Outcasts of the Gods?: The Struggle Over Slavery in Maori New Zealand
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Outcasts of the Gods?: The Struggle Over Slavery in Maori New Zealand
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781775587866 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/25/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| File size: | 23 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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Outcasts of the Gods?
The Struggle Over Slavery in Maori New Zealand
By Hazel Petrie
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 2015 Hazel PetrieAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-86940-830-5
CHAPTER 1
By black and red together, the work is done
Ma pango, ma whero, ka oti, which literally translates as 'With black and with red it will be done or the work completed', is probably the best-known Maori whakatauki, or saying, relating to people from the bottom of the social heap. Perhaps the earliest published explanation, from missionary Richard Taylor's 1855 book Te Ika a Maui, refers to the combined efforts of 'gentlemen' (rangatira, chiefs, or people of high rank), represented by the colour red, and slaves, represented by black. Taylor wrote that it referred 'to the custom of chief's [sic] painting themselves with red ochre and slaves with charcoal, before they went to war'. William Colenso also used the word 'slave' to explain the whakatauki's reference to black, but modified the terminology and the reason for the metaphor of colour somewhat by saying that '[t]he slaves and plebeians, naked and unwashed, were black enough'. Those differences aside, it is generally agreed that the essential message is that all members of a community must contribute to communal wellbeing. However, although the distinction between red and black is (or was) clearly meaningful and suggests one potential pathway into past understandings, disentangling its multi-levelled metaphorical, spiritual, and physical associations is not an easy task. Nevertheless, an attempt at disentanglement may reveal glimpses of how pre-Christian Maori conceived their social hierarchy.
The key to understanding slavery in any past society is to get inside the heads of the people who lived in that society. But if it is a past society, its people are no longer around to interview. Even their descendants, let alone historians from other societies, have lived their lives in other times and cultures and with more recent value systems. We might, therefore, look to oral traditions to suggest some clues as to how those long gone perceived their world and the varieties of people who shared it with them. Often, it is the everyday, common-sense perceptions that the historian will miss because they were unspoken in the record. But attitudes once taken for granted may be discernible if we look for subtle undercurrents.
Along with many other insights, oral traditions may allow us to probe beneath the superficial level of outsider accounts and better understand how war captives were perceived prior to European contact. 'Slaves' feature in many of those old stories, and certain themes occur in different stories and in different versions of them. So those recurring themes are likely to tell us something about pre-European contact perceptions, especially when the narratives were recorded in the Maori language at an early stage in Maori written history. The association of slaves with the colour black is one strong and recurring theme.
The colours red and black (as well as white), commonly used in Maori art and iconography, carry cosmological significance. Consequently, their use tells us much about the relative positions of war captives and rangatira in terms of mana (authority, power, prestige), tapu (spiritual restriction), and social status, as well as how each was perceived. It must be borne in mind, though, that although a number of different Maori words have been translated into English as 'slave', a word that can be used to cover a wide variety of situations in that language, Maori-language texts are equally imprecise. As will be seen, the same individual may be described by more than one term within the same text, which means that their more specific position in society is very cloudy indeed. Nevertheless, the association of the colour red with mana, tapu, and high rank is consistent, as is the association of black with its opposite counterparts.
Race and skin colour
The notion of race from which modern popular understandings have evolved derives from a period of colonial expansion when scientific developments in Europe provided a means of classifying the earth's many peoples into different social and cultural groups. Skin colour, a key marker, proved a useful way of identifying them as belonging to particular races and ranking them as either superior or inferior. Conveniently for those doing the classifying, that process implied their innate suitability for positions of either servitude or domination. Consequently, a set of purportedly Negro characteristics, which became the negative standard for describing and comparing human beings, was encouraged by the consolidation of the Atlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century. Those ideas not only assisted the ideological justification of colonial exploitation but also served to justify slavery, especially in the United States, as well as colonisation more generally. As Morgan Godwyn explained in a 1680 publication, the words:
Negro and Slave, being by Custom grown Homogenous and Convertible; even as Negro and Christian,Englishman and Heathen, are by the like corrupt Custom and Partiality made Opposites; thereby as it were implying, that the one could not be Christians, nor the other Infidels.
So Negroes were not Christian but natural slaves and Englishmen could not be heathen or, presumably, slaves. Such theories likely lie behind the perception of some early European observers that Maori slaves belonged to a different and inferior race from their masters.
These connotations of skin colour within the Western world are assumed to have evolved from earlier ones that associated positive characteristics such as purity and goodness with white, and death and evil with black. The use of black and white as metaphors for dark and light in the English language is often said to have derived from the Bible. Yet, as the Bengali theologian Mukti Barton pointed out, the origins of the Bible lie in the East, not Europe, and he has argued that such metaphors are not evident before the Bible was translated into English. Barton explained that in his Bengali language, darkness and blackness are not the same thing. Andhokar, the Bengali word for darkness, refers to blindness or something that impedes vision; it is not a colour as kalo (black) is. He therefore reread the Bible to consider whether the association of darkness with blackness originated there or was a purely European concept. Having done so, he concluded that European interpreters have sometimes read black and white into the texts when they were not present previously and, on other occasions, have interpreted less specific terms through the lenses of their own prejudices. That tendency, he suggested, began with Greco-Roman culture which associated black with death and the devil and is evidenced by representations of Africans and Blacks as demons or the devil throughout Christian writings from the first century CE. In other words, white is normative in European ways of thinking and to describe people as coloured carries negative connotations. However, such associations have not been limited to the Christian world. The colour black has evoked highly negative symbolism from ancient times, not only in Western culture generally, but also among various Asian, Native American, and even sub-Saharan African peoples. So we need to consider whether Barton's thesis concerning the connotations of black holds with regard to Maori understandings and symbolisms and whether those pertaining to red altered over time.
