Invitation and Refusal: A Reading of the Beginnings of Schooling in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This paper is a selective consideration of the scene of the establishment of the first school in New Zealand in 1816. By foregrounding the possible views of the indigenous (Maori) people about schooling, the authors show that the promise of schooling was impossible to fulfil. Our argument is that the first teacher(s)’ refusal to learn from the people they intended to teach ensured that a proper educational relationship between Maori and European could never be established.

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank Pepi (Joan) Walker from Ngati Hine, Phil Parkinson from the Alexander Turnbull Library, Sue Middleton from Waikato University and Judith Simon for their very different criticisms of an earlier version of this paper. Also thanks are offered to Alice van der Merwe for her assistance.

Notes

¹ Ranginui Walker has stated: ‘In 1814 the missionaries arrived … this glorified mission masked the insidious nature of their cultural invasion.’ Walker, Ranginui. Ka Whawhai Tonu Mātou: Struggle without End. Rev. ed. Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin, 2004: 9.

² Māori‐initiated schooling from preschool (Te Kōhanga Reo) to primary schooling (Te Kura Tuatahi) to secondary schooling (Te Kura Tuarua) to tertiary (Wānanga) level has developed since 1982.

³ The arrival of the first ‘invited’ white settlers to New Zealand occurred in December 1814, when the missionary Samuel Marsden arrived with three missionary families in the Bay of Islands. Prior to this, white settlers were sporadic and isolated, mostly made up from whalers, sailors and travellers.

⁴ We are aware that our use of the term ‘Māori’ in this paper is problematic because it is a general term to refer to the indigenous people of New Zealand while the story we tell is based largely in the northern part of the coastal Bay of Islands. In the early nineteenth century this area could not be uncomplicatedly called Nga Puhi, Ngati Rehia or Ngati Hine territory; many different tribal groups have variously occupied or been ascendant in parts of the region. Sissons, Wi Hongi and Hohepa use the names Waimate and Taiamai to refer to the people of the areas where the first missionaries and schools were located. Sissons, Jeffrey, Wiremu Wi Hongi and Patrick Hohepa, Ngā Pūriri O Taiamai: A Political History of Ngā Puhi in the Inland Bay of Islands. Auckland, New Zealand: Reed in association with the Polynesian Society, 2001.

⁵ For transcribed or printed eye‐witness accounts, see for instance, Earle, Augustus. A Narrative of a Nine Months’ Residence in New Zealand in 1827. Christchurch, New Zealand: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1909; Elder, John Rawson, ed. The Letters and Journals of Samuel Marsden 1765–1838. Dunedin, New Zealand: Coulls Somerville Wilkie and A. H. Reed, 1932; Elder, John Rawson. Marsden’s Lieutenants. Dunedin, New Zealand: Coulls Somerville Wilkie and A. H. Reed, 1934; Fitzgerald, Caroline, ed. Letters from the Bay of Islands: The Story of Marianne Williams. Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin Books, 2004; Havard‐Williams, P., ed., Marsden and the New Zealand Mission: Sixteen Letters Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press in association with A. H. Reed and A. W. Reed, 1961; Nicholas, John Liddiard. Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand. Vol. 1. Auckland, New Zealand: Wilson and Horton, 1817; Rogers, Lawrence M., ed. The Early Journals of Henry Williams, 1826–1840. Christchurch, New Zealand: Pegasus Press, 1961; Barton, R. J., ed., Earliest New Zealand: The Journals and Correspondence of the Rev. John Butler. Masterton, New Zealand: Printed by Palamontain & Petherick, 1927.

⁶ Parkinson, P. G. “Our Infant State: The Māori Language, the Mission Presses, the British Crown and the Māori, 1814–1838.” PhD thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 2003.

⁷ Salmond, Anne. Between Worlds: Early Exchanges between Māori and Europeans 1773–1815. Auckland, New Zealand: Viking, 1997.

⁸ Binney, Judith. The Legacy of Guilt: A Life of Thomas Kendall. Auckland, New Zealand: Bridget Williams Books, 2005.

