater ia ls , 60 gable, lancet windows, porch in penultimate bay, be l f r y , f l o r ia ted c ross , a l t a r raised above f loor l e v e l , open seats These precepts have not always been taken into account when making recent addit ions or a l te ra t ions for example, the la tes t ves t r y , be l f r y , Liggett doors, porte cochere

In t ry ing to see that these pr inc ip les were car r ied out, Selwyn got into trouble over S t Mary's and Bol land had to bale him out In 1845, while the church was under construct ion, Selwyn asked that a large black stone be l e t into the wal l for a credence bracket Another minister in the town, the Rev'd H H Turton, a Wesleyan, drew everybody's at tent ion to th is stone, ca l l i ng i t a Camden fee le r and a stone of offence to a l l episcopalian immigrants who may have experienced Puseyism in England So offensive was i t to them that one c l e r i c offered £5for i t s removal Bol land said the Bishop was an admirer of old forms and ceremonies We can only assume i t was removed

ADDITIONS

1844 gett ing stone onto s i t e , rimu into r i v e r

f i r s t stone

opened, Newland and "cathedra l " serv ice

westwards, porch ( s p l a y ) , vestry

ga l le ry (organ and choir )

25 March 1845

29 Sep 1846

1859-62

1864-94

25

1866 south a i s l e and ves t ry , p i l l a r s

Thatcher's north and west doors extant, Ν Β corbe ls , north wall

1893

1902

1915

1959-60

1970s

1865

1957

1977

1880

1910

1950

Costs

chancel and a i s l e pushed east (Mountfort)

ves t ry , doubled 1916

transept and chapel (Messenger, Walpole & Patterson)

vest r ies,and strong room

tower and be l ls abandoned

organ, enlarged 1892-96, rebu i l t 3 times

new f loor >

Viv ian St reet a r t e r i a l highway

gas l ight ing

e l e c t r i c l ight ing

gas heating

£1095 7 6, loca ls in cash/labour £773 5 0 £1555 10 2 £1590 est £1735 approx £9,000 +

1846 1866 1893 1915 1959-60

EARLY DESCRIPTIONS

Martha Adams, 1850

The church has open pews ( a l l f ree) of red pine wood which bears a very near resemblance to mahogany, the gothic windows are neat though dest i tu te of coloured g lass , and the books and sacramental p late are a l l extremely handsome There i s no pu lp i t , Mr Govett reading a l l the serv ice from the communion t ab l e , round which there is no r a i l The choir is well conducted by young men's voices a lone, and the school chi ldren who s i t in front of the clergyman are clean and well behaved

( S i r ) J L C Richardson, about 1854

I was par t i cu la r l y struck with the massiveness and general appearance of the gran i te -bu i l t church in the centre of a beaut i fu l ly green enclosure Serv ice was about to commence, and we hastened to enter The in te r io r i s beaut i fu l ly f i t t ed up, and in admiring the r i ch l y decorated wooden roof, we could pardon i t s somewhat ungrateful p i tch as seen from without which an increased length or turreted battlements might rec t i f y The serv ice was read from the communion table and the sermon del ivered from the reading desk, the clergyman being habited in his surpl ice The B ib le and prayer-book were decorated with crosses I note these t r i f l e s because they are new to us, for i t would be d i f f i c u l t to draw any jus t inferences from them in New Zealand at l e a s t , where we have seen the surp l ice so indiscr iminately used as would sorely puzzle any one who regards i t as the shibboleth of a party

Rev'd R Tay lor , 1864

I t i s ve'-y neat but too dark, too c lose an imitat ion of the medieval ages I t rus t the darkness does not reach the pulp i t

ARCHIVES USED

The material i s throughout the country, not jus t at S t Mary's

1 AUCKLAND

(a) Diocesan Off ice - Synod proceedings, Church Gazette

(b) S t John 's College Library - Plans for S t Stephens

(c) Auckland Ins t i t u te & Museum Library - Annual reports and le t te rs

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2 HAMILTON

Waikato Diocesan Of f ice - Correspondence, Waikato Diocesan Magazine

3 WELLINGTON

(a) Turnbull L ibrary - Journals e t c , of Selwyn, R Tay lor , Newland, Cotton, H i r s t , Taranaki Herald on microfi lm

(b) National Archives - f i l e on So ld ie rs ' graves including Maori c h i e f s , Gul ly paint ing of New Plymouth, ear ly land claims

(c ) General Assembly Library - church yearbooks, newspapers

(d) Ν Ζ His tor ic Places Trust - f i l e on Henui vicarage

(e) Minister of Defence - f lags a r t i c l e s

( f ) MWD - measured drawing (Wanganui o f f i ce )

4 PALMERSTON NORTH

Massey Univers i ty - Dr Vince Nea l1 , geological descript ion of stone used

5 DUNEDIN

Hocken Library - photos

6 WANGANUI

Walpole & Pat terson, MWD (plan)

7 NEW PLYMOUTH

(a) Taranaki Museum - But ler index, co l lec t ions of Lysons, Skinner, I n s u l l , Halse d ia ry , Messenger p lans, photos

(b) Publ ic Library - newspapers, booklets

(c ) Ci ty Council - Fulford St reet

(d) Deeds Off ice - history of s i tes

(e) Lands & Survey Off ice - churchyard plan inc l church with ves t ry , removal of barracks

( f ) Taranaki Herald o f f i ce - photos

(g) S t Mary's Church - Vestry Minutes - missing 1875-86, 1922-41 and other records

d i f f i c u l t y of making up

- Annual Reports - NZCA, TH, SMN - f inding l i s t - a l t a r r a i l s in 1857-58 accounts only

- Vestry Correspondence

- Serv ice (Of fer tory) Books

- Magazines - TCM, SMN - Skinner 's h is tory , 1910-11

- T h o t o s , paintings - Edwin Harr is and vestry

- Plans

- Newspaper cutt ings and scrapbooks, some with MS le t te rs (Walsh)

Margaret Alington Well ington

27

THE ROLE OF STRATFORD COUNTY HISTORIAN

I feel I am here under fa l se pretences to some extent, as I have no academic background for the posit ion and, in f a c t , found history extremely boring in school days The in terest that led to th i s appointment came with involvement in county matters as a counci l lor and d i s t r i c t matters as a resident , and the growing rea l i sa t ion that much local rural history had been and was being los t As w e l l , that which had been preserved and recorded was uncol lated, spread out and needed a central repository So, in 1977, the St ra t ford County made the appointment of myself as an honorary county histor ian The br ie f was wide, and aimed par t ly towards the oncoming county centenary in 1990 I t was to co l l a te and locate and, i f possib le, cen t ra l i se what was ava i l ab le , and thenceforth ensure as far as possible the present was recorded for the fu ture, and that aspects of the past as yet not tabulated or recorded be so done

St ra t ford County i s an interest ing area h i s to r i ca l l y I t covers over one quarter of the provincial land area, spreading from the peak of Mt Egmont to the Tangarakau Gorge on S H 43 in the eas t , and bordering stretches of the Wanganui and Waitara Rivers in the south and north The area of over 2,000 square kilometres i s almost hal f covered in nat ive bushland, much of i t Crown land The population of around 4,700 largely focuses around 400 dairy farms on the Egmont r ing p la in , and 250 dry stock farms, mainly in the eastern h i l l s These farms in jec t 'over $70 mi l l ion annually into the local economy, based around the serv ice town of St ra t ford Within the county l i e 20 d is t inc t rural communities

European settlement around St ra t ford commenced in the mid-1870s, and as the better land was f e l l e d and grassed, settlement moved east into the va l leys and h i l l s by the turn of the century There had been l i t t l e permanent Maori settlement beforehand, because of the topography, cl imate and land cover, though pockets of inhabitat ion were evident in some va l leys These have been suggested as due to groups seeking refuge from marauders, and par t ies seeking stones, e e l s , b i rds , e t c , to sustain the largely coastal population European surveyors had interest ing ventures in th is harsh land in i t s raw s ta te , as did e a r l i e r se t t l e r s Special settlement schemes under the Liberal government in the 1890s faced great d i f f i c u l t i e s in t ry ing to es tab l ish farms in the eastern h i l l country Many fami l ies walked of f , beaten by the massive communications and economic advers i t ies The Aotuhia Val ley once housed for ty fam i l i es , and i s th i s year being re -developed as a Crown land development block

The St ra t ford - Main Trunk rai lway Tine started in 1901, and was f i n a l l y joined in 1932, 24 tunnels and a l l manner of p o l i t i c a l , physical and f inanc ia l challenges l a te r The rai lway construction township of Tangarakau f lour ished and died within f i f teen yea rs , reaching a population of up to 1,500 people - now i t boasts two houses The d i s t r i c t saw the ea r l i e s t dairy factory cooperat ives, ae r ia l topdressing cooperat ives, and ' t a l k i e ' p ictures During the 1950s and 1960s the nucleated v i l l a g e settlements were almost decimated as dairy fac to r ies c losed, and in the h i l l country, farms amalgamated An experimental state forest at Te Wera was set up in the 1950s, with social reper-cussions Many aspects of these trends have now been recorded in various jub i lee book-l e t s , tapes, a r t i c l e s , and so on The task of assembling a sui table county history for the centennial w i l l be an interest ing one One source i s the 1940 History of the whangamomona county, published in commemoration of the New Zealand centennial

ASPECTS OF THE APPOINTMENT

The o f f i ce rs of the county are aware of the 1977 Act re la t ing to local author i ty a rch ives , and as i s general pract ice in the country, heed the c r i t e r i a l a i d down I see the job of a h is tor ian as to make archives interest ing and encourage use, they are not simply to co l l ec t dust Routine enquir ies come in from people seeking information on ancestors, landmarks, bui ld ings, e t c , often re la ted to family reunions, jub i lees or a r t i c l e s Our society has become more aware of the importance of h istory over the past decade, and th is brings inv i ta t ions to speak to organisat ions, supply a r t i c l e s for papers and bu l l e t i ns , there are also requests to 1îa ise with such bodies as the His tor ic Places Trust , the genealogical assoc ia t ion , h is to r ica l c lubs , help prepare stands for d isp lays , exh ib i t ions, and so for th

The 1978 St ra t ford and d i s t r i c t centennial was a log ica l time to organise a schools pro ject , whereby each area sought out and wrote on as much information in the i r speci f ic

28

area as they were able Using the resu l ts as a bas is , 20 d i s t i nc t d i s t r i c t f i l e s have been bu i l t up, taking in f i l e s , l e t t e r s , photographs, various logbooks and minute books, family records, and whatever can be cen t ra l i sed , or copied for the f i l e s Cooperation has been also received from organisations l i ke the Young Farmers' Clubs, Women's Div is ion of Federated Farmers, and so on, to ensure material i s not l e f t to the rubbish t ip or f i r e These f i l e s are now becoming of value to local communities as jub i lee book-l e t s are pr inted, or reunions held, or school projects undertaken From time to time outsiders enquire on theses or a r t i c l e s , for instance, the f i l e on the rai lway l i ne east i s well used

1 I have found time for around 100 tape interviews of people in the d i s t r i c t with

special in terests or pe rsona l i t i es , both re la ted to past l i f e s t y l e s and those of today P E P labour has been engaged in the task of t ranscr ib ing these Some of the more interest ing include - working in brickworks in the 1920s, and again 1950s, running a mobile movie picture c i r c u i t in the rural d i s t r i c t s in the 1940s and 1950, laying the material for the Stratford-Arapum high-voltage power l i ne by horses in the 1920s, farming in the Aotuhia Va l ley in the 1920s and 1930, the local mailman, storekeeper, hydatids o f f i c e r , and c a r r i e r , home guard in the Second World War, aspects of S t ra t fo rd County h is tory , in interviews with past chairmen, o f f i c e r s , counc i l lo rs and s ta f f , a Ρ 0 W in the 1945 march from East Germany on foo t , a policeman in the 1981 Springbok r i o t s , a l l aspects of farming and rural l i f e through the decades, and so on There i s so much more that could be done i f there were su f f i c ien t time and resources

More theses have been done on th i s area than has been rea l i sed , and a l i s t of those ava i lab le i s an excel lent source of information, leading to further records through the bibl iographies The St ra t ford County now keeps a scrapbook of press c l ipp ings , as do several local areas through schools The d i s t r i c t f i l e s are being added to from various sources, a recent school f i r e resul ted in more material coming forward from others to be safely cent ra l ised Another inventory of value i s the consolidated l i s t of books wr i t ten on or about the area - the Me and G U S se r i es , by Anthony and Jackson, Dr Doris Gordon's autobiographies, No-one went to town by Johnston, and in the sticks by Bacon, to name a few

The Whangamomona County merged with the St ra t ford County in 1955, only six years ago was i t rea l i sed the wealth of old h is to r i ca l material ly ing in the old safe at Whangamomona, gradual ly rot t ing and af fected by water damage Fortunately the material was recovered in t ime, and sorted by students under the holiday employment scheme Records came to l i gh t of the formation of a 'Backblocks' Counties Associat ion, the correspondence from the 'White Ν Ζ League' in the 1920s and the great volume of cor res-pondence t e l l i n g of the advers i t ies of se t t l e r s two generations ago In another small country school, Tututawa, closed in 1969, records of d i s t r i c t and school going back to the f i r s t decade of the century were found under a leaking roof - again, jus t in t ime, and in turn they re la te aspects of the r i s e and f a l l of a d i s t r i c t from the f i r s t decade to the 1960s, aspects of the community organisat ions, the f a c i l i t i e s and the fami l ies

One becomes aware of how r e l a t i v e l y recent events are now part of our past , the six o 'c lock hotel c los ing , and the ' r a i d s ' , working horses on the farms, the dairy factory routines in small v i l l a g e s , the card evenings of the rural communities, ' ca l cu t t as ' to ra ise funds, a lbe i t i l l e g a l l y , the World War I I experiences on the home f ron t , with so ld ie rs ' send-offs and fa rewe l l s , fundrais ing, home guards, b lack-outs, e t c , and the ever-changing aspects nf farming and land development The message i s - record them now - do not work on a large period as we have done, t ry ing to pr ise into the memory of people on events of two generations back

At th i s stage, the constra ints of time have meant less opportunity for further ing the matters discussed, the county centennial i s jus t over f i v e short years o f f , and e f fo r ts w i l l be channelled towards the production of an appropriate commemorative book

POINTS FOR CONSIDERATION

Regional archives are v i t a l to those communities and regions distant from larger c i t i e s Material i s of more value to those who are most l i k e l y to use i t i f i t i s close by, d i s t r i c t archives have a place too, but there must be l i a i son and not competition between the two, with cross-referencing of what each can of fer on material in both sub-j e c t and locat ion There should be moves to motivate more local h is tor ians of h is to r i ca l soc ie t ies in smaller rural communities, whether based around a local author i ty or not

?9

Pub l i c i t y , resources, and other appropriate incent ives could be offered Oral history is an excel lent means of recording, perhaps the means fo r more of th i s to be done could be coordinated through some students' employment programme or s imi lar job-creat ion scheme Local author i t ies should be encouraged to keep press cl ippings booklets, allow for su f f i c ien t space for local archives in renovations or new bui ld ings, a l l oca te more resources and interest to co l la t ing and recording the h is tory General ly , such matters are very low in the p r io r i t y l i s t s for ra te money, some incent ives could be offered

Absolute professionalism is not v i t a l to such aspects of recording local h istory as I have out l ined - much i s los t or not ava i l ab le i f subject to the geographical and f inanc ia l constraints employment of professionals would d ic ta te In the f i r s t instance, cent ra l i s ing in a local repository i s e s s e n t i a l , sophist icated treatment of such material can take place l a t e r i f need be I t should be rea l i sed that some rural l oca ls are inherently 'suspic ious ' of the outside professional or academic, and reluctant to open up o r a l l y , or surrender material for a repository that i s not r e l a t i ve l y local I t could be that the ARANZ organisation considers the appointment or secondment of a 'permanent i t ineran t motivator ' - to t ravel around the country and engender support for more meaningful treatment of matters h i s t o r i c a l , and to coordinate between the pr ivate co l lec t ions and public repos i to r ies , the amateur enthusiasts and the professionals, and to ensure that vacuums are f i l l e d Possibly more funding could be ava i lab le through regional bodies, or a l located through lo t te ry funds, or through Internal A f fa i r s similar to sports and recreat ion grants The government is looking for job creat ion - these f i e l d s would provide meaningful, interest ing employment A fur ther suggestion is that a l l regional and national h is tor ica l repos i tor ies and organisations should be encouraged to compile l i s t s for each local authori ty area of what i s ava i lab le in record form, the task sounds formidable, but i t would be a great help to th is St ra t ford County d i s t r i c t for instance, i f we had a l i s t of what was ava i lab le in surviv ing f i l e s of the Rai lways, Department of Agr icu l tu re , etc

The two main points I s t ress a re , f i r s t l y , the need to ensure that records are located, co l la ted and cent ra l ised l o c a l l y , and that they are accessib le and used, and, secondly, that , as time passes, recording of today's events and at t i tudes for tomorrow's history should be of prime importance

D £ Walter St ra t ford

ANZ BANK — NEW ZEALAND'S FIRST

In 1840 John Smith opened a branch of the Union Bank of Australia forerunner to A N Z Bank at the New Zealand Company s settlement of Britannia

A N Z Bank Archives has an unbroken series of historical material beginning with John Smith s signature book

Access for research can be arranged by contacting

The Archivist A N Z Banking Group (New Zealand) Limited Ρ O Box 1492 W E L L I N G T O N

Telephone 738 622

A N X BANK

30

O R A L H I S T O R Y A S B I O G R A P H Y T H R E E C A S E S T U D I E S I N M A O R I B I O G R A P H Y

INTRODUCTION

I am very grateful for th is opportunity to speak to you because I too am in the process of community biography and i t i s very useful for me to have the opportunity to consider three biographies from the point of view of h i s to r i ca l methodology pa r t i cu la r l y the use of sources I hope to also tes t some of my ideas about oral history before an audience some of whom w i l l be also wrest l ing with the thorny problems of biography, pa r t i cu la r l y Maori biography The works I have chosen are Anne Salmond's Amina and Eruera and Michael King's whina 1

