4 JANUARY 1845, Page 33

THE ABORIGINES.

THE Aborigines of New Zealand do not appear to exceed 100,000 in number. They are most numerous in the following districts of the Northern Island. 1. The peninsula North of the Thames. Here their number was estimated in 1838, by the Missionaries, at 22,000. As this is the region with which the Missionaries are most intimately acquainted, their estimate is adopted. 2. The vallies of the Thames and Waikato, and the West coast between Manukau and Kawia. The Aborigines of this district were estimated by the Missionaries at 23,000. This is probably in excess ; but subsequent visits have shown that there is here (for New Zealand) a pretty dense population—it may be taken at 20,000. 3. The Bay of Plenty. Its native inhabitants were stated by the Missionaries, in 1840, to be from 15,000 to 20,000. In this number, however, appear to be included part of the tribes of the Thames and Rotorua: the lowest estimate is therefore taken. 4. From the Bay of Plenty to Poverty Bay, and around the latter, 9,000. This estimate rests upon a comparison of the statements of Cook, the Missionaries, and the Bishop of New Zealand. 5. Around Lakes Rotorua and Taupo in the interior, and in the intervening and immediately surrounding country, 20,000. After comparing the statements of Bidwill, Dieffenbach, the Missionaries, and the settlers on Cook's Straits, these tribes cannot be estimated as more numerous. 6. On both sides of Cook's Straits, and North of Banks's Peninsula in the Middle Island, 7,000. This is Dieffenbach's estimate ; and more recent reports appear to corroborate it. 7. The remainder of the Middle and the whole of the Southern Island, 9,000. At Banks's Peninsula, the Natives have been so thinned by war that they no longer call themselves tribes. The population at (Nalco, on Foveaux's Straits, and in the Southern Island, is thin and straggling. At Dusky Bay and Chalky Bay, at the South-west extremity of the Middle Island, only a few wandering families have at times been seen. The above numbers give a total of 100,000 Aborigines for the three

islands.

The Natives' notion of private property in land appears to be limited to the right which any individual may acquire by reclaiming previously uncultivated land from the waste.* A warlike chief or tribe, who succeeds in driving or keeping out other tribes from a district, assumes the right to prevent the members of all other tribes from thus acquiring private property in the waste land of that district.t Whether the Abarigines have any distinct notion of a perpetual right to land thus reclaimed, and the power of transmitting it to their relations after death, is doubtful.: From Mr. Blackett's evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1840, it would appear that" they seldom plant twice on the same part ; they generally have a new soil; they burn down the trees and plant upon a new soil every year. II The only title to land recognized by the New Zealanders is the right of the strongest.

The stress laid upon their power of permitting aliens to occupy grounds by cultivation in the district they inhabited, appears so lately as 1839 to have varied very much with the individual characters, and even with the momentary mood of particular chiefs and tribes. There are facts stated in Colonel Wakefield's Journal (29th August 1839) that imply great apathy on this head among the Southern Natives. " Many White men have established themselves amongst different tribes, and cultivated land to any extent in their power, without a question or exaction of any kind from the Natives ; and it is probable that such is the value set upon European commodities and industry by the Natives, and so uncertain the right of ownership in land, (which has been usurped by tribe after tribe during a series of wars,) that a body of settlers might locate themselves without purchase in any part of the shores of the Strait unmolested by anybody." It is difficult to ascertain precisely what ideas the Aborigines entertain of civil society and civil government. The part of interpreters between them and the English at their first interview with Cook was performed by Otaheitans ;§ who, recognizing (under a dialectical difference) the words of their own language, were soon able to commu nicate with the New Zealanders. The Otaheitans naturally took each word in the exact sense in which they used it themselves. But in Otaheite there was a regularly-organized priesthood ; in New Zealand, no separate priesthood existed : it is apparent, therefore, that in speak ing of religious traditions and observances, the Otaheitan interpreter would necessarily convey to the Europeans not the vague and formless notion entertained by the New Zealander, but his own more precise no tions. Subsequent observations afford reason to suspect, that in the same way the earlier English visitors were led to attribute a greater social progress to the New Zealanders than they had actually attained. Until very recently, almost the only additional information respecting the New Zealanders, to that gleaned by Cook and his companions, was derived from the Missionaries. But the Missionaries were more intent upon imparting their own opinions and principles to the Natives than on learning theirs. The facts stated by unbiassed observers imply that the New Zealanders have no conception of civil government, in the European sense of the word. "The New Zealand chief, "says Mr. Busby, "has neither rank nor authority, but what every person above the condition of a slave, and indeed the most of them, may despise or resist with impunity." There is among the Aborigines of New Zealand neither a civil government nor the materials whereof to make one. They are not, like the tribes of North America, hunters, for they have nothing to hunt ; but they are scarcely less vagrant in their habits— cultivating one patch of land this year, and another the next. They cling to the same district, they have their palls or "cities of refuge" ; and so do and have the North American Indians. Among both, the strong warrior and the commanding or insinuating speaker exercise great influence Over their tribes. This influence, however, is chiefly felt during their * Mr. Protector Clarke's Report of Land-tenure among the Aborigines, 17th October 1853. Appendix to Report of Commons Committee 1845; No. 9, pp. 354-359.

