Fragments of Life

fragments NEW ZEALAND SOCIAL & CULTURAL HISTORY

EDITED BY BRONWYN DALLEY & BRONWYN LABRUM

f r agment s

f r agment s NEW ZEALAND SOCIAL & C U LT U R A L H I S TO RY

Edited by Bronwyn Dalley and Bronwyn Labrum

AU C K L A N D UNIVERSITY PRESS

First published 2000 Auckland University Press University of Auckland Private Bag 92019 Auckland New Zealand http://www.auckland.ac.nz/aup © The contributors, 2000 ISBN

1 86940 185 9

Publication is assisted by the Historical Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior permission of the publisher. Cover design by Christine Hansen Printed by Printlink,Wellington

Contents Abbreviations Introduction | Bronwyn Dalley and Bronwyn Labrum

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1 Imagining Our Pasts: Wr iting Our Histor ies | Michael Reilly

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2 ‘Ma¯ Pango Ma¯ Whero Ka Oti’: Unities and Fragments in Ma¯ or i History | Danny Keenan

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3 Surveying Space: Constructing the Colonial Landscape | Giselle Byrnes

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4 Domesticating the Land: Colonial Women’s Gardening | Katherine Raine

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5 Body and Soul: Heroic Visions of Work in the Late Nineteenth Century | Margaret McClure

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6 Textual Museums: Collection and Wr iting in History and Ethnology, 1900–1950 | Chris Hilliard

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7 The Cultural Remains of Elsie Walker | Bronwyn Dalley

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8 Opening the Wardrobe of History: Dress, Artefacts and Mater ial Life of the 1940s and 1950s | Fiona McKergow

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9 Persistent Needs and Expanding Desires: Pa¯ keha¯ Families and State Welfare in the Years of Prosper ity | Bronwyn Labrum

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10 Street-Level Chemistry: The Past in the Present at Histor ic Places | Gavin McLean

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Contr ibutors

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Index

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Abbreviations AJHR

Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives

ATL

Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington

DFFP

Deans Family Papers

LINZ

Land Infor mation New Zealand

NA

National Archives, Wellington

NZJH New Zealand Journal of History NZPD New Zealand Parliamentary Debates

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Introduction |

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History and history-making have never been more popular in New Zealand. Interest in the past is intense, as New Zealanders trace their family stories, explore their history at their local museum, or watch the unfolding of the country’s history on the small screen. Most often, it is our social history that arouses the greatest interest: the ways that New Zealanders have made sense of their lives and the events around them, the changes in the country’s social life, or the features of the local culture. Fragments speaks to this interest, and offers a snapshot of new research into the social and cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The essays explore new topics in New Zealand historical research, offer new insights into established areas of study, and challenge received wisdom about some aspects of the past.Together, they explore the ways in which our history is made, and what makes our history. Social history has been a growing area of research since the 1960s. Initially defined in opposition to political history, social history proclaimed its task to trace the experiences of the ordinary people frequently excluded from accounts of national politics or state activity.1 Such ‘history from below’2 explored the lives of women and men in their workplaces, their homes, or their local communities; it examined their working conditions, their relationships, their lifestyles, their organisations, or their politics. New topics have been added to social history’s ever-expanding horizon: welfare, medicine, sexuality, recreation,

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the body, popular culture. Experience, events, ideas and relationships are all acknowledged to be socially and culturally constructed and their significance changes over time: everything has a history. The explosion in subject matter and the plethora of groupings within social history – women’s history, urban history, labour history, family history, or cultural history, to name a few – have altered the earlier ideas of what constituted the discipline. More useful now as an umbrella term over its constituent parts, social history can be seen as the examination of society and social activity, and of the varied ways that people have experienced these and given them meaning. As one of the sub-disciplines under the umbrella, cultural history has undergone transformations too. Once concerned with ‘high’ culture, cultural history now often focuses on the ways by which people have understood their lives.3 Rituals, symbolic systems, and the meanings and stories attached to the everyday aspects of life are analysed in a rich array of topics that range from smell to carnivals, from promenades to reading, and everything in between.4 The changes in social and cultural history go beyond the discovery of new topics for study. Both areas have incorporated perspectives from other disciplines, often using the types of sources and modes of presentation that those disciplines employ. The social science approach that once characterised social history and which drew on sociology, demography or economics, for example, has been joined, if not overtaken, by ideas and theories emanating from cultural anthropology, literary theory, semiotics, or feminist theory. An interest in the techniques of power and knowledge, and their expression through language, has become an established – albeit sometimes controversial – aspect of social and especially cultural history.5 As social and cultural historian Raphael Samuel has reminded us, history is a ‘hybrid form of knowledge’ in which the subject matter is ‘promiscuous’ and the forms of communication diverse.6 The result of the ‘expanding and fragmenting universe’ that is social history is an eclectic and vibrant mix that encompasses some of the most exciting historical scholarship today.7 New Zealand historians, influenced by developments overseas, and sometimes trained in North American universities, introduced social history here in the mid 1970s.8 Erik Olssen’s and Andrée Lévesque’s 1978 article ‘Towards a History of the European Family in New Zealand’ was one of the earliest to explore some of the potential in social historical approaches.9 The essays in New Zealand Social History, published in 1980, picked up on the possibilities in the field; the essays

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explored aspects of nineteenth-century social policy, the settlement of urban areas, and religious practice.10 Research on social class, social mobility, or occupational groupings characterised much social history in the 1970s and 1980s, as historians drew extensively on social science methodologies.11 These topics continue to occupy a central place in New Zealand social history through important works such as Miles Fairburn’s The Ideal Society and its Enemies: The Foundations of Modern New Zealand Society 1850–1900, Charlotte Macdonald’s A Woman of Good Character: Single Women as Immigrant Settlers in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand, or the University of Otago’s Caversham project, part of which appeared as Erik Olssen’s Building the New World:Work, Politics and Society in Caversham 1880s–1920s.12 Other research areas have been significant, and some have been studied in depth: different aspects of the welfare system,13 immigration and colonisation,14 health and medicine,15 or studies of local communities.16 As elsewhere, strong groupings have emerged under social history’s banner as historians have examined the workings of the social history trilogy of class, gender and race. The well-established fields of labour history,17 and especially women’s history,18 have been among the most vibrant and prolific of these. Yet the changes that swept social history in the 1980s have largely bypassed New Zealand scholarship. Erik Olssen has suggested that many social historians here ‘seem but dimly aware’ of the shifts that have occurred, notably the emphasis on language, the deployment of literary criticism, and, one could add, cultural anthropology, at the expense of the ‘sociologically informed’ approach. Olssen believes that New Zealand social historians need to add more to their methodological tool-kits. He calls for the incorporation of the newer approaches if New Zealand social historians wish to ‘understand ourselves and the world we have inherited’ in more varied ways.19 A marked absence has been in the scholarly – as opposed to more popular – examination of cultural history, especially Pa¯ keha¯ cultural history; Ma¯ori cultural history has received considerably more attention both from historians and other scholars.20 A decade ago Jock Phillips claimed that historians were very far from creating a history that traced the ‘evolution of New Zealand culture’. There was, he noted, a ‘continuing failure’ to harness the diversity of historical approaches that could evoke ‘the history of a culture in all its richness – its smells, its tastes, its fashions, its rituals, its words’.21 Phillips has been one of the major contributors to New Zealand’s cultural history, with his research on male culture and memorials especially; other scholars have con-

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sidered aspects of the nation’s cultural life and heritage, and there is a growing range of publications dealing with aspects of ‘Kiwiana’. Few historians, however, have evoked the fabric of life in the past in a broad or sustained way.22 The essays in Fragments pick up the challenges laid down by Olssen, Phillips, and others, to extend our social and cultural history.23 Collectively and separately, the essays explore diverse fragments of life in the past.They offer glimpses of how New Zealanders lived their lives in the broadest sense: the meanings they accorded to events around them, the stories they told and wrote, their relationship to the land and to each other, the ways they dressed, and the things about which they pondered. The title of the collection reflects the fragmentary nature and eclecticism of social history in the 1990s; there is no single approach to studying our past. Some historians have decried the growing emphasis on multiple viewpoints, or on the contested, contradictory and constructed nature of past events; a certainty or wholeness is called for in the face of this fragmentation and complication.24 This collection celebrates such complexities in its embodiment of the different approaches to social and cultural history. Historians have always used fragments to build arguments and to create narratives; history ‘composites’, Raphael Samuel insists, and imposes ‘order on chaos’.25 Several of the authors here note the composite form of the past and of history-making, and emphasise the fragmentary nature of what we know; others take the notion of fragments further, and present their essays as episodes through which a narrative can be read.‘Fragments’ is a unifying theme of the collection.Whatever the structure, approach and content of the essays here, it is by teasing out such pieces of the past that its richness can be explored. Many of the authors in this collection look to the newer influences in social history, including literary theory, cultural anthropology, and subaltern studies. In the process, they draw on a diversity of historical sources. Poetry, oral history, waiata, carvings, fiction, photographs, and garden plans are all used, sometimes in conjunction with theoretical texts; some evoke the smells and textures of the past by focusing on material sources such as fabric, clothing, or the built environment. Several essays open up topics largely untouched in New Zealand history, such as gardening or the discursive colonisation of the country. Others bring into the fold of social history subjects usually discussed in more specialist arenas, such as architecture, landscaping or the heritage sectors. Alongside these areas, more established topics of New Zealand social

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history – labour history and welfare history – are given a new slant as their sustained volume of scholarship is reworked. Like any group of essays, this collection explores particular aspects of the past and not others, and it deploys some approaches to history instead of others. Fragments is a sampler, illustrating the breadth of topics and approaches in New Zealand social and cultural history today. The collection also introduces newer voices in New Zealand social and cultural historical scholarship. Some of the authors present work from recent postgraduate research; others draw from ongoing research projects; a few contributors write from within the institutional framework of their subject matter, including museums and the heritage sector. None of the authors has yet written major works specifically within the fields of social or cultural history, but collectively their research points ways to future developments in New Zealand history. Michael Reilly structures ‘Imagining Our Pasts: Writing Our Histories’ as a series of fragments to explore the connections between Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ history. Reilly calls on Pa¯keha¯ to acknowledge their implication in the history that they seek to represent, and to be aware of the ‘different consciousness’ existing in the ‘other islands’ of New Zealand’s past. He considers the potential of the ‘two-way traffic’ across these islands, and seeks to further the ‘debateable history’ occurring between New Zealand’s tribal and Western-trained historians. His essay confronts the very nature of history and history-making:‘in writing our histories we must look to making discoveries which reveal the foreignness of others’ pasts and their points of connection to our own. In so doing, we may discover how debateable the domain of any historical representation must be.’ Danny Keenan also charts some pathways into this ‘debateable history’. ‘“Ma¯ Pango Ma¯ Whero Ka Oti”: Unities and Fragments in Ma¯ori History’ draws on a rich array of source material to explore the role of customary knowledge in nineteenth-century Ma¯ori society. Keenan values the use of ‘customary ways’ of knowledge, particularly whakapapa, as an avenue into Ma¯ori social and cultural history. It is a route that differs from the history gathered from, or read into, other sources, such as official Pa¯keha¯ records or government reports. Customary knowledge, of which history is a part, helps structure identity, upholds or challenges tribal unity, and serves the mana of the tribe. Keenan’s essay exemplifies the strong interconnections between past and present; for nineteenth-century Taranaki Ma¯ori, and those seeking to explore their history, the acknowledgement of such

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connections is vital. The ‘intricate weaving of commentary’ reveals not only the intellectual worlds of nineteenth-century Ma¯ori, but also the ‘place of a sense of history’ in the ongoing organisation of knowledge. Land, and the boundaries between lands, are central features of such history and knowledge; they have also been integral to the European colonisation of the country. Giselle Byrnes’s essay, ‘Surveying Space: Constructing the Colonial Landscape’, traces the ways that surveyors turned land into landscapes, ‘with all the assumptions of domestication and familiarity’ that term embodied. Claiming and naming the land imposed a European presence on the country, but Byrnes also points to the fragmented and often contradictory ways that surveyors and settlers perceived the land as space that was bounded, yet boundless. Mapping the boundaries between was a fundamental aspect of the physical and discursive colonisation of the country, and it has a legacy that remains to this day. Colonisation was a gendered process, as a number of historians have argued.26 The land surveying and colonisation discussed by Byrnes exerted a ‘masculine defining presence’ on the land; Katherine Raine explores the gendered colonisation of New Zealand in the more intimate, feminine domain of gardening. ‘Domesticating the Land: Colonial Women’s Gardening’ focuses on three women who created English-style gardens out of the New Zealand ‘wilderness’. For these women, and many others like them, gardens were not only sources of food for the family, but personal sanctuaries for their creators. They afforded women a private space, an opportunity to build a world, and a chance ‘to be’. Yet such women also participated in the process of imposing a European presence on the indigenous land and flora, albeit one ignored in studies of the settlement of the country. Gardening, Raine points out,‘incorporated and symbolised the complex process of becoming a New Zealander’. Raine’s essay reflects the importance of the spiritual and emotional dimensions of Pa¯keha¯ culture. Margaret McClure pursues these themes in ‘Body and Soul: Heroic Visions of Work in the Late Nineteenth Century’. She uncovers an intense interest in workers’ bodies, as markers of a vigorous society, and as points of definition for individual and collective identity. Working bodies – and the process of work itself – were celebrated in letters, songs and stories that often evoked strong, sensual images of bodies at work. Workers themselves wrote and spoke admiringly of their own bodies, taking pride in the physicality of labour and its benefits. These narratives, McClure argues, warrant sustained

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attention; they elucidate the significance to New Zealand history of the ‘interior life of the soul and the sensual life of the body’. Narratives celebrating labouring pioneers and the ‘old-time’ Ma¯ori are the focus of Chris Hilliard’s essay, ‘Textual Museums: Collection and Writing in History and Ethnology, 1900–1950’. He explores and explains the dominance of collection in scholarly accounts of New Zealand’s national and local history.The enshrining of ‘facts, memories and anecdotes in texts that read like scrapbooks’ were significant aspects of the discursive colonisation of the country, and the creation of the ‘cultural reality’ of New Zealand. Hilliard emphasises that such texts – or indeed any text – cannot be divorced from the contexts of their creation. If historians are to capture the ‘energies of writing’ and the diversity of voices in the historical records, then such contexts require as much reading and interpretation as the texts they produce. Bronwyn Dalley reads the texts about the disappearance and death of a young woman within their contexts of the 1920s anxieties about social change and sexuality. ‘The Cultural Remains of Elsie Walker’ explores the stories circulating in newspapers, in local communities and historical accounts about the life, disappearance and death of a young woman in 1928. The cultural processes at work in the construction of these accounts sheds light on the ways that New Zealanders made sense of their lives and the events around them.They also indicate a fascination with the erotics of bodies and of death, and their potent combination in female corpses. The hazy divide between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ in such stories alerts us to the contested nature of these categories, and to the constructed, fictive nature of history itself. The stories presented in photographs and imprinted on items of clothing are examined in Fiona McKergow’s ‘Opening the Wardrobe of History: Dress, Artefacts and Material Life of the 1940s and 1950s’. In analysing material culture and its physical remains, McKergow draws on sources which historians have largely ignored, but which give the past ‘a tangible presence’. She uses this presence to explore the meanings New Zealanders ascribed to clothing and adornment in a period often seen as conservative and dreary. McKergow sketches a more vivid portrait of the 1940s and 1950s, identifying it as a time when women and men were concerned with fashion and appearance as markers of individual and national identity. The reassessment of the postwar years is also pursued in Bronwyn Labrum’s ‘Persistent Needs and Expanding Desires: Pa¯keha¯ Families and State Welfare in the Years of Prosperity’. Welfare history is a well-

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established field within New Zealand social history, although one which has accorded an emphasis on specific aspects of the welfare state. Labrum brings together the sustained analysis of welfare practice with a little explored form of discretionary welfare assistance to families to rethink both our welfare history and our view of the 1950s and 1960s. Discretionary welfare programmes coexisted with an extensive yet inflexible and increasingly inadequate system of pensions and benefits. Such programmes demonstrate continuing material need in the community, as well as problems and desires of a new and tangible kind, particularly those associated with obtaining a suburban home replete with consumer goods. The experiences of the growing number of families who used discretionary welfare services reveal a more fluid and contradictory picture of a period that was not necessarily abundant, satisfied or complacent for everyone. The continued relevance of the past to current practice is evident in many areas of social and cultural life in late twentieth-century New Zealand. Gavin McLean considers the complex interrelationship between the past and the present in the burgeoning heritage sector in ‘Street-level Chemistry: The Past in the Present at Historic Places’. Issues surrounding the ownership and uses of history at historic places are fraught. Questions of which and whose history should be preserved for posterity cut to the core of New Zealand’s national and cultural identity, as groups, individuals and periods are incorporated into or excluded from the built environment; historic places can easily become the physical form of the textual museum. Like others in this collection, McLean’s essay highlights the act of making history, and the ongoing process of constructing and reconstructing historical knowledge. The essays in this collection eschew a single reading or the construction of a grand narrative of New Zealand’s past; no one category of analysis, topic or methodology is privileged here. Certain themes nevertheless recur in the essays. The colonisation of the country is an organising theme of several essays, whether this be the human colonisation of immigration, the physical colonisation of replanting the landscape, or the discursive colonisation of naming the land and appropriating elements of Ma¯ori culture. Such approaches to the colonising process suggest that this continues to be a significant part of the history and historymaking of New Zealand. The stories that are told of New Zealand form another theme. These stories may be founding stories – of colonisation or origins – or they may be stories to explain key times and

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events in New Zealand history. The authors in this collection use such stories to examine the ways that New Zealand, and its historians, have shaped their world. The essays also share an aim to understand New Zealand culture by exploring fragments of life in the past: the ways that people dressed or passed their time, the forms in which they constructed the landscape, or the histories they wrote. They embody the conviction that examining ways of thinking and ways of speaking, as well as ways of doing, is a central part of historical research; together they acknowledge Margaret McClure’s contention that ‘the word is as important historically as the action’. Through doing this, Fragments complicates understandings of New Zealand history. As cultural historian Jonathan Dewald has argued, exploring the multiple, and sometimes contradictory ways that ideas and people functioned is not ‘destroying reality’, but is drawing out ‘all the richness’ of the past.27 The essays in this collection provide glimpses into the vibrancy of New Zealand’s past, that historian James Belich has described so graphically in his recent work on the settlement of the country.28 Fragments builds extensively on what has gone before, and reflects the depth of almost three decades of social historical scholarship in this country. The collection exemplifies the ‘double helix’ that is historical research – the connections between past and present, and between the historian and her or his subject.29 The process of making history is an organic one, subject to constant change and reassessment as research trends come and go.This collection is part of this ongoing process.The essays provide paths by which to explore and analyse the culture and society of New Zealanders – their lives, their rituals, their ways – whether these be the gardens that they made in the 1870s, the stories that they crafted to explain mysterious events, the clothes that they wore in the 1950s, or the heritage that they conserved in the 1990s. Together, they illustrate the diverse ways of imagining our pasts and of writing our histories.

Acknowledgements We develop many historical projects together. Most of these go no further than the cups of coffee or bottles of wine over which they are discussed. That Fragments has come to fruition owes much to the encouragement and enthusiasm of Bridget Williams. We thank her for

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her support in the early stages of the project, and for her role in having the idea of such a collection accepted for publication. Elizabeth Caffin and her team at Auckland University Press took over the project, and saw it through to completion with the professionalism that exemplifies their commitment to producing New Zealand history. Hilary Stace compiled the index. We benefited from conversations with Charlotte Macdonald and Jock Phillips early in the project; Rob Forlong and Conal McCarthy were supportive throughout. Most of all, we acknowledge the contributors to this volume, who responded enthusiastically to the idea of the collection, seized eagerly upon the notion of ‘fragments’ to make it their own, and who displayed patience and professionalism as the collection was brought together. August 1999

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The literature on the emergence of and developments in social history is immense. A useful summary can be found in Peter Burke, ‘Overture: The New History, its Past and its Future’, in Peter Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Polity, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 1–23. One of the earliest elaborations of this term is by E. P. Thompson, ‘History From Below’, Times Literary Supplement, 7 Apr 1966, pp. 279–80. This form of cultural history has inevitably been called the ‘new’ cultural history. A good analysis of this is Lynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989; see also Mark Poster, Cultural History and Postmodernity: Disciplinary Readings and Challenges, Columbia University Press, New York, 1998. The ‘new’ cultural history is sometimes presented as a reaction against a social history which failed to explore meaning, emotion or feeling. For one interpretation along these lines, see ‘An Interview with Jonathan Dewald’, http://www-dept.usm.edu/~amgrad/ interviews/jonathan_dewald/page1.html. Social historians have argued intensively about the ‘linguistic turn’ in the discipline. Some have viewed it as the ‘end’ of social history, while others have regarded it as a means to move social history out of the paradigms in which it has existed since the 1970s. For one recent debate, see the series of articles in Social History: David Mayfield and Susan Thorne, ‘Social History and its Discontents: Gareth Stedman Jones and the Politics of Language’, vol. 17, no. 2, 1992, pp. 165–88; Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor, ‘The Poverty of Protest: Gareth Stedman Jones and the Politics of Language – A Reply’, vol. 18, no. 1, 1993, pp. 1–15; Patrick Joyce,‘The Imaginary Discontents of Social History: A Note of Response to Mayfield and Thorne, and Lawrence and Taylor’, vol. 18, no. 1, 1993, pp. 81–5; James Vernon, ‘Who’s Afraid of the “Linguistic Turn”? The Politics of Social History and its Discontents’, vol. 19, no. 1, 1994, pp. 81–97. For a good summary of

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the debates, see Christopher Kent, ‘Victorian Social History: Post-Thompson, PostFoucault, Postmodern’, Victorian Studies, vol. 40, no. 1, 1996, pp. 97–133. Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory.Volume 1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture, Verso, London, 1994, p. 443. Burke,‘Overture’, p. 2. For examinations of the development of New Zealand social history, see Jock Phillips, ‘Of Verandahs and Fish and Chips and Footie on Saturday Afternoon: Reflections on 100 Years of New Zealand Historiography’, NZJH, vol. 24, no. 2, 1990, pp. 128–34; Erik Olssen,‘Where To From Here? Reflections on the Twentieth-Century Historiography of Nineteenth-Century New Zealand’, NZJH, vol. 26, no. 1, 1992, pp. 63–77. Erik Olssen and Andrée Lévesque, ‘Towards a History of the European Family in New Zealand’, in Peggy Koopman-Boyden (ed.), The Family in New Zealand Society, Methuen, Wellington, 1978, pp. 1–26. David Hamer (ed.), New Zealand Social History, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1980. See, for example, Erik Olssen,‘The “Working Class” in New Zealand’, NZJH, vol. 8, no. 2, 1974, pp. 44–60; Miles Fairburn, ‘The Rural Myth and the New Urban Frontier: An Approach to New Zealand Social History, 1870–1940’, NZJH, vol. 9, no. 1, 1975, pp. 3–21; Erik Olssen and Judi Boyd, ‘The Skilled Workers: Journeymen and Masters in Caversham, 1880–1914’, NZJH, vol. 22, no. 2, 1988, pp. 118–34. Miles Fairburn, The Ideal Society and its Enemies:The Foundations of Modern New Zealand Society 1850–1900, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1989; see also the debate on this in NZJH, vol. 25, no. 2, 1991; Charlotte Macdonald, A Woman of Good Character: Single Women as Immigrant Settlers in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand, Allen and Unwin/Port Nicholson Press,Wellington, 1990; Erik Olssen, Building the New World:Work, Politics and Society in Caversham 1880s–1920s, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1995. One of the most recent works of New Zealand social history also celebrates the primacy of the social science approach, paying little attention to alternative methods of exploring social history; see Jim Gardner, Where They Lived: Studies in Local, Regional and Social History, Regional Press, Christchurch, 1999. See especially W. H. Oliver, ‘Social Welfare: Social Justice or Social Efficiency?’, NZJH, vol. 13, no. 1, 1979, pp. 3–23; Margaret Tennant, Paupers and Providers: Charitable Aid in New Zealand, Allen and Unwin/Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1989; David Thomson, A World Without Welfare: New Zealand’s Colonial Experiment, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1998; Margaret McClure, A Civilised Community: A History of Social Security in New Zealand 1898–1998, Auckland University Press/Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Auckland, 1998. Rollo Arnold, The Farthest Promised Land: English Villagers, New Zealand Immigrants of the 1870s,Victoria University Press,Wellington, 1981; Macdonald, A Woman of Good Character; James Belich, Making Peoples:A History of the New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century, Penguin, Auckland, 1996; Tony Simpson, The Immigrants:The Great Migration from Britain to New Zealand, 1830–1890, Godwit, Auckland, 1997. See NZJH, vol. 22, no. 1, 1988; Linda Bryder (ed.), A Healthy Country: Essays on the Social History of Medicine in New Zealand, Bridget Williams Books,Wellington, 1991. The volume of New Zealand’s local history is vast, and the quality sometimes variable. For good recent studies see Margaret McClure, The Story of Birkenhead, Birkenhead City Council, Birkenhead, 1988; Rollo Arnold, Settler Kaponga, A Frontier Fragment of the Western World, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 1997; Jim McAloon, Nelson: A Regional History, Cape Catley, Picton, 1997; Caroline Daley, Girls & Women, Men & Boys: Gender in Taradale 1886–1930, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1999. Some of the more recent works in labour history include John E. Martin and Kerry Taylor (eds), Culture and the Labour Movement: Essays in New Zealand Labour History,

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Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, 1991; Pat Walsh (ed.), Pioneering New Zealand Labour History: Essays in Honour of Bert Roth, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, 1993; NZJH, vol. 28, no. 2, 1994; Olssen, Building the New World; Len Richardson, Coal, Class, and Community:The United Mineworkers of New Zealand 1880–1960, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1995. New Zealand women’s history has grown considerably in the last twenty years, and has produced a large volume of literature. This includes books of documents (Charlotte Macdonald, The Vote, the Pill and the Demon Drink: A History of Feminist Writing in New Zealand, 1869–1993, Bridget Williams Books,Wellington, 1993; and most recently Frances Porter and Charlotte Macdonald (eds), ‘My Hand Will Write What My Heart Dictates’:The Unsettled Lives of Women in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand as Revealed to Sisters, Family and Friends, Bridget Williams Books/Auckland University Press, 1996); collections of essays (Barbara Brookes, Margaret Tennant and Charlotte Macdonald (eds), Women in History: Essays on European Women in New Zealand, Allen and Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, Wellington, 1986 and Women in History 2, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 1992); organisational histories (Anne Else (ed.), Women Together: A History of Women’s Organisations in New Zealand Nga¯ Ro¯pu¯ Wa¯hine O Te Motu, Daphne Brasell Associates Press/Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, 1993; and most recently Dorothy Page, The National Council of Women:A Centennial History, Auckland University Press/Bridget Williams Books with the National Council of Women, Auckland, 1996); biographies (Charlotte Macdonald, Merimeri Penfold, and Bridget Williams (eds), The Book of New Zealand Women Ko Kui Ma Te Kaupapa, Bridget Williams Books,Wellington, 1991; and most recently Fay Hercock, Alice: The Making of a Woman Doctor 1914–1974, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1999); and, less frequently, general histories (Sandra Coney, Standing in the Sunshine: A History of New Zealand Women Since they Won the Vote, Viking Penguin Books, Auckland, 1993). Olssen,‘Where To’, pp. 72–7. See, for example, Judith Binney and Gillian Chaplin, Nga Morehu:The Survivors, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1986; Jeffrey Sissons, Te Waimana:The Spring of Mana:Tuhoe History and the Colonial Encounter, University of Otago Press, Dunedin, 1991; Anne Salmond, Two Worlds: First Meetings Between Maori and Europeans 1642–1772, Viking Penguin Books, Auckland, 1991; Judith Binney, Redemption Songs: A Life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, Auckland University Press/Bridget Williams Books, Auckland, 1995. Phillips,‘Of Verandahs’, pp. 130–1. See, for example, Jock Phillips, A Man’s Country? The Image of the Pakeha Male:A History, Penguin, Auckland, 1987, and with Chris Maclean, The Sorrow and the Pride: New Zealand War Memorials, GP Books/Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs,Wellington, 1990; Peter Gibbons, ‘Non-fiction’, in Terry Sturm (ed.), The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1998, pp. 31–118; Redmer Yska, All Shook Up: The Flash Bodgie and the Rise of the New Zealand Teenager in the Fifties, Penguin, Auckland, 1993. Fragments was compiled before the publication of Caroline Daley and Deborah Montgomerie (eds), The Gendered Kiwi, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1999, which contains a number of essays exploring aspects of cultural history. There is a substantial body of cultural history aimed at the popular, rather than the scholarly market. See, for example, Sandra Coney, I Do: 125Years of Weddings in New Zealand, Hodder Moa Beckett, Auckland, 1995 and Piha:A History in Images, Keyhole Press, Auckland, 1997. For Kiwiana, see Stephen Barnett and Richard Wolfe, At the Beach:The Great New Zealand Holiday, Hodder and Stoughton, Auckland, 1993; Hamish Keith, A Lovely Day Tomorrow: New Zealand in the 1940s, Random Century, Auckland, 1991; Paul Smith, Twist and Shout: New Zealand in the 1960s, Random Century, Auckland, 1991. There are also several other works where cultural history forms one aspect, such as Rollo Arnold, New Zealand’s Burning:The Settlers’World in the Mid 1880s,

I N T RO D U C T I O N

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25 26 27 28 29

Victoria University Press,Wellington, 1994 and Raewyn Dalziel,‘Popular Protest in Early New Plymouth: Why Did it Occur?’, NZJH, vol. 20, no. 1, 1986, pp. 3–26, which examines a local form of the charivari. See also the various essays in Colin Davis and Peter Lineham (eds), The Future of the Past: Themes in New Zealand History, Department of History, Massey University, Palmerston North, 1991. The literature on this issue is large, and very often polemical. For one example see Bryan D. Palmer, Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History,Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1990; for a different perspective, see Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, Columbia University Press, New York, 1988, and Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma, 1996; Joy Parr, ‘Gender History and Historical Practice’, Canadian Historical Review, vol. 76, no. 3, 1995, pp. 354–76 provides a useful summary of the arguments regarding history in general, and women’s history in particular.There are comparatively few New Zealand discussions of the issue. For some that touch on the debates, see Peter Munz, ‘The Two Worlds of Anne Salmond in Postmodern Fancy-Dress’, NZJH, vol. 28, no. 1, 1994, pp. 60–75, and Anne Salmond’s response, ‘Antipodean Crab Antics’, NZJH, vol. 28, no. 1, 1994, pp. 76–9; see also Susan Moller Okin, ‘Gender and Relativism in Recent Feminist Historical Scholarship’, NZJH, vol. 29, no. 2, 1995, pp. 211–25. Samuel, Theatres of Memory, p. x. Most notably in the New Zealand context see Macdonald, A Woman of Good Character, and Porter and Macdonald (eds). Dewald, page6.html. Belich, pp. 446–50. The phrase is taken from Greg Dening, Mr Bligh’s Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty, Cambridge University Press, Canto edn, Cambridge, 1994, p. 9.

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1 Imagining Our Pasts: Wr iting Our Histor ies |

M I C H A E L R E I L LY

In 1987 a posthumous edition of E. H. Carr’s classic What Is History? appeared. As in his original lectures, Carr criticised the British reliance upon an empirical approach to historical research that failed to acknowledge either the influence of the ‘social environment’ or the underlying principles and ideas upon which research and interpretations were based. Such an approach, in his view, could only lead to a Borgeslike historian who remembered everything but was incapable of thought.‘I recognize’, Carr wrote,‘that many present-day historians are dead because they have no theory. But the theory which they lack is a theory of history, not one delivered from outside. What is needed is a two-way traffic.’ Carr was also critical of a historical profession whose members’ insularity and monolingual competency in English had led them to focus on ‘what happened when the Europeans attempted to take [other countries] over’, with the result that the best histories of non-European countries were written outside university departments of history.1 Carr’s criticisms of the British historical profession may also apply to historians in Commonwealth countries such as New Zealand. Carr recognised that the traditional paramountcy assumed by the Western élite and its intellectuals was being shattered by what he described as ‘new forces and movements’ ‘germinating beneath the surface’ in Western society and in the revolts of colonised peoples ‘against capitalism in the guise of imperialism.’ Perhaps appropriately in an eminent historian of the Soviet Union, he wanted more intellectual dissidents.2

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These same dissenting impulses have recently emerged in the writing of history within Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu. Issues such as who defines the nature of New Zealand and Ma¯ ori history have been increasingly contested, and traditional lines of authority have become blurred. Historians and anthropologists such as James Belich, Judith Binney and Jeffrey Sissons, or professional historians contracted to the Waitangi Tribunal and the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, have contributed sometimes innovative and always challenging new histories of Ma¯ori. Tribal scholars and historians, who have always narrated the stories of their ancestors and the achievements of their tribes, even if their work has often been unrecognised in academic circles, have moved into the domains long the preserve of Carr’s Western intellectuals. Sidney Moko Mead describes the existence of whenua tautohetohe, or debateable lands, which form an outer boundary to tribal territory. He argues that this notion allows ‘for dynamic political and social relations between neighbouring tribes and reflects the ebb and flow of iwi politics.’3 While he is referring specifically to the experience of groups such as Nga¯ti Awa in the Bay of Plenty, the concept may be employed to describe the kinds of discussion occurring among tribal and Western-trained historians. The furthering of such a ‘debateable history’ is this essay’s chief interest. Just as Carr looked to a two-way traffic through which to constitute a more theoretically informed practice of history, so this essay traffics in Mead’s debateable territory, seeking to discover ideas and practices of history which may better express the new ‘forces and movements’ emerging among practitioners of New Zealand and, more specifically, Ma¯ori history. In order to acknowledge the complexity of the issues to be covered, I have constituted the essay as a series of fragments which each explore a different part of this debateable field:‘Encounters’ reflects upon the ambiguities which Pa¯ keha¯ especially experience when teaching and writing about Ma¯ori history today;‘Connections’ describes some destructive and constructive features of past Pa¯ keha¯ enquiries among Ma¯ori using the writing of two scholars;‘Atua and Hau’ suggests that Ma¯ori atua – spiritual beings – and metaphors may present a very different reflection of the Ma¯ori past from that understood by Westerntrained historians; ‘Towards a sea of islands’ discovers the limitations of the Western historical consciousness and the possibilities for other kinds of history in the wider Pacific. Fragments by their very nature suggest that some parts of the whole are beyond recovery; I make no claim to explore more than a part of the practice of New Zealand’s historians.

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This reflects my own position as a Pa¯keha¯ largely trained by Ma¯ori scholars within a Western system of education. Nevertheless, it is my hope that read together these fragments may encourage Carr’s seeds of challenge and dissent to take root and to produce further ways of imagining our pasts and writing our histories.

Encounters In his novel Remembering Babylon, David Malouf imagines an encounter in mid-nineteenth-century Queensland. Three white children met a being perched unsteadily on the top rail of the boundary fence dividing their farm from that of the unknown and hence forbidden ‘no man’s land’, that part of the country where no white man had set foot; ‘the abode of everything savage and fearsome . . . beyond experience . . . and all that belonged to Absolute Dark.’ Lachlan, the only boy among the three children, first read the vision as a raid by Aborigines; he took up his stick-cum-gun, striding forth in front of his cousins – Janet and Meg – and put his stick-gun to his shoulder. The reaction of this being, whose hair the children had already discerned was as blonde as theirs, was immediate: ‘“Do not shoot”, it shouted. “I am a B-b-british object!”’ (a statement that Malouf took from a contemporary incident).4 The object of their gaze, Gemmy, was a youngish white man who had lived for half his life with an Aboriginal clan. His sojourn among the settlers provoked unease. He remained for many of them ‘a parody of a white man’, unable to assimilate English; in Malouf ’s words,‘He was imitation gone wrong’. The settlers uneasily asked themselves, ‘had he remained white?’5 At once the same but different, he evoked the settlers’ hidden insecurities about their disappointments, losses and the demands of a strange environment. In old age Lachlan and Janet remembered every detail of that first encounter: how ‘the creature, unrecognised and unnamed as yet’ had ‘launched itself out of the unknown world towards them, that the landscape itself had hurled into their midst, a ragged fragment of itself, or of its history or their own, some part of it that was still to come’. He had, as Janet recognised, ‘touched off in them . . . what they were still living, both, in their different ways. It would end only when they were ended, and maybe not even then.’ She knew that they would each return to that moment of encounter ‘where they were inextricably joined and would always be.’ Janet looked across the flatlands to the

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incoming tide lit by the moon and reflected upon boundaries and connections: and all the waters of the earth ache towards it, and the light, running in fast now, reaches the edges of the shore, just so far in its order, and all the muddy margin of the bay is alive, and in a line of running fire all the outline of the vast continent appears, in touch now with its other life.6

Encounters – who has not experienced some dramatic moment when a meeting or discussion has raised pointed, even painful, questions which have irrevocably changed the tenor and future direction of one’s work and life? Any Pa¯ keha¯ practitioner of Ma¯ori history could tell of many such encounters based upon the question of their ethnicity. Mine, like Gemmy’s sojourn among the Queensland farmers, evoked uneasiness and ambivalence: was I perceived as a parody, an imitation? In teaching history to classes of Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ students, I have often encountered comments about my teaching authority. Some Pa¯ keha¯ students have felt they were shortchanged: they wanted an authentic Ma¯ori experience of history that only a Ma¯ori could impart. For some Ma¯ori students, the issue evoked deeper anxieties for their own cultural safety; to be taught about their past by a Pa¯ keha¯ within a Ma¯ori Studies environment was too much. In this view, far from being simply an administrative or academic structure, Ma¯ori Studies became a safe house for the articulation and affirmation of Ma¯ori knowledge.This was partly achieved by Ma¯ori students encountering positive academic role models in the form of Ma¯ ori scholars, who were frequently perceived as mentoring kauma¯tua. In the eyes of the students, had I constructed a parody of Ma¯ ori history and of the Ma¯ ori Studies academic? Senior managers within New Zealand universities have expressed a similar ambivalence. During an acrimonious meeting between my Department of Ma¯ori Studies and the Assistant Vice-Chancellor, the latter demanded to know why she should listen to advice from a Pa¯keha¯ male such as myself. As a senior Pa¯keha¯ academic woman and a New Zealand historian of considerable scholarship, she shared the students’ disquiet about the authenticity-effect; was I engaged, as a ‘white man’, in parodying a Ma¯ori Studies academic? Klaus Neumann may provide some responses to the dilemmas I experience. Reflecting upon first contact between Europeans and indigenous peoples, he asks who has not ‘wished the walls of the

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academic ivory tower to be sufficiently high to protect her or him from an intrusion of present concerns upon the representation of the past?’7 He stresses how such representations have to acknowledge selfconsciously the politics investing their sources and their writing, including the ways research funding, publishers and academic disciplines can influence what is said about the past.8 Neumann notes that there is no pure or objective position from which an historian can write about encounters between Europeans and indigenous peoples. Instead, they can opt for dialogue from an in-between space, or simply make way for the work of indigenous scholars. The representation of a first encounter cannot escape the very terminology of colonialism, for its language remains the medium of the historian’s own communications: The language at my disposal is the very language that has been used to facilitate colonialism. Its body has been contaminated too thoroughly to be cured by amputating its limbs or installing brand-new artificial limbs. We write from within and through the language against the very relationships and processes that it represents and that it has helped to create and maintain.9

An historian is forever involved in adopting ‘subversive strategies’ against the colonial narratives. Only these writing strategies acknowledge ‘the ambiguity and inherent contradictions of colonial history’ where those experiencing colonisation have long been struggling to contest and to unsettle its processes.10 Consciousness of the politics of representation was also uppermost in the minds of contributors to a hui organised between practitioners of Ma¯ori history drawn from the New Zealand Historical Association and Te Pouhere Ko¯rero (the Ma¯ori History Association) in 1994.11 While Pa¯ keha¯ praised the role of conflict and debate in forming historical interpretations, Ma¯ori contributors juxtaposed the roles of ethics and politics in researching the past. According to some Ma¯ ori present, Pa¯ keha¯ historians had until recently got away with too much; new criteria were called for, such as a competency in speaking and writing Ma¯ori and in maintaining good community relations. The university training of Ma¯ori historians had to encompass a form of postgraduate work among ‘their own people’, including being at the ‘beck and call’ of their elders. History ought ideally to be written in the language of the Ma¯ori; a greater role should be accorded the kauma¯tua, as advisors, critics and editors; and historical research should be gathered upon the

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marae rather than focus upon written materials. These specifications acknowledged the plain fact that Ma¯ori values and perceptions of the past were different, and that ways had to be found of safeguarding them. Ma¯ori considered that more emphasis ought to be laid upon tribal history and its historians; one thought it was time for Ma¯ori history to be located within the Pacific rather than British colonial history. This argument was developed against the Pa¯keha¯ historians’ espousal of an approach to the Ma¯ ori past that was centred upon the Treaty of Waitangi. As one Ma¯ori woman rather sharply retorted, the Treaty ‘is here today and gone tomorrow’, but the iwi and hapu¯ will always remain. Two tribal historians, Charles Royal and Monty Soutar, have amplified these views in stressing the central role played by the tribe, the use of Ma¯ori as the medium of communication, and the development of an appropriate relationship with the elders as repositories of tribal knowledge.12 How do Neumann’s and the hui participants’ responses illustrate my parodic dilemma? Examined in the light of Neumann’s remarks, my parody may be seen as an expression of the lack of any pure speaking/ writing position. In that sense, all historians, Pa¯keha¯ or Ma¯ori, engage in parody; it is part of our act.We can hardly lay claim to greater authenticity with respect to representing what has passed. Such parody or imitation is reflected in the very language of our history writing. Whether using English or Ma¯ori, we represent the past with words already ‘contaminated too thoroughly’ by the very colonial experiences of which we speak and write; our language is enmeshed in the ethnic divisions developed within earlier colonial struggles and premised upon ideas of race. As Neumann suggested, we can only acknowledge the ambiguities and contradictions lying within our pasts and our histories, and find strategies which work against the grain of our colonial narratives. Many of the suggestions advanced by individual participants at the hui contribute to the development of such strategies. A greater use of Ma¯ori and Ma¯ori scholarship not only advances the dialogue among tribal and Western-trained historians but increases the possibilities for working against the grain of New Zealand’s existing colonial historiography. The location of Ma¯ori history in the Pacific achieves a similar purpose. Recognising the importance of tribal structures shifts the representation of history towards a more localised level and stresses the particular historical relationships and processes that constitute the history of individual Ma¯ori groups in relation to specific Pa¯keha¯ settlers. Tribes and elders also situate such narratives within longer-term

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continuities and transformations, as tribal histories commence in the pre-contact era and move to the present through a genealogically centred timeframe, thus avoiding excessive reliance upon post-contact organising themes such as the Treaty of Waitangi.

Connections Pa¯ keha¯ practitioners of Ma¯ori history have often had an ambiguous relationship with the custodians of that knowledge.The history of such relations can be traced through the writing of two earlier practitioners who, though separated in time and attitude, are connected through place and their common encounters with the remains of the past found in wa¯hi tapu. Their particular relationships demonstrate Neumann’s point that as historians, we are implicated within the very history which we seek to represent. On 5 June 1846 a young man living at Mata on the Hokianga began a private journal as a record of his reading and his thoughts for the eyes, he hoped, of a future wife.This youth was John White, who went on to become recognised among his fellow British colonisers as one of their foremost experts on Ma¯ori affairs. Like many early settlers he was a capable speaker of Ma¯ori and deeply versed in aspects of ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori (Ma¯ori knowledge); near the end of his life he compiled The Ancient History of the Maori, still considered to be one of the more significant published collections of Ma¯ori historical narratives.13 Among the journal’s record of literature read and fancies dreamed, White reported a youthful indiscretion.14 While searching for some lost cattle in June 1847, he and his younger brother, Joseph, came upon a substantial Ma¯ori burial ground hidden amongst crevices and tall rocks; the latter, covered in moss and parasites, had ‘the appearance of exhausted giants in repose’. Such a description of the site may have been informed by White’s recent acquisition of The Poems of Ossian and his reading of Romantic poetry. His long and detailed description of the grave site, the arrangement of the bones, their grave goods and personal ornaments betrays his fascination and his consciousness of its ethnographical value: [T]here were 10, differant [sic] burial places each place contained chiefs of differant [sic] ranks, the first, there were 10 skulls whole, and many many broken or decayed by time, each skull and its bones were put in a place by its self, and

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walled up from the others by stones, in this [first] place were 2 calabashes which perhaps were things out of which some of the dead had drank of a little before their death and thereby became sacred . . . . the 5 place was the ledge of a rock under which 2 skeletons were laying, on these skeletons were put 7 skulls each skull was covered with a handkerchief, scarf, or piece of print, in these skulls we found a few curiosities, 2 sharks teeth and 2 bone ear drops and a piece of green stone, these things were put inside of the skulls, one of these skulls had its hair on and flesh of its face where all the tattoing [sic] could be clearly seen, the skin, on my trying to tear it, it appeared like leather.

The report makes a steady progress through the ten deposits of bones, ‘not more distant from each other than 14 yards’, and yet he was anxious the whole time. He noted at the end of his entry that he was ‘very timid lest any Native should find us there, for it would be the cause of a great row.’15 Despite his awareness of the consequences of discovery in such a tapu place, he repeated his folly. He wrote that in September 1847, he ‘went with the Captain of the barque “Hope” to see the tabboed [sic] place mentioned in this June 14 we found a few curiosities’.16 The men then looted the site of grave goods. Two men each took ‘a green stone figure in the shape of a man’, Joseph White took ‘a green stone ear drop’ and White himself obtained ‘a flute made of a man’s arm bone’.17 White also clearly intended to record what he saw for he mentioned taking a book in order to sketch the scene. These men showed few scruples about their actions at the time, but the event was not without its consequences. In the same entry White had to acknowledge that he lost his sketch book ‘to my great sorrow’. Early in December 1848, he began to suffer from a lifelong heart problem which, at the time, local Ma¯ori reportedly ascribed to ma¯kutu.18 His brother died in 1850 after being kicked by a horse.19 As the years passed, White may have experienced something of a change of heart when, in 1859, he donated ‘one Human Bone flute’ to the Auckland Museum.20 White’s dismissive attitude towards Ma¯ori beliefs (and women) is well illustrated in another long journal entry for January 1848 which highlights White’s inquisitorial manner and Ma¯ ori syncretism in references to tohunga wahine and atua Pa¯keha¯. While visiting a Ma¯ori village on the way to a hunt, White attempted to soften a leaf upon a fire before applying it to his sunburnt lips. A sickly female chief remonstrated with him that it was a tapu fire and he should cook the leaf elsewhere. The incident must have struck White for he took the

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unusual step of recording her statement in Ma¯ori: ‘“Kati, he ahi tapu tena, kawea ketia to mea tahu ai”’.When he persisted, she got up to stop him at which point White began to address her husband, ‘the chief of the place’, asking him why tapu was permitted in his family. The chief pointed out that European medicines had not cured his wife and so he had taken her to a female tohunga whose karakia had healed her: but said I ‘how did she heal her by words or by medicine,‘by words’ said he how and what words,‘I know not their incantations it is a sacrd [sic] thing which I must not look into’‘by whose authority does she heal the sick’,‘by a gods’ what god ‘an European god’ in what manner did he give her his authority,‘she was his mother’ and gave him birth, ‘yes’ who was his father, ‘an European God even as Mary spoken of in the scriptures’ and where is the god,‘in his Mother’ then he was not born to see the light of day ‘yes he was in light one night and spoke and returned to his Mothers womb’ and there lives,‘yes’ you believe such ‘yes’ that a NZ woman could give birth to a god,’‘yes’‘my wife’ said he was tormented by an European god, and the Priestess having a god child by an European spirit she could cast out the god from my wife, and has done so’ but said I ‘how do you know the difference between a god and the Devil, the devil is a tormenter, and a god exalts man, [therefore] it must be a devil that is tormenting your wife, and a devil that which the Priestess gave birth to, and also the devil that makes you believe the lie, in this case the devil is your god, and Hell your future Home, saying this I left the sick chieftess and her Husband, with their tapu fire.

As White departed in his moment of triumph he received a warning from the chief, whose son was part of the hunting party. He admonished them to be careful for he had experienced a violent contraction of his leg during the night which he took as a sure sign that one of them would be harmed by a gun accidentally discharging: ‘“so look out, no beast will harm you but you will be the cause of your own death”’.21 No doubt, the chief was able by such means to reestablish an equilibrium between himself, his wife and this callow youth. White narrowly escaped a charging bull in the ensuing hunt after trying to retrieve his gun; there may have been more to the chief ’s prediction than White cared to acknowledge. Later in the 1850s when White was a Native official accompanying a party of Kawerau and Waikato chiefs, they came upon a wa¯hi tapu belonging to the former tribe.This incident is mentioned in a lecture on chiefly mana and tribal rights, and forms part of a series he gave to the Auckland Mechanics’ Institute before 1861 and which was subsequently

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published by the Government. After stressing how entry to wa¯hi tapu was allowed only to tapu persons such as ariki,White claimed that ‘the Kawerau chief ’ gave him permission to enter the burial cave alone. White saw a small mausoleum, bones and various grave goods which he ‘did not touch’. He requested the chief ’s consent to remove ‘a small canoe’ and a ‘shark hook’ (described again as ‘curiosities’), ‘which the ariki of the Kawerau permitted’. The chief imposed one condition: White was to walk at the rear of the party so that the Kawerau ‘gods’ brought no harm to the Waikato chiefs.22 The contrast with his behaviour in the Hokianga wa¯hi tapu is remarkable: White is respectful and makes no dismissive remark about the ariki’s belief in the efficacy of tribal atua, though elsewhere in these lectures he condemns ‘Maori superstitions’ as ‘abominations’ which held Ma¯ori people in ‘servile bondage’.23 What had led to this change in the space of a decade? The shared experience of travelling together through the countryside may have contributed to this spirit of cooperation.The lecture’s composition before 1861 should alert us to a more critical factor determining White’s responses at least. In an era still intent on peacefully winning Ma¯ori chiefly cooperation, such a considered series of actions by a representative of the Government was to be expected. For the chiefs themselves, the very fact that the Crown’s representative among them sought their permission must have confirmed a sense of their own mana and disposed them – within set limits – to cooperate. Needless to say, a colonial government was happy to honour any amount of mana so long as it worked in their interests. White’s usage of ‘curiosities’ to describe the assorted artefacts he took from the Hokianga and the Kawerau burial sites links these references to a broader European appropriation of indigenous taonga.24 The description of artefacts as curiosities was very evident among those who participated in the voyages of Pacific exploration. This interest in the new and original was reflected in the writings of shipboard scientists who frequently described items as curious in appearance and design. White’s usage of ‘curiosities’ suggests the same sense of the novel, doubtless a result of entering restricted sites hitherto unknown to Europeans. White also reflects the later practices of explorers who subsequently bequeathed their collections to museums, thereby ‘augmenting the cultural capital of the state’ in contrast to the impoverishment of Ma¯ori and other indigenous societies. An incident in Papua New Guinea in the early 1920s strikingly parallels White’s theft.25 In the interior, a journalist and an Australian

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museum official came upon a longhouse temporarily deserted by its occupants. Among the artefacts were a number of skulls which the party took, attempting to dignify the theft by leaving various European commodities behind.This twentieth-century Papuan theft, like White’s transgression of a tapu burial ground, suggests the classic colonialist denigration of indigenous societies. We cannot avoid experiencing a sense of shock, of outrage; we participate in constructing the politics investing our interpretations of these historical moments. As Nicholas Thomas emphasises, the processes of colonisation were frequently more complex.26 In 1975 an anthropologist was taken by his local Christian hosts to an abandoned ritual site in the Solomon Islands. There, after hacking away the undergrowth, one of the hosts, an Anglican priest, demonstrated how a human sacrifice was ritually decapitated. In commenting upon the photograph of this demonstration,Thomas points to the priest’s modern clothing and his evident amusement; the apparent savagery of human sacrifice is first enacted and then displaced in the humorous portrayal by a modern, Christian descendant.This subversive enactment by local people disrupts Western assumptions about what constitutes the savage and the colonised victim. The participation of a local Anglican priest emphasises how much a European institution itself can become indigenised. Thomas’s argument is not to suggest that colonisation was benign, but to highlight the amount of interpenetration or entanglement which occurred in colonised regions between Europeans, and their institutions of governing authority, and the indigenous peoples who resisted, appropriated and accommodated these external forces for their own strategic ends.27 In the Kawerau wa¯hi tapu incident, the ariki clearly imposed conditions upon White, the colonial official. As Thomas points out, European colonists frequently betrayed their loss of identity with the metropolis, their confusion, anxiety, even terror in relation to the indigenous peoples they met and mingled with.28 White timidly entered the Hokianga grave site and was variously admonished and warned by local Ma¯ori leaders; when in the company of the local chiefs at the Kawerau site, he adopted a more respectful approach. Even White’s donation of the flute (if it came from that Hokianga wa¯hi tapu) may have been as much the expression of a wish to be rid of an object surrounded by grave associations, as the expression of a coloniser’s confident commodification. The search for a New Zealand identity among twentieth-century Pa¯keha¯ made some more aware of the land and the continuing existence

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of the tangata whenua. For the retirement of her mentors, including J. C. Beaglehole, historian Ruth Ross contributed an essay in reminiscence. It was partly an experiment at recalling her life as a teacher up the Hokianga River and partly an attempt to explore Beaglehole’s teasing remark that in such a location she was ‘closer to the original autochthonous New Zealand soil’. Reminiscence in Ross’s usage spanned time; as a recollection of the past it was not a respecter of the neat, linear chronology so beloved of Western-trained historians: Talk! About anything from Nukutawhiti and his slave Pononga, to the seal the Craig kids had found in their boat one morning; from the hard-case tricks of young Ken in Primer 2 to the time Kahukura fooled the turehu. It was all reminiscence, whether it occurred the previous week or in some mythical antiquity before time began.29

The old people of the community conducted this talk, in the quiet of a Sunday after the church service and a midday feast. The stories of the remotest ancestors such as Kupe were never related in the manner of the antiquarian; rather, they always seemed to be ‘as real to them as the chap who runs the ferry on the river’. Just as the talk showed no respect for an historian’s sense of order, neither did it respect strict linguistic boundaries, as the conversation drifted backwards and forwards from one language to another, its crossings unnoticed by anyone.30 Ross is perhaps best known today as the writer of a seminal essay on the Treaty of Waitangi texts. Not surprisingly, her quest for the identity of its Hokianga signatories features prominently in her recollections of conversations with local Ma¯ori. Her inquiries were not those of the anthropologist determined upon a synchronic field study, nor of the historian lost amidst the myriad documents in the colonial archives. After consulting the relevant sources such as the Land Court minutes and old Land Claims records, Ross sought connections between the signatories of 1840 and Ma¯ori of her day through the memories of the elders and in the records of the local cemetery headstones. A recounting of how Ross accompanied the local Ma¯ ori to an annual cemetery cleaning highlights the differences between her approach and White’s youthful transgression at the Hokianga urupa¯ (burial area). A long debate at a tribal meeting confirmed the elders’ suggestions that she sort out the identification of one tupuna by visiting the burial ground to check on a tombstone inscription. Before her journey to the cemetery at Hairini, Ross asked about the observation of

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tapu: ‘Not to worry, they said, tapu was just for Maoris.’ She was struck by the singular nature of tapu observances: some workers who had been in the graveyard avoided the others, some moved about meeting and greeting and eating.31 She quickly found that the tupuna who signed the Treaty did not appear to be the same as that buried at Hairini. As she had ruefully realised when talking earlier with the elders, there remained ‘a missing generation’ between the identity of the Treaty signatories and the ancestors whom the kauma¯tua recognised. While looking at the stones Ross also noticed a woman standing outside whose husband had been recently killed in a mill accident: When we came out the gate she was gone and we walked back along the creek bank till we came in view of the group under the puriri trees, then waded out into the creek, the tide now running out. Just washing hands and faces seemed a bit perfunctory; surely if we were serious we would do the job properly and damn the discomfort. I waded out a bit further, letting the water lap my rolledup jeans, then climbed the bank and made for the puriri grove.There were tuttuttings from the kuia – no need to wet your pants said one, and there was a shout of laughter.The woman we had seen by the cemetery gate now joined us and shook hands. I was glad we had not met her before we had whakanoa-ed ourselves, no sense in her taking risks with tapu after all her bad luck.32

Afterwards they listened to an impassioned debate about whether the tools ought to be left out to rot in the elements or be stored in a shed. They left during the discussion to catch the incoming tide. Ross was never invited back to another cemetery cleaning: ‘Had we transgressed in some way? Or had we just been asked to tell them whether their Hori Kingi had signed the treaty, and having said he did not, we were needed no more at Hairini?’33 In her desire to observe the requirements of tapu in an appropriate manner and in her concern that she had, after all, transgressed upon local sensibilities, Ross demonstrates a radically different consciousness of the people and the place from that of White. She resists a final answer to her questions about a possible transgression: ‘[i]n the Maori world the speaker speaks. Understanding is the business of the listener.’34 Ross’s enquiries about tapu evoke the anxieties of such outsiders; in this respect her concerns also reflect my parodic dilemma. Like Gemmy among sceptical Queensland farmers, how can someone from outside a community not avoid being questioned or questioning themselves about their sincerity and, ultimately, their authenticity? In response, we can

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only invoke strategies of critical self-consciousness, acknowledge our very complicity with the history we write and look to further strategies, such as those put forward by many Ma¯ori historians, in order to counter the colonisers’ claims to historiographical dominance. Ross’s attempt to establish connections between the memories of the elders, the local tombstone inscriptions and the documents captured in time by Land Court judges and Land Claim investigators points us towards the later contributions of scholars such as Judith Binney and Jeffrey Sissons.35 Like that talk of reminiscence – backwards and forwards, from Ma¯ ori into English – Ross’s effort to move from European archive to local memories seems far ahead of other Pa¯keha¯ historians writing in her day (or ours). Beaglehole’s teasing acknowledgement of the significance of the Hokianga and Ross’s good fortune in finding herself there suggests that others of us could discover the wellsprings of our own histories in such seamless encounters between languages, between the past and the present, between Pa¯keha¯ and Ma¯ori, between the land and its peoples.