ORAL HISTORY

I doubt i f there i s now any pract is ing h is tor ian or w r i t e r , l i b ra r i an or a r c h i v i s t , indeed any wel l read person in history who i s not aware of the exci t ing developments in oral history and the enormous contr ibut ion oral history i s s tar t ing to make I t is a d isc ip l ine par t i cu la r l y su i table to the twentieth century where so much material w i l l otherwise be los t because bas ica l ly so much p o l i t i c a l , commercial and social business i s now transacted face to face or through the telephone We can no longer hope fo r the co l lec t ions of intimate le t te rs that members of the Cabinet were forced to wr i te to each other because for much of the year they were scattered the length and breadth of New Zealand Nor do we feel i t necessary or desirable to keep the diary that was so important a feature of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries While the^typewri ter , Xerox machine and l a te l y the word processor s t i l l ensure that there i s a f lood of paper from the public and pr ivate bureaucracies, th is paper w i l l only take the h is tor ian so fa r This paper i s too often a matter of necessary publ ic record, i t may give the public j u s t i -f i ca t i on for decisions or non-decisions, but i t does not provide much insight into the hidden agendas, the personal and the bureaucratic r i v a l r i e s that lead to decisions being taken Oral history provides an important aid in capturing some of the motives and emotions that might otherwise be completely los t to the future h is tor ian and biographer

In addi t ion, oral history provides an important means of documenting the l i ves of people who otherwise would be completely obscure Nobody thought i t worthwhile chro-n ic l ing the l i f e of a f i f teenth century peasant, so tha t , at best , there are only f lee t ing glimpses of the v i l l age communities from sources such as manorial records, occasional references in chronicles and public documents La Roy Ladur ie 's Mantaiiiou i s so valuable because i t breaks the s i lence of the mediaeval v i l l a g e 2 Because of the Church's i nqu i s i -t ion into the region we have a deta i led picture of be l ie fs work patterns and family re lat ionships of that obscure and probably highly untypical v i l l a g e in the Pyrennes In the twentieth century oral history has rescued the ordinary people from obscurity and there is a long l i s t of research that has been done for l o c a l i t i e s , occupations and indeed whole social c lasses For anybody interested in th is whole f i e l d Ρ Thompson's voices of the Past i s an invaluable star t ing point 3

1 personally am very committed to the value of oral h istory and the need for i t to be ac t i ve l y pursued in New Zealand However, l i ke any new form finding i t s f e e t , there is a danger of losing sight of the wel l establ ished d isc ip l ines that past scholars have found necessary to maintain the in tegr i ty of history and biography I have chosen my three works because I bel ieve that they i l l u s t r a t e th is thesis very well These three books are interest ing methodologically from another view point They represent apparent-ly a hybrid between biography and autobiography, since in a l l cases the basis of the book has been the recorded reminiscences of the subject of the book though there are in terest ing var iat ions between the three of them How should such a hybrid be eva luated 7

AUTOBIOGRAPHY/BIOGRAPHY

Both genres are wel l establ ished in Western cul ture and both add considerably to our understanding of ourselves and the society that we l i v e in The autobiography has enor-mous value to the h is tor ian and indeed to any seeker a f t e r understanding because i t should be an attempt of an honest person to order the i r experience to make sense both of the incidents of the i r own l i ves and of the socia l context in which they moved In the hands of an i n te l l i gen t , sens i t i ve and l i t e r a t e person who i s very anxious to communicate with the reader and to enhance his reader 's understanding, the autobioqraphy can be a very moving book Such a book can be at many leve l s I t can be a chronicle of a l i f e that

31

gives the emotional high points for that person A l te rnat ive ly - and many feel th is has been the most sat is fac tory form of autobiography, i t can be a rigorous examination of how somebody came to evolve the i r in te l lec tua l viewpoint - dung's biography, Memories, dreams reflections would typ i fy th is type of autobiography 4 Another poss ib i l i t y i s to show how one's work and environmental experience moulded your in te l lec tua l and emotional develop-ment - Lauren Van Der Pos t ' s autobiography does th is very gracefu l ly 5 The essence of a l l these biographies is that they have not necessari ly revealed everything that happened to the wr i t e r , given every d e t a i l , to ld every s o c i a l , sexual , commercial, occupational truth What they a l l have in common i s the wr i ter has set down what he or she bel ieves is valuable for the reader to know The important t ru ths, the s ign i f i can t designs of the i r l i f e a t that point of time i s set down for the reader to consider

There a r e , of course, dangers in autobiography The wr i te r i s only te l l i ng his reader what he wants him to know Moreover even the most honest i s subject to the pro-blem that we a l l are apt to forget so much, there i s bound to be some censorship, i f only to protect the reputation of others and, f i n a l l y , the most insidious trap of a l l , the way the memory ra t iona l ises to make order out of one's l i f e André Maurois argues that i t i s impossible that any autobiography should not be a mixture of poetry and t ru th , to quote from him

I t i s so precious th is l i f e of ours How could those pal t ry happenings, so simple so ordinary seem anything but important to us, more important than any-thing e lse in the world since they aroused in us such v i v i d emotions7 We know that we should have nothing e lse in the world except these fo r t y , these s ix ty yea rs , we should l i ke them to be years of beauty or at least a few rare moments of perfect ion When actual l i f e does not give such moments, we create them, we reconstruct them, that is to say'we a re , in the f u l l e s t sense of the word poets 6

The biographer's task i s more prosaic and more exacting His or her job i s to estab-l i sh the major fac ts of the l i f e then se lect out from the wel ter of material that i s ava i lab le the facts that he considers relevant to give the tone and shape of that l i f e Barbara Tuchman vigorously re jects the modern theory that " a l l fac ts are of equal value and that the biographer or h is tor ian should not exercise judgement To that I can only say, i f he cannot exercise judgement, he should not be in the business A po r t ra i t i s t does not achieve a l ikeness by giving s leeves, buttons and shoe laces equal value to mouth and eyes" 7 This theme of giving an a r t i s t i c shape to a l i f e so that the phys ica l , emotional, sp i r i tua l and in te l lec tua l qua l i ty comes across and the person's s igni f icance can emerge i s a constant one in the theoret ical l i t e ra tu re on biography

J A Garraty expresses the task as fol lows

biography is the reconstruction of a human l i f e I t attempts to describe and evaluate one ind iv idua l ' s career , and also to reproduce the image of his l i v i ng personal i ty , analysing i t s impact upon his action and the world in which he l i ved A l l biographies must be h is to r ica l and s c i e n t i f i c in that they aim at truth and depend upon ve r i f i ab le evidence At the same time they must be imaginative and a r t i s t i c , because insight and f e l i c i t y of expression are essent ia l i f the f u l l three dimensional truth is to be transferred to a printed page 8

I t i s not an easy task

When the new poss ib i l i t y of tape recording i s added to t h i s , i t becomes, from the point of view of professional standards, though not necessar i ly of l i t e ra r y ones, even more d i f f i c u l t

AMIRIA

In her d iscussion, Dr Salmond tends to present hersel f as merely the t ranscr iber and editor She states

Because I am convinced with Geertz that l i v e s l i ke s o c i e t i e s , contain the i r own in terpretat ions, I have res is ted any anthropological t inkering with the main text , footnotes are explanatory rather than ana l y t i c , and the only anthropological discussion comes in th is section I t seems to me that Amina interprets her experience with exemplary s k i l l , and that any re-processing on my part would be beside the point 9

32

With respect to Dr Salmond, such an approach i s unrea l i s t i c and even a rather super f ic ia l examination of the t ranscr ip t of the f i r s t 22 tapes, which have been deposited in the Alexander Turnbull L ibrary shows that much more than th is was involved 1 0 These tapes reveal the intimacy that existed between the S t i r l i n g s and Dr Salmond They had known each other since 1964 and i t i s c lear Amina was being prompted to r e - t e l l well known and much loved s t o n e s 1 1 Some of these stor ies were very well to ld The f i f t i e t h anniversary of the taumau (arranged) marriage was very well publ icised - the S t i r l i n g s ' accounts were broadcast on the Maori programme and a te lev is ion feature was made - ra is ing the poss ib i l i t y that the mechanism of ra t iona l is ing and shaping that Maurois describes could have already been at work

Though Amina ' s proposal to Dr Salmond i s presented as spontaneous, I suspect the thought of a book had been put into her mind by Dr Salmond's c lear in terest A l l th is would have shaped the material presented

Moreover when i t came to the intereview i t s e l f , there would have been further poten-t i a l l y dec is ive involvement Anybody who has conducted a body of interviews knows there i s a subtle chemistry between the two part ies and by the i r questioning and in teres t or indi f ference in what is being said an interviewer can control the content and d i rect ion of an interview Moreoever the text of any interview i s rambling and pro l ix so that very considerable s k i l l s of ed i t ing , rearrangement and select ion are required In the case of Amina a high proportion of the interview was in Maori or a mixture of Maor i /Engl ish so that Dr Salmond had to add the s k i l l s of t ranslat ion as well

None of these actions I see as improper in the r ight context, my objection i s that in th is case (as in other cases I have read about) the ro le that is being played i s not recognised There i s a myth being generated that prevents the f u l l value of the mater ial emerging There i s a need to establ ish cer ta in c r i t i c a l standards and subject published oral interviews to c r i t i c a l analysis

I bel ieve the problem that Dr Salmond got hersel f into by claiming the ro le of passive t ranscr iber can be seen in re la t ion to two chapters "Girlhood Days" and "Typhoid Epidemic" In these chapters is set out what would broadly be the period of Am ina ' s l i f e between 1907 and 1917 In i t Amina recounts the fol lowing incidents I have de l ibera te ly l i s ted them and I have indicated where they occurred on the tapes j us t to show how much judgement Dr Salmond was obliged to exercise to create a coherent nar ra t ive The events chronicled can be characterised as follows

My f r iend J o Honua - Tape 1 T i t i Huía and I s teal a saddle to go to a dance - Tape 1 The Ngati Porou s ta r t dairy farming - Tape 14 The Ngati Porou prohibi t ion (and the consequent resentment of Ngata by Ngati Porou)

- Tape 15 Well ington Ladies ' College and why I ran away - Tape 2 George (Amina ' s pakeha boyfriend in Well ington) - Tape 3 I nurse in the typhoid epidemic - Tapes 3 and 4 I work as a housemaid for the Wil l iams - Tape 5 The Wi l l i am 's boy and the philosophy of chast i ty - Tape 3 Amina catches typhoid - Tape 5

You w i l l note from that the way in which various s t o n e s have been drawn from quite widely separated tapes

Amina S t i r l i n g throughout the tapes makes i t quite c lear that she i s very uncertain about dates even the date of her own bi r th 1 2 She had a struggle to have the fac t that she was of pensionable age recognised by the Socia l Secur i ty Department and she had to c a l l on an old pakeha f r iend on the East Coast to establ ish that she was e l i g i b l e 1 3 My own viewpoint i s tha t , a t th is point, Dr Salmond had to make a major e f fo r t to t ry to estab-l i sh the key dates for Amina ' s l i f e and her problems in the narrat ive stem from th is f a i l u r e to attempt to adequately date cer ta in events Even in the society of the 1890s and 1900s in a remote rural area therewere s t i l l some attempts a t record keeping and to my mind there was some research that could have been done to have attempted to date these events

The f i r s t is the death of her father As the t a i l o r a t Tuparoa he would have had some local consequence and his death could well have been noted by the local correspondent

33

of the Poverty Bay Herald This would also have helped to establ ish Amina ' s age She herself says " I j us t know i t was about eighty years ago, on the 16th of August at Tuparoa" 1 4 Since the taping of her reminiscences was 1973-75, th is implies that she was born somewhere between 1893-95 Though because there would be a cu l tura l preference to overstate her age, I would suspect 1893 i s fa r too ear ly She also comments that she bel ieves she went to col lege a t Well ington when she was 18 1 5 As th is could not be e a r l i e r than 1914 and could even have been 1915, th is would make a b i r th date of 1896 or even 1897 possible In fac t I bel ieve the more plausible dates for her bir th would be somewhere between 1895 and 1897

This seems confirmed by her react ion to her future husband when she was f i r s t told of the arranged match Her f r iend reminded Amina that "he (Eruera S t i r l i n g ) came here one t ime, and ca l led in to Taumata-o-mihi " Amina remembered him "And I sa id , 'But oh1 that boy's too young 1 ' I'm already f in ished school and heck I was working and I saw him one time I was a t the Wi l l i ams, and I went back home and this boy was running around on the marae " This "young boy" reference suggests a s ign i f i can t age gap Eruera S t i r l i n g in fac t was born on 30 March 1899, so he was over 16 in 1915 which seems the most probable year for the event This react ion seems to come from a person aged around 20 years 1 6

Another public fac t about Amina would have been her schooling She says quite spec i f i ca l l y that she went to Hiruharama School for several years and l a te r found out that she had been put down not as O'Hara, her true name, but as Haerewa, her foster parents' name She also attended a very vaguely described Ladies ' College in Well ington She attended i t according to her own account only b r i e f l y since she was unhappy there with the threat of a taumau marriage (arranged marriage) hanging over her She became fr iends with a German g i r l there who, since i t was World War I , was highly unpopular They both ran away together and the pol ice had to be ca l led to f ind her I would sus-pect that the dates were a t ea r l i e s t 1914 and I bel ieve more l i ke l y 1915 I ac tua l ly had a suspicion that i t might have been Wellington G i r l s ' College but the Registrar there had not been able to turn up a Haerewa or a Amy O'Hara for any year between 1913 and 1917

F ina l l y there i s the very s ign i f i can t fac t of the typhoid epidemic to which a whole chapter was devoted Typhoid was a highly feared disease in New Zealand at that time because i t was very contagious and with the more pr imit ive sewerage systems very hard to el iminate As a disease i t had to be not i f ied to the author i t ies so that precautions could be taken to prevent epidemics Even so, typhoid was endemic throughout the country and occasional ly f la red to major regional epidemics The Maori population with i t s lower l i v i ng standards and even poorer standards of hygiene and sani tat ion was par t i cu-l a r l y af fected by th is The typhoid epidemic that Amina describes is of such ser ious-ness that when I looked a t her account there was no doubt in my mind that i t would have l e f t r ipples in both the o f f i c i a l papers and probably have been wr i t ten up in the press accounts of the time Because of pressure of time I did not t ry and search the news-papers I did however go to the o f f i c i a l papers - records of the Health Department, annual reports of the Health Department, the New Zealand O f f i c i a l Yearbook ( the bible of a l l researchers) , and Department of S t a t i s t i c s publications for the relevant period to see i f I could a t leas t locate the year when the epidemic occurred I achieved the fol lowing resul t ,

Typhoid Statistics ,

Cook and Waiapu Hospital Districts

NOTIFICATIONS HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS*

Calendar Years

Cook Waiapu Cook Waiapu

1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918

123 116 167 84

100 22 93 25 34

29 36 42 15

11 9 7

12 11

66 22

14 33

34

1919 29 ' 5 0 13 4 1920 22 27 13 4 1921 17 29

sources AJHR, H31 Health Department Reports for a l l years except 1918 and 1919 which were derived from New Zealand Officxal Yearbook for 1918 and 1919

* Taken from Volume I of the statistics of New Zealand for the years 1914-20

Regret fu l ly as part of i t s war e f fo r t the Health Department ceased to publ ish s t a t i s t i c s of no t i f iab le diseases for individual hospital boards in i t s annual reports - an i n -fu r ia t ing omission since i t means the years 1915 and 1916 show a break However there are hospital admissions for typhoid for the Cook and Waiapu Hospital Boards for the missing period and these suggest there were no epidemics in those years This is con-firmed by the report of H Carr , the East Coast enumerator for the 1916 Maori census who reported in October 1916 that there had been no major outbreaks of disease in the area 1 8 The s t a t i s t i c s suggest 1911 and 1913 as the two possible years for the typhoid epidemic but probably fur ther work in the newspapers and of the Te Puia Hospital records could establ ish the matter beyond doubt, since Amina does give a great amount of deta i l

In my opinion 1913 i s the most l i ke l y date This i s because the report of the Well ington D i s t r i c t Health Of f ice noted that there was an outbreak of typhoid in Waiapu of 93 cases amongst the Maoris which necessitated the opening of Manutahi i so la t ion camp, the d i s t r i c t nurse for the Maoris got the disease and two nurses employed in nursing cases, but they a l l recovered 1 9 Manutahi is the old name for Ruatoria and i t seems to me that th is must have been the camp with the marquees Amina describes This immediately changes the ent i re sequence of events in her l i f e The typhoid epidemic in Dr Salmond's arrangement would have had to occur in 1915 or 1916 In fac t the epidemic occurs in 1913 Amina i s then sent to school in Wel l ington, I would suggest probably in 1914 and 1915 At some point she runs away from school in 1915 and then goes back to the Coast working as a housekeeper fo r the Wil l iams for two years She i s then be-trothed to Erurua S t i r l i n g in December 1917

I consider the date of the prohibi t ion and the Ngati Porou haka i s a lso out of sequence

Amina ' s mother would have been campaigning for prohibi t ion in 1911 because that was when the f i r s t l icensing pol l was held and narrowly passed thanks to the work of her mother amongst the Maori women of Waiapu 2 0 The l as t period that the haka could have been composed was 1922 because the second poll that revoked prohibi t ion was held in that year To judge from the accounts of what was happening on the Coast, l iquor was not exactly in short supply throughout the period from 1911 to 1922, even i f i t was incon-venient to obtain and Ngati Porou resented the prohibi t ion on themselves In theory, the haka abusing Ngata might have been composed any time between 1911 and 1922 I suspect, because Amina confuses prohibi t ion with the establishment of the dairy ing i n -dustry, that the scenes she ac tua l ly describes refer to the period 1921-22 Eruera had in fac t returned to work for the Wil l iams in 1919 so he could learn the a r t of farming Amina was therefore amongst her own people from 1919 to 1923 when they returned to Raukokore 2 1 I know from my own work that the prohibi t ion had become a major issue a f te r World War I and Ngata was pressing, almost desperately, to have i t repealed and he f i n a l l y persuaded Massey the Prime Minister and Coates the Native Minister to authorise and, more importantly, pay for another pol l fo r the 1922 e lect ion 2 2 Coates inspected the East Coast in May 1921 and Massey a lso went there in autumn 1921 and i t may well have been there that the haka was put on for the v i s i t o r s to show the Ngati Porou's fee l ings 2 3

