THE REV. SAMUEL MARSDEN

Otago Witness, Issue 2649, 21 December 1904, Page 21 (Supplement)

THE REV. SAMUEL MARSDEN

was an intimate friend of Governor King's, and as snch came much in contact with Te Pehi and his sons while they were guests at Government House. Marsden himself was a manysided man. Of a singularly vivid and energetic temperament, the conventional limits of an Anglican chaplain's life by no means contented him. He took up the breeding of stock with enthusiasm, and entered with zest into every enterprise vhich seemed to him likely to increase the prosperity of the infant colony of New South Wales. There, owing to his vivid and active interest in politics, he will always be identified with the mundane affairs of colonisation. New Zealand claims the purely missionary side of Samuel Marsden. In the meeting with Te Pehi Marsden received the first impetus towards that great work which was afterwards to make his name a household word m New Zealand. Te Pehi returned to his own country, and Marsden paid a visit to England. Returning from there to Australia in 1809,

Marsden was reminded of his first interest in the Maoris by coming in contact with a young Maori, a nephew of the great chief Hongi Hika of the Ngapuhi tribe. This Maori youth, Ruatara, confirmed the pleasant impression of his race which Marsden had received from. Te Pehi ; and at the end of a year's training in farming, etc., under Marsden's influence and advice, he was sent on, a modern "forerunner,'' to prepare the minds of his people for the friendly reception of the two missionaries who were already preparing to follow him. Then came news of an appalling tragedy of murder and cannabalism at Whangaroa: A young Maori chief, who, in order to see the world, had shipped as a sailor in the Boyd, a trading tramp, had been insulted. On two occasions, pleading illness, G-eorge had refused to work. The captain had him triced up and flogged, telling him he was no -hief, but a common sailor. "Wait till we reach my own country — you will then know if I am a chief,'" was the ominous answer. According to the law of Tapu a chief's back is so sacred that nothing but complete and wholesale vengeance could efface such an insult as was contained in George's punishment from his tribe. The Boyd anchored off Whangaroa ; George showed his scars to his father, and for every scar demanded vengeance. In savage and indiscriminating murder that vengeance was taken. Out of a crew and passengers numbering seventy, only four were left to tell the bloody tale. These four were rescued by the chief Te Pehi, keen to show his loyalty to his Pakeha friends. His efforts were ill-requited. Already his intercourse with the white man had brought him nothing but sorrow — his fair young daughter had, with her Pakeha husband, been abducted by a worthless trader, his youngest son contracted consumption during a visit to England, and died soon after returning to New Zealand. Now the last stroke of dystiny awaited Te Pehi in the outcome of the Boyd tragedy. The news of the massacre was quickly spread. Five whaling ships rendezvoused in the Bay of Islands, intent on vengeance They were told that Te Pehi had instigated the massacre, and without waiting to verify the information, laid their plans accordingly, fell on his kianga under cover of the darkness, and murdered every man, woman, and child

therein. Te Pehi alone escaped, severly wounded, only tcf meet the supreme irony of fate in being slam by the people of Whangaroa, in revemge for having tried to save the crew of the Boyd. Was ever tangle more complete? In the face of this latest revelation of native ferocity, which, in those days of ignorance concerning the Maoris, was absolutely devoid of extenuating circumstances, Governor Macquarrie refused permission to ihe carrying out of Marsden's missionary project. He however tried to lessen the probabilities of friction between Pakeha and Maori by passing a law penalising to the extent of £100 the captain of any vessel whose crew quarrelled with the Maoris. Hongi Hika, the great Ngapuhi chief, was sent for to Sydney, and invested with official control of the intercourse between the two races. The appointment of the first. Resident Magistrate at the Bay of Islands was also made in the person of Mr Kendall.