Atua and Hau The use of Ma¯ori language and a greater Ma¯ori cultural orientation within New Zealand history writing raise challenges for those reared within the Western historiographical tradition. Te taha wairua, the spiritual domain, has always played a critical role in many Ma¯ ori narratives; it is a contribution many Westernised secular scholars might find difficult to integrate successfully into their own discourse. The contribution of one particular atua, Ta¯whirima¯tea, and the concept of hau, to our understanding of New Zealand’s history and to a particular episode in the New Zealand Wars illustrates the ways in which these forces played a crucial role. Such a case study also highlights the potential contribution of tribal historians to New Zealand history writing and allows me to acknowledge the specific contribution of the late Ruka Broughton of Nga¯ Rauru to my own education. In analysing the mythological histories as told by the Te Arawa scholar, Te Rangikaheke, folklorist Gregory Schrempp claimed that Ta¯whirima¯tea had become the neglected god of New Zealand. Te Rangikaheke’s creation story highlighted the transformative deeds of Ta¯nemahuta and Tu¯matauenga and, in a later generation, the changes effected by Ma¯ui-tikitiki-a-Taranga. Nevertheless, Schrempp’s analysis of

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Ta¯whiri’s roles suggests this being has a significance for a discussion invoking images of debateable lands, encounters and connections.36 Ta¯whiri had disagreed with his brothers in separating their parents, Ranginui and Papatu¯a¯nuku. As a result, and in a plot with his father, Ranginui, he raised a brood of meteorological offspring with whom he attacked his brother atua and drove them apart. By separating off these other beings he also created what Schrempp calls ‘ecological niches’, spaces wherein the various entities lived, following their respective customs. Even more significantly, the offspring of his brothers underwent further ‘subspeciation’, as the creatures each went their own way and occupied distinct niches in the environment. This process of separation recalls the image used by James Belich to imagine the way New Zealand’s first Polynesian settlers made use of the land, by exploiting an archipelago of ‘islands’, each a resource rich location surrounded by less well-known or useful lands, through which the settlers passed.37 Schrempp also links Ta¯whiri,‘the great separator’, with the themes of continuity and connection. Ta¯whiri is intimately associated with the wind in the mythological narrative: wind or hau served as a potent Ma¯ori image of connection between peoples separated from each other by spaces of land. In this role, Schrempp describes Ta¯whiri as ‘the spacebetween’. As the wind he is also the being ‘in touch’ with every other entity. He is the atua associated with division and who mediates between the separated beings and so brings them back together. In Mead’s debateable lands of history writing, Ta¯whiri may serve as the principle connecting the islands of history and the practitioners who must travel between them. The association of wind and the elements with the atua, Ta¯whirima¯tea, may have given rise to more abstract usages, particularly its links to the idea of spiritually ordained potency, or mana. Herbert Williams defined hau as the ‘vitality of man, vital essence of land . . . which was particularly susceptible to the attacks of witchcraft’.38 This usage of hau has become famous through its description by Marcel Mauss as the ‘hau of the taonga’ (the spirit of the gift).39 He quoted Elsdon Best’s informant,Ta¯mati Ranaipiri, who argued that the hau was not the wind but rather the spiritual power possessed by all taonga, or personal property, and the forest.40 Mauss compared the term hau to the Latin concept of spiritus which meant both wind and soul, although he thought the hau referred solely to ‘the spirit and power of inanimate and vegetable things’, whereas mana was restricted to ‘men and spirits’.41

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The hau of Williams, Ranaipiri and Mauss lies behind one of the great enigmas of New Zealand’s wars of the 1860s.42 James Belich was not able to guess the ultimate reason why the great engineer and fighting general Tı¯tokowaru had so precipitately abandoned his supreme defensive position at Tauranga¯ika. Belich surmised that the answer might be known to the elders of the tribes, Nga¯ Rauru and Nga¯ti Ruanui, which had fought with Tı¯tokowaru. Ruka Broughton, a Nga¯ Rauru tribal historian, presented an interpretation which relies upon a reader’s understanding of ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori. In his Ma¯ori language history of Tı¯tokowaru and his achievements, Broughton emphasised that the accuracy of his interpretation would be clear only to the person who understood ‘te hinengaro Maaori’ (the Ma¯ori mentality):‘E kore hoki e kitea e te ngaakau Paakehaa noo te mea, he tikanga anoo aana, he tikanga anoo aa te Maaori.’ (It will not be comprehended by the Pa¯keha¯ mind, because they have one belief and the Ma¯ori another.) Broughton did not seek to exclude Pa¯keha¯ categorically; for he referred to the ‘tangata’, or person, who had knowledge of Ma¯ori ideas. Those unable to understand his argument would be unsympathetic to and ignorant of Ma¯ori thinking and, of course, the Ma¯ori language. His interpretation relied upon an insight into the spiritual domain; it was here, he believed, that the enigma would be answered. Broughton’s explanation begins with a visit to Tauranga¯ika by Colonel Thomas McDonnell, a man deeply versed (‘tino moohio’) in the language and customs of Ma¯ori. He was to use this bilingual knowledge to subvert Tı¯tokowaru’s own spiritual claims to power and authority and so gain the upper hand. This contest invoked the supernatural and, perhaps appropriately, took place at night round the battlements of Tauranga¯ika. In Broughton’s narrative, McDonnell was intent on identifying the atua who guarded Tı¯tokowaru during his battles and gave him his mana:‘Ki te pupuhi te whakarua, koiraa tonu te hau whakaatu i te Atua o Tiitokowaru, araa ko Uenuku. Kaatahi ka kohukohua e Makitaanara te Atua o Uenuku, araa he tuutuuaa!’ (If the north east sea breeze is blowing, there also is the wind showing the God of Tiitokowaru, that is Uenuku. Then McDonnell cursed the God, Uenuku, as if it were a low-born thing!) Broughton argued that this night-time cursing of Uenuku made Tı¯tokowaru fearful; not only because it was heard by others who had fetched him to see McDonnell, but because, as Broughton explained, Ma¯ori feared someone who could reach into their innermost thoughts, for that was their soul.Through his act, McDonnell had Tı¯tokowaru in

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his power and his abilities as a prophet and leader would be fundamentally weakened. The hau or spiritual potency of Tı¯tokowaru was identified as the wind, Uenuku. Its cursing by McDonnell represented a form of supernatural attack as described in Williams’s definition. It was the outcome of this contest, quite literally for Tı¯tokowaru’s heart and mind (‘hinengaro’), which prompted the sudden and total withdrawal of the Ma¯ori forces from Tauranga¯ika, and that nonplussed the colonial forces at the time.Tı¯tokowaru’s abrupt withdrawal was highly successful; not only was he able to elude McDonnell’s hold but he has remained an enigma to Pa¯keha¯ historians ever since. In elucidating what exactly happened at Tauranga¯ika, Broughton stresses the critical complementary role tribal historians play in the writing of New Zealand’s histories. As Monty Soutar points out, access to ‘the psyche of the tribal member’ is not now readily available to the non-Ma¯ori historian who must instead rely on the work of scholars within the hapu¯ and iwi. Soutar envisages these researchers working together and crafting the kinds of composite narratives which would provide fuller and more accurate tribal histories.43 Binney speaks of a similar approach in her biography of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki when she describes the juxtaposing of Ma¯ori and Pa¯ keha¯ forms of recalling the past in order that each retain ‘its integrity, its purpose and its autonomy’.44 Figures such as Tı¯tokowaru or Te Kooti, whose achievements span the genres of particular tribal and general New Zealand histories, show the possibilities for collaboration amongst those who are interested in the histories of Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu.The actions of bilingual Europeans like McDonnell, who used their knowledge to destroy Ma¯ori, may finally be redressed through the work of Pa¯keha¯ who speak the same languages but respect the hau which safeguards the domain of ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori.

Towards a sea of islands Among the sea of islands of the larger Polynesian world, others have reflected upon what it means to imagine other pasts and to write other histories. Their reflections extend the earlier themes and metaphors in this essay; in particular, the differences and connections that exist between distinctive islands of knowledge, such as the respective roles of the supernatural in the histories of indigenous peoples and among Western secularised historians.

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In a visionary essay Tongan historian and writer Epeli Hau‘ofa argues against the traditional understanding of Pacific ‘islands in a far sea’. He considers this to represent a perspective fashioned by ‘continental men’ from Europe and America who ‘drew imaginary lines across the sea, making the colonial boundaries that confined ocean peoples to tiny spaces’. They had been followed by an army of economists and other specialists, including Pacific Islanders, who preached of underdevelopment and perpetual dependency upon the wealthier nations of the world. Instead, Hau‘ofa envisages ‘a sea of islands’; a phrase which recognised that their inhabitants had never treated these lands as isolated dots in the surrounding sea. As Hau‘ofa eloquently demonstrates, the ancestors of the people in Oceania conceived of their universe as comprising the land and the sea. They crossed both spaces with ease, exploiting their resources, travelling from one island to another for trade, for play, for war and for marriage. Every such visitation contributed to building up an enormous number of social networks along which travelled both people and goods. The sea, far from being a constraining border, served as ‘points of entry that were constantly negotiated and even contested.The sea was open to anyone who could navigate a way through.’These same networks and entry points, Hau‘ofa argues, operate today among the descendants of these Pacific Islanders.45 These negotiable oceans surrounding the islands, both of which are tended by the inhabitants of the land, suggest a similar conception to Belich’s resource ‘islands’; both originate from within Islander conceptualisations of a motu, an island or, more literally, a piece of land separated or cut off from others.The openness of Hau‘ofa’s navigable sea defining but not sharply dividing the island groups from each other evokes Mead’s whenua tautohetohe, which defines the outer tribal boundary but permits relations between neighbouring tribes. These conceptualisations of islands and seas allow us to discover how the first tu¯puna of Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu used their existing knowledge and adapted it to the size of the new dominion. In an essay on the death of the astronomer,William Gooch, on Oahu in 1792, Greg Dening reflects upon the meaning of history writing, and especially his fascination with ‘problems about boundaries and the ways boundaries are crossed’.46 One location of Dening’s musings lies among the gravestones which surround the Children’s Mission Library in Honolulu. One marks the grave of Willie Nevins Armstrong, a child of missionaries, who was born in the Marquesas Islands:‘The Marquesans, for the brief time that they knew him called him Hape (“Upside-

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Down”). . . . “Upside-Down” was not a bad name for a Stranger born on a Polynesian beach. Stranger and Native both, but in-between, upside-down.’ The inscription on another stone also catches Dening’s attention: ‘“Sister Kate, She hath done what she could.”’ These statements, Dening decides, would make an apt epitaph for his own sense of history: ‘“Hape, Upside-Down, In-Between. He did what he could.”’47 Dening refers elsewhere to the limen, ‘a step, neither inside nor outside but in-between’; such ‘social moments of crossing a boundary’ exist in every culture, be it a birthday, marriage or funeral.48 Anthropologists have explored these moments most frequently, identifying them as ‘full of contradictions and sometimes dangerous’ and, as a consequence, edged about by signs of taboo. These boundaries were never permanent; groups and individuals would find passage across, joining and dividing as the situation or context changed. Just so, for Dening, the beach – ‘marginal spaces in between land and sea’ – is a boundary that marks an ever-changing island.49 Standing in the missionary graveyard, Dening also considers the nature of history.50 Like Carr, he perceives how reluctant historians are to think; better it seems not to attempt it at all. Dening thinks on the ways his anthropological training had made him aware of others’ culture, and of the ethnographic dimension of understanding anyone’s past. He stresses how much the crafting and telling of history is a part of everyone and every culture’s daily life and experience:‘Of all the systems that are expressive of who a people are, the sharpest and clearest is their historical consciousness. History belongs to us all, History is us all, in many ways.’ Such history is shaped in different ways, and European definitions cannot determine all of them:‘We know who we are in our varied ways of History making.’ And all of these histories reflect that liminal moment,‘In-between Past and Present’, which it is the privilege of history writing to describe. Dipesh Chakrabarty also wonders about the different ways societies, such as those of the Pacific Islands, remember their pasts.‘Are there’, he asks,‘experiences of the pasts that cannot be captured by the methods of the discipline [of history]?’51 He argues that minority histories can become incorporated into the narratives of history, while subaltern pasts remain marginalised because their stories cannot be incorporated within the historian’s overarching narrative.52 Chakrabarty illustrates his point with the work of the ‘Subaltern Studies’ group in South Asia who, like many historians of Ma¯ori, present

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marginalised groups as the agents of their own history by using records of the people’s own voices and experiences. One writer describing the 1855 Santal Rebellion, for example, could not assimilate the rebels’ claim that they had revolted at the direction of their god,‘Thakur’. Instead, the writer interpreted the rebels’ explanation as a religious consciousness, a form of Marxian self-estrangement, on the part of the insurgents. In Chakrabarty’s reading, however, such subaltern pasts become ‘like stubborn knots that break up the otherwise evenly woven surface of the fabric’; a hiatus which separates the nineteenth-century Santal experiences from the Subaltern Studies historian who is, ultimately, unable to write from within the rebels’ beliefs. Such subaltern pasts seem to represent a limit to history.53 Chakrabarty’s response to this dilemma is to invoke the idea of heterogeneity, whereby the subaltern gesture of the Santal rebels points to a plurality and disjointedness in our own experience of the relationship between the present and the past.54 In this argument, the Santal reference to ‘Thakur’ is not entirely foreign to twentieth-century Westerners because we also invoke the supernatural when, for example, we pay heed to astrological charts or idolise sports heroes. Subaltern pasts shed light upon history writing, stressing the existence of boundaries which mark the differences as well as the connections we share with other eras and peoples. Seen through the subaltern pasts, history loses its assumption ‘of a continuous, homogeneous, infinitely stretched out time’ and begins to realise that its historical consciousness does not cover anything more than a small part of the ‘experience of history’.55 Nicholas Thomas also confronts a similar gulf between empirical history and theory. He argues against ‘the Scylla of mindlessly particular conventional colonial history’ and ‘the Charybdis of colonial discourse theory’ with its universalising homogeneity unaffected by particular colonial encounters. Instead, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s work, he advocates ‘an ethnography of colonial projects’, which describes the transformations of the longer-term colonising process and its discourses in the specific and changing historical contexts of local regions and in the partial, even contradictory, actions of coloniser and colonised.56 These varied reflections about islands and seas, boundaries and hiatuses, stress the possibilities for negotiating a way between them.The role of the supernatural connects the reflections of Chakrabarty to Broughton’s explanation of Tı¯tokowaru’s departure from Tauranga¯ika. The former develops an image of plurality, breaking down the authority

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of the Western historical consciousness. Broughton breaks free of Western historiographical control by invoking the world of the atua, thereby representing a critical moment in New Zealand’s history as a domain dominated by ‘te hinengaro Maaori’. In making our way between these different islands of history, we will also no doubt enter Dening’s dangerous liminal moments and have to find new connections, as Thomas emphasises, between larger theoretically informed discourses and particular historical contexts; like Malouf ’s Lachlan and Janet, our writing will be forever affected by the encounter. European narratives of Pacific exploration refer to the ‘discovery’ of islands long inhabited by indigenous peoples.There is an older meaning of discovery as exposing, revealing or uncovering something; suggesting that Europeans and Islanders made many discoveries about the other’s foreignness during contact.57 Likewise, in writing our histories we must look to making discoveries which reveal the foreignness of others’ pasts and their points of connection to our own. In doing so, we may discover how debateable the domain of any historical representation must be. In encounters where the authenticity of our history-making is questioned, we should be open to entering a dialogue, or to making way for the writing of indigenous scholars. For myself, I opt for the first choice and seek ‘subversive strategies’ in order to write against colonial narratives. Such strategies invoke the names of gods in other worlds, for they form part of the different consciousness that operates in other islands of New Zealand history. We must all negotiate our own passage through the debateable lands surrounding them, each of us participating as we do so in a two-way traffic of ideas. Only then might we discover the entire margins of our lands, and write fully conscious of the many ways in which practitioners of history in Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu craft their different experiences of what has passed.

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12

13

14

15

16

17 18 19 20

21 22

23

E. H. Carr, What is History?, 2nd edn, Penguin, London, 1987, pp. 150ff. Carr, pp. 5–6, 177, 179, 182. Sidney Moko Mead, Landmarks, Bridges and Visions: Aspects of Maori Culture, Victoria University Press,Wellington, 1997, p. 236. David Malouf, Remembering Babylon,Vintage, London, 1994, pp. 3, 202. Malouf, pp. 39, 40. Malouf, pp. 194, 197, 200. Klaus Neumann, ‘ “In Order to Win Their Friendship”: Renegotiating First Contact’, The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 6, no. 1, 1994, p. 133. Neumann, pp. 132–4. Neumann, pp. 113–14, 130–1. Neumann, p. 114. This hui was jointly organised by these two associations and held at the Victoria University of Wellington. The encounter, a carefully staged dialogue between a selection of Pa¯ keha¯ and Ma¯ ori historians, provoked some honest and thoughtful responses. Though the discussion was recorded, the results have never been edited for publication. The following is my impressionistic report of some of the points raised during that gathering. Te Ahukaramu¯ Charles Royal, Te Haurapa:An Introduction to Researching Tribal Histories and Traditions, Bridget Williams Books/Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1992; Monty Soutar,‘A Framework for Analysing Written Iwi Histories’, He Pu¯kenga Ko¯rero, vol. 2, no. 1, 1996. Biographical information here and elsewhere on White is from Michael Reilly, ‘John White:The Making of a Nineteenth-century Writer and Collector of Maori Tradition’, NZJH, vol. 23, no. 2, 1989, pp. 157–72. It will be obvious to any reader that in discussing White’s response to certain Ma¯ori cultural requirements I myself have had to disrespect the privacy of his diary. This is a common dilemma for any historian and, in a parallel argument to this fragment of the essay, requires sensitivity and empathy, if not approval, for the subject of any historical research. John White, ‘Private Journal’, 14 Jun 1847, qMS, ATL. Spelling and punctuation accord with the original. In later writings White referred to burial grounds around the Hokianga which belonged to earlier tribes which had subsequently left the area and were not treated with any circumspection or respect by later inhabitants. See John White, Maori Superstitions,Williamson and Wilson, Auckland, 1856, p. 14. Judging from his comments this does not seem to apply to this site. One of the locals with them, John Webster, later maintained that they had come upon the site quite by accident while out pig hunting; John Webster, Reminiscences of an Old Settler in Australia and New Zealand, Southern Reprint, Papakura, nd, pp. 276–9. White,‘Private Journal’, 4 Sep 1847. White,‘Private Journal’, 6 Dec 1848. White,‘Private Journal’, 26 May 1850. This donation may refer to another human bone flute obtained by White on a trip up the Waima river in the Hokianga; he identified the bone as coming from a man killed in the Wairarapa. He gives no indication of how he came by it. See White,‘Private Journal’, 23 Feb, 1 Mar 1849. White,‘Private Journal’, 10 Jan 1848. John White,‘Maori History – incomplete MS’, in John White,‘Papers and Memoranda relating to the Maori’, NZ MS 714, vol. 1,Auckland City Libraries.This is the draft for the final part of his ‘Lectures on Maori Customs and Superstitions’, AJHR, 1861, E-7, p. 43. See, for example, his first lecture in this series originally published as Maori Superstitions, p. 33.

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24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36

37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44

45 46 47 48 49

36

The following discussion derives from Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma, 1991, pp. 127–44. Thomas, Entangled Objects, pp. 177–81. The following example is from Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1994, pp. 61–5. For example,Thomas, Entangled Objects, pp. 205–7, Colonialism’s Culture, pp. 13–15. Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture, pp. 15–16, 160–7. R. M. Ross, ‘The Autochthonous New Zealand Soil’, in Peter Munz (ed.), The Feel of Truth: Essays in New Zealand and Pacific History, Reed,Wellington, 1969, p. 52. Ross, pp. 52, 53. Ross, pp. 57–8. Ross, p. 58. Ross, p. 59. Ross, p. 49. For example, Judith Binney,‘Maori Oral Narratives, Pakeha Written Texts:Two Forms of Telling History’, NZJH, vol. 21, no. 1, 1987, pp. 16–28; Jeffrey Sissons, Te Waimana: The Spring of Mana: Tuhoe History and the Colonial Encounter, University of Otago Press, Dunedin, 1991, pp. 229–85. The following analysis is taken from Gregory Schrempp, Magical Arrows:The Maori, the Greeks, and the Folklore of the Universe, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison,Wisconsin, 1992, pp. 76–80. James Belich, Making Peoples:A History of the New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century, Penguin, Auckland, 1996, p. 41. Herbert W.Williams, A Dictionary of the Maori Language, 7th edn, GP Books,Wellington, 1971, p. 39. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1969, p. 9. Mauss, p. 9. Mauss, p. 86. The following section is based upon my readings in Michael Reilly,‘Inter-views of New Zealand History’, Southern Review, vol. 29, no. 3, 1996, pp. 268–70; Reilly, ‘Te Matakite Hou o nga Korero Nehe no Niu Tireni: Revisioning New Zealand History’, in Paul Spoonley, David Pearson and Cluny Macpherson (eds), Nga Patai: Racism and Ethnic Relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, 1996, pp. 85–7. The two works discussed are James Belich, ‘I Shall Not Die’: Titokowaru’s War: New Zealand, 1868–9, Allen and Unwin/Port Nicholson Press,Wellington, 1989; Rangiaahuta Alan Herewini Ruka Broughton, Ngaa Mahi Whakaari a Tiitokowaru,Victoria University Press,Wellington, 1993.Translations of Broughton’s texts are my own. Soutar, pp. 54–5. Judith Binney, Redemption Songs: A Life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, Auckland University Press/Bridget Williams Books, Auckland, 1995, p. 4; see also her ‘Maori Oral Narratives’. Epeli Hau‘ofa, ‘Our Sea of Islands’, The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 6, no. 1, 1994, pp. 149–50, 152–3, 154–5, 160. Greg Dening, The Death of William Gooch:A History’s Anthropology, University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu, 1995, p. 156. Dening, The Death of William Gooch, p. 155. Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land: Marquesas 1774–1880, University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu, 1980, pp. 157, 158. Dening, Islands and Beaches, p.158 and Mr Bligh’s Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty, Cambridge University Press, Canto edn, Cambridge, 1992, p. 177.

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50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

The following paragraph is drawn from Dening, The Death of William Gooch, pp. 156–8. Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Minority Histories: Subaltern Pasts’, Humanities Research, Winter 1997, p. 25. Chakrabarty, pp. 18–21. Chakrabarty, pp. 22–5. The following sentences come from Chakrabarty, pp. 26–9. Chakrabarty, p. 30. Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture, pp. 58–60, 105–6, 171. Thomas, Entangled Objects, pp. 206–7.

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¯ ti Awa, North Taranaki. PETER ADDS,TE A¯TI AWA WAITANGI TRIBUNAL Hapu of Te A EVIDENCE,WAI 143, D1–D10,VOL 1, 1991

2 Ma¯ Pango Ma¯ Whero Ka Oti: Unities and Fragments in Ma¯ or i History |

DA N N Y K E E N A N

Ma¯ori historians are increasingly interested in depicting the Ma¯ori past in ways which recognise Ma¯ori customary forms of organising knowledge, including knowledge of the past. Such presentations of the past not only provide Ma¯ori histories with a customary infrastructure, but they also incorporate material from a wide array of sources: waiata, tauparapara (incantation), whaiko¯rero (marae oratory), whakairo (carving), oral testimony, and ancient stories. As well as providing narratives about past events, these sources particularly emphasise people, places and relationships.1 A preference for Ma¯ori customary knowledge over more conventional forms of history writing poses challenges for Ma¯ori historians, especially in accessing those forms of knowledge.2 It should not be surprising that when writing about the past, Ma¯ori prefer to focus on the years prior to European arrival. Pre-contact histories are invariably affirming in nature; they open a window to Ma¯ori society before the changes wrought by contact with Pa¯keha¯, and they offer opportunities to work with customary forms of knowledge such as whakapapa.3 Given the interaction between Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ in this country, and the need to preserve Ma¯ori knowledge, Ma¯ori have good reason to present their histories in this way; iwi and hapu¯ histories invoked on the marae, for example, are invariably framed by whakapapa. Most Ma¯ori working with customary forms of knowledge are aware of the ways in which their research should be conducted. They generally agree that research should comply with the conventions of the marae, such as properly approaching, and dealing with testimony from the old

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people. These conventions are important and exert considerable influence over the processes of researching and writing Ma¯ori history.4 ‘Customary knowledge’ may be described at any number of levels. Ma¯ori researchers have a strong sense of what constitutes customary knowledge, knowing it to be a complex and contested issue that is frequently debated on the marae.5 Ma¯ori will take issue with Pa¯keha¯ historians who seek to define or qualify the nature of customary knowledge, adding further to the historiographical debate around it.6 As I argue in this essay, however, such types of knowledge and history writing for Ma¯ori substantially derive from local tribal or hapu¯ contexts. E.T. Durie has suggested that a national description of Ma¯ori customary knowledge in a range of spheres is possible – how Ma¯ ori social organisation affected issues of land tenure, for example.Yet as he notes, ‘practice and process varied from place to place, over time and according to particular circumstances’. As a result, changes and variations meant that certain customary rules did not always become fixed despite the existence of underlying certainties. Various tenets of customary knowledge ‘may not have acquired the status of a rule (though there was a consistency in the underlying ruling ideology, norms [and] values)’.7 Accordingly, there were always countless local stories from different areas and kinship groups that emphasised many different people, places, events and relationships. They were all important as independent – though seemingly fragmented – stories.When combined, they exceeded the sum of their disparate parts and constituted a greater historical unity and tradition. In some areas, Ma¯ori sought to maintain that greater unity in the face of ongoing and sometimes violent material and cultural disruption. The whakataua¯kı¯ (proverb) I cite in the title of this essay reflects this view – Ma¯ pango ma¯ whero ka oti, the many important colours contribute to the finished tapestry. Pre-contact histories of Ma¯ ori people may draw heavily upon customary organising devices such as whakapapa, but such ways of representing the Ma¯ori past are seldom extended across the nineteenth century.Yet this needs to be done if the actions of Ma¯ori after 1800, as well as before then, are to be positioned within an ongoing context of ‘customary knowledge’. As conveyed through devices like tauparapara, waiata and whaiko¯rero, customary knowledge offers vital insights into the activities of Ma¯ori right across the turbulent nineteenth century – and beyond. Not all historians would agree with approaches which accord a primacy to customary knowledge across the spectrum of Ma¯ori history.8

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There is a greater preference for histories framed by ‘race relations’ issues of contact between Ma¯ori and incoming settlers, which have long dominated the historiography of the nineteenth century. Contemporary interest in relations between Ma¯ori and Pa¯ keha¯, and the process of resolving Crown breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi suggest that ‘race relations’ history will continue to dominate approaches to this country’s nineteenth-century past for some time yet.9 Moreover, it is commonly held that the combined effects of colonisation and the work of agencies such as the Native Land Court served to muddy the waters of customary Ma¯ ori recollection. Durie notes that our perceptions of Ma¯ori community activity may have been ‘distorted by the opinions of settlers and colonial officials’.10 In these circumstances, the basis of the ‘customary’ nature of customary knowledge has been questioned. In answering such challenges to the use of customary knowledge in writing Ma¯ ori history, I suggest that when seeking to present the histories of Ma¯ori across the colonial era, it is the ‘customary’ forms of Ma¯ori knowledge that aid most in understanding the activities of Ma¯ori communities. This essay offers a range of issues and approaches that Ma¯ori – and non-Ma¯ori – historians, might consider when seeking to represent more broadly the histories of nineteenth-century Ma¯ ori communities. My own tribal district of origin, North Taranaki, is my particular focus here. In using this area as a case study, I am conforming with the general convention that in researching and writing Ma¯ori history, scholars should write about their own home area and people, especially if they are using whakapapa.

Maintaining tribal unities Common tribal stories of the past and a common geography centred on the imposing mountain provided the basis for a shared sense of Taranaki identity throughout the nineteenth century. Such shared tribal narratives were deposited within tribal memories, and they were kept alive in a variety of expressive forms, ranging from waiata to carvings. Elders often invoked these memories in formal testimony. In 1880, for example, Erueti Rangikopinga testified before the Native Affairs Committee and laid claim to the lands ‘all the way from the Tukeho Stream to Taitairamaka’.This claim arose from earlier land confiscations, and Erueti was seeking the return of confiscated kinship lands in particular.11 His claim seemed excessive to the Committee chairman, who asked ‘Do

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they claim all that land?’ Erueti replied: ‘These are the fixed boundaries of the Taranaki people. It includes Mount Egmont. These are the original boundaries and we claim within these . . . . our ancestor was called Rua Taranaki and the tribe is called Taranaki.’12 Erueti emphasised that his people were not actually claiming all of this land, but only 100 acres of Nga¯ti Tu, Te Kaingati and Nga¯ti Haumea land within it. The total landscape described in the petition was cited ‘merely to show that we claim within these boundaries . . . . I only claim the land of my grandmother who lived here and cultivated this land.’13 The whole, as well as the fragments in it, was significant. Erueti’s comments suggested a certain view of a common kinship throughout Taranaki. In order to emphasise this shared sense of kinship, Erueti cited a joint ancestor and pointed to a common land area. He stated this simply enough, but it would have had a profound resonance for Taranaki Ma¯ori and indeed for all Ma¯ori. As Durie has noted, the ‘cultural, social and spiritual life of the community was built around land.The land was posited as a living being from which the community derived. Founding ancestors enhanced this organic identity.’14 Erueti spoke at a time when the entire Taranaki landscape was changing rapidly under the impact of European settlement. Relations between Ma¯ori and the new settlers were often fraught; according to historian Hazel Riseborough,‘Victorian notions of racial and cultural superiority meant that a partnership between Maori and European was an impossibility: it was domination or nothing.’15 By 1880, Pa¯keha¯ colonisation had done much to erode the sense of unity that Erueti invoked. Yet even before the arrival of European settlers in 1841, the unity asserted by Erueti had been under pressure from intensive and frequent attack from the north. Aggressive incursions from Waikato tribes in particular had commenced a half-century earlier, and had inflicted a deadly impact upon the Taranaki people and their land. The ravaged landscape, destroyed villages, disturbed landmarks and wa¯hi tapu, an horrific death-toll and a scattered populace testified to the heavy material effect of the attacks.16 Of course, the material and military impact affected the cultural life of Taranaki people. The incursions severely disrupted the ways that the tribes organised and recorded themselves on the land long before the Pa¯keha¯ settlers arrived.17 After 1827, when the first whalers established a shore base at Nga¯motu, the material and cultural impact of external contact upon Taranaki Ma¯ori continued unabated. Specifically, Taranaki Ma¯ori were progressively confronted with disruptions to the security of land

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holdings.The Waikato attacks would continue for another decade, but at the same time, pressure was building from expanding European settlement and colonisation. The responses of the iwi and hapu¯ to the Pa¯keha¯ settlers especially can be seen in the many histories of interaction written about this period.18 Yet the tribal accounts of local Ma¯ori at this time tell of a people doing rather more than just reacting to waves of settlers. A recent Nga¯ti Te Whiti account of the mid-nineteenth century barely mentioned the arrival of European settlers. Instead, its primary focus was on the surviving families, the ways they regenerated themselves, and the land upon which this revival was achieved. This was history told through their whakapapa. The stories of contact and its impact were moved to the periphery; foremost in the narrative was the assertion of a shared sense of a history of mana that had survived, despite the frequent incursions from the north and the encroachment of European settlers.19 The impact of new settlers upon customary ways of dealing with Ma¯ori knowledge escalated following more organised Pa¯keha¯ settlement. Moana Jackson has described such impacts as ‘the unacknowledged and denied acts of colonisation’. They were all products, he states, of foreign ideas introduced into the Ma¯ori intellectual domain – ‘a Christian God, a capitalist ethic, a common law, an imperial domain and an individuated manifest destiny’.20 By the time that Erueti made his claim before the Native Affairs Committee, these ‘denied acts’ had radically impinged upon the continuing viability of Taranaki histories of mana. They had also seriously affected the ongoing and changing utility of customary knowledge, including the use of whakapapa across the nineteenth century. As Erueti was subtly pointing out, however, little had really changed beneath the surface. Ma¯ori communities of Taranaki were still asserting their histories of mana, as they had always done. They were citing revered forebears, who were still anchored into ancient landscapes, even though that same land might be slipping from the grasp of the people. Ma¯ori made such assertions irrespective of Pa¯keha¯ settlers advancing their ‘foreign ideas’, including laws which sought to extinguish Ma¯ori legal title to the land upon which their histories were entrenched.21 Such customary responses, drawing into the pre-contact years for validation in the face of later Crown challenges, remained important through the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. Responses that incorporated a reliance upon customary knowledge and the land were uppermost when Ma¯ori conceptualised nineteenth-century issues,

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and, where necessary, formulated responses to them. Associated with the land was a ‘complex relationship between people, the natural environment, gods, ancestors and spirits’.22 Yet while this was so, many of the new issues – those ‘denied acts of colonisation’ – cut deeply into Ma¯ori thinking, and sharply intruded upon the underlying bases of tribal unity.

The unity of whakapapa The device of whakapapa persisted as the primary organising device of iwi and hapu¯ history throughout the nineteenth century. Whakapapa was also the central storehouse of tribal mana, and implicit in its gradations of names were the places – the land – where that mana and those histories were anchored. In nineteenth-century whakapapa, deities remained as a focus of histories of mana. According to Durie, ‘whakapapa linked the land’s occupiers to the earliest occupying groups and even to the atua (gods) that formed it’.23 The importance of organising extended narratives of the past into recognisable history was thus not diminished, even if the tendency persisted for speakers to be oral, selective or intuitive as the occasion warranted. Deities were the highest echelon of historical narrative within whakapapa.This could also incorporate the ‘genealogy of the gods’, or ancestors deemed to be of spiritual origin.24 In nineteenth-century Taranaki, this initial component of whakapapa – including ancestors such as Rua Taranaki – persisted as a critical part of a tribe’s recall and mediation of knowledge into history. The Native Land Court in particular received a considerable amount of whakapapa filed as evidence alongside other documentary claims for land during major block disputes or investigations for new titles. Histories of mana heard in the courts constituted a record that had been established with frequent recourse to the customary tribal record. Accordingly, Ma¯ori ‘demonstrated great care in defining their guardianship’ of land and resources.25 In Taranaki, as elsewhere, Ma¯ ori accomplished this by continuing to deploy the device of whakapapa regardless of formal procedures that sought to undermine and deny its validity. Descent traditions were essentially histories ‘anchored in locality’.They also incorporated other aspects of customary knowledge such as mana whenua which marked out the land over which tribes continued to exercise claim and authority.26 It is evident, nevertheless, that much whakapapa may have been lost in that period, but also that its

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value increased in intensity. This was especially the case when, Durie believes, Ma¯ori made strenuous efforts to ‘whakapapa to both original occupiers and dominant migrants. The former had mana (right to the land or right to occupy the land), the latter, mana tangata (control over persons). By descent from both, one had all toes embedded in the soil.’27 The nineteenth-century impact on whakapapa was probably not fully realised until the next century, although Ma¯ori voiced their concern about the loss of whakapapa in the context of the loss of all things Ma¯ori. Nonetheless, an examination of whakapapa, its contents, and its emphases, reveals that it remained a critical method of tribal recall and history telling, despite the ‘denied acts of colonisation’ penetrating into the underlying sources of customary knowledge, such as the land. Ultimately, however, the mana of the deities merged into the mana of mortal ancestors, those recalled ancestors who were seen to be more mortal than spiritual and whose lives were generally locked into the known landscape. Whakapapa was all about the lives of such ancestors, and especially their families and formation into kinship groups.28 The nineteenth century was a time of great history telling in Taranaki, when spectacular hui generated significant whaiko¯rero. Faced with profound social and cultural change, tribes were compelled to act on new issues but sought solutions based on traditional ways of thinking. This was evident when Wiremu Kingi Rangitake wrote to Governor Gore Browne in 1859, saying that ‘I will not agree to our bedroom being sold (I mean Waitara here), for this bed belongs to the whole of us . . . .You may insist, but I will never agree to it.’29 It was also apparent at Parihaka before 1881 when Te Whiti o Rongomai ‘continued his show of autonomy long after any such challenge to European supremacy could hope to succeed’.30 Whaiko¯rero may have continued to be oral and selective, but its underlying framework remained one of an ongoing expression of Taranaki unity, manifested in many unwritten forms. Local unity was inherent, and Ma¯ori endeavoured to emphasise it wherever possible. This was not easy for some hapu¯ experiencing the impact of Pa¯keha¯ settlers after the 1840s.

Unity and ambivalence The unity of the Taranaki hapu¯ and iwi, as frequently expressed in customary terms, was largely maintained across the nineteenth century. This occurred despite evidence of an increasing ambivalence; depictions

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of the past were as likely to be fragmentary and incomplete, given that presentations of histories were often attuned to specific occasions, such as Native Land Court hearings. Yet Ma¯ori speeches and pronouncements after the 1830s still frequently harked back to a perception of Taranaki identity. They also emphasised the enduring relevance of Ma¯ ori customary forms of knowledge, expression and activity which underlay social and political change. The unity ultimately sprang from a common whakapapa, the customary framework that tied together the iwi of Taranaki.This strong sense of inherent unity endured to the 1927 Sim Commission, which was appointed to investigate land confiscations.31 Speaking before that Commission, Ma¯ori repeatedly invoked whakapapa which drew the people together.Thereafter, this sense of unity provided the basis for the establishment of the Taranaki Ma¯ori Trust Board in 1932. But a subtle shift had occurred by this time.The whakapapa invoked before the Sim Commission wove the people together but it also pulled them into a common history of land confiscations. The Taranaki land confiscations after 1865 now competed with customary knowledge as a basic source of unity.This more recent and quite justified grievance over land issues gained in importance as a focus of unity alongside the longstanding, inherent sense of customary knowledge of ancestors, common land holdings, and whakapapa. Riseborough astutely captured this change when she suggested that Taranaki had long had the ‘cohesion of a tribal district’ but since the later nineteenth century another cohesion had stemmed from a single cause – ‘a grievance: land confiscation’.32 To be sure, much had happened in the nineteenth century to challenge the unity of the tribes. The Waikato raids had substantially united the people against a common aggressor. But Pa¯keha¯ colonisation and the later conflicts were more complex. The Land Wars after 1860 had partly arisen from bitter inter-hapu¯ feuding over land alienation, quite apart from the desire of Te A¯ti Awa to assert its ownership of land in the face of Crown resistance.33 Despite this, much of the speechmaking and activity of the time was underpinned by the desire of Taranaki Ma¯ori to achieve a distinct Taranaki consensus, as seen in speech, song, chant, carving styles and other unwritten sources such as language and dialect.These were the sources that compelled the search for unity and in their turn, generated a certain rhetoric of unity to be invoked on particular occasions. But this quest for unity could be an ambivalent aspiration especially in the face of later local contests for land between hapu¯ and families before the Native Land Court. The rapid

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fusion of unconventional situations and the intense ferment resulting from Pa¯keha¯ colonisation only accentuated this further.

The fragmenting of Te A¯ti Awa By moving the focus to individual Taranaki tribes – Te A¯ti Awa in particular – the various ways that these competing sources of unity played out against each other can be explored in greater detail. Issues of ¯ ti Awa identity remained in a state of flux from the 1820s.The name Te A itself had long competed with ‘Nga¯ti Awa’ as the appropriate descriptive. ¯ ti Awa’ was the more favoured name, but ‘Nga¯ti Awa’ was often ‘Te A used by Ma¯ ori who occasionally asserted a traditional Taranaki connection to the Bay of Plenty. This connection was seen to have been of little practical effect when Pa¯keha¯ settlers first arrived, although it was revived later in the century. Throughout most of the later nineteenth century, Te A¯ti Awa hapu¯ ¯ ti Awa comprised were well-populated and productive. By the 1860s,Te A a large number of active hapu¯, each with its own boundaries and living areas.This was a largely amicable and fluid arrangement that allowed for development and change according to well-defined and long-established kinship rules.34 From around 1900, the three northern tribes of Te A¯ti Awa asserted their desire to be seen as independent; their assertion of difference was heard again during the land confiscation hearings of the Sim Commission. Records of that Commission and the Native Land Court display a clear enunciation of difference between hapu¯ that did not challenge the customary sources of unity, but turned instead on land ¯ ti Awa recorded earlier by the Compendisputes.35 A list of hapu¯ of Te A sation Court revealed the complexity of the picture, and showed how hapu¯ configurations had altered considerably over time. ¯ ti Awa was, in one sense, an The large number of hapu¯ within Te A ¯ expression of the mana whenua that Te Ati Awa asserted over its lands as well as the intensive use that was made of it. According to Alex Watson, ¯ ti Awa ‘developed an intimate relationship with the land and its Te A resources so that we shaped it and it shaped us’.Te A¯ti Awa made much of the fact that they lived within a defined territory, and that they were the first to settle in the area; they represented an uninterrupted descent continuum from the earliest settlers, as evident in their longstanding histories.36

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Te A¯ti Awa developed through interaction with the environment and with other iwi into a vibrant and dynamic political entity. This entity was firmly based on the hapu¯ as the main unit of everyday life and expression of rangatiratanga. Whakapapa remained as the focus of knowledge and history, within a unified sense of deities, land and history.These were all assembled to serve the outworking of the mana of ¯ ti Awa were able to recall their histories and people the tribe.Thus,Te A of prominence. According to Native Land Court records, for example, Ngati Rahiri recorded the following as their principal men who returned in the 1848 heke: Te Kahinga, Tu Tawa, Te Nirihanga, Ko Ongiongi, Areno, Grey, Nikodemus and Te Kaokao.37 The nineteenth century witnessed many changes to the nature of the customary land holdings, especially changes imposed by the Crown. Modifications also occurred in the nature of hapu¯ relationships, especially where contests for land were common, although the reverence for and creation of common wa¯hi tapu persisted.The customary Ma¯ori attitude to land was complex, and the contest it generated in the new environment underlay much of the Taranaki Ma¯ori activity during the period. Some ¯ ti Awa were unclear Ma¯ori found that precise hapu¯ boundaries within Te A during the later nineteenth century.This was often particularly so from the view of individual hapu¯. Given the widespread changes that were occurring after 1860, hapu¯ and community boundaries were often difficult ¯ ti Awa kauma¯tua conceded that the exact hapu¯ boundaries to locate.Te A were uncertain, especially after the Land Wars when the confiscations began to take effect.To a large degree, hapu¯ and the land on which they lived were in a constant state of flux, despite the intimate nature of the ¯ ti Awa as a whole.38 family relationships within Te A There may well be contemporary reasons for later-twentieth-century Ma¯ori delineating their hapu¯ boundaries. As the Waitangi Tribunal’s report on the Taranaki claim has pointed out, the later-nineteenthcentury social situation became very dynamic. Boundaries as well as identities were seemingly subject to frequent alteration. Local Ma¯ori did not always perceive this fluidity as significant, however, as hapu¯ were named and attendant land areas generally well known, given the closeness of inter-hapu¯ relations. Intermarriage sometimes added a confusion when attempts were made to link land with individuals recorded as either having been born at, or at some stage having defended a particular area of land.39 Crown Grant allocations compounded the problem of which Ma¯ori had entitlements to which specific lands. In 1884, the West Coast

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Commissioner indiscriminately conferred Crown Land Grants on Ma¯ori.The Pukerangiora area, near Waitara, exemplifies this confusion. The Pukerangiora estate was deemed after 1840 to have been purchased by the New Zealand Company. Governor FitzRoy’s later decision to overrule parts of that purchase effectively transferred title back to Pukerangiora, or it should have done. The Land Wars after 1860 totally enveloped the area; a series of major conflicts was fought along the southern bank of the Waitara River, right up to the site of the old Pukerangiora Pa¯. When Crown Grants were later allocated for the Pukerangiora area, part of the land was found to be occupied by Te Amo and his people, apparently from Nga¯ti Maru, just across the river. The Commission deemed these people to be squatters – which they probably were – and set aside a large alternative reserve for them further inland within the heavily bushed Nga¯ti Maru rohe itself.Te Amo refused to move, claiming a right to remain through descent from his mother. The local people objected but Te Amo’s claim was later upheld. The resulting exchange of land further clouded traditional claims as Te Amo continued to identify himself as belonging to Nga¯ti Maru, rather than Pukerangiora, on whose land he was – rightly or wrongly – dwelling.40 Further south stood the old pa¯ site of Manukorihi. By the early 1800s, this pa¯ had become the central focus of the northern Taranaki district. In area, Manukorihi was once the largest fortification in Taranaki, covering almost 23 acres.The wood carving there was famous, and local schools of learning vied with Pukerangiora for acclaim. Manukorihi had exercised considerable military and political influence at this time.Traditions hold that its chiefs and fighting men were sought in military alliances and battles, such as those that occurred between Ka¯whia and Waikato tribes around 1800. Defeated in battle, the Ka¯whia tribes took sanctuary in Nga¯ti Mutunga territory, just north of Urenui, and inevitably married into the local hapu¯. By about 1840, some 200–300 people, primarily of Manukorihi and Nga¯ti Mutunga, lived around Waitara. Elements of Otaraua and Nga¯ti Maru lived in Mamaku Pa¯; Manukorihi and some Otaraua also lived in Titirangi Pa¯, Kainganui Pa¯ and Mangaparua Pa¯. All of these diverse groups of people resided on lands of various hapu¯. This was the situation when European settlers drifted into the area. On 20 September 1843, Reretawhangawhanga, the ariki of Manukorihi and the father of Wiremu Kingi, died. Alarmed at the arrival of large numbers of Pa¯keha¯ settlers, he had earlier insisted that Wiremu Kingi promise never to permit the Pa¯keha¯ to settle in Waitara.Wiremu

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Kingi was to keep the oath as an inheritance for all Te A¯ti Awa. As such, it remained important because of its source of sustenance for local people. Much of the land around Waitara was swampy, and frequent rainfall rendered large areas seasonal in productivity. But the nonswampy land could grow ku¯mara, taro and later corn and two crops of potatoes a year. The climate was warm with few frosts. Ground was rested for two years between crops so that the fertility would not be exhausted. Apple and peach orchards were also planted, and use of timber was carefully controlled as most of the land was cleared for crops.This was especially so in the Waitara area, but further south to the Nga¯ti Te Whiti domain, extensive growing was also common.41 Later sales and confiscations made it difficult for Te A¯ti Awa to maintain their traditional activities of hui, marae and tangi. Manukorihi, for example, was included within the parcel of land confiscated by the Crown under the provisions of the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 in punishment for Te A¯ti Awa being in ‘rebellion’. A Crown Grant was issued for Manukorihi under the West Coast Settlement Act 1880 on 6 June 1883 to Enoka and others for an area totalling 25 acres. Enoka was one of the Manukorihi chiefs who commanded one of the waka on the return home from Waikanae.The Crown Grant included four other names.Whether these names were the same as those who crewed with him on the heke is unknown, as the names had not been recorded in 1848. A condition placed on the grant was that the ‘Said Lands shall be inalienable by sale, gift or mortgage or in other way whatsoever.’ The grant effectively placed the land into individual ownership. This meant that the customary land tenure system, long the material source of histories and traditions as well as communal use such as hui and tangi, was effectively extinguished.The site of the great pa¯ was now subject to Crown land conditions, and placed in the hands of five people.42 Issues of mana whenua were important to Ma¯ori where the establishing of histories of customary occupation was concerned. These histories were preserved over time to enhance the mana of the tribes of the north Taranaki area. Later claims by Ma¯ori to mana whenua reinforced for each tribe the sense of a history anchored within a specific locality. In the end, these substantiated a tribe’s sense of mana, as experienced in the landscape, and as recorded in the wa¯hi tapu found across that landscape. Whakapapa remained as the primary conduit through which relationships and unities were preserved, despite the tangible realities of

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loss and dispossession facing Ma¯ori communities. Longstanding alliances through relationships could be cited to enhance the security and prosperity of the people. Noted orators, warriors and chiefs of the past could be recalled, and, importantly, located within the ancient landscape. Kinship linkages could be reaffirmed, and the mana of the people restated, even in the face of severe challenge and even as the land itself was slipping from the grasp, but not the comprehension, of the people. Equally, the consequences of severe impacts upon the material and cultural resources of the people, especially upon the land, could be withstood. The predominant issue for the tribes of Taranaki and elsewhere was to sustain the unity of the people, and the continuing sense of unity through which Ma¯ori might view the past. This was achieved, in the context of fragmentation, through the unity of customary Ma¯ori knowledge. It may be inevitable then that modern Ma¯ori scholars have begun to recognise the complex histories such as occurred in Taranaki. Nor should it be surprising that they have tried to weave into their histories the narratives from sources such as tauparapara, whaiko¯rero and waiata. In this way, those things that were important to Ma¯ori, in their past – people, places and relationships long concealed from history – can be accentuated, as well as offering new narratives about the past.The key to this is undoubtedly whakapapa, which provides Ma¯ ori with firm imperatives to tell their history, including their histories throughout the entire nineteenth century. Whakapapa is now likely to be used increasingly as the controlling device and infrastructure of Ma¯ ori history, especially during the colonial era, when much happened that seemingly unravelled and fragmented the very sources of that customary knowledge. Such an intricate weaving of commentary emphasises the strong place of a sense of history, of Ma¯ori people acting consistently within their own enduring histories.

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Sidney Moko Mead, Landmarks, Bridges and Visions: Aspects of Ma¯ori Culture, Victoria University Press,Wellington, 1997. Te Ahukaramu Charles Royal, Te Haurapa: An Introduction to Researching Tribal Histories and Traditions, Bridget Williams Books/Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1992.

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26 27 28 29 30

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Cleve Barlow, Tikanga Whakaaro: Key Concepts in Maori Culture, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1991, pp. 171–4. Monty Soutar, ‘A Framework For Analysing Written Iwi Histories’, He Pu¯kenga Ko¯rero, vol. 2, no. 1, 1996, pp. 43–57. E.T. Durie,‘Maori Custom Law’, unpublished paper, 1994. Te Maire Tau, ‘Ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori as Epistemology’, Te Pouhere Korero, vol. 1, no. 1, 1999, pp. 10–23. Durie, p. 1. Historian Peter Munz is one prominent critic of these approaches; see Tau, p. 10. Jock Phillips, ‘Of Verandahs and Fish and Chips and Footie on Saturday Afternoon: Reflections on 100 years of New Zealand Historiography’, NZJH, vol. 24, no. 2, 1990, pp. 118–34. Durie, p. 1. Hazel Riseborough, Days Of Darkness: Taranaki 1878–1884, Allen and Unwin/Port Nicholson Press,Wellington, 1989, pp. 31–51. ¯ ti Rua Taranaki is one of the earliest tupuna of Taranaki. Joe Ritai, Submission of Te A Awa before the Waitangi Tribunal, Owae Marae,Waitara, 8 Apr 1991,Wai 143, D1, p. 17. Petition of Erueti Rangikopinga and others, Petition no. 291, Le 1/1880/6, Legislative Department files, NA. Durie, p. 61. Riseborough, p. 214. Ranginui Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou: Struggle Without End, Penguin, Auckland, 1990, pp. 83–4. James Bailey, Submission of Nga¯ti Rahiri before the Waitangi Tribunal, Owae Marae, 11 Apr 1991,Wai 143, D13, p. 84. B.Wells, The History of Taranaki, Thomas Avery, New Plymouth, 1878, reprinted Capper Press, Christchurch, 1976. A more recent account of earliest European arrival at Nga¯motu is Sally Maclean, A History of the Ngamotu Mission and the Grey Institute Trust, Grey Institute Trust, New Plymouth, 1992. Darcy Keenan, Submission of Nga¯ti Te Whiti before the Waitangi Tribunal, Owae Marae, 11 Apr, 1991,Wai 143, D14, p. 3. Moana Jackson, ‘ The Treaty and the Word:The Colonisation of Maori Philosophy’, in Graham Oddie and Roy Perrett (ed.), Justice, Ethics and New Zealand Society, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1992, p. 1. Such legislation as the Native Lands Acts of 1862 and 1865, for example, which sought to extinguish Ma¯ori customary title in land. See David V.Williams, ‘Te Kooti Tango Whenua’: The Native Land Court 1864–1909, Huia Publishers,Wellington, 1999. Durie, p. 62. Durie, p. 64. ‘Genealogy of the Gods’ or ‘Te Whakapapa o te Taiao Whanui’ are the terms used by Barlow, p. 174. Judith Binney, ‘The Native Land Court and the Ma¯ori Communities, 1865–1890’, in Judith Binney, Judith Bassett and Erik Olssen, The People and the Land:Te Tangata Me Te Whenua. An Illustrated History of New Zealand, Allen and Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, Wellington, 1990, p. 144. ¯ ti Awa before the Waitangi Tribunal, Peter Adds and Alex Watene, Submission of Te A Owae Marae, 8 Apr 1991,Wai 143, D3, pp. 24–33. Durie, p. 65. Barlow suggests two further categories – ‘Genealogy of Mortal Man or Primal Genealogies’ and ‘Genealogy of the Canoes’, p. 174. Wiremu Kingi to the Governor, AJHR, 1860, E-3, p. 6. Riseborough, p. 223.

¯ PA N G O M A ¯ W H E RO K A O T I MA

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

AJHR, 1928, G-7. Riseborough, p. ix. ‘The Taranaki Wars – The First War’, Waitangi Tribunal, The Taranaki Report: Kaupapa Tuatahi, Waitangi Tribunal,Wellington, 1996, pp. 83–7. ¯ ti Awa before the Waitangi Tribunal, Owae Marae, 8 Apr Alex Watson, Submission of Te A 1991,Wai 143, D3, p. 34. Greg White, Submission of Nga¯ti Tama before the Waitangi Tribunal, Urenui Marae, 17 Oct 1991,Wai 143, F19, p. 21. Watson, Submission,Wai 143, D3, p. 34 ¯ ti Awa before the Waitangi Tribunal, Owae Peter Adds and others, Submission of Te A Marae, 8 Apr 1991,Wai 143, D3, pp. 24–33. Watson, Submission,Wai 143, D3, p. 34. ¯ ti Awa before the Waitangi Tribunal, Owae Marae, 9 Apr Ted Tamati, Submission of Te A 1991,Wai 143, D17, p. 1. Ted Tamati, Submission of Pukerangiora before the Waitangi Tribunal, Owae Marae, 12 Apr 1991,Wai 143, D17, p. 1. Bailey, Submission,Wai 143, D13, p. 84. The subsequent history of this area can be found in Wai 143, P118.

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3 Surveying Space: Constructing the Colonial Landscape |

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‘How often have I sat on the mountain-side’, wrote the English novelist Samuel Butler in Erewhon (1872),‘and watched the waving downs, with the two white specks of huts in the distance, and the little square of garden behind them; the paddock with a patch of bright green oats above the huts, and the yards and wool-sheds down on the flat below; all seen as through the wrong end of a telescope, so clear and brilliant was the air, or as upon a colossal model or map spread out beneath me.’1 Butler’s description of the Canterbury countryside perfectly expresses the goals of the British colonising vision: to claim, tame and redefine the meaning of landscape in specifically English terms. Butler employs the panoptic gaze, a strategy which enables him to adopt the viewpoint of the all-seeing ‘I/eye’, and which allows him to take ‘possession’ of the territory within his frame of vision. His perspective embraces elements of the picturesque, where the scene is characterised by symbols of civilisation (‘the huts, and the yards and wool-sheds’). Butler’s comments also illustrate the way in which the personal is an integral part of this colonising vision: he assumes the land is both waiting for and available to him, as accessible as a ‘map spread out beneath’ him. He also stresses its utilitarian value and its productive potential within a capitalist economy. Most significantly, Butler’s sentiments reveal an overriding preoccupation with seeing the land as ‘landscape’, with all the assumptions of domestication and familiarity that term carried. In literature – as Butler’s observations show – in science, in the visual arts and in the language of advertising, the New Zealand landscape has

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been repeatedly invoked as a central motif signifying our cultural distinctiveness and imparting a sense of national identity. It continues to be a recurring theme, pervading our sense of who we are and how we relate ourselves to others. It is essential to understand how such ideas arose if we are to know why certain images of New Zealand identity continue to be recycled. I address this issue here by discussing the idea of space in relation to landscape, and particularly the ways in which landscapes were constructed by land surveyors in New Zealand during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Specifically, I offer some thoughts on colonial surveying activity and the concept of landscape and how the two are connected. I also consider the idea of ‘cultural space’, by which I refer to ‘place’ that has been given a particular meaning within the context of a particular culture. Throughout, I suggest that colonial ideas about space and visions of the colonial landscape were highly fragmented, ambivalent and at times contradictory. Landscapes and colonial space were perceived both as bounded and as boundless, for they were constructed primarily through visual strategies, most notably the panoptic and the picturesque.

The practice of surveying The New Zealand landscape has played a crucial role in creating ideas about national and cultural identity. For both Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯, land has special meaning which helps to provide each people with a sense of place. Land is central to both histories, although Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ view the land in fundamentally different (and conflicting) ways. Eddie Durie has summarised this difference by suggesting that while Europeans own the land, Ma¯ori belong to the land: while Pa¯keha¯ assume the land is there for development, Ma¯ori believe that the land and its resources should be respected.2 Since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, Ma¯ori have called for their appreciation of land to be recognised in legal and political discourse, and they have increasingly focused attention on the ways in which land is central to their cultural and economic survival. Pa¯keha¯ New Zealanders have held more ambivalent attitudes towards the land. Since the first European landfall, the New Zealand landscape, with its native flora, fauna and people, was celebrated for its distinctiveness and its difference from the landscapes of the old world. Parallels were often drawn between certain regions of Britain and those of the colony – reflected in the choice of place names in New Zealand, for example – but the special ‘character’ of the New Zealand landscape set it

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apart from that of the old country. This difference has also been celebrated in literature, in art and in historical writing, where the remodelling of the landscape has been seen as part of the progressive ‘pioneer tradition’. The unqualified belief in the utility of land is now increasingly challenged by a strong conservation ethic which, when combined with late-twentieth-century economic realities, suggest that we can no longer rely on land as the foundation of our economic wellbeing. As Jock Phillips observed in 1987, ‘Maori claims and Pakeha doubts have brought land back into national consciousness.’3 Since then issues regarding land – including questions of ownership, guardianship and land utilisation – have gained even more momentum. Pa¯ keha¯ ideas about land need to be seen in a broader historical context. The European colonisation of New Zealand was part of the global manifestation of British imperial power. Between 1853 and 1876, over four million emigrants left the British Isles in search of a better life elsewhere, buoyed on the tide of progress that promised to ameliorate poverty and to guarantee prosperity. Nineteenth-century British colonists expected that the settlement and physical transformation of New Zealand would impart a civilising influence on what they considered an untamed and uncivilised land. This part of the new world was to be a ‘Britain of the South’, an antipodean outpost of empire that would replicate and then reproduce the values, attitudes, and aspirations of the old. British settlers assumed that both nature and the natives would eventually be displaced: that ‘smiling fields’ would replace forests, just as the Ma¯ori would eventually be amalgamated with the European. The early decades of European colonisation were characterised by the beginnings of organised resettlement schemes and the inspection of the interior.This was also the period that witnessed a major transformation of the bush and a wholesale remodelling of the land.4 Land surveying was especially significant in the making of the colony. The delineation of boundaries and confirmation of property rights were seen as essential parts of the colonising process. Surveying also symbolised the struggle between humanity and nature, or between civilisation and the land.The bush presented a moral as well as a physical challenge to the early settlers, as it threatened to inhibit the pace of settlement and impede the Victorian quest to create order out of chaos. In new societies like New Zealand, Australia and Canada, the surveyor was instrumental in the establishment of title and subdivision of land. ‘[T]he main object of a colonial survey’, wrote former Surveyor-General and then Chief Commissioner of Railways James McKerrow in 1899,‘is

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to enable the settlement of the Crown lands to proceed on a system of survey and record which, for the settler, will give him possession of a definite piece of land which cannot ever after be overridden by a rival claim, and for the Crown the assurance that its guarantee of title will not involve it in embarrassing claims for compensation through overlapping boundaries.’5 As McKerrow implied, surveying was an important method through which the Crown expressed its political sovereignty. While early land surveys had been made to support applications to the Land Claims Commission, particularly in the North Auckland and Coromandel regions, it was not until organised European settlement commenced in the 1840s that there was a substantial demand for the services of surveyors.The Royal Charter of 1840 provided for an initial survey to be made of all the lands in the colony under the jurisdiction of a Surveyor-General.6 The absence of a uniform method of survey and the lack of systematised latitudinal and longitudinal calculations often led to confusion and inaccuracy. As late as 1873, Theophilus Heale, Inspector of Surveys, reported to the Colonial Secretary that ‘surveys in most parts of the Colony, and especially in those which were first settled, have not been conducted throughout on any consistent plan sufficiently sound and accurate to form a safe basis for defining and establishing the boundaries and relative position of estates granted by the Crown, or to determine in any satisfactory manner the geography of the country’.7 That same year a conference of Chief Surveyors recommended ‘the establishment of a general system applicable to the whole Colony so co-ordinating the work of the several Provinces that they will fit into and form part of a connected whole.’8 The plan, which was not officially adopted until 1876, included the division of the colony into 28 survey districts. Land survey practices in colonial New Zealand were also modelled on survey methods elsewhere. The system of standard survey eventually adopted here followed North American and Canadian models. Likewise, the registration of land ownership in New Zealand was based on the Torrens system, first developed in South Australia by Sir Robert Torrens in 1857. Surveyors’ tasks were twofold: to lay out rural and urban sections and to explore the hinterland with a view to its purchase and settlement. They were employed to mark out town sites and to prepare the path for orderly colonisation. There were literally hundreds of land surveyors active in New Zealand during the first few decades of settlement. From 1854, land surveyors were included on the staff of the Land Purchase Department (incorporated into the Native Department in 1885), which

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had been specifically established to acquire Ma¯ori land. Until 1862 it was possible to obtain work as a surveyor without registration, although surveyors who were under contract to the Crown to survey Crown Lands and Waste Lands were required to satisfy the standards set by the Provincial Chief Surveyors. In the absence of a standardised system of registration, any person with even a superficial knowledge of surveying could practice as a surveyor, with minimal proof of experience or qualification. Consequently, many young men turned to surveying as a source of income and adventure. Surveying was also a common occupation for educated migrants, since mathematical knowledge was one of the few intellectual skills then valued in the colony. As more settlers arrived and pressure for land increased, the demand for surveyors grew correspondingly. Acrimony between the colonial government and the New Zealand Company, largely over disparate land policies, together with the demands of Company settlers who felt cheated of their purchases, stretched to capacity the resources of survey staff during the 1840s. When government revenue from land sales later failed to meet expectations, the colonial government looked to the immigrant population to recruit extra survey staff. Sons of missionaries and traders, many of whom had been educated in mission schools and were fluent in Ma¯ori, were recruited as surveyors. Their knowledge of Ma¯ori culture and language was to prove invaluable in negotiating the purchase of Ma¯ori land. The archive of colonial land surveying in New Zealand is extensive and varied. It comprises official reports, published accounts, reminiscences, maps, provisional sketch maps, personal diaries and correspondence.The latter sources are especially valuable, characterised as they are by their fleeting, fragmented and often incomplete nature. Surveyors’ journals and diaries are distinguished by a transitory and open-ended quality which reflects the less than ideal conditions under which they were often created. Survey diaries need to be read in terms of their immediate contexts and in relation to the larger ideological and discursive formations to which they belong. In this respect, they are never innocent sources. Although they appear to be complete and seamless representations of reality, diaries are in fact highly subjective and personalised re-constructions. Such records are not entirely unreliable, but they need to be read with some caution.9 Despite this wealth of material, scant attention has been paid to the ways in which European settlers attempted to legitimise their presence in the colony through the construction of cultural space. C. A. Lawn’s

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A sketch of Walter Mantell’s surveying companion.WALTER MANTELL,‘MR WILLS ON TE REHE’S HOUSE’, MANTELL NOTEBOOK, MS 1535, ATL

The Pioneer Land Surveyors of New Zealand (1977) is the most comprehensive account of land surveying, and is complemented by a collection of regional and biographical studies.10 These texts offer a valuable reservoir of information to the modern researcher, but they have been composed largely from within the paradigm of imperial history and tend simply to celebrate the pioneering achievements of the European settler-surveyors. According to this interpretation, New Zealand was both available for and in need of European colonisation. Without the need for the modification of the land – its salvation from a state of ‘wilderness’ – the crusade of colonisation itself would founder. Consequently, texts such as Lawn’s present the early surveyors as willing actors in the drama of settlement, and exalt them to the heroic status of ‘explorer’ as the curtain rises on each episode of their ‘discoveries’.The achievements of the surveyor-explorers are often described in terms of a future national history: they are unsung heroes whose efforts should be recognised along with those of soldiers and statesmen.These same texts treat ‘land’ and ‘landscape’ not only as synonymous and interchangeable terms, but as mere background to more important human endeavour. Land and landscape are givens – immortal and immutable, except when the transformation of the land is celebrated as progressive. With a few exceptions, New Zealand researchers have been reluctant to examine the role of land surveyors in critical terms.11

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Recent commentary on the New Zealand landscape comes from art history, law, conservation and literary criticism, rather than from the discipline of history. Art historian Francis Pound’s Frames on the Land: Early Landscape Painting in New Zealand (1983) challenged assumptions regarding the representation of landscape. He argued that the ways in which land has been seen (and landscapes have been created) in New Zealand were intrinsically foreign, imported and particularly European. He also suggested that the depiction of land as landscape had an overtly political function: it was symbolic of the appropriation of land from Ma¯ori.12 The efforts of the colonial land surveyors in New Zealand deserve greater attention from historians of settlement and race relations. Surveyors were central to the colonising process and of significance to the history of both Ma¯ ori and Pa¯ keha¯. Surveyors were among the vanguard of colonists, and extended the boundaries of empire. Although physically located on the margins of settler society, surveyors occupied a central role in implementing the principles of colonisation on the ground: they operated, quite literally, at the ‘cutting edge’ of colonisation. Perhaps not surprisingly, colonial surveying is relevant to Treaty claims research where the work of land surveyors is coming under close historical and judicial scrutiny. An examination of surveyors’ work is a necessary step along the path towards a better appreciation of both the history of settlement and the factors which have combined to form our national identity in the last decade of the twentieth century and beyond.