Coates in h is speech in the House cer ta in ly refers to the in tens i ty of fee l ing on the issue in the Coast 2 4 I t was also in the ear ly 1920s that Ngata began his campaign to persuade his people to take up dairying which may explain how Amina came to connect and then ra t iona l i se the two separate issues S ign i f i can t l y enough, in f a c t , Amina recounts the story in tapes 14 and 15 when she i s ta lk ing about farming and the i r attempts to set themselves up 2 5

I would submit that i t i s not sustainable for Dr Salmond to make the claim that the l i f e has i t s own internal in terpretat ion I must also reg is ter my dvsappointment that she has assigned hersel f to the ro le of a dea ex machina instead of taking a ro le centre stage Certa in ly I feel very strongly that Anne Salmond could have brought two unique insights to both works One was her long standing intimacy with the S t i r l i n g s which

35

must have f i t t e d her to make comments on the i r character, aspects of the i r experience and the i r impact on others that would make them three dimensional 26 in f a c t , because of her long standing fr iendship and intimate personal associat ions, she potent ia l ly could have brought some of the qua l i t ies of close observation of a Boswell to her sub-j ec t The other s k i l l that should have been in conscious play is Dr Salmond's profes-sional competence as a trained anthropologist and Maori scholar While I agree with her judgment that Amina and Eruera show perception, i t i s more in re la t ion to individual events The overal l pattern and s igni f icance of the i r l i v e s requires to be elucidated by someone else

I have detai led a l l t h i s , not because I have a fondness for n i tp icking but because even where an informant i s not interested in chronology and cannot be helpful about chronology i t i s s t i l l possible by dint of hard work to use internal references to help establ ish chronology and these internal references can be l inked to outside events that w i l l y ie ld some f irm dates I bel ieve i t i s an inescapable part of the biographer's task to t ry and establ ish the chronological baseline of a l i f e because otherwise that l i f e has no meaningful pattern a t a l l Worse s t i l l , you may have given a wrong pattern to somebody e l s e ' s l i f e Inescapably the person preparing the tapes for publ ication is more than a tape recorder and has to take on the role of a biographer with a l l the respons ib i l i t ies that Garraty de ta i l s

ERUERA

I do not propose to deal with Erurua a t such length Interest ingly enough, Dr Salmond did attempt s ign i f i can t l y greater documentation of Eruera S t i r l i n g ' s l i f e I t is also apparent from her accounts in the book that everything was done on a much more formal basis and that Eruera was working 'through his whakapapa book with her 27 The general impression that I have i s , as you would expect from a man who had been a farmer and one of Ngata's agents, that he had a much better sense of chronology Even in th is book, there is an awkwardness between a running taped narrat ive that was used as a basis for the account and the need to document date and explain

Some of the recurrent d i f f i c u l t i e s show themselves in the treatment of the family background In the chapter heading "My Great-Grandpeople" Eruera ta lks about his grand-fa ther , Maaka Te Ehutu and his role in the wars of the 1860s 2 8 In that account he has Maaka going off to the Taranaki Wars along with Major Rapata Wahawaha and various other chiefs The account that he gives of the i r behaviour in Taranaki i s interest ing insofar as they were sparing those that the Government and even Rapata Wahawaha wanted to cap-ture Dr Salmond herself did some delving in the archives and turned up a l e t t e r in which Major Noakes, his commanding o f f i ce r , described Maaka as "troublesome and obstruc-t i v e " 29

In fac t as fa r as I can judge Eruera is passing on memories of the very confused and f l u id s i tuat ion amongst the Whanau-a-Apanui in the 1860s That side of the Coast, possibly because of i t s long-standing quarrel with Ngati Porou which Eruera documents in his chapter, seem to have been against the Government while many of the major chiefs of Ngati Porou were for i t Even so there was a strong kingi te sentiment r ight round the East Coast in the ear ly part of the 1860s and th is sentiment was powerful enough to form a contingent of tribesmen from Ngati Porous, Whanau-a-Apanui and other Tarawhiti t r ibes who t r ied to take part in the Waikato Wars in 1864 This contingent wished to march through Arawa te r r i t o ry but the Arawa refused them passage There was a skirmish around Lake Roto i t i on 7 - 9 Apr i l 1864 and a fur ther skirmish on 27 - 28 Apr i l which involved Government troops and two warships The Maori war party was soundly beaten 3 0

In the la te 1860s the area was described as infected with Hauhauism and i t was not unt i l 1870 that a Government agent was able to describe the Raukokore settlement as being now determined to uphold the Government 3 1

ι

In terest ing ly enough there was no conf iscat ion of land in the Whanau-a-Apanui I have a strong impression that Maaka and his fe l low tribesmen may have been forced by Rapata Wahawaha to serve in Taranaki as a proof of loya l ty This would probably also account for Maaka's remarks a t Rapata's tangí "Rapata Wahawaha good job you died' You did a lo t of d i r ty work steal ing the land from Ngati Porou 1 " Apirana Ngata himself to ld Eruera about his grandfather's remarks without expressing any resentment Indeed he commented on Maaka's strength and the way he had the crowd with him 3 2

In fac t Ngata's contemporary report to the Te Aute College Old Boys' Association on

36

the tangí has to be set against Eruera 's account There he remarks about the v i s i t of th i r t y ch iefs of Opotiki and the East Coast He describes them as ' f i n e , well set up in te l l i gen t men, the sight of whom revived and may the hope that cer ta in elements in the Maori character be touched, awakened to l i f e and energy, and directed to r igh t , the race might l i v e and grow vigorous" These chiefs Ngata reported to his peers were sym-pathet ic to the aims of the Te Aute Associat ion He has them saying "We sent you to the Colleges to learn the wisdom of the pakeha not for your own benef i t , but for the good of the people What you see i f for our good, you should t e l l us and you may not f ind us unwil l ing to hear The customs of the Maori must die,though not rapidly ye t surely And you w i l l think as the English think, U v e as they l i v e , and t i l l your f i e l d s and keep your lands as they do You must prepare for that time and perhaps i t s coming "33

I am not suggesting that Eruera S t i r l i n g was misreporting I t shows to me how oral accounts may round out and supplement wri t ten records even contradict them so that a complete picture emerges

I hope I have said enough on Eruera to indicate the way the oral memory can s impl i -fy and the need for any histor ian to be a l e r t to th is and to t ry to recover those e l e -ments which have been dropped out

WHINA

I would l i k e now to consider the th i rd book in th is s ty le - Dr King's book whina His presentation i s very d i f ferent from Dr Salmond's Whina Cooper s t i l l emerges very c l ea r l y from the book and is quoted extensively but Dr King has not used his taped in ter -view as the basis for the text This means he has not eschewed the normal c r i t i c a l standards and c lea r l y he has t r ied to ver i f y and corroborate her statement There i s also a very exp l i c i t chronological development and there is a consistent attempt to pre-c i se l y date events Dr King has also not been a f ra id to interpret and evaluate his subject Indeed considering the formidable personal i ty he i s documenting, his w i l l i n g -ness to be c r i t i c a l of her s ty le of leadership and to out l ine the problems i t gave r i s e to i s an act of considerable in tegr i ty and plain courage However, even so experienced an histor ian as Dr King can s t i l l f a l l v ic t im to the seduction of his informant and exhibi t some of the weaknesses I have noted in the other two books In the case of whma I noted these weaknesses in the two chapters "Queen of the North" and "Amazon Excavator" which deal with her personal farming and business ventures and her ro le in Ngata's land development projects in the north

One of the most v i v i d events in these two chapters i s the section where Whina, spec ia l l y inv i ted for a land development conference at Rotorua in l a te June 1932, meets Ngata for the f i r s t time She is convinced by the success of the schemes in the Bay of P len ty , but because of the kawa of the Arawa Marae which w i l l not al low women to speak in publ ic , she has to remain s i l en t throughout her v i s i t I t was only on the very l as t day a t the pakeha rai lway s ta t ion , that Ngata mischievously pointing out that they are now on a pakeha marae, asks her what she thought about the schemes and she rep l ies "Give me the money, Ap i , and we ' l l beat you" Dr King argues in th is book that her support marked a turning point for the acceptance of the schemes in the north 3 4

Regret fu l ly , because a r t i s t i c a l l y i t i s so r ight , I have to say that the r e a l i t y i s much more complex than th is Ngata had in fac t been very ac t i ve in North Auckland from the la te 1920s when he and Tau Henare, the MP for Northern Maori, backed strongly by Gordon Coates as Prime Minister and Native Minister negotiated rates compromises with the Northern County Councils 3 5 These were to give the Maori owners breathing space while consolidation schemes created v iable blocks for farming Judge Acheson from Tokerau Maori Land Board was an enthusiast ic advocate of Maori farming and, from 1925 on-wards, had used the funds of his Board lav ish ly to provide mortages for Maori farmers This must have included Whina's v i l l age a s , according to a report made to Ngata on 3 June 1932, there were 11 people in Pungaru with Board loans 3 & However Ngata was not sa t i s f i ed with Acheson In a handwritten note amongst his personal papers Ngata made the assessment that Acheson could not be trusted c i t i ng the excessive level of expenditure on farming exploi ts which Ngata held went beyond his experience and judgement as a judge Ngata therefore decided to circumscribe the Board's a c t i v i t i e s and for twelve months almost every recommendation of the Board was turned down 3 7 Ngata also decided not to delegate his powers to the Maori Land Board as he had done in other d i s t r i c t s but car r ied out his development schemes through supervisors d i rec t l y responsible to the Head Of f ice of Maori A f f a i r s Department This judgement was j us t i f i ed by subsequent events In 1931 the

37

Tokerau Maori Land Board was so f i nanc ia l l y overcommitted that Acheson was desperately t ry ing to t ransfer every possible unit and therefore the i r mortgages to the development schemes to restore some l i qu id i t y to his Board's finances 3 8 Apart from his 1928 tour, Ngata in fac t went on a comprehensive tour of the north in la te 1930 and th is included spending an evening a t Pungaru on Saturday, 26 A p r i l , explaining his schemes to the people there Ngata's pr ivate secretary, Ba lneav is , ac tua l ly made notes of that meeting and these make i t c lear that there was considerable in terest in the community and amongst Whina's own family in the land development schemes Whina inc identa l ly was not present at the meeting 3 9 As a resu l t of that tour Ngata was able to gazette, 26 June 1930, a number of Hokianga blocks, including some at Pungaru as sui table for develop-ment 4 0 Work began on the North Auckland schemes in August 1930 and, by Apri l 1931, there were 120 units in Hokianga under the Native Land Development Scheme 4 1 By 3 June 1932, 13 people were being assisted in Pungaru Ί2 Whina herself seems to have f i r s t become involved with Ngata's organisation through part ic ipat ion in August 1931 in a contract to provide work for the unemployed She and four others including her s i s te r contracted with Wil l iam Cooper to provide some money or i t s equivalent in kind to help bui ld a stop bank to prevent flooding The same memo also notes that the Government supplied £3 to the convent for cocoa and b iscui ts for the nuns' pupils - a very charac ter is t i c Whina Cooper touch 4 3

I am not suggesting that Dr King is completely wrong I suspect that the tour marked a psychological turning point for Whina by making her a wholehearted supporter of the development schemes Perhaps even more importantly she became a devoted Ngata supporter and a convert to Ngata's ideals of a cul tural rev iva l Ngata noted in a l e t t e r dated 9 June 1932 to his protege Wil l iam Cooper that he had put the idea into her mind Pungaru needed a carved meeting house 4 4 I t i s c lear that Ngata wanted her and her fami ly 's unequivocal commitment to the schemes and once he had i t the pace of the develop-ment schemes in the Hokianga noticeably accelerated The whole episode i l l u s t r a t es the need to be cont inual ly wary of the way in which complex events are s impl i f ied and even dramatised in your informant's memories Even more importantly, one has to recognise that an emotional fac t does not necessar i ly mean that i t can be treated as an establ ished truth

CONCLUSION

I r ea l i se that I have been highly c r i t i c a l of these works and i t i s important to make i t c lear that I regard them as valuable biographies that enhance our understanding and contribute to the l i t e ra tu re of our country

Nonetheless, there i s an important theoret ical question to be answered about these works Are they biography, autobiography or a new hybr id 7 I consider they are bio-graphy and must conform to the establ ished standards of biography I do not apologise for my c r i t i c i sm because I bel ieve also that i f New Zealand historiography i s to advance then i t is extremely important that a l l our works are subject to careful c r i t i c a l scrutiny I t is the only way to ensure future authors are aware of the i r predecessors' errors and methodological weaknesses and can try to avoid them I would hope there w i l l be more biographies wr i t ten based on oral accounts but I would expect those workers to ins is t on the i r r ights as biographers to establ ish base l i ne facts Certainly i t i s the i r i n -escapable responsib i l i ty to develop the i r own interpretat ion not jus t who publish and ed i t the tapes This i s the only way to earn the accolade of biographers

G V Butterworth Wei 1ington

REFERENCES

1 Anne Salmond, Amina the life story of a Maori woman Amina Manutahi Stirling, Wellington Reed, 1976 Eruera S t i r l i n g as told to Anne Salmond, Eruera tne teachings of a Maori elder, Wellington Oxford Universi ty Press , 1980 Michael King, whma a biography of whma Cooper, Auckland Hodder & Stoughton, 1983

2 Ε La Roy Ladur ie, Mantaillou Cathars and Catholics m a French village 1294 -1324, London Sco lar , 1978

3 Ρ Thompson, The voice of the past oral history, Oxford Oxford Universi ty Press ,

38

1978, ÎS the best short statement about the topic An even more interest ing book IS Ρ Thompson With Natasha Buichardt (ed ) , Our common history the transforma-tion of Europe, London Pluto Press , 1980 This i s a co l lec t ion of essays con-tr ibuted by those ac t ive in oral history research from a l l over Europe and shows the range and some of the problems associated with th is new form There i s a lso a considerable range of technical l i t e r a t u r e , e g W Κ Baum Transcribing and editing oral history, Nashvi l le American Associat ion for State and Local History, 1977, and C Davis, Κ Back, Κ MacLean, Oral history from tape to type, American Library Associat ion, 1977

4 C Jung, Memories, dreams and reflections, London Col l ins & Routledge Kegan P a u l , 1963

s L Van Der Post , yet being someone other, New York Morrow, 1983

6 A Maurois, Aspects of biography, London CUP, 1929, ρ 158

"» Β Tuchman, 'Biography as a prism Of h i s t o r y ' , Practising history Selected essays, MacMil lan, 1982, ρ 89

Β J A Garraty, rhe nature of biography, London Jonathan Cape 1958, ρ 38

9 Amina, ρ 166

10 A recording of the questions appearing on the f i r s t few pages of the t ranscr ip ts indicates very well the ro le Dr Salmond was playing Set below are the f i r s t ten questions and in brackets the pages they appear on

What was i t l i ke with Mrs Wi l l i ams ' What was she l i k e 7 (p 2)

What was the school a t the Wil l iams l i k e 7 (p 2) I know what Te l l about how I know what Tel l me about how your mother and father met7 (p 3)

Talk about that time your grandfather gave you that f i r s t whacking (p 5)

Were you a t school when you pinched the saddle 7 (p 10)

Oh t e l l us about that one, I l i k e that story (tape changed)

How old were you then 7 (p 10)

Why don't you ta lk a b i t about how you came to go to school, and a l l t ha t 7

How come you go away to school a t Wel l ington 7 (p 13)

There i s nothing i l l eg i t imate in these questions which are typical of those scattered throughout the 216 pages of the t ranscr ip t I bel ieve they indicate very c lea r l y Amina was being prompted by and responding to Dr Salmond's enthusiasm There are h in ts , too, that Eruera S t i r l i n g and possibly others were present (p 10)

11 At the i r f i r s t meeting in 1964 Amina held Dr Salmond's at tent ion with one of her s tor ies [Amina, ρ 164) and a t several points in the book the i r intimacy is stressed (see Acknowledgements, pp X , 145, 150, 164, 165, 166)

12, A quote from the t ranscr ip ts shows the ed i t o r ' s problems in t ry ing to get a date for the typhoid epidemic

"Anne What years were these, about7

" I can ' t remember now, what year i t was I t was a f te r the war Cause, I remember, when I was in Well ington, that was in 1914 I think, that was the worst year of that war, eh Yeah Well i t was a f te r that I think i t was '15 to '16 was the epidemic, because you see, I was married in 1918 " Amina, ρ 21

13 Amina, ρ 4

39

14 Amina, ρ 1

15 Amina, ρ 26

16 Amina t ranscr ip t ρ 41 In Amina, ρ 40, th is i s somewhat shortened and rearranged

17 Amma, ρ 27 " the Ladies ' College in Well ington" i s how i t i s described Yet on the same page she says " I did have a pakeha boy f r iend there too, a boy ca l led George Nelson He was at school with us and that i s how I met him " The s igni f icance of th is did not s t r i ke me when 1 wrote the paper but i t implies she may have gone to Wellington Technical Col lege, now known as Wellington High School which was the only co-educational school in Wellington This school i t seems to me as more l i ke l y to take an 18 year old student

