MAORI MEMORIES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 May 1938, Page 9

MAORI MEMORIES.

WHALERS. (Recorded by “J.H.S.” for “Times-Age”) Years before the Missionaries came, there were numerous whaling stations, the principal ones at Preservation Inlet, Banks Peninsula, Queen Charlotte’s Sound, Cloudy Bay, Kapiti Island, Poverty Bay, Bay of Plenty, and Taranaki. These were in full swing from 1827 to 1843. The average number of whales of the largest size killed each year off the South Island was 70. In 1840 there were 39 whale ships in Cloudy Bay at one time. Three hundred white whalers with their Maori wives and half caste families were settled in New Zealand. Possessed of a tact peculiar to Maori women of the Rangitira class, these whalers’ wives had a refining influence over husbands. They promoted good feeling between the two races, mediated in drunken sprees, and turned a dissolute husband into a sober man. Maori girls considered an alliance with a whaler to be an ideal match. Whalers’ houses were of thatched roof and walls lined with toi canes. The fireplace formed of clay a foot thick occupied one side of the house. Fish, hams and bacon hanging in or near the smoke. Around the fire on mats lay dogs, children bearing the sign of the cross, and Maori relatives of the wife. On Stewart’s Island in 1850 there were over 100 Europeans, mostly married to Maori women, and their grown daughters always preferred a white man in their informal but generally permanent alliances.

Whalers, like good sports, were generally endowed with a love of fair play and the Maoris, being a naturally imitative people, quite unconsciously absorbed those good qualities. Thus the way was made easy for the Missionary who came later.