THE MAORI WARS
Bishop Selwyn had helped to make peace at Taranaki (New Plymouth) in
1855, but discontent continued to smoulder both amongst the Maoris and
the Colonists. The English continued to be eager to acquire more land
and not scrupulous enough as to the means used to acquire it. Disputes
about title deeds and the right to certain bits of land were frequent.
The Maoris were suspicious of the constant encroachments of the British
power. They felt that by degrees their country was passing from them
into foreign hands. They had no representation in the Parliament which
had been set up in New Zealand by the Constitution of 1853, and
practically no share in the general government of the country. Colonel
Browne, the Governor, was obliged to report to the Colonial Office in
England the unsatisfactory state of affairs. The difficulties were
increased because the respective powers of the Governor and his
executive were not clearly defined, and by the want of sympathy with the
natives shown by the colonists. Maori chiefs were often treated with
indignities when they went to Auckland. Bishop Selwyn said that “he was
quite ashamed to travel with his native deacons, men who dine at his own
table and behave there like gentlemen, because he cannot take them into
public rooms where a tipsy carter would be considered perfectly good
society.”
After the first trouble at Taranaki had been settled for the time,
Bishop Selwyn uttered the solemn warning which he was so soon to see
justified that “while nothing is more easy than to extinguish the native
title, nothing will be found more difficult than to extinguish a native
war.” Slowly the country was drifting towards war. In the Waikato
country, the Maori chiefs held a conference in 1857, at which both
Selwyn and the Wesleyan missionaries were present, and the chiefs chose
a king for themselves. No rebellion was meant, for they put up the flag
of their chosen king and the Union Jack side by side on the same staff,
and the Governor did not think it necessary to take this king movement
seriously. In Taranaki, the chiefs had also formed a land league and
refused to sell land to the whites. This was very irritating to the
settlers along the coast, who saw land, of which they were in great
need, lying idle. When one chief of his own accord sold some land to the
whites, the chief of the Maori land league refused to allow the sale.
The Governor, however, maintained that the sale was legal, and sent
troops to the spot to support the rights of the purchasers. This was the
beginning of long and disastrous war. At first the Maoris gained some
advantage over the troops and the settlers were much alarmed. It was
feared that the war would spread to the Waikato, and the general anxiety
increased when the irritation of the natives was inflamed by the
discovery of a Maori, lying killed by a gunshot wound in the forest
thirty miles south of Auckland.
A body of armed Maoris gathered to avenge his death on the settlers, who
fled in terror from their homes. Selwyn at once hastened to the spot to
make peace. He rode twenty-four miles through the night, and then walked
through the wood wading in mud up to his knees to the place where the
fighting party were expected to land in their canoes. He wrote to his
son:
“We could see at once by the open and bright expression of their
countenances, that they did not mean mischief. The afternoon was spent
as usual in much talk upon the subject and ended with evening service
in a large house, filled with about two hundred men, with their arms
piled around the central pillars.... We were glad to find that they
were inclined to go back quietly.”
Afterwards he visited and pacified other natives in the district, and
encouraged the settlers to return to their homes, promising to remain
with them till the danger was past. One of them wrote afterwards:
“And so he did, guarding us with jealous care, never seeming to sleep
soundly, for upon any unusual noise in the night, he was up and out in
a moment. On the Sunday he conducted in our little schoolroom divine
service, and preached a sermon never to be forgotten—inspiring trust
and confidence in God.”
Selwyn’s plea which he submitted in a formal memorandum to the Governor,
was that the rights of the New Zealanders as British subjects should be
considered identical with those of the English, that the rights of the
Maoris to the soil where the title deeds had not been extinguished
should be recognised; that all native customs in connexion with
proprietary right should be respected, that disputes should be submitted
to a competent tribunal, and that for the moment there should be an
armistice. But he was not listened to, and the settlers denounced his
conduct as political interference. They said that “no right to interfere
between Her Majesty’s Government and her native subjects could be
allowed to any minister of religion.” In his reply to these criticisms
he said (1861) “as the earliest settlers in this country—as agents
employed by Government in native affairs—as intimately acquainted with
the language, customs and feelings of the native race—and above all as
ministers of religion having the highest possible interest at stake—we
assert the privilege which the Crown allows to every man of laying our
petitions before the Crown and the Legislature.”