I also take the view that the reference to going back to Taumata-o-mihi (Anuria, ρ 29) would probably be the school holidays a t Christmas which would f i t in well with her German f r iend f inding the hos t i l i t y impossible to cope with, pa r t i cu la r l y as the Ga l l i po l i casua l i t i es of Apr.il/May 1915 started to be known

is The census was taken in the f i r s t week of October 1916 and H Carr , the Enumerator for Waiapu reports, "The general health of the Maori appears to be on the whole sat is factory No epidemics or diseases have been reported " Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, (hereafter as AJHR) 1917, H-39A, ρ 4 A search of the or ig inat ing f i l e for the sub-Enumerator's reports in the Department of Maori A f f a i r s ' records held a t National Archives showed that there had been no censorship as far as epidemics were concerned although there were references to a greater number of tangís than usual and drinking was described as a great problem Department of Maori A f fa i r s records held a t National Archives, Wellington (here-af ter c i ted as MA) Yearly correspondence se r i es , 1916/1023

Florence Harsant (then Florence Woodhouse) who made a t r ip overland from Gisborne to Waihi as Maori Organiser for the Women's Christ ian Temperance Union from March to Apr i l 1914 reported typhoid a t Tolaga Bay which was in the Gisborne d i s t r i c t but reported no other health problems She did however mention drunkenness a t Hiruharama F Harsant, They called me Te Maan, Christchurch Whi tcoul ls , 1979, pp 131-143

19 AJíffi.1914, H-31, ρ 49 I t must be remembered that th is report covers the 1913-14 f inanc ia l year The report for 1913 also notes a serious outbreak of typhoid in Waiapu D i s t r i c t and mentions three nurses managing a hosp i ta l , which would be consistent with the outbreak star t ing in ear ly 1913 and reaching i t s peak mid-year AJHR, 1913 H-31 ρ 13 W D S MacDonald whose electorate covered the Waiapu and Opotiki counties asked a question without not ice on 23 J u l y 1913 whether a supply of typhoid vaccination amounting to 6,000 tubes had been sent Ngata queried whether vacccination procedures and t ravel res t r i c t ions were being properly carr ied out The Minister of Health assured them vaccine supplies were being sent New Zealand parliamentary Debates (hereafter NZPD), Vol 162, pp 724-25 There IS also mention of an iso lat ion camp being establ ished and kept open for a year a t Tuparoa a t some point during 1910 and 1911 but the repor t 's wording suggested by mid-1912 i t was history AJHR, 1912, H-31, ρ 21

20 See Anuria, pp 24-25, for a descript ion of her mother's work Ngata was in fac t canvassing his t r ibe for subscriptions to the Waipu Farmers' Co-operative in 1912 and th is may be what Amina hazi ly remembers and ra t iona l ises by transposing the establishment of the dairy farming industry in which she and Eruera would be v i t a l l y interested Ngata seems to have been arguing for the project from 1910 but Proh i -b i t ion gave him the opportunity to carry i t through by creat ing some surplus cash He in fac t co l lected some 11,380 £1 shares in the winter of 1912 to s tar t the Waiapu Farmers' Co-operative SeeiG V Butterworth, "The P o l i t i c s of adaptation the career of S i r Apirana Ngata 1974-1928", MA thes is , V ic tor ia Universi ty of Well ington, 1969, pp 67-69

21 Nurse Walker commented on s ly grogging in 1915, see AJHR, 1915, H-31, ρ 28 A deputation from the Anglican Synod waited on two Government min is ters, W Fraser and G W Russe l l , to complain about dr inking, Poverty Bay Herald, 31 October 1916, ρ 4 The dates for the East Coast stay are deduced from Erurua, pp 129-133, Amina, pp 72-76

40

22 The Parliamentary debate m 1922 on the Horouta Licensing B i l l brings out c lea r l y the social embarrassment and more ind i rec t ly the l iquor problems i t created WZPD vol 198 (1922), pp 682-690 See also Butterworth op at , pp 77-80

23 See S i r Harry Barker, Todays and yesterdays, Gisborne Logan Pr in t 1978, pp 26-31, NZPD vol 198, pp 682, 686

24 See NZPD vol 198 for Massey's (pp 686-87) and Coates' comments (pp 682-83, 688-89)

25 Amina t ransc r ip ts , pp 123-31

26 See Note 11 for Amina This intimacy is also stressed in Eruera, pp 245, 246-49

27 Eruera, ρ 245, and pp 246-248 describe the methods of working

28 Eruera, pp 13-78 The par t icu lar section deal t with is in pp 64-78

29 Eruera, ρ 71 No hint of th is problems appears in the o f f i c i a l h is tor ies or pub-l ished o f f i c i a l accounts See J Cowan, The New Zealand Wars A history of the Maori campaigns and the pioneering period vol II The Hauhau Wars 1864-72, Wellington Government P r in te r , 1983, pp 512-513 Major Noakes in h is report of Government dated 31 May 1870 praises Ngati Porou's good serv ice See "Report to the Inspector in Charge of Wanganui D i s t r i c t " , AJHR, 1870, D-70, ρ 4 Kohere and Wahawaha never served in Taranaki so the desnpt ion of Maaka overrul ing Rapata i s quite f a l s e

30 For a br ie f descript ion see Cowan op at vol I , pp 414-420, 1983 (Report) I t î s in te res t ing that the memory of th is par t icu lar defeat has not survived

31 See AfíjR, 1870, A-16, ρ 10

32 Eruera, pp 74, 76

33 Report of the Second Conference of the Te Aute College Students' Association, December 1897 (Napier, 1898), ρ 19

34 Whina, ρ 115

35 See Butterworth op at , pp 256-261 The rates compromises were negotiated in the ear ly months of 1928 but Ngata had spent a great deal of time with both Coates and Tau Henare persuading them of the v i r tues of consolidation and farming in 1926 and 1927

36 Derived from a set of tables supplied by o f f i ce rs a t Whakarapa on 3 June 1932 in f i l e headed "Hokianga Development Scheme" MA 31/7, National Archives, Well ington This f i l e is part of a bundle of min is ter ia l f i l e s covering the Tokerau D i s t r i c t

37 Handwritten note by Ngata dated 28 May 1930 in folder headed "Tokerau Maori Land Board" , Ngata Family Papers, Gisborne I t was s t i l l apparently in force in 1931 See A Τ Ngata, "Native Land Development" AJHR, 1931, G-10, ρ XVI

38 See MA year ly f i l e ser ies 1928/576 (National Archives, Well ington) which documents th is and Ngata's gradual disi l lusionment with Acheson's lack of farming and adminis-t r a t i ve expert ise In "Native Land Development" loc at , pp v - v i , the problem i s referred to general ly

39 See f i l e marked 'Tokerau D i s t r i c t Development Schemes (Genera l ) ' (MA 31/7) for a record of Ngata's tour throughout North Auckland in Apr i l 1930 There is a hand-wr i t ten paper probably in Ba lneav is ' s handwriting, noting what each speaker said Since Whina is not shown as speaking and s i l ence , as Dr King makes c l e a r , was not her s t y l e , I assume she was not present

40 See "Native Land Development" 1931 loc at , ρ 2 and 'Report of the Commission on Native A f f a i r s ' , AJHR, 1934, G - l l , ρ 163

41 "Nat ive Land Development" loc at , ρ 2 The estimated expenditure for 1931-32 was £8,058

Sheet headed "Whakarapa Development Scheme" in MA 31/7.

W. Cooper to A.T. Ngata, 5 August 1931 : i b i d .

Ngata to Cooper, 9 June 1932 : i b i d .

i f 1 9 & 8 / 5 7 6

f/ÍV^ \Λ AmUind,, ,.,Jth OctPtMj

MEMORANDUM for: -

The Under Secretary. Fativo TJeoartrue nt, wTfiT.LiyqT.Oft.

Tokerau Board Financée

I have to acknowledge receipt of your instructions of tne 27th ultimo, N. 1928/576.

On the 24th September, the day after Ï saw the Hon. the Minister, I carried out his definite inatructione and telegraphed Mr Watt to atop a l l further development work at Te Kao ponding the Minister's authority being granted. As many of the Natives wi l l have to go out on to the gunfielda to secure the means of sustenance. I fear that it wi l l not be possible now to get eome of the available areas ready for grassing this spring.

I have had no word yet as to when the Native Trust Office wi l l move in the matter of taking over 30:113 of the Board loans. I shall be away now until the last week in October. It is ad-visable that I should go into theoe matters personally with the Bative Trust Office representative.

I note with extreme regret that the Hon. the Minister has decided that the Tokerau Board raunt give up its interest ih the Emily Placo property to the Waikato M&niapoto Maori land Board. The definite instruetiono to facilitate the necessary arrange-ments wi l l be carried out. They w i l l be carried out under pro-test, however, for the effect of the arrangement wi l l be to put the Tokerau Office "back into its old position of tutelage to the Waikato Kaniapsto Office. The Tokerau Office has not deserved, this treatment whatever may be thought by the Hon, the Minister or, by you about me personally.

I beg to suggest that attention be drawn to Judge MucCormiek'o definite promise to me that he would not require payment of the first ^000 from the Tokerau Board until the 13th January next. I am confident that by the lath January next the Tokerau Board wi l l be in a position to repay the Waikato-ttania-poto Board as promised, and wi l l meet the balance of its indebted-ness by the 18th April aa arranged. In the neantine, the Waikato-Manlapoto Board**iarf easily hold the titles to the Emily Place property as security.

The suggeation to hand over the Emily Place property did not emitíate from me.

President.

42

T H E O R I G I N S O F N G A R A U R U Κ Ι Γ Α Η Ι

"Tu mokemoke ai a Taranaki i te uru, Kua rere nga manu noho i runga"

"Taranaki stands lonely in the west, For a l l the birds that nestled there have flown away"

INTRODUCTION

Tena koutou, e nga iwi i raro i te maru o te tupuna maunga n e i , o Taranaki I greet th is conference in the name of our most venerated ancestral mountain, Taranaki , once frequented by the host of proverbial birds of wisdom many of whom gained the reputation as prophetical leaders , each in his own time Te Ua Haumene, Titokowaru, Tohu Kakahi, Te Whiti-o-Rongomai, Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana, Ngapiki and Te Rua Hakaraia to name a few of that c lass of people of mana Therefore, to them and others who have flown from the summit of Taranaki 1 s peak to the Reinga, the Vei l beyond, I pay t r ibute Haere, e Kui ma, e Koro ma ki te au o Tahekeroa

KAUPAPA

The confederation of t r ibes from P a r i m m h i , the White C l i f f s , to Waitotara and beyond i s known as Taranaki and each t r i be i s ident i f ied as an iwi hapu , a major subsection of the main t r ibe The Te Ati Awa iwi hapu of New Plymouth area to Waitara and the Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama that includes t e r r i t o r i e s beyond P a r i m m h i , are the Tokomaru people From Nga Motu to approximately the Oeo area, here we have the Kurahaupo descendants Then, there is the Ngati Ruanui who, according to genealogical evidence, take in the Oeo area and f lank the Ngati Maru boundaries around St ra t ford and extends i t s t e r r i t o r i es as far as Patea and Whenuakura Nga Rauru commences south of Whenuakura to Kai Iwi In former times Nga Rauru took up part of the Whanganui region as fa r as the r i v e r , in places

Ngati Ruanui and Nga Rauru claim the i r canoe to be Aotea Whanganui are also of the Aotea but claim to be a separate t r ibe and today ident i fy themselves as Te Ati Haunui-a-Paparanagi

THESIS TOPIC

When I began to prepare my proposal to present for my M A programme, i n i t i a l l y I set out to wr i te a history about the Nga Rauru t r i be That was about the begimng of 1977 In the introduction I wrote, "My aim is to present a descr ipt ion of Nga Rauru Ki tahi and i t s t rad i t ions that i s la rge ly from the point of view of Nga Rauru's own scholars This descript ion i s tempered not only by my interpretat ions of the evidence (the oral t rad i t i ons , the manuscripts l e f t by Nga Rauru recorders and o thers , and the published l i t e ra tu re ) but also by the views of some of Nga Rauru's neighbours"

At that time I f i rmly bel ieved that Nga Rauru belonged to Aotea and that the i r ancestors came in the Aotea migration and se t t led in Patea However, as time went on and I delved deeper into the history of the people I began detecting a quite d i f fe rent p icture of the i r history and about the end of 1977, I discarded my or ig ina l intent ions of j u s t producing a history by ac tua l ly forming a thesis proper and that thesis was to demonstrate how the Aotea migrants ar r ived and took over " lock, stock and barrel " , to the extent that Nga Rauru very nearly los t i t s own or ig ins

SOURCES

I have always been interested in my t r i ba l connections and have spent a l l my l i f e studying various aspects of my t rad i t i ons , song, oratory, history e tc There were a number of elders l i v i ng in the 1850s-60s whose help in teaching me our customs, provided for me a good background that l a te r was to be of greater assistance and espec ia l l y in recording our history Taihape R i m i t i n u , Rakei Taituha K ing i , Koria Wipa, Te Waiwhakauru S u l l i v a n , Te Hokio Unahi are some of the old people whom I was very c lose ly associated with and whose openness made learning a comfortable experience over the years

43

44

Then there were the old manuscripts that belonged to various people of the t r i be and in par t icu lar material that was wr i t ten by Wiremu Kauika of Waitotara Kauika was a wel l t rave l led man and documented several chants and genealogies of the t r i be He also was an assessor for the Maori Land Court in his day His son, Ranginui also kept books and from those I managed to read a lo t of local history Then, perhaps, the greatest acq is i t ion of local documents that I received was Hetaraka Tautahi 's own manuscripts care fu l l y wr i t ten by Te Iwiora Tamaiparea and his brother Rima Wakarua respect ive ly One of the manuscripts was f ree ly used by John Houston in his book "Old Taranaki "

Other wr i t ten material was given to me from areas outside Nga Rauru as well The Rangikaitu manuscript that I have contains many Ngati Ruanui Whakapapa, the Pumipi papers that were kindly loaned to me by Mr John Tahu contain lo t of Whanganui genealogi and these and many, many other manuscripts that I have consulted helped me to care fu l l y sort out the theme and conclusions of my thesis

CONTENT MATTER

I do not propose to go over the whole book but I would l i ke to point out one or two important features that I barely touch on in these wr i t ings The f i r s t one i s the Aotea attempt to take over the Tokomaru area According to the accepted s tory , the commander of Aotea, T u n , and his people ca l led in a t Kawhia and from that incident Kawhia and Aotea Harbour receive the i r names The canoe was not used from there on, according to the t rad i t i on , but was l e f t a t Kawhia, and Tun and his people journeyed by land naming the places from there to Patea

Places that have been at t r ibuted to th is journey-that i s , the names such as Urenui Wai tara, Oakura cannot be regarded as re l i ab le because each of these areas are able to give the i r own account of the i r or igins I understand Oakura was named because of the redness of Hunakiko ( T u n ' s cloak) Yet according to Tautahi , Hunakiko was the name of one of the adzes brought in the Aotea canoe, and th is is mentioned in some of the Aotea chants in his book I bel ieve that the Aotea sa i led d i rec t l y from Kawhia to Patea or Whenuakura and that the story of T u n ' s journey from Kawhia via Tokomaru and Kurahaupo te r r i t o ry was an attempted bid for the Aotea to take over those areas I am sure that a careful study of th is t rad i t ion w i l l confirm my theory Who made i t up7

Pakeha scho la rs 7 The Maori himself 7 This i s another area to look at

The second point is that there i s s t i l l much more research to be done in the Nga Rauru area I am current ly sort ing out the genealogies of each hapu and hope to produce th is work in the not too d is tant future There i s probably the necessity to review,the t r i ba l boundaries and define them more c lea r l y taking into account the ear ly landmarks

Tena koutou

Ruka Broughton

Vic tor ia Univers i ty of Well ington

[An abstract of the thesis was on view to conference par t ic ipants ]

45

THE MAORI LAND COURT AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION

I come from the Aotea Registry s i tuated in Wanganui The land covered by our Registry extends from the Mokau River in the north, stretching across to the southern hal f of Lake Taupo and then extending south down to and including Wellington What I have to say w i l l , however, to a large extent a lso apply to other r e g i s t r i e s , ι e , the Tokerau Registry in Whangarei, the Waikato-Mamapoto Registry in Hamilton, the Wa iank i Registry in Rotorua, the Takitumu Registry in Hastings and the Te Waipounamu Registry in Christchurch This i s because there are standard procedures for the maintenance of records and the format in which they are set up

Minute books

From the beginnings of the Maori Land Court hearings in the l a t t e r hal f of the nineteenth century, records of proceedings have been kept in Court minute books which are handwritten by the presiding judge, and th is system remains to the present day in spi te of more modern and much more e f f i c i e n t recording techniques being ava i lab le The records in a par t icu lar minute book general ly re fer to areas in which the Court sa t , e g , Tokaanu minute books re fer to s i t t i ngs in the Taumarunui-Tokaanu area, although there are also minutes which were kept by par t icu lar judges, e g , we have Judge Ward's minute books, Judge Scanlon's minute books, etc

A l l minute books have an index in the front which contains

(a) the names of persons succeeded t o , and

(b) the names of blocks which were the subject of an appl icat ion to the Court

I t i s therefore possib le, i f one knows approximately when a person died or was succeeded to , or approximately when a block was deal t w i th , to locate the appropriate minute book reference, and a t th i s point I think i t i s important to bring to your notice that a l l indices l i s t i n g the owners of Maori land are in alphabetical order of christian name

Application files

These include papers dealing with appl icat ions lodged with the Maori Land Court Many of the ear ly ones deal with invest igat ion of t i t l e , ι e , claims by Maoris to the ownership of land Older appl icat ion f i l e s were f i l e d away in date order and some, a t l e a s t , of these contain very interest ing mater ia l , one example being the handwritten l i s t s of owners which were handed into the Court by claimants a t the or ig inal hearing Many subjects other than invest igat ion of t i t l e were deal t with but these are probably the most interest ing from the point of view of the researcher Most of these older appl icat ion f i l e s are now stored a t National Archives in Wellington but the information i s s t i l l ava i lab le to those interested Today, appl icat ion f i l e s are f i l e d in the Registry in minute book order 1