Fragmented space: bounded and boundless landscapes A landscape is by definition a cultural construction, a particular perspective of land. On arriving in a ‘new land’, Europeans applied their own frames of reference to what they saw. Bernard Smith has shown how visitors to the Pacific, imbued with rationalism and scientific method, imposed their cultural expectations on the environment and remodelled the land accordingly. Scientific observers ‘would transform the painting of nature in her exotic forms from being an item of scientific topography and documentation to an expressive form of landscape art, essential [in their view] to the nourishment of the European imagination.’13 Francis Pound has extended this notion to argue that all culture, all language – and indeed all art – is a ‘distorting preconception’ applied to nature, in order to translate the exotic into the

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familiar images with which a European audience can identify. Correspondingly, Polynesian settlers did not capture the ‘true’ New Zealand, for they too viewed the land from a particular cultural perspective. Pound asserts that Ma¯ori ‘did not paint landscape, though the land was also “an unavoidable presence” for them. It dominated their lives even more than it does ours.’ There can be no geographical determinism in visual re-presentations of New Zealand. Instead, artistic conventions applied to the land determine the way that the land is seen: it remains invisible without these conventional genres of reading. While the idea of ‘landscape’ itself may be seen as a kind of imported logic, or a European convention which has been applied to ways of looking at the land, this does not invalidate its practical function in the colonising process.Viewing land in aesthetic terms also answered certain needs in colonial New Zealand, including those of map-making and exploration. It heralded, as Pound notes, ‘the arrival of art, beauty and civilisation; the symbolic appropriation of land from the Maori, or the showing off of the “improvement” consequent upon the land’s real and physical appropriation; or, later in our history, the proclamation of a national identity’.14 In colonies like New Zealand, Australia and Canada, where large areas of land were being opened up for settlement, the relationship between land surveying and landscape painting was particularly close. It is no coincidence that many of New Zealand’s nineteenth-century landscape artists were also surveyors:William Mein Smith (1798–1869), Samuel Brees (1810–65) and Charles Heaphy (1822–69), to name three of the most prominent. Landscapes have been re-presented in survey texts both as bounded and – paradoxically – as boundless.This observation draws on the work of a number of scholars who have considered space and, more specifically, attempted to explain the constitution of colonial space. For Michel Foucault, ‘space is fundamental in any form of communal life [and] space is fundamental in any form of power’. Historian Michel de Certeau has described space as ‘a practised place’, where space is place that has been given meaning. Colonial space comprises a multiplicity of fragmented spaces; or, as J. K. Noyes has argued,‘[colonial space] can be grasped as a historically specific organisation of multiplicities into an apparent unity’. In short, colonial space was a manufactured and fractured space with the appearance of homogeneity.This facade of unity tended to subsume differences within colonial space. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have demonstrated how, within the capitalist economy, colonisation continually produces spaces, creating space out of

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a myriad of abstract qualities. They argue that ‘individual experience becomes meaningful in colonisation only where it can be incorporated into a written system of territories’.15 In the course of surveying the land, the space of the colony was constantly defined in terms of boundaries. Boundaries were a fundamental part of survey practice. With its dependence on accuracy and measurement, land surveying was based on the art of making lines which distinguished one space from another. A boundary – that real or imaginary line which marks the confines of two contiguous estates – was evidence of possession, or at least the intent to possess.The term is used to denote the physical objects to which the line of division refers, as well as the line of division itself. In this sense boundaries are natural (rivers and seashores) and imposed (roads, railways and fences). The efficient demarcation of survey boundaries in early surveys was of particular importance, for in the event of discrepancies in bearings and distances, only the original monuments could be accorded legal recognition. ‘[U]nlike the surveys of old countries, where time-honoured landmarks and a settled population conserve boundaries’, McKerrow later remarked, ‘the surveys of a new country have no such aids, but, instead, have to create boundaries in the unoccupied wilderness, which at best can only be marked by perishable surface-marks.’ Surveyors navigated across the land with reference to existing natural boundaries. Mountains and rivers were useful geographical features which helped the surveyor bound a useable space. In 1858, Edward Jollie and Samuel Hewlings surveyed the whole of the Canterbury province south of the Rangita¯ta¯ river to the Waitaki river, and navigated with reference to the coastal and inland waterways.‘My work’, Jollie later wrote,‘consisted in surveying all the coast line, rivers, hills, lakes, swamps, etc. . . . and after making a map of it, to have all the runs properly defined on the map, and then to go over the country again and show all the boundaries to the owners.’16 Provisional sketches by S. Percy Smith, John Rochfort and Walter Mantell further illustrate how space was bounded by both ‘imposed’ and ‘natural’ boundaries: trigonometrical lines, rivers and coastlines. Boundary marks determined the direction of an intended route and acted as a base from which accurate sightings could be taken.The survey ‘includes taking bearings, chaining, mapping, estimating areas, and attending at N L [Native Land] Court to prove surveys’, the surveyor Henry Field wrote, ‘as well as cutting the lines 4 ft wide and fixing boundary marks.’ Boundary markers made of pumice, rimu and ponga

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Whanganui River. J. ROCHFORT, FIELD BOOK 825, LINZ, HAMILTON

were common. W. G. Sealy erected ‘flags which will also do for temporary trig. Stations’ while surveying in the Manawatu in 1875. In 1886, James Park of the Geological Survey Department made an ascent of Mount Ruapehu, where he and his companions were to erect a signal on the summit for triangulation. Park’s account of the ascent of the summit of Parataetaitonga, one of the southern peaks of the mountain, was published in the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute later that year: ‘we hastily erected a trig. signal, which consisted of a stout birch sapling, driven into the snow several feet, and a ball of black calico. Our names, with the date of ascent, were placed in a sealed bottle, and left in a cairn of stones, on a rock-ledge about a chain to the north of the summit, and about 15 feet lower.’ The siting of a boundary marker was often accompanied with ritual and ceremony. Surveying near the Mo¯kau river in Taranaki in 1879, T. K. Skinner was accompanied by the chiefs Epiha and Takerau in driving a ponga peg into the soil.17 Physical boundaries often presented physical dangers to surveyors. Arthur Dobson recounted his experiences surveying in North Canterbury during the 1860s, remembering those surveyors who had fallen victim to the raging torrents of unpredictable rivers: ‘One of the chief difficulties in getting about the country in those days was crossing the large rivers, which could be crossed on foot only by those well used to the danger, and then only when the rivers were very low.’ While surveying on the West Coast of the South Island in 1863, he noted how ‘the whole of the country up to the snow-line and down to the water’s edge was covered with thick forest. Every flood brought down to the sea

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This sketch, from Mantell’s notebook of his Waingongoro journey, shows Taranaki dominating the landscape. Note also the solitary figure of the traveller at rest. WALTER MANTELL,‘TARANAKI FROM ROAD TO OROKOHAI’, MANTELL NOTEBOOK, MS 1535, ATL

quantities of timber, which was thrown up on the beaches, and excepting where the coast was cliff-bound the timber piled up in such vast masses that it was quite a climb to get over it into the bush beyond.’ Difficult conditions could hamper the progress of the survey. Robert Sheppard, who worked in Manawatu¯ in 1842, wrote of ‘the large swamp which is dry in summer is now so wet, that it becomes absolutely necessary to leave as many lines as possible to be cut in dry weather’. W. H. Skinner encountered similar problems surveying the Oakura block near New Plymouth, where he described the ‘miserable swamp country – towais, kaikateas, waiwakas etc. everything covered under a thick coating of moss tells a Tale on the Climate . . .’.18 Bounded space was not always hospitable to the surveyor. Colonial space was seen simultaneously as bounded and boundless. Homi Bhabha has argued that the attempt to visualise space in the absence of boundaries has always been a fundamental element of the colonising vision. ‘At the centre of the originary myth of colonialist power is the demand that the space it occupies be unbounded . . . unmarked by the trace of difference’, he suggests.19 In other words, colonial space was assumed to be both infinite and unified. Land surveyors frequently searched for boundless and empty spaces. Sketches in Mantell’s fieldbook exemplify this unbounded vision, where the horizon is almost limitless.The Nelson surveyors Thomas Brunner and Samuel Stephens had, on separate occasions, both looked for the ‘great plains’ of the West Coast of the South Island. Cass, Torlesse and later Baker were among those who had sought the ‘plains of promise’ in

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Canterbury. Surveyors attempted to convert these boundless spaces into bounded places.20 Land surveyors were not alone in maintaining these dual, and at times contradictory, perspectives. Pa¯keha¯ settler society has had no problem in seeing the New Zealand landscape both as bounded and boundless; indeed, this dichotomy sums up the history of Pa¯keha¯ attitudes towards the land.The main objective of the early British colonists was to change what appeared to be an unbounded land into a contained and controlled bounded space. Early settler propaganda promoting colonisation, such as Wakefieldian emigration literature, depicted the land as boundless, awaiting European civilisation and settlement. Miles Fairburn has described this Arcadian view and how such literature promoted positive and idealised images of New Zealand.21 A history of contact and conflict with Ma¯ori taught successive settler governments that the land was already bounded. Boundaries formed the basis of an indigenous Ma¯ori system of mapping the land. Land was at the heart of the tribal economy and community life and was identified through a system of rights and privileges which relied on boundary markers. Natural features like hills, sea coasts, cliffs and rivers delineated spheres of tribal influence. Piles of stones, holes in the ground, cultivation plots, diverted streams and canals were all used as boundary markers. These boundaries, and (more importantly) the stories attached to their making, were memorised and boundaries between neighbouring tribal areas were often mutually arranged and agreed upon. As Alan Ward has observed, ‘boundaries of groups were subject to continuous change as hapu and hapu clusters formed and reformed, [and] the boundaries of group land were not immutable either. The rights of groups, and the individuals within them, were most closely defined by the cultivations and other forms of usage and association near the principal kainga, and became more attenuated further away, in the zones of hunting and gathering, where they might start to intersect with the interests of neighbour groups.’22 Such perceptions of land were irrevocably changed by the arrival of Pa¯keha¯ settlers and the land trade which followed. Physical boundaries became important symbols of ownership in the newly imposed capitalist economy. After the land wars and the establishment of the Native Land Court, European definitions of land tenure became increasingly dominant. Colonial administrators viewed Ma¯ori concepts of communal land tenure and usage as impediments to the acquisition of land and to the entire colonial enterprise. Ma¯ori perceptions of land tenure continued, but European ideas about land

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usage and administration were popularised in public and official discourses and sanctioned by government legislation. British settlers came to learn that unbounded land was desirable and obtainable, while bounded land was contentious and potentially unavailable. Colonial governments had little difficulty in reconciling this contradiction: indeed, the progress of colonisation depended on its maintenance. In this way, land surveying – the measuring and mapping of boundaries – paralleled the history of the Pa¯keha¯ colonisation of New Zealand.

Fragmented visions: panoptic perspectives Surveyors’ perceptions of landscape were frequently constructed in terms of the panoptic perspective. Constructed from a first person subjectivity (the ‘I’/eye), the panoptic offers the viewer a position of omnipotence. As Mary Louise Pratt has suggested, the panoptic perspective was ‘unheroic, unparticularized, without ego, interest, or desire of its own… able to do nothing but gaze from a periphery of its own creation, like the self-effaced, non-interventionist eye that scans the Other’s body’.23 The panoptic reflected the dominance of a gaze where all subjects were subsumed beneath its surveillance. The panoptic perspective (and its product, the panorama) was an established motif in surveying discourse. In his Outlines of a System of Surveying, for Geographical and Military Purposes (1827), Sir Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor-General of New South Wales, wrote how ‘the consequent necessity [of] clearing summit stations for the theodolites, were great impediments; but I made the most of each station when it had been cleared, by taking an exact panoramic view with the theodolite of the nameless features it commanded’.24 The panoptic perspective, as de Certeau has argued, positions the viewer in the centre of the world, a place ‘whence the eye can transform foreign forces into objects that can be observed and measured, and thus control and “include” them within its scope of vision’, while the elevated vantage point, allowed a viewer ‘to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god’.25 Surveying at Ahuriri, near Napier, in 1852, John Rochfort noted: ‘This is a clear fine plain, and standing in the centre you see a clear horizon all round, such as you would at sea.’ In 1861, while exploring the grazing prospects of the Mackenzie Plains, South Canterbury, John Baker finally reached Lake Pu¯kaki: ‘Here I obtained my first view of the magnificent Mt. Cook range of the Southern Alps, with Mount Cook itself in the centre dominating over the surrounding snow giants.’26

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The panoptic gaze was a powerful colonising tool. The elevated vantage point it provided altered the world before and beneath the eye. The panoptic provided a bird’s-eye perspective that was frequently employed in contemporary landscape painting and hydrographic maps. ‘On coming home over the range which bounds the survey to the north’, wrote John Barnicoat, surveying near Motueka in 1844, ‘we enjoyed one of those magnificent views which delights the eye. We were looking on the mysterious Moutere and the district adjoining, verdant and barren, which produces every natural product of the soil in perfection, but refuses everything to cultivation.’ While supervising the survey of Nga¯i Tahu reserves at Akaroa on Banks Peninsula in 1848, Mantell ascended the hills between Ports Cooper and Levy. ‘From the summit’, he wrote in his journal,‘we enjoyed a magnificent view of the plains bounded inland by the snowy mountains beginning at Kaikoura and to the Southward fading so gradually that it would be impossible to say where the view ended.’27 The panoptic view (the panorama) was the reward for physical perseverance; it was the aesthetic satisfaction obtained from the ascent of a hill or mountain as place was turned into picture. Surveying at Great Barrier Island from its highest peak in 1885, Sidney Weetman viewed the land with a typically panoptic gaze: ‘A climb to the top of Mount Hobson on a clear day well repays the necessary exertion as the whole island appears to lie at your feet, and there is very little of it which is invisible. Rangitoto and Auckland are easily seen, as well as a long trend of coast-line northwards; also a splendid view is obtained of Cape Colville and the Mercury and Cuvier Islands southwards.’28 James Park described his view of Ruapehu in 1886 in panoptic terms:‘Immediately below us lay the great crater of Ruapehu, encircled by high peaks from 500 to 800 feet high. On its south-east side the great crater-basin, which is perhaps a mile across, is partially broken down, and connects with an immense snow-field, at the foot of which, at 6,000 feet, the Wangaehu as a considerable stream is first seen.’29 Three months after Park’s visit, the surveyor Lawrence Cussen also climbed Ruapehu to set a trigstation on Parataetaitonga. His description of the ascent echoed the sentiments of his predecessor: The weather was still beautifully clear when we got on top, and the view in all directions around us was truly magnificent.To the westward, the snowy cone of Mount Egmont was very conspicuously prominent, its distance from us being 73 miles. We thought we could distinguish the houses at Waitara with our

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telescopes; and some of our party suggested that a column of smoke which we saw rising up there came from the chimney of the Auckland Freezing Company’s establishment. The sea was visible beyond the east and west coasts, and all the successive mountain ranges and river valleys in both directions could be traced out with our telescopes. The rugged peaks of the Kaimanawa Mountains, extending for many miles away to the eastward, looked rather insignificant beneath us, although their height varies from 4,000 to 6,000 feet above the sea. The crater of Ngauruhoe, nine miles to the north of us, looked like the dilapidated chimney of some vast furnace down into which we were looking. Taupo Lake, which I have seen described as ‘a vast inland sea’, as seen from some of these mountains, looked quite small from our great height. The distant peaks of Pirongia,Te Aroha, and other prominent features of the Lower Waikato District looked but a short distance away from us, considering they were over 120 miles off; and as all our party hailed from that direction, each took pleasure in recognising the familiar landmarks which surrounded his own home, and which he had not seen for many months past.The comparatively low country lying between us and the west coast, though intersected by deep valleys and mountain ridges, seemed rather like a level plain, and, as one of our party remarked,‘the mountains only looked like potato ridges’.30

As these examples illustrate, panopticism was a powerful method of converting unbounded space into bounded landscapes. It mirrored the wider efforts of the colonial enterprise: to contain, control and ultimately redefine the meaning of land.

Fragmented visions: picturesque perspectives The picturesque was another established convention frequently invoked by surveyors in constructing landscapes. In the latter years of the eighteenth century, landscape and natural scenery were judged with reference to the standards of the picturesque. In 1794 Uvedale Price defined the Picturesque as a distinct aesthetic category, distinguished from the Sublime and the Beautiful by its variation and irregularity. Price argued that picturesqueness implied a certain roughness in place of the ‘tender smoothness’ of the Beautiful, and contained all the abruptness of the Sublime, but without its overwhelming greatness:‘the two opposite qualities’, Price wrote,‘of roughness and sudden variation, joined to that of irregularity, are the most efficient causes of the Picturesque’. He cited many examples as evidence of the contrast

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between the ‘wild disorder’ of the Picturesque and the harmony of the Beautiful: the ass as more picturesque than the horse, the rough waterdog more than the smooth spaniel and the shaggy goat more than the sheep.31 In his A Letter to Uvedale Price, Esq., also published in 1794, the landscape and garden critic Humphrey Repton challenged Price’s assertions, and further distinguished between landscape and prospect. In his Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of Taste (1805), Payne Knight claimed the picturesque to be nothing less than the true and visible appearance of things. Price admitted that these qualities were more likely to be found in art than in nature, and agreed with the Reverend William Gilpin, a fellow authority on the Picturesque, who claimed ‘that there are so few perfect compositions in nature’. Nevertheless, Price’s initial definition of ‘roughness and variation’ became the accepted version and was given popular currency in the literature of Austen, Hazlitt and Coleridge.32 The picturesque was soon expanded to include the exotic, as indigenous flora and fauna were ascribed picturesque qualities. Navigator James Cook also articulated the connection between scientific and artistic representation: ‘The Admiralty shewed no less attention to science in general, by engaging Mr William Hodges, a Landscape Painter, to embark in this voyage, in order to make drawings and paintings of such places in the countries we should touch at, as might be proper to give a more perfect idea thereof, than could be formed from written description only.’33 Hodges maintained that the ‘particular character’ that artists should seek in re-presenting landscapes was not determined by the aesthetic qualities of the subject – its adherence to the Beautiful, the Sublime or the Picturesque – but defined instead by natural features such as race, climate and vegetation.This philosophy was further championed by Alexander von Humboldt in his Aspects of Nature (1808) and Cosmos (1848). Among other things, Humboldt considered how written description, landscape painting and botanical illustration could all be used to provide Europeans with a better idea of the multiformity of nature. Land surveyors aimed to provide ‘a more perfect idea’ of the terrain they encountered. Charles Heaphy described the Taranaki landscape from a picturesque perspective in 1840: ‘For forty miles to the north, east, and south of Mount Egmont, the country rises, from a perfectly level plain, gradually to the base of that mountain. On these sides the land is unbroken by hills or ridges, and may be all cultivated: near the sea, the country is more rough – a ridge of hills, forming as it were a

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C. Heaphy, Mt Egmont, from the Sugar Loaf Islands,Taranaki (1849), watercolour. DP145011A CT, ATL

shoulder of the mountain – extends from it to the coast, and terminates at the Sugar-loaf Point and Islands.’34 Heaphy later illustrated this in his watercolour Mt Egmont, from the Sugar Loaf Islands, Taranaki (1849). Similarly, he depicted a panoptic perspective in his Birdseye View of Port Nicholson (1839). The picturesque focused on the aesthetic qualities of a scene, allowing a surveyor to visualise the country in terms of its future colonisation. After all, picturesque scenes were pleasant to gaze upon: they were appealing to the mind as well as to the eye. On commencing a survey of the inland Nelson region in the early 1840s, Samuel Stephens described the land in typically picturesque terms: Before leaving I took another hasty view of the lake and adjoining scenery, and also a rough sketch of its now really picturesque character. The view was completely alpine – the back mountain ranges being all completely cased in one continuous sheet of white, the trees and shrubs in the fore ground on the

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C. Heaphy, Birdseye View of Port Nicholson (1839), watercolour. DP029006CB CT, ATL

borders of the lake having their boughs encrusted by the snowy mosses and reflecting their graceful images in the still and glassy lake, really formed a most beautiful and striking picture, which was still more enhanced by its novelty, as we had met with no snow since we left England – excepting at a great distance. The scene was rendered still more peculiar, from the intense stillness, and absence of all appearance of animated nature – no sign of waterfowl floating on the lake, or note from the feathered inhabitants of the wood. The sun shining out in full splendour shortly afterwards, added a richness to the wintry picture.35

The picturesque provided the opportunity for personal moments of reflection, by allowing an observer to stop and appreciate a place. This required a kind of detachment or cessation from activity: it involved simply standing still in order to look. Edwin Brookes paused to describe a picturesque scene while surveying in Taranaki: Mount Egmont . . . an enchanting study for an artist, and may be considered as one of the chief sights of Taranaki. Another striking scene is when it is covered low down with snow, the reflection of the sun’s rays upon it, mostly toward sunset, change the usual dazzling whiteness to one of the richest tints of light pink, a scene at once so striking that one is chained to the spot as by a magician’s wand.This reflection seldom occurs, and even when seen it would be difficult for an artist to imitate either in oil or water-colours, as at best it would be far from the reality.36

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The picturesque included the magnification of the minute, and the godlike survey of the great, as Arthur Dobson’s description of his first view of the Mt Cook range in 1861 illustrates. ‘It was a most magnificent sight looking towards the south’, Dobson recalled, ‘the Southern Alps standing up like a great wall, culminating in the lofty peak of Mount Cook. In the foreground were the low hills covered with dark green forest, and a line of white surf, breaking all along the coast.To the south and east, low limestone hills, through which the Grey river had cuts its gorge, lay parallel to the coast, covered with beautiful forest, and the view looking over the wide expanse of river and lagoon in the foreground, was sublime.’37 As these examples reveal, the picturesque perspective helped surveyors transform unbounded space into bounded landscapes. Combined with panopticism, which provided a sense of omnipotence, the picturesque was an extremely powerful colonising tool. The work of the colonial land surveyors reflected much that was central to the European history of New Zealand. Surveyors embodied colonial ideas about space and spatiality that were fragmented and contradictory. Like the colonial settler society more generally, surveyors saw the land both as bounded and boundless. Their work also advanced the more practical aspects of the colonisation and domestication of the natural environment; they were at the forefront of the settler society, pushing out its margins and testing its limits. Land surveying, like colonisation itself, exerted a masculine defining presence on the land, inscribing it with new meanings and definitions. Visions of colonial landscapes – fixed in texts, and captured on the page, map or canvas – were created at specific historical moments. This process was, like the act of writing history itself, momentary, even evanescent. As Carolyn Steedman has commented, ‘History is the most impermanent of written forms: it is only ever an account that will last a while.The very practice of historical work, the uncovering of new facts, the endless reordering of the immense details that makes the historian’s map of the past, performs this act of narrative destablization, on a daily basis.’38 This history has real repercussions for the present. Unlike historical narratives which are subject to constant revision, the landscapes created by colonial surveyors have had lasting consequences.The map of modern New Zealand exists as testimony to their efforts: they have indeed left their legacy on the ground.

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1 2

3 4 5 6

7 8 9

10

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Samuel Butler, Erewhon: Or, Over the Range, Trubner, London, 1872, p. 20. Eddie Durie,‘The Law and the Land’, in J. O. C. Phillips (ed.), Te Whenua Te Iwi:The Land and the People,Allen and Unwin/Port Nicholson Press,Wellington, 1987, pp. 78–81. Geoff Park has argued persuasively that this conservation ethic cannot be applied wholesale to Ma¯ori views of the environment, see Geoff Park, Nga Uruora The Groves of Life: Ecology and History in a New Zealand Landscape, Victoria University Press,Wellington, 1995. J. O. C. Phillips,‘Introduction’, in Phillips (ed.), p. vi. Rollo Arnold, New Zealand’s Burning: The Settlers’ World in the Mid 1880s, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 1994. James McKerrow, ‘New Zealand System of Survey’, The New Zealand Surveyor: The Journal of the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors, vol. 1, no. 1, 1889, p. 9. ‘The Royal Charter’, 5 Dec 1840, cited in C. A. Lawn, The Pioneer Land Surveyors of New Zealand, Wellington, 1977, pp. 11–12. See also Claudia Orange, The Treaty of Waitangi, Allen and Unwin,Wellington, 1987, pp. 29–31. AJHR, 1873, H-1, p. 1. AJHR, 1873, H-1, p. 2. See further Andrew Hassam,‘“As I Write”: Narrative Occasions and the Quest for Selfpresence in the Travel Diary’, Ariel:A Review of International English Literature, vol. 21, no. 4 (1990), pp. 33–47. N. Baker (ed.), A Surveyor in New Zealand: John Holland Baker, 1857–1896, Christchurch, 1932; C. A. Lawn, ‘Outline of Early History of Surveying in Auckland Province’, New Zealand Surveyor, vol. 21, no. 1, 1954, pp. 27–43; J. Pascoe, Mr Explorer Douglas, Wellington, 1957; P. B. Maling (ed.), The Torlesse Papers, Christchurch, 1958; M.V. Mueller (ed.), My Dear Bannie, Christchurch, 1958; B. de Vries, ‘The Role of the Land Surveyor in the Development of New Zealand, 1840–1876’, MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1966; A. H. Bogle, Links in the Chain: Field Surveying in New Zealand, Wellington, 1975; L. Young, Father and Son: A Young Saga, Christchurch, 1976; T. McCormack, A History of Surveying and Mountaineering in Westland, Hokitika, 1988; N. Easdale, Kairuri The Measurer of Land;The Life of the Nineteenth-Century Surveyor Pictured in his Art and Writings, Highgate/Price Milburn, Petone, 1988; H. J. Jenks, Forgotten Men:The Survey of Tauranga and District, 1864–1869, Tauranga, 1991; J. Hall-Jones, John Turnbull Thomson: First Surveyor-General of New Zealand, Dunedin, 1992. See Brad Patterson, ‘Reading Between the Lines: People, Politics and the Conduct of Surveys in the Southern North Island, New Zealand, 1840–1876’, PhD thesis,Victoria University of Wellington, 1984; Wystan Curnow, Barbara Mare and Cheryll Sotheran (eds), Putting the Land on the Map:Art and Cartography in New Zealand Since 1840, GovettBrewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, 1989. See also Giselle Byrnes, ‘Inventing New Zealand: Surveying, Science, and the Construction of Cultural Space, 1840s–1890s’, PhD thesis, University of Auckland, 1995. Francis Pound, Frames on the Land: Early Landscape Painting in New Zealand, Collins, Auckland, 1983. Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 2nd edn, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1985, p. 205. See also Bernard Smith, Imagining the Pacific in the Wake of the Cook Voyages, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992. Simon Schama also offers an interesting discussing of perspective in relation to landscape, see Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, Harper Collins, London and New York, 1995. Pound, Frames on the Land, pp. 11–16; Francis Pound, ‘The Land, the Light, and Nationalist Myth in New Zealand Art, in Phillips (ed.), pp. 48–60. Michel Foucault, ‘Space, Knowledge and Power’, in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader, Pantheon, New York, 1984, p. 252; Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, Berkeley,1984, p. 117; J. K. Noyes, Colonial Space: Spatiality in the Discourse of German South West Africa, 1884–1915, Harwood, Chur,

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16 17

18

19

20

21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

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Switzerland, 1992, p. 98; Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1983, pp. 205, 287. Other scholars have discussed how colonial space is not only racialised, but gendered. See Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose (eds), Writing Women and Space: Colonial and Post-colonial Geographies, The Guildford Press, New York and London, 1984. McKerrow, p. 8; Edward Jollie, Reminiscences 1825–1894, MS-Papers-4207, ATL, p. 261. Cited in G. Sommerville,‘The Track that Field Made’, MS-90-195, ATL, p. 8;W. G. Sealy, Field Book (FB) 590, Land Information New Zealand (LINZ),Wellington; James Park, ‘Narrative of an Ascent of Ruapehu’, Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute (TPNZI), vol. 19, 1886, pp. 327–31; W. H. Skinner, Diaries, MS-020-1, Taranaki Museum (TM). Arthur Dudley Dobson, Reminiscences of Arthur Dudley Dobson, Engineer, 1840–1930, Whitcombe and Tombs, Auckland, 1930, pp. 31, 36, 145–7; A. D. Dobson, Diary 1859–63, Canterbury Museum; R. Sheppard, Diary 1842–45, MS-Papers-1094, ATL; W. H. Skinner, Diaries, MS-020-1,TM. For other descriptions see J.T. Stewart, ‘Notes on the Manawatu District’, [n.d.], qMS, ATL; W. G. Sealy, FB 590, 9 Jan–26 Mar 1875, LINZ, Wellington. Homi K. Bhabha, ‘Signs Taken as Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree outside Delhi, May 1817’, in Henry Louis Gates Jnr (ed.),‘Race’,Writing and Difference, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1986, p. 176. John Pascoe (ed.), The Great Journey: An Expedition to Explore the Interior of the Middle Island, New Zealand, 1846–8, Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1952; Samuel Stephens, Journal, MS-Papers-2698-1A, ATL. See Miles Fairburn, The Ideal Society and its Enemies: The Foundations of Modern New Zealand Society 1850–1900, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1989. Alan Ward, National Overview Volume II, Waitangi Tribunal Rangahaua Whanui Series, Waitangi Tribunal, Wellington, 1997, p. 7. See also I. H. Kawharu, Maori Land Tenure: Studies in a Changing Institution, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977, pp. 34–88. Mary Louise Pratt,‘Scratches on the Face of the Country: Or, what Mr. Barrow Saw in the Land of the Bushmen’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 1, 1985, p. 143. Thomas L. Mitchell, Outlines of a System of Surveying, for Geographical and Military Purposes, 1827, cited in Smith, European Vision, p. 214. de Certeau, pp. 36, 92. John Rochfort, Adventures of a Surveyor in New Zealand, David Bogue, London, 1853, p. 42; J. H. Baker, Diary 1857–97, MS-0119-0123, ATL. John Wallis Barnicoat, 13 Jan 1844, Journal 1841–44, qMS-0319, ATL; Walter Mantell, Journal, Kaiapoi to Otago, 1848–49, MS-1543, ATL, p. 9. S.Weetman,‘Notes on Great Barrier Island’, TPNZI, vol. 22, 1889, p. 82. Weetman, p. 330. L. Cussen,‘Thermal Activity in the Ruapehu Crater’, TPNZI, vol. 19, 1986, pp. 374–80. Uvedale Price, Essay on the Picturesque, London, 1794, cited in John Steegman, The Rule of Taste, From George I to George IV, 3rd edn, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, pp. 63, 68; Smith, European Vision, p. 149. See also W. J. Hipple, The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Picturesque in 18th Century British Aesthetic Theory, Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 1957; Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740–1860, Thames and Hudson, London, 1987; Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760–1800, Scolar, Aldershot, 1989; Simon Ryan,‘Exploring Aesthetics: Appropriative Gazing in Journals of Australian Exploration’, Australian Literary Studies, vol. 15, no. 4, 1992, pp. 282–93; Simon Ryan, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.

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32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Cited in Steegman, p. 63. See also Smith, European Vision, pp. 149–50. J. Cook, A Voyage Towards the South Pole, and Round the World, London, 1777,Volume I, p. xxxiii, cited in Smith, European Vision, p. 43. Charles Heaphy, Narrative of a Residence in New Zealand, Smith, Elder and Co., London, 1842, pp. 96–7. Stephens, Journal, p. 16. Edwin Stanley Brookes, Frontier Life: Taranaki, New Zealand, Brett, Auckland, 1892, pp. 57–60. Dobson, Reminiscences, p. 50. Carolyn Steedman, ‘Culture, Cultural Studies, and Historians’, in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler (eds), Cultural Studies, Routledge, New York and London, 1992, p. 614.

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4 Domesticating the Land: Colonial Women’s Gardening |

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In 1879 Adela Stewart wrote enthusiastically about the garden she was beginning to create in Tauranga:‘I got from an old friend in Auckland a present of cuttings and plants which Agnes and I had a busy time putting in – geraniums . . . hydrangeas . . . laurels . . . roses – a splendid contribution, most of which grew well and helped to convert our wilderness into a garden.’1 Like other migrant women who fashioned gardens out of scrubland, tussock or bush, Stewart perceived her household garden primarily as an important personal realm, yet she also used it as a metaphor for a wider, European-style development of the indigenous landscape. A garden, particularly in the colonial situation, could be a powerful claim to a particular place. Environmental psychologists have analysed various levels of meaning in gardens: as individual creations which reflect private beliefs and feelings, and as expressions of community that demonstrate public values and attitudes to the land.2 Garden styles are also culturally specific and are emblems of national identity and, in the case of a colony, of global political power. Colonial gardens were simultaneously a visual link to migrants’ personal and collective past, a projection of the European presence across the landscape, and a promise of continuing development in the future. On every scale from the individual to the international, a garden represents ‘an ecology of interrelated and connected thoughts, spaces, activities and symbols’ – not so much a place as a complex relationship between people and nature.3 Colonial gardens, like gardens today, were also the product of varying personal, environmental and

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Jane Deans in 1890 (aged 67) with her son and his family at the edge of her bush. Protecting this with shelter plantations was her first large-scale garden work in New Zealand.Today Riccarton Bush/Putaringamotu is a public park in the care of the city of Christchurch. DEANS FAMILY PRIVATE COLLECTION, DFPP 65

cultural factors. The intensity of the interplay of these factors was, however, heightened by the colonial situation: the personal circumstances of newly arrived immigrants were difficult, the land in many areas was previously uncultivated, and a British-based culture was rapidly evolving among the settlers. A garden was one way that many settlers fulfilled the urgent need to re-establish themselves. This essay explores the multiple meanings of colonial gardening through the writings of three women settlers – Jane Deans, Sarah Courage, and Adela Stewart – and examines how these meanings combined in their different gardening experiences. Each woman wrote a book of reminiscences of her experiences during the second half of the nineteenth century, including many details of her gardening. Deans arrived at ‘Riccarton’, Christchurch in 1853, and wrote her memoirs for her immediate family between 1885 and 1887. They were published in 1923 as Letters to My Grandchildren. Courage came to North Canterbury in 1864 and lived on sheep stations, first at ‘Double Corner’, then at ‘Seadown’. Lights and Shadows of Colonial Life, published in 1896, focuses

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on her first years in New Zealand. Stewart settled at ‘Athenree’ in the Bay of Plenty in 1878 and wrote My Simple Life in New Zealand in 1908, based on 28 years of diary entries.4 These three women were in many ways representative of immigrant women in colonial New Zealand. They were British (Scottish, English and Northern Irish, respectively), married with children, and they came with the aim of farming the land. Especially during their early days in New Zealand they struggled, as virtually all women did, with primitive living conditions, loneliness and tedious overwork. They were more fortunate than most, however, because they were middle class or genteel, lived on large properties and had the education and confidence to write extensively.5 Deans, Courage and Stewart arrived in New Zealand at a time when horticulture was becoming immensely popular throughout the western world, with Britain leading the way. The fashion for gardening reflected major developments in Britain, especially the growth of imperialism and the rise of the middle class. Gardening was now practised in the middle ground between the two former extremes of working-class subsistence and grandiose displays by aristocrats.The new middle class had time and money for recreation, and took up gardening en masse, forming an eager market for new plants, equipment and written advice. Exploration in service of the empire provided novel plant material, with thousands of new species cultivated and hybridised during the nineteenth century. A more highly educated society expressed its intellectual enthusiasms even on tiny suburban plots, where gardeners arranged their botanical collections in tasteful displays. Middle- and upper-class women became more active outside the house and authorities of both sexes promoted gardening as a physically invigorating, mentally wholesome and even spiritually uplifting activity. European settlers in New Zealand commonly grew kitchen gardens of familiar fruits, vegetables and herbs necessary for subsistence, ornamental plantings of trees and flowers brought from ‘Home’ for reasons of sentiment, and exotics collected on the voyage out. Though many migrants knew nothing of growing plants, others brought with them rich agricultural and horticultural traditions and sometimes an interest in the latest garden fashions. Contemporary writing and art show that virtually from the start of British immigration garden-making was widely practised in both town and country at a remarkably sophisticated level.6 Gardening was part of the physical and cultural settlement of New Zealand by Europeans, which involved a process of domestication. Men

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My Flower Garden, Athenree, New Zealand by Adela Stewart. Note the density of the shelter plantations around the house, with eucalypts in the foreground and pines on the lefthand side.The surrounding indigenous landscape is definitely excluded. ADELA STEWART, MY SIMPLE LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND

and women had complementary roles in relation to the land. Men generally domesticated in the sense of breaking in or ‘taming’ the land, while women created a sense of home and a familiar way of life in an alien setting. Though some men gardened, it was most often women who related to their new land in this way, expanding their domain outwards from the house. What we think of as the typical, flowery, nineteenth-century cottage garden was almost always the creation of a woman. The writings of Deans, Courage and Stewart show that women’s garden-making operated on at least three levels of consciousness – the personal, the social and the cultural. Gardening expressed an individual’s creative vision and created a personal space. It broadened the roles of women in household and community, and ultimately facilitated their role as cultural colonisers along with men. A garden both incorporated and symbolised the complex process of becoming a New Zealander and even in part defined what that could mean.

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Personal gardening Gardening was a common activity for colonial women, and one of the most accessible and dependable pleasures within their domestic realm.7 It is striking how many women wrote frequently of their gardens, and how significant they found them to be in their new lives. In Britain and Europe, women conventionally looked after the flowers and herbs, while men tended the vegetable and fruit gardens. But in New Zealand, women’s responsibilities often expanded to cover all gardens, plus any household livestock.8 As Adela Stewart recounted: ‘We pulled up fernroots, and dug with all our might, feeling completely exhausted, as do all “new chums” at the end of an hour. But that feeling of fatigue has to wear off; as time goes on it becomes evident that gardening must be the woman’s department, the men being too busy for anything so purely ornamental as flowers, or unnecessary as vegetables.’9 The new fashion for gardening supported the Victorian view of the role of women as the moral exemplars and guardians of the home.10 The assumption that gardening was a bracing, or at least harmless, amusement well within the boundaries of domesticity entirely missed the fact that the garden was a uniquely private realm for women where they could think, feel, act, create – and simply be – just for themselves. The opportunity to be intimate with nature was a significant involvement outside the usual confinements of family life, and it was a freedom sanctioned or overlooked by society. Deans, Courage and Stewart each had a high degree of autonomy in her garden.Widowed soon after her arrival, Deans claimed sole responsibility from the trustees of her property for the care and planting of trees. She began by conserving a block of native bush, surrounding it with a protective shelterbelt, as well as making the more usual ornamental and kitchen gardens.11 Later she undertook two other equally large-scale tree plantations. Stewart and Courage both took the initiative of planning, planting and maintaining all their household gardens, enlisting the assistance of their husbands when necessary. Throughout her reminiscences, each woman documented the wide range of ways that her garden-making gratified her. Courage noted that rural women,‘if they are not possessed of plenty of resources, and above all of a cheerful disposition, find the life extremely dull’.12 Unlike most other aspects of their lives, a garden continuously provided the anticipation of pleasure and its fulfilment. Its enjoyment became central to each woman’s process of creating a satisfying life for herself in New

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Zealand. For all of them, gardening was an activity well loved and engaged in almost daily. Deans described herself as ‘passionately fond of planting’.13 Courage wrote that ‘a really good garden . . . has all my life been a great pleasure to me’,14 and Stewart ‘continued finding far more pleasure in growing flowers, vegetables and trees than in any other occupation’.15 By daily tending and admiring their plants, gardeners were actively making a direct connection to their new land, which was a way of adjustment not open to housebound women. Gardening is a close involvement with a small area of earth, so it is not surprising that each woman described an intense relationship with the soil, weather and cycles of growth. Deans, in particular, formed a strong, spiritual bond with the Canterbury plains landscape. The outdoor physical activity of gardening was also part of its appeal; even vigorous exercise was soothing after housework. Courage found it a great antidote to the tedium of the daily round of her isolated life.‘To be busy is to be halfway to being happy – and yet it is not so with every kind of work; there are some occupations which seem of themselves to be peace-bringing and gardening is one of them, partly because one follows it in the open air I suppose!’16 Designing the garden involved the mental exertion of fitting a personal vision to the realities of the land, climate and lifestyle, and it was among the most private pleasures.The excitement of artistry, akin to that of painting a picture, cost Deans ‘a great deal of thought and many sleepless hours at night’ as she planned how to arrange the contrasting colourings of different tree species in her plantations so that they would be ornamental as well as providing shelter.17 Stewart exercised her creativity in the range of plants she collected and cultivated: ‘the more we did, the more we wished to do.’18 She knew nothing of gardening when she came to Athenree, but within the first year Stewart had made a flower bed of shrubs in front of the homestead, planted several hundred European ornamental and shelter trees, established a complete kitchen garden including asparagus and artichokes, made an orchard of 104 fruit and nut trees with bush fruits and strawberries, and experimented with exotic fruits such as oranges and loquats. In later years she collected rare bulbs, imported grape vines from the United States, seeds of unusual varieties of eucalypts and acacias from Australia for firewood and bee-food, and became an expert in the exacting art of growing exhibition dahlias. When their plantings made their initially bleak homesteads picturesque and homely, women derived a sense of selfconfidence and worth from their gardening efforts, as well as the

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pleasure of achievement. Courage wrote of her first summer’s garden: ‘Whatever the employments of the day, I always contrived to find a little spare time for the flowers.When autumn came I had a garden so bright that it would have done credit to a professional gardener – though I say it who should not, perhaps.’19 Stewart also felt greatly satisfied when the abundance of useful trees she planted had matured; ‘they made “Athenree” one of the loveliest places imaginable’.20 There was no hard and fast line between ornamental and utilitarian plantings in terms of the pleasure they gave.The sensuous experience of the garden came in part of course from the bright colour schemes of its flowers, although scents, the sound of leaves and the subtler tints of foliage were also frequently mentioned as sources of enjoyment. Deans appreciated the seasonal ‘blaze of colouring’ in her trees, which were very beautiful when young, and especially in the autumn ‘when the various tints came out in strong relief against the gums and pines in the background’.21 Courage particularly expressed her enjoyment of the fragrance of her plants:‘The clear, pale beams of a full moon shone over all and there was scarcely a breath of air abroad.We stood outside talking for some little time. I was quite loathe to go indoors, the night was so lovely; while from the bed of mignonette there rose a pure, sweet breath – sweet as the air of paradise.’22 Here the garden came into its potential as a place for a woman to relax away from the house and to relish the wider pleasures of nature. A garden has further emotional dimensions as a source of hope and comfort. Stewart’s garden revived her dependably after illness and soothed the distress over financial difficulties, allowing her to forget her problems in a fascination with her plants:‘Feeling ill and sad almost to tears, I cheered up upon receiving a parcel of lovely bulbs . . . and indulged in the joy of planting them.’ She expressed the restorative power of her plants as a bond of affection. ‘No one can over-estimate the pleasures of tending flowers. They are the one thing in the world that does not disappoint.They are true friends.’ 23 Deans and Courage chose mainly familiar European plants for their gardens. The attractiveness of these lay partly in linking the women to settings of their personal and collective past. The trees and shrubs that Deans took over from her late husband were all native to northern Europe (oak, sycamore, and gooseberry) or specifically to Scotland (Scotch fir, heather). Some even came from family properties; her brother-in-law sent seeds of hawthorn and other hedging trees, and Deans brought ash seeds from home.24 Courage was typical of colonial

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gardeners who often expressed their nostalgia for the sights and sounds of ‘Home’ in terms of an appreciation for particular, familiar plants. She wrote of her cabbage roses and lavender:‘Average humanity has a liking for something familiar, and the sense of smell is the sense of memory.’25 Many of the other plants she mentioned by name are also fragrant, traditional cottage garden favourites. All three women felt ambivalent about the indigenous landscape, praising the scenery and native vegetation, but admitting it was stark. For each of them, making a garden compensated for the overwhelming flatness, scrubbiness or emptiness. Courage, for example, found the low tussock-covered hills of the North Canterbury landscape ‘beautiful, but oh so dreary – not a house nor a tree to be seen anywhere’.26 In response, she made a vivid garden rich in colour and scent, centred on a carefully framed view of the sea, which she wholeheartedly enjoyed. In contrast, Deans expressed regrets that cultivation had destroyed so many of the ‘lovely sights of nature’ which she had enjoyed upon arriving in Canterbury.27 She had actively conserved and managed the native bush on her property, which was a landmark on the open plains. She felt responsibility for this six-hectare forest of ‘trees not planted by the hand of man’ and exempted it from the exploitation that quickly destroyed the few other patches of bush near Christchurch.28 Instead she ‘civilised’ her bush and made it garden-like by bounding it with a protective belt of Scottish firs, poplars, willows and elms, and by filling the clearings with oaks and other European trees.29 Shelter was essential in the open colonial countryside, both physically and emotionally. A contemporary painting and photograph of Stewart’s property show layer upon layer of vegetation of increasing fragility enclosing the house: a forest of trees, then shrub beds, flower borders and climbers enveloping the verandah, and finally in the middle a lawn dotted with the choicest specimen trees. Her planting was extremely dense: ‘The cadets dug a very long four-feet-wide border as an edge to one side of the lawn and in it we planted everything that would look pretty one foot apart’, including roses and gum trees as well as perennial flowers. Such an intensity of cultivation suggests the need to wall herself off from the vast ferny lands and her fear of the ‘practically unlimited Pacific ocean, quite lifeless’ by enclosing herself in a highly charged, private world of European- and British-style beauty.30 Ultimately, for these women, gardening was an important part of the psychological process of coming to feel at home in New Zealand. Courage’s frank descriptions give a clear insight into how gardening

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could enable women migrants to accept their new circumstances. For some, the emotional shift from the sadness of an exile to the active commitment of a purposeful settler took place slowly; for others, like Courage, it was remarkably rapid. Initially, she was overwhelmed with homesickness. Passing through the empty tussock-land on her journey from Christchurch to her new home, there was nothing to respond to but the landscape itself:‘I felt so terribly alone . . . the sort of feeling one would imagine of those who were transported for life. The sense of desolation was so great that tears rushed to my eyes, but I stifled my feelings and resolved to make the best of it, and go to my future home with a light heart if possible.’ She did indeed effect a change of heart by the next morning, as soon as she stepped outside: ‘what a morning it was! . . .The greenish-brownish tussocky hills all dewy and glistening in a glow of sunlight. Everything looked lovely . . . I decided . . . that we must have a garden made at once, as I am never so happy as when pottering about out of doors.’31 This optimism would, of course, be sorely tried, but the transformation in feelings was fundamental.

Social gardening Though personal gratification may have been the principal motivation for gardening, women also found that it provided new roles for them within their households and communities. For all the hardships of the migrant women, their new life did provide opportunities – within the conventional bounds of household and family it gave ‘a sense of purpose, a feeling of usefulness and a greater degree of independence’.32 This seems to have been particularly true for genteel women who sought the fulfilment of ‘respectable’ work when they emigrated, and thus were happy to set-to in the garden.33 As we have seen, gender roles could be more fluid in New Zealand as women took the initiative in unfamiliar activities. The experiences of Stewart and Deans showed that there was no limit imposed on the scope of their horticultural endeavours just because they were female. It was significant that both planted many hundreds of trees on their properties. In Britain or Europe it would have been highly unlikely for a woman to display an interest in trees, let alone find the opportunity to design or install such plantations. Some of the changes that arose through their gardening brought women more visibility and higher status, though the colonial life also tended to dissolve the traditional British class structure. As Stewart noted: ‘August

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Women designed and made gardens as a way of taming the raw nature in which they found themselves.A view of the landscape around Sarah Courage’s homestead Seadown, in North Canterbury in about 1890.The dark trees are shelter plantations. CANTERBURY MUSEUM, 1402

brought so much garden-work, also rain, that Hugh put up a little corrugated iron shelter, to which we could run during those drenching showers, and so we went on working, digging and hoeing, planting and sowing, Agnes [the housemaid] being most helpful, and in return persuading me to help with the milking.’34 Kitchen gardening was one activity commonly engaged in by women of all classes. The vegetables and fruits they grew often substantially increased the family’s standard of living, either by direct consumption, by barter or by earned income. All three women tended kitchen gardens because they had to feed their households. Stewart described hers in detail, as she became fascinated with growing all possible edible plants on a large scale.This in turn led to a huge amount of labour in the kitchen preserving the abundant harvests that gave her up to 1500 lbs of jams, bottled fruits and so forth per year. Stewart sowed one packet of tomato seed in 1881, for example, which yielded 700 seedlings. These plants, ‘beginning in February continued till April to yield such a crop that they were brought home in wheelbarrows, sometimes in a dray, and I made many gallons of tomato sauce (selling

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The formality of colonial gardens, such as Courage’s garden at Seadown, struck a fine balance between luxuriance and control of growth, creating an orderly sense of Europeanstyle civilisation. SARAH COURAGE, LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF COLONIAL LIFE: 26YEARS IN CANTERBURY, NEW ZEALAND

some of it at 1s. 6d. a quart bottle), chutneys and jams, the latter flavoured with lemon [also from her own trees] or ginger.’35 The diaries and letters of many colonial women show that in summer the preparation of preserved fruit was the most demanding of their household duties, yet was also highly reassuring as the jars filled the shelves for winter nourishment.36 Gardening often demonstrated the general trend towards egalitarianism, perhaps the most pervasive and characteristic social trend in colonial society. A keen observer of the social scene, Stewart described several major ‘levelling’ experiences in her garden. Not only did she have to agree to take on her maid’s milking duties in order to receive help with her planting, but she sometimes laboured in the field side by side with ‘the men’ or a tramp hired for a few days. In the absence of hired help, Stewart accepted the necessity, even in her fifties, of doing heavy work; her preparations as hostess for a visit from Governor Ranfurly included

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‘hoeing and raking the shell drive with all my might and main’. The attitude of people of her own class metamorphosed in New Zealand to accommodate the physical labour of ladies, finding it worthy of support and even admiration: ‘Hugh, thinking that I worked too hard in the garden, bought a Planet Junior wheel-hoe, which helped me most satisfactorily. I was using it with great energy, attired in “simple garden costume” and shady hat one day, feeling hot and untidy, when Hugh appeared with two strange men . . . I apologised for my appearance. One . . . raising his hat, with a low bow, said: “Mrs. Stewart, you are an ornament to your sex!”’37 For Stewart the most profound aspect of social equalisation was her failure to attain her potential position as lady of the manor. As the pastoral operations of the farm could not support the family’s wealthy lifestyle, Stewart effectively worked ‘in trade’. She was a successful businesswoman, making up to £100 per year, a sum equal to the income of many small farms.38 Stewart turned her talents into a range of moneymaking endeavours, by working on a much larger scale than her household needs. She sold eggs (up to 10,000 per year), poultry, milk, honey, cut flowers, fruit, vegetables and preserves. In later, more financially desperate, years she invited the public to her grounds where she served teas and dinners to holidaymakers. Rather than let her standard of living drop to a level more consistent with her husband’s income, Stewart chose to respond to her colonial life by redoubling her investment of energy and developing her skills, making an intricate set of readjustments to her social role. A garden is an intriguingly ambiguous space; designed mainly to be private, it could become public upon occasion as a place for family recreation, a venue for entertainment and ceremonies, and an essential part of the face the property presented to neighbours and passersby. A fine garden was an asset to the community, giving notable visitors a favourable impression of progress. When the Duke of Edinburgh came to Christchurch in 1869, he went pigeon-hunting in one of Deans’s shelter blocks and opened her drive plantation with a ceremonial carriage-ride.Thus women’s work in the garden also had a value outside of the immediate household – in fact, ‘useless’ ornamental gardens had higher social worth than kitchen gardens, as they demonstrated that the household (and by extension the community) had evolved past the subsistence stage. Part of the sense of achievement in creating a fine garden lay in sharing it with the community. Under her trees, Deans hosted Sunday

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school picnics and a feast with the local Ma¯ori to celebrate her son’s coming of age. Another part of her sense of achievement came from protecting her garden against a different component of the community, which she felt was anti-Scottish, envious of her prosperity and ‘covetous of our pretty place’: she had a protracted fight with the city council to preserve the roadside hawthorn hedge planted by her husband before 1850. As perhaps the first recognisably British landscape feature in Christchurch, it was ‘the admiration of all’.39 This conflict highlights the significance of garden features in the visual domain of communities. Women’s gardens were part of the display of ‘civilisation’, be they as modest as a rosebush by the gate or as grand as Deans’s 500-metre-long drive plantation, which happened to be visible to all railway passengers coming through Christchurch. Gardening promoted neighbourly bonds and friendships very effectively, which were especially important to women like Courage who lived in sparsely settled areas. The people who taught Courage to garden became her first two friends: the kindly carpenter on her property, and an older woman, the only one of her three immediate neighbours with whom she felt compatible.The garden was a place for Courage, her friends and neighbours to entertain each other, with strolling, croquet, tennis and music.The Stewarts celebrated the garden itself: ‘Our nine year old oaks, gums and pines being now a good size . . . we organised a “fete champetre” and entertained about twenty friends to lunch under the shade of these trees, of which we were very proud.’40 Moreover, garden products were commonly a sort of currency between women: ‘Having taken a fancy to have the Brahma strain this season in my poultry farm, I made an exchange with a girl-friend in Tauranga of fourteen of my prize chrysanthemums for a fine Brahma cock.Then, for another dozen plants I got from the winner of the First Prize for pastry at the Katikati Show, the recipe of how to make it.’41 Women gardeners could make wider connections beyond their immediate neighbourhoods by participating in the sub-community of horticulturists spread throughout New Zealand. Deans, for example, received a visit from former Governor Grey (an enthusiastic plantsman), who wished to view the English oak trees he and his wife had given her husband. Stewart’s level of gardening skill was high enough that she had a collegial relationship with the Auckland Domain Committee, which sent her unusual exotic plants. She also became well known far beyond the Tauranga area for her prize-winning chrysanthemums, which were in great demand by mail order throughout New Zealand.

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Cultural gardening As well as a place for working out personal and social issues, a colonial garden was a political domain. British settlers imposed their presence on the land through gardening; this was a major – if unexplored – way that women participated in the colonisation process. Imperialistic policies for the occupation and exploitation of new land were carried out in detail through the fulfilment of the pressing personal needs of the individual settlers. They not only required the land to be fertile, but as Deans implied, they also needed the emotional reassurance of familiar, traditionally cultivated scenery. ‘The [Canterbury] pilgrims arrived to change the dreary aspect of the plains, reclaiming the waste and unprofitable wilderness and transforming it into productive fields and gardens, and now it is the most productive country in the world.’42 Most settlers were eager to domesticate the land – even those of the upper middle class like Courage – because it was likely that it was the first time they had owned property themselves: ‘“Ours” – how odd it sounded at first! I braced myself up on the spot and felt rather important as being part proprietor of that hill covered with sheep.’43 In Britain, tree plantations and other large-scale gardening were the creations of the tiny minority privileged to own an estate.The slow and substantial growth of trees asserted the long-term entitlement of owners to the property well into future generations. In New Zealand, a garden with one’s own shade trees was an acquisition from the upper-class British lifestyle which almost any settler could enjoy without having to ascend socially.44 Issues of power and control are always part of garden-making.While colonial horticulture displayed the power of nature through the growth of trees, fruitfulness and flowery abundance, it was to a greater degree a display of dominance over nature. By extension, it was also dominance over the indigenous people whose land they occupied, exploited and transformed in appearance.45 Control of nature in the colonial setting was even more important than in tame Europe. Settlers had to prevail over the existing ecosystem, radically changing the patterns of growth from vigorous wilderness to orderly cultivation. Nearly all colonial gardens had a very formal design, in order to establish and demonstrate control. Geometry predominated over natural irregularity, both in the layouts of gardens and in the shaping of plants.This geometry could be either traditional, such as the lines of trees along Deans’s drive, or a fashionable import from Italianate Victorian ornamental gardens. But the intensity with which it was employed shows its significance in the

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colonial setting. Rectilinearity applied at every scale, from the blocks and rows of shelter plantations and orchards to the clipped boxwood edging along a front path. Circles and other tight curves were also popular in ornamental gardens. As the wilderness was cleared or bounded, settlers introduced ‘their own’ species of plants. For instance, of the 80 or so kinds of trees Deans established at Riccarton, the only natives she mentioned were the cabbage trees at her gate. European plants had an essential familiarity and a specific utility in traditional horticultural technology. Their usefulness and their beauty were deeply entwined in British culture. Deans found native New Zealand tree species too weak for shelter plantings, while the tea-tree on Stewart’s land was too strong and spreading. Settlers’ weeds over-ran the native vegetation – just as immigrants’ diseases decimated the Ma¯ori population. Stewart complained that ‘round the kitchen garden post and wire fence we planted blackberries . . . and although they bore fine fruit, we never ceased to regret the day we had introduced them for they spread terribly by root suckers over acres of this light land, and became a pest. So did among other imported plants – sweet briar, gorse, kangaroo acacia, hakea, etc.’46 Settlers grew a vast range of plants too tender to thrive in Europe. Many of these species, emblematic of Britain’s worldwide opportunism, were imported from other British colonies such as South Africa and India. Stewart appears to have grown very few traditional European plants outside of her vegetable plot. Her garden exemplified the most sophisticated colonial horticulture with its eclectic mix of plants from all over the world.The plants were luxuriant and exotic – passion-flowers, bananas, Indian rubber trees, bamboo – the epitome of the ‘sub-tropical’ style of planting which was so fashionable, and yet so difficult to achieve, in Britain. The ecologically and politically heedless actions of colonial gardeners spread a mantle of European-style ‘civilisation’ across the wider landscape.This matrix of gardens formed one important element in the new townscapes, which demonstrated to arriving immigrants just how British New Zealand was determined to be, as Courage found in 1864: ‘We passed elegant-looking villas with their prettily laid-out gardens filled with bright flowers. . . .The well-laid out road; the churches, too, of all denominations. . . .We, at least I, had landed in Canterbury with a sort of vague idea that we were entering upon a “spiritual wilderness,” as it were, and here, 15,000 miles away from all old scenes and associations, I found everything much more home-like than we had anticipated.’47

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This 1905 photograph of Jane Deans’s drive plantation shows little of the tartan and flag emblems planted 38 years previously.The limes were among the tree species symbolising Deans’s European roots. DEANS FAMILY PRIVATE COLLECTION, DFPP 302

Then, as now, the vast majority of plants growing around settled areas were immigrants themselves, and apparently appreciated as such. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Deans reflected directly on the colonisation process in her writing and in extraordinary symbolic plantings. In her eyes, a true colonist – regardless of gender – saw the necessity of planting trees; her own life in New Zealand gained meaning as she became an arboriculturist.To her, plantations were gardens in the widest sense of the word, as opposed to raw nature:‘To begin with, there were these vast plains in their original state, I may say, for they showed no sign of ever having been cultivated. . . . All was waiting for the advent of a white race of people to reclaim them and make them useful or beautiful as a garden.’48 Not only did her generation presume the right as imperialists to claim land, but furthermore as colonists, they believed that they had a moral duty to develop it. Making these gardens of virtuous productivity and beautiful utility was ‘the work of civilisation’. From a Eurocentric point of view, such ‘colonising’ was ‘heroic’.49 Deans’s first design was a tree-shaped plantation on an island in the Avon. She planted the roots, trunk and branches in different species of

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trees to represent the history and cast of characters of European settlement in Canterbury. For her next project she lined the drive, with birch, oak, elm and other European varieties. Crossing rows of trees depicted tartan, with British flag emblems in the corners.Together they symbolised Deans’s identity as a Scotswoman. As a tribute to her adopted country, she interplanted trees from the southern hemisphere. The whole plantation of several acres represented the ‘lights and shades’ of her life.Through this large-scale garden work, she summed up her 33 years in New Zealand. Deans acknowledged that her personal gratification arose mainly from the fulfilment of the colonist’s mission: ‘a happy, contented and pleasant, though lonely, life I have spent here in the enjoyment of reclaiming the wilderness’.50

A sense of home Gardens have a multitude of meanings for those who create or perceive them, for those who live in the communities they frame, and for the wider society whose worldview they reflect. The strongest single meaning of colonial gardens on all levels lay in the creation of a sense of security for the uprooted people who were the settlers.They epitomised ‘that greater meaning of home . . . a metaphor for all possible feelings of security, of safety, of what is predictable, gentle and good in life’.51 As the gardeners in the family, Deans, Courage and Stewart were typical of New Zealand’s women settlers. Each played her part in claiming and domesticating the land by extending her domain of care through her garden-making. Many thousands of households across the countryside repeated this process; it was essential in transforming the landscape into a place that felt hospitable to Europeans. A garden has always been an emblem of security for Europeans, a way of attempting to feel safe and at ease in nature. It is an artificial realm, the appeal of which is all the more powerful because it is made from elements of the real world, interweaving the idealised and the actual. Colonists became gardeners out of their need to partake of both the tangible and illusionary benefits of this cultural symbol. As much as the physical nourishment and shelter provided by gardens, they needed to create for themselves a feeling of being at home in their new land. Significantly, most colonial gardeners felt compelled to garden only after they emigrated. Some, like Stewart, planted flowers even before building a house, so strong was the urge to obtain the primal comfort of

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a familiar Eden. Flourishing auspiciously, their first gardens were places of optimism, reflecting how they hoped their lives would be, rather than how they actually perceived them during the difficult period of becoming established. Yet the benevolence of nature is the primary illusion of the traditional European garden. According to landscape theorist Ian McHarg, reassurance is the foremost role of the garden.52 Within a garden, nature is demonstrated to be bountiful, orderly, docile and stable. Nowhere is this illusion more flimsy, but also more necessary, than in the early days of a pioneer. Nowhere does it require a greater investment of energy to sustain than on a frontier. Gardening also fostered a second illusion, which flourished specifically in colonial soil: that the path to prosperity is straightforward, given enough effort. This was certainly truer in the garden, where women’s hard and consistent labour was often well rewarded. These two illusions supported the widely held fantasy of an attainable, homely paradise – a ‘better Britain’ – in New Zealand, where the land seemed ordained to fulfil the ambitions of European settlers.53 As Courage said, however, her book was not ‘a record of Arcadian simplicity’. Being a settler meant becoming reconciled to hard reality:‘We had then [twenty years ago] our ideals, illusions, aspirations and all that sort of thing. . . . For the first ten or fifteen years after we came out it was one continual descent from illusion to illusion; many times one was reminded that truth is stranger than fiction.’54 Initially gardens may have had their greatest value in the realm of imagination as symbols of cultural identity and personal hopes of success. As they matured they came to provide a tangible and substantial security, in all its different guises as abundance, order, harmony, comfort, peace and pleasure. While settlers’ gardens certainly contained a wide range of nostalgic elements, they were seldom wholesale replicas of European gardens. Instead, their power to reassure sprang from hardwon knowledge of the new land. Becoming a successful gardener in New Zealand meant adapting to local conditions and actively engaging with the new challenges and opportunities. ‘“Home”. . . always means England, for nobody except a born colonist calls New Zealand “home”, not even those who, like ourselves, have been here over a quarter of a century – we always look upon England as a haven of rest.’This statement at the beginning of Courage’s book demonstrates that immigrants carried with them such a powerful and idealised image of ‘Home’ as the mother country, that their sense of

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being ‘at home’ in New Zealand was quite tenuous. Each settler had to construct whatever feeling of homely ease she could out of the mundane elements of everyday living. At the end of her book, Courage describes returning to Seadown after a few days in Christchurch. Her words illustrate the way she, as a gardener, could assemble ordinary, but meaningful, pleasures to give that most essential sense of belonging. She stands for all the women settlers who literally made a place for themselves in New Zealand through their gardening: ‘A young moon welcomed our return with a soft radiance, and the big gum trees which flourished on one side of the house were moved by a slight breeze, a sort of murmur of welcome. All was delightfully still and restful, making one feel it was “home”. . . . How sweet the garden smelt . . . for, late autumn though it was, there were still many flowers.’55 In this moment she had fulfilled the ultimate task of the colonist – to make the new land hers.

