MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 January 1939, Page 10

MAORI MEMORIES

BRUTALITY BREEDS BRUTES. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Our old folks arrived at Wellington on Christmas Day, 1840. Already there were about 1000 whites, of whom over 100 were ex-convicts from the N.S.W. penal settlement, half of them on “ticket of leave,” the others escapees. About 200 rough and ready sailors, and 200 whalers, all noted for “language, liquor and liberties,” caused frequent pandemonium in that bush village near Pipitea Point. The remainder of the pakehas were 200 men and women with 300 children of all ages from 15 years down to as many hours.

As to the number of Maoris in the vicinity, they were deemed to be countless but estimates ranged from 4000 to 6000. To indicate the brutalised nature or these ex-convicts and the hardship of decent people thus compelled by circumstances to associate with them, and to show the cause of that brutality, and its obvious effect upon the Maori people, we may be pardoned for telling briefly one of many such observations at the barracks for convicts near Sydney in 1829.

“Men were rivetted together with heavy chains, hauling trucks like horses through the one street in Sydney. Many of them were convicted for stealing bread to feed their hungry children. Women convicts had their hair cut close to the scalp and were compelled to go about hatless to indicate their “evil character.” One woman, while being thus barbarously harbored by a sister in some trifling crime, snatched the scissors and stabbed the operator on the cheek. She was hanged at the Paramatta convict prison. Fifty women convicts of No. 1 (the worst) class were paraded before the gallows as a “wholesome warning.” Pandemonium reigned, and but £or the fact that the poor creatures were roped together, not one guard would have survived.” That was only a little over a century ago.