Title binders '

These contain the t i t l e to each and every block of Maori land (which i s usually a par t i t ion o rder ) , together with a l i s t of the or ig inal owners a t the time of pa r t i t i on , plus the current l i s t of owners and de ta i l s of leases , amendments to area, etc

The order of papers in a t i t l e binder i s standardised and each section contains

(a) the current l i s t of owners plus succession order schedules,

(b) memorial schedules containing de ta i l s of a l iena t ions , e g , l eases , timber grants, appointment of trustees', e t c ,

( c ) the par t i t ion order which includes a l i s t of owners at the time of pa r t i t i on ,

(d) the survey diagram, provided of course that the block has been surveyed, and I would emphasise here that there are s t i l l many hundreds of Maori Land Court par t i t ion orders which have not been completed by survey

Block order files

I f you want to know changes of ownership between the time the t i t l e was f i r s t set up and the present day, th is information is contained in the block order f i l e s These are

46

set up in date order and, in many cases, the f i l e s are divided up into sect ions, each containing the record of a par t icu lar subdivision of the parent block I f various sub-d iv is ions are not shown separately, one must wade through the whole ser ies of f i l e s looking for information which may be relevant This can be very time consuming However, we are working towards having a l l block order f i l e s broken up into subdivisions which w i l l make research that much easier

Alienation files

These deal with the a l ienat ion of Maori land by sale or l ease , timber grants, etc F i l e s dealing with land sold many years ago are now with National Archives but, as I said before, the information i s s t i l l ava i lab le to researchers This information can be very important when a t ransfer signed many years ago has not been registered in the Land Transfer Off ice and the document i s los t Appl icat ion can be made to the Maori Land Court fo r an order restoring the e f fec t of the l a s t instrument and information on the a l ienat ion f i l e s i s v i t a l to th is exercise

Probate or Letters of Administration

Unti l the 1967 Maori A f fa i r s Amendment Act came into force the Maori Land Court had ju r i sd ic t ion to make grants of Probate or Let ters of Administration and f i l e s dealing with these grants, together with the or ig inal W i l l s , are held in the Maori Land Court

Adoption files

S im i l a r l y , the Maori Land Court had ju r i sd ic t ion to make adoption orders and r e l e -vant papers are f i l e d in our records These show de ta i l s of natural parents, adoptive parents, the c h i l d ' s or ig inal name, and h is or her adoptive name i f d i f fe rent

Whakapapa or Family trees

Over the y e a r s , Court s taf f have had on many occasions to prove or disprove a r ight to succession or the correctness or otherwise of an e a r l i e r succession This work in most cases necessi tates the drawing up of a whakapapa and these are sometimes very extensive This work i s time-consuming and, in order to t ry and ensure that i t does not have to be repeated, we have bu i l t up, over recent yea rs , f a i r l y extensive whakapapa f i l e s and the information on these can be made ava i lab le Older minute books a lso con-ta in a number of whakapapa

Nominal index

There has always been d i f f i c u l t y in ascertaining the extent of a Maori owner's land in terest and when a benef ic iary died and was succeeded to , various in terests were often l e f t out because the i r existence was not known Over the past several years we have bu i l t up an extensive nominal index and th is contains the name of every owner of Maori land in the Aotea d i s t r i c t and a complete l i s t of h is or her land in terests Cards are not removed when a benef ic iary dies and i s succeeded to but de ta i l s of the succession are entered on the card This means the index contains the names of a l l benef ic ia r ies who were owners a t the time the index was set up or who have come in as owners s ince, but does not include owners who had died or were succeeded to pr ior to the sett ing up of the index I would repeat the point made e a r l i e r - these cards are f i l e d in alphabetical order of christian name

Succession indices

These make up, to a cer ta in extent, the def ic ienc ies in the nominal index as these indices give d e t a i l s , ι e , minute book references, of a l l successions pr ior to the set t ing up of the nominal index These indices are not exhaustive but can be very useful

Beneficiary cards

These are not in the Court Registry but are kept by the Trust Accounts Section in the Department of Maori A f f a i r s ' Wanganui o f f i ce These are very l i ke old bank ledger cards and contain information regarding any moneys which have ever accrued to the bene-f i c i a r y and, more importantly from our point of view, contain references to how the par t i cu la r benef ic iary came on to the t i t l e and of succession a f te r death These cards are not ava i lab le for public searching but the information can be obtained by search c le rks from the Court Section to ass i s t in the i r own searches or when they are helping a member of the public with a search

47

Valuation cards

We have a complete set of valuat ion cards covering every block of Maori land in the Aotea d i s t r i c t and these contain de ta i l s of valuation from each f i ve -year l y valuat ion review, and also of any special valuat ions carr ied out for sale or lease purposes

Plans and maps

We have Lands and Survey cadastral maps covering the whole d i s t r i c t On these, lands current ly in Maori ownership are coloured yel low and th is makes the locat ion of Maori land much easier and also provides an immediate answer to the question of the density of Maori land in any par t icu lar area

The cadastra is are being supplemented by a complete ser ies of plans used by the Valuation Department These are a considerable larger scale than the cadastra is and th is makes ident i f i ca t ion of smaller areas much easier Valuation maps also have the Maori land coloured yel low

I f we do not have maps showing the information that you requi re, we can perhaps obtain these from the Department of Lands and Survey

Microfilms

At various times a l l Court minute books have been microfilmed This work was i n i t i a l l y car r ied out by the Mormon Church and l a t t e r l y by the Government Pr in te r Copies of a l l the microfi lms are held by National Archives Other ins t i tu t ions (e g , the Alexander Turnbull L ibrary and the Universi ty of Auckland L ib rary ) hold some copies also

Each Court Registry has a microfi lm index and we f ind these valuable for other pur-poses The index l i s t s a l l the minute books, the venues of the Court s i t t i n g , the dates of the s i t t i ng and the presiding Judge Thus, i f you know the Maori Land Court sat in New Plymouth in 1903, the index w i l l help you locate the minute book in which the minutes of the s i t t i ng are recorded

Types of Order

You may ask what types of cases do Maori Land Courts deal w i th , ι e , what i s recorded in the minute books7

Some of these are

(a) successions - these are perhaps the most important An owner in Maori land dies and orders must be made to pass his or her land interests on to the chi ldren who are the ones pr imari ly en t i t l ed to succeed,

(b) par t i t ion - th i s re fer to the subdivision of Maori land,

(c ) t ransfer of shares under section 213 - th is i s a simple means by which a Maori owner can t ransfer his or her shares to another Maori e i ther by way of sale or g i f t .

(d) t rus ts under section 438 - the appointment of t rustees who are charged with the management of land under mult iple ownership,

(e) the creat ion of Maori reservat ions as marae, burial grounds, places of h is to r ica l i n te res t , etc

There are many more and, i f you want further information, I would re fer you to the current statute which i s the Maori A f fa i r s Act 1953 and i t s amendments

Incorrect evidence

Orders of the Maori Land Court from ea r l i e s t times r ight up to the present have to a large extent been based on verbal evidence given under oath and i t must fol low that from time to time incorrect evidence i s given Th is , of course, leads to incorrect orders being made, but these can be remedied by an appl icat ion to the Chief Judge (a t present under section 452) F i l e s dealing with such appl icat ions are ava i lab le for inspection and research

48

I f you disagree with the Court 's decision you may lodge an appeal and th i s i s heard by the Maori Appellate Court usually made up of three Maori Land Court Judges Here again, the fu l l proceedings of the Maori Appellate Court are ava i lab le for public inspection Those of you with l e g a l i s t i c minds may be interested in the Maori Appel late Court decis ions, some of which have far-reaching e f fec ts

The Land Transfer Office

I think I should mention here that some, but by no means a l l , Maori Land Court orders are registered in the Land Transfer Of f ice Land Transfer Of f ice records are only correct insofar as they show the orders which have been registered Therefore, i f ( pa r t i cu la r l y for legal purposes) you want the fu l l picture as to a block of Maori land, i t i s imperative that you search the records of both the Land Transfer Of f ice and the Maori Land Court

What of the future'

This appears to l i e in computerisation and planning i s already under way to have a l l Maori land ownership l i s t s , de ta i l s of area, a l i ena t ions , e t c , computerised Information from nominal index cards w i l l also be on the computer This w i l l be ana t ion -wide exercise and there w i l l be terminals in a l l Maori Land Court Reg is t r ies and in the many o f f i ces of the Department of Maori A f fa i r s throughout New Zealand E f fo r ts are already being made to get a l l Maori Land Court t i t l e s recorded in the Land Transfer Of f ice but th i s work w i l l not be able to be completed unt i l a l l the land concerned has been surveyed The net e f fec t w i l l be that information regarding Maori land w i l l be-come much more readi ly ava i lab le and a great deal of the tedious manual work involved in updating of Maori Land Court records w i l l be eliminated

Searching the records

I f you want to make an in-depth search of the Maori Land Court records may I suggest that you f i r s t of a l l consult with a senior o f f i ce r of the Maori Land Court I f you make your needs known he w i l l be able to assess which records you require and make these ava i lab le to you and, depending on the accommodation s i tuat ion in the par t icu lar o f f i c e , may be able to make special f a c i l i t i e s ava i lab le I f you cannot f ind what you want, then please ask - s ta f f are ava i lab le to a s s i s t , although, of course, the assistance they can give to any one person must be l imi ted

Conclusion

The Maori Land Court i s a vast well of information I t has been bu i l t up over a period of well over one hundred years I t provides an insight into a very important part of our history The information is there Please make use of i t

Br ian Herl lhy Aotea D i s t r i c t Maori Land Court Wanganui

49

TRANSLATING THE GREY MAORI MANUSCRIPTS FOR THE PUBLIC

The object of my paper is to test out on you some ideas and cr i t i c isms which or iginated from my experience compiling an inventory of the Maori manuscripts in the Grey Col lect ion at the Auckland Publ ic L ibrary The t i t l e re fers to the process of arranging these manu-scr ip ts and of making them accessib le to users I t i s not used in the sense you might expect, that i s , of t rans lat ing manuscripts in the Maori language into Engl ish, but rather in the sense of the work of spec ia l i s t l i b ra r ians and a rch iv i s t s who " t rans la te" or declare to the public the s igni f icance of the material in the i r charge, who move i t from one condition of disorder and obscurity to another (preferably) of order and c l a r i t y In much the same way, t rans lators c l a r i f y the meaning of one text in a foreign language by rendering i t in the i r own language and that of potential readers Like t rans la to rs , a r ch i v i s t s and l i b ra r ians aim to represent both the sense and s p i r i t of the or ig ina l document, and to describe the document in such a way as to make i t under-standable to users I t i s th i s f ine tuning in " t rans la t ion " , in interpretat ion of docu-ments, which I want to centre on with regard to Maori mater ia ls

There are two preliminary remarks which I would l i ke to make F i r s t l y , I am neither the spec ia l i s t l i b ra r ian nor the a rch iv i s t whom I am addressing, although I have a t times been employed to do the i r kind of work I d i rect my comments a t both spec ia l i s t s because of the i r common ground in the care of Maori mater ia ls The issues of the paper also concern l i b ra r i ans a t large

Secondly, my knowledge of Maoritanga - the language and cul ture of the Maori peop le-i s la rge ly derived from our education system, i t i s an outs ider 's knowledge which lacks the fluency on the one hand and depth of understanding on the other of Maori experts in the i r own cul ture In ta lk ing about Maori manuscripts and other objects of Maori o r i g in , I may be seen by some to be usurping them There are Maori people who would suggest that enough of the i r land, language and l i f e has been taken over by the race I represent, and that I should therefore remain s i l en t While I respect those opinions, I am prompted to speak because of many others who encourage our working together to reconci le Maori and pakeha ways of l i f e in t h i s country To th i s end I feel that our respons ib i l i t i es as pakeha are to learn about Maoritanga, to teach our fe l low pakeha what we learn of that Maormess, and to of fer in interact ion with Maori people some of our cul tura l s k i l l s which might be useful in our b i -cu l tura l development More importantly, however, I think we must t r a m ourselves to appreciate Maori cu l tura l pract ices and incorporate them as Maori people see f i t I s t ress the l a s t point because we have long neglected to do th i s while Maori people have done i t with us since we f i r s t ar r ived I t i s for these reasons that I wish to comment again on the ro le of a rch iv i s t s and l i b ra r ians and Maori mater ia ls I say "again" because 1 have deal t with th i s topic before in a r t i c l e s in New Zealand Libraries and Archifacts^- but the Conference and i t s t imely theme of "Maori History and Resources" seemed the ideal place to a i r these views and perhaps to get some response

The manuscripts of the t i t l e (which are a topical focus only for the paper) are items accumulated by S i r George Grey, whose interest in Maori language and h is to r ica l t rad i t ions i s well-documented in records of his l i f e and in his own publ icat ions Most of the manuscripts were wr i t ten between 1845 and 1854, and the i r authors included Maori men and women, other pakeha co l l ec to rs , and Grey who made every e f fo r t to obtain Maori language texts as he went about the country There are some 10,000 pages and they contain, for example waiata (song poems), koorero (nar ra t ive accounts, for example of t r iba l h i s t o r y ) , whakapapa (genealogy) and other components of the oral t rad i t ions The material went f i r s t , with the rest of Grey 's l i b ra ry , to the South Afr ican Publ ic L ibrary in Capetown, the New Zealand books and papers were sent there in 1861 Negotia-t ions were made for the return of th is New Zealand matter and the resu l t was i t s deposit in the Auckland Publ ic L ibrary between 1922-23, some 62 years ago 2

My at tent ion was f i r s t given to th i s co l lec t ion during a Master 's paper dealing with t ranscr ipt ion and t rans lat ion of Maori manuscripts A c lass v i s i t provided me with an awareness of the extent of th is and other Maori material in the Library A consequence of the v i s i t was that a Student Community Serv ice Project was approved for the summer of 1980, and I was employed to expand on the exist ing catalogue of the Maori manuscripts from the Grey Col lect ion This catalogue had largely been drawn up from a l i s t i ng of a l l Grey 's l i b ra ry compiled in 1858 by a Capetown scholar, Dr B leek , i t was sketchy and inaccurate, not a productive f inding a id The chance to explore the manuscripts was rewarding in i t s e l f , but i t also meant that I was constantly in the L ibrary , using these

50

mater ia ls , seeing how they were used, and supplying for others ' use of them My ideas did not necessar i ly form at that time m the coherent pattern which, I hope, they form in th is paper, they developed with research on Maori documents in other l i b r a r i e s and arch ives , but th is i n i t i a l experience was the source of my assert ion now that current systems of management of Maori materials in our ins t i tu t ions are inadequate

My br ie f was to set up a descr ipt ive inventory of th is body of texts As I have said I had neither expert ise in Maori language and t rad i t ional knowledge (the usual subjects of such texts) nor t ra in ing in the care of manuscripts and archives I was a student of one, a user of the other I t may have been th is very lack of special i ty which caused me to see how the two kinds of expert ise came together m the L ibrary meeting p lace, or rather, how they did not come together there, how only one kind of expert ise was evident and then not very e f f ec t i ve l y I shal l i l l u s t r a t e what I mean by th is with reference to the task of cataloguing and to the consequences of insu f f i c ien t user information on Maori mater ials

No doubt every cataloguer wishes to meet the object ive of a balanced contr ibut ion to the ident i f i ca t ion and organisation of mater ia l , and to the descript ion of i t for users I do not want to dwell on the correct emphasis for each or on the in t racac ies of manuscript indexing per se, but rather on the special features of cataloguing Maori mater ia ls , on the preparation needed for those who come to use them, the public of my t i t l e As fa r as the Grey Maori manuscripts went, i t seemed to me that the public meant Maori people or pople with some knowledge of, or desire for knowledge of Maoriness I decided that i f I indexed for Maori people's needs I would also meet the needs of others I assumed that the same essent ial categories would be relevant to them a l l

I began to think, therefore, about how a Maori might require th is material to be described in a catalogue, what top ics , what key ent r ies ( to use the terms of the trade) Maori people might come looking for Subjects came to mind l i ke the names of IWI ( t r i b e s ) , hsputi ( sub - t r i bes ) , tuupuna (ancestors) and whenua ( lands) As these topics were not general ly represented in the exist ing manuscripts catalogue, I went to see how they were catered for in other parts of the L ibrary There were not accounted for in any compre-hensive or useful way For example, in catalogue entr ies Waikato i s bound to turn up, Ngaati Porou might but probably not Tai Rawhi t i , and Ngaapuhi i s more l i k e l y to be North-land - Maoris Subject heads which had become common in English language usage were i temised, but not those common in the Maori language or to Maori people Two problems with exist ing catalogues were therefore apparent one of topic awareness, that i s an understanding of areas of primary in terest to Maori people or i f you l i k e , for the subject Maori, and, inextr icably t ied to th is was the other of language The inventory needed to be b i - l ingual in key captions a t leas t The Maori terms of reference with a supplement of English t ranslat ion were necessary in order to make sense of the subject

The absence of topical Maori catalogue ent r ies made me consider how, as a pakeha, matters of concern to my l i f e were provided for in l i b r a r i e s and in a rch ives , in our national reposi tor ies of information I rea l ised how easy i t was for me to pull out a catalogue drawer or grab a l i b ra r ian for reference to information on v i r t u a l l y any a s -pect of my l i f e - my personal l i f e (my family or ig ins) and my environment (the world in act ion around me) Information i s ava i lab le in books, rather less eas i l y from manu-sc r i p t s , and then from other materials References to th i s information are ca re fu l l y ordered for my re t r ieva l by a host of fami l ia r terms, a number of var iant ent r ies which, whatever my angle of thought, should point me to my resources