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Adela Stewart, My Simple Life in New Zealand, Banks and Son, London, 1908, p. 49 (hereafter MSLNZ). Mark Francis and Randolph Hester Jr, ‘Introduction’ in Mark Francis and Randolph Hester Jr (eds), The Meaning of Gardens: Idea, Place and Action, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Cambridge, Ma, 1990, pp. 2–19. Francis and Hester,‘Introduction’, in Francis and Hester (eds), p. 2. See the entries on Jane Deans and Adela Stewart in Charlotte Macdonald, Merimeri Penfold and Bridget Williams (eds), The Book of New Zealand Women Ko Kui Ma Te Kaupapa, Bridget Williams Books,Wellington, 1991. For more on the life and activities of Jane Deans see Gordon Ogilvie, Pioneers of the Plains:The Deans of Canterbury, Shoal Bay Press, Christchurch, 1996, and Thelma Strongman, The Gardens of Canterbury: A History, Reed,Wellington, 1984.The letters of Charlotte Godley also give first-hand descriptions of ‘Riccarton’ in its early days, see J. Godley (ed.), Letters from Early New Zealand by Charlotte Godley 1850–1853, Whitcombe and Tombs, Christchurch, 1951. Julia Millen, Colonial Sweat and Tears: The Working Class in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand, Reed, Wellington, 1984, presents the contrasting experiences of working-class women in nineteenth-century New Zealand. For gardening trends in 1840–1860 see Katherine Raine, ‘The Settlers’ Gardens’, in Matthew Bradbury (ed.), The History of the Garden in New Zealand, Penguin, Auckland, 1995, pp. 64–83. Chapters 3–5 in the same book cover European gardening over the nineteenth century as a whole. Many letters and journal entries about women gardening in nineteenth-century New Zealand are contained in Frances Porter and Charlotte Macdonald (eds), ‘My Hand Will Write What My Heart Dictates’: The Unsettled Lives of Women in Nineteenth-Century New

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Zealand as Revealed to Sisters, Family, and Friends, Auckland University Press/Bridget Williams Books, Auckland, 1996.The introduction provides the context for the specific experiences of colonial women. James Belich, Making Peoples:A History of the New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century, Penguin, Auckland, 1996, p. 395. MSLNZ, p. 27. Raewyn Dalziel, ‘The Colonial Helpmeet’, in Barbara Brookes, Charlotte Macdonald and Margaret Tennant (eds), Women in History: Essays on European Women in New Zealand, Allen and Unwin/Port Nicholson Press,Wellington, 1986, p. 55. A detailed account of the history and management of Deans’ bush is in Brian Molloy (ed.), Riccarton Bush: Putaringamotu, Riccarton Bush Trust, Christchurch, 1995. Sarah Amelia Courage, Lights and Shadows of Colonial Life: 26 Years in Canterbury, New Zealand, Whitcoulls, Christchurch, 1976, p. 240 (originally published c.1896 and hereafter LSCL). Jane Deans, Letters to My Grandchildren, 3rd edn, Cadsonbury Publications, Christchurch, 1995, p. 56 (originally published in 1923 and hereafter LMG). LSCL, p. 61. MSLNZ, p. 74. LSCL, p. 61. LMG, p. 55. MSLNZ, p. 120. LSCL, p. 90 MSLNZ, p. 19. LMG, pp. 55–6. LSCL, p. 131. MSLNZ, pp. 168, 136–7. Jane Deans, ‘Canterbury Past and Present’, New Zealand Country Journal, vol. 6, no. 6, 1882, p. 388; LMG, p. 37. LSCL, p. 231. LSCL, p. 43. LMG, p. 76. LMG, pp. 37. Deans,‘Canterbury Past and Present’, p. 392; LMG, p. 37. The psychological importance of shelter in the landscape is covered in Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia:A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values, Prentice-Hall Inc, New Jersey, 1974 and J. Appleton, The Poetry of Habitat, Miscellaneous Series No. 2, Landscape Research Group and Department of Geography, University of Hull, Hull, 1978; MSLNZ, pp. 37, 71. LSCL, pp. 42, 47. Dalziel, p. 59. Belich, pp. 326–8. MSLNZ, p. 50. MSLNZ, p. 59. See Dalziel, and Porter and Macdonald (eds). MSLNZ, pp. 146, 154. Belich, p. 364. LMG, pp. 73, 74. MSLNZ, p. 104. MSLNZ, pp. 147–8. LMG, p. 7. LSCL, p. 42. Michael Pollan, Second Nature, Laurel/Dell, New York, 1991, p. 194; Belich, p. 329.

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Belich, pp. 300–1. MSLNZ, p. 34. LSCL, p. 33. LMG, p. 75. LMG, p. 36; LSCL, p. 238. LMG, pp. 55, 75. A. Quindlen, One True Thing, Random House, New York, 1994, p. 213. I. McHarg,‘Nature is More Than a Garden’, in Francis and Hester (eds), p. 34. Belich, pp. 299–305. LSCL, pp. 234, 236. Note that Stewart’s book title, My Simple Life in New Zealand, was meant ironically. Her introduction makes it clear that she published in part to give a dose of reality to her naive acquaintances in Britain who wished for ‘the simple life’ they imagined could be had in New Zealand. The early propagandists for New Zealand settlement had done their work so well that the idealised image of the colony still persisted when Stewart’s work was published in 1908. LSCL, pp. 8, 231.

5 Body and Soul: Heroic Visions of Work in the Late Nineteenth Century |

MARGARET McCLURE

‘The body is what we’ve got’, historian Caroline Walker Bynum reminds us. Bodies are physical entities; they exist materially, ‘whatever else they stand for.’1 But the flesh speaks of something else, too, and cultural historians who explore the stories that people tell have pointed to the symbolic nature of discourse on the body.2 They suggest that the body is both event and invention: not only the seat of pleasure and pain, but often an allegory of good and evil, a symbol of values and personal identity, and a pointer to the innermost heart or soul. The body is what we’ve got when we look at surviving nineteenthcentury Pa¯keha¯ texts, and particularly those which discuss the meaning of work. Many men and women beginning a new life in New Zealand found that the nature of their own body was a decisive factor in their working life and progress. The body gained further resonance in the new world as it became a focus of colonial debate, and a point of definition for both individuals and nation. The ways in which immigrants described their bodies at work reveal what they felt deeply about, and provide glimpses of both their sensual and spiritual life. Far from being loathed or obscured (as scholars sometimes suggest), the body was a recurring motif in narratives of work and a metaphor for colonial fears and ideals.3 Work processes and labour relations, rather than the stories told about work, have been the subject of most labour history in New Zealand. In 1990 Jock Phillips suggested that we should follow American and English historians by tracing ‘a worker’s culture, a complete way of life’.4

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This is a pertinent challenge to cultural historians in New Zealand, for stories of work are among the founding narratives of immigrant and colonial culture. Labour historians have answered Phillips’s call and broadened their analyses to encompass symbols, language and shop-floor customs in order to gain a fuller understanding of the role of work in popular culture.5 My study of discourses on bodies at work is another response to the challenge to expand the scope of labour history. The texts explored in this essay are drawn from a range of public and private discussions of work in which perceptions of the body contributed to a broader discourse on new-world society. I chose sources which highlight moments of change in individual lives or turning-points in a culture: immigrants’ leave-taking and arrival, their first experience of work in a different country, and a colonial society’s reactions to industrialisation. Immigration was at its peak in the 1870s, and Immigration Office correspondence recounts the official scrutiny of men and women who had been selected to be vigorous workers.We see this official pragmatism transmuted into heroic rhetoric in the writings of emigration propagandists in order to attract workers across the world. Immigrants’ letters convey their own interpretation of work experience and become a kind of ‘soul history’. Alternative images of the body surfaced when the move towards large-scale manufacturing raised qualms about the nature of work: parliamentary debates on the eighthour day and discussions on industry in farming journals exposed the relationship of the body to the machine as both threat and promise. Texts such as these deserve close attention, for they not only reflect a culture, but shape it too; the word is as important historically as the action, the debates which precede legislation as important as the law itself, and the song of the plough as important as the plough’s performance.6 The ‘way we tell important stories’, the structure and imagery of narratives of work, the ordering, plotting and metaphors are an integral part of the meaning of any account.7

Scrutinising immigrants A healthy body and a capacity for strenuous physical work were central to the official description of immigrants required by the New Zealand government in the expansive decade of the 1870s. Under Premier Julius Vogel’s impetus, the government provided assisted passages for people of the working class who were sober, industrious, of good moral character,

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and free from any bodily deformity ‘likely to prevent his or her usefulness’ in opening up large tracts of wilderness and forest.8 The need to develop New Zealand would therefore point public attention to immigrants’ physical attributes. Isaac Featherston, New Zealand’s Agent-General in London, supervised agents who recruited and selected suitable emigrants from all over the British Isles and, to a lesser extent, from Europe. It was difficult to find, check, and despatch quickly the tens of thousands of working people that Vogel required. In his turn, Vogel was unappreciative of Featherston’s efforts, under pressure of looming public debt, and conscious of public criticism of the calibre of immigrants.9 Their correspondence was often acrimonious, and assessments took on a defensive tone as the condition of immigrants’ bodies increasingly became a point of contest between British-based recruitment officers and Vogel. Provincial superintendents, immigration officers, ships’ commissioners and surgeons contributed to this discussion.Their letters were published in Wellington and became a focal point for debates over immigration policy and its benefits. In a decade when the immigrant population of New Zealand doubled, the controversy over fit bodies stimulated public expectations of a vigorous colonial society. Official scrutiny applied equally to men and women, for both sexes were being drawn across the world to construct a young working society. As the numbers of immigrants grew (30,000 entered the country in the peak year of 1875), the government’s welcome for the fit equalled its anxiety over the unfit, the ill, the old, the very young and the very poor. Immigration officials criticised the arrival of a consumptive child and a young woman who was half-paralysed, and repeatedly pointed to migrants who were weak, undersized, or ‘a puny lot’.10 The public joined in a more informal appraisal of immigrants at points of departure and arrival, and en route. Fellow voyagers, and an earlier generation of immigrants in New Zealand who guarded their own jobs jealously, rigorously assessed those who arrived in the 1870s, although their disquiet was more often over unruly behaviour: drunken navvies, married women who consorted with sailors, and men and women who climbed the walls of immigration barracks.11 At times of official complaint or public outcry over the appearance and behaviour of immigrants, Featherston claimed that their physique was more important than their respectability;‘depraved’ girls from Cork were at least employable.12 His best agent argued that the capacity for rough work was more valuable to the colony than the virtues of ‘the

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nice sort of emigrants’.13 As criticism reached a crescendo, Featherston defended his selection by quoting officials’ descriptions of immigrants who were ‘healthy desirable colonists’ or ‘a well selected healthy class of people’.14 In these policy tussles the appearance of healthy vigour defined a proper colonist, and the fitness of both women’s and men’s bodies was important. However, this association of the fit, energetic body with the new world was also part of a broader discourse on new-world identity, in which idealised portrayals of the colonial body were distinctly gendered and racialised, and the colonial worker became masculine, white, and heroic. Rollo Arnold has noted the admiring tone of observers’ reflections on the physical appearance of emigrants; they seemed to belong to a virile physical elite which made them natural members of the new world. In 1879 a journalist watched workers board the Stad Haarlem, and felt that it was typical that ‘the best men, the best instructed, the most muscular, in every sense the most valid men, emigrate, leaving the old decrepit, and inferior behind . . . . So far as I have seen, the emigrants from Kent of tomorrow are composed of powerful men, great square-shouldered fellows.’15 Emigrant propagandists had an important role in immigration policy and in promoting the connection between vigorous bodies and a new life. In the south of England, where the work of rural labourers had become devalued, emigrant agents and agricultural union leaders promoted the new world as an apt setting for a worker’s strength and energy. The English labourer could escape the servility of his work in England for a truer home, where body and soul would be liberated, and a man achieve his full stature. After a long tour of New Zealand in 1873/4, Christopher Holloway, chairman of the Oxfordshire Agricultural Labourers’ Union, encouraged the momentum of emigration by drawing on a spiritual tradition in which union leader Joseph Arch would become a new Moses, leading farm labourers in another Exodus: already a gleam of light was seen in the distant horizon, which was gradually increasing in brightness, and giving promise of a more glorious day – a day when the slaves should be emancipated, when the chains and fetters . . . should be snapped asunder, and when the farm labourers of Old England should once more stand forth in all the dignity of true manhood, a happy and contented people.16

This insistence on the difference of the worker in the new world and

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the romanticisation of male strength served another purpose.The Pa¯keha¯ body was integral to defining ethnic difference, and portrayals of the Anglo-Saxon body strongly suggested its right of possession of a ‘new’ country. As part of a ‘literature of invasion’, these celebrations of immigrant energy accompanied the ‘insertion of an alien people and polity into an already inhabited land’, justifying yet again the physical displacement of Ma¯ ori from their lands.17 Such accounts drew on imperial notions of new white arrivals as heroic and active, and indigenous peoples as passive and degenerate. The propagandists’ scrutiny of Ma¯ori was often cursory: Alfred Simmons, Secretary of the Kent and Sussex Agricultural Labourers’ Union, was in New Zealand only a few weeks.Yet he wrote scathingly of ‘the conquered and lazy remnant of the New Zealand blacks’. His portrait ousted them to a marginal, wandering role in a future where, like the gypsies of England ‘they will ultimately become a drivelling herd of servile beings, hawkers of tenpenny ware and trumpery curiosities’.18 Vogel was similarly dismissive in his attempts to further the immigrant cause, despite closer observance. He described Ma¯ori with ‘well-formed’ bodies, good teeth, strong calves, and graceful bearing, but argued that ‘in bodily prowess the Englishman has the advantage. As a carrier of heavy burdens, the native is the superior; but in exercises of strength and endurance, the average Englishman surpasses the average Maori.’ Vogel drew a sharp distinction between the physicality and energy of civilised and uncivilised peoples, claiming that for the white race, ‘exertions are themselves a source of happiness,’ whilst ‘the uncivilised man, on the other hand, has a craving for rest . . . his idea of labour is to obtain by force or stratagem what does not belong to him.’ Vogel borrowed Byron’s words to highlight the superiority of the white body, and to promote his romantic vision of the immigrant’s role in a new land: Wherein are cast the heroic and the free, The beautiful, the brave – the lords of earth and sea.19

Soul history These propagandist visions of heroism were constructed as inducements to emigration, but they found echoes in the narratives of ordinary people. The letters home from newly arrived immigrants which

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recorded the first days or months of immigrant experience described lives marked by radical change. The transformation of the meaning of work and a new consciousness of the body were important elements in these accounts, and vital to an immigrant’s own sense of a newly made self. Immigrants who described changes in their body and person were heirs to a tradition of ordinary people who gave order and purpose to life by shaping their lived experiences in writing. Such writers achieved a kind of heroism, for without writing and reflection, without recollecting, comparing and assessing, a person ‘has no history’; the person who meditates on the experience of change, and shapes his or her experience becomes the ‘author of his own life, its historian and interpreter’.20 Celebration of change was a normal pattern in immigrant letters worldwide.21 The dichotomy which immigrants constructed between two worlds may have been necessary when it was often impossible for voyagers to reverse the irreversible.22 And as James Belich has argued, some of these letters were published by emigrant propagandists as an advertising tool.23 Unpublished letters for a private audience, however, were similar in structure and ethos; both published and unpublished letters can be read as the ‘soul history’ of ordinary people.24 In his description of the ‘sea change’ of emigration as a kind of puritan conversion experience, historian Stephen Fender comes close to the mood of these British men and women in New Zealand. Letters sent soon after arrival conveyed the immigrant’s personal survival and transformation. The writing itself was ‘the badge of the initiate’, ritualising the passage to a new world.25 Some of the letters were structured very like conversion narratives, describing a journey from darkness to light, and proclaiming at the climax: ‘Look, we have come through!’26 At the crux of the story was a choice which brought a changed way of life; the blessings of the new life were thrown into sharp relief by memories of the past. These letters convey a sense of celebration.Workers exulted in activity that was hard, but not degrading, and for which the rewards seemed high. They felt a sense of new vigour, and fulfilled Holloway’s vision of an escape from serfdom to freedom. James Miller, for example, wrote from Invercargill:‘Father says you are not to stay in England to be transported, but you are to come out here; he says he was transported all the time he was there, but now is free again.’ 27 The writer’s body was an important element in immigrant accounts. It often became a symbol of well-being and a sign of a new identity in the new land. Some of these letters were from educated colonists who

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were conscious of suspending past values and defying the expectations of their class when they accepted manual work in New Zealand.These writers argued strongly, conscious of an unbelieving audience at home who would resist their interpretation of events. John Royds confronted his family’s disdain for physical labour by detailing his new physical skills and his pride in his body: I found it abominable work to fell trees at first . . . with a great American axe with a handle a yard long which you swing round you with both hands . . . but now I would swing it round my body and hit you on the fingernail if you would put it down on the block . . . I guess you would hardly know me if you saw me . . . I have got big and burly. . . I must be heavier now, say 12st. 8lb. whereas when I left England I weighed 10 st. 6lb.

He noted beside a rough sketch of his brother sawing with him: neither of us ever scorn our work by any means – I think we both like the work, at any rate I do, for it makes one feel so strong – I do positively feel twice the man I did when I was at home, and can look at a crowd of able-bodied men and feel myself equal to the biggest of them which I couldn’t have done before if I had tried ever so hard.28

Schoolteacher Peter McGregor came from Manchester to Dunedin with his wife, Emma, in 1875. As a builder in Caversham, he enjoyed a breeze that put ‘fresh life’ into him, and felt ‘as if I was made over again’. He boasted of his new-found masculinity: My face fairly shines again and together with my neck and arms up to the elbows are burnt a deep healthy brown – I fancy you would rather open your eyes to see poor delicate me!!! at work, in shirt and trousers, with my braces fastened round my waist, shirt sleeves rolled up to my elbows.29

Women’s accounts of hard work and its effect on their bodies were more ambivalent. Maria Thompson, market farming in Auckland, wrote home of her children’s energy: ‘Georgie is a big ruf lad, he sais he is a big man, he is as happy as a king’. But while her husband,William, once a law clerk in Manchester, proclaimed his new strength and prowess with an axe, Maria was more rueful about her own hard work.30 Despite the excited accounts by ‘legendary’ women such as Lady Barker and Jane Maria Atkinson, for whom manual work was a novelty, letters such as

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Maria’s suggest that women were more reluctant to romanticise their heavy pioneering work, and may have suffered more than men from the loss of their former class position and identity. Elizabeth Peryman, her ‘stock of strength’ used up, wrote to her mother:‘I often feel as if I were scarcely in the body at all but hovering just round it, ready to leave very quickly’.31 The masculine admiration of a vigorous life was inherited in part from a long English Protestant tradition, in which activity was worthy and indolence evil. But the early-nineteenth-century Victorian moral conception of work as ‘the duty of life’ was less evident in the new world.32 Appreciation of the worth of male work in 1870s New Zealand was more exuberant than this, and was shared with other new-world societies. The need for energy was obvious when over 50 per cent of male workers in New Zealand in 1874 were working as farmers, miners, navvies, labourers, and sawyers.33 Immigrant letters are significant for the way in which they evoked a marked degree of sensuality in men’s descriptions of rough work, the new enjoyment of sun, wind, sweat, and physical movement, and the male worker’s appreciation of the strength and beauty of his body. This discovery of a vigorous body marked a point of change and the moment of forging an identity in a new setting, but the sense of transformation could be short-lived. The tone of letters which cover longer periods of time sometimes shifted to disillusionment. Diarist James Cox was dispirited throughout his entire working life; John Royds felt unsuccessful five years after his arrival, and wrote that continual disappointment had made his brother ‘silent and grumpy’; Peter McGregor turned to teaching and helped his wife at dressmaking for extra cash.34 William Thompson continued writing over nearly ten years, and his enjoyment of labour clearly diminished.35 His struggles foreshadowed the immigrant letters of lament in the 1880s that conveyed a sense of wasted labour and sweat. Nevertheless, the later ambivalence of these migrants does not negate their earlier experience: their conversion to a new self, in which a new body signified a crossing-over, and work was a catalyst for finding an identity as a member of the new world.

Sweated bodies A single unifying vision of work was also difficult to sustain as the colonial workplace diversified.The birth of large-scale manufacturing in

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the 1870s provoked anxieties about the nature of work in a new society, and an alternative discourse on oppression became an undercurrent to the immigrant celebration of vigour. An early focus of political concern was the length of a working day. In parliamentary debates on protective labour legislation, the body symbolised a worker’s welfare. Bodies were, however, sharply gendered: discussion of women’s bodies at work focused on their vulnerability, while debates on the eight-hour day for men envisioned a more heroic potential. Elsewhere in the nineteenth century the factory had been the central site of debate on the nature of work.36 Textile mills epitomised the threatening nature of manufacturing: mill-work was regarded as an aggressive industry, with highly specialised steam machinery, and largescale employment of women and children.The construction of the first woollen mill in New Zealand at Mosgiel in 1871 aroused public excitement, but also fears about women’s entry into a new workplace outside the home.The first attempts to regulate the hours of a working day in New Zealand centred, as elsewhere, on the ‘special’ category of women workers. Factory reformers feared the moral and physical consequences of women’s work outside their traditional domestic confines, as much as the actual work practices within industry. Machinery had the potential to dissolve differences between men and women workers, diminishing the importance of muscular strength. But reformers were concerned that factory work provided young women with the opportunity to spend their daily lives away from parental control, and in the company of men where they would be exposed to male profanities, and given increased opportunity for sexual liaisons. They also shared the concern of other nineteenth-century industrialised societies that the maternal role of women would be threatened by factory work: how would women’s bodies, after years at a machine, adapt to child-bearing? And if married women worked in industry, how could they remain the linchpin of family welfare?37 The frailty of a woman’s body, and its difference from the male body, became the focus of this anxiety. In the rhetoric of reform, overworked, weary bodies became a ‘metaphor for disorder’, a cautionary symbol in a fight to protect the health of future generations and traditional ideas of femininity in the face of shifting patterns of work.38 Parliamentarian James Bradshaw and pamphleteer John Richardson promoted New Zealand’s first factory legislation in 1873 to limit women’s factory work to eight hours a day, and more controversially, to ban night work; the Employment of Females Act was passed in 1873 and

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amended in 1874. Owners of the Mosgiel mill were joined by Christchurch manufacturers intent on extending working hours to defray their outlay on expensive machinery and counter their mounting debts. To oppose any possibility of extended hours, factory reformers drew on a sentimental tradition in which women were the object of gallantry and compassion. Their narratives of the female body and the pathos of its suffering under factory conditions aimed to create a sympathetic bond between audience and workers and ‘goad the moral imagination’ of those who listened.39 A Lancashire man by birth, Bradshaw drew his cautionary tales from the pottery towns of England. He had included boys’ working hours in the amendment to the 1873 Act, which enabled him to emphasise vulnerable bodies in the workplace. He foresaw a future which could soon mirror England’s conditions, with ‘pale faces of little children, stunted and outworn’, and parts of machinery ‘fed by almost “infant hands”’. He told of a 24-year-old woman making 2000 bricks a day, while fifteen- and sixteen-year-old girls had to carry loads of clay ‘up the slippery sides of the pit’. A year later when the Mosgiel millowners attempted to extend working hours further, Bradshaw’s analogies became more extreme, likening future New Zealand women workers to ‘inferior’ foreigners such as Russian women in industrial and field labour, who bore their children in a stable.40 In 1881 Bradshaw published Richardson’s pamphlet warning of the dangers of factory work for women and children, and highlighting the difference between women’s and men’s bodies. In its introduction, Bradshaw cited medical opinion that ‘a great physical law was violated’ when women were overworked, and argued that it was physically impossible for a woman to work the same number of hours as a man without injuring her constitution. But the reformers saw that the public needed illustrations, ‘not vague generalities’, and preferred sensationalised stories of overworked, abused bodies,‘stunted, distorted, and pale as spectres’.The pamphlet included an article by a Massachusetts reformer, who catalogued the bodies of thousands of female factory workers in the slaughter-trenches of Massachusetts’ industrial ‘battlefield’, and added a nightmare glimpse of turf heaving over the corpses of these overworked women.The image of death was magnified in his vision of a future where sick bodies would multiply when weakened women on ‘beds of pain’ bore generations of feverish children.41 Such factory debates and reform rhetoric gave little sense of the vigour of women in a colonial workplace, nor did they recognise the daily

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arduous grind of women’s domestic toil.The heroic figure in this discourse was the male reformer in his role as guardian of the weak: it was reformers, rather than immigrants themselves, who would achieve Burke’s model of a good nation of ‘strong men and women’, when they could see New Zealand children enter the factory gate at a later age, ‘in the vigour of unimpaired health, and not as the cripples of former times . . . like a mass of crooked alphabets’.42 Richardson saw himself inheriting the role of idealists whose ‘heroic deeds’ had emancipated the slaves or who had opened the prison doors – those who would not relent until they had ‘freed from a scarcely less horrid bondage the women and children of their native land – their brothers and sisters in the flesh’.43 As manufacturing became more competitive in the 1880s, and tenand twelve-hour days displaced more workers into the ranks of the unemployed, men were drawn into this discourse on protection. The Eight Hour Bill of 1884 was an attempt to codify workplace values in a new society by limiting the hours of male labour, so that eight hours should constitute a day’s work unless there was a written contract to the contrary. But labour reformers faced a dilemma: protection of women had been claimed in terms of frailty and women’s maternal role, but it was difficult to defend male workers without emasculating men. Pastoralists and manufacturers, who were the chief opponents of eighthour legislation and supporters of freedom of contract, made the most of this issue, and offered demeaning images of a man as an imbecile, or ‘a baby in long clothes’ who needed to be nursed by such protective measures.44 They portrayed the freedom to work hard for unlimited hours as the natural right of an energetic man in a new country, and described success in terms of virility and vigour for ‘hale and hearty men like to work long hours’.45 John Grigg, owner of the enormous sheep-station at Longbeach and a large employer, believed Parliament ‘should do everything to give nerve to the people, and to encourage the use of their energies in every possible direction’.46 Proponents of the eight-hour day pointed to the potential of a labouring man rather than to his weakness.They claimed that a man had the right to be more than a mere body: his full stature was gained in escaping a brutish existence, and he must not be worked as a slave, a machine or an animal.The body was the seat of the mind and soul, and as a human being a man should be allowed time to cultivate his mind and raise himself intellectually. In these debates on men’s working hours, twelve years on from the Employment of Females Act, there was less harking back to old-world

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experience. Members of Parliament defended their arguments with stories of their own lives in the new world, and with no hint of physical frailty, deformed limbs, or victimhood. Although there was a playful element in these competing accounts, they carry the tone of conversion narratives (like immigrant letters before them), and convey the same confidence in the belief that the nature of work makes a man, and defines a colony. James Lance, the southern pastoralist, gave his story: Why, Sir, if one thing more than another induced me to settle in this country in 1856, it was the extraordinary independence, and energy and self-reliance of everybody that I saw in this colony. . . . A man whenever he left his home did it almost at the risk of his life. I was almost astounded at the character of the population who had settled this colony, and I said to myself, ‘I am game to throw in my lot with men of this class.’ Suppose at that time that men had talked of eight hours work or the laws of labour.Why, Sir, the thing would have been laughed to scorn . . . we shall destroy the very condition upon which depends . . . successful colonisation; and that reminds me of the lines of Goldsmith, A bold peasantry, their country’s pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.47

Richard Seddon, the former mechanic and publican, countered with his story: I may tell the honourable member for Cheviot, as he has given the history of what caused him to remain in New Zealand, what caused me to remain in the colonies. When I left the Old Country as an engineer to go to Victoria for a Home firm, what did I find? While I had left working ten hours a day, the mechanics employed by the Victorian Government had only to work eight hours a day . . . . In the Old Country I had to work from six in the morning to six at night; but I found that my fellow mechanics in Victoria were more robust and altogether a different class of men from those that I had left in the Old Country; and I said to myself,‘This is the country for me; this is a free country; the day’s work is only eight hours.’ I made up my mind that I would not go back to work ten hours a day.48

Central to these opposing accounts was a vigorous vocabulary, the energy of the participant in a new life, and a narrative structure that highlighted the significance of choosing one’s future.

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Songs of hope and courage Farming journalists also confronted the growth of industrialisation. New Zealand’s first agricultural journal, The New Zealand Farmer, Bee and Poultry Journal (NZ Farmer) was founded in 1885, and proclaimed itself as ‘the leading periodical of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere’.49 It provided small farmers with technical information to aid agricultural success in the difficult period of the late 1880s when economic survival was precarious. Clearing bush and swampland was expensive, export profits were low, mortgage payments high, and small farmers felt politically impotent, with pastoralists dominating the representation of country interests in parliament.50 In resistance to manufacturing and the economic threats of the 1880s, the NZ Farmer promoted the elemental task of a man on the soil, celebrating the strength and sensuality of his body, and his participation in ‘an ancient calling’.51 The journal became an aggressive critic of the ‘close and unwholesome’ factory and the city surrounding it, and lamented the role of an expanding education system in luring away the younger generation, and unfitting them for rough work of any kind. It insistently attacked rival workplaces, and prescribed the advantages of a good life on the land, with claims that a competent farmer was ‘one of the noblest specimens of industrial humanity’.52 The journal’s selection of poetry further buoyed farming confidence with heroic portrayals of the farmer’s body at work. These ‘songs of hope and courage’ were often borrowed from American and Australian journals, which reflected the same nostalgia for the past in response to fluctuating markets. ‘The Hero of the Plough’ was typical of this genre. It describes a long day’s work in which labour is enobled and the farmer’s sweat and sunburnt brow enhance his masculinity.The plough extends the sexual potency of the farmer’s body, suggestively breaking the receptive earth: Lo! On he comes behind his smoking team; With toil’s bright dew drops on his sunburnt brow. The Lord of earth, the hero of the plough! . . . Line after line, along the bursting sod, Marks the broad acres where his feet have trod; Still where he treads the stubborn clods divide, The smooth, fresh furrows open steep and wide;

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Matted and dense the tangled turf upheaves, Mellow and dark the ridgy cornfield cleaves.53

This sensuality accompanied a radical shift in the journal’s ideology in the mid-1890s when its opposition to manufacturing evaporated, and its celebration of the male farmer’s body was extended to the machine.The shift reflected a revolution in farm technology and an economic boom for farm exports. By 1891 New Zealand had 21 large freezing works, and small farmers were able to produce lamb of dependable quality and enter the export business.54 Efficient dairy factories and milking machines meant that families could maintain larger herds without paid labour, and at the same time the Liberal government’s support for small farmers eased their financial burdens. The combination of technology, market opportunities and land legislation opened up the future for Pa¯ keha¯ farmers, while closer integration of industry and agriculture moderated the traditional dichotomy between rural work and urban industry. The NZ Farmer’s reports on large manufacturing establishments over the mid-1890s highlight the shift from an agrarian tradition to a new fascination with the factory world of work.55 Admiring descriptions of freezing works served to reshape the farmer’s identity, portraying him at one with modernity and the world of the future.The setting for energy and hope shifted from the soil to factory floor, and nostalgia gave way to catalogues of novelty.There were common elements in spheres of work which seemed so disparate: both farm and factory could be vindicated in terms of strength, initiative, action and conquest, and both models of work were highly masculine. In these accounts, the sexual potency of the plough dividing the land had its equivalent in the phallic symbol of the factory chimney. The prominence of the tall smoking brick stack of the Gear Company’s Works at Petone made it needless to ask the way from the station. At Port Ahuriri in Napier, the North British Freezing Works stood up against the visitor ‘like a rock of testimony’. Similarly a Patea chain of meat-work buildings ‘by its very appearance indicates something of the pushing enterprise found therein.’56 The strength of the male body was paralleled in a factory setting by the power, size and quantity of machinery and its intense activity. The report on the Nelson Brothers’ Freezing Works in Hawke’s Bay was typical of several which captured a sense of the pulsating thrust of industry, with the high pressure of steam pumps and their huge capacity.57 The journal’s descriptions of industries

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less directly involved with agriculture conveyed the same pleasure in movement. At Booth, McDonald and Company’s Implement Works at Carlyle, skilled mechanics worked with ‘tools innumerable’ to punch, drill and plane, shape, slot and grind, and ten types of lathes, saws and other machines morticed, bored, shaped, sawed and polished. The reporter admired nine forges and a steam hammer ‘a hundred times as strong as the brawniest smith’.58 The authorial voice was that of the observer representing the farmer, admiringly linked to the works by economic gain and a new sense of kinship, but not himself at work there. Freezing workers were inseparable from the machines and in some accounts invisible. An account of the production line in the slaughter-room at the Islington works idealised the workers’ rhythmical actions as their bodies moved in a choreographed pattern in time to the machines: In this slaughter-room are twenty eight butchers in a row, engaged killing sheep with extraordinary rapidity. This work made a curious scene. The regularity of movement struck me. There was a long line of faintly wriggling dying sheep on the floor, a long line of partly skinned sheep swinging from hooks, a continuous row of dressed carcases sliding slowly along towards the cooling chamber, each carcase suspended by a hooked pulley, which ran easily along on an overhead iron rail. There was regularity of movement among the workers too, so many men stooping over the live sheep, so many knives drawn the same way, so many men standing by partly-flayed carcases, a regular stream of blood flowing along the gutters, a regular service of trucks carrying skins and entrails, and that constant stream of mutton carcases sliding along to the darkest corner of the room. We followed this stream. It hesitated for barely a second whilst each sheep was weighed . . . and each sheep as it passes into the cooling chamber is examined, classed and turned, with just a touch of the hand.59

The journal’s idealisation of the traction engine typified this genre in which the farmer took possession of technology, and the rhetoric of vigour and sweat shifted from the farmer’s body on the land to the new machine. Like a lone individual in the outback, the traction engine made its journey hauling loads of wool and wheat to the waiting ship. It combined pioneering qualities and the miraculous powers of modern technology: ‘taking its part in clearing the new forests to make way for new forests . . . a grand pioneer of new country . . . . In the grip of its steel ropes the trees will come down as if by magic’. Its capabilities were conveyed with verbs of strength; it ‘hauls’, ‘cracks’, ‘drags’ – ‘a potent

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power . . . its possibilities are enormous.’The final flourish personalised the machine again: ‘Who will train the traction to be a pioneer? It wants thought and plan and capital, but the work is capable of infinite expansion.’60 This mood of entrepreneurial optimism, and the widening of the farmer’s horizons, does not appear to have been shared with the young women of farming households.While male imagery could shift easily into modernity, and the farmer’s body found new expression in depictions of the machine, his daughter’s body remained sheltered in the home. Factory and office work for farm women remained a threat to the stability of farming families.The NZ Farmer warned young women against leaving the farm for the city, and forsaking rough homes for the gentility of a schoolteacher or shop-girl. It argued that these ‘pretty, tired creatures . . . do not earn what any bright girl could get as a margin on butter’, and urged farm daughters to ‘take a billet in the safe kingdom of home’.61 The contrasting visions of male and female bodies is clear in the journal’s selection of poetry at the turn of the century. Its optimism and decreasing bitterness against rival pastoralists was paralleled in a burst of rollicking heroic poems from the Sydney Bulletin school which the journal published in the late 1890s. A. B. Paterson, Henry Lawson and New Zealand’s David McKee Wright wrote of musterers and shearers whose work was portrayed as a battle, a game, or a race beneath wide skies.They were men whose bodies were caught up in movement, and the elation of the outdoors: We came from the hills where the hot winds blow And the yellow tussocks wave, From the long bright plain where the titris grow, From the land of the sun and the frost and the snow, Where the hearts are strong and brave.62

The women portrayed in these songs stand enclosed at the threshold of the farm door, watching, waiting and welcoming: And through the twilight falling We hear their voices calling, As the cattle spring across the ford and churn it into foam; And the children run to meet us, And our wives and sweethearts greet us, Their heroes from the Overland who brought the cattle home.63

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Narratives of work such as these were central to colonial Pa¯keha¯ culture. Images of the body were a focal point in this discourse on work, and often a symbol not of decay, as in old-world rhetoric, but of transformation and hope.64 Policy prescriptions for the selection of immigrants in the 1870s focused attention on fit bodies, and in the immigrant’s own statement of belonging, the appreciation of a strong, sinewy body marked the adoption of a new-world identity. The growth of large manufacturing stimulated opposing views of labour, and a return to old-world narratives of wan, sickly bodies and the vulnerability of women. Reformers’ support for male rights in the workplace, however, shifted again to conversion tales and the strenuous body. In the midst of technological change, farm rhetoric swivelled from the nostalgic heroism of physical toil on the land to more expansive heroic visions of the machine as the ally of the future. The nature of the body was important to both personal identity and a collective Pa¯keha¯ identity of an immigrant community. The narratives selected here are fragments, and the cultural historian must be wary of making one text representative of a whole, or of covering gaps to make one consecutive narrative. As Raphael Samuel has warned, the historian risks ‘dressing up fragments to make them look like meaningful wholes’, or ‘discovering eternity in a grain of sand’.65 Nor do these stories tongue or groove neatly.66 Like slivers of glass in a kaleidoscope, they can be shaken to form a variety of patterns. Perceptions of work often clashed in late-nineteenth-century New Zealand when values and identities were forming and re-forming. The rhetoric of these narratives shifted constantly backwards and forwards between the old world and the new, and between tradition and modernity.While observers and travellers saw a Better or Greater Britain, that image is a pallid one, for participants in the new world felt part of a more dynamic culture, and were often keen to assert their difference from the old world and their kinship with other new-world countries.67 Although these discourses on the body at work are eclectic, they are not incoherent, and common elements recurred. The sensuality and vigour of the male body were important elements in defining a man, and heroic visions of the body at work were radical in granting significance to the ordinary man in a new setting.The celebration of the body also suggests that the nineteenth century was not as dour as we have commonly assumed, believing, in James K. Baxter’s words, that it carried ‘like strychnine in its bones a strong unconscious residue’ of Calvinism.68 Heroic portrayals of the colonist’s body could be confining

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nonetheless, often excluding Ma¯ori and women, whose bodies were more commonly described as passive or frail. A focus on transformation marks many of the stories of bodies and work, whether those stories be immigrants’ ‘conversion narratives’, parliamentarians’ life stories, or a farm journal’s fascination with new technology. Immigrant myths of transformed identity can too easily be dismissed as delusions, hyperbole, or as a means of overcoming disappointment. Another way of interpreting them is to acknowledge a ‘last remnant of the sacred’ within accounts which convey a yearning for a new life.69 Focusing on the way we tell important stories reminds us that Pa¯ keha¯ mythology is significant and deserves more empathetic reconstruction. The interior life of the soul and the sensual life of the body should be integrated into future studies of Pa¯ keha¯ work and culture.

1

2

3

4

Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion, Zone Books, New York, 1991, pp. 19, 20. I am grateful to the editors and Mike Riddell for their questions and comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. For a review of recent work on cultural narratives, see Sarah Maza, ‘Stories in History: Cultural Narratives in Recent Works in European History’, American Historical Review, vol. 101, no. 5, 1996, pp. 1493–1515. Cultural historians who have focused on the meaning of the body include Thomas W. Laqueur, ‘Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative’, in Lynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 176–204. For a reassessment of Victorian attitudes to the body, see Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur,‘Introduction’, in Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur (eds), The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987, p. vii. See also Patricia Anderson, When Passion Reigned: Sex and the Victorians, Basic Books, New York, 1995; Michael Mason, The Making of Victorian Sexuality, Oxford University Press, New York, 1994; Jill L. Matus, Unstable Bodies: Victorian Representations of Sexuality and Maternity, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1995. For the significance of fears and fantasies to historians, see Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson, ‘Introduction’, in Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson (eds), The Myths We Live By, Routledge, London, 1990, p. 2. Jock Phillips, ‘Of Verandahs and Fish and Chips and Footie on Saturday Afternoon’, NZJH, vol. 24, no. 2, 1990, p. 129. For Europe, see Patrick Joyce: ‘The Historical Meanings of Work: An Introduction’, in Patrick Joyce (ed.), The Historical Meanings of Work, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 18, 28; Steven Laurence Kaplan

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5

6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21

22

23

24 25 26

and Cynthia J. Koepp, ‘Introduction’, in Steven Laurence Kaplan and Cynthia J. Koepp (eds), Work in France: Representations, Meaning, Organization, and Practice, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1986. See John E. Martin and Kerry Taylor (eds), Culture and the Labour Movement: Essays in New Zealand Labour History, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, 1991; Erik Olssen, Building the New World: Work, Politics and Society in Caversham 1880s–1920s, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1995. Peter Gibbons, ‘Non-fiction’, in Terry Sturm (ed.), The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1991, p. 28; Lynn Hunt, ‘Introduction: History, Culture and Text’, in Hunt (ed.), p. 17; Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1987, pp. 3–4. Bynum, p. 29. AJHR, 1874, D-3, pp. 31, 33. Raewyn Dalziel, Julius Vogel: Business Politician, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1986, pp. 165–70. AJHR, 1875, D-3, pp.6, 12, 14, 30, 46, D-2A, p.3, 1878, D-6A, p. 4. AJHR, 1873, D-1D, p. 18. AJHR, 1875, D-2, p. 28. AJHR, 1873, D-2A, p.14. AJHR, 1875, D-2A, pp. 4–5. In Rollo Arnold, The Farthest Promised Land: English Villagers, New Zealand Immigrants of the 1870s,Victoria University Press,Wellington, 1981, p. 207. AJHR, 1875, D-6, p. 5. Gibbons, p. 35. Alfred Simmons, Old England and New Zealand, Edward Stanford, London, 1879, pp. 18, 106. Julius Vogel, The Official Handbook of New Zealand,Wyman and Sons, London, 1875, p. 29 and New Zealand and the South Sea Islands and their Relation to Empire, Edward Stanford, London, 1878, pp. 10, 29, 42. N. H. Keeble, The Literary Culture of Nonconformity in Later Seventeenth-Century England, Leicester University Press, Leicester, 1987, pp. 224, 208. See Charlotte Erickson, Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in 19th Century America, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1990; Stephen Fender, Sea Changes: British Emigration and American Literature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992; David Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1994; Walter Kamphoefner, Wolfgang Helbich, and Ulrike Sommer, News from the Land of Freedom: German Immigrants Write Home, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1991. Fender, p. 13. See also Miles Fairburn, Nearly Out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial Labourer’s Diary, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1995, p. 16. For the significance of the voyage see also Charlotte Macdonald, A Woman of Good Character: Single Women as Immigrant Settlers in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand, Allen and Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, Wellington, 1990, p. 14; Graeme Davison, ‘Cities and Ceremonies: Nationalism and Civic Ritual in Three New Lands’, NZJH, vol. 24, no. 2, 1990, p. 116. James Belich, Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century, Penguin, Auckland, 1996, p. 282. His view of these authors as the dupes of a con,‘victims’ of a ‘vampire’s bite’, seems unduly cynical. Luisa Passerini,‘Mythbiography in Oral History’, in Samuel and Thompson (eds), p. 57. Fender, p. 13. Samuel and Thompson,‘Introduction’, p. 9.

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27 28 29 30

31

32 33 34 35 36

37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55

56

J. Miller to Son and Daughter, 27 Apr 1874, Kent Messenger and Maidstone Telegraph, 18 Jul 1874.Thanks to Barry Reay for these references. John Royds to William Royds, 17 Mar 1862, Royds Family Papers, MS 1890, ATL. Peter McGregor to Father and Mother, 13 Jan and 11 Feb 1875, Peter McGregor Papers, MS 1173, ATL. Maria Thompson to Father and Mother, [1872] and to Brother and Sister [1872],William Thompson to Father and Mother, 28 Dec 1871,William Thompson to William (friend), 16 Feb 1872,Thompson collection, copy in author’s possession. Elizabeth Peryman to Mother, 2 Dec 1870, cited in Frances Porter and Charlotte Macdonald (eds), ‘My Hand Will Write What My Heart Dictates’: The Unsettled Lives of Women in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand as Revealed to Sisters, Family and Friends, Bridget Williams Books/Auckland University Press, Auckland 1996, p. 174. Joyce, p.20; Fairburn, pp. 164–5. Jock Phillips, A Man’s Country? The Image of the Pakeha Male: A History, Penguin, Auckland, 1987, p. 14. Fairburn, passim; Royds to Mother, 20 Apr 1867, MS 1890; McGregor to Father, 4 Apr and 30 May 1875, MS 1173. William Thompson to George Thompson, 30 Jul 1877,Thompson collection. Robert Gray,‘The Languages of Factory Reform in Britain c. 1830–1860’, in Joyce (ed.), pp. 143–4 See also Joan Scott, ‘“L’ouvrière! Mot impie, sordide...”: Women Workers in the Discourse of French Political Economy, 1840–1860’, in Joyce (ed.), pp. 119–42; Daniel T. Rodgers, The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850–1920, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1974. See Ulla Wikander, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Jane Lewis (eds), Protecting Women: Labor Legislation in Europe, the United States, and Australia, 1880–1920, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1995. Scott, pp. 119, 121. Laqueur,‘Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative’, in Hunt (ed.), p. 178. NZPD, 1874, vol. 16, p. 322, 1875, vol. 19, p. 109. John L. C. Richardson, Employment of Females and Children in Factories and Workshops, Otago Daily Times, Dunedin, 1881, pp. 4, 25, 31. Richardson, pp. 4, 13, 31. Richardson, p. 15. NZPD, 1886, vol. 55, pp. 557, 563, 1885, vol. 52, p. 199. NZPD, 1887, vol. 57, p. 345. NZPD, 1884, vol. 49, p. 26. NZPD, 1885, vol. 52, p. 198. NZPD, 1885, vol. 52, p. 200. Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Auckland, 1902, vol. 2, p. 271. The New Zealand Farmer, Bee and Poultry Journal (NZF), Jan 1890, p. 15. This phrase came from J.W., a correspondent in Waipa, who appealed for ‘songs of hope and courage’ to replace the dirges of hard times, NZF, Aug 1888, p. 300. For discussion of Pa¯keha¯ and Western agrarian tradition, see J.G.A. Pocock,‘Tangata Whenua and Enlightenment Anthropology’, NZJH, vol. 26, no. 1, 1992, pp. 28–53. NZF, Sep 1888, p. 345, Dec 1888, p. 466. NZF, Sep 1890, p. 372. W. J. Gardner, ‘A Colonial Economy’ in W.H. Oliver (ed.) with B.R. Williams, The Oxford History of New Zealand, Oxford University Press,Wellington, 1981, p. 80. For the melding of agrarian and manufacturing traditions, see John F. Kasson, Civilising the Machine:Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776–1900, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1977. NZF, Aug 1896, p. 274; Nov 1894, p. 409; Jul 1896, p. 232.

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57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67 68

69

NZF, Oct 1895, p. 383. NZF, Jun 1894, p. 218. NZF, Nov 1894, p. 408. NZF, Sep 1895, p. 323. NZF, Nov 1886, p. 326. D. M. Wright, ‘In Town’, Otago Witness, in NZF Home and Household Supplement, Sep 1897, p. i. A. B. Paterson,‘With the Cattle’, NZF Home and Household Supplement, Apr 1897, p. i. For nineteenth-century identification of the body with decay, see Gallagher and Laqueur,‘Introduction’, p. x. Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory. Vol. I: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture,Verso, London, 1994, pp. 434, 437. Novelist Patricia Grace describes an idealised community where ‘although the stories all had different voices . . . each one was like a puzzle piece which tongued or grooved neatly to another. And this train of stories defined our lives’, Potiki, Penguin, Auckland, 1986, p. 41. Belich is perhaps over-insistent on the dominance of a ‘Better Britain’ in Making Peoples, pp. 302–6. James K. Baxter, The Man on the Horse, Dunedin, 1967, p. 91. Jock Phillips argues for a reassessment of a supposedly repressed society in ‘Our History, Our Selves. The Historian and National Identity’, NZJH, vol. 30, no. 2, 1996, p. 116. Passerini, p. 50.

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6 Textual Museums: Collection and Wr iting in History and Ethnology, 1900–1950 |

CHRIS HILLIARD

When T. Lindsay Buick entered the employ of the Dominion Museum in August 1934 he was told that his title would not be ‘Government Historiographer’, as he had hoped.1 Though he would be doing historical work, official documents would refer to him as ‘clerk’ – the same title that Elsdon Best had when he was paid by the Museum to write up ethnological data.2 Angling for a government job writing history, Buick had suggested that the Department of Internal Affairs revive Best’s job ‘in a modified way’: ‘Mr. Best’s employment, as you are aware, chiefly centred round the recording of Maori customs, but as there is now no one to take his place, my suggestion is that the office should be devoted to the recording of the phases of European history still unrecorded . . . . The point of importance is the setting down in black and white of many facts relating to the settlement and development of New Zealand which call for a permanent record while it is yet possible to make that record.’3 Buick’s entreaties were eventually accepted, and he took Best’s place on the Dominion Museum’s payroll and succeeded him in the newspaper room on the top floor of the Alexander Turnbull Library.4 Best and Buick worked in different fields, but this episode points to an important overlap in their concerns.The gathering of documents and artefacts has a significant place in the history of colonisation generally, and in New Zealand was practised by such avatars of colonisation as Sir George Grey and Gilbert Mair. Twentieth-century ethnologists and historians continued the work of collection. The collection and

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recording of stories, traditions, documents, and ‘facts’ before it was too late were central to the projects of both history and ethnology. Pa¯keha¯ historians and ethnologists alike employed a rhetoric of disappearing knowledge.5 As did ethnologists overseas, members of the Polynesian Society often stressed the urgency of recording Ma¯ori ‘lore’ before the guardians of the knowledge died.6 Talk of disappearing knowledge was not only a function of a belief in the demise of the ‘old-time’ Ma¯ori, however. ‘Early settlers’ too were dying out, and interviewing them about their experiences and preserving their manuscripts were supported by historical societies and by the state.7 Perhaps, beyond these practical reasons, there was a sense that the changes wrought by colonisation had put time out of joint, a sentiment that several Pa¯keha¯ writers voiced.8 The sense of change and the threat of loss elevated the seriousness of collection: it became an act of rescue. Like many researchers, earlytwentieth-century historians and ethnologists celebrated the thrill of the discovery of apparently pristine traditions or crucial documents ignored by others. Salvage was as important a trope as discovery in both their scholarly writing and their public pronouncements. The psychology of salvage in New Zealand warrants further study, but my focus in this essay is on the relationship between collection and writing in New Zealand between 1900 and 1950. Historical and ethnological texts replicated collecting practices both in their genres and in the accumulative model of knowledge underpinning these fields. Scholars did not practise the genre of the essay written in a strong authorial voice that subjugated quotations, and they even dispensed with the synthetic narrative style of the canonical nineteenth-century narrative historians. It was more important to them to enshrine facts, memories and anecdotes in texts that read like scrapbooks; these were assemblages of data that relegated the author’s textual persona to the role of a plaque on a discursive display cabinet. These were textual museums, and they took a number of forms. Some were almost anthologies, chunks of quoted source material ordered by subject and chronology. Others depended less on quotation and took the form of unstructured albums of data. Then there were ethnological talks that began with some general comments on a topic and then adduced a string of anecdotes or oral traditions.The textual museum was a mode of writing that occurred in several genres and spanned the fields of both history and ethnology. History and ethnology were substantially different kinds of inquiry. Ethnological texts dealt with ‘traditional’ accounts of ‘old-time’ Ma¯ori, and drew on methods distinct from those involved in writing history. In this

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context, history may be defined as the reconstruction of events involving Pa¯ keha¯ or Ma¯ori or both in the years after 1769, based largely on documents or eye-witness testimonies. The two forms were seldom combined in the same text, and those works that did combine them juxtaposed rather than blended: the discursive register shifted from Ma¯oricentred ‘tradition’ to European-centred ‘history’ as the story passed through the period 1814–40.9 For all their differences, though, both fields were dominated by non-synthetic writing. Not all ethnologists and historians wrote this way – certain works by S. Percy Smith and Thomas Hocken, for example, are important exceptions – but the prevalence of this mode of writing in the first half of the twentieth century calls for examination.The years 1900 and 1950 are not decisive points at which this tradition of writing began and ended, but they mark off a period in which such writing flourished, played an important part in the development of the humanities in New Zealand, and, eventually, was challenged by more synthetic traditions of scholarship emanating from the universities. The discussion that follows is in three parts. The first examines the writings and activities of a number of writers and argues for collection as an important context for reading early twentieth-century New Zealand scholarship. Although we often talk about contexts as freestanding realities, complete with a definite article (‘the social context’, ‘the political context’), they are interpretative devices whose makeup varies according to the kinds of inquiry pursued. Contexts, therefore, require as much ‘reading’ and interpretation as texts do.The second and third sections of the essay trace some of the relationships between the context of collection and a variety of texts that form case studies of the ways in which texts maintain, reformulate and sometimes contest their contexts. I consider the ways in which the writing practices associated with collection interacted with the concerns of writers of local histories and dictionaries of place names in their discursive attempts to ‘occupy’ particular regions of New Zealand. Finally, I engage in a critical analysis of a single text, Best’s Tuhoe, a work that both draws on and calls into question the tradition of collection-based writing.