In this difficult moment Sir George Grey was asked to return as Governor
to the Colony which he had administered so wisely and where he was
respected by all. For a moment there was peace, but as the soldiers were
still in the land there was no sense of confidence or security. The
Bishop went on with his efforts for peace, and his consequent
unpopularity with the colonists continued to grow. He attended a great
assembly of the natives in the Waikato, and from there went on to the
English settlement at Taranaki where he was met on the beach by a mob
who shouted: “Three groans for Bishop Selwyn,” and followed him with
groans till he turned round and faced them saying: “Now it is more
English-like to look me in the face and tell me your grievances.” This
they did with much frankness, interspersed with rude outcries. They
accused him of grasping lands for the Church, of loving power, of
reviving all the old abuses of England. From this he went on to discuss
matters with the natives, who for the most part received him with much
friendliness, though at one place they said that no minister should go
through their land. But he slipped off in the dusk to the next village
and when he came back, the old chief apologised and said: “Now let us
how d’ye do, and henceforth all ministers may come and go as aforetime.
You are the great billow that has crushed the canoe; you are the great
fish that has broken through the net.” Alone and unarmed he went through
all this disaffected district. He knew the people well and sometimes by
a joke, sometimes by a serious word, sometimes by a parable could turn
aside their anger and win them to listen to him.
The natives at this time were very indignant because the Governor had
forbidden them to have arms; and one chief had said to him: “My custom
is to give my enemy a weapon if he has not one, that we may fight upon
equal terms. Now, O Governor, are you not ashamed of my defenceless
hands.” Soon after this an English carter and his boy were murdered by
the Maoris. Shortly afterwards, the Bishop, on his travels through the
country, was sitting round the fire with a large party of natives, who
were telling him some of their national myths. He said: “Now I will tell
you a ghost story. There was once a man who dreamt that he was sitting
with a large party round the fire, when out of the fire rose the figure
of a man who said, ‘O Governor if I had an enemy and he had no weapon, I
would give him one before we fought. O Governor were you not ashamed of
my defenceless hands?’ The people all applauded, but the dream went
further. ‘After a time another figure rose up slowly out of the fire,
with a white face, very pale, with blood streaming down; the figure was
dressed like an English boy and held a bullock whip. He too stretched
out his arms to the Maoris and said, ‘Were you not ashamed of my
defenceless hands?’” The Bishop refused to interpret the story, but it
was passed on amongst the Maoris, and told by many a camp fire. All knew
its meaning.
On one of these walks, the people in a particular village were persuaded
not to receive the Bishop, but to offer him a pigstye for his night’s
shelter. The Bishop at once set to work to turn out the pigs, clean the
stye and make himself a bed of clean ferns. This made the astonished
Maoris say: “You cannot degrade that man from being a gentleman.”
For some time an uncertain kind of peace prevailed, but the irritation
among the natives was all the time on the increase, and the trouble more
and more took the form of hostility on the part of the natives as a
whole to the whites. The chiefs in the Waikato began to gather their
forces to come to the help of the Maoris in the Taranaki district.
Bishop Selwyn, anxious to check the growth of this hostile Maori
feeling, went to a Conference of Maoris, where on the Sunday the Maori
chief preached to the assembled people on the text: “Behold how good and
joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity”; and spoke
of the gain it was that the Maoris were now joined together as one
brotherhood under a Maori king. When the next day the Bishop was allowed
to speak to the people, he said: “Here I am a mediator for New Zealand.
My word is mediation. I am not merely a Pakeha (Englishman) or a Maori;
I am a half-caste. I have eaten your food, I have slept in your houses;
I have talked with you, journeyed with you, prayed with you, partaken of
the Holy Communion with you. Therefore I say I am a half-caste. I cannot
rid myself of my half-caste; it is in my body, in my flesh, in my bones,
in my sinews. Yes, we are all of us half-castes. Your dress is
half-caste—a Maori mat and English clothes; your strength is
half-caste—your courage Maori; your weapons English guns.... Therefore I
say we are all half-castes; therefore let us dwell together with one
faith, one love, one law.” He proceeded to implore them to allow the
Waitara case about the disputed land to be tried by law; and that all
together should set right the wrong which had been done by men on both
sides. Finally he turned to the whole assembly and said: “O all ye
tribes of New Zealand, sitting in council here, I beseech you in the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ in whom we all believe and hope, agree to
the proposals by which we shall all live in peace and happiness.” Some
were convinced, but the majority refused to give up the lands. It was
not long before hostilities began. Sir George Grey came down to
investigate the question of the claim to Waitara, but he brought troops
with him and the suspicious Maoris felt this meant war. They ambushed a
small party of soldiers consisting of two officers and seven men, and
killed all but one. Sir George Grey, though in the meanwhile he had
discovered that the Maori title to the Waitara was sound, felt that
British authority must be vindicated and the murderers punished, so
fighting began.