I t does not appear to me to be as easy for a Maori to research his or her l i f e in th is way In my research on Maori top ics , in looking through numerous catalogues and inventor ies, I do not have the same sense of d i rec t h i t In fac t I feel a sort of desperation - "There's bound to be something in here and I don't know how to get a t i t " A Maori can, of course, go into a l i b ra ry and f ind out about his or her pakeha-ness, that i s , about those other charac te r i s t i cs and a c t i v i t i e s which have inevi tably become part of his or her l i f e But the primary qua l i t i es of personal l i f e and the environment, the land, int imately connected with i t , a l l those other parts of a Maori person's l i f e (hui, marae, whakapapa, whanaunga, iwi) have not been captured in f inding aids in most of the l i b ra r i es and archives which record, amongst other th ings, our nat ion 's existence I f one opens a catalogue drawer (or reads a microf iche) in search of a hapuu name, the chances are that i t w i l l not be there, but the chances are that there w i l l be something in that ins t i tu t ion about the hapuu In some cases i t i s more l i k e l y that information

51

i s in manuscripts rather than in the more eas i l y catalogued and acquired published works, fo r th is reason alone the search i s harder My conclusion i s that our l i b r a r i e s and archives have not served the i r Maori publ ic wel l with respect to the l i t e r a t u r e of a l l kinds which they hold and which o f fe rs information on the i r Maoriness (nor have they tested the provision of other ma te r ia l , for example, tapes for Maori users) They have not made the exist ing l i t e r a t u r e obvious to the Maori people or to other potent ial users, that i s , by t rans la t ing i t from a state of deposit to a f i t s tate for use This kind of neglect of Maori in terests i s ca l l ed ins t i tu t iona l i sed racism

I would l i k e to explore an argument which I think par t ly explains but does not excuse th i s s i tuat ion and which I think i s central to the management of Maori mater ia ls You might conclude from th i s c r i t i c i sm that the real reason fo r th i s imbalance in con-sumer serv ices der ives from our di f ferences as Maori and pakeha You might say "Ah, but l i b r a r i e s and archives are pakeha systems for information storage, our par t i cu la r method of pooling and dispensing informational resources, and one which i s not pursued by Maori people and which therefore doesn't work so well for them There's not much l i t e ra tu re in our ins t i tu t ions concerning them and they don't seem to use i t " I think there i s an element of t ru th in t h i s but i t bears fur ther thought For me the question of d i f ferences in such a claim hinges on the matter of o r a l i t y and l i t e r a c y

My contention i s that as f a r as Maori society goes ( I mean here Maori a c t i v i t i e s which are cu l t u ra l l y d i s t i n c t ) o r a l i t y i s s t i l l a prevalent condi t ion, that i s , the spoken word holds precedence The marae r i t u a l s above a l l proclaim t h i s , and the many hui, the constant gatherings fo r debate and decision on p o l i t i c a l and soc ia l matters a lso proclaim i t (Think of the preference Maori people have fo r taped ma te r i a l , not notes from a hui but a tape of the whaikoorero, not the text of a waiata but a recording of a kaumaatua or kuia singing i t ) The transmission of t rad i t iona l knowledge continues in r i t u a l s on marae in the texts of whaikoorero and waiata, and, a t night a f te r the ce re -monies, in the long koorero (d iscussions) when old and new knowledge i s passed on in account and argument There i s much about ' t rad i t iona l matters and contemporary events that i s only learn t of in t h i s way, through th i s oral exposit ion

But th i s i s not to suggest that a l l Maori knowledge i s exclusive of the l i t e r a t e world The master memory of the old Maori has long since been replaced by the use of w r i t i ng , by manuscript books of t r i ba l t r ad i t i ons , by published works and, more recent ly , be taped matter Some e lders today surpr ise us with the amount they can r e c a l l , but for many of them the fund of knowledge l i e s secure in some manuscript book or notes a t home Nevertheless, much t rad i t iona l information i s s t i l l acquired and passed on through oral communication - by repet i t ion on the marae, in conversation between elder and youth, or in waananga (schools of l ea rn ing ) , though i t may be stored on paper or tape The use of wr i t ten or pr inted material i s supplementary, these are the secondary sources, the oral remain primary Young Maoris in search of t he i r heri tage would, I am sure, rather be apprenticed to e lders than to l i b r a r i e s , but i f they had no elders to go to (as i s often the case) then the resources of a l i b ra ry or archives could be v i t a l to them

This aspect of o r a l i t y in Maori cu l ture may tes t your a r c h i v i s t s ' and manuscript l i b r a r i a n s ' s k i l l s , I do not be l ieve that i t l e t you off the hook F i r s t l y , because in the Maori people 's t rans i t ion to use of wr i t ten l i t e r a t u r e , l i b r a r i e s and archives have had a special ro le to play By v i r tue of deposit of material from both Maori and pakeha, they have received some of the f i r s t evidence of that t rans i t ion - a t rans i t ion that i s no doubt inev i tab le but one which we, with hundreds of yea rs ' experience of wr i t ing and pr in t behind us , may be in danger of taking for granted This respons ib i l i t y which has devolved upon our ins t i tu t ions has become greater in the l i gh t of h i s to r i ca l and contemporary events

The near el iminat ion of the language through pakeha education for ass im i la t ion , and the undermining of the oral transmission by pen, pr in t and new cu l tura l pract ices ( to the extent that some elders chose to die without divulging the i r t rad i t iona l knowledge rather than leave i t in an i rappropr iate set t ing) have meant that the mater ia ls in our ins t i tu t ions have become more valuable Valuable in terms of our ideas of h i s to r i c va lue , but more s ign i f i can t l y in the sense of helping the Maori people to preserve a past that is of prime importance to them (And I suggest here that knowledge of the i r past is of more immediate import to Maori people than i t is to pakeha ) For past h i s -tory plays a v i t a l role in a Maor i 's everyday l i f e , for example, i t i s re-enacted or re - to ld regular ly on marae, in claims to .land and in obl igat ions to whanaunga The l i t e ra tu re which surv ives and documents that past i s v i t a l too

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The other reason why I do not think that l ib ra r ians and a r c h i v i s t s can be excused for neglecting the i r care of these materials is simply t h i s , that they have the t ra in ing to do i t From my experience as a cataloguer, from a cursory reading of l i t e r a t u r e on record keeping and manuscript c a r e , and acknowledging debts to the much-used Schellenberg anâ,a paper by Michael Hodder at a 1981 seminar4, I would summarize the theoret ical ideas, the^principles behind record management, in the following way The aim of such work is to preserve a selected document in i t s en t i re ty , taking into account i t s nature and function in re la t ion to the agency i t represents By acknowledging the or ig inal context of the document, the re lat ionship i s maintained between the body which created the record and the record i t s e l f With t h i s understanding of the whole item, the best arrangement and description for access to i t i s then determined Now, i f you accept th is out l ine of the s p e c i a l i s t s ' intent as cor rec t , then as far as Maori mater ials go there seems to be no problem, in pr inc ip le at least

For i f you have a Maori manuscript and you seek to recognise i t s or ig inal context, understand i t s nature and function and create the l ink with the agency i t represents, then surely you w i l l arrange and describe i t in a way which expresses i t s Maormess But I do not see the resul ts of these pr inc ip les having been applied to Maori mater ials I th ink, for example, that the or ig inal context, the agency, has been made a pakeha one, because that i s what has been known Thus in catalogues Tai Tokerau has become Northland, Ngaati Porou East Coast Maoris, waiata Maori poetry, and, by extension, Te, (Kooti "Ti Coati" on the l i p s of l i b r a r i a n s In e f fec t Maoriness has been t ranslated into the categories of pakehaness

+ ( ; Of course there are d i f f i c u l t i e s in putting these pr inc ip les into e f fec t How much

îjbf _the Maori context i s to be re ta ined 7 For example, in ident i fy ing and describing 'sBme manuscript minute books held in the Department of Maori A f f a i r s in Whangarei, I "sought to recognise Schellenberg's "natural organic order in which the records were created" The committees from which the minute books were produced were established by l é g i s l a t i o n , but as a resul t of Maori persistence and the work of Maori members of Parl iament, they were run by Maori e f fo r t for Maori purposes, and the minutes which remain recount Maori t r iba l history What i s the or ig inal context 7 What i s the agency - Government or the Maori people' Whose history is i t ' In our national record

^ke(eping should not there be some d is t inc t ion in favour of our nation of two peoples?

As another example in the i r cataloguing and recording of cul tural knowledge, Ipór i people apply r i t u a l s which are a t variance with the dispassionate aspect of the work of a r c h i v i s t s or manuscripts l i b r a r i a n s There are sp i r i tua l connotations surrounding Maori manuscripts which contain t radi t ional knowledge - the maun (1 i f e

r f o r c e ) of the knowledge, the tapu (sacredness) of documents, and there are attendant r i t u a l s for handling such material - karakia (prayers) and separation from other mundane occupations, for example There are a lso emotional aspects - tangí over manu-

s c r i p t s of a tupuna, or fee l ings that material should not be located away from i t s source of t r ibe and land Your theories and buildings need to al low for an accomodate these differences

' An interpretat ion of Maori materials for the public m a manner which i s in keeping with the l i v i n g Maori cul ture and users' requirements demands the best of your pro-fessional s k i l l s When seeking the or iginal context of material deriving from a pre-dominantly oral cu l tu re , and when cataloguing c r o s s - c u l t u r a l l y , knowledge of the context is c r i t i c a l As fa r as Maori matter goes, the easiest way of acquiring t h i s knowledge

" i s ' b y going to the people for whom the material has meaning, checking with them how to present i t and surveying the in terests of potential users s A uni lateral approach of deciding what i s best for others without consulting them i s surely outdated, i t i s cer ta in ly not productive Unfortunately, in the past i t has been the s ty le of pakehas'

h behaviour towards the Maori people I f your methodology does not include t h i s kind of dialogue, then perhaps the pr inc ip les need changing too

<- The challenge i s there for you as professional a r c h i v i s t s and l i b r a r i a n s to service Maori materials with e f f ic iency and s e n s i t i v i t y The demand for your services w i l l increase i f you advise the people most interested in them of the quanti ty, content, locat ion and a v a i l a b i l i t y of Maori materials in youç ins t i tu t ions Much of Maori cul ture has been submerged, some l o s t , by pakeha determination for integration There is<<now a widespread c a l l from Maori people for a return of the i r past and the i r cul ture Do you not have an obl igation to give easy access and f i t t i n g presentation to the part of the i r past which you have become guardians o f

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The process has already begun A number of projects for Maori mater ia ls have been undertaken by the Auckland Publ ic L ib rary , the Auckland Ins t i tu te and Museum L ib rary , National Archives and the Hocken L ib rary , 'and good work has resulted from them But these have been short term programmes (most through PEP and not the i ns t i t u t i on ' s funds) and have employed people of varying qua l i f i ca t ions As yet (the Alexander Turnbull L ibrary excepted) no one has created permanent posit ions in th is area While you accord the demands of the majority population f i r s t p r io r i t y and designate work on Maori mater ials as low-pr ior i ty , Maori people may then see themselves as of low-pr io r i ty , of low worth in your eyes Your decisions concerning Maori materials in your i ns t i t u -t ions contribute to the status of Maori people in th is country

In an a r t i c l e in New Zealand Libraries I wrote that some l i b ra r i es did not need fu l l - t ime assistance for Maori manuscripts On re f lec t ion I would say that a l l major l i b ra r i es and archives need fu l l - t ime spec ia l i s t s taf f for Maori mater ials Other smaller l i b r a r i e s should also ensure some permanent expertise for the i r Maori stock ( I wonder, for example, i f l i b r a r i e s are prepared for the Maori speaking chi ldren who w i l l come from the Kohanga Reo) Further I would suggest that for such appointments qua l i f ied Maori people have f i r s t option For others l i k e l y to serv ice th i s ma te r ia l , t ra in ing should include courses in Maori t rad i t iona l history and customs along with experience of the contemporary cu l tu re , and tu i t ion in the correct pronunciation of Maori words What I recommend by these suggestions is an ongoing commitment to Maori mater ials

I f you accept that change i s necessary then make sure that in your planning you go to the other professionals in th is f i e l d , to the Maori experts, to learn from them and in exchange to of fer them your ta len ts In th is way you work to reverse the dispro-portionate provision made m our ins t i tu t ions for our two major cul tures You are in an interest ing posit ion with regard to th is kind of change You hold and make ava i lab le some of the documents which have allowed others to re-evaluate and re-wr i te our country 's history pointing out the in jus t ices borne by the Maori people How are you going to set those new records s t ra igh t 7 Translat ing your Maori mater ia ls properly with par t icu lar regard to your Maori public i s one way of doing i t Make i t your p r io r i t y

Jane McRae

Univers i ty of Auckland

REFERENCES

1 'Maori manuscripts in public c o l l e c t i o n s ' , New Zealand Libraries, Vol 44, no 1 (1983), pp 8 -11 , 'Maori manuscripts - whose r e s p o n s i b i l i t y 7 ' , Archifacts, 1983/4 (Dec 1983), pp 2-6

2 For de ta i l s on the or ig ins and nature of the co l lec t ion see H W Wi l l iams, 'Maori matter at the Cape Of Good Hope', Journal of the Polynesian Society, 15, pp 175-80, Bruce Biggs, 'The t rans lat ion and publishing of Maori material in the Auckland Publ ic L ib ra ry " , Journal of the Polynesian Society, 6 1 , pp 177-91, J M Curnow, 'Wiremu Maihi Te Rangikaheke his l i f e and work' , unpublishd M A Thesis, Auckland Univers i ty , 1983 A descript ion of the contents of the Maori manuscripts may be found in the Inventory ( in progress), ava i lab le from the New Zealand Department, Auckland Publ ic L ibrary

3 Τ R Schel lenberg, The Management of Archives, New York Columbia Universi ty Press , 1965

4 Michael Hodder, "The Pr inc ip les andfldeas of Processing", a paper read at the 1981 ARANZ seminar 'Archives appraisal and processing'

5 A pract ica l commentary on how th is can be achieved i s made by Stephen Murphy in 'Maoritanga at the Paraparaumu Publ ic L i b r a r y ' , New Zealand Libraries, Vol 42, no 2 (1979), pp 43-6, and in 'L ibrary Serv ices to the Ethnic Community', LAA-NZLA

Conference Proceedings (Christchurch, 19-23 January 1981), pp 373-81

MAORI POLICING IN NINETEENTH CENTURY NEW ZEALAND

What I am going to do today in the br ie f time ava i lab le i s to provide a general ised framework of interpretat ion within which one can make sense out of an extraord inar i ly complicated subject I want to make c lear from the beginning that I am analysing why, when and how the pakeha ru lers of New Zealand u t i l i sed Maoris as policemen my per-spective i s that of the usefulness of Maori pol ice to the state and excludes any discussion of why indigenous people of New Zealand consented from time to time to so act as constables Suf f ice i t to say, both part ies gained perceived benef i ts from such arrangements

* * *

In nineteenth century New Zealand, Maoris f u l f i l l e d a t d i f ferent times and in d i f ferent places three separate but in ter re la ted pol ic ing functions

1 They would be required for the i r expert knowledge of fe l low members of the i r race , t r ibe or hapu, and/or of Maori customary law, of the t e r r a i n , and so forth This I w i l l ca l l the i r specialist ro le One half of a good thumbnail def in i t ion of pol ic ing ta lks of pol ice as being the 'eyes and ears ' of the state in i t s quest to control the general condition of order in a soc ie ty , the state requires survei l lance over populace and te r r i t o ry and th i s job i s pr imari ly given to the pol ice I t i s an equally well known ru le of pol ic ing that e f f i c iency i s best at ta ined through l i k e pol ic ing l i k e , with Maori pol ic ing Maori , a high degree of e f f i c iency was in theory achieved

2 Secondly, Maori pol icy could be used to impose cer ta in minimal standards of order upon predominantly Maori a reas, pending f u l l e r pakeha penetration and control - in the process of so doing they were laying the very groundwork for such increased pakeha penetration or settlement In such circumstances Maoris were act ing as temporary agents of indirect control by the pakeha s t a t e , whereas in the i r spec ia l i s t r o l e , Maoris are operating as indiv iduals or groups inside pakeha pol ice fo rces , in th i s indi rect control and pre-paratory r o l e , they operated under minimal guidance from state o f f i c i a l s -and i t was a holding operation

Note that both of these functions emphasise the notion of coercive control Without wishing to enter into the current ly raging academic debate over the purpose and ac tua l i t y of pol ic ing I w i l l jus t note here the other hal f of the def in i t ion of pol ice being the eyes and ears of the s ta te , which i s that they are also the 'hands' of the state To quote the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted P o l i c e , a body much akin to our Armed Constabulary in the 1870s 'The government w i l l make use of any person connected with the Force a t any work that may be considered des i rab le ' Po l ice in the nineteenth century were, indeed, al l -purpose agents of the s ta te , the common in ter l ink ing factor in a l l t he i r a c t i v i t i e s being (a) that as the 'hands' of the state they alone had legal discret ionary authori ty in ordinary circumstances to ac t coerc ive ly - to make people do th ings, (b) that a l l the i r energies were aimed at imposing and/or maintaining, in soc ie ty , condit ions which were defined by the state as 'order and regu la r i t y ' These def in i t ions a l tered from place to place and from time to t ime, and, because of the nucleated pattern of ear ly pakeha settlement, pol ic ing was -un t i l the abol i t ion of the provinces - a loca l i sed or a t most regional ised phenomenon

3 The th i rd pol ic ing ro le for the Maori of l a s t century i s broadly encompassed by the preceding two overal l functions of po l ic ing, but had a very spec i f i c form, v iz Maori pol ice were sometimes seen as an agency by which the Maori as a race could be brought c loser to what the pakeha ca l led c i v i l i s a t i o n , to acceptance of pakeha norms of order and regu lar i ty In th is perspect ive, Maoris in the pol ice would themselves imbibe a l l the a t t r ibu tes deemed desirable in a 'good c i t i z e n 1 , and then act as a conduit carry ing to the i r fe l low Maori desired pakeha notions of d i sc ip l i ne , order, regu la r i t y , and so for th I w i l l ca l l th is the conduit, or ' c i v i l i s i n g miss ion ' , role

