Post by Kiwi Frontline on Aug 23, 2017 5:04:11 GMT 12
NZ HISTORY REVISED 2: THE INSECURITY OF TRIBAL LIFE
Here I note some features of pre-contact Maori tribal life, to consider what the movement of tribes meant for those whose lands, and lives, were taken from them.
As I have read further historical accounts, I have often found a common story, repeated many times over the centuries, of tribal movement to conquer and replace the then ‘people of the land’.
Further confirmation of brutality
I have just come across two more.
One is a book about Tuwharetoa of Taupo. There Maruiwi, “one of the aboriginal tribes of New Zealand”, had been driven out by Te Atiawa, then “hunted and slaughtered as they retreated”. The next residents, Ngati Hotu, were in turn overwhelmed by Tuwharetoa, who took over that land.
The other is of Northland, where Chief Pairama told Andreas Reischek “the tribes formerly living here had been very good at working and cultivation, but who knew little about fighting. His forefathers had conquered them, eating those they killed, and enslaving the rest.”
There was a similar happening around Kapiti when Rangitane came through the Manawatu.
Buick describes how, after one of the last battles, “so important a battle was celebrated by a great feast, and for the next few days the ovens were kept hot for the reception of the dead bodies, which as fast as they were cooked were served up with all the horrors attendant upon the savage orgies and cannibal banquets of the ancient Maori.”
The Ngatiawa survivors retreated and sheltered on the island of Kapiti.
Fear and insecurity
Many communities were driven from their ancestral lands, and many were living in fear of attack from their neighbours.
The insecurity was immediately evident to Cook in 1769.
“The perpetual hostility in which these poor savages who have made very village a fort must necessarily live, will account for there being so little of their land in a state of cultivation; and as mischiefs very often reciprocally produce each other, it may perhaps appear that there being so little land in cultivation will account for their living in perpetual hostility.”.....
Continue reading Dr John Robinson’s # 2 series published in the ‘Kapiti Independent’ here > kapitiindependentnews.net.nz/new-zealand-history/
Here I note some features of pre-contact Maori tribal life, to consider what the movement of tribes meant for those whose lands, and lives, were taken from them.
As I have read further historical accounts, I have often found a common story, repeated many times over the centuries, of tribal movement to conquer and replace the then ‘people of the land’.
Further confirmation of brutality
I have just come across two more.
One is a book about Tuwharetoa of Taupo. There Maruiwi, “one of the aboriginal tribes of New Zealand”, had been driven out by Te Atiawa, then “hunted and slaughtered as they retreated”. The next residents, Ngati Hotu, were in turn overwhelmed by Tuwharetoa, who took over that land.
The other is of Northland, where Chief Pairama told Andreas Reischek “the tribes formerly living here had been very good at working and cultivation, but who knew little about fighting. His forefathers had conquered them, eating those they killed, and enslaving the rest.”
There was a similar happening around Kapiti when Rangitane came through the Manawatu.
Buick describes how, after one of the last battles, “so important a battle was celebrated by a great feast, and for the next few days the ovens were kept hot for the reception of the dead bodies, which as fast as they were cooked were served up with all the horrors attendant upon the savage orgies and cannibal banquets of the ancient Maori.”
The Ngatiawa survivors retreated and sheltered on the island of Kapiti.
Fear and insecurity
Many communities were driven from their ancestral lands, and many were living in fear of attack from their neighbours.
The insecurity was immediately evident to Cook in 1769.
“The perpetual hostility in which these poor savages who have made very village a fort must necessarily live, will account for there being so little of their land in a state of cultivation; and as mischiefs very often reciprocally produce each other, it may perhaps appear that there being so little land in cultivation will account for their living in perpetual hostility.”.....
Continue reading Dr John Robinson’s # 2 series published in the ‘Kapiti Independent’ here > kapitiindependentnews.net.nz/new-zealand-history/