Early days of Marlborough

Press, 14 August 1976, Page 15

Early days of Marlborough

Old Marlborough, or the Story of a Province. By T. Lindsay Buick. Hart and Keeling, 1900. Capper Press reprint. 478 pp. N.Z. price $18.50. (Reviewed by Robert Lamb) Lindsay Buick wrote with a facile pen, recapturing in his narrative something of the dramatic impact of events he was writing about. Evidence of this are the chapters that deal with Captain Cook’s discovery of the Marlborough Sounds, the raids of Te Rauparaha, and the armed clash — known as the Wairau affray — that took place at Tua Marina in June. 1843. The book goes little beyond the period of provincial government and ends at 1890, the year in which its author was elected to represent Wairau in Parliament. Its account of political issues hotly debated in the Marlborough Provincial Council is not always as explicit as could be desired. Readers in search of a more lucid and lively account of the wrangles that characterised, so frequently, the council’s deliberations, should turn to Sir Alister Mclntosh’s book, “Marlborough. A Provincial History,” which was published in 1940, and has long been out of print. Mr Buick’s book, through being reprinted, without any editorial revision, will continue to perpetuate historical misconceptions that have been uncovered since it was first

published in 1900. Thus we cannot allow to pass, unquestioned, the author’s assumption (even though he admits it to be unproven) that before the coming of the Maori “an older race” called Moriori inhabited Marlborough. Professor W. H. Oliver, writing on this subject in Volume II of “An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand,” says that “the term Moriori should, in fact, be limited to the inhabitants of the Chatham Islands.” The ancient pits in Marlborough dealt with at some length by Lindsay Buick, • have been more recently investigated by Mr Michael Trotter, of the Canterbury Museum, who says of the reputed Morioris of New Zealand that “there never were any such people.”

Then Mr Buick’s reference to “the colony’s first Premier, James Edward Fitzgerald” (Page 413) is another example of a long-persisting misconception. The first Ministry in our Parliamentary history was led by Henry Sewell in 1856; and it is to him, as Professor Oliver and others have pointed out, belongs the distinction of having been first Premier of New Zealand. These errors notwithstanding, it is good to see a book of this calibre being placed once again in general circulation.

[Robert Lamb retired recently as head of the reference section. Canterbury Public Library.]