Collection as context Robert McNab’s books are paradigmatic of collection-based writing, and an examination of his work serves as a way further into this topic. From the late 1890s until his death in 1917, McNab hunted for

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documents on ‘early New Zealand history’ in New Zealand libraries, particularly those of Thomas Hocken and Alexander Turnbull, and in Sydney, London, Paris, and North America. He then embalmed his finds in print. Some of his publications are straight anthologies, while others are relentlessly factual, chronologically ordered sequences of brief narratives, dominated by quotation.10 The texts present themselves as reports on the research, rather than as distillations of it. Murihiku illustrates this point strikingly. Each of the first two editions (1904, 1905) consisted of brief collections of reprinted (and apparently unrevised) newspaper articles by McNab on incidents in the far south of New Zealand. Each volume was a series of chronologically arranged episodes with loose connections.The preface and conclusion of the 1905 edition promised further recording and a ‘sketch . . . in some sort of narrative form’.11 A third edition was in press and partially printed when McNab had the opportunity to visit America to do more research. He subsequently destroyed most copies of the portion (the first 144 pages) of this new edition that had been printed. A 1907 edition and a 1909 update added banks of further information that were assembled on the same principles as the first two editions.12 As a published work-inprogress, the book was perennially provisional. It had no need for closure or a tightly plotted narrative structure.13 McNab’s texts consistently play down the author’s existence as anything other than as a collector and recorder. This position is made explicit in his prefaces, which openly deny his role as a writer: ‘The reader is given the fruits of the Author’s research, not the fruits of his thought. . . . Others who can make historical narrative attractive can build what literary edifices they desire, out of the material supplied [here].’14 Fellow scholars accepted McNab’s self-appraisal, the surface modesty of which camouflaged its implied assertion of accurate research. ‘McNab did not claim to be a brilliant or even an attractive writer’, Johannes Andersen wrote in 1936; ‘but he was something as good and perhaps rarer – a patient collector of facts.’15 Avoiding paraphrase and synthesis also furthered McNab’s quest to establish factual foundations for histories of New Zealand. ‘The publication of the Author’s paraphrase of the material’, he wrote,‘would rob the events of that accuracy which is the feature of many of the rough unlettered accounts of the principals, and would never prove the last word on the question.’16 McNab’s endeavours presupposed that there was a decisive cleft between fact and interpretation, and that facts could be established once and for all.The renunciation of authorship, or

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rather, the ascription of ‘authorship’ to historical records which the ‘collector’ transparently presented to the reader, served a scholarly purpose more urgent at the time than argument or ‘literary edifices’. McNab’s work epitomised the key characteristics of the relation between collection and writing in history and ethnology: an emphasis on recovering and rescuing obscure materials and the events they documented; a belief in minimal mediation between research and writing; a lack of synthesis and sustained narrative in favour of collections of quotations with bridging paragraphs by the author; and a belief that this almost anthological mode of writing served to create a record necessary for future, more sophisticated scholarship. One reason that the work of McNab and others could be held up as the heroic ‘recovery of so much of our fast receding history’ was the remarkable neglect of public records.17 There were no separate national archives, and until Turnbull’s library was bequeathed to the state as ‘the nucleus of a New Zealand National Collection’ on its owner’s death in 1918, there was no major public research library.18 Subsequent government-funded attempts to remedy the deficiencies in libraries and archives contributed substantially to scholarship. There were also some overt links between the expansion of libraries and the development of scholarship. Johannes Andersen ran the Turnbull, and the historian G. H. Scholefield was the General Assembly Librarian and Controller of Archives. Just as there were few ‘professional’ humanities scholars in New Zealand until the 1930s, librarianship and archives-keeping were similarly underdeveloped.19 The distinction between gathering source material for institutions and using it in scholarship was often blurred. Scholefield, for instance, devoted much attention to library work that assisted his own projects. He was instrumental in acquiring for the parliamentary library the papers of a number of nineteenth-century politicians, which facilitated his work in political biography. Scholefield also availed himself of the library’s extensive newspaper holdings. Newspaper obituaries were important sources for his massive Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (1940), which rested on a card index that he had begun much earlier for the New Zealand Who’s Who. This index paralleled and exploited the obituaries index that Scholefield had initiated at the parliamentary library. His Dictionary also contained information contributed by family members and acquaintances of his subjects whom he had approached directly, or who had responded to the large numbers of biographical sketches he published in newspapers as a means of jogging memories and eliciting information. Like McNab,

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Scholefield envisaged his work as a public record, and a preliminary step enabling later scholarship. Scholefield did not use the rhetoric of salvage and vanishing knowledge to the extent that McNab did, but he took special pains to document and ‘rescue from oblivion’ the achievements of certain groups, in particular members of the Provincial Councils.20 Outside the Turnbull and parliamentary libraries, private collectors also accumulated material. George Graham, a bilingual Auckland accountant who was very interested in Ma¯ori culture, recorded and translated Ma¯ori songs, traditions and names, which he presented in talks and papers and drew on when assisting others with their research.21 The Wellington bibliophile and historian Horace Fildes spent much of his money on books and manuscripts relating to New Zealand history, and devoted a good deal of time and effort to transcribing material owned by other people. He kept scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, notes and other stray data, and diligently indexed his collection, thus facilitating the retrieval of information for himself and others.22 Fildes’s knowledge of New Zealand history was encyclopaedic, not just in its extent but also in its organisation. He probably knew, or was able to find, more facts of New Zealand history than anyone else in the 1920s and 1930s, and his library and expertise were put at the disposal of a host of New Zealand historians.23 Ethnologists also actively solicited manuscript material and transcripts of oral traditions and ‘songs’ for preservation in libraries and in print. These activities were not confined to the principals of the Polynesian Society: throughout the country, lesser-known figures spoke with local Ma¯ori, compiled whakapapa, and recorded traditions. Some of the information they gathered was published in the Journal of the Polynesian Society. Under S. Percy Smith’s editorship (1892–1903, 1905– 22), the journal was not discriminating, reflecting the impulse to salvage.24 It printed editions of manuscripts, some of which were later published separately, such as the two-volume Lore of the Whare-wananga (1913, 1915), which Smith put together from manuscripts of H. Te Whatahoro Jury, and for which Te Whatahoro had been much more than the ‘scribe’ Smith took him to be.25 The journal also published information presented in ‘somewhat scrappy and disconnected notes’ and semi-anthological articles written to ‘put on record’ oral tradition or other information about ‘an almost forgotten past’.26 This kind of literary self-abnegation characterised much ethnological and historical writing during the early decades of the twentieth century. Authors often prefaced their works with disclaimers of any pretensions

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to literature: they were simply ‘transcribing’ or ‘compiling’.27 The narrator of Herries Beattie’s ethnological works on Nga¯i Tahu was always identified as ‘the collector’: ‘The collector of these traditions has previously referred’;‘Every time the collector of these traditions visits his Native friends’;‘Recently the collector heard’.28 Many scholars accepted McNab’s opposition between ‘literary edifices’ and the accumulation of facts. Source material purportedly printed verbatim and other relatively undigested material committed to print were regarded as building blocks of scholarship.‘The old people are continually adding scraps and titbits of knowledge to the heap of information accumulated by the collector, and when such is pieced together it will materially aid in our compilation of authentic records of old-time fighting in Maoriland.’29 Other scholars echoed McNab’s declaration that his researches might reach fulfilment in the hands of those who could ‘make historical narrative attractive’. Smith wrote in endorsement of Downes’s Old Whanganui (1915) that eventually a great history of New Zealand that dealt with each region would be written, ‘and then such collections as those embodied in Mr. T. W. Downes’ “Old Whanga-nui” will of necessity form the basis’ of ‘such future history’. Downes’s ‘collections’ might not be sufficiently appreciated until reprocessed by ‘the future historian with the genius of a Gibbon, a Hume, a Macaulay’.30 Andersen presented the material on mythology, custom and natural phenomena in his Maori Life in Ao-tea (1907) as a ‘mine of wealth’ for poets and artists to quarry.31 Like the apologetic comments of contemporary literary critics, these claims speak to a sense of the futurity of New Zealand literature that was later voiced most famously by Allen Curnow: Not I, some child, born in a marvellous year, Will learn the trick of standing upright here.32

Along with the scholarly reasons for presenting source material in an apparently unmediated way, there were also more affective ones. For McNab, avoiding paraphrase and synthesis preserved ‘that accuracy which is the feature of many of the rough unlettered accounts of the principals’; with others, extensive quotation was important for its personal flavour and its accuracy.33 The work of James Cowan, a historian of the New Zealand Wars and culture contact generally, illustrates the point well. Cowan was primarily an oral historian who felt that written documents did not ‘give you the real meat of history’.34 Over the first four decades of the twentieth century, Cowan built up a

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database of narratives from informants that he published and republished in newspapers and books. In their published form, these stories attempted to reproduce the immediacy and oral narrative context of the interviews on which they were based. Long quotations of eye-witness testimonies were strung together, with some interpolations, and with passages indicating how Cowan came to hear the story now being relayed to the reader. Ethnologists routinely named their informants and said when and where they had been interviewed, but no other writer dramatised the personal commerce of interviewing as regularly and as richly as Cowan did.35 ‘Human documents’ was a phrase he used to describe his sources.36 Quoting these ‘documents’ at length was a way of preserving what a later proponent of oral history has called ‘the voice of the past’.37 Although a very different writer from Cowan, the politician-cumhistorian William Downie Stewart also believed in quotation rather than authorial synthesis for affective reasons. While working on his biography of the politician William Rolleston in 1939, he meditated on the issue in a letter to James Rutherford, Professor of History at Auckland University College. His comments suggest much about the perspective of historians outside the university: I have the book about finished but not being like you a trained historian I am constantly puzzled how far to interrupt the narrative by inserting letters. If one merely tears out of the letter a few sentences, or paraphrases it, one has the feeling that having used that part of the letter for its immediate purpose means that the full letter will never be published. My inclination is to put in the full letter, even though it deals with other topics and interrupts the flow of the narrative. I notice some biographers use practically no letters and merely state the substance of them where necessary in their own language. This makes the story run smoothly but if the man is a good letter writer it seems a pity to lose his mode of expressing himself.38

Collecting and colonising Colonisation forms a significant part of the general cultural context that made collecting historical and ethnological information meaningful and worthwhile in early twentieth-century New Zealand. In piecing together fragments of an individual’s life, or gathering the documents of a particular place or time, or writing down different oral traditions,

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writers and collectors were helping assemble something called ‘New Zealand’.The varied intellectual work of establishing ‘New Zealand’ as a cultural entity and a meaningful term is part of the process of colonisation. In making this claim I am following the work of Peter Gibbons. Subtly but firmly, and with an unparalleled familiarity with and sensitivity to the corpus of New Zealand non-fiction writing, Gibbons has demonstrated the pervasiveness of colonisation in New Zealand writing and the superiority of colonisation over alternatives such as national identity as a metanarrative of New Zealand cultural history.39 Appropriating the indigenous; effacing the indigenous; imposing European patterns on existing terrain: all of these aspects of colonisation occur in Pa¯keha¯ writing as well as in the physical occupation and transformation of the country. It is now commonplace to regard as a form of colonisation the appropriation of Ma¯ori taonga and indigenous flora and fauna in the name of art or identity.40 Texts that do not refer to Ma¯ori people can also be part of the enterprise of colonisation in their treatment of the European presence in Aotearoa as natural, normative, or simply not needing explanation or justification. This includes the cultural nationalist writing that searched for a ‘home in thought’ that was prominent among modernist or university-associated writers from the 1930s to the 1950s.This literature was colonising in its concern to take possession of the land culturally and to turn Europeans into ‘settlers’ in a cultural sense, rather than unsettled exiles, or godwitlike birds of passage.41 A concern with ‘national identity’ is one strand of the wider process of formulating and reformulating ‘New Zealand’, of the country’s discursive colonisation. The role of colonisation in writing is made quite clear in dictionaries of place names and historical works about specific localities.These works also drew heavily on collection-oriented writing. An examination of local histories and books of place names will therefore illuminate how the general context of colonisation interacted with the more specific one of collection. Some local histories concentrated on the post-contact history of Ma¯ori in the district, and the ‘romance’ of intercultural relations and conflict. ‘If you want to write a Lindsay Buick history with real adventure, pioneering and “atmosphere” – go to the Chathams’, wrote one enthusiastic reader. ‘The place reeks of early whalers, canons [sic], full riggers, cosmopolitans, bullock teams, Te Kooti, etc. . . . Rape and murder, shipwreck and waterspouts – oh, I wish I could weave it into a saga.’42 Most local histories in this period, however, marginalised Ma¯ori

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and arrogated to Pa¯ keha¯ a vocabulary of origins (‘first ships’, ‘early settlers’); they also tended to avoid such swashbuckling. These histories were more seemly affairs concerned with the building of prosperous and upstanding communities out of a ‘wilderness’ – they were a narrative analogue of the ‘waste lands’ legal doctrine. Their accumulated facts were direct or indirect indices of ‘progress’. Philippa Levine has made a comparable point about mid-Victorian English local historians: ‘A historical landscape peopled with events, buildings and figures from the past and verified by historical fact was a triumph of possession. Nostalgia provides an insufficient explanation for the popularity of organised antiquarian pursuits.’43 Local historical societies and the authors associated with them sought to gather such documents of progress, and to impress upon the pioneers’ successors a ‘duty of remembrance’.44 It was commonplace to say that a book was written, or a museum collection assembled, in order that present-day Pa¯ keha¯ might comprehend the hardships the pioneers faced.45 In the written products of this enterprise, pioneer life and labour are described in the thick material detail that was often provided by old settlers when interviewed or writing about their experiences.46 Historical societies and early settlers’ associations encouraged these acts of reminiscence, kept the resulting manuscripts, and sometimes published them.The museological nature of the work is readily evident in the published material, which is dominated by loose strings of anecdotes and ‘portrait galleries’ of miniature biographies such as Robert Valpy Fulton’s Medical Practice in Otago and Southland (1922). Other books that did not define themselves as miscellanies of anecdotes cannot easily be distinguished from books that did. Though not without explicit preaching, such works represented a place’s past less through sustained argument or narrative than through the accumulation of episodes and details.This practice is not confined to New Zealand. In local histories generally, writes Paul Carter, a place name is ‘frequently the only thing that holds together the fragmentary collage of milk-production figures, bowling-club presidents and dimly reproduced postcards of ferny dells or the disused railway station’. Carter explains the disjointed nature of local history in this way: ‘In local histories, the place serves much the same function as the plot in fiction: it is a means of unifying heterogeneous material, of lending it, rhetorically at least, a unique destiny.’47 What this analysis omits is local social relations. Many of New Zealand’s local histories were produced under the auspices of local

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newspapers, or historical and early settlers’ societies that doubled as social clubs. Decorum and status are important reasons for the exhaustive heterogeneity of local history, and for the practice of acknowledging the achievements of as many people as was humanly possible. Rolls of early settlers were compiled for anniversaries, but the habit of naming en masse pervaded other texts because most local histories were commemorations whether or not they coincided with a jubilee. Gibbons has commented that local histories at this time tended to contain ‘about as many names as the district’s telephone directory’.48 A paper that Albert N. Burrows read to the Gore and Surrounding Districts’ Early Settlers’ Association in August 1929 shows that this comment is not as hyperbolic as it may seem. Burrows led his audience on a hurried tour of the buildings and sections of early Gore, listing their occupants, and then moved to an unadulterated four-page list of names organised by area and street. 49 Local histories placed a premium on individual persons; ‘history’, wrote one author, ‘consists of the story of lives of men.’50 But most of these ‘men’ were important because of their institutional positions and their places in community hierarchies. Given the importance of the rhetoric of origins, an individual could take on significance because he (and occasionally she) was the first practitioner of a particular trade in the district, the first mayor and so on. Even John Barr’s history of Auckland, commissioned by the city council, was concerned less with the workings of institutions than with listing the people who occupied positions within them.51 Pa¯keha¯ committed place to print in dictionaries of place names as well as rolls, miscellanies and non-synthetic prose accounts.52 The dictionary genre traversed the fields of ethnology and history. Some dictionaries dealt only with Ma¯ori place names, seeking to recover names displaced by intertribal conflict and colonial renaming, and to elucidate their meaning and history; others dealt with Ma¯ ori and European names. Some works on place names, such as Fildes’s unpublished list of Wellington place names, were perfunctory.53 Other writers took the nominal headings and alphabetical order of the dictionary format and wrote substantial paragraphs for entries. The entries in Andersen’s unpublished book on Auckland place names contain information about where the place is; measurements and directions for points, outcrops, islands and so on; brief notes on the Ma¯ori history of places, and the resources traditionally used there; and stories about particular events that occurred there.54

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For those dealing with Ma¯ori place names, the creation of dictionaries was, of course, an act of salvage. Leslie Adkin dramatised his travels round Horowhenua with a local Pa¯keha¯ ‘informant’ in this way: ‘Even on the first field-day it was evident that a great harvest of material awaited garnering . . . . my guide and informant indicated the position and recited the name of lagoon after lagoon, hill after hill, site after site – all redolent of historic associations and past human activities.To harvest and preserve these for posterity became an obvious duty.’55 Salvage was not all that was at stake in creating dictionaries of place names, or ‘topographical history’ as Andersen called it.56 Works that dealt with names familiar to their readers exposed a history commemorated in an often unnoticed way and unpacked the stories buried in a name. F. L. Irvine-Smith’s book on Wellington street names, The Streets of My City (1948), is a popular example.57 Allowing for differences in tone, Irvine-Smith was doing much the same as Andersen was in his dictionaries. ‘In the place-names of a country’, Andersen wrote, ‘large parts of its history lie embalmed.’58 [N]ames, once given and accepted, possess a vitality that even successive occupations by different peoples does [sic] not destroy. New pronunciation may alter the name, the inhabitants may be ignorant of the meaning of the name, yet the name persists; and the changes, recorded in old documents in the case of civilized lands, practically record the history that has been enacted around the name.59

Andersen’s work here was consistent with his other attempts to absorb the ‘colour’ of indigenous Aotearoa for modern New Zealand. Irvine-Smith and Fildes were less involved in cultural appropriation, but they contributed to the same overall colonial project as Andersen – constructing ‘New Zealand’ as a cultural reality.The gathering of names of particular places is but one site of this discursive colonisation; others range from nationalist poetry to tourist curios. Dictionaries of place names, collections of personal names, pioneer prosopographies, and many local histories all went about the work of ‘occupying’ a region by covering its past by saturation. They purported to record all notable points, rather than order certain points through narrative or argument.

Reworking the textual museum While non-synthetic, semi-anthological writing dominated many books

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and articles, some texts brought this tradition into contact with contrasting modes of writing. Adkin’s Horowhenua (1948) is one example: its place-name definitions support and enrich an ethnological and geological framework that has much more claim to the title of ‘topographical history’ than Andersen’s lists do.60 Another example is Andersen’s Maori Life in Ao-tea. In a manner comparable to Alfred Domett’s epic poem Ranolf and Amohia (1872), whose marathon digressions on nature, philosophy and Ma¯ori culture matter more than the slender plot onto which they are loaded, Maori Life in Ao-tea presents a fictitious iwi and a narrative of intertribal conflict, and treats the turns of the plot simply as ‘devices for the presentation of other materials’, typically in the form of huge quotations. Andersen also incorporates elements of genres other than prose fictional ones, including encyclopaedias and scientific works.61 Elsdon Best’s Tuhoe: The Children of the Mist (1925) reworks the textual museum in more complicated ways.62 It orchestrates a multiplicity of voices and obscures their points of origin. The book’s ventriloquism subverts the collection-based tradition that structures Tuhoe and other historical and ethnological texts. The book is a massive aggregation (over 1100 pages) of narratives and information. Here and there one finds tell-tale features of the collection-based tradition of writing. There are one-sentence paragraphs, unintegrated and stranded at the ends of sections; there are annotated transcriptions of Ma¯ori accounts; some hapu¯ receive extremely brief discussions, whereas others are accorded lengthy accounts, with no explanation for the disparity; and the book ends very abruptly.63 Tuhoe is biblical in its size and in its rhythmic accumulation of narratives of creation and growth. This accumulation confounds a sustained overall narrative, but in a different way from the narrative weaknesses of other ethnologists and historians. In other works, a coherent narrative is hampered by slippages between episodes; Tuhoe proceeds by piling up parallel narratives, especially in the long chapter on ‘the early tribes of Tuhoeland’.64 This probably owes less to Best’s design than to the competing accounts of the Native Land Court testimonies that he drew on to complement his field notes.65 Jeffrey Sissons aptly comments: ‘One searches in vain [in the book] for the outline of the grand narrative of Tuhoe history to discover instead multiple histories, multiple perspectives drawn together’.66 Tuhoe thus calls into question a key assumption of early-twentiethcentury New Zealand history and ethnology: that there was one past.

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Louis O. Mink once wrote that the dream of ‘universal history’, which most historians associate with the height of the Enlightenment, lives on as a historiographical ideal. Although the idea of universal historiography or the possibility of writing universal history had died, Mink argued, the notion that the past ‘really was’ a single ‘untold story’ had survived.67 The writers discussed earlier in this essay clearly had few pretensions to telling a complete and fully ‘present’ account of even a small section of the past, but they were, in Mink’s sense, universal historians. John White prefaced his Ancient History of the Maori (1887–90) with an apology for ‘the disjointed nature of the contents of this work’. Matters of tapu and mana understandably affected what informants would divulge of their history.‘Therefore, to give the most perfect history of the Maori people possible under such circumstances, it was deemed best to compile it as it is herein given, and, further, as the priests of different families of the same migration give different readings of the same parts of their history, to give all these, so that they might explain each other.’68 Best did not venture to explain the way his text constructed multiple pasts, but merely acknowledged and satirised the problem: The reader of these erratic notes will probably observe divers discrepancies throughout the narrative, and point an accusing finger at many weak points. E taea hoki te aha! For the son of man who attempts the thankless task of unravelling the tangled skein of the historical traditions of the Maori, truly he treads a devious and rocky path.The innumerable raids, sieges and killings, with contradictory statements, form a maze from which the famed Philadelphia lawyer might well fail to produce a smooth and accurate narrative. The task however, had to be done, if only as some slight return for the patience with which my old native friends have so often retailed to me the tales of old.69

Tuhoe’s authorial voice diverges further from the pattern of semianthological writing. Best’s textual persona figures prominently in his stories, as a researcher and explorer of ‘Tuhoeland’, and as a critic of his material. Stories about places are sometimes accompanied by accounts of Best’s own travels to them and discoveries there. Ma¯ori accounts are subjected to criticism, sometimes scornful and sometimes protractedly analytical. Throughout, Best uses the first person singular eschewed by other writers adopting detached, invisible textual personae, or thirdperson expressions such as ‘the collector’.70 This authorial voice is prominent in Tuhoe, but it is one of many.There are also, of course, the voices of Tuhoe informants. In addition, Tuhoe

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incorporates elements from a range of other genres and fields of discourse. These include the post-Scott ‘picturesque’ epic; Chaucerian archaisms (‘divers’; ‘For Tamata was a fowler of high renown . . . I ween’); biblical language (‘In the time of Te Rangi-monoa there was living in the valley of the Tauranga river a tribe’); surveyors’ terminology; and zoological and botanical discourse (including Latin genus and species names).71 Every text is situated in multiple genres. But Tuhoe differs from the other texts discussed here not only in degree – it brings together more identifiable generic traditions perhaps even than Andersen’s Maori Life in Ao-tea – but also in kind.The constituent genres are not only juxtaposed, but unsettled: Tuhoe is dialogical in a fashion that verges on novelistic. ‘Dialogical’ is a term associated most with the work of M. M. Bakhtin, whose insights are very pertinent to Tuhoe.72 Dialogical writing fosters ‘heteroglossia’, or the way language is burdened with a multiplicity of ideological and generic elements in abrasive contact with one another. Dialogical discourse introduces different voices to each other in a textual space where they may re-combine, or contest each other: an authoritative author is displaced by a play of voices already existing in language and culture. One of the most intense sites of dialogisation in written texts is free indirect style.This mode of writing, associated especially with the post-Flaubertian novel, brings into the text voices other than those of the narrator figure without quoting them directly.73 A dialogised free indirect style is at play in Tuhoe, and subverts the authority of the first-person authorial voice. The most important aspect of Best’s indirect style is his handling of quotation. Unlike other ethnologists and historians, Best does not make dramatic distinctions between his own words and those he quotes, and he seldom names informants. Few of the Ma¯ ori narratives are in quotation marks, and his translations of what presumably were informants’ accounts are in a similar prose style to the rest of the text. The plots largely remain disconnected, but the prose register does not shift between ‘author’ and ‘quotation’. It is often difficult to know when a ‘quotation’ ends, to know who is speaking, or to tell whether something is being presented as authoritative. At one point, Best spends three pages on a story of intertribal conflict, and indicates only at the end that it may not be reliable:‘The above version of the Nga-Potiki v. Whakatane campaign is scarcely credible when we know that Te Rangimonoa’s sons settled on . . . lands up the Tauranga River’.74 Until then, the ‘above version’ is not framed as a quotation, nor as a story neither authorised nor authored by Best.

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Decontextualised elements of other genres are interpolated into both ‘authorial’ analyses and ‘Ma¯ori’ narratives, in contrast to the apparently sacrosanct banks of quotation in other writers’ works. Sometimes these interpolations are flippant quips; often they are bits of purple prose, frequently archaic – in their syntax as well as their diction (for instance, Best employs inversions such as ‘Noted were they’ and ‘truly is it a wild spot’).75 The point has been made that such archaisms distance Best from his Ma¯ori subjects.76 Paradoxically, though, they undermine a cognate of that distance: Best’s scholarly, ethnological authority. Critics often celebrate dialogisation because its orchestration of multiple voices unsettles the authority of the text. In Tuhoe it has the effect of unravelling the book’s claims to yielding fact and the stuff of record, but not of contesting the fundamentals of colonialism. Moreover, the dialogical dimensions of Tuhoe frustrate the latter-day recovery of even approximations of pristine Ma¯ori voices from the text. Michael Reilly has attempted this in a recent essay on representing Ma¯ ori history.77 Despite its talk of deconstruction and postcolonial critique, Reilly’s article is historiographical business as usual, subordinating Tuhoe to a life-and-times context, cataloguing Best’s Eurocentrisms, and purporting to extract an authentic Ma¯ori history from what remains after Best’s errors have been identified and (presumably) isolated from the genuine.Whether such an approach is ever valid is debatable; at any rate, it is inappropriate to this text, the dialogics of which problematise the separability of fact and interpretation that Reilly’s reading assumes. Tuhoe, then, is a text that employs some of the structural features of semi-anthological writing but undermines other key assumptions of that tradition: the textual separation of author and source material, and the belief that ethnology and history involved piecing together the accumulated fragments of the past. Tuhoe caused no disciplinary rupture, however, and non-synthetic writing remained the norm in ethnology and history for some time. From the 1930s, its predominance was challenged by the scientific conventions of archaeological writing and the synthetic narratives and essays prescribed by British academic practice following the establishment of research doctorates.The case of James Rutherford illustrates the shift. When he took up the chair in history at Auckland in 1934, he was distressed by the inadequacies of the library, and devoted much effort to acquiring books and wheedling old manuscripts out of families. He used these in his own work, but did not adopt the style of other collector–historians. He wrote in the genre of the extended essay, arguing a case and subjugating quotations with a

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strong authorial voice.78 Beyond the university colleges, non-synthetic writing continued, and still persists in areas of historical writing outside the influence of academia. I have paid less attention to matters of ‘content’ than to how history and ethnology were written in the first half of this century – to some relations between genre, research, and texts. In so doing I have taken a course quite different from my previous work in this area. This is not because I no longer think that studying content is worthwhile, but because attention to genre, methods and textuality is important in marking out a territory for New Zealand intellectual history. All too often New Zealand historians treat the texts of history, ethnology, and other kinds of writing as documents of supposedly deeper cultural realities, and give short shrift to the work of genres and research practices in constituting texts. Both James Belich’s work on ‘myth’ and the proliferating ‘representations of ’ industry in New Zealand historiography treat texts as symptomatic of monolithic or organic discursive structures.79 Consequently, they encourage the quarrying of newspapers, novels and non-fiction texts for statements about ethnicity, gender, national identity and other subjects in a way that does justice neither to individual texts nor to the discursive structures that are the object of the study. Texts are implicated in the constitution of culture; discourse is maintained through texts (in the widest sense of the word), not merely reflected in them. If historians treat texts as mouthpieces of reified versions of ideology, culture or discourse, they miss the energies of writing and occlude important problems of voice in the historical record. How far have we come from the textual museum?

1

For their help with this essay I am very grateful to Judith Binney, Caroline Daley, Raewyn Dalziel, Sarah Graham, Fiona Hamilton, Ewan Johnston, and Deborah Montgomerie. I also wish to thank the New Zealand History Research Trust for an award that made it possible for me to write this essay. Earlier versions were read in the seminar series on Collectors and Collecting hosted by the Department of Art History at the University of Auckland in April 1997, and at the Stout Research Centre at Victoria

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University of Wellington in July 1998. I am grateful to Iain Buchanan and Vincent O’Sullivan respectively for the opportunity to present my work to these audiences. J. A.Young to T. Lindsay Buick, 9 Aug 1934, IA 1, 1935/187/128, Department of Internal Affairs files, NA. Buick to Young, 25 Jun 1934, IA 1, 1935/187/128. Rachel Barrowman, The Turnbull: A Library and Its World, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1995, pp. 34–5. Ma¯ori scholars, most prominently Apirana Ngata, made efforts to commit oral traditions to print, and cooperated guardedly with the Polynesian Society, but their efforts were directed towards sustaining cultural traditions rather than to memorialising something believed to be nearing extinction. S. Percy Smith, History and Traditions of the Maoris of the West Coast, North Island of New Zealand Prior to 1840, Polynesian Society, New Plymouth, 1910, p. viii; M. P. K. Sorrenson, Manifest Duty:The Polynesian Society over 100Years, Polynesian Society, Auckland, 1992, pp. 24, 37, 64, 65; Atholl Anderson, ‘Introduction: James Herries Beattie and the 1920 Project’, in James Herries Beattie, Traditional Lifeways of the Southern Maori: The Otago University Museum Ethnological Project, 1920, Atholl Anderson (ed.), University of Otago Press, Dunedin, 1994, pp. 12, 14. For Australian parallels see Chris Healy, ‘Histories and Collecting: Museums, Objects and Memories’, in Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton (eds), Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1994, pp. 43–4. Similar arguments were made elsewhere about the collection of artefacts: Annie E. Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England,Yale University Press, New Haven, 1994, p. 121; Virginia R. Dominguez, ‘The Marketing of Heritage’, American Ethnologist, vol. 13, no. 3, 1986, p. 548. Records of the Gore and Surrounding Districts’ Early Settlers’ Association, vol. 2, Gore and Surrounding Districts’ Early Settlers’ Association, Gore, 1933, p. 20; Johannes Andersen to James Hislop, 3 Oct 1922, IA 1, 113/6. H. Guthrie-Smith, Tutira:The Story of a New Zealand Sheep Station, 2nd edn, Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1926, p. vii; James Cowan, ‘Chapter I: The Old Race and the New’, typescript, nd, James Cowan Papers, MS Papers 39, folder 42C, ATL. Examples include T. W. Downes, Old Whanganui, W. A. Parkinson and Co., Hawera, 1915, and George Graham,‘A Maori History of the Auckland Isthmus (Tamaki-MakauRau)’, in John Barr, The City of Auckland, New Zealand, 1840–1920, Whitcombe and Tombs, Auckland, 1922. Robert McNab (ed.), Historical Records of New Zealand, 2 vols, Government Printer, Wellington, 1908, 1914. Robert McNab, Murihiku: Some Old Time Events: Being a Series of Twenty-five Articles on the Early History of the Extreme Southern Portion of New Zealand, Southern Standard, Gore, 1905, pp. iii, 97. For the publishing history of Murihiku, see Johannes Andersen, The Lure of New Zealand Book Collecting, Whitcombe and Tombs, Auckland, 1936, ch 5, and A. G. Bagnall (ed.), New Zealand National Bibliography to the Year 1960, 5 vols in 6, Government Printer, Wellington, 1969–85, vol. 3, p. 149. The same can be said of L. G. D. Acland, The Early Canterbury Runs, 3rd edn,Whitcombe and Tombs, Christchurch, 1946. Robert McNab, The Old Whaling Days: A History of Southern New Zealand from 1830 to 1840,Whitcombe and Tombs, Christchurch, 1913, pp. vii–viii. Andersen, Lure of New Zealand Book Collecting, p. 33. Another example is ‘Liber’ [Charles Wilson],‘The Book of the Day’, Dominion, Apr 1914, clipping in IA 1, 126/8/2. McNab, Old Whaling Days, p. vii. T. Lindsay Buick, The Treaty of Waitangi, or, How New Zealand Became a British Colony, S.

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18 19

20

21

22

23

24 25

26

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and W. Mackay,Wellington, 1914, p. v. Barrowman, p. 25. David Colquhoun, ‘The State, Archives-keeping and History Making in New Zealand 1840–1930’, Diploma in Museum Studies research essay, Massey University, 1996; Maxine K. Rochester, The Revolution in New Zealand Librarianship:American Influence as Facilitated by the Carnegie Corporation of New York in the 1930s, Dalhousie University School of Library and Information Studies, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1990; Ralph Munn and John Barr, New Zealand Libraries: A Survey of Conditions and Suggestions for Their Improvement, Libraries Association of New Zealand, Christchurch, 1934; Barrowman, chs 2–3. AJHR, 1958, H-32, p. 17; Munn and Barr, p. 30; G. H. Scholefield, A Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, 2 vols, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1940; G. H. Scholefield, ‘Autobiography’, unpublished typescript, nd [c. 1960], pp. 204, 218, 223, 226, G. H. Scholefield Papers, MS Papers 212, folder 67, ATL; Scholefield to John Meech, 27 Apr 1961, IA 1, 62/9/2. George Graham to Eric Ramsden, 20 Nov 1943, Eric Ramsden Papers, MS Papers 196, folder 189, ATL; John Rawson Elder (ed.), The Letters and Journals of Samuel Marsden 1765–1838, Coulls, Somerville,Wilkie and A. H. Reed, Dunedin, 1932, pp. 9–10. Fildes to A. J. Harrop, 28 Jul 1930, A. J. Harrop Papers, MS Papers 1271, folder 1, ATL; H. J. Barnett to Fildes, 14 Aug 1930, Horace Fildes Papers, box 37,Victoria University of Wellington Library; Horace Fildes, scrapbook on Porirua, MS Papers 1081, ATL; Selective Indexes to Certain Books Relating to Early New Zealand, Compiled by H. E. M. Fildes, ca. 1920 to 1937, and Now Transcribed by the Victoria University of Wellington Library, Victoria University of Wellington Library,Wellington, 1984. K. A. Coleridge,‘Horace Fildes and His Collection’, New Zealand Libraries, vol. 38, no. 5, 1975, pp. 260, 263–6; Chris Hilliard,‘Island Stories:The Writing of New Zealand History 1920–1940’, MA thesis, University of Auckland, 1997, pp. 59–60. Ironically, Buick had managed to talk the government into employing him as an historian by citing the example of McNab and stressing the need to recover historical records before it was too late. Once hired, Buick did hardly any such work, and instead busied himself revising his earlier books and researching new ones based on sources already in print or in the Turnbull Library: Buick to J. A.Young, 25 Jun 1934,W. R. B. Oliver to Malcolm Fraser, 5 Jul 1934, Buick to Oliver, 21 Sep 1935, IA 1, 1935/187/128; Buick to J. W. Heenan, 11 Nov 1937,T. Lindsay Buick Papers, MS Papers 58, folder 8, ATL. Sorrenson, p. 39. S. Percy Smith (ed. and trans.), The Lore of the Whare-wananga, or, Teachings of the Maori College on Religion, Cosmogony, and History, 2 vols, Polynesian Society, New Plymouth, 1913, 1915; David Simmons and Bruce Biggs, ‘The Sources of “The Lore of the Wharewananga”’, Journal of the Polynesian Society (JPS), vol. 79, no. 1, 1970, pp. 22–42. Recent work by Peter Clayworth has challenged earlier views of Te Whatahoro’s role in the creation of The Lore of the Whare-wananga: ‘The Sources of the “Moriori Myth”’, unpublished paper, 1998. I am grateful to Peter Clayworth for giving me a copy of this paper. Roger Buddle, ‘Contributions to South Island (N.Z.) Maori History’, JPS, vol. 21, no. 84, 1912, pp. 173–80; George Graham, ‘Te Toka-tu-Whenua: A Relic of the Ancient Waiohua of Tamaki’, JPS, vol. 34, no. 134, 1925, pp. 175–9. William Edward Bidwill and Airini Elizabeth Woodhouse, Bidwill of Pihautea:The Life of Charles Robert Bidwill, Coulls, Somerville, Wilkie, Christchurch, 1927, p. vii; A. Selwyn Bruce, The Early Days of Canterbury: A Miscellaneous Collection of Interesting Facts Dealing with the Settlement’s First Thirty Years of Colonisation, 1850–1880, Simpson and Williams, Christchurch, 1932, p. 9; Henry Brett and Henry Hook, The Albertlanders: Brave Pioneers of the ’Sixties, Brett Printing Company, Auckland, 1927, p. 6. H. Beattie,‘Traditions and Legends: Collected from the Natives of Murihiku (Southland,

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New Zealand): Part XII’, JPS, vol. 29, no. 115, 1920, pp. 128, 132, 133, 136. See also Beattie, Traditional Lifeways, pp. 35, 178, 307, 502, 503. ‘The collector’ appears again throughout one of Beattie’s works on early settlers, Pioneer Recollections – ‘Collected by H. Beattie’, according to the title page. H. Beattie, Pioneer Recollections: Dealing Chiefly with the Early Days of the Mataura Valley, 2nd series, Gore Publishing Company, Gore, 1911, pp. 22, 27, 90, 91, 93, 95, 107. H. Beattie,‘Traditions and Legends: Collected from the Natives of Murihiku (Southland, New Zealand): Part XIII’, JPS, vol. 29, no. 116, 1920, p. 189. S. Percy Smith, preface to Downes, Old Whanganui, pp. iii, v. Similarly, McNab prefaced a collection of pioneer memoirs with the statement that if every part of the country had work like this done on it, there would be ‘a vast storehouse of information put at the disposal of the future painter, poet and historian. Works like this you are about to read are priceless when a distinctive New Zealand literature looks around for a foundation on which to rest.’ Robert McNab, preface to Beattie, Pioneer Recollections, p. ii. Johannes C. Andersen, Maori Life in Ao-tea,Whitcombe and Tombs, Christchurch, 1907, p. x. Allen Curnow, ‘Attitudes for a New Zealand Poet (III):The Skeleton of the Great Moa in the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch’, in Allen Curnow (ed.), A Book of New Zealand Verse 1923–45, Caxton Press, Christchurch, 1945, pp. 165–6. McNab, Old Whaling Days, p. vii. James Cowan, Hero Stories of New Zealand, Harry H.Tombs,Wellington, 1935, p. x. Chris Hilliard,‘James Cowan and the Frontiers of New Zealand History’, NZJH, vol. 31, no. 2, 1997, p. 220; Cowan, Hero Stories of New Zealand, pp. x–xi. However, see also S. Percy Smith, Hawaiki:The Original Home of the Maori; with a Sketch of Polynesian History, 4th edn, Whitcombe and Tombs, Auckland, 1921, p. 14; Graham, ‘Te Toka-tu-Whenua’, pp. 176–7. Cowan to Downes, 10 Nov 1937, Cowan Papers, MS Papers 39, folder 5; James Cowan, ‘Human Documents’, Auckland Star, 4 Feb 1928. Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1978, p. x. Stewart to Rutherford, 16 Mar 1939, James Rutherford Papers, MSS A-42, folder E26/8, University of Auckland Library. Peter Gibbons, ‘Non-fiction’, in Terry Sturm (ed.), The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1998, pp. 31–118. See also P. J. Gibbons,‘A Note on Writing, Identity, and Colonisation in Aotearoa’, Sites, vol. 13, 1986, pp. 32–8, and Terry Goldie, Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Literatures, McGill–Queen’s University Press, Kingston, Ontario, 1989, pp. 12–13. On these subjects see J. O. C. Phillips, ‘Musings in Maoriland – or Was There a Bulletin School in New Zealand?’, Historical Studies, vol. 20, no. 81, 1983, pp. 520–35; Paul Allan Hamer,‘Nature and Natives:Transforming and Saving the Indigenous in New Zealand’, MA thesis,Victoria University of Wellington, 1992. J. C. Beaglehole, ‘The New Zealand Scholar’, in Peter Munz (ed.), The Feel of Truth: Essays in New Zealand and Pacific History, A. H. and A.W. Reed,Wellington, 1969, p. 252; Allen Curnow, ‘Introduction’, in Curnow (ed.), p. 52; M. H. Holcroft, The Deepening Stream: Cultural Influences in New Zealand, Caxton Press, Christchurch, 1940, pp. 20–1, 23, 30, 31; Allen Curnow, Island and Time, Caxton Press, Christchurch, 1941, pp. 2, 10, 20–1, 22–3, 40–4; Charles Brasch, ‘The Silent Land’, in Curnow (ed.), p. 149. On the phrase ‘home in thought’ see James Bertram,‘A Commentary’, Phoenix, vol. 1, no. 2, 1932, p. 23. Charles Fleming to ‘Mr Sutherland’, 2 Feb 1938, Buick Papers, MS Papers 58, folder 8. Philippa Levine, The Amateur and the Professional:Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, p. 61.

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44

45

46

47

48 49 50 51 52

53

54 55

56

57 58 59 60

Brett and Hook, p. 5.The motto of the Otago Early Settlers’ Association, which appeared on its publications, was ‘Reanimate Otago’s Pioneers to Fame Undying through the Years’. One of the stated goals of its Wellington counterpart was ‘To inspire a feeling of veneration for the early colonists, their works and institutions.’ ‘Objects of the Association’, Journal of the Early Settlers’ and Historical Association of Wellington, vol. 2, no. 2, 1922, p. 28. William Martin and Eric Skinner (eds), Short History of the Otago Early Settlers’Association 1898–1948 and Guide to the Museum, Laing and Matthews, Dunedin, 1949, p. 32; Bidwill and Woodhouse, p. vii; Robert Valpy Fulton, Medical Practice in Otago and Southland in the Early Days: A Description of the Manner of Life,Trials and Difficulties of Some of the Pioneer Doctors, of the Places in Which, and of the People Among Whom They Laboured, Otago Daily Times and Witness Newspapers, Dunedin, 1922, p. v. A. E. Woodhouse, George Rhodes of the Levels and His Brothers, Early Settlers of New Zealand: Particularly the Story of the Founding of the Levels, the First Sheep Station in South Canterbury,Whitcombe and Tombs, Auckland, 1937, pp. 87, 92, 93. Paul Carter, Living in a New Country: History, Travelling and Language, Faber and Faber, London, 1992, p. 123. See also Tom Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, p. 221. Gibbons,‘Non-fiction’, p. 73. Records of the Gore and Surrounding Districts’ Early Settlers’Association, vol. 2, pp. 59–63. Robert Gilkison, Early Days in Central Otago: Being Tales of Times Gone By, Otago Daily Times and Witness Newspapers, Dunedin, 1930, p. 184. Barr, especially pp. 67–76. On naming places in New Zealand see Giselle M. Byrnes, ‘Affixing Names to Places: Colonial Surveying and the Construction of Cultural Space’, New Zealand Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 1998, pp. 22–8. This list is appended to ‘Reminiscences of James John Taine, a Wellington and New Zealand Pioneer Settler of 1839, Compiled by H. E. M. Fildes, with Portraits and Illustrations’, Micro MS 218, ATL. Andersen, typescript of a book on Auckland place names, nd, Johannes C. Andersen Papers, MS Papers 148, folders 111C–111D, ATL. G. Leslie Adkin, Horowhenua: Its Maori Place-Names and Their Topographical and Historical Background, Department of Internal Affairs,Wellington, 1948, p. 1. It should be added that this was a beginning, and that Adkin’s subsequent research did involve speaking to Ma¯ori informants as well. See Anthony Dreaver, An Eye for Country:The Life and Work of Leslie Adkin,Victoria University Press,Wellington, 1997, pp. 170–1. Arguing for a ten- to fifteen-volume ‘topographical history’ of the whole of New Zealand, not to be written wholly by himself, Andersen asserted:‘Moreover, it is urgent that it should be taken in hand without delay, as a great deal of local topography is carried in the minds of the older generation fast passing away.’ Andersen to Chairman, Board of Science and Art, 17 Feb 1919, Andersen Papers, MS Papers 148, folder 35. F. L. Irvine-Smith, The Streets of My City:Wellington, New Zealand, A. H. and A.W. Reed, Wellington, 1948. Johannes C. Andersen, Place-names of Banks Peninsula:A Topographical History, Government Printer,Wellington, 1927, p. 5. Andersen to Chairman, Board of Science and Art, 31 Jan 1917, Andersen Papers, MS Papers 148, folder 35. The publication of Horowhenua entailed a long struggle between Adkin and Andersen, who, as editor of the Journal of the Polynesian Society, was initially to be the publisher of the work. At the centre of the dispute were Andersen’s rules on Ma¯ori nomenclature, as promulgated by the New Zealand Geographic Board. See Dreaver, pp. 185–91.

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61

62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69

70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79

Peter Gibbons, ‘“Going Native”: A Case Study of Cultural Appropriation in a Settler Society, with Particular Reference to the Activities of Johannes Andersen in New Zealand During the First Half of the Twentieth Century’, DPhil thesis, University of Waikato, 1992, pp. 83, 85–6, 87–8, 98. Elsdon Best, Tuhoe: The Children of the Mist: A Sketch of the Origin, History, Myths and Beliefs of the Tuhoe Tribe of the Maori of New Zealand; with Some Account of Other Early Tribes of the Bay of Plenty District, 4th edn, 2 vols, Reed, Auckland, 1996 (first pub. 1925). All references are to the first volume; volume two consists of genealogical tables. For an excellent reading of Tuhoe on very different lines from the one presented here, see Jeffrey Sissons, Te Waimana:The Spring of Mana:Tuhoe History and the Colonial Encounter, University of Otago Press, Dunedin, 1991, pp. 6–21. Best, Tuhoe, pp. 36, 40, 732–9, 1142–3. Best, Tuhoe, pp. 12–209. Sissons, Te Waimana, p. 5. Jeffrey Sissons, preface to Best, Tuhoe, p. vii. Louis O. Mink, Historical Understanding, Brian Fay, Eugene O. Golob and Richard T.Vann (eds), Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1987, pp. 188–9. John White, The Ancient History of the Maori, His Mythology and Traditions, 6 vols, Government Printer,Wellington, 1887–90, vol. 1, pp. iii–iv. Best, Tuhoe, p. 668; see also pp. ix, 1143. The phrase ‘Philadelphia lawyer’ was a stock expression, not a reference to a particular individual. ‘Divers’ is not a misprint for ‘diverse’, but one of Best’s many archaisms. Best, Tuhoe, pp. 19–21, 33, 50, 54. Best, Tuhoe, pp. 1–6, 7, 9, 11, 17, 22, 31, 35, 37, 45, 668. M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, Michael Holquist (ed.), University of Texas Press, Austin, 1981, especially pp. 262–3, 270–85. Dominick LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1983, p. 308. Best, Tuhoe, p. 47. See also p. 56. Best, Tuhoe, pp. 48, 49. Michael Reilly,‘An Ambiguous Past: Representing Maori History’, NZJH, vol. 29, no. 1, 1995, pp. 30–1. Reilly, pp. 21–38. J. Rutherford Papers, MSS A-42, folders F29/1, F30/2, G55/2, G33/4; J. Rutherford, Hone Heke’s Rebellion 1844–1846: An Episode in the Establishment of British Rule in New Zealand, Auckland University College, Auckland, 1947. James Belich,‘Myth, Race, and Identity in New Zealand’, NZJH, vol. 31, no. 1, 1997, pp. 9–22 and Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century, Penguin, Auckland, 1996.

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The Cultural Remains of Elsie Walker |

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Bertha Gotobed was a minor but important witness in a murder case, and the discovery of her body in Epping Forest, far from her home, heightened the mystery surrounding the case. Bertha’s remains offered no clue to indicate foul play, and bore neither wounds nor marks of a struggle.‘“The death was perfectly natural”’, Sir Andrew Mackenzie, the Chief of Scotland Yard, informed aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, and assured him that there were ‘“no signs whatever of any assault”’. Wimsey was not convinced: ‘But what was she doing in Epping Forest?’. . . . ‘That must be inquired into, of course. Still – young people do wander about, you know. . . .’ ‘But if the death was natural, no one would leave a sick or dying girl like that?’ ‘You wouldn’t. But say there had been some running about – some horse-play – and the girl fell dead, as these heart cases sometimes do. The companion may well have taken fright and cleared out. It’s not unheard of.’

Bertha’s body had been found in an unfrequented part of the forest: ‘It lay among some bushes – the sort of place where a frolicsome young couple might go to play hide-and-seek.’ ‘Or where a murderer might go to play hide and let the police seek,’ said Wimsey.

Wimsey was right to be suspicious, for there was nothing natural about

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Bertha’s death. Suspicions justified and hunches followed are the stuff of detective fiction, and Dorothy Sayers’s creation, Lord Peter Wimsey, was a classic fictional detective.1 In 1928, a year after the publication of Sayers’s novel Unnatural Death, New Zealand police investigated a death which, like Bertha’s, appeared to be ‘perfectly natural’. Elsie Walker’s body was found beneath bushes in an isolated spot on the outskirts of Auckland where it had lain for several days.There were no visible signs of struggle, no obvious wounds, no traces of poison, no indications of sexual assault, and just one small bruise on the head. Elsie’s body was also discovered far from home – more than 300 kilometres from her residence in the Bay of Plenty, from which she, a motor-car, £10 in cash and a cheap watch, had been reported as missing. How the seventeen-year-old Elsie made that journey when she was not known to drive, and how her body ended up more than ten kilometres from the abandoned vehicle, were questions which had the New Zealand public agog and police baffled.They could have done with the assistance of Lord Peter Wimsey, who always succeeded in getting his man. No murderer was found in Elsie’s case, and indeed it was never clear that any crime had been committed. Unlike Wimsey, I do not venture to ‘solve’ the mystery of Elsie Walker’s death.That was, after all, done countless times in the late 1920s, as the case transfixed the country and stories about Elsie’s life and death abounded. Solutions ranged from ‘natural causes’, abduction, seduction and rape, to elaborate theories of homicide by electrical charges or as a consequence of international conspiracy. Each scenario purported to present ‘what really happened’, and none of them would have been out of place on the pages of Unnatural Death. These narratives and explanations constitute the cultural remains of Elsie Walker, the fragments of her life and death which were woven into explicable stories.2 Creating narratives, a generation of cultural historians has informed us, is an important cultural process. Robert Darnton suggests that stories are the strategies that people use to make sense of their world.3 Through the formation and shaping of a narrative, people impose order on life. They fashion a beginning, middle, and most importantly, a moral ending, for the traumatic nature of mystery and crime demands a moral certainty to be wrought from incoherent events; explanations of crime and unexplained death perform the cultural work of societies wrestling with sharply transgressive phenomena in their midst.4 Mysterious deaths such as Elsie’s were seldom everyday occurrences, and their very unrepresentative nature contributed to the need to

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suggest explanations for them, and to conjure stories around them.5 Sometimes stories assign blame or offer excuses. ‘Turning a terrible action into a story is a way to distance oneself from it, at worst a form of self-deception, at best a way to pardon the self ’, Natalie Zemon Davis argues, highlighting the role that narrative may play for an individual, as well as a society, confronting crime and mystery.6 The stories surrounding Elsie Walker are examined in this essay, as I explore why and how the mystery of her death captivated New Zealand imaginations in the 1920s.

A narrative of a life, a death, and an investigation Elsie Walker was raised on her father’s farm in the isolated East Coast Ma¯ori settlement of Raukokore, near Cape Runaway. There were six children born to Charles D’Renzy Walker and his wife, and Elsie was the second of three girls.7 No one in the district owned a motor-vehicle while Elsie lived there, and locals took the service car to the nearest ¯ po¯tiki, about 100 kilometres away. Elsie left school large settlement of O shortly after she turned fourteen, and worked on the family farm for a year before she announced her intention to become a dressmaker. Claiming that she was too young to be apprenticed, Charles sent her instead to live with his sister, Constance Bayly, in the Bay of Plenty.8 Constance and Frank Bayly farmed a large property at Papamoa. When Elsie moved there in August 1927, the Baylys’ five sons, ranging in age from three to 22, were living at home; the only daughter had married and moved to Hamilton, and in August 1928 the eldest son, Bill, married and settled in Auckland. The Baylys were considered to be a respectable family, and Constance was sure that her brother had sent Elsie to her because of that. Raukokore, she pointed out, was a ‘very remote district’ where Elsie’s only companions ‘would be Maoris’, and sending her to Papamoa gave her an opportunity to be in a ‘better environment’.9 The Bayly family had nevertheless experienced their share of trouble. In 1926 Bill appeared in court charged with the carnal knowledge of a local girl, and although the judge dismissed the charges, Bill did not have a good reputation. Police considered him to be ‘sexually weak’ and he was known locally as a ‘seducer’ whose name was usually associated with any scandal involving girls and young women. His secret marriage in August 1928 to a young woman he had got ‘in trouble’ created a rift

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with his family, and at the time of Elsie’s disappearance in October, relations in the Bayly family were cool.10 Papamoa was less isolated physically than Raukokore. It was just a few kilometres from Te Puke, which had a population of around 1000 when Elsie moved into the district;Tauranga, the largest local centre, had about 2500 inhabitants. With the completion of the last section of the East Coast Main Trunk Line in March 1928,Tauranga was connected to Auckland by rail in tri-weekly passenger and freight services of eight hours’ duration. A smaller line joined Te Puke and Papamoa, where the tracks ran through the Bayly farm, just a short distance from the house. Regular service cars connected Papamoa and Te Puke with Rotorua, Hamilton and beyond, although the notoriously difficult road through the Kaimai ranges was often made worse by its boggy, muddy condition.11 The district also had a greater range of organised amusements than Raukokore. Both Te Puke and Tauranga had picture theatres in the 1920s, but dances were one of the most popular forms of entertainment.12 Young people from around the Bay of Plenty attended the regular socials in Te Puke and Tauranga, at some of which the alcohol flowed freely.13 The young men of the Bayly household were keen dance-goers, but Elsie did not share their enthusiasm.They preferred to leave her at home, and she did not accompany her cousin Trevor to the dance in Te Puke the night she disappeared. Elsie attended socials infrequently and seldom danced once she got there, a reluctance one dance partner attributed to her being a ‘new chum at dancing’.14 Constance Bayly described Elsie’s position in her household as a ‘lady help’, or ‘companion and niece’, who assisted with the housework, for which she received 12s 6d a week.15 Elsie’s role in her aunt’s house fell between domestic servant and junior family member, with an emphasis on the former. She performed a large share of the housework, and Constance admitted that she kept her niece ‘strictly under discipline’. She knew Elsie’s correspondents, and her ‘close watch’ assured her that Elsie had no male companions. Constance found her niece to be ‘very gentle and kind’,‘clean and tidy’, but she could also be strange in her manner, ‘simple and dopey’ or untruthful. In all, Constance concluded, the seventeen-year-old Elsie had the mental ability of an eleven-year-old.16 Elsie had dreams and desires, which she sometimes wove into elaborate fantasies of husbands-to-be or abundant possessions. Such fancies contributed to her reputation for untruthfulness, and friends

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and family confirmed that Elsie had a romantic teenage imagination. She had no boyfriends at either Raukokore or Papamoa, and Constance swore that no ‘sweethearting’ occurred between her teenaged sons and her niece, who was still ‘only a child’.17 Everyone agreed that Elsie was a young woman of good moral character. Elsie’s greatest dream was to visit Auckland. Her sister Ann lived there, and in her correspondence to Elsie she painted the city in glowing colours. Elsie’s wish was almost fulfilled in August 1928 when she and Constance set off for Auckland. Elsie only got as far as Tauranga, where she stayed for a fortnight with Minnie Jordan, a friend of the Baylys, while Constance went on to Auckland. It was a poor substitute. The Jordans lived three kilometres from Tauranga, and Elsie often stayed at the house while the family went into town. Attending the Tauranga Children’s Fancy Dress Ball seemed to be the highlight of the holiday, and Elsie passed it sitting with Minnie Jordan.18 Auckland remained an attraction for Elsie. She listened spellbound one evening as Audrey Bayly, a visiting cousin, entertained the family with an exciting account of Charles Kingsford Smith’s historic arrival by air in the city.19 Eleven-year-old Tom Bayly helped Elsie wash the dinner dishes that night, while the rest of the family sat talking in the billiard room, and he noticed his cousin’s sudden and inexplicable anger. Audrey remarked on Elsie’s strange conduct as well, when later in the evening she met her emerging from the wash-house, where she said she had been emptying a bucket, although Audrey noted that Elsie had no bucket with her.20 Elsie did not join the family to hear further stories of Audrey’s holiday in Rotorua or life in Auckland. Next morning, Elsie could not be found. Her bed had not been slept in, and indeed had not been made up from the day before. The family car was missing, and an empty bucket stood in the garage near where the vehicle was usually parked. Fresh tyre marks outside the gate suggested that the car had turned towards Te Puke. Family members found that their clothing and possessions had been rifled and money taken, and Trevor was missing a watch and a black leather pouch. All of Elsie’s possessions were in their place. She had disappeared in the clothes she had been wearing to do the dishes: a mauve dress, an apron, and a pair of flat canvas shoes.21 Police located the vehicle in Papatoetoe, over 300 kilometres away, where it had stood abandoned for more than a day. It was covered in dust, and a deflated tyre and jack sat on the back seat, but the vehicle was still in working order and had petrol in the tank.To local police, it

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was indistinguishable from any other vehicle abandoned in Auckland on an almost daily basis in the late 1920s.22 Later that week, a girl’s body was found under bushes in a scoria paddock at Panmure. Constable Charles Collins and local resident Stephen Carter checked the body for signs of injury, noting that the head was lying in a pool of blood. Frederick Coppins, a driver for a local undertaker’s firm, helped the two men pull the body from the bushes, and, watched by between fifteen and twenty bystanders, load it into a ‘shell’, and deliver it to the morgue.There, the three men, two hospital doctors, and an off-duty doctor who was passing when he saw the lights on, gathered around the police slab while two detectives stripped the body completely. Letters found inside the pockets of the coat the girl was wearing suggested that the body was Elsie’s.This was confirmed the following day when her uncle travelled up from Papamoa and formally identified the body.23 With the exception of a boy’s overcoat belonging to one of the Bayly sons, Elsie wore the same clothes as on the evening of her disappearance, and none of the clothes were in disarray when she was found. On stripping her body, however, police found blood and other stains on the outside of her underwear. The bacteriologist confirmed that the stains were semen, apparently ejected with the blood, and that they were ‘quite recent’.24 The post-mortem on Elsie’s body offered few clues to indicate the cause of death. She was a fit and healthy seventeen-year-old who had eaten a light meal just a few hours before her death, judging by the contents of her stomach. Her body bore no marks of a struggle, and missing pieces of flesh on the arms and face were attributed to the work of rodents and maggots over the three days her body had lain outside. Vaginal swabs revealed no traces of semen or signs of recent sexual activity, and although the hymen was missing, the condition of ‘certain organs’ was ‘compatible with virginity’.A small bruise on the top of the head was the only injury, but the doctors conducting the post-mortem were unsure whether it was fatal.The initial post-mortem report assigned no obvious cause of death, but after protracted consideration and an amendment to their original report, the doctors concluded that the probable cause of death was concussion following a blow on the head.25 Police inquiries failed to connect anyone with Elsie’s disappearance. For a time, they suspected Bill Bayly, owing to his reputation and inability to account adequately for his movements in the days surrounding Elsie’s disappearance from Papamoa.26 Despite extensive

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inquiries along routes between Papamoa and Auckland, there were no confirmed sightings of Elsie or the Baylys’ vehicle on the night she disappeared, and no one reported filling the car’s petrol tank or changing the tyre. A Bay of Plenty car dealer stated it was a simple matter to change the tyre of a vehicle like the Baylys’; his garage juniors did it, and in his opinion, a seventeen-year-old girl could as well. He also believed that anyone sitting alongside the driver of the automobile over a number of months – such as Elsie had done – would gain sufficient knowledge to drive the car.27 These claims, along with the testimony of the Baylys’ toddler son that he had once seen Elsie drive the car when no one else was at home, suggested to police that Elsie had driven herself to Auckland. Dissatisfied with her position with the Baylys, and excited by the talk of Auckland, Elsie had, according to police, simply left Papamoa for Auckland, or had ended up there after taking a wrong turn on her way back to Raukokore. Confused, tired, and perhaps apprehensive about having taken the car, money and watch, she abandoned the vehicle and began walking. Overcome by exhaustion – or maybe even frightened by a rat – Elsie crawled into the bushes in the scoria paddock and died.The semen stains on her underwear had most probably occurred at Papamoa when Elsie and the Bayly boys had been ‘sky-larking’.28 At a crowded inquest in January 1929, which took two weeks rather than the anticipated three days, members of the Bayly family, policemen, medical officers, and those who found Elsie’s body were questioned closely. Bill Bayly came in for particular scrutiny, and occupied the witness box for the better part of two days. One police officer expressed outright his suspicion that Bill Bayly was implicated, and noted the rumours in the Bay of Plenty to that effect. At the end of the hearing, Erima Northcroft, counsel for the Bayly family, criticised the attention directed at Bill. The inquest had proceeded more along the lines of a murder trial with his client as chief suspect, he argued. That, and the theatrical nature of some of the questioning – James Thompson and Stephen Carter were asked to demonstrate the position of Elsie’s body when they found it – savoured of continental rather than British modes of justice. In Northcroft’s view, it was clear that Elsie had left Papamoa voluntarily. He agreed with police that it was not improbable for Elsie to have driven herself and then walked into the bushes where she lay down and died.29 The Coroner’s verdict posited another scenario, and criticised the police inquiry. According to Frederick Hunt, Elsie had disturbed a thief,

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who either knocked her unconscious, or, most likely, induced her to travel away with him. In either case, Elsie was unprepared for the trip, otherwise she would have dressed differently, perhaps have put on makeup and carried a handbag. On the way to Auckland the man attempted to assault her sexually, but Elsie resisted and hit her head. He drove on through the night,‘hoping against hope that she might recover’, until he reached Auckland, where he dumped the body and abandoned the car. Hunt’s formal finding was that Elsie Walker died between Papamoa and Auckland, and that the cause of death was concussion following a blow on the head.There was insufficient evidence to determine whether the blow was homicidal or accidental, and there was no evidence to link any particular person to the mystery.30 Several weeks later, a commission of inquiry upheld the police investigation. In July 1929, however, police received evidence to suggest that Bill Bayly may have lied about his whereabouts on the night of Elsie’s disappearance. Two women who had travelled by train from Onehunga to Papamoa that evening stated that they had seen him on the train. At the time, Kathleen Langdon and Margaret Thomason had agreed not to notify the police, as they did not wish to add to the Bayly family’s ‘troubles’; neither mentioned the incident when questioned in October 1928, and neither appeared at the inquest.31 Thomason had, however, written to Constance Bayly informing her that Bill had been seen on the train at Papamoa, and the two women corresponded about the issue for some months. Believing that Thomason was trying to blackmail her when she wrote that she was about to tell her story to a newspaper, Constance finally informed the police. While Constance and Thomason conversed in a hotel room, police listened through the wall. Blackmail was clearly more on Constance’s mind than Thomason’s, as the officers heard her assiduous and clumsy (and unsuccessful) attempts to induce Thomason to ask her for £10,000 in hush-money.32 The police discounted the claims of Thomason and Langdon, pointing to numerous discrepancies between the statements they had made at the time of Elsie’s disappearance and their later revised statements. The possibility of further evidence stimulated public demands for the reopening of the inquest.The Auckland branch of the Society for the Protection of Women and Children hosted a clamorous public meeting in the Auckland Town Hall, where almost 1000 people passed a motion calling for the inquest to be reopened.Women’s groups in Auckland and around the country campaigned accordingly, and the

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National Council of Women organised a petition which had attracted 15,000 signatures by the time it was presented to Parliament at the end of 1929.33 The inquest into Elsie’s death was not reopened, and could not be under New Zealand law. A legislative amendment to the Coroner’s Act in the following year made provision for the reopening of inquests, but the law was not made retrospective. The open verdict delivered by Coroner Hunt in January 1929 stood as the official finding into the death of Elsie Walker.