⁹ For instance: Glen, Robert, ed. Mission and Moko: Aspects of the Work of the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand, 1814–1882. Christchurch, New Zealand: Latimer Fellowship of New Zealand, 1992; Elsmore, Bronwyn. Like Them That Dream: The Māori and the Old Testament. Auckland, New Zealand: Reed, 2000; Cloher, Dorothy Urlich. Hongi Hika: Warrior Chief. Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin, 2003; Woodcock, Peter. The Cultures Collide: The Contact Period of New Zealand History, 1769‐1846. Auckland, New Zealand: Macmillan, 1988; Wright, Harrison Morris. New Zealand, 1769–1840: Early Years of Western Contact. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959; Lee, Jack. The Bay of Islands. Auckland, New Zealand: Reed, 1996; Doak, Wade. The Burning of the ‘Boyd’: A Saga of Culture Clash. Auckland, New Zealand: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984; Ballara, Angela. Taua: ‘Musket Wars’, ‘Land Wars’ or Tikanga?: Warfare in Māori Society in the Early Nineteenth Century. Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin Books, 2003.

¹⁰ McKenzie, D. F. Oral Culture, Literacy and Print in Early New Zealand: The Treaty of Waitangi. Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press, 1985; Parr, C. J. “A Missionary Library: Printed Attempts to Instruct the Maori, 1815–1845.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 70 (1961): 429–50; Parr, C. J. “Maori Literacy, 1843–1867.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 72 (1963): 211–34; Jackson, Michael D. “Literacy, Communication and Social Change.” In Conflict and Compromise: Essays on the Maori since Colonisation, edited by Ian Hugh Kawharu. Wellington, New Zealand: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1975, 27–54.

¹¹ Paterson, Lachy. Colonial Discourses: Niupepa Māori 1855–1863. Dunedin, New Zealand: Otago University Press, 2006.

¹² Parkinson, Phil, and Penny Griffith. Books in Māori, 1815–1900: An Annotated Bibliography –Ngā Tānga Reo Māori: Ngā Kohikohinga Me Ona Whakamārama. Auckland, New Zealand: Reed, 2004.

¹³ Such as Barrington, J. M. and T. H. Beaglehole. Maori Schools in a Changing Society. Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Council for Educational Research, 1974; Beaglehole, T. H. “The Missionary Schools, 1816–1840.” In Introduction to Māori Education, edited by John L. Ewing and Jack Shallcrass. Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand University Press, 1970: 21–25.

¹⁴ Fitzgerald, Tanya. “Jumping the Fences: Māori Women’s Resistance to Missionary Schooling in Northern New Zealand 1823–1835.” Paedagogica Historica 37 (2001): 175–92; Fitzgerald, Tanya. “Creating a Disciplined Society: CMS Women and the Re‐Making of Nga Puhi Women 1823–1835.” History of Education Review 32, no. 1 (2003): 84–98.

¹⁵ May, Helen. School Beginnings: A Nineteenth Century Colonial Story. Wellington, New Zealand: NZCER Press, 2005: 16.

¹⁶ Ibid.; also May, Helen. School Beginnings: A History of Early Years Schooling, Research and Policy Series, No. 1. Wellington, New Zealand: Institute for Early Childhood Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, 2003.

¹⁷ Jenkins, Kuni. “Haere Tahi Taua: An Account of Aitanga in Maori Struggle for Schooling.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Auckland, 2000. This paper builds on a very small section of the thesis.

¹⁸ For information on early Māori ability to write, see McKenzie, Oral Culture, Literacy and Print; Parkinson, “Our Infant State”; Parr, “Maori Literacy.”

¹⁹ Marsden to Pratt, Secretary CMS, 28 August, 1809, in Havard‐Williams, Marsden and the New Zealand Mission, 22. Havard‐Williams transcribed 16 letters from the Hocken Library for this collection. These particular letters are of considerable interest to us because they set out clearly Marsden’s rationale for missionary settlement in New Zealand.

²⁰ Elder, Letters and Journals, 65. We have relied on Elder’s collection of Marsden’s letters and journals for this article. Binney notes that Elder’s transcripts in this collection are ‘fairly accurate’. She also points out that there are errors, especially in Māori names, and the volume of papers represents only a selection of Marsden’s writing. See Binney, Legacy of Guilt, 21.

²¹ Marsden to Pratt, Secretary CMS, 7 April, 1808, in Havard‐Williams, Marsden and the New Zealand Mission, 15.

