Sidestep: Pakeha Slaves

There has been a lot in the news about Colonialism and slavery lately. Europe, India, China, Iran, Korea, Arabia, Spain, Germany, Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand all kept slaves. As far as we are aware New Zealand is the only country where slaves were also cooked and eaten. But this story is about white slaves of the Maori

In 1834 a southerly gale drove a ship “Harriet” on to the Taranaki coast. Everyone survived. In true survivor style the castaways made tents from the ship’s sails. Several days later Ruanui and other Taranaki Māori attacked the survivors and some of those shipwrecked were killed. Several men including Jackie Guard, were eventually released on the understanding they would return with a cask of gunpowder as ransom for the rest of the party. But some 12 weeks later the Alligator and the Isabella launched a rescue expedition, arriving in Taranaki in September 1834 with a detachment of 60 men from the 50th Regiment. These soldiers were the first British troops to come into armed combat with Māori. Jacky Guard and some of his men accompanied the party. The ruse of overwhelming firepower worked and the tribes released eight sailors.

Elizabeth Guard and her baby daughter were given up in exchange for the rangatira Oaoiti, who had been captured and brutally treated on board the Alligator. The capture and eventual release of Guard and her children attracted huge attention. In lurid detail, the Sydney Herald described Guard as being stripped naked and dragged into a hut (of course even now the Sydney Morning Herald is full of vicarious bullshit so nothing much has changed there). Her husband claimed she had been taken as a "slave wife", even though other accounts suggest that, after the initial affray, she was treated well and protected by Oaoiti, who took Elizabeth as his wife or lover. Unfortunately, Guard's version of events is absent, her story reliant on reports by others, including one suggesting she later gave birth to twins fathered by Oaoiti. The rescue itself was criticised for its excessive use of force against Māori.

There are many forgotten stories of Europeans who lived and sometimes died as slaves in tribal New Zealand between the 1790s and 1880s. In some cases, this was done as an act of revenge for serious breaches of Māori tikanga. In 1874, eight-year-old Caroline Perrett was kidnapped by Māori in Taranaki after her father dug up Māori graves and a local Māori child had also been kidnapped by Europeans (Perrett was recognised some 50 years later while working alongside her adopted hapū).

Utu similarly motivated the attack on the London-bound Boyd by Ngāti Pou and Ngāti Uru in 1809. A leading rangatira, accused of stealing pewter spoons, had been flogged and robbed before being sent back naked to his people at Whangaroa. In the ensuing attack, 60 passengers and crew were massacred as a result and nine survivors were enslaved. (https://tangatawhenua16.wixsite.com/the-first-ones-blog/single-post/2018/12/29/Sidestep-The-Boyd-Massacre )

The mistreatment of enslaved castaways diminished as rangatira realised they could be exchanged for muskets (this was the time of the Musket Wars), gunpowder, axes or hard cash. When the American schooner Cossack was wrecked near Hokianga in 1823, local Māori provided Captain Dix and his crew with good food and housing before they were escorted through neighbouring rohe and sold to Anglican missionaries and ships' captains. Some captives were imprisoned only briefly. Others became bound to iwi through marriage, many gaining respect as interpreters, warriors, trade negotiators or even "Pākehā rangatira", often enjoying a life far better than the harsh treatment on board ships. Jack Marmon, who lived with a Te Hikutu hapū on the Kerikeri River between 1817 and 1820, described living quietly with his wives, fishing, hunting, boatbuilding "and when all things failed had my pipe to fall back upon". These captives fall into Bentley's category of "chattel slaves" – they were the personal property of their captors, placed within a hierarchy similar to that used for Māori slaves or war captives.

James Caddell was one famous case in Southland/Fordland in the very early days where he was saved as a boy buy a chief's daughter during a raid on some sealers, and grew to become a chief in his own right. Mind you, he had to raid and kill Europeans to prove himself.

The loose labelling of Māori war captives as "slaves" conflated two quite different institutions "and led to those captives being perceived in much the same way as African slaves in the Americas rather than as the prisoners in intertribal warfare that they almost always were". Others were tributary vassals or demi-slaves – the missionaries, shore-based whalers, sealers, sawyers, flax traders and entrepreneurs who were welcomed into Māori communities and, as long as they obeyed Māori law and paid regular tribute, allowed to live on Māori land and use the resources, whether it be timber, whales, seals or people's souls. They were given access to resources and protection and got on very well with Maori – as long as they contributed. If not, then they were plundered.

But were they really slaves? Well yes; the act of stripping somebody indicates you are enslaved, your identity has been removed, your ship or whaling station has been plundered or your boat confiscated and you are going to be worked hard and, in the case of war captives, put through rituals of whakataurekareka, which could be quite brutal physically and psychologically. But whether they lived as chattel slaves within Māori communities or semi-independently as tributary vassals on tribal lands is immaterial. In New Zealand before the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and in Maori-dominated regions thereafter, they were subject to the control of local rangatira. Dependent upon Maori for protection in return for service or tribute, they all had a place on the Māori continuum of slavery. Bishop Selwyn, for example, was one of about 14 missionaries "enslaved" when he was detained and imprisoned in 1861 by Māori in retribution for the killing of family members and the destruction of homes and crops by British and colonial troops. Some were stripped and [their possessions] plundered while mission stations were burnt but they don't mention this in their journals or they skim over it very lightly. Returned "slaves" and media accounts of the day told stories that (as with the media now) veered towards the sensational. Tales of helpless white women in the hands of "savages" were in high demand in the 19th century as British and American readers seized on the often-salacious accounts of captivity and rescue.

Ramping up the drama was useful. Exaggerated tales of torture served the purposes of British and colonial officials, their military forces and land-hungry settlers. Church missions were often forced to rely on explicit accounts of so-called barbarity to ensure ongoing funding. For those who had been enslaved, especially those forcibly tattooed, recounting their experiences provided a livelihood otherwise denied them. It was difficult to live with tā moko in Victorian society as they were considered white savages, who had slipped down the scale of civilisation.

There are extracts from the 1834 journal of Alligator crew member Lieutenant Clarke, including accounts of Māori licking the blood from a woman’s wounds and attempting "to made an incision in her neck with a piece of hoop iron in order to drink her blood". White slavery in New Zealand occurred at a time when Maori had the upper hand and settlers were virtually powerless.

Of course telling these stories doesn’t fit into the modern rhetoric of European colonisation and exploitation, so it will likely not be accepted very well. Pakeha slavery has been often ignored because academics preferred… well, they are academics so we all know what they prefer to say as they would never dare cross the thinking of University leadership lest they lose their comfortable and easy existences (that insistence on not rocking the boat is probably another form of forced slavery!)

Still, there is both sides to every bit of history but it seems to depend of which side it comes from as to whether it is seen as racist or not. We might sound cynical, and we are - you might already be aware of how one-sided the modern approach to teaching this countries history is already. We will rewrite all that one day.