Death and the maiden For over a year in the late 1920s, Elsie Walker’s life, disappearance and death were news. Newspapers reported in detail each development in the police inquiry. The weekly New Zealand Truth ran large, almost serialised stories about the mystery throughout October and November 1928, speculating about how Elsie met her death and demanding a solution to the case. Its reporters interviewed individuals involved in the case, and were particularly active in the Bay of Plenty in fostering and reporting rumours. Along with the Auckland-based dailies, Truth stationed reporters at court throughout the inquest and published the entire proceedings, sometimes with photographs.The Coroner’s verdict was reproduced in papers throughout the country, usually with an editorial affixed to it.The Auckland papers and Truth printed almost all the evidence to the commission of inquiry, the entire correspondence between Margaret Thomason and Constance Bayly was published, and reports of the agitation for the reopening of the inquest in 1929 appeared in all major provincial dailies.34 Elsie’s life and death were discussed in households, worksites and places of entertainment, as police quickly found. Gerald Flynn, who fitted and maintained petrol pumps around the Bay of Plenty, was one of many who confirmed that the subject was on the lips of everyone in the district, and indeed his own ‘more than ordinary’ interest in the case led one local to suggest that the police should question him.35 Outside the Bay of Plenty as well, Elsie’s disappearance and death were topics of conversation and sometimes convoluted hearsay. Palmerston North’s Detective Barling reported a lead supplied by two ‘reliable businessmen’ (who did not wish to be identified): a Tauranga hairdresser travelling to Palmerston North via Foxton, where the businessmen lived, had told them that a client (whose name they could not remember) had

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informed him that he had seen Bill Bayly in Papamoa on the day of Elsie’s disappearance.36 Police were perplexed by the extent of attention to what had become a cause célèbre. Auckland’s Chief Detective Alfred Hammond claimed that no other case in his 34 years’ police experience had involved as much inquiry, much of it due, he believed, to the publicity. Police had interviewed nearly 2000 people, and by the end of 1929, the Elsie Walker file stood almost half a metre high.37 Many reasons account for the public and media attention, but here I focus on three: the unsolved, perennially open nature of the case; its seemingly bizarre aspects; and the imaginative possibilities provided by the death of a healthy, seventeen-year-old female virgin with seminal stains on her underwear. As an open case in which there was neither trial nor clearly named suspects, Elsie’s death was the subject of considerable speculation. American cultural historian Karen Haltunnen has argued that the lack of a trial opens a space for almost limitless conjecture about what might have occurred. Telling stories and offering explanations fill this void, instead of the structured narratives and possible closure that a trial could have elicited.38 Many associated Elsie’s death with five unsolved murders over the previous fifteen years. Three of the deaths had occurred in Auckland, and in three cases, women were the victims. Gwen Scarff ’s murder in Christchurch in 1926 was still fresh in the public mind, and several papers and commentators linked the two cases to illustrate alleged inefficiency on the part of the police. Police brought to trial a clear suspect in the Scarff murder, although discrepancies in their procedure seriously diminished the strength of the evidence against him.39 In the other recent unsolved murders, victims were found in or near their homes, or witnesses reported hearing cries or seeing suspicious individuals fleeing from the crime scenes.The Elsie Walker case grabbed the headlines as yet another death for which the police had been unable to account, but one which was considerably more intricate and mysterious in its details. Given this record, it was not surprising that police conclusions were greeted with cynicism and disdain – or that many commentators eschewed an explanation of natural causes in favour of one of murder. Death by natural causes was, after all, a rather mundane ending for a case which was far from ordinary; death by deliberate, calculated violence held out more imaginative possibilities. Constructed as a murder

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mystery, the Elsie Walker case became news. It was an exciting, titillating experience, and perhaps even a diversion from more gloomy issues, such as reports of the declining state of the New Zealand economy. Many in the community postulated that Elsie was murdered. Papers such as Truth jumped to the same conclusion.‘All the evidence in Truth’s possession points to but one conclusion – that the solution of this mystery is to be found in the grim word murder’, the paper wrote two weeks after the discovery of Elsie’s body.40 Elsie’s father Charles steadfastly refused to believe that his daughter’s death was a simple matter.The picture the police had sketched had little in common with his perception of his daughter. He maintained that Elsie could not drive, and would never have attempted to drive herself to Auckland, despite her longing to visit the city. She was a good girl who would never willingly undertake the journey with a man, and certainly not in the clothing she had worn to do the dishes.Walker suggested that a thief had stolen the money and was surprised in the car-shed: ‘Realizing the consequences of an alarm being given by the girl, I maintain that the man either strangled or suffocated her in the shed – and then deposited the body in the back of the car and drove off.’ Driving 300 kilometres through the night and then leaving the body in the scoria paddock would have lessened the chance of discovery,Walker added.41 Other explanations of Elsie’s death were more sinister or elaborately contrived. Truth moved from a theory of murder to one of attempted rape, followed by murder. To this scenario it added the abduction of Elsie from her home, or a voluntary journey by night made under false pretences. In her eagerness to see the ‘enchanted city’, Truth suggested, Elsie agreed to accompany an unknown man, and in the process,‘pinned her faith to a man who was more fiend and devil than a companion helping her to realize her dream’.42 John Lister of Lower Hutt wrote to the Minister of Justice in 1929 hinting at an international conspiracy. Lister included a Truth photograph showing the place where Elsie’s body was discovered, and drew the Minister’s attention to a face resembling that of the Kaiser’s in the bushes at a corner of the image.43 Some obtained their explanations from unusual sources. Auckland spiritualists informed police that they had communicated with the spirit of Elsie’s aunt in ‘the other World’, who claimed that Elsie was taken from Papamoa by her cousin Ronald Walker, who subsequently murdered her. Police were sceptical. ‘It seems strange that if they are so confident of their ground on this matter that they had failed to get in touch with the spirit of the deceased, but apparently it has not yet

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arrived at its destination’, one officer noted. Even so, police inquired for a Ronald Walker in the family.44 An open case encouraged speculation and allowed for accusatory fingers to be pointed at possible suspects.The repeated police questioning of Bill Bayly, followed by his grilling at the inquest, suggested to many that he was implicated. Bay of Plenty rumour associated Bayly with the case in one way or another. One anonymous correspondent to the police noted that ‘the many conversations I’ve had with people in the areas is that there is another man but Bayly [is] involved’.45 Others used the opportunity to inform on troublesome relatives or peculiarly behaved friends whom they considered may have been implicated in Elsie’s disappearance. Shepherd Smith told police that his nephew Dale Wrigley, who lived in Te Puke, had ‘something to do’ with Elsie’s death. ‘This family has been carrying on this kind of business for years’, Smith stated mysteriously. ‘In 1883 I laid a charge against this man’s father . . . and they have always had a set on me since. . . . If this man has done the trick then my sister is the next to go.’ He suggested that Wrigley’s mother also was in danger, and added that his nephew was a ‘fearless driver’.46 Strangers could be suspect as well. Wanganui’s Constable Phillips reported that a respectable businessman who had stayed at the Imperial Hotel in New Plymouth several nights after Elsie’s body was found had noticed a man with a ‘haunted look’ in the hotel.This strange man had travelled from Auckland on a motorbike and appeared to have something on his mind; he also looked to be someone who would be ‘irresponsible for his actions’, the businessman conjectured.47 The bizarre circumstances surrounding Elsie’s disappearance and death ensured that public and media interest would be higher than that for other recent unsolved deaths. Her departure from Papamoa in her apron and without handbag or make-up perplexed many, especially when Elsie was generally known for her snappy dressing. One anonymous correspondent to the police wondered what girl would go to Auckland wearing white shoes, cotton stockings, an apron, a man’s overcoat and no hat. Surely, the writer continued, she would have put on her best, would have taken most of her possessions, and would have certainly worn a hat.48 How Elsie travelled from Papamoa to Auckland occupied many commentators. Those who knew the poor condition of parts of the route believed that her scant knowledge of driving would not have enabled her to negotiate the roads in the dark.The New Zealand Herald scoffed at the police theory: ‘Is it reasonable to imagine that she, with

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marvellously conceived secrecy, travelled alone through the night a great distance, in a motor-car that there is no proof she could efficiently drive, unsupplied at the outset with sufficient petrol, and so deliberately and successfully covered her tracks from her distant home to the place where she was found that she could baffle a police force . . . ? This is supposing a very great deal.’49 Truth believed the police argument belonged more to the realm of crime fiction than solid investigation. ‘No story of crime between two covers, even by the master hand of Edgar Wallace, has excelled in mystery that of the two-hundred-mile journey of Elsie Walker’, it proclaimed. It went on to trace a vivid picture of Elsie tackling the road through the Kaimai ranges, which at one point contained 72 sharp bends along a two-kilometre stretch: It takes severe toll of the imaginative faculties to picture this child of the backcountry sitting tense in the driving-seat, gazing into the twisting, twining arterial road ahead of her, which, with its occasional dips, ever ascends like some white serpent across the sombre volanic mountain ranges. Did her heart quake as the small denizens of the night . . . scurried across the smooth . . . road; or, when she came to sharp turns and twists, where the land fell away with sheer drops on one side or the other of fifty to a hundred feet, and the tumultuous waves of broken land shut her out from all her kind?50

The absence of obvious wounds on Elsie’s body confounded many, including the pathologists, and elaborate theories were expounded to account for this. James Thomson, a shift worker at the Waikino Power Station, took his theory of murder by electrical charge directly to Prime Minister Joseph Ward in 1930. He asserted that Elsie’s death was caused by the ignition system of a car. An ‘electrical man’, Thomson had conducted a test on a cat to prove that contact with the ignition could kill without leaving burns or other marks of violence. He believed that it could also kill a human, particularly if the person were asleep at the time. In language which verged on the erotic, Thomson sketched his scenario: ‘You could just imagine a girl with soft delicate, moist skin (a good conductor) lying asleep in a car, if she was touched, say in the mouth, with a wire from a spark plug I reckon it would have every chance of killing her.’51 At the heart of the fascination with the Elsie Walker case was the image of a healthy seventeen-year-old woman who simply disappeared from her rural home at night to be found dead on the outskirts of the country’s largest city, and with semen stains on her underwear. Such an

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image fostered erotically charged stories and explanations that dwelt on Elsie’s body and sexuality, or that configured her as the victim of incest, or abduction and attempted rape.These topics were not regular fare in public debates in late 1920s New Zealand. Letters to the police outlining hypotheses and suggesting possible lines of inquiry, or participation in public newspaper discussion allowed New Zealanders to explore ‘taboo’ subjects such as rape or incest in a legitimate – and legitimated – way. The alacrity with which many took up these opportunities for public discussion, as seen through the extent of newspaper coverage and letters to the police, suggests a society interested in death and female sexuality, and the connections between them. Many commentators concluded that Elsie was the victim of a sexually motivated crime or a seduction, theories given some credence when it was revealed that her underwear bore seminal stains.‘Of course the child was outraged before being done to death’, one Wellington writer confided to Auckland police.52 Some considered that she was forcibly abducted from her home by one or more men, who tried to rape her and then dumped her body; others suggested that she picked up a man somewhere on her journey who attempted rape.53 Truth’s theory of attempted rape and murder suggested that Elsie had been killed because of unfulfilled lust, after she had resisted the advances of her abductor/companion: ‘what is more likely than that he picked up some blunt object – and in the blind rage of thwarted passion, struck the fatal blow which felled the girl and killed her?’The paper developed and embellished this hypothesis. In the scoria paddock where Elsie’s body was found the ‘base animal passions of the man gained the upper hand and he tried to overcome the girl’s scruples’. Elsie ‘repulsed his lewd advances’ and tried to escape but was caught from behind and struck unconscious. At that point, ‘who knows – he may have tried to achieve his foul purpose’, the paper conjectured.54 These narratives built upon images of urban danger that had proliferated in New Zealand for a number of years. As New Zealand became increasingly urbanised in the first two decades of the twentieth century, and as growing numbers of young women and men moved from rural areas into towns and cities in search of employment and pleasure, commentators pointed to the incipient dangers lurking in urban locales. For young women especially, such dangers embodied a sexual aspect, such as the risk of rape or the unwanted glances and attentions of strange men. The ‘enchanted city’ of Elsie’s dream contained peril as well as excitement, and in the scenarios which

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hypothesised sexual assault, it was her desire for excitement which imperilled, and ultimately ended, her life. Elsie’s pathetic and unsolved death stood as a warning of what could await the innocent when they left the security of their domestic rural hearths to seek out the city.55 Of course, not all domestic situations were safe for women either, and some narratives suggested incest within the Bayly household and urged police to question Frank Bayly and his sons very closely. One anonymous correspondent to the police posited a relationship between Bill and Elsie, and enclosed nine pages of questions for police to consider when questioning the Baylys.The writer conjured up a web of intrigue and incest, claiming that family members would be sure to cover for each other. Bill Bayly had been ‘running’ both his wife and Elsie, who had grown jealous of his marriage. His wife’s pregnancy meant that Bill had ‘not had connection with her for some time’, given that she was ‘pretty far gone in the family way’.‘Was it his lust that drove him back to Te Puke’, the writer wondered, ‘a need for cash, or had he been threatened by [Elsie] with exposure for tampering with her?’56 Elsie was consistently portrayed as an innocent victim. Her desire to go to Auckland and her stories of boyfriends were viewed as fantasies or the understandable dreams of a young girl working as a domestic servant in the countryside. Elsie was never painted as a sexually aware young woman eager to sample the pleasures of the city or to live out her wishes for male companions; no one considered that she got what she deserved in leaving her home and travelling by night alone and in secret to Auckland.‘Little Elsie Walker’, as she was frequently termed, was a girl of sound moral character. She was a good girl, an unsophisticated, open and trusting child who died as she had lived: virginal, pure and without sexual mystery. Elsie’s apparently incontrovertible goodness amplified the erotically charged scenarios surrounding her death. The image of a young innocent fighting valiantly to defend her purity – who would rather sacrifice her life than give up her chastity – was a potent one. It had formed the staple theme of the sensationalist, semi-pornographic white slavery novels of the previous two decades, which recounted in graphic detail the fate awaiting young women lured into prostitution. Many seized on the imaginative possibilities suggested by the death of a maiden. Newspapers led the way, and dailies such as the New Zealand Herald and the Auckland Star were detailed in their descriptions of Elsie’s body and the condition of her underwear. The more populist and unashamedly sensational Truth wove evocative tales under such melodramatic

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headlines as ‘BRUTALLY SLAIN WHILE DEFENDING HER HONOR ’. ‘Little Elsie Walker’ fought and ran to the last until she died a hero’s death in the scoria paddock: ‘the little girl lay there, her life blood oozing from her, where the blood of many thousand Maori warriors had dyed the ground a hundred or more years ago.’57 Western nations have long been fascinated by female death, and the female corpse holds an enduring, sometimes pornographic appeal.58 Elsie’s story enabled New Zealanders to dwell pruriently on the erotics of female death, constructing fantasies of a rape repelled and a sacrificial death. As a maiden fixed in purity by her death, Elsie embodied a romantic notion of a young woman: fragile, vulnerable, and in need of protection from the harsh world beyond her home.

Crime fiction The reasons Elsie’s death case attracted such interest are also related to how the case came to occupy a place in late-1920s New Zealand. Here the news media, and individual papers especially, played a vital role in shaping and disseminating public opinion. Newspapers, rather than radio, were the primary form of news reporting at the time. While many of the country’s major papers carried items relating to the case, the most intense – and the most illustrated – reporting was carried out in the Auckland papers and in the weekly Truth. Founded in 1906, Truth was New Zealand’s most popular example of the ‘new journalism’. Emerging in Britain and North America in the mid nineteenth century, the ‘new journalism’ focused on the blatantly sensational and scandalous, such as court trials involving violence and sex, murder cases, tales of intrigue, crime and divorce proceedings.59 Truth explored such topics in detail on its pages, along with political issues, offering a lively and often partisan debate. The Elsie Walker case was clearly Truth material; it provided the paper with possibilities for intrigue and mystery unequalled in criminal matters of recent years. A gradual and sustained public unfolding of the case in newspapers, and the drawn-out nature of the inquiry and inquest created a sense of a mystery unravelling. Readers were invited to share in the details, to sift through the evidence, to weigh up the competing stories about Elsie’s demise, and to form their own conclusions; they were, in effect, able to play the part of detective, judge and jury. Truth formulated scenarios that transformed readers into viewers who witnessed the life and death of

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Elsie Walker.The persistent recreation and reenactment of Elsie’s life and death turned her into a public spectacle in which all could share. From an early point in the investigations, newspapers wrote up Elsie’s death as a mystery; the New Zealand Herald dubbed the case the ‘Tamaki Mystery’. Auckland papers spurned the police interpretation of events, and approved of Hunt’s finding that someone else was involved in Elsie’s death. Other papers asserted that it was murder, and published as many clues and leads as possible. Truth was particularly active in this respect. ‘There seems absolutely nothing at this stage on which to hang the theory of foul play, but . . . this cannot altogether be ruled out as a possibility’, it initially claimed. In the subsequent weeks, it turned this possibility into a fully-fledged claim of murder, a position it held throughout the investigations and on into 1929.60 Readers entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of the mystery by sending theories to papers or offering themselves for interview, sometimes for payment from Truth. Alf Dodds, a work-mate of Bill Bayly’s, sold Truth his version of Bill’s visit to the farm on the day after Elsie’s disappearance, and police suspected that one of the pathologists had leaked information to the paper.61 Newspaper stories in turn gave rise to reader reports and stories of sightings of a car similar to the Baylys’ – or Elsie herself – on the night she disappeared. Mr Lindemann of Katikati, for example, informed Truth that he may have travelled in the same car as Elsie and her abductor. He had given directions to a driver and his female passenger on their way to Auckland, and accepted their offer of a lift. The man looked friendly enough, but the girl appeared ‘sad and careworn’. Lindemann claimed that it was only by reading about Elsie’s disappearance in the papers several days later that he connected the two events and went to the police.62 Whether or not stories were elicited by financial incentives, the frequency with which new leads appeared in the media indicated a reading audience in an organic relationship with newspapers. Readers took up the challenge offered them to play a part in solving the mystery of Elsie’s death and to produce their own theories. The publication of such theories in the papers keyed back into the mystery, perpetuating it and keeping it alive. Relationships between the creation and reception, the production, reproduction and consumption of the stories and narratives about Elsie Walker were inseparable, and illustrate the ‘flexible contract’ between news writers and readers. More than this, however, the active dialogue between papers and their audiences exemplifies the ‘cultural exchange’ which occurs as language, values and information

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travel across society: a rich mélange of popular culture, official pronouncements and news reports which formed the many stories circulating about the case.63 Newspapers also transported readers to the scene of Elsie’s disappearance and death. Through richly textured word pictures, readers were invited to travel with Elsie from her home to Auckland, to share her thoughts and to watch her struggles with her assailant; readers became spectators to the events, participants who could imagine the sights, sounds and smells on the night of Elsie’s death. Truth went further than any paper in constructing stories for the voyeuristic reader. It led readers on a virtual journey with Elsie from her home: Stealthily she found her way to the cartshed. . . . Having crossed the bridge which passes over the Tauranga–Te Puke railway line . . . she would seem to have started up the engine and sped . . . through the open gate to the road. . . . Through Te Puke where good folks slumbered in their warm beds sped Elsie, unobserved, and so out into the lonely country. . . .Through Paengaroa and its scattered dwellings, on past rich pasture lands, where sleek cattle browsed, and then westward into the mountainous desolate country, where the brackencovered ridges brood in the silver moonlight, separating east from west.64

At a time when cinema attendance was booming in New Zealand, the scenario in which the reader sits alongside Elsie in the car, seeing what she sees, and feeling what she feels has an almost cinematic quality. Even at the death, the reader watches and experiences, sharing vicariously in the horror of her last moments and the attempted assault on her chastity: Distraught in mind, weary in body, the little country girl must have reluctantly given in to a stronger and evil force. She accompanied him. Over that wired gate, Elsie Walker climbed to her ghastly and cruelly violent death . . . . she walked with her slayer over the damp grass cart-track, to sit down on a patch of level turf from which one or other of them removed a few lumps of scoria . . . .There they sat, and maybe ate the ‘Minties’ which the man had with him. . . . Then it must have been that the base animal passions of the man gained the upper hand and he tried to overcome the girl’s scruples. . . . Elsie ran – and she ran in the only direction that was open to her, for to the south the man barred her path. . . . It led towards the place which was to be her temporary bier. . . . Mad with rage, frustrated passion and desire, the infamous brute . . . struck at Elsie. . . . Having struck her, it is possible that the first blow did not stun her and

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that the terrorized child’s screams impelled the brute to grasp her by the throat. As he hurled her to the ground, he may have struck her again, until she was still and silent. . . .65

Evocative and emotional, the reporting laid bare Elsie’s life and death for all to see and to experience, over and over again. Creating a story around an unexpected death made it logical and understandable, allowing it to be integrated into the cultural and social fabric. An examination of the narratives around Elsie Walker’s death has afforded us an entry into the process of New Zealand society coming to terms with a sudden and seemingly violent death: drawing morality tales from her life and death, pointing the figure at possible subjects, indulging in erotic fantasies about the death of a maiden. Yet the explanations and stories surrounding the case also suggest what Zemon Davis has termed the ‘uncertainty of truth’.66 Openended, unsolved, perennially under question, the Elsie Walker mystery showed just how difficult it was to grasp ‘what really happened’. No one ever knew or could ever know, what had occurred, and in the space opened up by the uncertainty of truth, was the certainty of fiction. From fragmentary suggestions of possible suspects to full-blown erotic narratives of her final moments with her would-be rapist, Elsie’s story was constructed and reconstructed in a myriad of crime fictions. Here I use the term ‘fiction’ in a broad sense, not to suggest that the stories were false, but to emphasise that they were made up – carefully sculpted, designed for particular purposes and to express specific points of view. The fictive processes at work in the stories – the ordering and reordering, omission and inclusion, modification and fabrication, of events – point to the contested nature of the facts around which the narratives twined, and to the cultural imperative to find an explanation for them.67 In the end, the repeated exhumation of Elsie’s cultural remains stripped the case of any human, personal element. Elsie disappeared from the contemporary stories about her, as they focused on possible suspects, illicit sexual relationships and scenarios of seduction and rape. She became a text to be reworked, loaded with symbolic meaning or innuendo.This is true of her histories too. Since 1929, Elsie has been the subject of repeated disinterment through a series of texts that recreate her life or attempt to solve the mystery of her death.68 Some of the narratives are highly imaginative. George Joseph’s 1982 essay, for

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example, is a colourful and muddled account which constructs vivid scenarios of Elsie’s life and death; its fairy tale opening – ‘once upon a time there lived a seventeen-year-old girl named Elsie Walker’ – sets the tone for fanciful speculations about what might have happened.69 Other narratives, implicitly or explicitly, suggest a possible suspect in Elsie’s disappearance and death. The execution of Bill Bayly in 1934 for the murder of Samuel and Christobel Lakey in the previous year rekindled interest in the Walker mystery; subsequent accounts of the Bayly case have continued this by linking the two events.70 This essay is another part of the process of the textual exhumation of Elsie Walker. My narrative of Elsie’s life, death, and the investigations around them has also attempted to recompose her life and death, to make it logical, and to offer an explanation. Like her contemporaries, I too have woven a story about Elsie’s life and death, drawing on police information and newspapers to craft a narrative of its significance. By this time, you as reader will no doubt have formulated another narrative to explain the mystery and the stories surrounding it, and perhaps have even found a possible suspect in a murder case.With all others interested in the mystery, we have pored over the cultural remains of Elsie Walker and created our own crime fictions. Lord Peter Wimsey, Elsie Walker’s contemporaries and her historians may not be so far apart after all.

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Dorothy L. Sayers, Unnatural Death, Four Square Books, New English Library, London, 1964, first published by Victor Gollancz, London, 1927, pp. 56–7. Thanks to Bronwyn Labrum and Susan Grogan for helpful comments on this essay. I have taken the phrase ‘cultural remains’ from Amy Gilman Srebnick’s superb reading of the narratives around the unsolved death of Mary Rogers, whose mutilated body was found in a river near New York in 1841; see Amy Gilman Srebnick, The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers: Sex and Culture in Nineteenth-century New York, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995, p. 80. Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, First Vintage Books, New York, 1985, pp. 3–6. Hayden White, ‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 6, Autumn 1980, pp. 5–27; Karen Haltunnen, Murder Most Foul:The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma, 1998, p. 2. Such a rich array of potential sources has led cultural historians to investigate criminal stories in detail in recent years. See, for example, Edward Berenson, The Trial of Madame

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6 7 8

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11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

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Caillaux, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992; Ed Cohen, Talk on the Wilde Side: Toward a Genealogy of a Discourse on Male Sexualities, Routledge, New York, 1993; Gilman Srebnick; Haltunnen; Ann-Louise Shapiro, Breaking the Codes: Female Criminality in Finde-siècle Paris, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1996; Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992. Sarah Maza, ‘Stories in History: Cultural Narratives in Recent Works in European History’, American Historical Review, vol. 101, no. 5, 1996, pp. 1493–1515 discusses the rise of the cultural historical focus on narrative more generally. Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in SixteenthCentury France, Polity Press, London, 1988, p. 114. None of the police inquiries or newspaper reports mentions Elsie’s mother, who may have been living apart from her husband and children. Auckland Star (AS), 15 Jan 1929; New Zealand Herald (NZH), 15 Jan 1929; Statement of Charles D’Renzy Walker, 13 Nov 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 3, Police files, NA. I am grateful to Chief Inspector Sherwood Young for facilitating access to these files. Depositions of Constance Bayly and Charles Walker, P1 1928/1724, pt 2. Superintendent W. G.Wohlmann, Auckland, to Commissioner of Police,Wellington, 13 Nov 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 1; Report of Constable Rimmer, Waihi, 3 Nov 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 3; statement of Bill Bayly, 27 Oct 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 3. Evelyn Stokes, A History of Tauranga County, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, 1980, pp. 225–7, 230–1. Statement of Ida Wilkins, 4 Dec 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 4; J. Lennox-King,‘A small boy’s Tauranga in the early nineteen twenties’, nd, np, 91–263, ATL. Statement of William Morrow, 19 Oct 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 3. Statement of Phyllis Bayly, 28 Oct 1928, statement of Minnie Jordan, 15 Nov 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 3; statement of Reginald Lees, nd, subfile no. 11, P1 1928/1724, pt 1. Statement of Constance Bayly, 3 Oct 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 3; NZH, 15 Jan 1929. Statements of Constance Bayly, 3 and 18 Oct 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 3; witness statement of Constance Bayly, P1 1928/1724, pt 1; NZH, 15 Jan 1929. NZH, 15 Jan 1929; deposition of Constance Bayly, P1 1928/1724, pt 2. Statement of Minnie Jordan, 15 Nov 1928, statement of Constance Bayly, 18 Oct 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 3. AS, 14 Jan 1929. NZH, 15 Jan 1929; deposition of Constance Bayly, P1 1928/1724, pt 2. Depositions, P1 1928/1724, pt 2. Evidence of Constable Gerald Maloney, ‘Record of Proceedings and Depositions of Witnesses in Commission relating to the conduct of members of the New Zealand Police Force concerning the disappearance and death of Elsie Walker, late of Papamoa, deceased, February 1928’ (Commission), pp. 153–4, P1 1928/1724, pt 4. Depositions, P1 1928/1724, pt 2; Commission, pp.109, 156, P1 1928/1724, pt 4; NZH, 16 Jan 1929. Report of Frederick Armitage, nd, P1 1928/1724, pt 1. NZH, 11 Jan 1929; ‘summary’, nd, P1 1928/1724, pt 1; deposition of Donald Murray, supplementary report of pathologists, 6 Dec 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 2. Report of Detective-Sergeant James Bickerdike, 7 Dec 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 1. Deposition of Herbert Cairns, P1 1928/1724, pt 2. Inspector J. Hollis, Auckland to Commissioner, 31 Oct 1928, Wohlmann et al to Commissioner, 2 Jan 1929, P1 1928/1724, pt 1. NZH, 11–23 Jan 1929. Coroner’s verdict, 25 Jan 1929, P1 1928/1724, pt 1; NZH, 26 Jan 1929. Sub-files no. 1 and 2, P1 1928/1724, pt 1. Report of Detective Sneddon,Wanganui, 3 Jul 1929, notes taken by Detective Sneddon

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at Foster’s Hotel,Wanganui, 22 Jun 1929, P1 1928/1724, pt 5. NZH, 23, 24 Oct 1929; AS, 21 Oct 1929. Newspapers did not – or were not permitted to – print evidence indicating police inability to take fingerprints from the inside of motor vehicles; detailed medical testimony concerning the condition of Elsie Walker’s vagina, ovaries and uterus also did not appear in newspapers.The full commission report, which was never published, is in P1 1928/1724, pt 4. Statement of Gerald Flynn, nd, anonymous letter to police, nd [Jan 1929], P1 1928/1724, pt 2. Report of Detective E. Barling, Palmerston North, 25 Feb 1929, P1 1928/1724, pt 2. Commission, pp. 83, 97, 107, 154–5, 159, 185, P1 1928/1724, pt 4; see photographs of police file stack, P1 1928/1724, pt 7. Haltunnen, pp. 111–16. Gilman Srebnick takes the unsolved nature of that case as the starting point for the investigation of various scenarios. For example, Dominion, 26 Jan 1929, connects the events. Graeme Dunstall discusses the Gwen Scarff and Elsie Walker cases, and the criticism directed at the police, in The History of Policing in New Zealand, vol. 4, A Policeman’s Paradise? Policing a Stable Society 1918–1945, Dunmore Press/Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Palmerston North, 1999, pp. 76–9; I am also grateful to Graeme Dunstall for allowing me to draw on his unpublished manuscript, and I appreciate the many conversations we have had about the Elsie Walker and Gwen Scarff cases. Truth, 25 Oct 1928. Truth, 25 Oct 1928; see also Charles Walker to Minister of Justice, 20 Mar 1929, P1 1928/1724, pt 6. Truth, 25 Oct 1928. John Lister, Lower Hutt to Minister of Justice, 9 Aug 1929, P1 1928/1724, pt 6. Report of Detective-Sergeant T. Kelly, Auckland, 31 Jan 1928 [sic], P1 1928/1724, pt 2. Anon to police, nd, P1 1928/1724, pt 2. Statement of Shepherd Smith, 28 Feb 1928 [sic], Report of Constable Vial, Auckland, 28 Feb 1929, Report of Constable Jackson,Te Puke, 17 Mar 1929, P1 1928/1724, pt 2. Report of Constable Phillips,Wanganui, 3 Dec 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 4. Anon to police, nd [Mar 1929], P1 1928/1724, pt 2. NZH, 5 Apr 1929. Truth, 1 Nov, 18 Oct 1928; Stokes, pp. 230–1. James Thomson to Prime Minister, 3 Jan 1930, statement of J.Thomson, 25 Jan 1930, P1 1928/1724, pt 5. J. Scarlet,Wellington to Chief Detective, Auckland, 30 Nov 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 3. For example J. Attwood, Nga¯ruawa¯hia to Superintendent of Police, Auckland, 20 Feb 1929, P1 1928/1724, pt 2, and several anonymous letters to police, P1 1928/1724, pts 1, 2. Truth, 25 Oct, 1 Nov 1928. For a discussion of other fears about women and the city in New Zealand see Bronwyn Dalley, ‘“Fresh Attractions”: White Slavery and Feminism in New Zealand, 1885–1918’, Women’s History Review, forthcoming 2000. Anon to police, nd [1928], P1 1928/1724, pt 2. Truth, 1 Nov 1928. See Daniel Cohen,‘The Beautiful Female Murder Victim: Literary Genres and Courtship Practices in the Origins of a Cultural Motif, 1590–1850’, Journal of Social History, vol. 32, no. 2, 1997, pp. 277–306; Haltunnen, chs 3 and 6; Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1989, passim; Gilman Srebnick, passim. For more on the ‘new journalism’, see Thomas Boyle, Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead: Beneath the Surface of Victorian Sensationalism, Hodder and Stoughton, London,

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60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

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69

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1990; Cohen, Talk on the Wilde Side; Haltunnen, passim; Gilman Srebnick, passim. In a New Zealand context, see Bronwyn Dalley,‘Criminal Conversations: Infanticide, Gender and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand’, in Caroline Daley and Deborah Montgomerie (eds), The Gendered Kiwi, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1999, pp. 63–85. Truth, 11 Oct 1928. Sub-file no. 10,Wohlmann to Commissioner, 13 Nov 1928, P1 1928/1724, pt 1. Truth, 31 Oct 1929. Walkowitz, p. 83; Davis, p. 112. Truth, 18 Oct 1928. Truth, 1 Nov 1928. Davis, p. 113. Davis, p. 113. A large number of scholars have discussed the constructed aspects of all narratives and the contested nature of all events.Those I found most useful for this study include Darnton; Davis; Greg Dening, Mr Bligh’s Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty, Cambridge University Press, Canto edn, Cambridge, 1994; Haltunnen; Mariana Valverde,‘As If Subjects Existed: Analyzing Social Discourses’, Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, vol. 28, no. 2, 1991, pp. 173–87;Walkowitz;White. See George Meredith, A Long Brief: Recollections of a Crown Solicitor, Collins, Auckland, 1966; L. P. Leary, Not Entirely Legal,Whitcoulls, Christchurch, 1977; Sandra Coney,‘Elsie Walker’, in Charlotte Macdonald, Merimeri Penfold and Bridget Williams (eds), The Book of New Zealand Women Ko Kui Ma Te Kaupapa, Bridget Williams Books,Wellington, 1991, pp. 707–8. George Joseph, By a Person or Persons Unknown: Unsolved Murders in New Zealand, The Law Book Company Ltd, Sydney, 1982, pp. 151–68. More recently, Tony Williams has continued in this fashion by weaving ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ in his discussion of the Walker case while purporting to represent the ‘true story’ of the case. See Tony Williams, Unsolved Murders in New Zealand:The True Story Behind 17 of New Zealand’s Most Notorious Cases, Hodder Moa Beckett, Auckland, 1999, pp. 21–38. See H. J.Wilson (ed.), The Bayly Case, National Magazines Ltd,Wellington, 1934; Joseph; Coney; David Green,‘Bayly,William Arthur’, in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol. 4, Auckland University Press/Department of Internal Affairs, Auckland, 1998, pp. 41–2; Sherwood Young, Guilty on the Gallows: Famous Capital Crimes of New Zealand, Grantham House,Wellington, 1998, pp. 159–76;Williams, pp. 28–38.

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8 Opening the Wardrobe of History: Dress, Artefacts and Mater ial Life of the 1940s and 1950s |

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Artefacts – those fragments of material life from the past – have the power to fascinate by the way that they look, feel and sound, even by the way that they smell.1 The pleasure of working with artefacts is in their ability to satisfy an urge for historical immediacy. The appeal is both imaginative and experiential.With items of dress there is interest in the materials used, their combination, colour and texture, as well as the construction – the processes of cutting, shaping, piecing together, and applying decoration. Such items – especially ones from the recent past – have the capacity to jolt us out of a false sense of familiarity because they do not look like clothes we would make or wear today. Clothes and accessories retain the traces and imprints of human bodies, such as salty lines of perspiration and foot shapes etched in shoe leather. They show signs of wear and tear, or conversely, of careful preservation. Adjustments to waistlines and hemlines are often visible. Clothes and accessories reveal the innumerable ways items of dress can sculpt the body into a desired shape, with a mix of cutting, joining, fastening, padding and stiffening techniques. The effect of materials on flesh is evident in the way the body is firmed here, allowed to fall loose and soft there, revealed or concealed, flattered or hidden. In this essay I explore dress as an aspect of material life in New Zealand during the 1940s and 1950s, examining the way men and women used clothes to make sense of themselves and their worlds

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during wartime and its aftermath.There is a widely held perception that these decades were characterised by a grim austerity, followed by a stifling and hide-bound conservatism, and that these moods were reflected in the apparently dull and unexciting ways in which New Zealand adults dressed and adorned themselves.2 By studying physical items of clothing, in conjunction with other sources of evidence, I suggest that it is necessary, as an increasing number of studies shows, to recast such notions to allow a richer, more multi-layered view of New Zealand during these decades.3 The material world of commodities and ‘things’, as exemplified through dress, was critical to the workings of New Zealand society and culture during the 1940s and 1950s, as it has been at other times. Any attempt to understand this period of considerable social and economic change must take material life into account.

A tangible presence Dressing is an ordinary part of our everyday world. It is a mundane and habitual act, but its social and cultural significance is undeniable. It is the most immediate way we present ourselves materially to the world. Consciously or unconsciously, we use clothes and accessories to frame and give meaning to our daily existence. Like other components of material life, dress functions on a number of different levels and serves a variety of purposes beyond those of a utilitarian nature. It has social value and makes many of the historical constraints and imperatives experienced by social groups culturally visible. Dress is a fundamental dimension of shared cultural experience and, like other aspects of culture, is charged with ambiguity and ambivalence.4 At any given time in history, dress may be said to be a reflection and an expression of the social and cultural circumstances of people’s lives. Ideas about masculinity and femininity are defined and ordered through dress. It has a role in the marking of ethnic difference and maintaining ethnic autonomy. Dress is an indicator of social class and occupational status. It reveals age differences, as well as those of location, particularly across urban and rural boundaries. Rites of passage, religious rituals, public events and commemorations, and other special ceremonies, are enacted through dress. It reveals practices and beliefs associated with the physical needs of the body, such as during pregnancy, for sport and recreation, and in disease prevention, safety and protection.Technological innovations in fabric and fibre have a considerable impact on dress. So too does fashion, and

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economic factors relating to manufacture and trade. The reasons for diverse forms of dress being made and worn at different times and places are many, varied, and complex. In the words of historian John Harvey, ‘dress is the complication of social life made visible’.5 Examining dress as an aspect of material life is an exercise in evidential synthesis. It invites different ways of engaging with the past – ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘touching’ – that historians do not normally employ. In recent years scholars have begun to place greater emphasis on using ‘tangible proofs’ to explore how particular social and cultural groups have defined their lives and identities materially in the past.6 This has not quieted the lament that the historical potential of artefacts is frequently overlooked. As Steven Lubar and David Kingery explain: Too seldom do we use the artifacts that make up our environment to understand the past.Too seldom do we try to read objects as we read books – to understand the people and times that created them, used them, and discarded them. In part this is because it is not easy to read history from things.They are illegible to those who know how to read only writing.They are mute to those who listen only for pronouncements from the past.7

Here I combine ‘pronouncements from the past’, such as the written word, with more ‘tangible proofs’ – the histories offered by clothes, accessories and other items of adornment – as well as the spoken word and the captured image to suggest other ways of looking at New Zealand in this period. The intellectual challenge presented by artefacts may be hard to meet. Artefacts cannot be used to address every historical question. Studies requiring detailed circumstantial evidence of ‘what happened’ and ‘how and why it happened’ are unlikely to be effectively or easily approached this way. But having identified a line of inquiry where the use of material evidence is appropriate, the rewards are significant. As Kenneth Ames argues, ‘the gain from this approach is access to cultural values not expressed verbally.The loss is one of refinement, nuance and specificity. Understandings from things are often grosser, more general, than understandings from words.’8 Artefacts enable and enrich the historical imagination in ways quite distinct from conventional forms of evidence. Like written records, artefacts are substantive and touchable, the products of human ingenuity, aspiration and intent, and have magnitude and meaning within specified social and cultural contexts.Yet seeing and

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handling objects provides insight into ways of life at a given time or place in the past beyond that offered by documentary, visual or oral sources. As remnants of the past, artefacts open a window on the physical and cultural circumstances of past lives. If, in the words of Raphael Samuel, photographs give history ‘a human face’, it can be said that artefacts give history ‘a tangible presence’.9 Like photographs, artefacts have immense potential to aid the understanding of the past, by adding an extra and critical dimension to historical inquiry. They enrich our understanding of the complex changes and continuities, similarities and differences in lived experience over time. Yet as Jock Phillips has observed, ‘the gaps in the history of [New Zealand’s] material culture are large’. There is a ‘continuing failure to employ the whole range of approaches open to the historian in order to evoke the history of a culture in all its richness – its smells, its tastes, its fashions, its rituals, its words.’10 Although Phillips made this claim a decade ago, historians have yet to meet this challenge adequately.11 The record of material life in New Zealand is abundant and exciting, and remains an acutely under-utilised resource in the writing of our social and cultural history.

‘Badge of courage’: wartime dress, 1939–45 There are many superb examples of wartime photography, which shape our perceptions or memories of this period, as the photograph opposite shows. Setting aside the emotional impact of these photographs, and searching in them for clues about clothing and its associated meanings, we might observe that dress becomes a medium through which social roles and distinctions are ordered. Crowd scenes show men, and occasionally women, dressed in khaki uniforms, and civilian bystanders in the heavy winter coats or the light cotton garments as the season demands. The distinctive forms of clothing worn by the participants encode these moments for all time. We see a nation divided at its very heart, with clothing the tangible medium of this disjunction. Further, the black and white photography lends a deceptive monotony to the clothing worn by civilians in these scenes.We are left with an impression of a nation too absorbed with the anxieties of war to be concerned with ephemeral matters of style. Considering garments in more detail offers a more nuanced story about dress in the war years, and complicates the received wisdom about clothing.

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Arrival at Wellington wharf of the Wanganella hospital ship carrying Second World War servicemen, c.1945. F66955 1/2, ATL

The Second World War was essentially regarded as a period of emergency, when many personal and household items were in short supply. In particular, fabric and clothing supplies for ordinary consumers were severely restricted. The rationing of clothes began with women’s stockings on 27 April 1942 and was extended in the following month to include virtually all items of clothing, footwear and household linen.12 Coupon books were issued to households throughout New Zealand. Special provision was later made for members of the armed services, nurses and other uniformed workers to be provided with coupon-free clothing for work.13 Based on the system operating in Britain, rationing was intended to promote an equitable distribution of goods in a time of national crisis.14 Each item of clothing was assigned a unit value to identify the number of coupons required for purchase, ranging from fifteen coupons for a woman’s fur coat to a quarter of a coupon for an infant’s binder, bib, pinafore, apron, or handkerchief.15 Clothing rationing lists published in newspapers of May 1942 give a detailed snapshot of typical items of wartime apparel. Some items of clothing are instantly recognisable: overcoat, raincoat, suit, jacket, shirt, trousers, dress, skirt,

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shorts, jumper, cardigan, hat and cap. Other items, like bloomers, corselette, eezees, roll-ons, fur necklet, maternity belt, blousefront, and combination suit, are not.16 Although these lists contain familiar terms, without exception the items of clothing they represent are significantly different from our own in materials, construction and style. Examining actual wartime clothes and accessories makes these differences clear. During the war years, women’s formal daywear was commonly sober, sensible, makeshift and derived from materials readily at hand.The navy wool crepe suit, held at the Auckland Museum and shown opposite, is an excellent example of women’s wartime dress.The jacket of this homemade suit is fitted, yet unlined and unstiffened, with makeshift shoulder pads and self-covered buttons. The straight, kneelength skirt is also unlined, has no waistband and is side-fastened with domes, as zippers were difficult to obtain.This is a ‘sensible suit’, simply and cheaply made; yet some appreciation of style is evident in the cut and the decorative detail of topstitching and raised needlework. The relative simplicity of such items of clothing, the consequence of a scarcity of materials and an ethos of austerity, gives palpable expression to making do in harsh times. Clothes like this provide a sense of the way most women coped with clothing shortages, by resorting to homesewing and developing economical techniques to achieve styles which, although pared back to their basic elements, remained serviceable and elegant. Cutbacks in the availability and style of clothing were anticipated at the outset of the war. ‘If we’re in for a long, long war, we’ll all come sooner or later to the tight split skirt that saves material. But that’s a distant date. There are oodles of material around just now, so for just a little longer we may play with it.’17 Essential home dressmaking materials, such as elastic, gradually disappeared from shops. Dunedin dressmaker Phyllis Irwin (formerly Ruston) recalled:‘At the start of the war there wasn’t the fabric shortage as I can remember, but gradually things became short. A piece of elastic, it was worth your diamond ring nearly. Of course I can’t remember much about the materials, but there wasn’t a great choice even after the war finished, but such things as elastic, well in those days everyone had bloomers and elastic went in the legs as well as up round the waist, now that really was hard.’18 As surviving garments reveal, domes, buttons and fabric tapes were used as substitutes for elastic on underpants for both men and women. Cartoons show women’s underwear falling around their ankles in public. Jocular stories of ‘kiwi ingenuity’ abound, including those of rugged individuals

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Navy wool crepe suit, early 1940s. T665, AUCKLAND MUSEUM

who unravelled the rubber interior of old golf balls or sliced the rubber of disused bicycle tyres to secure their underwear.19 Some items of dress, such as men’s braces, temporarily faded out of use. Neither historians nor museum curators have paid much attention to men’s dress.20 In part this is because men’s clothed appearance has not been regarded as central to masculine identity. There are exceptions to this lack of attention. Military uniforms, unlike civilian clothing, are

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often invested with stories of valour and tragedy. Widely regarded as having national significance, these items are also more likely to be documented and preserved. Rugby jerseys and cricket clothes associated with talented sportsmen or famous test matches also have similar iconic status. Such garments relate to men’s public roles and are consequently more likely than everyday male clothing to accrue value. New Zealand men spent much of the 1940s in military dress, and for many military uniforms still have the power to evoke strong, and often conflicting, memories.The 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force wore battledress, which consisted of a woollen waist-length khaki jacket or ‘tunic’, with numerous pleated pockets, and matching trousers, closed at the ankles with leather gaiters.21 Based on a British prototype, it was developed in 1937 to accommodate new forms of weaponry and ammunition, and to give servicemen an up-to-date look. Many servicemen went to great length to ‘improve’ on this design, as indicated in a 1942 army instruction order on the ‘mutilation of uniforms’, which stated that the practice of ‘stitching creases into battledress trousers, and widening battledress trousers’ would be dealt with as cases of ‘wilful damage’.22 Despite repeated efforts by the authorities to impose uniform standards in military dress, campaign photographs confirm that New Zealand troops were often irregular in appearance. That various servicemen chose to maintain a sense of individuality in their dress implies more than a reflexive response to extreme pressure to conform to a collective code; it suggests that individual self-expression through dress was an integral dimension of male experience. There is also a perception that men’s clothing has been immutable. In fact, it is viewed as unchanging and lacking in variety because it is unexamined.The association of men’s dress with its public function has reinforced this appearance of constancy. This perceived lack of change has complex roots and implications. For some men, clothing has had the power to secure their identity in a fundamental way. As Janet Frame put it: ‘My father’s change of suit colour as his change of brand of tobacco (for he wore his tobacco like clothes) could bring panic to his children . . . . In a life where people had few clothes and a man one suit and one overcoat, the clothes were part of the skin, like an animal’s fur.’23 During the 1940s most men dressed in plain-coloured clothing made of serviceable fabrics in wool and cotton, and most menswear – if neatly worn – gave an image of substance and regularity. It can be argued that the altered economic and social circumstances of women’s lives in wartime, including the enhanced personal autonomy

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Knitting pattern for a ‘Battle Dress Jacket’, published in the Mirror, July 1945. SL26328, ATL

and mobility associated with higher levels of paid employment, was symbolised in the wearing of more practical, functional items of clothing such as trousers. Women made increasing use of trousers or ‘slacks’, previously worn only for casual sports, beach and home wear. In 1950 a fashion commentator for the Mirror reflected: ‘When the war took women into many new fields of employment it put them into slacks of a more serviceable kind – overalls, military trousers and factory garb. More and more women found that slacks were comfortable and practical for many occasions.’24 This practice did not occur without opposition, on the grounds that such attire was clearly unfeminine. There were other more subtle gestures in the direction of an increasingly masculinised dress for women. Used as a vehicle for popular expressions of patriotism, women’s wartime dress often mimicked elements of men’s military uniforms in colour and style. A pattern for a ‘Battle Dress Jacket’ in navy wool was offered in the Mirror’s knitting pages (above).25 Pseudo-military labels, such as ‘The Commander’, were

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applied to commercially manufactured dresses.26 There was no danger that these might be confused for actual items of male attire.This was not the case for women in military uniform, who threatened to challenge outward expressions of gender order in a much more fundamental way. Before the war women had worn uniforms for work, such as domestic service and nursing, although the femininity of these uniforms was indisputable. Military uniform for women was another matter, being closely associated with the traditional male preoccupations of warfare and national security.The government was initially reluctant to uniform female military personnel and it was not until mid-1941, almost two years after armed conflict had begun, that the Women’s War Service Auxiliary were issued with uniforms. These were not direct replicas of male military uniforms, as they included skirts rather than trousers, along with other feminine effects. Conservative public opinion held that the femininity of women would be tainted by wearing uniforms, and equally that the femininity of women might devalue the authority and status of uniforms.Women in military uniform became the butts of wartime humour, as cartoonists played on the apparent anomaly of women in uniform and the ‘creeping androgyny’ that this represented.27 Stockings – or rather the lack of them – became symbolic of women’s wartime sacrifices.As early as December 1940 Walter Nash, then Minister of Customs, appealed to women to buy fewer silk and artificial silk (rayon) stockings. Women were urged to wear other types of hosiery, such as cotton lisle, a ‘wholly British’ product and at least a third the price of Japanese silk.28 This ‘appeal to the patriotism of buyers of silk hosiery’ had the reverse effect.29 Anticipating shortages, women customers converged on city stores where hosiery counters were ‘besieged’ – the language of the press was mock-heroic – as they sought to purchase as many pairs of stockings as possible.30 Agitated shop attendants stood behind the counters of one Christchurch shop knee deep in empty hosiery boxes.31 Phyllis Irwin recalled shopping at Dunedin department store Arthur Barnett Ltd for her mother, a coffee stall proprietor: [T]hey’d advertise and they’d get all these people in the shop, great queue of people out to the door, queuing up for silk stockings, or towels . . . now Mum needed towels, plenty of them. Mum used to send me up there. She said, ‘You go and get in that queue’. Oh, I saw Barnett’s counter being pushed one day with the weight of people, great huge, I suppose they were oak counters then . . . and the men jumped up on the counter because they would have got pressed against the walls.32

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These stocking rushes may also be explained by the relative quality of silk hosiery. ‘Artificial silk’ or rayon stockings lacked the lustre and elasticity of silk, while lisle and woollen stockings were bulky and tended to sag at the knees and ankles with wear.The wearing of flimsy silk stockings had become an indispensable social convention among a large number of women. As Irwin put it: ‘Girls wanting to get married really wanted their silk stockings . . . of course the nylons didn’t come in till later on . . . . we knew of a girl who had 18 or 20 pairs tucked away and she used to line up and we used to think she was very greedy . . . . I wouldn’t have told anybody if I had had all those lined up . . . . She was hoarding them for her future . . . so we were very nasty. We said we hoped they rotted on her.’33 During the war New Zealanders achieved an uneasy consensus over the need to sacrifice luxury clothing and rationalise their appearances in the interests of patriotism and common sense. It became usual for women in factories, offices and shops to work stockingless. Appalled at the stocking skirmishes in city stores, one woman gained permission from her employer for female staff to appear at work bare-legged in summer and in wool stockings in winter.34 She surmised that ‘if the patriotism of the women of New Zealand was going to stop at silk stockings then there seemed to be poor hope of winning this war’.35 Some employers refused to concede and provoked heated discussions on feminine beauty and standards of dress in the workplace.36 Other women resorted to painting seams down the backs of their legs to give the effect of fully fashioned stockings. Products such as ‘Stockingless Cream’ were claimed by cosmetics manufacturers to bring women ‘the comfort of bare-legged freedom, with the elegance of the sheerest hose’.37 Although advertised as ‘harmless to the skin, non-greasy, nontacky’, they were unpopular as they gave irregular colour and rubbed off on clothing and furniture.38 For civilian men, the official banning of the long-popular trouser cuff matched women’s anxieties over stockings. The scope of men’s clothing narrowed when regulations for austerity clothing were gazetted on 29 October 1942. Men’s and boys’ shirts were not to have double cuffs, pockets, neck reinforcements, slide fasteners, laced fronts or more than five front buttons. Coats could not be double-breasted, or have belts, pleats, yokes, ornamental buttons, more than four pockets, and hems wider than one and a half inches. Similar regulations were applied to sports coats, and blazers were to be unlined with no decorative braid. Waistcoats could not be double breasted or have back straps, and trousers

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could not have cuffs, pleats or be wider than twenty inches at the ankle.39 Daniel Sullivan, the Minister of Supply, claimed that these ‘economies in materials’ would lead to corresponding gain to the war effort.40 A leading manufacturer supported this by stating that the production of men’s trousers would increase by 6 per cent with savings in fabric, labour and buttons.41 Others argued that trimming the ‘flamboyant pockets’ on armed forces uniforms would be a better means of reducing fabric use. ‘To ask an already depressed and worried male population to wear depressing clothes, in the name of economy, while thousands of yards of material are being recklessly wasted on these unnecessarily large pockets smacks of inefficiency.’42 Of some urgency was the fact that men’s work clothes, particularly trousers for farmers and labourers, were increasingly in short supply.43 The removal of the widely favoured trouser cuff caused most ill feeling, and Sullivan was forced to concede that it was more than the economy was worth.44 Contemporary advertising did not play on such concerns, like it did for women. Although advertising is primarily intended to sell a product, it also conveys clear social messages, presenting idealised depictions of personal attributes and lifestyles often on an overtly gendered basis. Wartime advertising of women’s clothing and accessories was often expressed in pseudo-military terms, engaging in shifts in the way gender was being defined. With a Berlei bra women gained a ‘badge of courage’, which ensured ‘real support and protection for the delicate breast muscles in shouldering the extra burdens of war-work’ (opposite).45 Women’s beauty was linked with ‘courage, serenity, a gallant heart . . . all the things we need so desperately just now.’46 The participation of women as indefatigable workers on the home front was emphasised in Berlei’s ‘She’s a warrior’ advertising campaign for corsets:‘She works like a Trojan. Her co-workers in the Red Cross think her much younger than she really is – she never seems to tire. She knows that at her age (and size) and in these days of extra service, a woman needs real corseting.’47 In another advertisement each ‘Little Amazon’ was warned: ‘Everywhere, women are pouring their immense energies into the country’s war effort. . . .This exacting new life could so easily over-tax slender nervous and physical resources – if it were not for Berlei.’48 Copywriters for Wellington department store Kirkcaldie and Stains exploited the tension between women’s perceived desire for luxury and need to make clothing sacrifices: It’s a woman’s way . . . to sacrifice willingly and generously, to forgo, without murmur, those countless luxuries that make her days more pleasant – but to

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Advertisement for Berlei brassieres, published in the Evening Post, May 1942. NP4188, ATL

cling tenaciously, to scheme and devise, by hook or by crook to keep a modicum of elegance in her life – for without this she knows that she can never be her imperturbable, most efficient self. So it is that, with daytime clothes of more uniform severity, women seek out lingerie more entrancingly feminine than ever.49

Advertisers shifted emphasis towards the end of the war by running a succession of alluring advertisements for garments and lingerie not yet available in anticipation of a return to normalcy. Of hosiery by Prestige the copywriter said: ‘There is one thing common to the whole race of women. It is love of beauty.Today it is tight held, but it is there.Thus, in among her big hopes and ambitions of war’s end, each woman finds place for dreams of small, intimate things. Of adornments long laid

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aside, of furs, of silks and satins. Of perhaps, just a pair of those superb silk stockings she used to call “Dulmode”.When peace comes, they will be back.’50 The same company claimed in 1946 that ‘today, utility takes the place of beauty . . . but never lose your appreciation of what is truly beautiful . . . . soon now we will fashion them for you again . . . exquisite stockings in Silk or Nylon, flattering, wispy, perfect’.51 Such advertisements acknowledged the desire of many women to take possession of rewards for their wartime privations. While advertisers aimed to tantalise, advise and reassure, women’s magazines did their best to reinstate the centrality of a woman’s appearance to her personal worthiness and appeal. In 1945 readers of the Mirror were advised to use their household chores as a means of maintaining the shape and beauty of their bodies. ‘Bend and stretch as you dress. Make the movement of fastening your side and back suspenders work for you, pulling round farther, farther, so there is a tug on the waist and hips.’52 To avoid other ‘fatal givers-away of lost looks’, women were counselled to develop a sequence of exercises that could be done while shelling peas or darning, such as ‘ward off nose-to-mouth lines by blowing imaginary bubbles’.53 Whether women took such instructions seriously cannot be known, but this recurring advice reinforces the notion of New Zealand womanhood overcoming a possible indifference to appearance in anticipation of men’s return from war.The circumstances of wartime had stimulated desire, envy, and even anger about the clothing and personal luxuries that were unavailable. In a post-war world these hopes and dreams gradually turned into a material reality founded on an ideology combining domesticity, consumerism and security.

‘Fashion fiesta’: post-war clothing, 1945–59 During the late 1940s styles in women’s dress took a new and more overtly feminine direction. As clothing restrictions lessened, there was an opening for a greater emphasis on fashion for both New Zealand manufacturers and consumers. As it had done prior to the war, fashionable dress took its lead from overseas fashion houses, particularly in France. In 1947 Christian Dior launched his first collection of women’s fashions, which showed lush designs using generous swathes of fabric.54 Called the ‘New Look’, this influential fashion was intended to supersede the functional styles of the war years. It was characterised by

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rounded shoulders and a cinched-in waist, which were designed to heighten the effect of the longer, more ample skirt.This, in turn, had a rigid structure by the use of weighty fabrics stiffened with net and other forms of underlay. Heavy tailoring reshaped the female silhouette. In a successive series of different lines, including the A-line and the Hline, Dior glamorised women’s fashions and imposed abstract architectural forms on women’s bodies.55 The New Look was not immediately or widely popular; in Australia and Britain it led to street protests.56 In New Zealand a commentator for the Mirror observed: ‘Just recently New Zealand [fashion] houses which have tried to introduce the “New Length” have met with an almost unanimous negation. The public doesn’t like it.’57 But in March 1948 the New Zealand Draper and Allied Retailer reported that the New Look was ‘steadily growing in favour’.58 Although it was noted that women were ‘a little wary about the necessity for the sloping shoulder, the nipped-in waist and the padded hips’, most fashion-conscious women had now adopted the lower hemline.59 Local designers achieved the effect of a nipped-in waist through cut, rather than with foundation garments, thus relieving women of their fears of regressions of style.This new fashion was also offered to New Zealand women through the sale of paper dressmaking patterns, so that they could sew their own versions of this new aesthetic.60 The eventual success of these feminine fashions can partly be credited to the resurgence of conservative sexual politics that sought to correct perceived disruptions to the gender order caused by the war.61 For many New Zealand women, however, there was a need to move beyond the austerity of the war years. Such fashions gave many women a lift, a new distraction and a sense of glamour that had been absent during this period.Women’s efforts on the home front and greater participation in the paid workforce, combined with shortages in clothing supply, had led to significant changes in their clothed appearance. In the aftermath of war, many women who had been manpowered left the paid workforce. As part of an overwhelming desire for stability and normalcy, the importance of home and family was reinscribed. In the shift to more feminine styles, there was perhaps a sexualised notion of men returning from the war to more alluring women. To a certain extent in the post-war years, components of style were similar in the dress of both men and women. In 1948 a parallel ‘new look’ for men was introduced. Instead of the ‘padded-up square shoulder’, a more rounded look was apparent.62 Trousers were narrower.

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These remained cuffed – despite sporadic attempts to popularise plainbottomed trousers – as men’s memories of government enforced wartime austerity had not yet completely subsided. Despite a broad congruence of style, gender difference was clearly marked in other elements of men’s dress. In particular, colour was used as a powerful tool for inscribing notions of gender. During the late 1940s and 1950s a tendency for plain colours in men’s dress continued. The grey flannel suit, typical of white-collar workers, is a case in point with its apparent connotations of masculine conformity.63 Black is a colour which has also been strongly associated with masculinity, especially in men’s formal wear, and, in garments like bikers’ black leather jackets, with antiestablishment or counter-culture dress. Either way, the wearing of black makes a declaration of assertion and control.64 The use of colour in women’s dress, whether ‘kingfisher blue’,‘metallic pink’ or ‘lime green’, among other popular choices, reflects a female prerogative to use colour in all its variety.65 Existing garments capture differences of colour in men’s and women’s clothing with great effect. The New Zealand Draper and Allied Retailer observed a move towards ‘sensible clothes’ for business and professional men.66 After the sweltering summer of 1946/7, it was noted that a substantial number of men, particularly those in Auckland who were associated with the Stock Exchange and the professions and who were confined to hot offices during daytime, were wearing lightweight ‘semi-tropical suits’ supplied from Suva. It was observed that ‘to have had the fashion introduced by the larrikin type, youngsters who not so long ago were fond of getting around in attire of the zoot-suit variety, would have killed it’.67 Alluding to an ingrained conservatism in dress, middle-class men would not have adopted this style if the garments had carried such social connotations. Over-heating was a problem peculiar to white-collar workers, who usually wore three-piece suits in all seasons. Labouring men had long ago taken up wearing only singlets and trousers for summer work (opposite). Wartime restrictions and rationing were lifted completely in 1950. New Zealanders subsequently experienced an unprecedented level of prosperity during the post-war decades. Middle-class people at least began to have the means and an incentive to consume. New aspirations for work, leisure and material prosperity were reflected in dress. People were able to own more clothes and accessories, and dress was reaffirmed as an indicator of class differences. Fashionable items of dress produced by New Zealand clothing manufacturers were now shown at an annual

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The informal, practical clothing of working men. Rimutaka Tunnel railway workers, 1954. NATIONAL ARCHIVES, NATIONAL PUBLICITY STUDIOS COLLECTION, F-27648-1/2, ATL

Fashion Fiesta held in Wellington.The wearing of special items of dress for different activities became increasingly apparent for leisure activities, and special occasions and ceremonies, with greater distinctions emerging between casual and formal wear.These changes are particularly evident from fashion shows, but also in the playing out of various rites of passage. After years of shortages, weddings in the 1950s were characterised by the lavish use of fabric in bridal dresses, especially in full skirts and large trains. Once again sumptuous gowns were made for the wedding day alone.68 Twenty-first birthdays were significant celebrations, and were enacted or enabled by the wearing of special forms of dress. They marked the final transition to adulthood, ‘giving you the right to be able to be a little more independent’.69 Yvonne Marsh (formerly Lediard), for instance, wore a sleeveless bronze shot-silk evening dress for her twentyfirst birthday party at Auckland’s Overseas League clubrooms in 1956. This dress (over), held at the Auckland Museum, has a sweetheart neckline, fitted bodice, full skirt with pale green lining, and a wide sash tied in a bow at the back. ‘Mother and I made it in a joint effort. After the war years, probably about 1950, she went to pattern cutting classes.