²² Binney, Legacy of Guilt, 28.

²³ Salmond, Between Worlds, 405.

²⁴ Belich, James. Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders: From Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century. London; Auckland, New Zealand: Allen Lane; Penguin Press, 1996: 135.

²⁵ Michael King, The Penguin History of New Zealand. Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin Books, 2003: 140.

²⁶ Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Mātou, 81.

²⁷ Hohepa, Pat. “My Musket, My Missionary, My Mana.” In Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769–1840, edited by Alex Calder, Jonathan Lamb and Bridget Orr. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999: 180–201.

³⁰ In his Journal entry for 10 June 1814, Kendall made a copy of the letter. Kendall Journal p. 311 Hocken PC 119.

²⁸ For instance, Yarwood states that ‘37 vessels called in at the bay from 1805–1809’. Yarwood, A. T. Samuel Marsden: The Great Survivor. Wellington, New Zealand: Reed, 1977: 128.

²⁹ This re‐established contact came after a period of withdrawal by European shipping due to a massacre of a European ship’s company (the Boyd) in the area in 1809.

³¹ Salmond, Between Worlds, 410.

³² Marsden to Pratt, 15 November 1809, in Harvard‐Williams, Marsden and the New Zealand Mission, 24, noted ‘The Young Chief is much attached to [William] King’; and in the same letter mentioned the ‘close Intimacy’ formed between the missionaries and Ruatara on board.

³³ Elder, Letters and Journals, 67.

³⁴ Marsden to Church Missionary Society, 15 March 1814. In McNab, Robert, ed. Historical Records of New Zealand, vol. 1. Wellington, New Zealand: Government Printer, 1908: 320.

³⁵ Elder, Letters and Journals, 67.

³⁶ Elder, Letters and Journals, 70.

³⁷ Ibid. See also Petrie, Hazel. Chiefs of Industry: Māori Tribal Enterprise in Early Colonial New Zealand. Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press, 2006: 44.

³⁸ Binney, Legacy of Guilt, 69; see also Cloher, Hongi Hika, 121.

³⁹ Nicholas, Narrative of a Voyage, 41.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 43.

⁴¹ A number of missionaries noted the views of local chiefs about European settlement and the unfairness of Europeans settling with only one hapu (sub‐tribal group), given its disastrous effects on local balances of power. The missionary John Butler’s journal records the desires expressed by many chiefs ‘praying for Missionaries to live amongst them’. (Journal entry 14 August 1819, Barton, Earliest New Zealand, 19). See also Sissons, Wi Hongi and Hohepa, Ngā Pūriri O Taiamai, 29.

⁴² See Jackson, “Literacy, Communication and Social Change”, 32.

⁴³ Head, Lyndsay, and Buddy Mikaere. “Was 19th Century Maori Society Literate?” Archifacts 2 (1988): 19.

⁴⁴ Hohepa, Patu. Preface to Books in Māori, 1815–1900: An Annotated Bibliography – Ngā Tānga Reo Māori: Ngā Kohikohinga Me Ona Whakamārama, by Phil Parkinson & Penny Griffith. Auckland, New Zealand: Reed, 2004: 6.

⁴⁵ Durie, Mason. “Progress and Platforms for Maori Educational Achievement.” Paper presented at the Second Hui Taumata Matauranga: Maori Education Summit, Turangi and Taupo, New Zealand, November 2001.

⁴⁶ School teaching was largely in the Māori language until Governor Grey’s 1847 Ordinance that required students to be taught in English. See Parr, “Māori Literacy”, 213.

⁴⁷ Sahlins, Marshall. How ‘Natives’ Think: About Captain Cook, for Example. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995: 148.

⁴⁸ Parr, “Missionary Library”. We have not here taken up the argument that Marsden in particular saw significant opportunities for personal gain in trade, via the mission (his many critics, including other missionaries such as John Butler, suspected this as his primary motive; see for instance John Butler, in Barton, Earliest New Zealand, 28).

⁴⁹ Marsden to Secretary, 24 March 1808. In Harvard‐Williams, Marsden and the New Zealand Mission, 11.

