LOCALITY OF NEW ZEALAND — GENERAL APPEARANCE OF THE PEOPLE — THE TWO CASTES, AND THEIR SUPPOSED ORIGIN — CONTRAST BETWEEN THE SEXES — LAXNESS OF MORALS — NUMBER OF THE POPULATION, AND THE DIFFERENT TRIBES — MODE OF GOVERNMENT — DISTINCTION BETWEEN RANKS — FORMATION OF THE CLANS, OR SUB-TRIBES — THE SLAVES, THEIR VALUE AND TREATMENT — THE TENURE OF LAND — A COMPLEX ARRANGEMENT AND CONSEQUENT DIFFICULTIES — ESTABLISHING A CLAIM — NATIVE LAW — THE “LEX TALIONIS” — SENSITIVENESS TO DISGRACE — THE PREVALENCE OF SUICIDE — STRANGE CONDUCT OF A MAORI CHIEF — THE SISTER’S VENGEANCE.

Southward and eastward of Australia we come to the group of islands known collectively as New Zealand. Like Australia, New Zealand possesses many peculiarities of climate and natural production, and is inhabited by a number of tribes which are generally hostile to each other, but which are almost identical in appearance and habits. We shall therefore be enabled to treat of this important portion of the globe with much more brevity than could be the case if, as in Africa, the tribes differed from each other in hue, dress, and customs.

Taken as a whole, the New Zealanders are a singularly fine race of people—tall, powerful, and well made. Though varying somewhat in shade, the color is always a brown of some kind, the complexion being sometimes as light as that of a Spaniard, and sometimes of a dark umber. It is, however, always of a clear tint and never approaches to the deep black of the Australian. The nose is straight and well formed, in many cases being boldly aquiline; and the mouth is rather large, and the lips moderately full, though not resembling those of the negro. The cheekbones are rather high, but not much more prominent than those of a genuine Scotchman; and the eyes are large, dark, and vivacious.

The teeth are remarkably white and even, and the feet and hands small and well proportioned. The foot is very well developed, the native never having spoiled its beautiful mechanism with shoes or boots, and being accustomed to use the toes in many tasks wherein a civilized European requires his fingers. The toes are, for example, continually employed in holding one end of a rope, while the fingers are engaged in twisting or plaiting it; and the consequence is that the natives are able to ridicule with justice the misshapen feet and toes of the European.

The men have naturally a full beard; but they always remove every vestige of hair on the face, in order to show the patterns which are tattooed upon it. Now and then a very old and powerful chief will dare to allow his beard to grow; but, as a rule, the face is divested of all covering: so that the absence of the beard, together with the profuse tattoo, destroys all evidences of age, and makes the countenance of a young man of twenty look nearly as old as that of his grandfather aged sixty.

The hair is plentiful, and mostly straight, being twisted and curled by art into the various fashionable forms. In some cases it is light, or even reddish, in color; and in such instances accompanies a complexion of peculiar fairness. Albinism exists among the New Zealanders, but is not agreeable in appearance, the eyes being always weak, and the skin looking as if it had been artificially whitened. In fact, such an albino looks among his dark fellows like a plant that has been bleached by growing in the dark.

There seems to be two castes of men among the New Zealanders. The upper caste is distinguished by the above characteristics; but the lower is shorter in stature, and has coarse and curly, though not woolly hair, more prominent cheekbones, and a much blacker skin. This second race, according to Dr. Dieffenbach, “is mixed in insensible gradations with the former, and is far less numerous; it does not predominate in any one part of the island, nor does it occupy any particular station in a tribe; and there is no difference made between the two races among themselves.

“But I must observe that I never met any man of consequence belonging to this tribe, and that, although freemen, they occupied the lower grades: from this we may, perhaps, infer the relation in which they stood to the earliest immigrants into the country, although their traditions and legends are silent on the subject.

“From the existence of two races in New Zealand the conclusion might be drawn that the darker were the original proprietors of the soil, anterior to the arrival of a stock of true Polynesian origin; that they were conquered by the latter, and nearly exterminated. This opinion has been entertained regarding all Polynesian islands; but I must observe that it is very doubtful whether those differences which we observe among the natives of New Zealand are really due to such a source. We find similar varieties in all Polynesian islands, and it is probable that they are a consequence of the difference of castes so extensively spread among the inhabitants of the tribes of the great ocean.