We are not concerned to follow in any detail the course of the war, but
only to speak of Bishop Selwyn’s activities during it. Ten thousand
troops had gathered in the country and there was not a single chaplain
with them. The Bishop therefore joined the army as chaplain. He hoped
thus not only to minister to the troops, but to be in a position to
protect his native teachers and Christians. He lived in camp, pitched
his own tent and shared the life of the soldiers, who admired him for
his courage and endurance. An English officer describes how he first saw
him. Looking through his telescope he perceived the figure of a man on
foot rapidly making his way to the mission station; after a while he
came to a small stream, and was observed feeling for its bottom with a
long stick; when it proved too deep to be forded he stript, tied his
clothes in a bundle on his head and swam across. Selwyn was on his way
to warn a native clergyman of the coming of the English soldiers, and to
protect him and his school.
During the trying months of war which followed, he did all he could to
help both sides, and thus earned the criticism of both colonists and
Maoris, they could not understand his position, nor perceive that his
one desire was to mitigate the cruel sufferings of war. “If there must
be war,” he said, “our great effort ought to be to debrutalise it, and
the army from the General downwards, have shown every willingness that
it should be so.” He held constant services for the soldiers, attended
to the wounded, buried the dead, and fortunately got permission from the
War Office to appoint three other chaplains to assist him. During these
days he wrote (December 4th, 1863): to his sons in England:
“It is a strange thing to be moving up the Waikato with an army, after
twenty years of an annual visit of a peaceful kind. To see the hills
crowned with English forts, and steamers smoking on the river, is a
strange and to me a painful subject of reflection.”
He sought for wounded men, both Maori and English, in the swamps after
an engagement, fearless of stray gunshots. A naval chaplain, who was
helping him, was riding with him one day through dense bush, said to be
infested with Maoris, when they came to a part of the road cut up with
deep ruts on the side of a steep hill. The Bishop jumped from his horse
and proceeded to fill up the ruts so as to save the wagons for
provisioning the troops from being capsized. Further on, he found an
Irish soldier lying drunk and bareheaded, and got down to drag him into
shelter saying: “Those men do not know the danger of sunstroke.”
To the misery of watching these scenes of war was added the bitter
disappointment of seeing the conduct of the natives. Selwyn wrote to the
Bishop of Adelaide:
“I have now one simple missionary idea before me—of watching over the
remnant that is left. Our native work is a remnant in two senses, the
remnant of a decaying people and the remnant of a decaying faith. The
works of which you hear are not the works of heathens; they are the
works of baptized men, whose love has grown cold.”
The Maoris could not understand the Bishop’s presence with the English
soldiers and looked upon him with suspicion as having gone over to the
cause of their enemies, not recognising that he could not leave the
troops without some one to minister to their spiritual needs. The
English officers soon learnt to love him and to admire his devotion and
courage. On a Sunday he would ride many miles, holding seven or eight
services in the day. There was a long ridge of about two miles exposed
to the fire from the Maoris below which connected two redoubts. The
Bishop rode along it at full canter, and the officers used to watch him
through their field glasses. They would see a puff of smoke and then the
Bishop still galloping along, and say: “It’s all right, they missed
him.”
He was comforted sometimes by hearing of truly Christian acts done by
Maoris. One Maori General was an old pupil of the Bishop’s; he himself
tended a wounded English prisoner all through one night, and when the
man asked for water and there was none in the Maori camp, he crept out
through the fern into the English lines and brought back a calabash of
water for the dying man. The Maori clergy to the Bishop’s great comfort
were faithful all through the war.
Lady Martin thus describes the effect of the war:
“One by one the large flourishing schools on the Waikato and Waiapu
rivers had to be closed, with their branch village schools under
native teachers, which had become centres of light. The fine country
which we had seen covered with wheat and crops became a
battlefield—the mills were closed, the churches built by the natives
were often used as barracks for the troops ... our bay became
deserted. No invalids were brought to be nursed, no canoes heavily
laden with produce skimmed across the harbour. It seemed as if the
pleasant intercourse with the Maoris, which for twenty years had made
our lives so bright was at an end.”
In 1864, a new horror was added to the war by the sudden appearance
amongst the Maoris of a fanatical sect, which gathered round an insane
chief who professed to have received revelations from the angel Gabriel.