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The f i r s t policemen resident in New Zealand were three Ngapuhi ch ie fs - Ruatara, Hongi and Korokoro who, in 1814, were ' invested with power and author i ty ' by the state of New South Wales to act as policemen in associat ion with the f i r s t white o f f i c i a l l i v i ng in the land, missionary Thomas Kendal l , OP, Resident Magistrate a t the Bay of Islands

This pr imi t ive pol ic ing apparatus was not only charged with the impossible task of contro l l ing the behaviour of pakehas in or v i s i t i ng New Zealand, but also to impose an overal l leve l of 'order and regu la r i t y ' such as was a t least minimally acceptable to the New South Wales state Pakeha shipping masters and crew, and escaped convicts from New South Wales or elsewhere, had been committing a t roc i t i es upon the Maori , or a t very leas t v io la t ing tapu, Maori re ta l i a t i on had followed from time to time and the government of New South Wales now intervened in an attempt to procure the preconditions for expansion of commercial and industr ia l contact between Sydney and the land across the Tasman which i t considered to be within i t s sphere of influence

So, long before annexation, a l l three, Maori pol ic ing c r i t e r i a were operating pr imar i ly , the 'policemen ch ie f s ' - and any others w i l l i ng to co-operate - were deemed agents of indirect and preparatory control by the New South Wales state They were a l so , as pr incipal ch ie fs of the i r t r i b e , already spec ia l i s t s in social control amongst the i r own people, and i t was expected that white men, by the ' s k i l f u l use of those powers which educated men possess over the wi ld or h a l f - c i v i l i s e d savage,, would bring them to see the advantages of adopting European re l i g i on , mores, trade prac t i ces , etc They were expected then to pass on a l l that they had learnt to the i r own people Of course, the experiment was not a tota l success, but the idea of indirect control v ia Maori ch ie f l y pol ic ing was retained i t was what Busby as B r i t i s h Resident was ordered to , and t r i ed to , implement

Even a f te r annexation in 1840 the indirect control method survived for a while as the prevalent pol ic ing a t t i tude v i s - à - v i s the Maori , the all-pakeha pol ice of the towns seldom ventured fa r from the i r sett lements, and any pol ic ing a c t i v i t i e s beyond those boundaries were normally conducted by ch iefs - with presents and rewards from the pakeha state accruing i f such act ions were approved of as being par t i cu la r ly relevant to the need of what i s now sometimes referred to as the 'power cu l tu re '

The events of 1845-47 abruptly a l te red th i s pattern when, in both the fa r north and the fa r south of the North I s land , cer ta in t r ibes and hapu took up armed resistance to the ever encroaching European George Grey was a t th is point selected as governor, par t ly because he had been working on plans for the rapid integrat ion of aboriginal peoples, and had begun to introduce such ideas in South Austra l ia peaceful assimi lat ion was seen as a fa r preferable - and fa r cheaper - a l te rna t i ve to continuing need for m i l i ta ry conquest Af ter m i l i ta ry defeat of the most important Maori insurrect ion, Grey focused on the enforcement upon the Maori'iof rapid assimi lat ion to pakeha ways Pol ic ing loomed large in his plans

In 1846-7 he phased out the old heterogeneous Pol ice Magistracy forces in favour of three mixed-race, parami l i tary forces headquartered a t Auckland, New Plymouth and Wel l ington, with again a l l three pol ic ing c r i t e r i a encompassed the Maori constables were needed for the i r specialist ( including f ight ing) s k i l l s , the Maori policemen, most of them young rangatira, were to be a key conduit for the rapid pakeha-isation of the Maor i , l i f e in the force as a sol ider/constable being presumed to have the e f fec t of turning the 'rude savage into the dut i fu l subject , so that when his contract serv ice was up he would return to his t r i be or hapu and shape his people in his own new image of the pakeha v i r tues of t h r i f t , s e l f - d i s c i p l m e , righteousness, regular i ty of habit and so f o r t h , f i n a l l y , in the course of th is process the young ex-constable rangitira would be carrying out his a l l o t ted ro le of implementing an interim state of order in the in te r io r as both a holding operation and in preparation for the more concentrated appearance of the pakeha, his ways and ins t i tu t ions In th is f ina l a c t i v i t y the rangitira would e f fec t his ' c i v i l i s i n g mission' alongside the newly created ins t i tu t ion of rural Resident Magis t rac ies, the incumbents being sent into the in ter io r with orders to select sui table ch iefs as kaiwhakawa, or assessors '

Not surpr is ingly a number of problems intervened between theory and pract ice Grey himself deplored the 'unfortunate prejudice which a l l Englishmen have to a dark s k i n ' , but he underestimated the constraints which th i s ethnocentrism - or racism - placed upon

56

the v i a b i l i t y of his pol ic ing and rapid assimi lat ion po l i c ies In the sett lements, Maori po l ice met face on in the streets the at t i tudes recorded by the Reverend Richard Taylor as being widespread amongst pakeha the Maori was 'constant ly being ca l led a nigger and a black fe l low to his f ace , and viewed as an in fe r io r being' Whites jus t refused to be pol iced by Maori constables, enforcement by Maori pol ice ac tua l ly fomented rather than prevented disorder This had been foreshadowed when Clendon had employed Maori po l ice when reset t l ing Russe l l , and he had l i ved 'hourly in dread of a disturbance between them and the low Europeans', the New Plymouth author i t ies noted in 1850 that i t was impossible for a Maori to patrol the town alone as the resul tant ' r io tous and drunken conduct' by pakehas could well cause an 'a f f ray or more possibly a fa r more serious resu l t ' - ι e , race war Very soon i t became the norm in the Armed Pol ice Forces that except in emergencies Maori pol ice deal t only with Maori offenders Thus the function of the Maori constable gained a dynamic which propelled the ins t i tu t ion towards, u l t imate ly , a spec ia l i s t role of ' l i k e dealing with l i k e ' Commentaries upon the Maori constables increasingly emphasised the i r spec ia l i s t a b i l i t i e s , e i ther as indiv iduals dealing with individual Maori or as a c o l l e c t i v i t y dealing with sections of the i r own race or t r i b e , one predicted in th is l a t t e r respect, for example, that in a 'few years a strong mixed force of nat ives and European might be brought to such perfect ion as to keep in subju-gation any i l l -d isposed or d isaf fected t r i b e s ' The movement away from the ' c i v i l i s i n g mission 1 towards the spec ia l i s t ro le was encouraged as a resu l t of another problem

The Maori pol ice were supposed to learn the a t t r ibu teso f ' c i v i l i s a t i o n ' from the i r pakeha comrades Because of the meagre resources ava i lab le to the s ta te , pol ic ing was an exceedingly i l l - p a i d job so that when men considered to be of sui table qua l i ty did j o i n , i t was only as an ephemeral, stop-gap occupation whi ls t they searched for bet ter -even day labouring usually paid more, often much more Most of the pakeha pol ice with whom the Maori f ra te rn ised, therefore, had l i t t l e to teach each other than how to get drunk Auckland's Resident Magistrate noted in 1842 that i t was a 'notor ious' f ac t that the ' P o l i c e Barrack i s the most disorderly place in the Town' - and that rangitira were avoiding entering the force in order to avoid the 'contamination' which would occur from the i r mixing with the 'very worst c lass of Europeans' Even the pre-1840 beginnings of Maori pol ic ing in New Zealand had been inauspicious from th is point of view - the ch ie f l y policemen could observe drunkenness and fornicat ion amongst a number of the mission s ta f f , as well as in the grog shops and brothels of the Bay of I s lands , i t was Kendal l , indeed, who had sold to Hongi muskets used to deadly e f fec t in h is in te r t r iba l wars of conquest which had so disrupted the New South Wales s t a t e ' s plan to safeguard and foster the expansion of trade and settlement in New Zealand

In the 1840s c r i t i c s of the ' c i v i l i s i n g mission 1 ro le painted graphic word pictures of Maori ex-pol ice drunkenly 'wending the i r way home to instruct the i r un in i t ia ted brethren in the i r i n te r i o r ' in the 'unmixed, unmitigated e v i l ' that they had picked up in the Armed Po l i ce Forces This view of Maori pol ic ing as a conduit for ' d e c i v i l i s i n g ' was cer ta in ly exaggerated, but contained some truth - enough ul t imately to d iscred i t the conduit theory

On a th i rd score, too, theory and pract ice diverged Maori pol ice quickly became aware that the vaunted amalgamation of the races was to be on European terms and were accordingly on the i r guard / Cer ta in l y , " fo r the f i r s t and l a s t time in the century, Maori policemen were paid a t rates equal to those of the pakeha - a major innovation in B r i t i s h colonies - but the i r condit ions of serv ice were decidedly in fe r io r They had to pay for the i r own uniforms and f i rearms, the pakeha did not, nor were they allowed to r i se to even NCO pos i t ion , when rewards were dist r ibuted annually to pol ice who had not blotted the i r copybooks, i t was the NCOs who always got the most ( in New Plymouth in 1849 the sergeant rece i ved f 5, the corporal f 3 ) , with white constables next ( " Í2 for each of the three New Plymouth pr ivates) and, a t the bottom, the Maori pr ivates (18/3d each) The Maori pol ice noted th is ,keen1y and sometimes protested - and were cer ta in ly not very happy with a ' c i v i l i s a t i o n ' which even a t i t s most generous (ι e , within the Armed Po l i ce ) continued to t rea t them d i f f e ren t i a l l y from the i r fe l lows with white faces

In was quite c lear to many of the rangatira that the ult imate aim of the Grey i te ' c i v i l i s i n g mission' was the 'asser t ion and preservation of B r i t i s h author i ty ' v i s - à - v i s the Maori and they could see, increasingly, that the state was attempting to use customary Maori ch ie f l y ins t i tu t ions in order, in the f ina l ana l ys i s , to subvert them In turn, when Maori ch ie fs co-operated with the pakeha in the grand pol ic ing plan, they too did so for the i r own purposes Herein lay the f i na l key problem

57

Frequently a f te r leaving the fo rce , having acquired the money and the knowledge that they had been seeking and returned to their, v i l l a g e s , the former pol ice rangatira rever-ted to the i r customary concepts of what i t was that consti tuted order in the i r par t i cu lar environments Jus t as the def in i t ion of normalacy had in Hongi's and Korokoro's eyes (Ruatara had soon died) encompassed devastating in ter t r iba l musket wars, so too did order and regular i ty as defined by ex-pol ice rangatira not necessar i ly coincide with the requirements demanded by the pakeha state as preconditions for expanding t rade, settlement and agr icu l ture When Grey, therefore, claimed to the Colonial Off ice in 1849 that 'no measure has been so to ta l l y successful in i t s resu l t s ' as the pol ice c i v i l i s i n g mission, he was - as he so often was - not t e l l i ng the truth The Maori pol ice experiment had not operated general ly as a conduit of state-desired mores, for imposing what were seen as desirable modes of behaviour upon the Maori , nor - re la ted ly -as a system of ind i rect cont ro l , except insofar as the returning rangatira were swept up into the Resident Magistrate-Assessor network

Yet the fac t remains that the Maori component of the Armed Po l ice Force c lea r l y qua l i f ied under the other pol ic ing c r i t e r i on of spec ia l i s t e f f i c iency The Wellington Maori po l i ce , for example, who numbered 16 out of 70 when the force was a t i t s peak, were praised for the i r work as t rackers , f ighters and patrol po l i ce , with compliments such as ' i t i s astonishing how well these men did the i r mixed duty of sold ier and con-s tab le ' f lowing in Indeed, in New Plymouth's dozen-strong Armed Po l ice Force detach-ment there was never even a pretext of the c i v i l i s i n g mission Inspector McLean enrol led chiefs for reason en t i re ly of expediency, the f i r s t to jo in being in f luent ia l pro-landsel l ing chief Rawiri Wairaua, who had soon 'rendered essent ia l services for the influence he possesses amongst a portion of his t r i be during the recent quarrels between the Puketapu and Taranaki na t i ves '

In Auckland, when pakeha pol ice found i t d i f f i c u l t to dist inguish between ch ie fs and non-chiefs and thereby v io la ted tapu, dangerous potential race conflagrat ions loomed So Maori pol ice were put on to patrol alongside the i r pakeha col leagues, charged with implementing new d i f fe ren t ia t ing decrees - such as that no Maori chief could be arrested for non-warrantable of fences, the i r presence on th i s issue being par t i cu la r ly required a f te r most Maori males questioned by pol ice began to claim that they were ch iefs and therefore not touchable

The most fundamental appl icat ion of the e f f ic iency c r i te r ion was, in short , to pre-vent that f r i c t i on a t the rac ia l in ter face which could eas i l y lead to race war at a time when the pakeha were not ready to f i gh t , the Maori s t i l l outnumbered the pakeha, and tota l numbers of pol ice and troops in the colony were not large enough compared with the Maori population for de f i n i t i ve conquest This meant that the spec ia l i s t function was seen by the state as a necessary antidote to ethnocentr ical ly-baseo se t t l e r overconfidence Many se t t l e r s had, by the 1850s, concluded, m the absence of recent Maori insurrect ion, that the indigenous people of the colony had been for a l l time subjugated, leading to widespread questioning of the continuing need for Maori constables which often descended to the leve l of racism For example, in Wellington an observer declared that a 'dozen lamp posts would be cheap and e f f i c i en t substi tutes for hal f a dozen Maori policemen'

In 1853 control of many aspects of government, including po l ic ing, passed to provincial administration - to , therefore, the type of se t t l e rs who had been demanding, and to a degree get t ing, a phase-out of Maori pol ice The Provinc ia l Council of Auckland Province resolved that future pol ice vacancies be f i l l e d by pakehas only so that in the end i t s provincia l APF would become ent i re ly European in composition Even in r a c i a l l y sensi t ive Taranaki the new Prov inc ia l Council decided at once to dismiss the i r remaining three Maori policemen, the i r services as mediators a t the rac ia l in ter face were retained only by the General Government taking them over and const i tut ing them a special Nat ive Po l ice Force Headed nominally by a white inspector, on a day to day basis they were now control led by one of the i r number, Kar i ra , who was promoted to sergeant, the f i r s t Maori pol ice NCO

The barr ier between the two races heightened as the 1850s progressed To be sure, Maori constables remained in the Auckland, and par t i cu la r ly the Wel l ington, pol ice fo rces , but sole ly because they were the only people w i l l i ng to accept the extraordinar i ly low wages of fered, provincial administrators being usually on the verge of bankruptcy (The state had never rewarded i t s pol ic ing agents well Hongi and Korokoro had received a cow and a mi l i ta ry uniform apiece )

58

The phasing out of Maori pol ice was slower in Wellington than in Auckland only because Wel l ington's f inancia l s i tuat ion was the even more precarious, recurrent pro-blems of race re la t ions were exacerbated by white reactions to a 'bandof semi-barbarians' dragging off European c i t i zens to the lockup 'wi th a l l possible v io lence ' In view of the very few white pol ice ava i lab le the unwritten ru le that Maori pol ice should never lay hands on whites had frequently to be overlooked There was great indignation that only four of the Maori pol ice could speak even broken English - how could innocent pakeha c i t i zens who only appeared to be drunk and riotous explain the i r mistake to the Maori po l ice ar rest ing them'

By the la te 1850s race polar isat ion had become intense The Maori Kingi te r e s i s -tance movement had establ ished a r i va l sovereignty in the Waikato, Auckland Prov ince, looking enviously at the r ich Waikato lands, was about to get r i d of i t s f i na l remaining Maori constable, P r i va te George War broke out in Taranaki in 1850, and the truce in 1861 served to resolve l i t t l e - escalat ion of warfare seemed l i k e l y , espec ia l l y a show-down with Kingism, unless something fundamental were done

* * *

The Colonial Off ice once again sent for Grey, with s t r i c t instruct ions that he should avoid fur ther warfare i f a t a l l possib le, par t i cu la r l y by u t i l i s i n g the serv ices of the ch ie fs the pol ic ing emphasis was to be once more on indirect control of the Maori

Four years e a r l i e r , Waikato Resident Magistrate F D Fenton had suggested that the best way to establ ish indi rect control was to go fur ther than merely u t i l i s i n g the ch i e f s , whose inf luence was in any case waning The ancient Maori ins t i tu t ion of runanga, counci ls or meetings which advised ch iefs on matters of s ta te , was undergoing rev iva l and could be l icensed to operate local pol ic ing and jud i c ia l regimes on behalf of the pakeha The idea had been toyed with before being overtaken by race confrontat ion, and enabling leg is la t ion of 1858 was s t i l l i n tac t , moreover Grey had recent ly applied an ind i rect pol ic ing and governmental structure in the Cape Colony, and he now suggested that under the New Zealand leg is la t ion a very s imi lar structure could be establ ished

He would divide the North Is land into twenty 'Nat ive D i s t r i c t s ' , each presided over by a pakeha C iv i l Commissioner working with a D i s t r i c t Runanga, in each D i s t r i c t there would be six subdivisions ca l led Hundreds, each Hundred to have i t s own six-man pol ice force headed by a [Maori] warden The Maori po l i ce , or karere, would enforce laws within the i r Hundred which mad been passed by the D i s t r i c t Runanga and then endorsed by the Governor, they would be 'about the trespass of c a t t l e , about fences, about branding c a t t l e , about t h i s t l e s and weeds, about dogs, about s p i r i t s and drunkenness, about putting down bad customs of the old Maori law, l i ke the Taua', and so on The colonial ministry saw a t once that Grey 's scheme was too mechanistic and too r i g id l y contro l led by the pakeha, but i t was accepted in pr inc ip le and gradually applied in adapted form throughout the North Is land in accord with local conditions

In the event the scheme worked not a t formal D i s t r i c t level but a t v i l l a g e or hapu runanga l e v e l , normally a v i l l a g e w i l l i ng to par t ic ipate would, in conjunction with the nearest Resident Magistrate or C i v i l Commissioner, have i t s runanga declared a state ins t i tu t ion and would then select a local pol ice force which was paid by the Native Department Dozens of runanga pol ice forces were establ ished and they did whatever the i r ch i e f s , and/or runanga, and/or pakeha o f f i c i a l s wished them to do Often, indeed, a runanga pol ic ing regime was s t r i c t e r than some of those of the pakeha world