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Yvonne Lediard on the occasion of her twenty-first birthday party,Auckland, 1956. 1966.75.43, AUCKLAND MUSEUM

She’d always made my clothes . . . she took different styles from pictures and adapted them to be a bit different. Sleeveless dresses were quite popular, and basically the big sash and bow was my idea. Since then and going through different publications of French couturiers, I must have had quite a feeling for Balenciaga, with the bow bustle.’70 Here the tangible evidence of the garment itself, combined with the personal recollections of the original owner, and a photograph of her wearing it provide a fuller insight into this period. In the post-war decades fashion photography became one of the most important means of promoting increased consumption of clothing and accessories. By the mid twentieth century, photography had largely

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succeeded fashion illustration as a means of offering information about new styles. It had the practical advantage of allowing garment details, such as seaming, shaping, decorating, and fastening, to be portrayed accurately. Over time photographers explored new techniques which influenced the character of fashion photography, notably the use of light, the handling of focus and the distortion of images.71 These emerging technical conventions were incorporated into photographic representations of beauty, the female body, its gestures and movements.72 Until recent years, the emphasis of fashion photography has consistently been on depicting women, rather than men; it has usually projected images of femininity, which are grounded in desire. As Susan Sontag observes, ‘the greatest fashion photography is more than the photography of fashion.The abiding complexity of fashion photography – as of fashion itself – derives from the transaction between “the perfect” (which is, or claims to be, timeless) and “the dated” (which inexorably discloses the pathos and absurdity of time).’73 Fashion photographers of the late 1940s and 1950s were intent on creating ‘glamorous constructions’ of women, echoing the close connection between the film industry and the development of fashion photography.74 Clifton Firth, a pre-eminent New Zealand fashion photographer of this period, used photographic techniques based on black and white Hollywood movie stills, where studio lighting was employed to enhance the appearance of the model or sitter in a dramatic blend of light and shadow.75 He specialised in portraiture at his Queen Street studio in Auckland, capturing the faces of Aucklanders – ‘beautiful women’, intellectuals, trade unionists, servicemen – from the late 1930s until the mid 1970s.76 A long-time friend recalled that ‘it was the in-thing to be photographed by him’.77 Firth’s photograph of Auckland model Robin Garland, shown on the next page, captures the elegant lines of her stippled felt hat in a characteristically seductive play of light and shadow. What draws the viewer is the model’s pose; looking into the middle distance she is aloof, yet with her parted lips, the sinuous arch of her neck, and beckoning shoulder and breastline, the image is intricately constructed for sensuous appeal. As Firth explained, such images were the product of an exacting relationship between the model and the photographer: ‘The model who constantly loses her pose by patting down imaginary wisps, scratching herself, flicking the dandruff off her shoulders and breadcrumbs off her lap is just temperamentally unsuited to a career which demands poise above everything.’78 Firth’s work and that of other New Zealand fashion photographers played an important

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Portrait of model Robin Garland taken by photographer Clifton Firth during the 1950s. CLIFTON FIRTH PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION, AUCKLAND CITY LIBRARIES

role in glamorising new life styles, promoting consumption and presenting female sexuality more overtly and explicitly in the post-war years.79 In New Zealand and elsewhere during the 1950s the urge for modernisation, with its emphasis on ‘the new and clean, and its enthusiasm for the labour-saving or space-saving device’, was widespread.80 It became one of the mainstays of popular consumerism.This modernising impulse was as relevant to clothing as it was to almost every other aspect of material life. There was real excitement about the emergence of new synthetic fibres, yarns and fabrics, and these had a huge impact on men’s and women’s clothed appearance. Among the most significant synthetic fibres to be developed were Celanese, a useable form of rayon (1921), Nylon (1935), Terylene (1941), and Orlon (1950).81 Synthetic fabrics did not occupy a major presence in the wardrobes of New

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Zealanders until after the Second World War. When they did, it was nylon that figured most highly. Women’s underwear manufacturers put light nylon underwear into the shops and women’s wardrobes.82 One advertisement by corsetry specialists, Steeles, promised ‘Nylon For Enchanted Evenings’. Men’s shirt manufacturers produced shirts in Terylene. Both Nylon and Terylene garments were easily washed and dried, and did not require ironing, and it was this ‘labour saving’ efficiency which made early synthetics popular. As Yvonne Marsh recollected, ‘nylon to us was something that cut down on the laundry, getting away from the actual ironing side of it all, that made it time saving . . . it was quite a thing when you were able to buy something in nylon.’83 Yet complaints about lack of comfort were common, especially how hot synthetic fabrics were to wear. In part, the war had stimulated the development of new applications for synthetics.84 Previous scientific research had been successful in altering natural organic polymers like cellulose and rubber to produce yarns such as rayon and elastic. No one had synthesised a formerly nonexistent organic polymer until the development of nylon by American company Du Pont.85 This opened the way for the engineering of fibres with specific properties.86 Their highly successful ‘Better Things for Better Living . . . through Chemistry’ advertising campaign popularised nylon in North America.87 Synthetics had a powerful democratising effect, derived from their ability to imitate the ‘real thing’. Cheap natural materials could be chemically enhanced to mimic rarer ones. This was particularly evident in the fur industry. A fashion commentator for the Mirror reported in 1946 that ‘with chemicals, clippers and plastic resins furriers have learned how to turn a thirty-five shilling sheepskin into “otter”, “blue fox”, “mink” and other furs, “with that £500 look about them”.’88 Science emerges strongly in this period as a means – and metaphor – for social and self-improvement. As in the decades before the war, the ‘Wonder World of Chemistry’ continued to be applied to material life in innovative ways.89 Advertisers presumed great faith in science, and with regard to dress, used it to appeal to the purses of female consumers in particular. There was a strong emphasis on commodities that were expressly innovative or new, with attributes that construed an enhanced personal success for the user. Personal success – whether at work or at home – appears to have become more explicitly associated with appearance in the post-war years. Success for women was popularly regarded as resting with beauty and successful romantic or family

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relationships, while the image of the smartly dressed, successful man remained strongly associated with business achievement.90 But it was also about commodifying the bodies and attire of both men and women. In this decade, as in others, women were pulled into capitalism’s preoccupation with fashion and its mythology of desire, and the dream of being something more than what they were. Men were persuaded to strive for material goals as a route to ensuring their masculine status.Yet it is too easy to argue that advertisers duped women and men; both sides had desires and fantasies, and these are reflected in the forcefulness with which people who had lived in limbo for the duration of the war were bent on getting on with life. The material record consistently portrays the diversity, colour, and vibrancy of clothes worn by New Zealanders in the post-war years.91 The level of attention shown to tailoring and other techniques for constructing and shaping garments is marked for both women and men. For women the array of techniques might include knife pleating, chevron quilting, French darts, draping, ruching and gathering. Evocative styles ranged from ‘whirlpool’ brassieres to matador pants, from petal caps to bouffant skirts, and from winged revers to ‘disturbed’ hemlines. Accessories might include saucer-like buttons, gold lurex stoles, kid gloves, and ostrich skin handbags. Cotton print fabrics show a dazzling variety of dots and stripes, florals, plaids, and abstract geometric designs, often brightly or ‘gaily’ coloured. For men – allowing that the material record is not as rich as it is for women’s dress – existing items of clothing range from pork pie hats to brothel creepers, from tweed hacking jackets to drainpipe trousers. Items such as these confirm a lively approach to clothes, accessories and style in the 1940s and 1950s which cut against conventional interpretations for this period of New Zealand history. Examining artefacts allows us to explore the ways in which people ‘saw’ themselves in their clothes, and the ways that they thought about that clothing. Personal accessories and clothes were critical to the workings of New Zealand society during times of major upheaval and change, such as the 1940s and 1950s. As part of the constant struggle for status and identity, dress was used to structure social relationships, including military and civilian wartime occupations, as well as the broader shifts in the way gender was defined. Clothes and accessories were practical, providing comfort and warmth, but they also gave opportunities for displays of self-expression; clothes allowed New Zealanders to situate

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themselves in their worlds more completely. The examination of material evidence, such as clothing, enables the historian to ‘step inside’ the past. Artefacts can become props for entering an imaginative and recreated past, or an entirely different historical and cultural landscape; for there is theatre in dress. Items of dress and adornment offer evidence of cultural values not expressed in words, but it is also important to examine the ways that people talked and wrote about them. Through doing this, periods such as the 1940s and 1950s can be re-interpreted as a time of innovation, colour and creativity; it is time to take artefacts out of the ‘closed wardrobe’ of history.

1 2

3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11

I would like to acknowledge the support of a New Zealand History Research Trust Fund grant that made this research possible. See, for example,Tom Brooking, Milestones:Turning Points in New Zealand History, Mills, Lower Hutt, 1988, p. 183; Helen May, Minding Children, Managing Men: Conflict and Compromise in the Lives of Postwar Pakeha Women, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 1992, p. 70. For comments on clothes in general and the constrasting sartorial revolution among some teenagers, see Redma Yska, All Shook Up:The Flash Bodgie and the Rise of the New Zealand Teenager in the Fifties, Penguin, Auckland, 1993, pp. 55–7, 171–6. A number of New Zealand scholars are working towards this reassessment. For one example of particular relevance to this essay, see Fraser Andrewes, ‘Representations of Masculinity in Post-war New Zealand, 1945–1960’, MA thesis, University of Auckland, 1995. See also the essay by Bronwyn Labrum in this volume. Margaret Maynard, Fashioned from Penury: Dress as Cultural Practice in Colonial Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 1–6. John Harvey, Men in Black, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995, p. 17. Kenneth Ames, Death in the Dining Room and other Tales of Victorian Culture, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1992, p. 1. Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery (eds), History from Things: Essays on Material Culture, Smithsonian Institution Press,Washington, 1993, p. viii. Ames, p. 3. Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory.Volume 1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture, London,Verso, 1994, p. 190. Jock Phillips, ‘Of Verandas and Fish and Chips and Footie on Saturday Afternoon: Reflections on a Hundred Years of New Zealand Historiography’, NZJH, vol. 24, no. 2, 1990, pp. 131–2. The ‘wordless’ or ‘voiceless’ character of artefacts raises important methodological questions. Faced with a profusion of ‘things’, decisions need to be made on how to select them for analysis. If there is no documentation relating to the original maker, owner and user of the artefact, a judgment needs to be made regarding its integrity as a historical source.

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12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Dominion, 29 May 1942, p. 4; Nan Taylor, The New Zealand People at War:The Home Front, Historical Publications Branch, Department of Internal Affairs,Wellington, 1986, p. 790. Evening Post (EP), 10 Jun 1942, p. 6. Dominion, 29 May 1942, p. 4. Dominion, 29 May 1942, p. 4. Dominion, 29 May 1942, p. 4. New Zealand Observer, 13 Dec 1939, p. 19, cited in Taylor, p. 834. Phyllis Irwin, interview, 18 June 1992,Women in World War Two Oral History Project, OHP WWWII/175, ATL. New Zealand Free Lance (NZFL), 9 Jan 1946, p. 9;Taylor, p. 775. For recent New Zealand exceptions to this see Andrewes, passim, and Danielle Sprecher, ‘The Right Appearance: Representations of Fashion, Gender, and Modernity in Interwar New Zealand, 1918–1939’, MA thesis, University of Auckland, 1997. There is a growing international literature on the topic however. A good recent study is Harvey, passim. See, for example, the uniforms exhibited in ‘Scars on the Heart’ at the Auckland War Memorial Museum Te Papa Whakahiku. Press, 9 Feb 1942, p. 4. Janet Frame, An Autobiography. Volume 1: To the Is-land, Century Hutchinson Ltd, Auckland, 1989, p. 139. Mirror, vol. 30, no. 1, 1950, p. 81. Mirror, vol. 24, no. 1, 1945, p. 28. Press, 4 Oct 1943, p. 4. Deborah Montgomerie,‘Reassessing Rosie:World War II, New Zealand Women and the Iconography of Femininity’, Gender and History, vol. 8, no. 1, 1996, pp. 112–9. Press, 7 Dec 1940, p. 12. Press, 5 Dec 1940, p. 10. Press, 7 Dec 1940, p. 12. Press, 7 Dec 1940, p. 12. Irwin, interview. Irwin, interview. Press, 11 Dec 1940, p. 10. Press, 11 Dec 1940, p. 10. Dominion, 11 Feb 1941, p. 10. EP, 18 Jan 1941, p. 15. EP, 18 Jan 1941, p. 15;Taylor, p. 759. Dominion, 30 Oct 1942, p. 6;Taylor, p. 835. Press, 3 Nov 1942, p. 4. Press, 3 Nov 1942, p. 4. Press, 5 Nov 1942, p. 6. Press, 9 Feb 1942, p. 4. Auckland Star (AS), 13 Apr 1943, p. 4. EP, 25 May 1942, p. 8. EP, 25 May 1942, p. 8. EP, 27 May 1942, p. 7. EP, 31 Aug 1942, p. 6. EP, 2 Sep 1942, p. 6. Mirror, vol. 22, no. 6, 1945, p. 45. Mirror, vol. 24, no. 7, 1946, p. 57. Mirror, vol. 22, no. 6, 1945, p. 55. Mirror, vol. 22, no. 6, 1945, p. 55. Julia Baird and Patty O’Brien, ‘The Farce of Fashion: A Defrocking of Dior’, Refractory

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55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

Girl, no. 52, 1997, p. 42. Baird and O’Brien, p. 43. Baird and O’Brien, p. 43. Mirror, vol. 26, no. 5, 1947, p. 84. New Zealand Draper and Allied Retailer (NZDAR), 7 Mar 1948, p. 35. NZDAR, 7 Mar 1948, p. 35. Baird and O’Brien, p. 44. Baird and O’Brien, p. 42. NZDAR, 7 Apr 1948, p. 53. For more on the grey flannel suit, see Andrewes passim; Sprecher, passim, discusses office fashion more generally. Harvey, p. 16. Dominion, 22 May 1952, p. 12, 10 Jul 1953, p. 6, 17 Jul 1953, p. 12. NZDAR, 7 Mar 1948, p. 19. NZDAR, 7 Mar 1948, p. 19. Sandra Coney, I Do: 125 Years of Weddings in New Zealand, Hodder Moa Beckett, Auckland, 1995, p. 72. Yvonne Marsh, interviewed by the author, Aug 1998. Marsh, interview. Jennifer Craik, The Face of Fashion, Routledge, London and New York, 1994, p. 98. Craik, p. 99. Susan Sontag,‘The Avedon Eye’, Vogue (United Kingdom), Dec 1978, quoted in Craik, p. 93. Craik, p. 101. AS, 1 Sep 1980, p. 3. AS, 10 Jun 1974, p. 8. AS, 10 Jun 1974, p. 8. Clifton Firth,‘For Models Poise Above Everything’, Photographics New Zealand, Jul 1961, p. 7. Samuel, pp. 340–1. Samuel, p. 56. Janet and Peter Phillips, ‘History from Below: Women’s Underwear and the Rise of Women’s Sport’, Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 27, no. 2, 1993, p. 137. Dominion, 2 May 1952, p. 11, 15 Jul 1953, p. 15. Marsh, interview. Jeffrey Meikle, American Plastic: A Cultural History, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick and New Jersey, 1995, p. 125. Meikle, p. 129. Meikle, p. 132. Meikle, p. 134. Mirror, vol. 24, no. 11, 1946, p. 90. Meikle, p.134. Andrewes, pp. 77–80, 87–8. This study was based on the clothing collections of the Auckland War Memorial Museum Te Papa Whakahiku, the Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust and The Science Centre and Manawatu Museum.

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9 Persistent Needs and Expanding Desires: Pa¯ keha¯ Families and State Welfare in the Years of Prosper ity |

B R O N W Y N L A B RU M

Our conventional view of post-war New Zealand and similar countries centres on ‘social optimism, prosperity, naivety, and innocence’.1 Add conformity and conservatism and the list of defining terms is settled. New Zealand – so the story goes – was dull and boring, but also ‘small, rich and complete. . . .The most comfortable place in the world to grow up.’2 Recent studies have begun to question these enduring characterisations. As the historian Mona Gleason suggests, such cliched views say ‘more about the tendency to look back at this period with nostalgic eyes than about the period itself ’.3 By examining such varied topics as gender roles, sexuality, new teenage cultures or domestic design, ‘the other fifties’ – and another sixties – are emerging.4 Rather than being exemplified by comfort, uniformity or dullness, post-war societies were riven with contradictions, tensions, and ambiguities, all of which were experienced differently by groups and individuals. My focus is on the prevailing marker of prosperity. I investigate a particular form of social assistance – discretionary welfare – and argue that post-war New Zealand and its welfare state are more complicated than they are often shown to be.5 Problems maintaining the suburban family home, including the adequacy of benefits, were material issues with which increasing numbers of families needed assistance; they constitute the focus of the essay. The growth of discretionary welfare services demonstrates the continuing existence of need over a period

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when the adequacy and success of the social security system as a whole was never revisited. By viewing the relationship between families and the state from the perspective of families, my approach differs from that taken by other welfare historians. The importance to families and the state of the distinguishing features of this period – the suburban home, women as mothers and men as providers, consumerism and domesticity focused on the household – is clearly evident in the case files compiled by social workers which comprise a key source in this essay. Yet the familiar representation of a contented, domesticated society was not as simple as historians have often made out; there was greater nuance in these concepts and social roles. I sketch a more fluid and contradictory picture of a time that was not necessarily abundant, satisfied or complacent for everyone, and of a society which had persistent needs and a growing range of desires.

The changing post-war world For Pa¯keha¯ the period from 1950 to about 1967 has been described as New Zealand’s golden age; the ‘fat, satisfied years’ after the lifting of war-time restrictions in 1950 were a time of ‘unsurpassed prosperity and social tranquillity’.6 In the ensuing decade, an agricultural revolution dovetailed with the growth of sales of farm produce to Britain and a boom in wool sales following the Korean War. Increasing overseas sales and the appearance of a wide range of consumer goods from 1954 stimulated local spending. Full employment, new cars, a larger range and number of household appliances, increasing electricity consumption, more telephones, more roads and highways – the list of positive indicators for post-war New Zealand society is lengthy and gave the country the second highest standard of living in the world.7 These trends continued until 1967, when full employment ended and the economy headed into recession.8 Prosperity held out the promise of security, stability and the ‘New Zealand way of life’ for everyone.9 Not only had the family ‘triumphed’, but the post-war period was also the heyday of what Gael Ferguson aptly calls ‘the New Zealand Dream’: living in a family home in the suburbs. The attainment of this dream drove government policy throughout the 1950s and 1960s.10 The dream was founded on an idea of the family as a ‘privatised collective identity based on the assumed

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mutuality of interests and the natural and essential source of affective ties and sense of belonging’. The normative, nuclear family was highly gendered, and comprised a working provider father and housewife mother who had ‘innate qualities of motherhood’ and played the ‘happy housewife consumer’ role. All family members were important and interdependent, even if their relationships were unequal, although an apparent egalitarianism stressed the complementarity of husband and wife roles.11 The national population increased from 1.7 to 2.9 million between 1945 and 1972, and there was a boom among the Pa¯keha¯ population. As marriage became virtually universal and occurred at a younger age, the percentage of the population under 15 grew from 27 to 34 per cent in the same period. The greater number of births allowed the primary school population to double between 1945 and 1970; the secondary school population increased three and a half times over the same period as more children attended school at a younger age and remained for longer periods. At the same time there were geographic shifts, particularly urbanisation and the drift north. Between 1936 and 1976 the rural portion of the population dropped from one third to one sixth and urban areas contained two thirds of all New Zealanders. By the 1970s the North Island contained 73 per cent of the population. Suburbanisation, particularly in Auckland, mushroomed.12 As a number of writers have noted, not everyone benefited from the good times.13 The downturn in construction during the Second World War and the marriage and baby boom left lingering problems in housing the population. By the end of the war there were 47,000 unsatisfied housing applications. Surveys in Invercargill in 1946 and Auckland in 1951 revealed a housing shortage that remained acute throughout the decade.14 It was not only housing that was in short supply; there was more generally tremendous pressure on public services and facilities, such as schools and hospitals. Urbanisation and suburbanisation produced raw, monotonous and sprawling instant communities in areas such as the Hutt Valley. Social problems persisted, to the perplexity of many community leaders and politicians, and more worryingly, appeared to symbolise underlying difficulties. Anxious perceptions of ‘juvenile delinquency’, especially in urban areas and the new suburbs, more unmarried mothers, and ongoing revelations of inadequate family life, suggested that all was not well.15 Wages stagnated for many New Zealanders, and even though they grew as a proportion of total private income, inflation ate into them; in

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these years of prosperity, it was more commonly the élite that prospered. The gaps were most noticeable in the cities, as the ‘social gradient lengthened and social distance increased’. Differentiation was to some extent masked by the growing number of two-income households, as more women entered paid work.The gap between single- and doubleincome households had lengthened markedly by the 1970s.16

The expansion of discretionary welfare New Zealand’s wide-ranging social security system, which included universal family benefits, low-interest housing loans, and unrestricted access to education and health care, was intended to support the increasing population, the spread of consumerism, and the focus on suburban homes and families. As with housing, education and other services, however, social security was also circumscribed and under mounting pressure. While many individuals and families enjoyed the welfare state’s benevolence – and this is the view with which we are most familiar now – new studies have emphasised social security’s limitations and its uncomprehensive nature. Margaret McClure concludes that continuing tensions resulted in a system that ‘did not alter the wide disparity in people’s chances in life, [although] it provided protection against the worst that could happen’.17 Spending on social security fell steadily as well. Benefits declined as a proportion of gross national product, from nearly 8.5 per cent in 1947 to 6.83 per cent by 1971, at a time when the number of dependants (children and the aged) was an increasing proportion of the population. The universal family benefit, often cited as the benchmark of the welfare state, decreased in value because it was not linked to the cost of living or wage rises.18 The insufficiency of statutory benefits was recognised in 1951 by the establishment of additional ‘special assistance’ grants, which encompassed 10 per cent of all beneficiaries by 1971.19 Discretionary welfare services attempted to fill the gaps for many families. Discretionary welfare is an umbrella term for an extraordinarily wide variety of non-institutional services.These range from the tangible provision of material aid – money, food, blankets, or rent assistance – to matters more concerned with quality of life and family relationships, such as behavioural problems, adoptions, assistance for unmarried mothers, or advice. Discretionary welfare programmes can be contrasted with the assured rights and clear statutory guidelines of benefits and

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pensions which we usually think of when we evoke the ‘welfare state’. Welfare officers or social workers from the Child Welfare Division of the Education Department and the Social Security Department were the principal providers of discretionary services. Even in terms of need and assistance which were primarily material, specific programmes and forms of aid were developed as part of discretionary welfare services.20 Before the Second World War, financial need and monetary transactions were a very small part of such services. In most cases of material need before the introduction of the social security system in 1939, families turned to the Pensions Department, charitable aid boards or other local agencies. Child welfare officers sometimes assisted families financially – fostering illegitimate children with their birth mothers so that they could receive payment, for example – but such forms of direct financial aid were rare. The social security system included provision for discretionary emergency benefits in cases of hardship. These could be granted for reasons of age, physical or mental incapacity, domestic circumstance, or for any reason which prevented applicants from earning a livelihood sufficient for them and their dependants.The emergency benefits were granted at the same rate as the type of benefit for which the applicant most closely qualified. Compared with other benefits, the criteria for emergency benefits were uncertain and unreliable, and once granted, these benefits were kept under constant review. Applicants had to disclose their circumstances and perhaps a life history, and make a case for their need in a process that entailed more inquiries than applications for other benefits.21 From the early 1940s, Child Welfare became more directly associated with the disbursement of money and other forms of direct material aid, as it participated in a low-profile, inter-departmental scheme to assist large and needy families living in poor housing. Child welfare officers investigated referrals from the State Advances Corporation or Social Security and made recommendations for future action. Depending on whether the family was deemed to need ongoing supervision, either Child Welfare or Social Security would take over the case. Recommendations could include assistance with rent, or small grants for removal expenses or food vouchers, in order to tide a family over a difficult period. Families could also receive money, grants for food, clothing and bedding, or budgetary advice; supplies of blankets and clothing were kept on hand in Child Welfare offices for emergencies.22 Child Welfare’s involvement in the Needy Families Scheme was a

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continuation and elaboration of its emphasis on ‘preventive work’. Preventive work was based on the general principle of working with whole families, as much as with individual children. Initially couched in terms of heightened efficiency and the prevention of delinquency, its primary aim in an era of deinstitutionalisation was to prevent the committal of children to state care. Preventive work also exemplified Child Welfare’s policy of preserving the family unit first and foremost. Effecting ‘social adjustment’ by keeping the child under review for a period and visiting the home reworked the meanings of welfare in terms of constructive alterations in social and family relations. Personal intervention and ongoing assessment of the success of re-negotiated family relations were integral to the new definitions. By the Second World War, preventive work extended to a range of activities for other government departments and agencies: assessing housing applications for the State Advances Corporation and family situations for the Social Security Department, acting as marriage conciliators, or reporting on custody and maintenance disputes for the Magistrate’s Court. In 1951 Social Security began a second discretionary programme of ‘special assistance’ to provide financial aid. It was intended for those who had commitments that could not be met out of the basic benefit, who had insufficient other means available to them, or who had no possibility of helping themselves. The grant – either a lump sum or continuing payments – was to be used for the essentials of life such as food, clothing, or shelter.23 The establishment of the programme, renamed supplementary assistance from 1958, was an official recognition that statutory benefits were insufficient.24 Even so, the programme was seldom publicised, it involved greater targeting than statutory benefits, and its criteria for assistance could be rigid.25 The total number of discretionary cases rose from 7150 in 1950 to 39,759 by 1965.26 Caution is necessary in interpreting these figures as they greatly underestimate the amount of assistance distributed through discretionary services more generally. The number of cases refers to individuals only and not to other family members who were also involved in a particular case; if all family members were included, the total number of people in contact with social workers would have been much higher. The numbers give only a snapshot of total cases or payments in each year; they do not reveal the number of inquiries conducted nor the number of cases processed in any single year, let alone those matters that were investigated but did not become cases in an agency’s files.

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The statistics do not reveal which category of need was involved in any one case. Social Security’s special assistance programmes may have often been about financial and material need, but this was not always the only factor. The impact of internal family dynamics or the need for information could occur in these individual family situations as well. Apart from the figures supplied specifically for the Needy Families Scheme – which was never a large programme – it is almost impossible to specify which of the Child Welfare cases relate primarily to material need.27 Child Welfare’s preventive cases, many of which involved tangible forms of assistance, increased spectacularly from 938 in 1950 to 15,948 in 1965.28 Preventive work ensured that Child Welfare, perhaps even more than Social Security, had become, as Bronwyn Dalley notes, a ‘general welfare agency catering to the spectrum of need’.29 Discretionary services were delivered through casework based on personal visiting, home investigation and individually tailored assistance. Families often had highly personalised and localised, and sometimes lengthy and demanding, interactions with social workers. The discretionary welfare relationship relied on cooperation, rather than the force of statute.The Needy Families Scheme, for example, operated on two basic principles: the preservation of the family unit wherever possible, and assistance given to be ‘of a helpful, social, constructive character, and not merely a monetary grant’.30 Inquiry was wideranging: information was taken about the dependent and nondependent children living at home, the family income, rent or mortgage payments, and any special circumstances including household expenditure and debts. The emphasis on casework influenced the ways families came into contact with social workers. Their route to assistance was extremely varied. Sometimes family members – usually mothers, less frequently fathers, and occasionally children – initiated contact directly with welfare officers and social workers.There was often a degree of reluctance and ambivalence on the part of family members, who could be mindful of the potential cost of opening up personal situations to scrutiny. When child welfare officer, Miss Charman, mistakenly visited a house on the basis of a complaint of child neglect, she tried to explain to the occupant that ‘it was not necessarily a disgraceful thing for a Child Welfare Officer to call’. Displaying an unusual lack of appreciation of the occupant’s position, Charman was at a loss to understand why the woman should have felt embarrassed; after all, Charman had previously visited others in the street about board applications, adoptions and needy

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family assistance, and believed that only the closest neighbours would have noticed anything anyway.31 Most officers acknowledged that they were, to many, an ‘agency of last resort’.32 Yet by the 1950s members of the public knew that they could go to Child Welfare and Social Security for a broad array of services and all kinds of information and advice.33 More people were doing just that as a burgeoning sense of citizenship and entitlement, and the proliferation of an increasingly professionalised group of social workers, encouraged the articulation of need. Greater district and rural social facilities enabled the public to demand ‘on the spot’ services as the welfare state expanded throughout the country.34 Publicity drives, particularly in the wake of the 1954 Mazengarb Report on delinquent teenage behaviour in the Hutt Valley, stimulated increasing use of these services. During 1958, for example, Child Welfare staff gave 500 public talks and lectures to groups up and down New Zealand.35 Some family members wrote to their local Members of Parliament, who then passed on the inquiry to an official to investigate. A few applicants, such as Mrs Leute, went straight to the top.‘Having heard of the wonderful work you have done for the welfare of women and children’, she wrote to Hilda Ross, Minister in charge of Child Welfare, ‘I make an appeal to you in the interests of humanity.’36 Many such letters were written directly to Ross, who was also Minister for the Welfare of Women and Children (1949–57), and to Mabel Howard, who assumed these portfolios in 1957, as well as being Minister of Health (1947–49). The women who wrote to these female ministers hoped – sometimes ineffectually – that they would identify with their plight as women and act accordingly. Not only did welfare officers have an increased ability to assist women such as Mrs Leute, but they also had a widening regulatory and inspectorial role that brought families into contact with the discretionary welfare system. By the 1950s there was more chance of families encountering welfare officers as individual government programmes expanded and inter-departmental cooperation grew. Many families had existing contact with other state departments and once they were in ‘the system’, there was more likelihood of other issues and needs being discovered. ‘The system’ could also include social and community mechanisms. Neighbours, teachers, priests and ministers, voluntary welfare and community groups all referred family members to welfare officers. The delivery of discretionary welfare services also reflected what others believed family needs to be; there was a continuum

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between self-identified need and observed problem, and discretionary welfare fell in the area between. As the encounters with welfare officers and the pleas to female cabinet ministers indicate, discretionary welfare was largely a female world, in which women predominated as recipients and as providers. Mothers at home had the greatest contact with visiting social workers; they were also the ones who were believed to have most interest, and most expertise, in children’s and family welfare. Such beliefs highlight the dominant contemporary gender notions and representations of a woman’s role as in and for the family, and a mother’s relationships to children and the house (as housewife) as naturalised and taken for granted. It was thus assumed that women social workers would be more attuned to and experienced with domestic issues and spaces, and family problems. Their work took them into people’s homes more frequently than male officers’; women social workers dealt with infants, children of both sexes under the age of ten, and older girls, while male officers had responsibility only for older boys. Discretionary programmes generated case files and a large amount of supporting documentation, which passed back and forth between head office, district officials and individual social workers. Most family situations revealed a number of problems simultaneously, regardless of which programme or form of assistance was utilised. Not all of these predicaments were financial, but material need of various kinds was increasingly in evidence. When Charles Peek, the Child Welfare Superintendent, looked back on 27 years of child welfare work in 1967, he believed that society’s problems were those of affluence and prosperity, rather than of poverty:‘Prosperity brings its own social problems, and greater skill and understanding can be required to deal with these than with the problems of poverty and illegitimacy’.37 The nature of some of the ‘problems of prosperity’, the tensions between need and desire, and changing nature of discretionary welfare in the 1950s and 1960s form the remainder of this essay.

Families’ needs and desires The material needs of families were a mixture of longstanding needs that had intensified in changing social and economic circumstances, and new requirements that emerged from the hopes and optimism of the post-war world. Needs surrounding the suburban home in particular

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exemplify the combination of old and new issues; they also point up the inherently gendered premises of family problems and the solutions that welfare agencies offered. Such needs underline the complexity of postwar society and its welfare system. In reaching for the ‘New Zealand way of life’, the attainment of a family home in the suburbs was the goal. As Graeme Dunstall has argued, home-ownership was a ‘central motif in the post-war social pattern . . . . [and] expressed the ruling ideas about family life and childrearing, the need for privacy and space’. Dunstall concludes that housing patterns reflected Pa¯ keha¯ characteristics of ‘possessive individualism, equality, [and] cultural homogeneity’.38 Yet many families faced recurring problems of either a lack of, or inferior, accommodation, or they had difficulties in meeting their rental payments. Accommodation issues increasingly centred on the desire for a private family house, rented or owned by its occupants. Families became the focus of state lending provision with the 1935 Labour Government, and the detached family house was the desired norm.39 State houses were built from 1937 for rental to those on middle and lower incomes. Subsidised housing was still out of reach of the poor and destitute and there was little decent, cheap, private rental housing throughout the post-war period. Workers on moderate incomes benefited from state houses with, in effect, subsidised rents. The criteria for the balloted allocations consisted of level of need, insecurity, number of dependants, ability to afford rent, and the suitability and respectability of the family concerned. From 1949 the National Government’s policy of encouraging home-ownership further reinforced the equation of house with home. State rental housing was limited to those on low incomes, who were given the option of buying their houses. By now, the criteria in order of weighting were congestion, inadequate services, length of time spent in poor conditions, housing costs, health, and dispersal of family members.The National Government also started a programme of cheap lending through the State Advances Corporation and private organisations. The subsequent Labour Government (1957–60) continued this policy direction with 3 per cent building loans through State Advances and the opportunity for parents to capitalise the family benefit from 1958 and put a deposit on a house. A specific vision of young, small families lay at the centre of successive government housing policies, despite the official and public emphasis on population growth. Such a vision precluded the building of houses for larger families and existing houses were converted instead.

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Few private rental houses were available for larger than ‘normal’ families, who could often find themselves having little choice about where to live. The Shadwell family, for example, was disadvantaged by the emphasis on small families. When Mr Shadwell applied for a fourbedroomed house for his large family, he was told that an application specifying a three-bedroomed house with a built-in porch would get him one more quickly. The welfare officer noted that ‘Mrs Shadwell assures me that they have no need whatever of financial assistance and their problem is one of accommodation only’.40 The ironic tension between the post-war desire for a greater population, and the social and economic realities faced by many families is clear in some housing situations. For the Dicksen family, the tension was experienced in acute form. Mr and Mrs Dicksen and their four children aged between seven months and ten years had moved from the West Coast to Christchurch in order to improve Mrs Dicksen’s health. Their accommodation did not improve, however.They lived in a bach with a large living room, one bedroom, a kitchenette and a sun porch. The kitchenette contained an open fire and a small sink. Only one of the stove elements worked, and the bach had no water connection – and neither bath nor handbasin. Mrs Dicksen had to carry the water up four wooden steps and heat it on the open fire. Mr Dicksen had consistently attempted to improve his family’s living arrangements, and had unsuccessfully approached various land agents and answered numerous advertisements for rental houses. He had also investigated the possibility of working in forestry simply to obtain a house for his family, but there were no vacant positions with married quarters. His family’s case was passed to Child Welfare to consider as a needy family after he had applied for a state house. The child welfare officer noted that the family ‘appear to be clean and hardworking and I consider them suitable tenants for a state house’.The case was classified as urgent. Mrs Dicksen tried other channels to obtain accommodation. She wrote to Hilda Ross:‘At present I am a worried and desperate Mother and am not a bit agreeable to the statement that New Zealand wants a larger population’. Knowing that large families were not popular with rental agencies, she informed Ross that she had considered fostering out her children, but could find no suitable homes or institutions for them.41 The Dicksens both focused on the risks of their current situtation for child-raising.Yet the different channel each parent took was also apparent. Mr Dicksen, in his provider role, tried to change his place of employment and to find a rental accommodation. Mrs Dicksen, on the other hand, approached the government directly,‘woman to woman’.

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Large family size also had other ramifications: it prevented parents from being able to save or put aside money for regular outgoings or household expenses and thus compounded already tight financial circumstances. Sometimes married siblings with children were forced to reside in the same household or adult friends of the family formed part of the household.This enabled costs to be shared, but in the view of the welfare officers, it created the potential for overcrowding and contributed to a lack of privacy and possible conflict within families. Even where families were not large, the case files show extended family situations. Several cases refer to grandparents (particularly the grandmother) living together with children and grandchildren. In some instances this was a positive move, such as when divorce was pending and a woman wanted a state house so that she could have the children to live with her. Her mother would also reside there and provide child care.42 Some families used discretionary welfare to get out of unhappy situations. One couple had been living with the husband’s parents but wanted a new house in a completely different city to ‘avoid bad family relationships’. Moving right away ‘would be less likely to cause dissension than a move to other board or one room in the same city’.43 Even for families with suitable accommodation, there was the threat of eviction if they fell behind with the rent. Evictions were often the result of the loss of the breadwinner, either by illness or desertion. Lack of a male breadwinner put many mothers in a vulnerable position in a period when the male-breadwinner family was the basis of social, political and economic policy, and when access to benefits was difficult for sole women attempting to support their families. Desertion often masked a further desperate situation. For example, Mrs Austin’s husband had left and he had no intention of supporting her or their two children.The child welfare officer was involved because of the housing situation and problems with the children, even though Mrs Austin was receiving the emergency unemployment benefit and the family benefit. Her mother, who was living with them, received a pension. Mrs Austin was ‘in a financial mess, nervous and upset’ because her husband accused her of abusing the children. The five-year-old was ‘uncontrollable’ and the seven-year-old was ‘afraid of the Father’.The older girl said that Mr Austin ‘tried to get her and her friends to take their bloomers off in a paddock. He threatened to kill them if they told.’ Mrs Austin’s mother also testified to his violence. Although the officer advised Mrs Austin to go to the police, she privately thought that Mrs Austin was ‘so bitter against her husband that she will make up any possible story against

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him’. In an era that gave scant recognition to domestic violence or incest and the power some husbands held over their wives, the officer chose to doubt Mrs Austin’s story.44 Mrs Austin’s predicament shows that many of these cases contained more than one problem and illustrates how discretionary services dealt with matters outside the scope of other services. Difficulties arising from rental arrears figure more frequently in the case files than eviction or other problems arising from desertion. One woman whose husband was in hospital with tuberculosis fell behind in her rent and requested assistance in meeting her payments. She was receiving benefits for herself and four children aged between six months and eleven years, but these were insufficient to cover her outgoings.The State Advances Corporation asked Child Welfare for an appraisal and a rental subsidy was subsequently recommended. In common with other cases, the welfare officer’s investigations discovered other difficulties; the children’s beds had insufficient cover, and the local Mayor’s Fund was called on to supply four single blankets.45 Getting behind in rent was partly a consequence of not having enough money but it could also result from difficulties with budgeting. Handling of money and budgeting were integral to many discretionary welfare cases, and home management – in the sense of stewardship of resources – became a more pressing issue during this period. Overwhelmingly, financial over-commitment was the critical problem for families provided with discretionary welfare services. It was a predicament that was intimately bound up with the temptations of an expanding consumer society. From the early 1950s, family housing needs extended beyond basic material and financial issues. The furnishing and care of houses and gardens also became a matter of discretionary welfare; in post-war New Zealand, ‘welfare’ was as much to do with desires, as with needs or problems. It was also based on a broader set of meanings than in the late twentieth century, when narrowly targeted income support came to dominate welfare policies. The housing needs and desires were propelled by the growing range of consumer goods available. Almost inevitably, budgeting and hire purchase arrangements became part of the problems families faced. Post-war prosperity held out the promise of security and stability for all, but such goals were not necessarily in everyone’s reach. New Zealanders used hire purchase or other forms of credit in order to obtain consumer products and to realise the aspirations to a higher standard of living. At

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the end of 1955, £9,663,000 was owed under hire purchase, and this figure increased to almost £15,000,000 by the end of 1960.46 Easy hire purchase terms and the facility with which many families could acquire new homes under family benefits capitalisation could spell disaster if their circumstances changed. Hire purchase, especially furniture buying, recurs repeatedly in the case files.The big-ticket items, such as electric ranges, refrigerators and washing machines, were within reach of many families, and by 1956 just over half of all households had these three major appliances.47 With the availability of more consumer goods and the development of the mass market, standards of living rose; the 1950s housewife could come into her own. As Helen May notes, the image of the housewife as improviser, held over from the war, gradually shifted in the 1950s to that of the home-maker and all the connotations that term carried. Magazines reinforced the shift; the Woman’s Weekly ‘Economy Hints’ page became ‘Surer Shopping’. The 1950s housewife had skills in shopping for ‘the house, the table, the family’, and could choose from a range of new household products with which to decorate the home or ease her domestic work: plastic tablecloths, sponge mops, pegs and coloured baths, radios, louvre windows.48 Time saved with new vacuum cleaners, for instance, was to be focused on home decorating, as Anne Else recalls: ‘I picked up the message very early, mainly from the pages of my mother’s fat weekly bundle of magazines, showing fascinating floor plans of the right and wrong way to arrange furniture, or ten bright ideas for trimming lamp shades.’49 Escalating material aspirations – or simply keeping up with the neighbours – sometimes outstripped the ability to pay. In the view of the welfare officer who investigated the case, the Williams family had overspent on a range of goods. Mrs Williams admitted that she could not stop herself from obtaining items for her family of seven children aged between one and 21. If she saw her children in need of clothing she would purchase it; Mrs Williams was not one to ‘make do’. The family was reasonably well off. Mr Williams, a carpenter, earned £21 a week, and gave his wife £15 with which she easily covered the household bills.50 For the welfare officer handling the case, the Williams’s income should have been sufficient to support the family. Mrs Williams’s aspirations were evidently higher than simply ‘managing’, as she sought to acquire the type of material goods for her children that post-war society had made available. Perceptions of need clearly diverged between families and officials.

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Other cases revealed difficulties caused by buying cars or other goods on time payment, accumulating Building Society debts, or running up popular sources of credit such as that offered by the Farmers’ Trading Company.The mounting desires of children for new clothing, shoes and other items could be met by the system of revolving credit of a small deposit followed by weekly payments, and often used at several stores at once. Children and young people sometimes used such credit without their parents’ knowledge, and the discovery was made only when families had to foot the unpaid bills.51 Hire purchase commitments and lack of money skills sometimes added to existing difficult family circumstances. The Reid family budgeting troubles emerged after they had been under Child Welfare supervision for several years.The family consisted of four children aged between two and thirteen years, with another child on the way.Welfare officers considered both Mr and Mrs Reid to be ‘sub-normal’. Mr Reid had a drinking problem and, unable to control his temper, beat his children. In turn, the children experienced problems at school, and one child had committed suicide. Mr Reid had been declared an undischarged bankrupt but brought in an average of £14 a week with overtime. He gave his wife £10 for housekeeping and family benefit added another £2.The family also received 10s a week from the Mayor’s Relief Fund in groceries, meat and vegetable orders, and assistance with rent arrears. The family’s weekly outgoings were almost £4, excluding food. The debt collectors from a local department store regularly approached them for payments on an outstanding debt of more than £55 owing on a sewing machine. The family had lived in unsuitable accommodation for a number of years, but had finally obtained a state house.Welfare officers found the living conditions, clothing and feeding of the children to be satisfactory, and concluded – perhaps with some justification considering the difference between income and outgoings – that mismanagement of funds was the main issue facing the family.52 Many families did not have the means, contacts or skills to do the kind of planning and sacrificing often required to live the New Zealand dream.This was particularly so for women without a male breadwinner. Deserted by her husband and left with four children aged between two and eight years, Mrs Newbold struggled to cope with the basic requirements to maintain her family and house, as well as paying off accumulated debt. She received the deserted wives’ benefit as well as the family benefit, and was given a monthly sum from the Social Security Special Assistance Fund. Together, these benefits were insufficient to

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sustain her family and cover her debts which included outstanding payments for rent, clothing, groceries, meat and vegetables. She also owed money to various stores for furniture, linen and bedding, and a vacuum cleaner. The child welfare officer recommended that the State Advances Corporation accept a lesser amount each month for rent arrears.53 Budgeting and simply managing the household finances were major issues for many families.The provision of government-funded budgeting services was one way of helping families out of trouble. Community family budgeting services were introduced first to Kaikohe in 1960, and by the late 1960s, were to be found in most major towns. In 1968 in Hamilton alone the service handled more than half a million dollars a year for 200 families.54 Other government polices exacerbated – or even encouraged – family financial woes. One commentator believed that family benefits had become part of the wage structure in New Zealand and thought that wives were in particular danger, ‘as they were often expected to [pay] household costs out of the family benefit, while the husband’s income was spent on something else, possibly buying a house’. In 1960 the number of families capitalising their family benefits peaked, and between 1960 and 1964 45,330 families took up this option. Newspaper editorials warned that the capitalisation scheme had ‘brought hardship to those most in need of the weekly payment of the child allowance’.55 Accommodation continued to be an issue during the 1950s, but welfare workers believed that ‘the question of insufficient finance from Social Security benefits to cope with present day costs’ was more evident.56 As one officer noted, ‘family budgeting has been seriously affected and it is a difficult problem. It is becoming increasingly noticeable that people on a benefit can hardly manage to feed and clothe themselves and have few pleasures, if any, which can only be at the expense of food and clothing.’Yet the varying ability of families to cope was also recognised: ‘It would seem that in many cases people would benefit by learning to buy food and clothing economically and plan for their needs. However, it seems characteristic of people in economic distress that their ability to plan is very limited and because of their personal anxiety their use of money is usually chaotic.’57 A broad definition of welfare that encompassed pleasure as well as need is apparent, as is the recognition that distress and emotions were part of the problem; social workers attempted to give effect to social security rather than just economic security.58

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There was continual tension, however, between what the state and families defined as prosperity or security, whether social or economic. This difference was manifest in only some needs and desires being catered for in welfare programmes. Families had to show that they were making an attempt to manage wisely and well. In the process, women had to be good housekeepers and mothers and men good providers.The case of Jack and Mary Bauer and their family shows what was considered desirable, in contrast to the Williams family’s overspending and mismanagement. The Bauers and their five children (including twins) aged between eight and seventeen years, had rented an old threebedroomed wooden house for nineteen years. The welfare officer investigating their circumstances noted that the house was very well kept – ‘beds all made with sheets and pillowcases’ – and that Jack had made much of the furniture himself. Jack had worked on the wharves but ill health meant that he was no longer in paid employment. The family received a combined weekly income of about £9, which included board payments from the eldest child who was working, an age benefit and the family benefit. Basic outgoings on rent and essential foodstuffs totalled almost £4 a week, and the family also owed over £45 for items of clothing and bedding and a dining suite.There was little opportunity to meet their regular commitments as well as to purchase necessary items, such as clothing for the children. The welfare officer judged that Jack appeared to ‘manage his affairs in a methodical way’. Mary was described as ‘a sensible Scottish woman and has all her monies planned each month trying to pay a little here and little there until her debts are cleared’. There was nothing in the family situation to warrant supervision, so it was recommended that Social Security assist with clothing.59 A good deal of flexibility is apparent in the assessment of family situations. In the Hunter case, for example, welfare officers took the unusual step of paying off debt. Assistance was not generally given for this, but the principle could be waived where ‘the effect would otherwise be a struggle for many years and this would in turn affect the welfare of the children’.60 As the welfare officer investigating the Hunter’s case argued, ‘the fact that Mr Hunter has over the past 2 years been able to pay small deposits on a Frigidaire does not mean he is thereby less deserving of a rental subsidy when he is genuinely £2.5.6 below the Needy Family formula’. In order to cement the justification for taking this unusual step, the officer continued: ‘Many of our clients spend more money on drink and the TAB each week than Mr Hunter

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has contributed to his Frigidaire. He spends nothing on these things.’ As with the Bauers, time payment was seen as good organisation. There is also a sense that the male provider was doing well, and should be rewarded rather than penalised. The officer wanted to encourage his recent good behaviour: ‘Instead of a cruel sadistic man whose thoughts dwelt on how he could punish his children and his cruelty not be detected by the “welfare’’ he now spent much of his time mending toys for children’s homes’.61 Casework methods reinforced the post-war emphasis on homes and consumerism, and underscored traditional gender roles in the process. Not only were housekeeping, feeding the family and cleaning the focus of welfare officers’ questions, but the officers’ duties extended to advising on furnishings and care of the house, supervising the purchase of household goods and clothing, and overseeing repayments. These duties most frequently centred on the actions and values of wives and mothers. A woman’s lack of interest in her home was taken as a negative sign. One welfare officer wrote that ‘Mrs Roberts has tended to lose interest in the home because of the long period of friction with the husband and uncertainty. She has not maintained a satisfactory standard of housekeeping, and the furnishings are worn, and with the interior, [they] have been damaged at times by the husband in fits of temper.’62 Domestic violence was yet to be recognised as a social problem that could and should be challenged; it was Mrs Roberts’s housekeeping role and level of interest in maintaining her surroundings that were at issue. Yet within the consumer home and family context of post-war New Zealand, women could and did challenge or manoeuvre around unequal power relationships, and particularly gender relationships. Welfare agencies could consciously or inadvertently assist them in doing this. Appealing to welfare agencies, as other historians have discovered, was one way that weaker individuals within a family could attempt to deal with their problems.63 In the context of material needs, discretionary welfare could be a means of dealing with (or more often bypassing) struggles between spouses over who should be the financial manager and how the family finances should be handled. In 1951, for example, an ill woman called at the office of the State Advances Corporation in Christchurch about rent arrears. She had been in bed three weeks and had spent the rent money on her children’s clothes. She told the welfare officer that her husband was unaware of rent owing, and that she could not manage the house on his wages. A subsequent report from a welfare

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officer noted that a good portion of the family income went towards her husband’s drinking, and that there was little co-operation between husband and wife. The officer had gradually taken over the household accounts because she believed that the woman was such a poor manager of finances and home affairs.64 This case is also an example where, to get herself out of one controlling situation at the hands of a man, a woman finds herself in another, even if the controller in this case was a female welfare officer. Welfare for such women was often a double-edged sword. Male control and tyranny over family finances is a recurring motif in the case files, and women continued to bear the burden of housekeeping and putting up with husbands’ ‘rights’ while attempting to attain the New Zealand dream. Mr McKenzie, for example, did not give his wife sufficient money to meet their rent and other expenses. They were given notice to quit their accommodation, but Mrs McKenzie ‘came to the rescue’ with lump sum payments. She used moneylenders at high rates of interest, which only caused her to slide further into debt.Welfare officers noted that ‘Mr McKenzie does not seem to concern himself very much with regard to the financial management of the home’. He spent 10s a week on beer,‘which he feels entitled to’, as well as gambling – unsuccessfully – at race meetings. He gave his wife sufficient money only when Child Welfare intervened. Mrs McKenzie had not wanted to approach Child Welfare for fear of losing the children (she was a former state ward herself ). She had, however, contacted a solicitor about her husband’s ‘ill-treatment’ of her.65 Male drinking was a frequent catalyst in this and other situations. As officers complained, ‘it is a wasted effort trying to assist the family if the father drinks more than his share of the family income or where the father finds he can spend more because his family is being assisted’.66 Contemporary gender ideology and the focus on keeping the family together, as well as the reluctance of wives to confront husbands, contributed to their ongoing dependence and vulnerability. In the prosperous post-war years discretionary welfare programmes coexisted with an extensive system of pensions and benefits.These services demonstrate the continuing existence of material need and the appearance of new problems and desires of a tangible kind. Reaching for the New Zealand ‘way of life’, increasingly identified with a house in suburbia replete with new consumer goods, created spiralling aspirations, bred discontent, and strengthened social inequalities.

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The delivery of discretionary services through casework reinforced a home and consumer focus. A successful family household meant managing well, even if that included incurring debt and paying off goods. Social workers helped families in the post-war world negotiate an increased range of responsibilities, such as debt, hire purchase, household budgeting, and the varied uses of family benefits. Rather than taking over many family functions, the post-war state’s delivery of discretionary welfare services supported families: families and the state created each other. Provision on these terms also shored up the gendered basis of discretionary welfare. Thorough investigation and home visiting emphasised the role and values of mothers in the household economy – their housekeeping, their impact on children, and their furnishing of the house. Fathers were encouraged to be providers; their daily impact on family relationships was secondary. Welfare officers focused on preserving the family unit and the traditionally differentiated roles within it, even if that sometimes meant aiding wives in their battles against husbands, or more frequently helping them avoid such conflict. Family units consisting of mothers and children were also assisted, because of the contemporary identification of the mother with the children’s interests. Above all, discretionary welfare epitomises the contingency of need, the changing nature of adequacy, and the ‘problems of prosperity’ in an era when Social Security benefits lost ground. Case files show families who were not just the poor and downtrodden, although their experiences are to be found there. A widening range of families wanted, and required, assistance, particularly since economic, social and emotional security were not considered to be separate issues. Even when the discussion of discretionary welfare is restricted to issues of material need, the unpredictable nature of family situations and growing expectations meant that tangible notions of adequacy could never be measured in precise or absolute terms. Post-war definitions of welfare were broad and flexible; they dealt with desire as much as with need, and welfare officers helped boost families’ expectations in the face of static and inflexible statutory provision.The growing number of families who used discretionary services reveals another side to the 1950s and 1960s. Contentment and domesticity lay behind the twitching lounge curtains but so did disparity, pressure, and discontent.

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1

2 3 4

5

6

7

8 9

10

11 12 13 14 15

Mona Gleason, ‘Psychology and the Construction of the “Normal” Family in Postwar Canada, 1945–60’, Canadian Historical Review, vol. 78, no. 3, September 1977, p. 450. My thanks to Charlotte Macdonald and Edward Dickinson who supervised the original research from which this essay is drawn and to Bronwyn Dalley for her perceptive and useful comments. A journalist quoted in Michael King, After the War: New Zealand Since 1945, Hodder and Stoughton with Wilson and Horton, Auckland, 1988, p. 45. Gleason, p. 450. Julie Glamuzina and Alison Laurie, Parker and Hulme: A Lesbian View, New Women’s Press, Auckland, 1991; Helen May, Minding Children, Managing Men: Conflict and Compromise in the Lives of Postwar Pakeha Women, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 1992; Sally Parker, ‘A Golden Decade? Farm Women in the 1950s’ in Barbara Brookes, Charlotte Macdonald and Margaret Tennant, (eds), Women in History 2, Bridget Williams Books,Wellington, 1992, pp. 205–24; New Zealand Home & Building, Souvenir Edition:The Newstalk 1ZB 1950s Show, Auckland City Art Gallery, Associated Group Media Ltd., Auckland, 1992; Redmer Yska, All Shook Up: The Flash Bodgie and the Rise of the New Zealand Teenager in the Fifties, Penguin, Auckland, 1993; Fraser Andrewes,‘Representations of Masculinity in Postwar New Zealand, 1945–1960’, MA thesis, University of Auckland, 1995. Useful overseas examples include Wini Breines, Young,White and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties, Beacon Press, Boston, 1992 and Joanne Meyerowitz, (ed.), Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1994. A much more extensive and strikingly different form of discretionary welfare was delivered to Ma¯ori families by welfare officers in the Department of Ma¯ori Affairs. For an introduction see G. V. Butterworth and H. R. Young, Maori Affairs, Iwi Transition Agency/GP Books,Wellington, 1990. Margaret McClure, A Civilised Community: A History of Social Security in New Zealand 1898–1998, Auckland University Press/Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Auckland, 1998, p. 7; Parker, p. 205. Jock Phillips, Royal Summer: The Visit of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip to New Zealand 1953–54, Daphne Brasell Associates Press/Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs,Wellington, 1993, p. 17. Graeme Dunstall, ‘The Social Pattern’, in Geoffrey W. Rice (ed.), The Oxford History of New Zealand, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1992, p. 451; King, p. 91. This phrase was the ‘antipodean cousin’ of the notion of an ‘American way of life’: the house in suburbia with car and consumer goods, which had to be defended against communist subversion during the Cold War era. See Mark Rolfe, ‘Far Away Fordism: The Americanisation of Australia and New Zealand during the 1950s and 1960s’, NZJH, vol. 33, no. 1, 1999, pp. 73–4. Jock Phillips, A Man’s Country? The Image of the Pakeha Male: A History, Penguin, Auckland, 1987, p. 226; Gael Ferguson, Building the New Zealand Dream, Dunmore Press/Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Palmerston North, 1994, passim. As early as 1926 about 50 per cent of wage and salary householders owned their own homes; see Miles Fairburn,‘The Farmers Take Over’, in Keith Sinclair (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of New Zealand, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1990, p. 206. Annalee Gölz, ‘Family Matters: The Canadian Family and the State in the Postwar Period’, Left History, vol. 1, no. 2, 1993, pp. 26–9. Dunstall, pp. 454–5, 467. Yska, p. 45. See also May, pp. 2, 21, 64. See Child Welfare (CW), Series 1, 2/9/26, pt 1, NA, and Health Department (H-A), A43, 19/1, National Archives Records Centre, Auckland. See Yska, passim.

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16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

24 25

26

27

28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Dunstall, pp. 469, 470, 472. McClure p. 257. The value of family benefit was increased only once between 1945 and 1972. Dunstall, pp. 473–5 and Table 1.1. For other Child Welfare and Social Security programmes see Bronwyn Dalley, Family Matters: Child Welfare in Twentieth-Century New Zealand, Auckland University Press/ Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Auckland, 1998, passim and McClure, passim. Royal Commission of Inquiry into Social Security, Social Security in New Zealand: Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry, Government Printer,Wellington, 1972, pp. 88–9, 91. For a more extended discussion from the point of view of Child Welfare policy, see Dalley, pp. 154–63. AJHR, 1953, H-9, p. 26. A similar fund was set up at the same time for recipients of war pensions and war allowances. See also Circular to all registrars and district agents, 30 Nov 1951, Social Security (SS), Series 7, 7/7/13, NA. AJHR, 1958, H-9, p. 38. Evan N. Simpson,‘The Supplementary Assistance Scheme: A Short History’, 1969, SS 7, 35/13/2, pt 1; Registrar, Wellington, to Director, Social Security Commission, 1 Oct 1954, SS 7, 7/7/13. All figures are as at 31 March each year, derived from the Child Welfare Division’s and Social Security Department’s annual reports, AJHR, 1950–65. Child welfare officers were the principle providers of this type of assistance. Social Security’s contribution, while it grew steadily over the whole fifteen-year period, was small overall.The number of Social Security discretionary payments grew from over 2277 in 1950 to over 11,713 in 1965. Child Welfare cases, on the other hand, leapt from 6873 to 28,046 by 1965. Most of this increase occurred in the 1950s with only a small rise from 1960 to 1965. Needy Families cases grew from 125 families involving 562 children in 1950 to 283 families and 863 children in 1965, with the biggest increases occurring in the decade from 1955 to 1965. This latter figure includes 10,537 ‘miscellaneous’ cases, a ‘short-term’ and ‘less troublesome’ category, which was added to the long-term preventive work from the mid-1950s. AJHR, 1956, E-4, p. 4 and Dalley, p. 250. Dalley, p. 175. Memo to child welfare officers, 19 Dec 1941, Education Department (E), Series 2, 1950/25b, NA. Child welfare officer (CWO) to District child welfare officer (DCWO), Auckland, 21 May 1957, CW 1, 2/10/2, pt 2. Brian Harrison,‘Foreword’ in Dugald J. McDonald (ed.), Working for the Welfare: Stories by Staff of the Former Child Welfare Division,The Social Work Press, Christchurch, 1994, p. vi. AJHR, 1955, E-4, p. 8. C. E. Peek,‘A Superintendent Looks Back’, New Zealand Social Worker, vol. 5, no. 4, 1969, p. 19. AJHR, 1959, E-4, p. 17. See also the press clippings in CW 1, 8/9, pts 1–3 and 8/9/1, pts 1–2. 14 Mar 1955, CW 1, 4/7/1, part 1. As a condition of access to the files all names of clients have been changed to preserve confidentiality. Dominion, 28 Oct 1967, clipping in CW 1, 8/9, pt 1. Dunstall, p. 458. Ferguson, pp. 155–7. DCWO, Christchurch to Superintendent, 10 Jul 1950, CW 1, 4/7/1 pt 1. DCWO, Christchurch to Superintendent, 30 Mar 1950, P. E. D— to Minister of Social Welfare, 15 Jun 1950, CW 1, 4/7/1, pt 1.

