How to Civilise Savages: Some ‘Answers’ from Nineteenth-century New Zealand.

­Sorrenson, M.P.K. “How to Civilise Savages: Some ‘Answers’ from Nineteenth-century New Zealand.” Ko Te Whenua Te Utu/Land is the Price, edited by M.P.K Sorrenson, Auckland University Press, 2014, pp. 55 – 67

• “ vital agents of civilisation — commerce, Christianity and colonisation. These were confidently expected to bring about what Europeans in the nineteenth century called the amalgamation of the races.” 55

• “Maori, with their sedentary agriculture and skilled arts, were usually placed on the border between savagery and barbarism and assumed to be capable, with proper guidance, of graduating to civilisation.” 56

• “Nevertheless, Maori who emerge from the pages of early publications on New Zealand were no Noble Savages: that reputation, so far as Polynesians were concerned, was reserved for the more compliant Tahitians.6 Maori gloried in war and indulged in cannibalism.” 56

• “Yet this was not the only aspect of their behaviour that attracted notice. Maori had quite an advanced form of agriculture, sophisticated fishing gear, skilfully woven garments and elaborately carved artefacts; these were clear evidence of industry and ingenuity” 56 - 57

• “Cook and his companions began to unravel some of the apparent irrationalities of Maori savagery. They inquired closely and persistently into the nature of Maori cannibalism and found — correctly, as it turned out — that this was a means of utu, of taking revenge upon one’s enemy” 57

• “Europeans still had to learn to respect the laws of tapu and the mana of chiefs; it was probably their failure to do so that provoked the massacres” 57

• “Take for instance that pioneer of commerce and Christianity in New Zealand, the Rev. Samuel Marsden, chaplain to the convict settlement at New South Wales and founder of the Anglican mission to New Zealand.” 57

• “Marsden saw in agriculture and trade the first steps in civilisation and, in turn, the adoption of Christianity” 58

• “European optimism was to continue in the first two decades of colonisation, despite the setbacks of military conflict in the New Zealand Company settlements and Heke’s war in the north, for Maori continued to supply the colonists with agricultural produce, labour and other services. By the early 1850s Maori agriculture was so advanced that they were able to supply the bulk of New Zealand’s exports to the Victorian goldfields” 58

• “The missionaries now reversed Marsden’s priorities and concentrated on Christian instruction and conversion before civilisation.” 60

• “The truth is, their evil doings, which were neither few nor small, were loudly proclaimed, while their good deeds were unrecorded.” 61

• “The missionaries tried to promote the civilisation of Maori while also retaining a considerable measure of social separation; they tried to turn Maori into brown-skinned Pakeha, but, apart from rare sinners, they did not take Maori wives or even encourage their sons to do so (and for their daughters to take Maori husbands would have been unthinkable). But Pakeha-Maori had no hesitation in taking Maori mistresses; and the Dane, PhillipTapsell, even persuaded the missionaries to give him a Christian marriage. They were therefore the real pioneers of the amalgamation of the races.” 62

• “At the heart of the Company plan were the proposals to deal with Maori land. The Company proposed to buy land for colonisation from the Maori owners but considered it unnecessary to pay a high price, since the ‘real payment’ was to be ‘the conferring on them of the great boon of civilization” 62-63

• “The methods of the South African and Australian frontiers could not be easily applied in New Zealand. Nor was there any need to apply the segregation policies of those colonies since the Maori continued to display a capacity and apparently a desire for civilisation. Amalgamation remained a possible goal.” 63

• “Under the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840 Maori rights to land were recognised, and the Crown was accorded a right of pre-emption to purchase such lands as the Maori owners were willing to sell. The Crown thus played a vital role in the continuation of colonisation.” 64

• “The war soon spread to Waikato and other districts; it continued intermittently for more than ten years. As a consequence of settler criticism of the government bungling of the Waitara purchase, the Crown’s right of pre-emption was abolished once more by the Native Lands Act of 1862. A second Native Lands Act in 1865 provided for a Native Land Court to adjudicate Maori titles and allowed settlers to purchase land belonging to the individuals named in the court’s orders. The system of ‘free trade’ in Maori lands thus initiated was to continue for many years.” 64

• “Civilisation would spread to the Maori like a benevolent infection.” 64

• “For Maori who had sold land the future was by no means as bright as the purchase agents had pretended. The shiny gold sovereigns paid for the land were soon spent, but the land was gone forever. And as the Maori landed estate decreased, colonists continued to pour into the country: in 1858 the European population passed that of Maori whose numbers were declining. The progress of colonisation was being achieved by the dispossession, possibly the extermination, of Maori.” 64-65

• “Ever since the Treaty of Waitangi had transferred sovereignty from Maori chiefs to the Queen, and New Zealand had become a British colony” 65

• “Separate Maori representation was expected to be temporary; it has remained to this day because Maori have been unwilling to give it up.” 66