“If one part of the population of New Zealand are a distinct race—a fact which cannot be denied as regards other islands—it is very curious that there should be no traces of such a blending in the language, where they would have been most durable, or in the traditions, which certainly would have mentioned the conquest of one race by the other, if it had happened. Captain Crozet, a Frenchman, who early visited New Zealand, says that he found a tribe at the North Cape darker than the rest. I could observe nothing of the kind there, though I visited all the natives. Nor are those darker-colored individuals more common in the interior; I should say, even less so.

“There is undoubtedly a greater variety of color and countenance among the natives of New Zealand than one would expect—a circumstance which might prove either an early blending of different races, or a difference of social conditions, which latter supposition would go far to explain the fact. All the New Zealanders speak of the Mango-Mango, or Blacks of New South Wales, as unconnected with and inferior to themselves; but they never make such a distinction regarding their own tribes.”

As is often the case with uncivilized people, the women are decidedly inferior to the men, being much shorter, and not nearly so well made. They are not treated with the harshness which is the usual characteristic of married life among savages, and are even taken into their husbands’ counsels, and have great influence in political affairs. Still, the heavy work of the household falls upon their shoulders, and the lot of an ordinary New Zealand wife is rather a severe one. She has to cultivate the ground, to carry the produce of the distant fields to the house, and, when the family is travelling, the women have to carry all the heavy loads. It is no wonder, therefore, that a life of such drudgery should tell upon the women, both in preventing the proper development of their frame and in causing their beauty to decay. Those who preserve their beauty longest are the daughters of wealthy chiefs, who can afford slaves by whom all the hard work is done, and who therefore free their mistresses from one of the causes of deterioration.

There is, however, another cause, which is perhaps equally effective, but not so palpable. This is the very lax code of morality which prevails among them, a young girl being permitted the utmost freedom until she is married, although afterward she is a model of constancy. This license is exercised at a very early age, and the natural consequence is that the due development of the frame is checked. This vicious system is so much a matter of course, that it carries no reproach with it, and the young girls are remarkable for their modest and childlike demeanor.

Of course they become aged much earlier than those whose development takes place at a later period of life; but they compensate for their deteriorated appearance by their peculiar kindliness of demeanor. The engraving No. 1, illustrates the countenance and dress of a New Zealand woman and her boy.

Unlike the men, the women do not disfigure their faces by the tattoo, which gives to them the stern and fixed expression so characteristic of a New Zealand warrior; and they thus allow the really flexible and intelligent features to have full play. The only portions of the face that are marked with the tattoo are the lips, which are rendered blue by the process, as it is considered disgraceful for a woman to have red lips. The tattooing is always performed when the child is allowed to take her place among women; and, as may be imagined, it gives a livid and altogether unpleasant appearance to the mouth.

The children are very pleasing and interesting little creatures. They are full of intelligence, and unusually free and open in their manner. Unlike the children of most savage nations, they live as much with the men as with the women, and partake even in the councils of their parents, thus having their faculties sharpened at a very early age. The illustration opposite gives typical examples of the New Zealander from childhood to age, and the reader will notice the contrast between the soft and rounded outlines of the youth, and the harsh, rigid countenances of the old man and his consort.

In proportion to the dimensions of New Zealand, the population is very small; and, even in the earliest days of our acquaintance with it, the land seems to have been but thinly inhabited. That such should be the case is very remarkable, as a very thin population is generally found in those countries where, as in Australia, the inhabitants live principally by the chase, and therefore require a very large tract of land to support them. The New Zealanders, however, do not live by the chase, for the simple reason that there are no animals which are worth the trouble of hunting; so that a family of twenty or so, even if they had the entire country as a hunting-ground, would find themselves in very great straits were they obliged to procure their food by the chase. The reasons for this thin population will be presently seen.