I Ibid. Appendix to Committee's Report, p. 355. Notes of Evidence to Committee's Report, p. 490. Cook's First and Second Voyages. wars, and implies no such authority as Europeans recognize in their governments. A letter from an intelligent traveller in New Zealand, now on our table, appears to convey a more accurate notion of the relative positions of different members of the tribes, than any account we have seen elsewhere. "Almost every freeman calls himself a rangatira if asked what he is, but may nevertheless be a man alio influence. What is called an ariki or head chief, is a man often not higher by birth than the other, but who has some influence, and may be said to possess certain sovereign rights, when somebody else more powerful is not at hand. But all these distinctions are exceedingly vague : in some tribes, such as Rauperaha's, I should have been contented to obtain the signa. lure of one or two chiefs only [to a cession of sovereignty] ; while in more democratic tribes the signatures of almost every head of a family would be necessary, as they all divided the authority equally, and no single one was acknowledged to be a greater rangatira than another. I have often witnessed a korero (or discussion) among them, on the knotty point of whether a man who had been called a taloa (or 'no gentleman') was so or not, trail into great length and inextricable entanglement among pedigrees which only the old men remembered."

Individually, the New Zealanders are courageous and enterprising. When Cook's vessels first approached their shores, the people encountered them with demonstrations of hostility and defiance. Since they have become better acquainted with the superior knowledge and resources of Europeans, numbers have sought in the most adventurous manner the means of obtaining a share of these advantages. Te Pehi and others have thrown themselves on board English and French vessels, solely for the purpose of visiting lands of whose existence they had but a faint conception, but where they expected to learn and obtain the means of gratifying their rude ambition. Separated from their countrymen and enrolled in an English crew, New Zealanders have been found to make alert and docile mariners. But this native energy is combined with a very low degree of intellectual or moral development. The evidence given before Committees of Parliament, the published accounts of traders and missionaries, and even the reports of Protectors of Aborigines, concur in representing them as insatiable in their desire to accumulate property, and regardless of promises in this pursuit;' as recognizing no law in their dealings with each other or strangers, but the law of the strongest ;-1as habitually prostituting their women for gain a as devouring the bodies of their enemies, and, having thus contracted a relish for this unnatural food, not scrupling to murder their slaves to indulge in it. § Combined with these bad habits is an instability of purpose—the prevailing characteristic of uncivilized men— which rendered it impossible to rely upon the good-will even of the best-disposed among them.11

The effect of the irresolute and fawning deportment of the English Government in New Zealand towards the Aborigines, has tended to confirm them in adherence to their savage habits, has excited a spirit of hostility against them towards the settlers, and has moreover inspired them with a dangerous over-estimate of their own power.

When Governor Hobson arrived in New Zealand, the Natives were disposed to welcome the arrival of settlers amongst them,[ and to submit to the authority of the British,Government." Since that time, the Aborigines have repeatedly destroyed the houses and cultivations of the British. In March 1842, a body of Natives attacked and plundered the settlers in the valley of the Wangari river, which flows into the Frith of the Thames, from the North.ft In June 1843, the homesteads and farms of the settlers at Manganui, to the North of the Bay of Islands, were " wrecked " and plundered by the followers of the chief Noble.:: At the close of 1842 and beginning of 1843, the settlers in the valley of the Hutt were persecuted by a series of destructive inroads from Rangihaeata's tribes, the occupants of Porirua.§§ The re fusal of the local authorities to interfere for the protection of the settlers, and their manifest leaning to the Aborigines on all occasions, increased the confidence of the unruly chiefs ; till it ended in the massacre of the Wairau.IIII And the consequences of the refusal of the Government even to institute a judicial investigation of that affray, are expressed in the words of Major Richmond, Police Magistrate at Wellington—" The Natives have, since their unfortunate success at the Wairau, assumed a different bearing, and are certainly not inclined to yield obedience to our laws."

While the Aborigines thus act in a spirit of hostility to the settlers, they refuse to acknowledge any right on the part of Government to in.

terfere to prevent wars among themselves. "Many," says Mr. Clarke in his report of his proceedings when sent to mediate between Taraia and the chiefs of Tauranga, "stoutly denied the right of the Government to interfere in their quarrels."

They also deny the right of the Government to suppress their old savage customs. Taraia, when told by Mr. Clarke that it was the determination of her Majesty's Government to put a stop to cannibalism, "replied, that it was a matter in which Natives alone were concerned, and he did not see what business the Governor had to interfere in it."

In October 1843, on the death of Kupanga, the wife of a Native chief in the island of Wailleke, near Auckland, a slave-girl was shot to accompany her mistress to the other world ; and Government would not or dared not interfere.

* Brodie' s Evidence, 1844; p. 898. Mr. Clarke's Report of 4th January 1848: Appendix, No. 4, p. 16. Mr. Clarke's Report of 18th June 1812: Ibid., p.115. f Busby's Report, 16th June 1837. Correspondence, p. 15. t Earp's Evidence, 1844: 2529. For recent instances, see Mr. Clarke's Report, 15th June 1842: Appendix to Committee's Report of 1844; No. 4, p. 86. 6 Commons Committee of 1840: Notes of Evidence, 548-555. v Wakefield's Journal, passim. Evidence of Messrs. Karp, Brodie, Af'Donnell, and Kettle, in 1814. ** Mr. Clarke's Report of a Visit to the Thames, December 1840 ; Sessional Papers 1842, No. 569, p. 93. Speech of the Chief Noble, Sessional Papers 1841, No. 311, p.56.

Southern Cross, (Auckland newspaper, edited by a gentleman whOm Governor

Fitzroy has made a member of Council,) 21st March 1843. tt Ibid., 10th June 1843. hi Appendix to Report of 1844, No. 2, pp. 55 et seq. Ii Ibid., No. 4, pp. 21-78.