December, 1913. 



KNOWLEDGE. 



455 



the fishermen's nets and upsetting their canoes. 



In the Missionary Register for 1823 is mentioned 

 a circumstance which helps to throw light on the 

 occasional ferocious attacks upon white explorers 

 and others made by the Maoris. Probably the most 

 notable, as it was among the first, of what appear to 

 have been either sudden acts of frenzy or of cold, 

 calculated massacre, was the slaughter of Captain 

 Marion du Fresne at the Bay of Islands in 1772. 

 Captain du Fresne, in command of the ship " Marquis 

 de Castres," and Lieutenant Crozet, commanding 

 the sloop " Mascarin," put into the Bay of 

 Islands to refit. Friendly relations were soon 

 established between the Frenchmen and the Maoris, 

 and for several weeks both races lived together in 

 harmony. " The inhabitants treated us with every 

 show of friendship for thirty-three days," records 

 Crozet in the volume already mentioned, " with the 

 intention of eating us on the thirty-fourth." Whether 

 the massacre was premeditated for a month or more, 

 or was suddenly resorted to in a fit of religious 

 excitement, has never been satisfactorily decided. 

 The fact, however, remains that the Maoris suddenly 

 attacked the party, killing, and afterwards eating, 

 twenty-nine of the number, including du Fresne. 

 Crozet had a narrow escape from the same fate, 

 but he eluded the savages and " lived to tell the 

 tale." The probability is that the murder of du 

 Fresne and his twenty-eight countrymen was due 

 to what in these later days would be designated 

 religious mania. The Register says : " The natives 

 have long suspected, ever since white men arrived 

 in their country, that their great god Atua has been 

 very angry with them for having allowed any white 

 men to obtain a footing in their country, a proof of 

 which they think they see in the greater mortality 

 that has recently prevailed among them." 



The Missionary Register four years later is 

 found discussing these suspicions of the Maoris. It 

 was then apparent that they attributed their losses, 

 sickness, deaths — all their misfortunes — to the God 

 of the Christians. Him they denounced accordingly 

 as being cruel — at all events to others than 

 Christians. The article proceeds : " Sometimes 

 they more rationally assign as the cause of the 

 many deaths the diseases that have been introduced 

 among them by the whites. Until the whites came 

 to their country, they say, young people did not die, 

 but all lived to be so old as to be obliged to creep 

 on their hands and knees." Missionaries and 

 teachers tried to get the Maoris to believe that " the 

 white man's God " and Atua were one and the 

 same. The Rev. Samuel Marsden, New Zealand's 

 first missionary, in one of his letters relates a con- 

 versation he had upon this theme with some Maoris, 

 the sons of a chief, who had accompanied him to 

 New South Wales. When he told them that there 

 was but one God, they put the question : " Has the 

 pakeha's [white man's] God given the pakehas any 

 kumeras [sweet potatoes] ? " They failed to under- 

 stand why one God should give the Maoris kumeras 



and the white man none ; and why, also, He should 

 be partial to the whites in the matter of cattle, 

 sheep, and horses and entirely neglect the Maoris so 

 far as these animals were concerned. But the final, 

 and to the Maoris the unanswerable, argument was : 

 " If one God made us both, He would not have 

 committed such a mistake as to give us different 

 colours — make one black, the other white." Mr. 

 Marsden, who, by the way, settled in New Zealand 

 in 1814, asked a Maori what he conceived the Atua 

 to be, and was answered : " The Atua is an immortal 

 shadow." 



In " Nicholas's Voyage " appears, on the authority, 

 it is stated, of Nicholas's friend, Duaterra, a lengthy 

 and fairly precise account of the inferior deities of 

 the ancient Maoris. Their number was " very 

 great " and " each has his distinct powers and 

 functions." One minor god " was placed over the 

 elements, another over the fowls and fishes, and so 

 of the rest." Deifications of the different passions 

 and affections also found a place in Maori 

 mythology ; a fact which suggests a connection of 

 some kind with the early peoples of Europe and 

 Egypt. It is very remarkable, as Nicholas points 

 out, that the Maoris attributed the creation of man 

 to their three principal deities acting together, " thus 

 exhibiting in their barbarous theology something like 

 a shadow of the Christian Trinity." Still more 

 wonderful was their tradition respecting the creation 

 or formation of the first woman, who, they said, was 

 made of one of the man's ribs. Moreover, the 

 Maori's general term for bone is pronounced some- 

 thing like hevee, which certainly seems to be not 

 far removed from the Eve of Biblical narrative. 



Chiefs of high standing had, according to Nicholas, 

 their own particular god or gods. When, for 

 instance, the ship " Active " was lying in the river 

 Thames, in the North Island, there was a gale of 

 wind, and this the natives on board attributed to the 

 anger of Hupa's god. Hupa was a chief who lived 

 near the Thames. An elderly native, a man of some 

 note apparently, Koro-Koro by name, informed the 

 master of the ship that, as soon as he got ashore, 

 he would endeavour to prevail upon the chief to 

 propitiate the offended deity. When Mr. Marsden, 

 trying to embarrass the Maoris of Kiapara, asked 

 them if they had ever seen or heard, or had any 

 communication with, the god of that locality — for 

 certain localities had their own particular god — he 

 was bravely informed that the god of the Kiapara 

 had been often heard whistling. Frequently chiefs 

 were called Atuas, or gods, even while they were 

 alive. There was, it will be observed, considerable 

 confusion as to Atua. Atua was the principal god ; 

 but the name was thus also applied to men not 

 thought to be specially endowed with supernatural 

 power apparently, but to those who considered them- 

 selves as the habitation of deities. An aged chief, 

 Terra by name, who is mentioned in the nineteenth 

 report of the Church Missionary Society, solemnly 

 assured a missionary that the god of thunder resided 