His followers called themselves Hau Haus. In a condition of wild
excitement, indulging in excesses of every kind, they marched through
the land claiming the allegiance of other natives. Infuriated by meeting
resistance from some loyal Christian natives, they vowed vengeance to
all missionaries. It was in this mood that they reached Poverty Bay,
just as two missionaries, Volkner and Grace, arrived in a small schooner
bringing medicines and food for the people in the Bay who were suffering
from an epidemic of fever. Volkner was seized and murdered next morning
in a revolting way, whilst Grace was taken prisoner. As soon as this
news reached Bishop Selwyn he hastened to Poverty Bay to try to rescue
Grace. At Poverty Bay he found Bishop Williams in whose diocese it was,
and with him a great crowd of loyal natives. He described his adventures
in a letter to Mrs. Selwyn:
“Went to the Bishop’s house, found all well and thankfully
acknowledging the steadfastness of their people, who had gathered from
all parts for their protection. Went out to a meeting at which the
Bishop’s army appeared in fighting costume, with more of Maori-usage
than I liked to see, as I would rather have seen the native clergymen
with a hundred quiet men in brown coats than four hundred native
warriors in brown skins.”
These men expressed themselves determined not to allow their Pakehas to
be touched, but they would not help to attack the murderers of Volkner.
They even made conditions about the release of a Maori prisoner before
they would write a letter asking for the release of Grace. Selwyn had to
send a schooner to fetch this prisoner and then went off with the letter
demanding Grace’s release to Opotiki, and sent boats to the shore which
brought off Grace and other white people who were there. He then, to his
great regret, had to hasten back to Auckland for the Synod; he believed
that the English clergy and others in that district were still in great
danger. He doubted, however, whether he could have done more to help
them as he had now become such an object of hatred and suspicion to the
rebel Maoris.
After a year of fighting the Maoris were driven back and dispersed. No
regular peace was made but both sides were weary of war, and the English
troops were withdrawn. It was many years before the interior of New
Zealand was really at peace and safe for settlers.
At the end of the year (1865) the Bishop wrote to an old friend in
England:
“How much of the buoyancy of hope has been sobered down by experience!
when instead of a nation of believers welcoming me as their father, I
find here and there a few scattered sheep, the remnant of a flock
which has forsaken the shepherd. I do not know how far it is right to
go among my people, though, in former times, peace or war made no
difference in their willingness to receive me. At present we are the
special objects of their suspicion and ill will. The part that I took
in the Waikato campaign has destroyed my influence with many. You will
ask then ‘Did I not foresee this? and if so why did I go?’ I answer
that I could not neglect the dying and wounded soldiers. Then there
were many wounded Maoris brought in from time to time to whom it was
my duty to minister. Add to this two of our mission stations had been
occupied by a native clergyman and catechist, whom no threats could
induce to leave their posts after the English missionaries were
advised to retire. It was my duty to see they were not injured when
our troops advanced.... This has thrown me back in native estimation
more, I fear, than my remaining years of life will enable me to
recover.... In the midst of these sorrows we have solid comfort in the
sight of the stability of our native clergymen who have never swerved
from their duty.... The real cause of war in New Zealand has been the
new constitution, and the cause of the greater bitterness of the
strife has been the new element of confiscation introduced by the
colonists against the will and express orders of the Home
Government.... A Maori cares more for his land than anything else....
We have every reason to think that the worst is now past.... We shall
probably settle down upon the unsatisfactory basis of the questionable
possession of one or two millions of very indifferent land, and of the
entire repudiation of the Queen’s authority over the whole interior of
the Northern Island. This is the result of seeking first ‘the other
things’ instead of the ‘one.’”
The war was drawing to a close in 1864 when Bishop Hobhouse, after
accompanying Selwyn on one of his journeys to the camp, wrote the
following description of what he saw:
“He was still obliged to provide for the chaplain’s duties, though the
army was no longer massed, but was spread into numerous out-posts
stretching as far as ninety miles from Auckland. This involved his
starting every Friday with such clerical companions as he could get;
calling at the various stations throughout Saturday to do any pastoral
duty required amongst the troops, and planning with the officers how
to make the most of his services on Sunday.... After forty-five miles
we reached the Waikato river ... when the steamer arrived it was found
to be towing some barges filled with the families of the new
Australian settlers, a corps which had been raised in the Australian
towns.... The arrival of these families was an opportunity for
pastoral work.... The Bishop plunged into the barges.... One woman,
the mother of a family was nearing her end. He induced the captain to
put her on shore opposite to a wooden church which had been riddled by
shot and dismantled in the war. Inside that inhospitable ruin he
proposed to stay the night as the comforter of the poor woman, and
bade me proceed to the nearest military post and await his arrival.