According to Dieffenbach’s calculation, the native population of the entire country may be reckoned rather below one hundred and fifteen thousand. These are divided into twelve great tribes, which are again subdivided into sub-tribes, or clans, each of which has its separate name, and is supposed to belong to a certain district. The fighting men, or warriors, form about one-fourth of the whole population; the remaining three-fourths being made up of old men, women, and children. Since this calculation the numbers of the aborigines have considerably lessened. The most important of the tribes seems to be the Waikato, which is divided into eighteen clans, and which occupies a very large proportion of the country. This tribe alone can bring into the field six thousand fighting men; so that the entire number of the tribe may be calculated at twenty-four thousand or so.

The Waikato clans have managed to preserve their individuality better than the others, and, though brought much in contact with civilization, and having adopted some of the habits of their white visitors, they have still retained many of their ancient customs, and, as Dieffenbach remarks, have preserved much of their ancient vigor and original virtues.

The tribe that is strongest in mere numbers is the Nga-te-kahuhuna, which inhabits the east coast, and may be reckoned at thirty-six thousand strong. In fact, these two tribes alone outnumber the whole of the others taken collectively. One tribe, the Rangitani, is interesting from the fact that it was described by Captain Cook. In his days it was evidently a large and flourishing tribe, but some few years ago it could scarcely muster three hundred warriors, representing a total number of twelve hundred. The decadence of this tribe is probably owing to the destructive wars in which the New Zealanders engage, and which are often so fierce as to erase a tribe entirely.

The government of the New Zealanders is a curious mixture of simplicity and complication. Monarchy is unknown, each tribe having its own great chief, while an inferior chief presides over each clan, or sub-tribe. The whole of the population may be roughly divided into three ranks. First come the nobility, then the free men, and lastly the slaves. The nobility go by the general name of Rangatira—a title which is always given to officers, missionaries, and other white men who are placed in command over others.

In each tribe one of the Rangatira is the Ariki, or principal chief; but, as he is necessarily a Rangatira, he is always addressed by that title, and, in consequence, a stranger finds some difficulty, even after a prolonged visit, in ascertaining who is the Ariki. Among the New Zealanders there is no Salic law, so that the Ariki need not be a warrior, and may be a woman. The office is hereditary, and the existing Ariki is always held in the highest veneration in virtue of his descent. Even the hostile tribes respect an Ariki, and in most cases, if he should be captured in battle, the victors will spare his life. One or two of the most powerful chiefs living have been captured and afterward released, whereas, had they been common men, or even ordinary Rangatiras, they would have been killed, their bodies eaten, and their heads dried and fixed as trophies on the houses of their conquerors.

A sort of tax, or tribute, is paid by the different families, though the tax is entirely a voluntary one, and may be great or small, or withheld altogether, at pleasure. Mostly the Ariki is a man of considerable mental powers, and, in such a case, he exercises great authority over the tribe, either as a priest or a warrior. There is nothing to prevent the Ariki from assuming the office of priest, and in many instances he has been able to exercise a far greater influence by spiritual than by physical means.

The Rangatira are the great men, or nobles, of the land, and with them, as with the Ariki, the rank is hereditary. The law of succession is very remarkable, the eldest son being the heir to his father’s rank; but if the child dies, the youngest, and not the next eldest, becomes the lawful successor. These two heirs, the eldest and the youngest sons, are called by a name which signifies the fat of the earth.

Each Rangatira is independent of his fellows, though they collectively form a sort of body which we may compare with the House of Peers in England. Any Rangatira who has sufficient influence may gather together the members of his clan, build a fortified village, or pah, and become a petty sovereign in his own dominions. It is in this way that the various clans, or sub-tribes, are formed, each gathering round a noble of more than usual ability, and adopting a name by which the members will ever afterward be known.

The free men form the great body of the warriors; some of them being the sons of Rangatira, and others merely having the privilege of free birth; which carries with it the right of tattooing the face. Sometimes a free man who is remarkable for his generalship and courage will take the command of an expedition, even though men of higher rank than himself should be engaged in it.

Last come the slaves. These are always procured from two sources: they are either captives taken in battle, or are the children of such captives. The value of such slaves is very great. All savages are idle, but the New Zealander is one of the laziest of mortals in time of peace. In war he is all fire and spirit; but in peace he lounges listlessly about, and will not do a stroke of work that can possibly be avoided.