As the proverb 'Ma pango, ma whero, ka oti' indicates, the lowest members of Maori society were signified by the colour black and people of rank by red. Explanations of the saying often refer to the chiefly practice of smearing the body with a mixture of kokowai (red ochre) and oil. Although it is sometimes said to have been only those of rank and, therefore, with a considerable degree of tapu whose bodies were besmeared with kokowai, there is evidence to suggest that it was sometimes more widely available. Archdeacon Walsh, for example, suggested that it was used by minor rangatira on festive and ceremonial occasions. More interestingly, though, George French Angas described a young slave woman he encountered gathering flax, saying: 'Her only garment was a coarse brown mat, extending from her waist to her knees, and her limbs were anointed with kokowai, or red ochre, to keep off the attacks of the sand-flies.' René Primevère Lesson, a doctor and naturalist aboard the French ship Coquille, also mentioned young slave girls rubbing their bodies with fish oil to make red ochre dust adhere. So, on the surface, such instances would appear not to conform to the colour coding of social rank indicated by the proverb, but the difference may have lain with the type of oil the kokowai was mixed with. Fish oil was effective but smelly. Vegetable oils were far more desirable but rarer, so more expensive and prestigious. Titoki trees, for example, which were one important source of oil, do not produce fruit every year, hence its rarity. When they did fruit, the oil was stored in gourds and scented by adding aromatic leaves to produce a far superior and more pleasantly perfumed product. Another saying: 'Ko nga rangatira a te tau titoki' ('They are only chiefs of the season in which the titoki tree bears it berries') is a reference to the years of titoki fruiting when it was said that anyone could procure it and look like a chief, whether or not they were. It was applied to a person who suddenly turned out in fine dress. Or, as a nineteenth-century Englishman might have said, was getting ideas above their station.
But if red was generally associated with chiefly folk, by contrast, ashes, soot, and charcoal were most often associated with slaves or war captives, perhaps because of their role as fire makers and cooks. Because cooked food represented a serious danger to the chiefly classes whose tapu was vulnerable to contamination or neutralisation by such contact, food preparation was very much the work of lowly folk. That is why kauta, or cookhouses, were built away from the sleeping quarters and other buildings, allowing rangatira to keep a safe distance from them. The humble folk, obliged to spend their days tending fires, were more likely to have skin discoloured by smoke, soot, and ashes.
Cosmology
Another explanation for the metaphorical association of war captives with black and people of rank with red lies in the realms of cosmology. Some traditions tell that kokowai is the blood of the sky parent Ranginui that soaked into the body of the earth mother Papatuaanuku when the primordial couple were being separated by their children in order to bring light into the world. In that version of the creation story, Ranginui clung so fast to his wife that they had to cut off his arms causing his blood to flow, which is one explanation for its use as body paint signifying high social status.
Whatever the origin of the symbolism, red is the colour of the gods in much of Polynesia and, to a lesser extent, other parts of the Pacific. In Maori society, mana is the fundamental basis of chiefly leadership, and since the rangatira represented the most direct lines of descent from the gods, it follows that red would also be considered a chiefly colour. But whereas, in cosmological terms, red signifies tapu or spiritual restriction, power, rank, and the gods, black is the opposite. As in Greco-Roman culture, black represents the world of death, 'a dark, defeated underworld of the ill, the dead and the beaten'. 'Whiti te ra, ka whakatika; to te ra, ka kino', or 'When the sun rises things are all right but when the sun sets the situation is bad', is another 'message about good and bad, expressed clearly by the contrast between light and dark, daytime and night'. Such sayings have particular relevance for a discussion of captivity in Maori society which was very much about its spiritual and psychological elements.
Red feathers and chiefly garments
Although other forms of red dress or adornment have served similar purposes, red feathers indicated chiefly status in a number of Pacific societies. The Bounty mutineers, surprised that they were able to purchase a bull and a cow for just a few red feathers when they visited Tahiti in 1789, had assumed the islanders considered the cattle of little value, not realising that the feathers were such highly desirable treasures.
Memories of the significance of red feathers appear in Maori traditions such as one recorded by George Grey concerning the migration of the Arawa canoe to New Zealand. As the travellers neared land, they saw a mass of pohutukawa trees in bloom and one of the rangatira is said to have called out:
"See there, red ornaments for the head are much more plentiful in this country than in Hawaiki, so I'll throw my red head-ornaments into the water;" and, so saying, he threw them into the sea. The name of that man was Tauninihi; the name of the red head-ornament he threw into the sea was Taiwhakaea. The moment they got on shore they ran to gather the pohutukawa flowers, but no sooner did they touch them than the flowers fell to pieces; then they found out that these red head-ornaments were nothing but flowers.