⁵⁰ See Binney, Legacy of Guilt, 57. Kendall’s first compilation of lessons in te reo Māori was printed by G. Howe in Sydney, NSW in 1815 entitled A Korao no New Zealand; or, the New Zealander’s First Book; being An Attempt to compose some Lessons for the Instruction of the Natives. For an account of Kendall’s book see Parkinson and Griffith, Books in Māori, 28–29; see also Parkinson, “Our Infant State.” A Korao was used to teach Europeans some simple Māori words and phrases; cards of the words and phrases were also produced for teaching Māori children in the school.

⁵¹ Kendall’s accounts are unfortunately un‐interpretable by Māori or Pākehā as ‘[h]is constructions ringed the Māori cosmological ideas into which he was inducted with almost impenetrable thickets of mis‐interpretation’. Binney, Legacy of Guilt, 16, 127ff.

⁵² Nicholas, Narrative of a Voyage, 358.

⁵³ Earle, Narrative of a Nine Months’ Residence, 119.

⁵⁴ See also Cloher, Hongi Hika, 203, 241 for other examples of Māori anger about, or demanding ‘satisfaction’ for, missionaries’ flouting of tapu.

⁵⁵ Letter from John King to Revd Daniel Wilson, 2 July 1815. In Elder, Marsden’s Lieutenants, 111.

⁵⁶ Kendall to Marsden, 28 October 1816, Hocken PC 0130, p. 119; see also Binney, Legacy of Guilt, 53.

⁵⁷ Earle, Narrative of a Nine Months’ Residence, 126.

⁵⁸ Butler, Journal entry for 18 November 1820, in Barton, Earliest New Zealand, 106.

⁵⁹ Rogers, Early Journals of Henry Williams.

⁶⁰ McKenzie, Oral Culture, Literacy and Print. McKenzie documents this spread of enthusiasm, but argues that it did not necessarily imply that the skill of reading was as widespread as Māori engagement with, and enthusiasm for, books suggested. We argue elsewhere (Jones & Jenkins, in preparation) that the arguments about the extent of early Māori literacy miss the key point that engagement with books was integrated into Māori culture in complex ways.

⁶¹ Parr, “Missionary Library”, 448.

⁶² Earle, Narrative of a Nine Months’ Residence, 127.

⁶³ McKenzie, Oral Culture, Literacy and Print, 31.

⁶⁴ Hamilton, David. Towards a Theory of Schooling. Lewes, UK: Falmer Press, 1989: 100.

⁶⁵ See Parr, “Maori Literacy”, for a comprehensive account of the shifts in Maori school engagement between 1843 and 1867.

⁶⁶ Nicholas, Narrative of a Voyage, 86.

⁶⁷ Church Missionary Society, Revd S. Marsden’s Account of his First Visit to New Zealand, December 1814, in McNab, Historical Records, 334.

⁶⁸ Yate Journal, 23 May 1828, cited from manuscript in Binney, Legacy of Guilt, 212 n. 31.

⁶⁹ Marsden, J. B. Life and Work of Samuel Marsden. Christchurch, New Zealand: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1913: 48.

⁷⁰ The following part of the argument relies on Binney’s transcriptions in Legacy of Guilt.

⁷¹ Kendall to Pratt, 21 December 1818, cited from manuscript in Binney, Legacy of Guilt, 66.

⁷² Kendall to his friend Revd John Eyre, 27 December 1822, cited from manuscript in Binney, Legacy of Guilt, 106.

⁷³ See Mutu’s comments about the intention of tribal leaders in the north to ‘bring individual Europeans and their families within the tribal structure’, which meant that the benefits and disadvantages of the tribe would be shared with the Europeans and vice versa. Margaret Mutu, “Tuku Whenua and Land Sale in New Zealand in the Nineteenth Century.” In Voyages & Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769–1840, edited by Alex Calder, Jonathan Lamb and Bridget Orr. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999: 319.

⁷⁴ Samuel Leigh to Marsden, 4 April 1822, cited from manuscript in Binney, Legacy of Guilt, 104.

⁷⁵ Marsden IV New Zealand Journal, 12 August, 20 August 1823, cited from manuscript in Binney, Legacy of Guilt, 129

⁷⁶ See Parr, “Missionary Library”, 443ff.

⁷⁷ Hadfield, Letters to the Church Missionary Society, 43. “Report for year ending 30/6/1844”, cited from manuscript in Parr, ibid., 446.