He may, perhaps, condescend to carve the posts of his house into some fantastical semblance of the human form, or he may, perchance, employ himself in slowly rubbing a stone club into shape, or in polishing or adorning his weapons. Whatever real work is to be done is left to the women or the slaves, and a man who values his wife or daughter will endeavor to procure slaves who will relieve her of the drudgery.

There are slaves of both sexes, to whom the appropriate work is allotted. They are considered the absolute property of their owner, who may treat them as he pleases, and, if he prefers to kill them, may do so without attracting any attention. Of course he would not do so except for very good reasons, as he would deprive himself of a valuable article of property. There have been cases, as we shall presently see, when the owner of slaves has deliberately murdered them for the sake of selling their heads.

Once a slave, always a slave. Should one of these unfortunates manage to escape and get back to his own tribe, his owner would apply for him, and he would be given up, the right of the master to his slave being universally recognized. Still, as a rule, the slaves are treated well, and some of them, who have attained excellence in certain arts, often become richer men than their owners. So great is the value of slaves, that many a war has been undertaken for the mere purpose of slave hunting, and some of the most disastrous and obstinate feuds have originated in the slave hunt.

Connected with the government of the New Zealanders is the land question. This is a strangely complicated business, as every inch of ground has an actual owner, while there are usually several claimants who allow their rights, real or imagined, to lie in abeyance as long as the land is owned by one who can hold his own, while they will all prefer their claims at his death, or even during a lengthened absence.

So it has often happened that the white men, while desiring to act according to law and honor, have involved themselves in a very net of difficulties. A chief, for example, may agree to sell a portion of territory, will receive the price, and will sign a deed, which will be witnessed by natives as well as by Europeans. No sooner has he done so, than a claimant comes forward, declaring that the chief in question had no real right to the land, and therefore had no right to sell it.

His claim will be inquired into, and, if it seems to be tolerably consistent with likelihood, the man will be paid an additional sum for his consent to the sale. The matter, however, is not at an end, for such is the jealousy with which the natives regard land, that, as long as a foreigner holds an inch of ground, so long will there be a native who prefers a claim to it. Strange as it may seem, the white man would incur less odium by taking the land by force, and seizing it by right of conquest, than by trying to act according to justice and equity.

War is a fertile source of misunderstanding about land. A tribe may be driven out of a district, and their land given to others, who hold it as long as they can keep it, the original possessors being sure to reconquer it if possible. It has sometimes happened that a chief to whom such lands have been presented has transferred them to another chief, and he, in his turn, has sold them to European settlers, the bargain being ratified by his own followers, who are considered as having a share in such property.

The colonists take the land, clear it, cultivate it, and when the crops are fairly in the ground, the dispossessed tribe will come forward and prefer their claim to it. Those to whom it was sold have already received their price, and do not trouble themselves to oppose the claim; and the consequence is, that the colonists are obliged either to make a second payment or to run the risk of war.

As to the claims themselves, they are of the most curious and unexpected character, such as no European would be likely to anticipate. According to Dieffenbach, “There exists a very distinct notion of the rights of landed property among the natives, and every inch of land in New Zealand has its proprietor. Sometimes land is given to a strange tribe, either as pay, or from other considerations, but the proprietor reserves certain rights, some of which are what we should term manorial.

“It was formerly very common that the fat of the native rats (Kiore) killed on such lands should be given to the principal proprietor, and in many cases a title to land seems to have been derived from the fact of having killed rats on it. Thus a chief will say, ‘This or that piece of land is mine; I have killed rats on it.’ Generally, however, land descends, as with us, by inheritance.”

Such being the complicated tenure on which land is held—a tenure which is often puzzling to the natives themselves—it is no matter of wonder that English settlers should have found themselves in difficulties. It is said that the colonists tried to make themselves masters of the land by unfair means, i. e. either by forcibly taking possession of it, or by inveigling the ignorant natives into signing documents which they did not understand, and thus selling their paternal estates for rum, tobacco, and a few blankets.