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42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

DCWO,Wellington, to Superintendent, 26 Jan 1951, CW 1, 4/7/1, pt 1. DCWO,Wellington to Branch Manager, State Advances Corporation, 4 Mar 1955, CW 1, 4/7/1, pt 1. CWO to Senior CWO, Auckland, 16 Oct 1956, CW 1, 4/7/1, pt 1. DCWO, Palmerston North, to Superintendent, Aug 1952, CW 1, 4/7/2. New Zealand Official Yearbook, 1961, p. 631, cited in Andrewes, p. 2. Jean-Marie O’Donnell, ‘ “Electric Servants” and the Science of Housework’, in Women in History 2, p. 177. May, p. 111. Anne Else, ‘Edmonds Cookery and Bernadine’, Women’s Studies Journal, vol. 2, no. 2, 1986, p. 75. CWO to DCWO, Lower Hutt, 3 Oct 1957, CW 1, 4/7/1, pt 1. CW 1, 4/16. Case 1048, CW 1, 4/7/3. Report dated June 1955, CW 1, 4/7/1, pt 1. See various press clippings in CW 1, 8/9. Evening Post, 22 May 1964 and the Press, 5 Jun 1964, press clippings in SS 7, 5/3/6a. Welfare officer (WO), Christchurch, return of work for April 1958, SS 7, 7/7/27. WO, Christchurch, report on welfare work Aug 1959– Jul 1960, SS 7, 7/7/27. See for example, AJHR, 1964, H-9, p. 18. CWO to DCWO, Auckland, 3 Sep 1952, CW 1, 4/7/2. Circular, Oct 1952, CW 1, 4/7/3. Case 1478, CW 1, 4/7/4. Case 1986, CW 1, 4/7/4 Linda Gordon, ‘Family Violence, Feminism and Social Control’, in Linda Gordon (ed.), Women, the State and Welfare, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1990, pp. 191–3. Manager, State Advances Corporation, Christchurch to CWO, Christchurch, 19 October 1951; CWO’s report, 10 January 1952, CW 1, 4/7/1, pt 1. Manager, State Advances Corporation, Napier, to CWO, Napier, 19 December 1950; DCWO, Napier, to Superintendent, 16 January 1951, CW 1, 4/7/1, pt 1. DCWO, Hamilton, to Superintendent, 26 June 1944, CW 1, 4/7, pt 2.

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10 Street-Level Chemistry: The Past in the Present at Histor ic Places |

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While touring the Far North in December 1997 to promote his latest book, ACT Party leader Richard Prebble posed for the camera in front of Kemp House. He had been drawn there by a fight over a fence.The New Zealand Historic Places Trust wanted to reinstate a boundary fence swept away by floodwaters sixteen years earlier. By 1997, however, locals had become accustomed to their unobstructed view of the old house and opposed a fence of any description. Backing local opponents of the Trust, Prebble told The Chronicle that ‘if historical accuracy was the yardstick overseas, most of the Royal palaces would have been pulled down’. Alleging that the Trust had been captured by a small group of experts, Prebble warned that ‘they must remember who they are doing these things for.’1 An earlier Chronicle editorial entitled ‘Precious Approach to History’, had asked similar questions about historical accuracy, property presentation and ownership.2 Some locals agreed. Yvonne Skudder used The Chronicle to attack Trust Conservation Adviser ‘Fergus Clunie’s arrogant statement that “the locals seem to think they own the Stone Store Basin area and Kemp House”, the answer is yes, Mr Clunie, we do.We have put our money on the line to buy expensive properties in this area, pay exorbitant rates and generally support the larger Kerikeri area and businesses with our custom.’3 Arguments about the ownership of history are not unique to historic places of course. Frequently, however, they are sharpest at historic places, where much of the material evidence from the past is owned and occupied by individuals, private companies and public organisations.

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This essay explores some of the debates about the ownership and use of history at New Zealand’s historic places. It examines both the numerically overwhelming privately owned sites, and the publicly owned and publicly interpreted places, especially Pompallier and The Residency (the Treaty House).The discussion teases out the implications that ownership has on the written, viewed and spoken pasts at these sites. It concludes with an examination of the processes of selection of pasts and their deficiencies as they are articulated at historic places, and offers suggestions for historians to influence the production of richer views of those pasts. The land-based heritage sector has created enough ugly jargon and terminology to fill a turbid chapter in itself. I shall steer clear of those shoals, merely observing that the Historic Places Act 1993 defines an historic place as ‘any land (including an archaeological site) or any building or structure (including part of a building or structure); or any combination of a building or structure that forms part of the historical and cultural heritage of New Zealand and lies within the territorial limits of New Zealand and includes anything that is in or fixed to such land’. Historic places include archaeological sites, historic areas, wa¯hi tapu areas and natural features with significant human associations; I will concentrate on historic buildings and the written, viewed and spoken history produced at and about these places.

Privately owned historic places Skudder’s sense of ‘ownership’ of the Kemp House front garden highlights some of the differences between historic places and movable cultural property. Historic places are often compared to museum objects. Some, of course, are museums – the ‘house museums’ and ‘open air museums’ of common parlance – and some contain movable cultural property and are interpreted for the public. Most historic places differ from conventional museums by being privately owned. For every Stone Store, Katherine Mansfield Birthplace or Olveston presented to the public as a museum of its own past, thousands of other privately owned buildings, structures and archaeological sites have to earn their keep as homes, business premises or grazing land for sheep. In October 1998 central and local government owned just 21 per cent of the 5900 historic places, historic areas, wa¯hi tapu and wa¯hi tapu areas on the Historic Places Trust Register.

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This precludes most historic places from becoming the objects of special visits or pilgrimages like museums or art galleries. Instead, the places – buildings, sites or even entire streets – form the backdrop to the everyday lives of people who use them, in Peter Fowler’s words, as ‘a mere convenience, a facility, often in ignorance of its significance as something old, a survival, let alone of its cultural value’.4 Helen Proudfoot observes that once designated a historic place, the building or site ‘moves along paths we cannot pick out, shrouded in the mists of an always transitory unison, of a museum without walls, involved with its own progression . . . of a metamorphosis that, daily and inexorably, changes the present into the past’.5 In other words, the history produced at historic places is predominantly informal and created by lay people. Historian Doreen Massey argues that the past is present in places in three major ways.6 First, and most importantly, it is present materially. The process of survival is uneven; the masonry structures of the élite and of public institutions, or those buildings and sites where the value of land has not risen exponentially tend to survive better in New Zealand, as do our flexible and adaptable wooden houses. Lay people frequently trample unwittingly across pre-European archaeological sites, but most can see the shape, size and texture of a building, even if they cannot distinguish a dado from a dildo. That does not necessarily mean that what they are seeing is authentic. In Wellington, for example, a former public lavatory now serves as a restaurant, a redundant fire station has become a cafe and dozens of historic factories and office blocks have been transformed into inner-city apartments. Sometimes the effect is similar to welding a sailing ship’s figurehead to a supertanker’s bow.The remnant facade of the former Westport Chambers was buzz-sawed apart, hauled across the road and reinstated with Frankensteinish finesse against Wellington’s new Circa Theatre; Auckland’s Queen’s Head tavern facade has been enveloped in Sunday Horrors-style by a mirror-glass tower block. The problem is not confined to buildings. Salvage archaeology recovers evidence of the past, but at the cost of destroying the place and decontextualising the artefacts. Society’s treatment of large, privately owned, land-based artefacts differs from its treatment of movable cultural property, where it is almost inconceivable for an informed owner to want to alter a painting, rare book or antique dining table, or for an enthusiasts’ group to want to fit a jet engine to a Kittyhawk. Even when the material past survives intact, without interpretation it may not offer an authentic insight into the past. Thorndon’s tastefully restored workers’ cottages, once over-crowded workers’ slums in a

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smoke-filled, damp, inner-city suburb, now present themselves to latetwentieth-century eyes as élite inner-city housing. Like Raphael Samuel’s antique mangles displayed as objets d’art,7 they have become so completely decontextualised from their nineteenth-century significance as to offer a misleading view of that past. Massey notes that the past may also be present in resonance, whether actually from the past or reinserted as a self-conscious building-in of ‘character’. American urban historian Dolores Hayden believes that ‘urban landscapes are storehouses for these social memories, because natural features such as hills or harbours, as well as streets, buildings and patterns of settlement, frame the lives of many people and often outlast many lifetimes’.8 Here language is important. Street names such as Wellington’s Lambton Quay provide linkages to the early colonial-era foreshore, while Dunedin’s ‘Exchange’ recalls the days when the ornate stock exchange building dominated the intersection. Even when buildings or landscapes survive with alterations, attempts are sometimes made to create a link to the past.Wellington’s former BNZ buildings in Lambton Quay, reduced to little more than a gutted shell crowned with fake cornices and pediments during its 1997–9 revamp, rides on history’s coat-tails as ‘The Old Bank Arcade and Chamber’. On a broader scale, the words ‘historic’ and ‘heritage’ have infiltrated the real estate lexicon, sometimes as alternatives to the shop-worn euphemism ‘handyman’s special’. EFT-POS and heritage facades mix well. Elite restaurants have operated from historic commercial and residential properties for several decades, building on the ambiance of the material past to such an extent that dishes are often named after the history of the place. Even Valentines or Burger King now seek out heritage buildings such as the Dunedin Railway Station and the former Te Aro Branch (Wellington) of the Bank of New Zealand. Burger King imports 1950s Hollywood imagery for its eateries, but the homestays and guest houses conjure up a pantheon of equally nostalgic local pasts for their paying customers. Readers of Remuera’s Aachen House brochure, peering through a window into a Barbara Cartland-ish boudoir scene, are enticed to ‘enter a timeless world where the qualities of excellence welcome you.Where each step is one into an era where graciousness abounds.’9 Finally, Massey contends, the past can be present in the unembodied memories of people. People carry around mental pictures of landscape features and buildings, often long after they have changed their function, disappeared or have been altered beyond recognition. The past helps

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Whither authenticity? In 1993 the facade of the free English baroque Westport Chambers (1916) was moved across the road and inserted in the new Circa Theatre complex in a highly controversial compromise. Facadism – the retention of the partial or complete exterior of a building in a new development – is generally deplored by the heritage sector for transmitting confusing images. NEW ZEALAND HISTORIC PLACES TRUST COLLECTION (TOP) AND GAVIN MCLEAN (BOTTOM)

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make the present, but the process always works two ways; new pasts – mental, written and physical – are constantly being created.This streetlevel chemistry between past and present fizzes and froths away in New Zealand daily. Material traces, resonance and memory combine to treat the past at historic places more like a script to be reworked rather than the types of movable cultural property usually found in archives, libraries, galleries and museums. Each owner or each generation imposes a new layer of meaning on the cultural heritage landscape while chopping out a piece of parchment here and attaching another bit there. In the process, the owners of historic places – unlike owners of museum artefacts or archives – often destroy or alter the physical evidence itself. They are not alone. Local authorities and business groups also create new pasts as communities try to use heritage as a point of differentiation for marketing or tourism purposes. For several decades, picturesque backwaters such as the Bay of Islands and Arrowtown marketed themselves in low-key ways as tourist destinations. Now the larger centres have entered the business, employing the selective amnesia common to the heritage industry. On the cusp of the twenty-first century, Oamaru wiped its hands of the twentieth by marketing itself as ‘A Victorian Town at Work’, while Napier presented itself as ‘The Art Deco Capital of the World’. Although the 1931 earthquake features in the background to Napier’s marketing imagery, the city largely excises the Depression from the marketing, for which Napier’s Art Deco Trust has created an English fop called ‘Bertie’.To chase international dollars, Fords, fops and flappers have elbowed aside whanau and Depression-era Prime Minister Forbes. Aesthetically driven heritage overlay zones or design guides reinforce selected heritage themes or periods, thereby denying or mitigating the aesthetic entropy that characterises urban change. Nevertheless, even Thorndon or Devonport lack the homogeneity that the more effective regulatory and voluntary protection has created in historic districts in the United States. New Zealand’s historic towns and districts are distinctly different from what Diane Barthel calls ‘Staged Symbolic Communities’, entities that she criticises for representing a break from history, with all its mess and change, while at the same time purporting to represent history.10 Business appropriates history when it suits, and its heritage marketing is often free of the contagion of authenticity. Auckland’s ‘Historic Parnell’ shopping centre and Victoria Park Market, for example, trade on

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Since the mid 1980s ‘Whitestone’ Oamaru has used its nineteenth-century built heritage to rejuvenate its economy by fostering heritage tourism.This is part of the west side of Thames Street.Abacus House is a rare brick commercial building, but the former Waitaki County Council and Oamaru Borough Council offices typify the limestone buildings that dominate the townscape. GAVIN MCLEAN

greatly modified assets largely devoid of any meaningful public interpretation. Twenty years ago, Dunedin businesses embraced a pseudo-Victorianism. The block of George Street shops south of the Knox Church intersection was rebranded New Edinburgh Way. Period gimcrackery sprouted from buildings, ‘heritage’ signwriting dashed its way across storefronts in browns and beiges, and one menswear store even restyled itself an ‘emporium’. Fortunately, storeholder stinginess stymied the spread of ersatz Victoriana and by the 1990s all the chipboard flimflam had been removed. At the other end of the central business district, the city’s Speights Brewery has recently opened a heritage centre in its brewery complex, adding another attraction to its long-running factory tours. It is much rarer for people to falsify the material past deliberately, but it does happen. In 1997 the new minister of New Plymouth’s St Andrew’s Church tried to remove a reference to ‘Masonic ceremony’ from the 1931 church’s foundation stone. Denouncing the Freemasons as non-Christian, he antagonised many parishioners, Freemasons and the

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Taranaki Branch of the Historic Places Trust, which objected to his attempts to censor the past. Heritage and holiness finally shook hands early in 1998 when a Presbyterian judicial commission ruled that the stone ‘shall remain in place and shall not be removed, nor shall its wording be changed in any way.’11 Most of the frequent use of the material past is informal, as Peter Fowler observed, but New Zealanders often consciously use historic places to celebrate community milestones. The nation holds its commemorative services at cenotaphs or restored historic buildings such as Parliament Buildings or Old St Paul’s. Many people also choose historic places as venues to celebrate important personal events, such as weddings, funerals or family reunions. For well over a century a mainstay of jubilee, centennial and now sesquicentennial celebrations has been the sight of bewhiskered and crinolined locals masquerading as Victorian settlers landing from boats on historic foreshores.Wellingtonians staged a landing re-enactment in 1890 and 50 years later re-enacted the scene aboard the ship Tory in which Ma¯ori ‘maidens’ handled the New Zealand Company’s trade goods; sesquicentennial re-enactments included a sheep drive between Petone and the Wairarapa.12 Kerikeri locals celebrated the 175th anniversary of European settlement in the area with ‘living tableaux’ of missionaries, Ma¯ori and soldiers. Such ‘living history’, with actors or staff dressed in period costume and speaking in character, which is so contentious in Britain and the United States, has yet to become significant at New Zealand historic places. Also absent are the weekend warriors. Political sensitivities have probably prevented amateur military history groups from using New Zealand Wars sites for re-enactments of battles. Politically motivated arson and vandalism at historic sites are still rare, if one excepts the use of markers as targets by gun-toting youths. Mercifully, the country has also been spared the spectacle of Britain’s modern ‘Druids’.

Publicly owned and publicly interpreted historic places The issues surrounding the material past at New Zealand’s publicly owned and publicly interpreted historic places are as complex as at those which are privately owned. I take two particular sites as a case study to explore the types of history created and consumed at publicly owned historic places. The Residency (the ‘Treaty House’, Waitangi, 1833) and Pompallier, Russell (1841) were acquired as tangible symbols

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of national identity, The Residency as the result of gubernatorial beneficence and Pompallier through purchase by the Department of Internal Affairs. The conservation of such places is governed by conservation plans,13 and the ICOMOS New Zealand Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Heritage Value.The latter is particularly significant for historians. It mandates the use of all relevant conservation values, knowledge, disciplines, arts and crafts, involving the minimum degree of intervention consistent with long-term care, and it notes that the evidence of time and the contributions of all periods should be respected in conservation.14 The requirements of the ICOMOS charter can be difficult to achieve in practice, and they sometimes bring historians into conflict with others in New Zealand’s small heritage industry.15 Historic places have significance on a number of levels, and at many stages of their history. The prioritisation of one can generate heated debate, or at the worst, potentially damage the site. At the 1841 Marist mission printery building at Pompallier, for example, the interaction of impermeable wartime Portland cement applied over historic pisé de terre (rammed earth) brought the building to the verge of collapse, and later additions threatened the safety of the place and of the people who use it.16 Sometimes, too, when the aesthetic or architectural value of a place clearly outweighs any other significance(s), a good case may also be made for optimising its presentation at an early stage of its existence. This is where historians’ concern for the process of change and the continuum of history frequently clashes with others’ desire to present original design or at least what they consider a visually more coherent (and usually appealing) artefact. This is also where historians can make effective linkages to communities, echoing the United States Power of Place assumption that every inhabitant is an active participant in the making of the city, not just the hero-designer.17 Historians are no less disturbed by what prevails at many publicly owned and publicly interpreted historic places than they are by the use and abuse of the past at privately owned places. As a frontier society preoccupied with material progress, New Zealand long displayed little interest in conserving historic sites and buildings.18 Initial purchase and presentation efforts concentrated on scenic preservation. The Cook Landing Site, for example, was scheduled in 1896 under the guise of ‘scenic purposes’, and the Canterbury Provincial Buildings Chamber, the first major building to receive statutory protection, was protected under

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the Canterbury Provincial Buildings Vesting Act 1928.19 Despite the creation of the Historic Places Trust in 1954, however, property purchases proceeded cautiously. As with privately owned buildings, the presentation of Doreen Massey’s material past lies at the centre of management issues. Both The Residency and Pompallier have undergone considerable physical alteration since purchase, which has created controversy among professionals and generated confusion and anger in the public.The real cause of this frustrating tale of inept intervention was the agencies’ reluctance to undertake research before intervening in the historic fabric. The Department of Internal Affairs engaged Professor C. R. Knight to act as the consulting architect for Pompallier. Unfortunately, he restricted his investigation to a site visit and research in the Auckland Public Library. He also interviewed members of the Roman Catholic Church and Russell identity Louisa Worsfold, who sold him the myth that the building had been Bishop Pompallier’s residence. Forty years later conservation architect Jeremy Salmond noted that Knight’s ‘decisions on detail matters [which] were [also] premised on the idea of . . . the need to reduce the maintenance of the building’ delivered a poorly supervised, aesthetically driven repair and alteration job.20 In 1949 a white-painted confection ‘housing a sparse display of antiques unrelated to its history, Pompallier House, a building that never was’, opened its doors to dupe the public, albeit innocently.21 Seventeen years later, control of the building passed from the Department to the Trust, which engaged historian Ruth Ross to examine Pompallier House’s past.Working on the Catholic Church archives and helped by the Marist Fathers in New Zealand and Rome, Ross exposed the ‘bishop’s house’ myth and the flawed basis of the 1940s restoration. The energetic and inquiring Ross presented the Trust with a dilemma. The material past was largely a modern invention at Pompallier House, the building was an architectural sham and most of the artefacts had little or no association with its history. One of New Zealand’s premier historic places was spinning misleading stories, overlaid by myths such as a pit being Bishop Pompallier’s wine-cellar.22 As a first step in correcting these misrepresentations, Ross drafted more accurate leaflets. By 1967 visitors were at least reading that the building was a former printery, even if the fabric of the 1949 ‘house’ appeared to belie the fact.The Trust also altered the displays but did not grapple with the thorny question of the building until the late 1980s. By then, it was clear that past alterations, such as the insertion of a chimney in the pisé in

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1879, an unsupported and dangerous veranda, and especially the application of the fake cement ‘adobe’ in the 1940s, were threatening structural collapse. The controversial result was, of physical necessity, a return to as-built presentation. Extensive research based on Ross’s earlier efforts, knowledge gained during the 1990–3 project, and a wider range of leaflets explained fully the history of the mission and the site. Technical processes such as tanning and printing are now presented in working form during the summer season, a rear gallery tells the history of the place and trained staff interpret its history to visitors.The power of resonance is demonstrated, however, by the widespread survival of the name ‘Pompallier House’, despite Trust attempts to exorcise the word ‘house’. The Residency, New Zealand’s most frequently visited historic place, began life in 1834 as economy accommodation for the British Resident, James Busby. It survived in a dilapidated state until Governor-General Lord Bledisloe and his wife acquired the building for the nation in 1933. Next year the Waitangi National Trust Board commissioned leading architects William Gummer and William Page to supervise the restoration of the house. With the New Zealand centennial of colonisation looming, there was a desire to recreate the building of 1840. ‘At the end of the day,’ Aidan Challis observed, ‘a substantial proportion of its original fabric . . . remained beneath heavy neoclassical make-up of boxed corners, six panelled front door, new french doors, classical turned veranda columns with square abacus and plinth, and chimney stacks to a new design. The 1933 work produced a structure seven-eighths new.’23 The need to provide curatorial accommodation and the absence of any meaningful historical research poured an architectural avalanche over the old Busby house. Not only had the material past been largely buried, but there was also an officially imposed change of resonance.The old Residency – the Busby house – emerged from its institutional chrysalis as The Treaty House, centrepiece of a national shrine, surrounded by the trappings of nationhood including formal grounds, cannon and flagpoles. The Waitangi National Trust commissioned extensive historical research for the first time in the 1970s, but its decision to furnish the building to the period of the 1870s provoked an angry and mystified Ruth Ross to resign. As Challis noted: after 1978 perhaps 80,000 visitors a year admired the new presentation of the house and garden – polished furniture and colourful borders, a national

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Publicly owned and publicly interpreted places can offer more scope for understanding the cultural heritage significance of historic places. In the case of New Zealand’s earliest state purchases, the desire to turn buildings into monuments of state falsified heritage fabric and distorted the messages conveyed.This photograph of an earlier treatment of part of the interior of The Residency shows a building overburdened with ‘institutional graffiti’: a large noticeboard acknowledging the philanthropy of the Bledisloe family dominates the room, another commemorating the New Zealand Centennial clutters the fireplace, and a small wall plaque lurks in the corner by the door. NEW ZEALAND HISTORIC PLACES TRUST COLLECTION

monument and tourist attraction; but there must have been a few who wondered:‘What are we looking at, and why?’The answer was not immediately apparent, and when recognised was unpalatable. ‘Mrs Busby’s bedroom’ had been built new in 1933 as the custodian’s lounge.The majority of the furniture on display bore no relationship to the house, having been purchased from dealers . . . . The Residency of humble national origins had become buried under national expectations of grandeur.The Treaty House was an inauthentic representation.24

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In 1988 the Trust Board commissioned conservation architect Clive Lucas to prepare a conservation plan. Lucas recommended presenting the Treaty House as it appeared during the Busby family period between 1840 and 1860. He offered several reasons: no one knew for certain about the pre-1840 extensions; the balanced north and south wings had strong aesthetic qualities and it was still possible to present and display the Sydney house within this model; finally, there had developed a strong public association with the now-iconographic fraud created during the 1930s, which had by now assumed some historical significance for what it said about the aspirations of New Zealand society in that period. In Challis’s words, ‘the house was to be put in touch with 1840, yet the words of 1933 would not be eaten’.25 As a result of this the historic skillion is presented in gutted form, protected by a new covered walkway at the rear of the building.The surviving original fabric, exposed to public viewing, is explained through the use of backlit interpretative plinths. Not everyone is happy with the rejection of asbuilt presentation. Writing in the Listener in 1990, Keith Stewart complained that externally,‘this symbol of nationhood will change little, and it will continue to perpetuate a lie initially fabricated during the 1930s’.26 He was also disturbed that the garden, which reflected Busby’s substantial contribution to horticulture in the South-west Pacific, was being ignored, criticism echoed in 1998 by Fergus Clunie.27 There is more to an historic place than fabric. Since the late 1980s the Waitangi National Trust has made extensive changes to the interpretation.Visitors now reach the house after viewing a slide show on Waitangi and the Treaty at an elaborate visitor centre and shop. Once inside the historic building, they can read discreet wall notices and interpretative panels.The south wing contains a new mini-museum and in 1998 further alterations to the northern wing provided space to portray the twentieth-century history of the place and of the Waitangi National Trust.Written guides have also changed.Vernon Reed’s lengthy 1940s pamphlet, Historic Waitangi, listed every artefact and gave an uplifting account of the place that commemorated the ‘entry of New Zealand into the British Empire’. A briefer 1978 leaflet devoted just one of its six sides to the house, but perpetuated the myth that ‘when renovation was necessary the original design was carefully maintained so that the Residency today looks as it did in Busby’s time’.28 The latest colour brochure, Waitangi National Reserve, provides a very general introduction to the Treaty, the building, grounds and other historic objects.

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Selecting and presenting the informal past The process of survival at historic places produces a fragmentary inheritance, a pockmarked palimpsest. The material past – the stock of heritage buildings and archaeological sites – tends to be dominated by the permanent masonry structures of the élite (town halls, parliamentary complexes, cathedrals, churches, basilicas, and bank buildings) and those from areas of slow economic growth (the Bay of Islands, Oamaru, and Arrowtown). Where buildings and structures prove durable and adaptable and where land value does not rise disproportionately faster than the value of improvements, they too have a reasonable survival rate. The shortcomings of the survival process are usually compounded by problems stemming from heritage surveys. The majority of New Zealand’s national and local registers and schedules are not produced through thematic, systematic survey and most of the local lists are not even compiled by multi-disciplinary teams. Therefore any historical narrative that relies solely on the surviving and identified fabric of historic places would be inadequate and misleading. Other nations – the United Kingdom, with its Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England or Canada, through the Canadian Inventory of Historic Building – recognise these limitations by running large heritage recording programmes, which provide a broader context for the survivors.29 New Zealand, leg-ironed by a long-held conservationist fear that promoting recording would be seen as opening the door to requests from developers to record and demolish, has no comparable programmes. Even in publicly owned, publicly interpreted historic places, heritage is still, as Jim Russell complained in 1993,‘framed as an accumulation of artefacts’ rather than as ‘a critically and pluralistically defined matrix aimed at educating [people] to an understanding and appreciation of the broader environment’. Graeme Davison argues against the primacy of the preserved artefact and for an ‘inspirational model of history, the stuff of which is intangible, such as the ideals and values which invest buildings and places with meaning’.30 Russell and Davison somewhat overstate the case, because the survival of traces of the material past will almost always be intrinsic to historic places, but there is considerable validity to their warning that the story-telling potential of most historic places is often under-utilised. In New Zealand, history is frequently hidden behind ‘the cult of the historic artefact’, with lists of buildings being chosen almost entirely for their architectural value or their

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31

association with a respected architect. New Zealand heritage practitioners devote more time to debating how to conserve places than to the politically sensitive questions of whose heritage is being conserved and why. An early 1990s analysis of United States places of national, state and local landmark designations showed that only 5 per cent reflected women’s history;32 a New Zealand comparison would be unlikely to be any better. Our historic places tend to be celebratory, a catalogue of firsts, largests, or places associated with the élite: parliamentary buildings have had a higher survival rate than immigration barracks or benevolent institutions. The written and spoken history presented at New Zealand places is usually meagre. Despite the best efforts of the precariously funded New Zealand Heritage Trail Foundation, our cities have few versions of the internationally known English blue plaques or the prominent signposting used in United States federal historic districts. There is nothing to parallel Boston’s renowned Freedom Trail and its Black Heritage Trail;33 nor is there anything like Power of Place’s use of provocative open-air interpretative devices to tell American urban social history, or the National Parks Service’s ambitious moves to interpret places associated with the Civil War ‘Underground Railroad’, which smuggled slaves out of the Confederacy. So vigorous is the American heritage trail movement that practitioners such as Jennifer Jones are already devising strategies such as preparatory off-site interpretation to lure Generation X-ers back onto the trails and sites.34 Text, pictures and sound offer an under-exploited solution to some of the problems created by the limitations imposed when hard choices are made about the physical presentation of the fabric of a building, structure or site. Imaginative interpretation can solve some of the dilemmas that arise when trying to interpret the continuum of history through the material past alone, interpreting both change over time for individual buildings, structures and sites, but more importantly, places that have not survived and the people, events and ideas associated with them. Heritage Trail interpretation usually employs a combination of noticeboards and pamphlets. Many pamphlets, such as Hamilton’s Architrek: A Walk Through Hamilton’s Historic Southend, are essentially architectural descriptions of existing buildings linked only by geographical proximity. Wellington’s substantial trail booklets, researched and written by professional historians, link existing buildings and features to vanished ones from the past. Some of the more imaginative

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(This page and opposite). Government Buildings was erected in 1876 to house the bulk of the New Zealand public service.The huge wooden building is a rare example of a conservation project that combines a concern for conserving fabric with attention to articulating the place’s intangible associations. The building’s professional interpretation includes conventional signs and elaborate museum displays. GAVIN MCLEAN

trails take a thematic view of place. In Oamaru, for example, a recently opened heritage trail presents Janet Frame’s life and fictional representation of ‘Waimaru’ to visitors.35 In 1993 Sandra Coney and Christine Fernyhough produced a Women About Town heritage trail pamphlet for the Auckland central business area, and during the late 1990s local enthusiasts offered a gay and lesbian heritage walk as part of Wellington’s Devotion festival. People, especially Ma¯ori, women, lesbians and gays and the working class, generally receive little attention from the heritage industry’s publications. That is difficult to reconcile with a more recent trend to place more emphasis on streetscapes and historic areas and less on individual buildings; it also ignores the enormous changes in the subject matter of historical inquiry over the last 30 years, which has seen an emphasis on social history and ‘ordinary’ lives.36 With the exception of some archaeologists, New Zealand heritage practitioners have made little progress on reading and interpreting cultural landscapes. Most remain mesmerised by the ‘wood’ of the buildings and structures and blind to the ‘trees’ of what cultural geographer Peirce Lewis called the ‘unwitting biography of our culture (and ourselves)’.37 Interpretation at historic places is usually minimal. Wellington’s Government Buildings and Oamaru’s Visitor Centre, both publicly owned, are rare examples of the adaptive reuse of ‘working’ heritage

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buildings that also incorporate some public museum functions. The restored Parliament Buildings offers guided tours and the 1990 Bowen House tower offers a reconstruction of hotelier Baron von Alzdorf ’s wine cellar, but often site-specific interpretation does not match even the variable quality of building conservation. In 1998 the Christchurch Heritage Trust’s plaque, which gives building name, date and architect, merely reinforced traditional stereotypes and offered no advance on the brown name and date notices put on Oamaru buildings 30 years earlier. Wellington’s St James Theatre re-opened in 1998 after expensive publicly funded conservation. The building gained a new plaque honouring those who conserved it but it displays no information about its past, even though the old ground-floor ticket windows, sealed and painted over in a historically unprecedented manner, appear eminently suited to displaying text and historical photographs. Here is a page awaiting a scribe. There is a growing literature on historic building types and the short-run technical literature of archaeological reports, conservation plans and heritage inventories grows ever-more rapidly. Nevertheless, because the discussion of historic places is limited outside publications such as the Historic Places Trust’s New Zealand Historic Places (1983–) and few professional historians work in the heritage sector, its contribution

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to New Zealand historiography has so far been modest. Chris Pugsley’s ‘Walking the New Zealand Wars’ series in the small-circulation New Zealand Defence Quarterly links past and present imaginatively and several recent popular books have featured the heritage of towns and districts, building on earlier efforts by the Trust.38 Archaeological, architectural, art history and planning journals give considerable space to heritage issues but it was not until 1997 that the New Zealand Journal of History carried its first article on historic places.39 The vagaries of the process of survival, ad hoc survey and selection, as well as changing political and community taste and perception, have combined to bequeath New Zealanders an idiosyncratic cultural heritage landscape. At the national level, the country has conserved key places such as Parliament Buildings and The Residency ‘to facilitate a sense of national and cultural identity’, as the Historic Heritage Management Review’s discussion document announced in October 1998, and there has been grudging funding of identification and assessment programmes.40 Local government and charitable trusts have also purchased key sites and structures for permanent preservation and presentation, but they are moving increasingly towards intervening to assist the adaptive reuse of heritage streetscapes and elements. As communities and business groups use heritage buildings and landscapes as a point of differentiation for retailing or other tourism purposes, the emphasis can be expected to swing towards informal use of the past, as a ‘mere convenience, a facility’, as Peter Fowler describes it.41 Authenticity will continue to be important for the publicly owned, publicly funded places, but increasingly, the street-level chemistry will blend the froth and hiss of cappuccino machines with the tour guides’ spiel and place the sponsors’ name alongside the heritage plaque.

1

2 3

The Chronicle, 13 Dec 1997. I gratefully acknowledge the comments of David Hamer, David Reynolds, Craig Cairncross, Stephen Rainbow, Julia Gatley and Jan Harris on drafts of this chapter. The Chronicle, 20 Sep 1997. The Chronicle, 13 Dec 1997.

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4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15

16 17 18 19

20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Peter J. Fowler, The Past in Contemporary Society:Then, Now, Routledge, London, 1992, p. 109. Helen Proudfoot, ‘The Concept of Historical Significance in Relation to Heritage’, Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra, 1988, p. 40. Doreen Massey,‘Places and Their Pasts’, History Workshop Journal, no. 39, 1995, p. 186. Raphael Samuel, Patriotism:Vol. 1, History and Politics, London, 1989, pp. xlix–l. Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma, 1995, p. 9. Aachen House, leaflet, nd. Diane Barthel, Historic Preservation: Collective Memory and Historical Identity, Rutgers, New Brunswick, 1996, p. 37. Daily News, 23 Mar 1998. Graeme Davison, ‘Cities and Ceremonies: Nationalism and Civic Ritual in Three New Lands’, NZJH, vol. 24, no. 2, 1990, p. 113. James Semple Kerr, The Conservation Plan: A Guide to the Preparation of Conservation Plans for Places of European Cultural Significance, 3rd edn, National Trust, New South Wales, Sydney, 1991. ICOMOS New Zealand Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Heritage Value, Auckland, 1993. In 1997/98, the lead government agency, the Department of Conservation, allocated 2.7 per cent of its budget to cultural heritage, from which it also partly funded the Historic Places Trust, which employed fewer than 60 staff. Of the 77 regional and local authorities, only three employed one or more full-time heritage staff. ICOMOS New Zealand had a membership of 50 architects, engineers, archaeologists, museologists, planners, administrators and historians. Sixty professional members of the New Zealand Archaeological Association were directly involved with heritage. The New Zealand Institute of Architects had no heritage sub-group, and its members were more likely to be working with developers than with heritage agencies. Fergus Clunie, ‘A Building Resurrected’, New Zealand Historic Places (NZHP), no. 44, 1993, pp. 30–3. Hayden, p. 236. David Hamer,‘Historic Preservation in Urban New Zealand: An Historian’s Perspective’, NZJH, vol. 31, no. 2, 1997, p. 252. David Reynolds, ‘The Ethical Context’, unpublished paper presented to The Conservation Plan – Prospect or Postscript conference, Auckland, 12–14 Oct 1995, p. 4; earlier purchases under the Scenery Preservation Act included pa¯ sites and redoubts, and during World War I, a blockhouse in Upper Hutt. Ian Lochhead,‘Constructing a Past’, NZHP, no. 67, 1998, p. 24.The rest of the complex was protected a decade later. Jeremy Salmond,‘Pompallier and Circumstance’ in David Reynolds (ed.), Timber & Tin: Proceedings of the First ICOMOS New Zealand Conference on the Conservation of Vernacular Structures, Russell, Bay of Islands, 1–4 June 1990, Auckland, 1992, p. 125. Fergus Clunie,‘The House That Never Was’, NZHP, no. 44, 1993, p. 27. Ruth Ross to R.I.M. Burnett, 23 May 1967, HP 35004-007, NZ Historic Places Trust, Wellington. Aidan Challis, ‘The Restoration of the Treaty House, Waitangi, Bay of Islands’, in Reynolds (ed.), p. 151. Challis, p. 152. Challis, p. 153. Keith Stewart,‘New Zealand’s Heritage?’, Listener & TV Times, 5 Feb 1990. Fergus Clunie, Historic Bay of Islands:A Driving Tour, Auckland, 1988, p. 15. Pamphlet, Treaty House,Waitangi, Bay of Islands, New Zealand,Whangarei, 1978. Richard Martineau, ‘The Canadian Inventory of Historic Building: Expanding its

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30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41

Horizon and Creating Synergy’, Heritage Canada, May/Jun 1995, pp. 12–13. Jim Russell, ‘Debating Heritage: From Artefacts to Critical Perception’, Australian Geographer, vol. 24, no. 1, 1993, pp. 12–16. Quoted in Russell, p. 13. Hayden, p. 54. The Freedom Trail, primarily based on sites associated with the War of Independence, stretches from Boston Common to the Bunker Hill Monuments and includes over 30 historic buildings, structures, graveyards, museums and the USS Constitution. See Charles Bahne, The Complete Guide to Boston’s Freedom Trail, 2nd edn, Newtowne Publishing, Cambridge, Ma, 1993. Jennifer Jones, ‘Keeping the Legend Alive: How Can We Help the “Lost Generation” Find the Value of Historic Trails?’, CRM, no. 1, 1997, pp. 46–8. Joan Blackburn, ‘Janet Frame Heritage’, NZHP, no. 67, 1988, pp. 14–15 and Judith Doyle,‘Walking the Trail’, NZHP, no. 67, 1988, pp. 15–16. Hamer, p. 263. Quoted in Nora J. Mitchell and Katherine T. Lacy, ‘Reading Stories Written on the Land’, History News, Summer 1997, pp. 25–7. See Glyn Strange, The Arts Centre of Christchurch Then and Now, Christchurch, 1998; T. Minehan et al, Round the Square, Christchurch, 1996; Sheila Leaver-Cooper, Janet Frame’s Kingdom by the Sea: Oamaru, Lincoln, 1998. Hamer, pp. 251–69. Historic Heritage Management Review: Report of the Ministerial Advisory Committee, Department of Conservation,Wellington, 1998, p. 6. Fowler, p. 109.

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Contr ibutors Giselle Byrnes is a Lecturer in New Zealand history at Victoria University of Wellington, where she currently teaches courses on Ma¯ori–Pa¯keha¯ relations and the Treaty of Waitangi. She has a PhD from the University of Auckland and has published several articles on colonial surveying and the Treaty claims process. Giselle has a book coming out soon on colonial land surveying. Bronwyn Dalley’s major research interest is cultural history. In 1997 she was the J. D. Stout Fellow in New Zealand Cultural Studies and began a study of gender, sexuality and culture in New Zealand urban centres between 1869 and 1929; the essay in this collection is drawn from that research. A Senior Historian at the Historical Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs, Bronwyn is compiling a photographic history of everyday life in twentieth-century New Zealand. Chris Hilliard graduated MA (Hons) from the University of Auckland in 1997, where he completed a thesis on the writing of New Zealand history in the years between 1920 and 1940. He has published several articles from this research. Chris is currently a student in the PhD programme in history at Harvard University. Danny Keenan was born in New Plymouth and is of Nga¯ti Te Whiti– Te A¯ti Awa descent. He teaches Ma¯ori and New Zealand history at Massey University, Palmerston North. His research interests include Taranaki iwi history, New Zealand race-relations history, and comparative native history. He is a co-editor of a forthcoming Ma¯ori history of New Zealand. Bronwyn Labrum is Curator, History and Textiles, at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, where she pursues her interests in the social history of clothing and fashion, and the interconnections between material and popular

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culture. Previously she taught in the History Department at Victoria University of Wellington where she is completing a PhD on the subject of her essay in this collection. She is the author of Women’s History:A Short Guide to Researching and Writing Women’s History in New Zealand (BWB, 1993) and a number of articles on women’s history and biography. Margaret McClure gained her MLitt for a study of nineteenth-century perceptions of work, and is now a freelance historian. She is currently researching the history of divorce in New Zealand, and teaches theology and literature for the Auckland Consortium of Theological Education. Her previous publications are The Story of Birkenhead, and A Civilised Community:A History of Social Security in New Zealand, 1898–1998 (AUP, 1998). Fiona McKergow is Curator of Social History at The Science Centre and Manawatu Museum, Palmerston North. Her research interests include the history of clothing and textiles, on which she has written several articles. This essay is drawn from a larger study of women’s and men’s dress in New Zealand. Gavin McLean, Senior Historian at the Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, lives in Wellington, where he has gained modest notoriety as a critic and chilehead. He is a former Head of Policy and Senior Historian for the New Zealand Historic Places Trust and a national committee member of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). Gavin’s recent publications include Historic Wellington: A Walking Tour (1998), and Wellington: The First Years of European Settlement (2000); several pieces of work will appear later in 2000. Katherine Raine is an ardent immigrant gardener. She has a BA from Harvard University and a MLA from the University of Sheffield. After studying and working in Japan and California, she began practising landscape architecture in Dunedin in 1989. She has written a number of articles on aspects of New Zealand’s garden history. Michael P. J. Reilly’s serendipitous study of Ma¯ori and History at high school in Te Atatu¯, Auckland, led to an MA in Ma¯ ori Studies from the Victoria University of Wellington and a PhD in Pacific Islands History from the Australian National University. He introduced a series of Ma¯ori history courses at the University of Otago, where he has been a Senior Lecturer in Ma¯ori Studies since 1997. He believes in the heuristic value of serendipity and in espying connections between the histories of islands in the Pacific.

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Index Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations Aachen House: 214 Abacus House: 217 Aboriginals: 16 Adkin, Leslie: 129, 130 adornment: 7, 165, 176, 185, see also clothing advertising: 174, 176, 183, 184 Alexander Turnbull Library: 118, 122, 123 Alzdorf, Baron von: 227 Andersen, Johannes: 121, 122, 124, 128, 130, 132 Arch, Joseph: 100 archaeology: 213 architects and architecture: 4, 225 Arrowtown: 216, 224 art deco: 216 artefacts: 7, 21, 23–4, 118, 163–87 passim, 213, 224 ‘Athenree’: 78, 79, 81, 82 Atkinson, Jane Maria: 103 atua and hau: 15, 21, 23, 27–34, 123 Auckland: 22, 67, 68, 76, 88, 103, 125, 128, 133, 141–56 passim, 178, 179, 181, 190, 213, 216, 217, 220, 226 Auckland Museum: 21, 168, 179 Australia: 16–17, 23, 26, 56, 61, 81, 109, 112, 177 Baker, John: 64, 66 Bakhtin, M. M.: 132 Bank of New Zealand Building: 214 Barker, Lady: 103 Barnicoat, John: 67 Barr, John: 128 Baxter, James K.: 113–14 Bay of Islands: 216, 224, see also Kerikeri, Russell,Waitangi

Bay of Plenty: 15, 47, 76, 78, 142–54 passim Bayly, Audrey: 144 Bayly, Bill: 142–59 passim Bayly, Constance: 142, 143, 144, 147, 148 Bayly, Frank: 142, 154 Bayly,Tom: 144 Beaglehole, J. C.: 25, 27 Beattie, Herries: 124 Belich, James: 15, 28–9, 31, 134 Best, Elsdon: 28, 118, 120, 130–3 passim Bhabha, Homi: 64 Binney, Judith: 15, 27, 30 Bledisloe, Lord: 221, 222 bodies: 6, 7, 97–117 passim, 163, 164 Bowen House: 227 Bradshaw, James: 105, 106 bras: 174, 175, 184 Brees, Samuel: 61 Brookes, Edwin: 71 Broughton, Ruka: 27, 29, 30, 33, 34 Brunner,Thomas: 64 Buick,T. Lindsay:118, 126 built environment: 4, 8, 211–28 passim Burrows, Albert N.: 128 Busby House see The Residency Butler, Samuel: 54 Canterbury: 54, 56, 61–7, 77, 81, 83, 89, 90, 91, see also Christchurch Canterbury Provincial Buildings: 219 Canterbury Provincial Buildings Vesting Act 1928: 220 Carr, E. H.: 14, 15, 16, 32 Carter, Paul: 127 Carter, Stephen: 145, 146

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Caversham Project: 3 Chakrabarty, Dipesh: 32–3 Challis, Aidan: 222, 223 Chatham Islands: 126 child abuse: 199 Child Welfare Division: 192, 193, 194, 195, 198, 200, 202, 206 children: 31, 78, 105, 106, 107, 144, 188–212 passim Christchurch: 77, 87, 88, 91, 106, 111, 149, 172, 198, 205, see also Canterbury Christchurch Heritage Trust: 227 Circa Theatre 213, 215 clothing: 4, 7, 9, 163–87 passim, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, see also adornment Collins, Charles: 145 colonisation: 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 18–21, 24, 31, 33, 42–7, 54–61, 64, 66, 67, 72, 76, 77, 79, 89–92, 97, 114, 118, 119, 125, 126, 127, 129 Compensation Court: 47 Coney, Sandra: 226 constructing history: 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 15–37 passim, 58, 120, consumer goods:172, 201, 202, 206 contexts: 7, 32, 33, 55, 58, 120, 133, 165, 213–4 Coppins, Frederick: 145 Cook, James: 69, 219 Coroner’s Act 1930: 148 Courage, Sarah: 76–96 passim Cowan, James: 124, 125 Cox, James: 104 crime: 140–62 passim Crown Forestry Rental Trust: 15 cultural heritage: 211–28 passim cultural history: 1–9 passim, 27, 32, 60, 61, 89, 97, 98, 113, 126, 129, 134, 140–87 passim, 212 Curnow, Allen: 124 Cussen, Lawrence: 67 Davison, Graeme: 224 Deans, Jane: 76–96 passim, 77, 91 death, unexplained: 7, 140–62 passim Dening, Greg: 31–2, 34 Department of Internal Affairs: 118, 219, 220 Dior, Christian: 176–7 discretionary welfare: 188–212 passim discursive analysis: 4, 7, 8, 27, 33, 58, 66, 97, 98, 100, 105, 107, 113, 120, 126, 129, 132, 134 divorce: 199 Dobson, Arthur: 63, 72 Dodds, Alf: 156 domestic violence: 200, 202, 205, 206 Domett, Alfred: 130 Dominion Museum: 118 Downes, T. W.: 124

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dress see clothing Dunedin: 3, 103, 168, 214, 217 Durie, E.: 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 55 education: 191 Eight Hour Bill 1884: 107 Else, Anne: 201 Employment of Females Act 1873: 105, 107 England: 177, 224, 225 Enoka: 50 Epiha: 63 ethnicity see race ethnology: 7, 33, 118–39 passim fabric: 4, 164, 167, 168, 174, 182, 183 facadism: 215 Fairburn, Miles: 3, 65 family history: 2, 8, 188–210 passim family benefit: 191, 202, 203 farming: 107–13 passim, 189 fashion: 7, 164, 176–84 passim Featherston, Isaac: 99–100 Feminism: 2 femininity: 105, 164, 171–7 passim, 181, 183, 184 Fender, Stephen: 102 Fernyhough, Christine: 226 Field, Henry: 62 Fildes, Horace: 123, 128, 129 Firth, Clifton: 181, 182 FitzRoy, Governor: 49 Flynn, Gerald: 148 Forbes, George: 216 Fowler, Peter: 218 Frame, Janet: 170, 226 freezing works: 68, 110, 111 Fulton, Robert Valpy: 127 gardens and gardening: 4, 6, 50, 69, 76–96 passim Garland, Robin: 181,182 gay history: 226 gender: 3, 6, 100, 105, 134, 172, 174, 177, 178, 184 in families, 188, 190, 196, 197, 205, 206 see also men, women Geological Survey: 63 Gibbons, Peter: 126, 128 Gilpin,William: 69 Gooch,William: 31 Gore: 128 Gore Browne, Governor: 45 Government Buildings,Wellington: 226, 226–7 Graham, George: 123 grandparents: 199 Grey, George: 86, 118 Grigg, John: 107

INDEX

Gummer,William: 222 Hairini: 25–6 Hamilton: 143, 203, 225 Hammond, Alfred: 149 hau see atua and hau Hau‘ofa, Epeli: 31 Hawke’s Bay: 110, see also Napier Hayden, Dolores: 214 Heale,Theophilus: 57 health: 22, 90, 98, 99, 100, 105, 107, 108, 191 Heaphy, Charles: 61, 69, 70, 71 heritage sites: 8, 212–28 passim Hewlings, Samuel: 62 hire purchase: 200, 201, 202, 204, 205, 207 Historic Heritage Management Review: 228 Historic Places Act 1993: 212 Historic Places Trust Register: 212 historical accuracy: 34, 39, 133, 158, 165, 211, 220 historiography: 14–20 passim, 25, 27, 30–4, 39, 40, 41, 118–39 passim, 228 see also artefacts, constructing history, cultural history, discursive analysis, family history, gay history, interpretation, labour history, Ma¯ori history, memory, narratives, oral sources, ownership of history, social history, source material, story-telling, soul history, teaching history, texts, welfare history, writing history Hocken,Thomas: 120, 121 Hodges,William: 69 Hokianga: 20, 23, 24, 25, 27 Holloway, Christopher: 100, 102 Horowhenua: 129, 130 horticulture see gardens and gardening housing: 188–212 passim Howard, Mabel: 195 Hunt, Frederick: 146, 147, 148, 156 Hutt Valley: 190, 195 ICOMOS: 219 immigrants: 56, 61,78, 83, 84, 92, 93, 97–102 passim, 113, 114 Immigration Office: 98 incest: 153, 154, 200 India: 90 interpretation: 214, 221, 223, 225, 226 Invercargill: 102, 190 Irvine-Smith, F. L.: 129 Irwin, Phyllis: 168, 172, 173 Jackson, Moana: 43 Jollie, Edward: 62 Jones, Jennifer: 225

Jordan, Minnie: 144 Joseph, George: 158 Journal of the Polynesian Society: 123 Jury, H.Te Whatahoro: 123 ‘juvenile delinquency’: 190, 193 Kaikohe: 203 Katherine Mansfield Birthplace: 212 Kawerau: 22–4 Ka¯whia: 49 Kemp House: 211, 212 Kingi, Hori: 26 Kerikeri: 211, 212, 218 Kiwiana: 4 Knight, C. R.: 220 Knight, Payne: 69 Korean War: 189 labour history: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 97–117 passim Lakey, Christobel and Samuel: 159 Lance, James: 108 land: 4, 6, 8, 15, 41–51 passim, 54–96 passim, 109, 110, see also Ma¯ori and land, whenua tautohetohe Land Claims Commission: 25, 57 Land Purchase Department: 57 landscape/s: 4, 6, 9, 16, 42, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 60, 61, 65, 67, 69, 72, 79, 83, 88, 214 land wars see New Zealand wars Langdon, Kathleen: 147 language: 3, 18, 25, 27, 29, 30, 46, 60, 127, 156, 172 Lawn, C. A.: 58, 59 Lediard,Yvonne see Marsh leisure: 9, 164, 178, 179 letters: 98, 99, 101–4, 108, 125, 153 Lévesque, Andrée: 2 Lister, John: 150 Lucas, Clive: 223 Macdonald, Charlotte: 3 McDonnell,Thomas: 29–30 McGregor, Peter and Emma: 103,104 McKerrow, James: 56, 57, 62 McNab, Robert: 120–4 passim Mair, Gilbert: 118 Malouf, David: 16, 34 Manawatu¯: 63, 64 Mantell,Walter: 59, 62, 64, 67 manufacturing: 98, 104, 105, 110, 111, 165 Manukorihi: 49, 50 Ma¯ori: 3, 5, 7, 8, 58, 60, 65, 110, 114, 226 customary knowledge, 39–53 passim, 119 history, 15–53 passim, 118–39 passim land, 15, 27, 28, 41–51 passim, 55, 56, 58, 60, 65, see also land, whenua tautohetohe

235

INDEX

Marquesas: 31–32 marriage: 179, 190 Marsh, Yvonne (Lediard): 179–80, 180, 183 masculinity: 36, 104, 107, 164, 169, 170, 184, see also men Massey, Doreen: 213, 214, 220 material culture: 7, 163–87 passim Mauss, Marcel: 28–9 Mazengarb Report: 195 Mead, Sidney Moko: 15, 28, 31 memory: 25–7, 214 men: as fathers/providers, 189, 190, 194, 198, 199, 205, 206, 207 as immigrants, 97–117 passim bodies, 105, 106, 109, 111, 112, 184 clothing, 163, 166, 169, 170, 173–4, 177–8, 179, 183, 184 work, 97–117 passim see also gender, masculinity methodology: 3, 4, 7, 9, see also historiography Miller, James: 102 Mink, Louis O.: 131 Mirror: 170, 171, 176, 177, 183 Mitchell,Thomas: 66 Mosgiel woollen mill: 105, 106 Mt Cook: 66, 72 Mt Egmont see Mt Taranaki Mt Ruapehu: 63 Mt Taranaki: 64, 67 ,69, 70, 71 murder: 126, 141, 149–57 museums: 5, 23, 212, 213, 216, see also textual museums Napier: 110, 216 narratives: 4, 6, 7, 8, 18, 19, 20, 34, 39, 41, 43, 51, 72, 97, 98, 108, 113, 121, 122, 125, 126, 127, 130, 141, 149, 158, 159, 224 Nash,Walter: 172 National Council of Women: 148 national identity: 7, 8, 24, 55, 60, 76, 93, 97, 126, 134 Native Affairs Committee: 41, 43 Native Department: 57 Native Land Court: 25, 27, 41, 44, 46, 47, 48, 62, 65, 130 Needy Families Scheme: 192, 193, 194, 204 Nelson: 67, 70 Neumann, Klaus: 17–20 ‘New Look’: 176, 177 New Plymouth: 217 New Zealand centennial 1940: 222 New Zealand Company: 49, 58, 218 New Zealand Draper: 177, 178 New Zealand Farmer: 109–12 passim New Zealand Herald: 151, 152, 154, 156

236

New Zealand Heritage Trail Foundation: 225 New Zealand Historic Places Trust: 211, 218, 220, 227 New Zealand Historical Association: 18 New Zealand Journal of History: 228 New Zealand Settlements Act 1863: 50 New Zealand Truth: 148–57 passim New Zealand wars: 27, 46, 48, 49, 124, 218, 228 New Zealand Woman’s Weekly: 201 Nga¯ Rauru: 27, 29 Nga¯i Tahu: 67, 124 Nga¯ti Awa: 15, 47 Nga¯ti Haumea: 42 Nga¯ti Maru: 49 Nga¯ti Mutunga: 49 Nga¯ti Rahiri: 48 Nga¯ti Ruanui: 29 Nga¯ti Te Whiti: 43, 50 Nga¯ti Tu: 42 Northcroft, Erima: 146 Oamaru: 216, 217, 224, 226, 227 Oamaru Borough Council building: 217 Old St Paul’s: 218 Olssen, Erik: 2, 3, 4 Olveston: 212 oral sources: 4, 39, 123, 124, 125 Otaraua: 49 ownership of history: 211, 212 Pacific: 19, 23, 30–2, 60 Page,William: 222 painting: 60, 61, 67, 69 Pa¯keha¯: 3, 5, 6, 39–41, 43, 54, 60, 66, 97, 101, 110, 113, 114, 127, 128, 188–210 passim and Ma¯ori history, 15–53 passim, 118–39 passim panoptic perspective: 54, 66–8, 70, 72 Papamoa: 142–51 passim Papua New Guinea: 23, 24 Parihaka: 45, 49 Park, James: 63, 67 Parliament Buildings: 218, 227, 228 Patea: 110 Peek, Charles: 196 Pensions Department: 192 Peryman, Elizabeth: 104 Petone: 110 Phillips, Jock: 3, 4, 56, 97, 98, 110, 166 photographs/photography: 4, 7, 24, 166, 170, 180, 181, 182 picturesque perspective: 68–72 poetry: 4, 109, 112, 124, 129, 130 police: 144–59 passim Polynesian Society: 119, 123

INDEX

Pompallier: 212, 218–22 Pompallier, Bishop: 220 Port Nicholson: 71 post-war era: 7, 8, 188, 189, 196, 197 Pound, Francis: 60, 61 power: 89, 205, 206 Power of Place: 219, 225 Prebble, Richard: 211 Price, Uvedale: 68, 69 prosperity: 56, 178, 188, 189, 196, 200, 204, 206 Pugsley, Chris: 228 Pukerangiora: 49 Putaringamotu: 77 Queen’s Head Tavern: 213, 214 race: 3, 15–37 passim, 41,42, 56, 100, 101, 134, 164, see also Ma¯ori, Pa¯keha¯ Ranaipiri,Tamati: 28–9 Ranfurly, Governor: 88 Rangikopinga, Erueti: 41–3 Rangitake,Wiremu Kingi: 45, 49 rape: 126, 150, 153, 155, 157, 158 Raukokore: 142, 143, 144, 146 Reed,Vernon: 223 Repton, Humphrey: 69 Reretawhangawhanga: 49 Richardson, John: 105, 106, 107 ‘Riccarton’: 77, 77, 90 rituals: 9, 63, 164, 179 Rochfort, John: 62, 63, 66 Rolleston,William: 125 Ross, Hilda: 195, 198 Ross, Ruth: 25–7, 220, 221, 222 Royal, Charles: 19 Royds, John: 103, 104 Russell: 218–22 Russell, Jim: 224 Rutherford, James: 125, 133 Samuel, Raphael: 2, 4, 113, 166, 214 Santal Rebellion: 33 Scarff, Gwen: 149 Scholefield, G. H.: 122, 123 Schrempp, Gregory: 27–8 ‘Seadown’: 77, 85, 86, 94 Sealy,W. G.: 63 Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force: 170 Second World War: 166–76, 183, 192, 193 190, see also clothing, uniforms security: 92, 176, 189, 200, 207 Seddon, Richard: 108 sexuality: 7, 145, 153, 154, 155, 158, 177, 188 Sheppard, Robert: 64 shoes: 163, 167, 202

Sim Commission: 46, 47 Simmons, Alfred: 101 Sissons, Jeffrey: 15, 27, 130 Skinner,T. K.: 63 Skinner,W. H.: 64 Skudder,Yvonne: 211, 212 Smith, Charles Kingsford: 144 Smith, Stephenson Percy: 62, 120, 123 Smith,William Mein: 61 social class: 3, 78, 85, 89, 98, 164, 178 social history: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9,14, see also cultural history social security see welfare Social Security Department: 192, 193, 194, 195, 202, 203, 204, 207 social workers: 189, 194, 196, 196, 207 Society for the Protection of Women and Children: 147 Solomon Islands: 24 soul history: 6, 7, 98, 101–4 source material: 4, 6, 7, 9, 20, 21, 39–53 passim, 58, 59, 97, 102, 119, 122, 125, 165, 185, see also artefacts, texts Soutar, Monty: 19, 30 South Africa: 90 space/s: 6, 32, 54–76 passim Speights Brewery: 217 St Andrew’s Church, New Plymouth: 217 St James Theatre: 227 State Advances Corporation: 192, 193, 197, 200, 203, 205 Stephens, Samuel: 64, 70 Stewart, Adela: 76–96 passim Stewart, Keith: 223 Stewart,William Downie: 125 stockings: 167, 172–3, 175, 176 Stone Store: 211, 212 story-telling: 8, 9, 97, 98, 114, 142, 149, 157–9, see also memory, narrative, oral sources Sullivan, Daniel: 174 surveying: 6, 54–75 passim Takerau: 63 Taranaki: 5, 41–53 passim, 63, 64, 69, 70, 71 Taranaki Ma¯ori Trust Board: 46 Tauranga: 76, 88, 143, 144, 148, 157 Tauranga¯ika: 29–30, 33 Ta¯whirima¯tea: 27–8 Te Amo: 49 Te Arawa: 27 Te A¯ti Awa: 38, 46–50 Te Kaingati: 42 Te Kooti: 30, 126 Te Pouhere Ko¯rero: 18 Te Rangika¯heke: 27 Te Whiti o Rongomai: 45

237

INDEX

teaching history: 17 texts: 4, 7, 8, 59, 97, 98, 118–39, 159 passim, see also sources textual museums: 7, 8, 118–39 The Residency: 212, 218–23, 221, 228 Thomas, Nicholas: 24, 33 Thomason, Margaret: 147, 148 Thompson, Maria and William: 103, 104 Tı¯tokowaru: 29, 30, 33 Tonga: 31 Torrens, Robert: 57 Tory: 218 Treaty House see The Residency Treaty of Waitangi: 19, 20, 25, 26, 41, 55, 60 Tuhoe: 120, 130–3 passim Turnbull, Alexander: 121, 122 uniforms: 166–72, 184 unions: 100, 101 United States: 81, 106, 109, 225 Vogel, Julius: 98, 99, 101 von Humboldt, Alexander: 69 wa¯hi tapu: 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 42 50, 131, 212 Waikato: 22, 23, 42, 43, 46, 49, 68 Waimaru: 226 Waitaki County Council building: 217 Waitangi: 218–23 Waitangi National Trust: 222, 223 Waitangi Tribunal: 15, 48 Waitara: 45, 49–50, 67 Walker, Charles D’Renzy: 142, 150 Walker, Elsie: 7, 140–62 passim

238

Walker, Ronald: 150, 151 Wanganella: 167 Ward, Joseph: 152 Weetman, Sidney: 67 welfare: 188–210 passim welfare history: 3, 5, 7, 8, 188–210 passim Wellington: 70, 71, 99, 128, 129, 167, 213, 214, 216, 225, 226, 227 West Coast Settlement Act 1880: 50 Westport Chambers: 213, 215 whakapapa: 5, 39, 40, 41, 43–6, 48, 50, 51, 123 Whanganui: 63, 124 whenua tautohetohe: 15, 31, see also land, Ma¯ori –land White, John: 20–6, 131 White, Joseph: 20–1 Williams, Herbert: 28–30 women: 2, 3, 6, 80, 107, 113, 147, 148, 149 as immigrants, 83–4, 97–117 passim as mothers, 189, 190, 194, 196, 201, 202, 205, 207 bodies, 105, 106, 112, 114, 177, 181, 184 clothing, 163, 166, 168, 170–84 death, 155 farming, 80, 112 history, 2, 3, 6, 225, 226 work, 105, 106, 177, 191 see also feminism Women’s War Service Auxiliary: 172 work: 6, 97–117 passim, 128 Worsfold, Louisa: 220 Wright, David McKee: 112 writing history: 7, 9, 27, 28, 30, 39, 41, 56, 118–39 passim