Maori tribal warfare of the 19th C

Press, 3 November 1984, Page 22

Maori tribal warfare of the 19th C

Maori Wars of the Nineteenth Century. By S. Percy Smith. Second and enlarged edition first published 1910. Capper Press reprint, 1984. 490 pp. $4O.

(Reviewed by

John Wilson)

What to call the various bouts of fighting which occurred in New Zealand in the nineteenth century is a matter of some debate among historians. Most no longer think it appropriate to call the wars 'that followed European settlement, fought largely between Pakeha and Maori

over the land, the “Maori Wars”. Although published more than threequarters of a century ago, the title of this book is in line with modern thinking for it deals not with the Land Wars out with the fighting among different Maori tribes earlier in the : century. The book deals with the period, of barely two decades, which saw the introduction of European firearms and their use in tribal fighting. It was a period of imbalance among the tribes, unprecedented in Erevious Maori history, when northern -ibes who gained muskets first set out on military expeditions to settle old scores with tribes to the south. The period came to an end in the mid 1830 s, partly because the wars had exhausted many tribes and desolated large areas, partly as a result of missionary influence, but perhaps mainly because once the southern tribes had secured muskets of their own a balance was again restored, making southern expeditions much less appealing to the northern tribes. The material was collected by S. Percy Smith, by word of mouth from often elderly Maori informants, over long years later in the nineteenth century. Among his most forthcoming informants were members of Ngati Whatua of Kaipara and the Auckland isthmus and the book treats in greatest detail of the conflict between Ngati Whatua and what Smith calls Nga Puhi. Modern scholars would probably not use the name Nga Puhi quite as Smith does because the names and histories of the various Bay of Islands iwi and hapu are now better understood by Europeans. A central figure m the story is the well-known Hongi Hika, whose depredations between 1815 and his death in 1828 have .been part of the received version of New Zealand history for many years. But Hongi Hika is only one of many actors in the drama about which Smith writes.

The book is not easy reading. This is partly because the narrative is complicated — there is so much coming and going of so many groups and individuals that it is hard at times to relate one episode to another. In addition, much remains uncertain and tentative, at least by the standards of European historiography. Transposing oral traditions to the written page is never easy. There are, in addition, deficiencies in Smith’s style and ability to organise a clear narrative. The sum of all this is that the book is of greatest use as a source book for specialists or for people wanting information about a specific event or person. The sites of many of the engagements Smith writes about are, for example, marked today by plaques or noticeboards, and Smith’s book has been crucial to devising wording for these, at least as a starting point. For the persevering reader there are insights to be gained into the ways and attitudes of the pre-European Maori. But the caution which must be sounded about reading the book for such insights is that it deals with an extraordinary time in Maori history. It would be most unhistorical to project back from what happened in these few bloody years, after traditional Maori society had been profoundly altered by initial contact with Europeans and the introduction of firearms, into the years which preceded such contact. The checks and balances of pre-European life were completely disrupted by the second decade of the nineteenth century and to assume that Maori life was always as it was after this had happened would be wrong. So long as this caution is heeded, it can be welcomed that this valuable source book for a fascinating period of New Zealand history has been reprinted, though the welcome must be

tempered because the reprint suffers from Capper Press’s recent lapses in standards of production.