EARLY SETTLERS’ COLUMN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 5 July 1939, Page 6

EARLY SETTLERS’ COLUMN

NOTES FROM PIONEER DATS This column will appear weekly, and will be edited bv Mr J. H. Moore. Interesting matter concerning the early days of Nelson for inclusion in this column will be welcomed. The purpose of this column is to stimulate and keep alive the interest of those amongst us who have any pride in the doings and live* of the early settlers of Nelson, and particularly those of the younger generation. It is difficult to interest these latter in the happenings of a past day. and hard to find items that will appeal in any way. Perhaps they may be induced to ponder a little on some of the trial* and tribulations of those early settler* when compared with the pleasant lines upon which their lives flow' to-day * * * * Take just the simple matter of clothes, something in which our young women ‘and many of the young men. loo) find an absorbing interest. The chief difficulty of the early settlers was to get clothes of any kind for themselves and their families when they had exhausted the supplies they had brought with them. One very old settler writes: “Clothes were very scarce. I remember my mother made me a suit of clothes out of a three-bushel sack, trousers and all. I was quite proud of them, and many others were dressed in the same fashion.” How would th# young people of to-day feel if they were to be brought to such a pass as that?

At the commencement of the settlement, the matter of clothe* produced some very queer results. These settlor* v ere English people, and brought English clothes with them. Many of the men came supplied with dress suits, frock coats. Prince Alberts (just then c'.ming into fashion), and other distinctive apparel, not omitting by any meini the tall hat known as the “bell-top-per.” It is quite likely that some of them would have had plus-fours with them, had that form of raiment been in vogue at the time. The ladies brought dainty English frocks, mantles, bonnets, even ball-dresses. Of course, that extraordinary piece of machinery, the crinoline, had not yet come into being, and that still greater abomination, the bustle, had not yet arrived; yet many were the modish and stylish garments that came here with the first of our settlers. But, alas, the day came when many of these found their way into the hands of the Maoris, in exchange, perhaps, for a few pounds of potatoes or a string of fish. The habiliments of the outer man had been sacrificed to the needs of the inner one. A very delightful pen-picture has been left to ua of a tall Maori on his way to church, garbed in a well-cut dress coat, with e white cotton shirt flapping round his knees, the w-holc surmounted by a tophat; behind him followed his admiring wahine, and still further behind a number of their picaninnie6 clad mostly in “the skanderlus garb of the Greek slave.” * * * *

The food problem was often very acute. One old settler has written:— “Wc had to live as best we could for some time. For years I never heard of any butchers —only when a neighbour killed a pig. Mutton was out of the question, and I never saw a joint of beef for years, except from a bullock that had died from tutu.” The fact that seed potatoes planted for growing had been dug up and eaten for food, only the eyes being saved for replanting, is testified to by more than one of the early settlers. The Crown Prosecutor of Nelson to-day probably find* little difficulty in procuring a loaf of bread to satisfy the appetites of his family; it is nevertheless true that one of his ancestors found himself faced with just this difficulty. The full story has been told by the late Judge Broad—how Mr Alfred Fell was once quite unable to procure a pound of flour at any price, until Mr Best, of Appleby, carried a bag from his home, through swamps and muddy roads, and delivered it at Mr Fell’s house in Nelson. There is more than one of the early settlers w'ho ha« feats akin to this to their credit.

The following questions have been asked for elucidation in this column:— (1) Had the practice of cannibalism been discontinued by the Maori by the time the settlement of Nelson was founded? (2) Were the bodies of any of the victims of the Wairau massacr# taken away by the Maoris? The answer to both question is—no. Cannibalism was rife up to that time whenever Maori fought Maori, and continued spasmodically up to and during the Hau Hau rebellion of later years under the old rascal. Te Kooti. There is a reminder in the Nelson district in the shape of Cannibal Gorge, not far from j Maruia Springs, which got its name from a fearful slaughter of penned-up I Maoris in the very early days. In 1832 —only a scant ten years before the

j founding of Nelson —the white w'halcr ! Thoms, then living at Tc Awaiti m ! Tory Channel, saw twenty headless | funks brought in in canoes and roast:cd on the beach before his house. It ia necessary sometimes to recount these horrible facts in order to obtain a proper comparison between the past and the present. Still, not even talcs such ai this were sufficient to daunt the enterprise of the men and women who

came with the expedition. * * * * It seems to be clear that none of th# twenty-one victims of the tragedy at T-tamarina were taken away by th# Maoris. Twenty bodies in all were collected and buried by the Rev Samuel Ironside, the Wesleyan Missionary, at the mouth ol the Wairau river, and others. Only one body was never found, and this fact probably prompted the question. This • was the body of Constable Mai mg. but no evidence ban even come to light that the Maoris had taken his body with them. It is just possible that. as they buried their own dead on the spot, they may have buried him also.