So the new arrivals quickly discovered their mistake. The blossoms of the pohutukawa do not last and New Zealand was sadly lacking in red-feathered birds.
They were not entirely unfamiliar, though. According to Walter Buller, the amokura, or red-tailed tropic bird (fig. 7), was well known to Northland's Ngapuhi people. Almost every year, following easterly gales, a few would be washed ashore (generally dead) at North Cape or Spirits Bay and the local people would set out to look for them systematically. Because the bird was so rare, its long red tail-feathers could fetch a high price when exchanged with southern tribes. Buller claimed that a Hawke's Bay chief gave a valuable slab of pounamu (greenstone or nephrite jade) in exchange for just three of those feathers.
In other parts of the Pacific, where nature also failed to provide adequate supplies of red feathers, other symbols and colours have been employed to indicate chiefly status. Whether due to the lack of indigenous sources of red feathers or the new land's distance from other trade sources, kokowai provided a substitute and cloaks replaced headdresses as signifiers of rank in New Zealand.
William Brougham Monkhouse, the surgeon aboard James Cook's ship the Endeavour on its first voyage to New Zealand, described a variety of types of cloak. Some had geometric patterns on the borders, woven into the garment in shades of cinnamon red, cream, and black. Also reported, though less often, were fine cloaks ornamented with red breast feathers from a native parrot (presumably the kaka) or strips of white-haired dog skin. As well as noting that the people's faces and limbs were dressed with kokowai mixed with oil, the ship's company also reported that carvings on canoe prows and sterns were coated with a similar paint and that fine cloaks were reddened by being rubbed with dry ochre. Even the hafts of some weapons were bound with flax from which red feathers or white dog's hair was suspended.
Some fine cloaks made for persons of high birth were made from fibres that had been coloured with kokowai before being woven, as opposed to colouration after the weaving was completed. James Barry's famous painting of the great Ngapuhi leader Hongi Hika (fig. 5) during his visit to London in 1820 with Waikato and Thomas Kendall shows him wearing a red cloak, which may have been treated that way, but red kaka feathers can also be seen at the base of the gannet feathers in his coronet. He clearly chose to be immortalised in his finest ensemble. An oral tradition concerning Tamainupo tells how the loss of such a garment could cause a devastating loss of standing: the hero, who was the son of a rape victim and her attacker, took revenge on his father by stripping him of the red cloak that symbolised his chiefly status.
Once Western travellers began arriving on New Zealand shores, Maori were keen to acquire other items of red clothing and adornment. Moehanga, from Northland, was very keen indeed. Believed to have been the first Maori to reach England, in 1806 aboard a British whale ship, he asked Captain Peter Dillon to take him to Calcutta twenty years later. That was apparently where he thought he might get himself a red soldier's jacket to complement his old cap. Edward Markham, an English adventurer who spent a few days at Waitangi in 1834 while the British naval ship HMS Alligator was in port, noted the significance of red clothing and the power it implied. Maori had 'much greater fear of the Red [soldiers] than the Blue Jackets [sailors]', he reported.
Maori traditions relating to skin and hair colour
Attitudes towards physical attributes including skin and hair colour also come through in oral traditions and imply that certain looks were favoured. A number of stories refer to a 'race' that inhabited New Zealand prior to the arrival of the Maori, variously known as patupaiarehe, urukehu, or turehu. Indeed, one of the patupaiarehe tribes was called Pakepakeha which, according to some, was the origin of the modern term Pakeha for a person of European descent. It is quite probable that their skin colour gave early explorers and traders an advantage when they first arrived in New Zealand. Maori memories of their first meetings with Europeans suggest that their unusual appearance, if nothing else, suggested a supernatural origin. Patuone used the term 'tupua' (goblin, demon) to describe his father's first impression of Europeans, but a Ngati Porou account recorded by Mohi Turei was even more explicit. He wrote that:
They were turehu [fair people], punehunehu [misty-looking], ma [fair], ma korako [pale, like albinos], whero takou [red, like red ochre] ...
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Outcasts of the Gods? by Hazel Petrie. Copyright © 2015 Hazel Petrie. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements,Introduction,
A note on usage and orthography,
Chapter 1: By black and red together, the work is done,
Chapter 2: Tapu and mana: losing and regaining,
Chapter 3: The roles, status, and rights of Maori war captives,
Chapter 4: The value of captives and the impact of muskets,
Chapter 5: Dark Helens and aboriginal Messelinas,
Chapter 6: Taking British liberty and freedom to Maori,
Chapter 7: Plucking brands from the burning,
Chapter 8: Breaking the spiritual bonds,
Chapter 9: 'Offensive to the English in the next degree to man eating'?,
Chapter 10: Enslaved by the British?,
Chapter 11: The language of slavery,
Appendix,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,
Plates,
Copyright,