This was of course indi rect pol ic ing control par excellence, with barely a nod towards the pakeha ' c i v i l i s i n g mission' in pract ice - as opposed to the theory, which would have had white o f f i c i a l s channeling the runanga laws in desired d i rect ions As a contemporary put i t , the object of the scheme was to make the Maori ' pa r t i es to the i r own submission', to avert warfare and therefore buy time for less cost ly means of sub-jugation and soc ia l i sa t ion to pakeha norms than those of conquest and other overt forms of coercion Nevertheless, although Grey did abandon his predecessor's plans for a short-term invasion of Kingi te Waikato, he continued war preparations - for Grey and for most sectors of s tate the bypassing of conquest by means of the o f f i c i a l runanga system was no more than an outside chance Hence the c r i te r ion of e f f i c iency became important on several l eve l s by imposing a reasonably ordered state of a f f a i r s in Maori areas a l l over the North Is land i t enabled Grey to concentrate his m i l i ta ry resources on crushing the major perceived enemy, the r i va l Kingi te autonomous state When war

59

came, too, many areas of potential support for Kingism had been neutral ised by the

operation Of the Of f i c ia l runanga

The runanga operated on many other layers of e f f icacy too, runanga pol ice frequently co-operated with the provincial pol ice forces and the mi l i ta ry in keeping the l i d on d is -order over vast areas of the North is land, and for th is they were frequently praised At the Hawke's Bay races in 1863 the provincial pol ice were on duty In addit ion the 'picket of the 14th and a body of troops were also on the ground to keep order, and a good serv ice they d id , for we noticed several noisy worshippers of Bacchus being conveyed from the course Nor were the Maori policemen i d l e , fo r , as soon as they saw one of the i r brothers misbehaving himself, he was immediately seized and conveyed to some place '

Ye t , by the mid 1860s, with Kingism m i l i t a r i l y ousted and pushed into the mountain-ous in te r io r , the pakeha cl imate of opinion was once again changing was i t not time to disband a l l ins t i tu t ions of indi rect r u l e , make the Maori obey white laws a lone, force them to ass im i la te 7 In such atmosphere and pledged to do such th ings, the hard-l i ne Staf ford ministry entered o f f i ce in October 1865 At once, Colonel A H Russe l l , Minister of Native A f f a i r s , began to run down the runanga system, cutt ing the sa la r ies or dismissing two-thirds of the runanga pol ice - with the ult imate aim of phasing the system out of existence altogether

The ins t i tu t ion of nat ive constable did surv ive, however, because i t was s t i l l needed on a l l three grounds of pol ic ing c r i t e r i a in cer ta in isolated areas, although -par t i cu la r l y a f te r a new Resident Magistracy ordinance of 1867 - the karere ceased to be in any meaningful sense members of runanga, forces and became increasingly in r ea l i t y specialist employees of white o f f i c i a l s The Armed Constabulary had meanwhile in 1867 been superimposed upon the provincial forces of the North Is land This was a colonial mi l i ta ry body to replace the departing imperial troops, but al so to have occupation pol ice functions à la the I r i s h Constabulary upon which i t was modelled I t was the Armed Constabulary which fought the l a te r stages of the Anglo-Maori wars, against Titokowaru and Te Koot i , and i t did so, and garrisoned conquered areas, with the help of Maori aux i l i a r i es In the changing cl imate of pakeha opinion, although there was nothing in the Armed Constabulary leg is la t ion to prevent the Maori from jo in ing as armed constables th is was seldom to happen - when i t d id , the Maori constables were generally discarded as soon as they had served the immediate purpose for which they had been hired efficiency pol ic ing pure and simple

Those Maori who did jo in the Armed Constabulary general ly did so as a t r iba l or war-party bloc under control of the i r own ch iefs - the bush corps 8th d i v i s ion , for example, or the Arawa Fly ing Column, whose two d iv is ions were formally incorporated into the Armed Constabulary in 1874-5 The old problems perpetuated themselves the F ly ing Column, which spent most of i t s time building strategic roads through swamps, had a lso the task unt i l 1872 of pursuing Te Kooti whenever he appeared from out of the Ureweras This they were forced to do with obsolete Terry carbines or even cumbersome Lee Enf ie lds when every white solider-policeman in the Armed Constabulary, none of them ac tua l l y doing any f ight ing a f te r 1860, d r i l l ed with brand-new rapid loading and rap id- f i r ing Sniders '

As the countryside was increasingly subdued, Armed Constabulary garrisons phased out most of the runanga pol ice In Ngatiporou t e r r i t o r y , for example, in the mid 1870s the runanga po l i ce , ' t o t a l l y unacquainted with the English language' and knowing nothing of what the pakeha meant by po l ic ing , could not adequately control the widening rac ia l i n te r face , an Armed Constabulary detachment of a dozen armed constables was therefore sent in to replace them In many other cases Resident Magistrates increasingly reported that the Maori were becoming''almost universal ly obedient to our l a w s ' , and thus runanga pol ice could be phased out in favour of , say, a single pakeha provincial policeman, even a part-t imer In 1874 there were 150 runanga po l i ce , by 1882 only 29

Following the public works and communications schemes of Vogelism, by 1882 the hitherto seperated pakeha settlements had become much more c lose ly in ter l inked, in 1875-6 the provincia l system of government in New Zealand was abolished With cen t ra l i sa -t ion of government came cent ra l isa t ion of po l i c ing , a l l provincial forces were absorbed by the Armed Constabulary which now, under the name of the New Zealand Constabulary Force, operated both a pol ic ing wing and a less well paid f i e l d force or reserve f ight ing wing Almost a l l those Maori s t i l l in the Armed Constabulary went into the f i e l d fo rce , there was now no poss ib i l i t y that pakeha c i t i zens would have to be pol iced by Maori, with only the Native Department's runanga constables continuing to do any day to day pol ic ing work

60

By 1882, with the invasion of Parihaka having mopped up what was perceived as the l a s t s ign i f i cant resistance to the pakeha, two of the Maori pol ice c r i t e r i a had become in e f fec t well and t ru ly redundant those of indi rect rule and of the pakeha-ising conduit Except in areas considered re l a t i ve l y unimportant by the pakeha, the Maori had been forced to come to terms with the inescapable consequences of the i r swamping by the pakeha

There was s t i l l a specialist pol ic ing ro le for the Maori a few were needed for occasional superintendence of standards of order in remote areas In 1882, then, the remaining 29 runanga constables were t ransferred from the Native Department to the Constabulary, although they did not become fu l ly - f ledged regular pol ice - they were, l i ke a number of European constables in rural a reas, part-t ime constables paid a small reta iner to do any pol ic ing jobs which happened to crop up in the i r area

In 1886, when the pol ice f i n a l l y separated formally from the m i l i t a ry , only a single Maori policeman appeared on the ro l l of regular pol ice - and within two years he too had been demoted to the posit ion of part-t ime 'na t ive constable' This ins t i tu t ion of 'na t ive constable' continued to play a spec ia l i s t ro le , with 48 of them appointed between 1882 and 1900, and then another two dozen between the turn of the century and the aftermath of the F i r s t World War But few stayed for very long - the remuneration jus t was not worth i t for a job which might from time to time take on a nearly fu l l - t ime aspect The designation did not en t i re l y fade away unt i l the end of the Second World War, but i t had in rea l i t y been superseded at the end of the F i r s t by a cautious pol icy of recru i t ing Maori men as regular constables Ful l integrat ion a t l eas t admin is t ra t ive ly , had f i n a l l y ar r ived in the New Zealand pol ice the pioneering days were well and t ru ly over - by now even the spec ia l i s t c r i t e r i a for Maori pol ic ing had been made redundant by the press of events, and less over t ly coercive agencies for spec ia l i s t control of Maori areas s t i l l deemed to be in need of i t had been developing since the turn of the century

Richard H i l l H is tor ica l Publ icat ions Branch Wellington

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1985

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Archifacts 1985/2

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PRESIDENT'S REPORT

INTRODUCTION

The year being reviewed has been a productive one. A f u l l Council has been active since the 1984 AGM in New Plymouth. We have been most fortunate in the cal ibre of those elected, with representatives from Auckland, New Plymouth, Wanganui, Christchurch and Dunedin, as well as Wellington. Elected were John Angus and Richard H i l l (Vice-Presidents), Anne Bromell, Mary Reid, Brian Henderson, Caroline Etherington, Graham Butterworth, Michael Hoare and Brad Patterson, the las t two-named being former Presidents of the Associat ion. Barry Thomson has served as Secretary, with Tim Lovell-Smith start ing the year as Treasurer but rel inquishing th is post to Cathy Marr when he became Member-ship Secretary on the resignation of Pat r ic ia Oil i f f . Michael Hodder, as Editor of Archifacts, is also an ex o f f i c i o member of Counci l .

Counci l 's meetings were set for 27 October, 25 February, 4 May and 1 Ju ly , with the May meeting being held at the New Zealand Pol ice College at Por i rua. I should l i ke to record my personal thanks to a l l counci l lors for their contributions and service. Some very important matters have been pursued with vigour and the knowledge, a b i l i t i e s and contacts of counci l lors have enabled us to tackle them with confidence.

A three-day training course on records appraisal , archives management and conserva-tion was held in Dunedin from 23-25 August 1984. Arranged for the Otago/Southland Branch of the Association by the Otago University Extension's Resource Development Centre, contributors included Norma Bethune, Beverley Booth, Rosemary Co l l i e r , Susan Kooyman, Marjorie Maslen, Gavin McLean, Peter M i l l e r , Prue M i l l e r and Stuart Strachan. A three-day archives t raining course ent i t led "The management of small archival co l l ec t i ons ' , organised by Mark Stevens, the regional arch iv is t of the Auckland Regional Off ice of National Archives, w i l l be held from 2-4 September 1985, immediately before the ARANZ Conference and AGM in Auckland.

The three Branches of the Association have kept Council well informed of their a c t i v i t i e s , and th is is where the presence of Anne Bromell and John Angus on Council has been par t icu lar ly important. High hopes are held that, with Caroline Etherington now being a Council member, the Canterbury Branch can be revived by the time of the AGM in Auckland.

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ARCHIFACTS

This journal continues to be a t r ibu te to Michael Hodder. F ive Records Management Newsletters have now appeared as supplements, which has placed an addit ional burden on Michael. I t i s hoped that assistance with th is aspect w i l l be possible by the time of the sixth supplement in September. Because of the time involved, Michael has had to re ly increasingly on the others involved in the publication - Cheryl Campbell, Brad Patterson and Mark Stevens (Associate E d i t o r s ) , Richard Greenaway (Reviews E d i t o r ) , and Kay Sanderson (Accessions Co-ordinator) . The sincere thanks of the Associat ion are extended to them a l l .

CONFERENCES

The 1984 Conference was held in New Plymouth l as t August - the second such Conference to be held outside the main centres. Most of the organisation was in the hands of Mary Re id , acting on behalf of the Taranaki Museum, to whom most of the success of the Conference is due. Mary has since proved a most useful asset on Counci l .

The 1985 Conference w i l l be held on the North Shore in Auckland. A committee convened by Hugh Franc is , comprising representat ives of ARANZ at Council and Branch l e v e l s , National Archives and the Northern Archives and Records Trust , has been working on the organisation of a very big occasion. The f i r s t day (Fr iday , 5 September) w i l l incorporate the themes of records management, l e g i s l a t i v e provisions and l e g a l , business and local authori ty a rch ives . The second day (Saturday, 7 September) w i l l concentrate on aspects of the National L i b ra ry ' s a c t i v i t i e s and sources for Maori h istory in the Auckland area. This w i l l be the f i r s t Conference to be held in Auckland for f i v e years and w i l l be able to demonstrate developments since Auckland was described as "the black hole" in 1980. Our appreciat ion is extended to Hugh Francis and his committee for the work they have done.

NATIONAL LIBRARY POLICIES

At the 1984 AGM resolut ions were passed regarding the National L i b ra r y ' s po l i c ies regarding access to i t s manuscript and l i b ra ry repos i to r ies . These resolut ions have been brought to the personal at tent ion of the Chairman of Trustees, the National L ibrar ian and the Alexander Turnbull L ib ra r ian . Both Mr Scott and Mr Traue w i l l be addressing the Conference in Auckland on these and other po l i c i es . Thé issue of news-paper microfi lming i s another aspect which is being cont inual ly monitored.

DIRECTORY OF ARCHIVAL REPOSITORIES

The compiler of the Directory, Frank Rogers, took over the publication of th i s booklet in l a te 1984. I t became ava i lab le in ear ly 1985, and fu l l -page publ ic i ty for i t appeared in the December 1984 issue of Archifacts. Pr iced at $16 posted, i t i s a companion work for the National Register and comprises a directory of archives and manuscript reposi tor ies in New Zealand and six South P a c i f i c states - the Cook Is lands , F i j i , Niue, Tokelau, Tonga and Western Samoa. Also provided are alphabetical and c l a s s i f i e d indexes to the 176 repos i to r ies , as well as a General Index to Col lect ions that are named in the text - over 500 items. Our thanks are due to Stuart Strachan, Jane Wi ld , Hugh P r i c e , Peter M i l le r and Frank Rogers for the i r respect ive ro les in the production of th is extremely useful resource book.

OTHER MATTERS

With the change of government, there has been a need to establ ish dialogue with the Ministers most c lose ly re la ted to the aims and object ives of th is Associat ion. This has been done, with a meeting having been held with the Minister of Internal A f fa i r s on 19 March, a t which the Archives and Records B i l l and accommodation for National archives were discussed. Further correspondence has been exchanged since that meeting. Addi t iona l ly , the acceptance by other Ministers and MPs of i nv i t i a t i ons to speak a t the 1985 Conference has furthered our in teract ion with the Government and the Opposition.

The Associat ion has, during the year , made wr i t ten submissions both on the Archives and Records B i l l and the Parliamentary Serv ice B i l l . Pa r t i cu la r thanks are due to Brad Patterson for his work on these two submissions.

THANKS

On behalf of the Associat ion, I should l i ke to express our warm thanks to our Patron, S i r John Marshal l ; our Honorary Auditor (now re t i red) Mr Roger Stedman, and Honorary S o l i c i t o r , Mr Greg Thomas. I would also l i ke to add special thanks to Pa t r i c i a Oil i f f for her work as membership secretary unt i l February, during which time she was able to have the membership records placed on a computer programme. My own personal thanks are also extended to those Wellington-based Counci l lors and other members who have readi ly undertaken tasks during the year , i . e . , Richard H i l l , Brad Pat terson, Graham Butterworth, Michael Hoare, Tim Lovel l -Smi th , Cathy Marr, Michael Hodder, Barry Thomson and Cheryl Campbell.

CONCLUSION

Once aga in , th i s report i s not al l -embracing. I t w i l l leave questions unanswered, and there w i l l be those ARANZ members who w i l l consider the Association could have adopted a higher p ro f i le during the year under review. However, the year w i l l prove to have strengthened the organisational s t ructure, so v i t a l to the smooth running of a voluntary organisation such as ours. And I am confident the 1985 Conference w i l l prove to be a memorable one, which w i l l set the stage for the very important 10th anniversary Conference, to be held in Wellington in 1986.

Sherwood Young

31 May 1985. President.

TREASURER'S NOTES

Presented here i s the unaudited copy of the Annual Statement of Income and Expenditure for the f inanc ia l year ended 30 March 1985.

As noted in l as t y e a r ' s Statement, l a t e payment of some $2000 in subscriptions for the previous year swelled the 1983/84 income from subscript ions. Nevertheless, there has been a decl ine in membership in the 1984/85 year , a cause for concern.

The d e f i c i t for the year represents a major hurdle and an unacceptable t rend. The whole of the Investment Account ($900) and part of the term deposit ($500) were drawn upon during the 1984/85 year .

Cathy Marr Acting Treasurer.

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A R C H I V E S A N D R E C O R D S A S S O C I A T I O N O F NEW Z E A L A N D ( I N C . )

S T A T E M E N T O F I N C O M E A N D E X P E N D I T U R E F O R Y E A R E N D E D 3 0 M A R C H 1 9 8 5

EXPENDITURE

Archifacts Typing Pr in t ing Postage/Registrat ion Bromides

1984

729.00 4161.00 457.66

10.00

5357.66

1985

981.30 6077.00 656.69 97.60

7812.59

Administration Postage/Stat ionery Photocopying Ñ 0 Box Rental Word Processing - Membership l i s t

Grants to Branches Subscript ion refunds Loans to Branches Turnbull House Rental Travel Grants - Council

- Other PARBICA and other subs Grant to Women1 s Archi ves Cornmi t tee 1982 Conference Proceedings -

Stat ionery/Postage 1983 Conference - Postage/Pr int ing 1983 Training course 1984 Business Archives Course

Excess Income over Expenditure

(De f i c i t )

Total Expenditure

INCOME

Subscript ions In terest Loan Repayments 1982 Conference P ro f i t 1983 Conference P r o f i t Todd Foundation Grant Sales of Proceedings 1982 Conference iy83 Course Pro f i t s Sales Donation and Refunds 1984 Conference P ro f i t and Loan

Repayment

Total Income

148.57 340.19 25.00

304.50

818.26 120.00

5.00 100.00 60.00

480.00

77.91

112.60 172.14

1007.68 27.60

2162.93

3161.36

11500.21

8943.51 360.32 100.00 351.42 371.96

1000.00 373.00

257.20 159.80 25.00

244.60

686.60 417,00

234.00 45.00

700.00 180.00 121.76 25.00

11,500.21

1722.76

(3623.79)

10221.95

4928.00 190.83

850.00 80.00

190.00

359.33

6598.16

As at 31 March 1985 the Associat ion 's bank accounts stood a t :

Cheque account $252.11 Savings account $116.34 Term deposit $570.00