More Light on the Maori Wars

New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 622, 1 June 1951, Page 6

More Light on the Maori Wars

\ AITARA! The old word, once so often on our lips, now of the past. To my mind it embodied principles, and still it sounds like a‘ trumpet cry, bursting out of the sepulchre of the past. You must write me a letter on Waitara; I do not ask it upon personal grounds, but that truth may be known. — Sir Frederick Weld to Mr, Justice Richmond, August 4, 1878. HE Taranaki Wars began at Waitara in 1860 and were not settled for ten years. The fighting spread through the North Island. to the Waikato, Bay of Plenty, and East Coast, and cost the cclony many livés and millions of pounds. The wars were disastrous for the Taranaki settlers. Their homes were burnt down, their crops destroyed, and their cattle and sheep left to wander and starve in the bush. They were equally disastrous’ for the Maoris, and led to the wholesale confiscation of Maori land by the Government. A so far’ unpublished account of the war and its background is contained in the private papers and intimate journals of two of the principal Taranaki families involved-the Richmonds and the Atkinsons, Sir Harry Atkinson later became Prime Minister: of New Zealand, and C. W. Richmond became Minister of Native Affairs and a famous judge.. These letters and diaries are to be edited by Dr. G.» H. Scholefield -and published with the aid of a subsidy from the State Literary Fund. The collection should prove of great interest for their detailed. picture of conditions at the time, and for the light they throw on one of the most controversial periods of our history. The facts of the cause and outbreak of the war have not yet been discovered, and C. W. Richmond, at the time a member of Stafford’s Ministry, has been held partly responsible by some historians for setting off the fighting. ; A portion of the correspondence is bound in 40 volumes in the General Assembly Library in Wellington. The letters were collected by Mary and Emily Richmond, the daughters of C. W. Richmond, who hoped that in doing so they would, among other things, help to vindicate the part he had played in the war. The collection includes letters by the Hon. J. C. Richmond, artist, engineef, and statesman, Governor Gore Browne, Alfred Domett, Stafford, and others of the leading figures of the time: The two families were intermarried, ‘and came to New Zealand between 1849 and 1853. A valuable section of the papers deals with family life in ‘the "fifties and\’sixties, especially as it is tevealed in the journals of Jane Maria Richmond, a _ highly intelligent and aggressive woman who had a cultivated circle of friends in England to whom she wrote at great length. The Gentlemen Colonists The papers fall into four main groups. The first covers the years 1821 to 1849, and consists of discussion of life in England, where the Richmonds were members of the privileged upper middle class. There were three boys in the family; all ‘trained for professions: Christopher, a lawyer, James, an engineer, and Henry, a scientist who was studying. under Faraday. The difficulties of life. in the Hungry Forties, even among the well-to-do, are revealed

in their correspondence, and this group of letters also contains references to Carlyle, Wordsworth, Clough, Macaulay and other literary figures. On the voyage the output of letters and journals continues without a break. We read of James Richmond’ spending "the great part of the afternoon in the fore-top with Plato,’ reading Dieffenbach, and studying a Maori dictionary. His reaction to the conditions at Auckland, where they arrived after four months, is Contained in this sentence: "The gentlemen colonists (well-dressed men) spit on the carpet as they smoke their filthy little short pipes; they lie in Yankee attitudes on the sofa, one man occupying space» meant for four, whilst his neighbours, even ladies, sit on hard, straight-backed chairs." Dilatory Maoris . The family buy land at New Plymouth for about ten shillings an acre and proceed to cut down the bush, and sow crops and build houses. Maria and the Atkinsons arrive in a later boat and settle near by. This is how Maria describes the Maoris: "The Maoris are like grown-up children in everything; their bargains are very shrewd, and their suspiciousness is I dare say warranted by the conduct of many Europeans. They are most provokingly dilatory. Of course, time is no object to a man that sleeps half his nights in the fern, lives on potatoes, Kumara and maize with wild pork once a month." But on the whole they find their life wonderful after

England. They are enraptured with the climate, and enjoy working and building in the wilderness. The farming proceeds slowly, and the estates are called grandly "Hurworth"

and "Merton." Maria marries- Arthur Atkinson in 1854, and by this time, after the accounts of house-war: arties, dances and -picnicg*in "the bush ¢ ‘at the Sugar" Loaves, a warlike note’ | becomes noticeable in the letters. There were less than 3000 settlers occupying 63,000 acres at New Plymouth, and>.there:was not enough. land’ for ‘new’ arrivals. The Maoris,’ 1750° of ' whom held two million ‘acres, were also becoming reluctant to"sell. A Splendid Tract of aii "I ought to tell ofthe. gtand.. Maori meetings. last. week, bit. have! no. time," Maria notes in ‘her..journal., "They terminated most ‘satisfactorily for Taranaki, by the acquisition of a splendid Aract of land, as large as the. whole of the land ‘before in ‘the ‘possessiog of the Europeans. There seems nothing now to retard the progress of this settlement. Let nb one hesitate coming. now from the fear of a waht of land. Evetyone is in great spirits at the purchase, and I am sure those are glad who did: not skye in Auckland." ig e But by Anigist, sath sah: 46 ‘Niriting of those feuds bétween the Maoris over the sale of land to. the. settlers which marked the real beginnings of the Taranaki wars. The men of ss familie: are: ih into public life in the Provincial Council of Taranaki and the General, Assembly. C. W. Richmond becomes Minister of Native Affairs and later J. C. Richmond ‘be nae /Colonial. Secretary, "The disputes over land and Native policy are now accompanied by graphic accounts (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) of the trials of the settlers, the burning of homes and raiding of farms, the formation of the Volunteers and the Bush Rangers. Harry Atkinson describes his part in the battle of Waireka, and is called the best captain of militia in New Zealand. The dissatisfaction of the settlers with the way. they are treated by the British troops, and the mismanagement of Colonel Gold, their Teader, comes out in many letters, and there is much criticism of the way the Government is running the war. "A greater farce than sending officers and men down to defend the settlers, with strict orders to allow all who do not happen to live in the town to be murdered or burnt out of house and home, without stirring a finger to help them, was never heard of," says Maria. In the final section of the letters, which go up to 1894, the controversy ebout the war and its causes goes on long after the fighting had ended. The war is consistently presented from the viewpoint of the settlers, who blame the disaster on the initial weakness of the Government's attitude to the Maoris. The publication of the correspondence should make an interesting contrast with official accounts of the war, and should elso be of particular value as a document of pioneer life in the ’sixties.