6 
INTRODUCTION. 
Cunningham; he caught a violent cold, which settled on his 
lungs, and in a few months brought him to his grave. 
The native is not deficient in those arts which are essential 
to his comfort. His house is constructed with great skill and 
elegance,* his garments with much beauty, and ornamented 
with a border of elaborately wrought embroidery; his little 
farm is tilled with the greatest care, not a weed to be seen; in 
fact he has carried those arts with which he is acquainted, to 
as much perfection, as they are apparently capable of. This 
is not the character of the savage. If, then, in these respects 
we cannot view him as such, it must be in his social state; 
their cruel and bloody wars, their cannibal feasts,—these mark 
the savage. The truth cannot be concealed, neither is it 
desirable to do so ; but is not human nature in its unrenewed 
state, much the same everywhere ? Are there no European 
savages as well ? 
When we consider the way in which the New Zealanders 
lived, we cannot wonder at the crimes they committed. Shut 
out from the rest of the world, without any to set them a 
pattern of what was right, or to reprove what was wrong; is 
it surprising, that morally they should have degenerated, even 
from the standard of their forefathers ? They were not 
always addicted to war, neither were they always cannibals ; 
the remembrance of the origin of these horrid customs, is still 
preserved amongst them. If the progressive development 
doctrine were true, aboriginal races should have progressively 
advanced ; every successive generation should have added some 
improvement to the one which preceded it; but such is not 
the case. A remarkable proof of this may be adduced in the 
fact, that the New Zealanders have retrograded, even since the 
days of Captain Cook ; they then possessed large double 
canoes, decked, with houses on them, similar to those of 
* The natives rendered valuable assistance in this sort of work (building 
houses for the Port Nicholson settlers), at which they were very expert. It 
must be confessed that the huts built by them were much superior to those of 
our handiwork; many of them, indeed, deserved to be called houses, and 
were, when I quitted Port Nicholson, still used by emigrants of all classes. — 
4th page of Hon. H. W. PHire's New Zealand: Smith, Elder, & Co.,Lond. 1841. 