Early on the Saturday morning he arrived after an unbroken night
watch, during which he had seen his poor patient’s death, had
committed her body to the grave and had made arrangements for the
charge of her children. Without any sleep, he then hastened to depart
on foot to the missionary station, where we had been expected
overnight. During the many hours of the day as we passed over the
fields of action with their gloomy records of ruined churches,
abandoned paths, down-trodden enclosures, the Bishop poured out his
heart to me more freely than was his wont. The scene was sad enough to
have overwhelmed him with acute regret and despondency for the future.
The Waikato tribe more than 10,000 strong, the most advanced of the
powerful tribes in civilization and churchmanship, with churches and a
complete set of schools endowed by themselves, were now driven from
their fertile valley, estranged from British rule, and perhaps
alienated from the Christian faith. The missionary work of forty years
seemed all undone and the Bishop himself was regarded as a traitor.
Yet all these gloomy reflections were put away, and his only thought
was how to minister to the new settlers now pouring in from the
Australian towns.... As we passed over the scene of bloodshed he said:
‘I have been in every action I could possibly reach. It was my duty to
minister to the wounded natives as well as to the British.... Indeed I
always ministered to the fallen Maori first so as to give a practical
answer to their charge against me of forsaking and betraying them. It
was needful that I should be in the midst of each fray and between two
fires; but I was never hurt. I lay on the ground at night and shared
soldier’s fare.’”
Whilst recalling all that he had gone through, the Bishop’s missionary
zeal still enabled him to make plans for fresh enterprises and to sketch
out new work amongst the settlers. But there were thoughts poured out
too about what he could do when no longer fit for the active life New
Zealand demanded. He thought he might best serve his Master by retiring
to Canterbury, and helping to train the next generation of missionaries
at St. Augustine’s College. But the time of retirement was not yet, and
the next day after a night spent sleeping on the ground, he took eight
separate services for the troops.
Many are the stories of his utter fearlessness during the war. One
settler years afterwards wrote to an Auckland paper saying that he was
sure many of the settlers owed their lives to Bishop Selwyn’s untiring
watchfulness. He told how once when returning to their homes at Mauku,
after a sudden flight, through fear of a Maori attack, the Bishop
appeared and, refusing all refreshment, asked merely to be allowed to
leave his horse for the night. He said he must go on at once to Purapura
which was some nine miles away, and to be reached only by a bush track;
that he needed no food as he had some bread in his kit, but would
probably be back next morning. At 4 o’clock next morning he duly
appeared, drenched to the skin, having walked all through the night and
having had to ford a creek. He then told them that the day before he had
heard that a band of the fiercest Maoris were on their way to attack the
settlement, and he had gone to see the chiefs assembled at Purapura to
persuade them to forbid their war party to go on. This they had promised
to do, but said the Bishop, I will stay till all danger from these wild
spirits is past. During the night he was up and out in a moment if there
was any unusual noise. The following Sunday he held a service in the
little schoolroom, preaching a sermon never to be forgotten, inspiring
trust and confidence in God.
At the end of the war, Bishop Selwyn was granted the same medal as was
given to the soldiers; and the officers and men among whom he had
ministered subscribed to give him money to ornament his private chapel.
The prayer which he drew up to be used in all the churches in New
Zealand, deserves to be recorded here as showing his inmost mind about
the war.
“O Lord whose never failing Providence ordereth all things both in
heaven and earth, we humbly beseech Thee to receive our prayer for the
Governor of this land and for all who are in authority that they may be
guided by Thee in all things, that the dominion of our Queen may be
established in this land in justice and mercy according to Thy Holy
Will.
“We commend to Thee oh merciful Father all our brethren who are gone
forth from amongst us to bear arms and to be exposed to the peril of
death, all who are thereby hindered from worshipping Thee in Thy house,
that Thou wilt keep them from forgetfulness of Thee and of Thy holy law:
all who are sick, all who are wounded, all who are drawing nigh unto
death; all who are bereaved. And we pray that Thy Holy Spirit may so
rule in all of us as to keep us from every unbecoming and unchristian
temper; from all cruel, unmerciful and vindictive thoughts.
“And we beseech Thee, good Lord, to restrain the evil passions of men,
and to deliver this land from the misery of strife and bloodshed and to
pour upon all the people of the land the spirit of concord and obedience
and peace. And this we pray through Him who is the Prince of Peace and
Saviour of all men, our Lord Jesus Christ.”
It is to be noted that he did not bid them pray for victory.