refuge by fleeing to the protection of Tawhiao, who then—as now—defied the Queen's authority within his dominions.
Sir Donald McLean, while Native Minister, had several important interviews with the Kingites, with a view to bring about a better relationship between the two races, and as he was well known to the natives both before and during his term of office, his efforts had considerable effect in promoting a more friendly intercourse.
Again, Sir George Grey, when Premier of the Colony, attended two large native meetings in the King Country, in 1878, and opened up communication with the chiefs of the Kingites. At the second meeting at Hikurangi about seventeen miles beyond Alexandra, Sir George Grey laid before the natives definite terms of accommodation. He offered to give back to them the whole of the land on the west bank of the Waipa and Waikato rivers, and to confer certain honours on Tawhiao, the son of Te Wherowhero, who had succeeded to the kingship. At a subsequent meeting held at Te Kopua, in April, 1879, these offers were again made, but Tawhiao, for some reason which has never been satisfactorily explained, declined to accept them, and they were distinctly withdrawn.
With the advent of the Whitaker ministry into power, it was felt that another attempt should be made to deal with the Maori king, and accordingly, during the session of 1882, acts were carefully framed so as to facilitate the object. A Native Reserves Act was passed, under which natives could have placed any blocks of land they chose under a board which would have administered the property for the benefit of the owners. An Amnesty Act was also put on the statute-book, under which the government could have issued pardons to those natives who had committed crimes and taken refuge among the Kingites. The most sanguine hopes were entertained that this difficulty would at last be settled, and in a way which would be satisfactory for both peoples. The terms which Mr. Bryce, as Native Minister, laid before Tawhiao and his people at the Kingite meeting, held at Whatiwhatihoe in October of the same year, were so liberal as to surprise the whole country. A large tract of the confiscated land on the west bank of the rivers Waipa and Waikato was offered to be restored, while Tawhiao was to be secured in all the lands which he could claim in the King Country, and the government were to endeavour to procure for him and his people a block of land from the Ngatimaniapoto tribe, the most extensive landowners in his dominions. Altogether the amount of land to be restored amounted to many thousands of acres, most of it fertile and well suited for the purposes of the natives, or that section of them known as the Waikatos, of whom Tawhiao was the hereditary chief.
What the government proposed to do was that the king's mana, or sovereign authority, should be removed by the best means, and that in doing so the utmost care should be taken that all of the natives of the king's tribe should be provided for. This step was the more necessary from the fact that Tawhiao, although the acknowledged head of the Maori race, and exercising a supreme authority over the King Country, was, owing to the confiscation of his tribal lands which had taken place after the war, a comparatively landless monarch.
At the Kingite gathering at Whatiwhatihoe, Tawhiao, in view of the proposals made, was willing to take back the land, but objected to receive a salary from the government, to be called to the legislative council, or to be made a magistrate.[3] He, and those around him, saw that to have accepted these terms would have been equivalent to saying that he abdicated his position as king. That being, from the Native Minister's point of view, the all-important matter, the negotiations could go no further, and the memorable meeting at Whatiwhatihoe broke up with Tawhiao still reigning as absolute monarch over one of the most extensive and fertile portions of New Zealand.
With my reference to the geographical, historical, and political features of the King Country, I will here allude briefly to the physical and social position of the native race as I found it during my travels through that portion of the island where the inhabitants dwell in all their primitive simplicity.
There can be no doubt whatever that the Maori race is greatly on the decrease,[4] and that the three principal diseases conducing to this result are phthisis, chronic asthma, and scrofula; the two first principally brought about, I believe, by a half-savage, half-civilized mode of life, and the latter from maladies contracted since the first contact of the people with Europeans. It is, however, clear that there is a large number of natives yet distributed throughout the King Country, and among them are still to be found, as of old, some of the finest specimens of the human race. A change of life, however, in every way different from that followed by their forefathers, has brought about a considerable alteration for the worse among the rising population, and, although during my journey I met and conversed with many tattooed warriors of the old school, and who were invariably both physically and intellectually superior to the younger natives, it was clear that this splendid type of savage would soon become a matter of the past.
I found the natives living much in their primitive style, one of the most pernicious innovations, however, of modern civilization amongst them being an immoderate use of tobacco among both old and young. Although most of the native women were strong and well-proportioned in stature, and apparently robust and healthy, there appeared to be a marked falling off in the physical development of the younger men, when compared with the stalwart, muscular proportions of many of the older natives—a result which may, no doubt, be accounted for by their irregular mode of life when compared with that usually followed by their forefathers, combined with the vices of civilization, to which many of them are gradually falling a prey. It is a notable fact, which strikes the observer at once, that many of the old chiefs and elders of the various tribes, with their well-defined, tattooed features and splendid physique, have the stamp of the "noble savage" in all his manliness depicted in every line of their body, while many of them preserve that calm, dignified air characteristic of primitive races in all parts of the world before they begin to be improved off the face of the earth by raw rum and European progress. On the other hand, the rising generation has altogether a weaklier appearance, and, although I noticed many buxom lasses with healthy countenances and well-developed forms, not a few of the younger men were slight of build, with a thoughtful, haggard, and in many instances consumptive look about them.
In both their ideas and mode of life they appeared to cling to their old customs tenaciously, and seemed to know little of what was going on in the world beyond their own country, while their religion, what little they possessed, evidently existed in a kind of blind belief in a species of Hauhauism, in which biblical truths and native superstition were curiously mixed. In matters of politics affecting their own territory they invariably expressed a desire that matters might remain as they were, and that they might be allowed to live out their allotted term in their own lands. From one end of the country to the other they seemed to entertain an almost fanatical faith in the power of Tawhiao, and they appeared to regard his influence in the light of our own legal fiction, "that the king could do no wrong."
When I undertook to explore the King Country—being at the time only a new arrival in the colony—I found that it was a part of the British Empire of which I knew very little. I soon, however, learned that the extensive region ruled over by the Maori king was, to all intents and purposes, an imperium in imperio, situated in the heart of an important British colony, a terra incognita, inhabited exclusively by a warlike race of savages, ruled over by an absolute monarch, who defied our laws, ignored our institutions, and in whose territory the rebel, the murderer, and the outcast took refuge with impunity. This fine country, embracing nearly one half of the most fertile portion of the North Island, as before pointed out, was as strictly tabooed to the European as a Mohammedan mosque, and all who had hitherto attempted to make even short journeys into it had been ruthlessly plundered by the natives, and sent back across the frontier, stripped even of their clothes.
At this time—in the early part of the year 1882—Te Wetere, Purukutu, Nuku Whenua, and Winiata, all implicated in the cruel murders of Europeans, were still at large, bands of native fanatics, excited to the point of rebellion against the whites, were massing themselves together in large numbers at Parihaka, and singing pæans to the pseudo-prophet, Te Whiti, who had for some time been inciting his followers to resist any attempt at incursion into their territory on the part of the European colonists who had acquired land and built settlements near the frontier. Thus it was that wars and