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History doesn’t change but our perception of it certainly does. CHARMIAN SMITH talks to Peter Entwisle about the discovery of a manuscript that changes our view of what happened in Otago in the 1810s.
OUR knowledge of what happened in the South in the sealing days from the 1790s to the 1820s is sketchy. It relies on a handful of journals kept by sealers who stayed here briefly, or sailors who visited, or on accounts published in the Sydney Gazette at the time.
However, the unlikely discovery of a significant manuscript giving an account of the period from the Maori point of view, particularly the attacks on Pakeha sailors and sealers in Otago Harbour in the 1810s, has thrown new light on early Otago history.
The manuscript was discovered by local historian Rev Donald Phillipps while researching the history of the Methodist mission at Waikouaiti. He found it in the Turnbull Library in a folder of miscellaneous papers relating to Charles Creed. Creed was the second missionary at Waikouaiti, succeeding James Watkin in 1844, and appears to have been given the information by two Maori who had lived through events 20 and 30 years earlier, or who had heard about them in typical Maori oral tradition from people who had been there.
“It mentions things we do know about already and things we’ve never heard of before, and it gives answers to questions that remained hanging around for a long time,” Peter Entwisle says.
His latest book on the early history of Otago, Taka: a vignette life of William Tucker 1784-1817 (Port Daniel Press, pbk, $40), draws on the new information.
Before the discovery of the Creed manuscript it was thought European trade in Otago Harbour with Maori dated only from about 1814. The new information shows it was well established by 1810 when local Maori were in the habit of going on board ships to trade in pigs and potatoes.
We now have to shift our margins back a few years, Mr Entwisle says.
But the Creed manuscript also explains the reasons for what previously seemed the inexplicable hostility of Maori towards groups of European sealers and sailors over several years. One of the best-known events was the killing of Tucker and other men at Whareakeake (Murdering Beach) in 1817.
In his earlier book, Behold the Moon; The European Occupation of the Dunedin District 1770-1848 (1998), Entwisle argued that the reason for Maori hostility was Tucker’s theft of a tattooed head from a Maori settlement, probably near Foveaux Strait, in 1810.
“We know about the theft of the head because a letter appeared in the Sydney Gazette. It said that when the Maori discovered it as Tucker and co were rowing away in their little boat, they rushed off after them and would have launched a hundred canoes and slaughtered these fellows. Tucker’s shipmates were all very surprised they were being attacked. They couldn’t understand it because I dare say Mr Tucker had the head well hidden and wasn’t about to announce to his mates that he was the cause of all this bloody trouble.”
The Creed manuscript now reveals a different cause for the hostilities.
In 1810, a Maori chief, Te Warepirau, had boarded a ship which can be identified from Pakeha records as Sydney Cove, to trade in pigs and potatoes, but he also stole a knife, a red shirt and some other articles.
“Later, when the owner discovered this he hunted down that Maori chief — it must have been a day or two later and perhaps it was on shore somewhere. He attacked him with a cutlass and the Maori man ran along the beach with his guts spilling out and died.
“Now Maori considered the theft wrong, but they considered the reprisal extensive, so they then set upon the sealers,” Entwisle said.
Subsequently, there were attacks on Pakeha from several other ships, including a party of seven sailors sleeping in their boat north of Moeraki. Some of the Maori who had fed and entertained them wanted to save them, but others would not consent and five were killed and eaten.
However, not all contacts between Pakeha and Maori were so violent. Tucker, who had been sealing on Green Island or White Island off the coast in 1809, returned to the region probably in about 1814 and lived with the Maori at Whareakeake for two years. He built a house, kept sheep and goats, and took a Maori wife although they had no children.
Besides the missioners in the Bay of Islands, he was the only other person in New Zealand at the time who represented an outpost of European culture, Entwisle says.
“He wasn’t just someone who had run away; he wasn’t just somebody who got captured. He was someone who had come ashore deliberately with European resources behind him, and he was keeping livestock.”
At the time, various groups based in New South Wales were investigating trading opportunities with southern New Zealand. Besides seal and, later, whale products, there was a less well-known and less glamorous trade in flax, pigs and potatoes and, in the North, in timber. But there was also a trade in “curios”.
From the circumstantial evidence and archaeological finds at Whareakeake, Entwisle argues that Tucker was there to organise Maori to carve hei-tiki from damaged mere and adzes that had lost their mana, using iron tools.
Hei-tiki were worn around the neck and had not been very common among Maori, but a huge number were found at Whareakeake, he says.
“The quantities taken out of there were phenomenal. Maori abandoned that site in about 1825. By the 1880s and 1890s, Europeans were using sluicing methods adapted from gold mining to wash out greenstone artefacts from Murdering Beach to sell them. That’s in the fossicking period before archaeologists begin.
“When archaeologists get there from 1919 — the first archaeologists at Otago University paid for by Willi Fels — they focused on Murdering Beach because it was a well-known site and they still found masses of this stuff.”
In the 1890s, Maori were asked why they left all the greenstone items behind when they abandoned the site but they gave no answer, he said.
Also, an editorial in the Sydney Gazette in 1819 spoke about sealers acquiring hei-tiki and selling them in Sydney and Europe. It discussed whether these were regarded by Maori as sacred objects or whether they were really just works of art — ornaments — and decided they were really just works of art as Maori wouldn’t part with them if they thought their gods inhabited them.
“But the significant thing is it shows there was such a trade that had been carried on at some time. It was carried on specifically by sealers, and it mentions that these men had such a chancy way of living and were such doubtful characters they were often in danger of losing their lives. It seems an echo of the announcement about 12 months previously that Tucker had lost his life at Murdering Beach.”
Tucker had been away from Whareakeake for some time, but returned to Otago Harbour on the Sophia, captained by James Kelly, in 1817.
With six companions, he visited Whareakeake and received a friendly enough welcome. But while he was in his house and the others were about to bargain for potatoes, an old man, Te Matahaere, seized Kelly and called to another to kill Tucker. Kelly and two others escaped, but three were killed and eaten, including Tucker who reached the surf and, according to an account in the Sydney Gazette, stopped to beg the Maori not to hurt their friend, Wioree.
The reason for the unprovoked attack given by the Creed manuscript was resentment that Tucker had distributed gifts to Maori in Otago Harbour before visiting Whareakeake. Taiaroa’s father, who was then chief in the harbour, did not want to share the presents and would not allow a canoe to take them to Whareakeake. It was not until the ship’s boat returned from elsewhere that Tucker and his companions were able to visit Whareakeake.
“In the poisoned atmosphere then existing, it wasn’t difficult for a Maori leader to incite his people to kill Pakeha. If relations hadn’t been generally soured, deaths wouldn’t have resulted from such slight causes as these,” Entwisle writes.
Kelly returned to his ship, killed some Maori who were on board and the following day burned Otago, the large village on Te Rauone Beach near today’s settlement of Otakou.
Subsequently, other sealing gangs were attacked and men killed as far away as Stewart Island and Chalky Inlet.
In 1823, Captain William Edwardson negotiated a truce, although there were more attacks from both sides, but no fatalities, when the Weller brothers set up their whaling station at Otakou in 1831.
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