This may to some extent have been the case when the colonists first came to settle in the country. But the natives are far too intelligent to remain long ignorant of the power of pen, ink, and paper, and there is no doubt that in many cases they intentionally outwitted the purchaser, either by putting forward a sham owner of the ground, who had no right to sell it, and who vanished with his share of the prize as soon as the bargain was concluded, or by asserting ignorance of the meaning of the document which had been signed, and refusing to carry out its conditions. That the white men succeeded too often in cheating the natives is unfortunately true, but it is no less true that the natives as often cheated the colonists.

Law among the New Zealanders seems to be of the simplest kind, and, as far as we know, is not so well developed as among some of the tribes of Southern Africa. The three offences of which the law takes cognizance are murder, theft, and adultery. For the first of these offences a sort of lex talionis holds good, the relatives of the slain man being sure, sooner or later, to kill the murderer, unless he manages to compromise with them. Even theft is punished in a similar fashion, the thief being robbed in his turn.

As to the third offence, it is punishable in various ways; but both the offending parties are supposed to have forfeited their lives to the husband. If, therefore, the fact be discovered, and the culprit be a person of low rank, he seeks safety in flight, while, if he be a man of rank, he expects that the offended husband will make war upon him. Sometimes, if a wife discovers that her husband has been unfaithful to her, she will kill his paramour, or, at all events, disgrace her after the native custom, by stripping off all her clothes, and exposing her in public. Even the husband is sometimes subjected to this punishment by the wife’s relations; and so much dreaded is this disgrace that men have been known to commit suicide when their offence has been discovered.

Suicide, by the way, is not at all uncommon among the New Zealanders, who always think that death is better than disgrace, and sometimes destroy themselves under the most trivial provocation. One such case is mentioned by Mr. Angas. “On arriving at the village or kainga of Ko Nghahokowitu, we found all the natives in a state of extraordinary excitement. We had observed numbers of people running in that direction, along the margin of the river, from the different plantations, and, on inquiry, we learned that an hour previously to our arrival the son of an influential chief had committed suicide by shooting himself with a musket.

“Our fellow-travellers, with Wisihona their chief, were all assembled, and we followed them to the shed where the act had been perpetrated, and where the body still lay as it fell, but covered with a blanket. The mourners were gathered round, and the women commenced crying most dolefully, wringing their hands, and bending their bodies to the earth. We approached the body, and were permitted to remove the blanket from the face and breast. The countenance was perfectly placid, and the yellow tint of the skin, combined with the tattooing, gave the corpse almost the appearance of a wax model. The deceased was a fine and well-made young man. He had placed the musket to his breast, and deliberately pushed the trigger with his toes, the bullet passing right through his lungs. Blood was still oozing from the orifice made by the bullet, and also from the mouth, and the body was still warm.”

The cause of this suicide was that which has already been mentioned. The young man had been detected in an illicit correspondence with the wife of another man in the same village. The woman had been sent away to a distant settlement, a proceeding which had already made her lover sullen and gloomy; and, on the day when Mr. Angas visited the place, he had become so angry at the reproaches which were levelled at him by some of his relations, that he stepped aside and shot himself.

The determined manner in which the New Zealanders will sometimes commit suicide was exemplified by the conduct of another man, who deliberately wrapped himself up in his blanket, and strangled himself with his own hands. The crime was perpetrated in the common sleeping-house, and was achieved with so much boldness that it was not discovered until the man had been dead for some time.

A remarkable instance of this phase of New Zealand law took place when Mr. Dieffenbach visited the Waipa district. He was accompanied by a chief, who called a girl to him, and handed her over to the police magistrate as a murderess. The fact was, that her brother, a married man, had formed an intimacy with a slave girl, and, fearing the vengeance of his wife’s relatives, had killed himself. His sister, in order to avenge the death of her brother, found out the slave girl in the bush, and killed her. The strangest part of the business was, that the accused girl was the daughter of the chief who denounced her.

The girl pleaded her own cause well, saying, what was perfectly true, that she had acted according to the law of the land in avenging the death of her brother, and was not amenable to the laws of the white man, which had not yet been introduced into her country. As might be imagined, her plea was received, and the girl was set at liberty; but her father was so earnest in his wish to check the system of retaliatory murder, that he actually offered himself in the place of his daughter, as being her nearest relation.