Part #153: Sittin’ on Top of the World
“If you wish to understand history, go to any town square. Take a rich sculpture or a precious vase or something of that type and set it on a high pedestal, with ladders provided that may be used to reach it. Assemble the local people and tell them that this item is precious and valuable, but only so long as it is left perfectly intact and undamaged: the material it is made out of is almost worthless, it is the perfection of the craft which is prized. The people will understand this.
Yet what will they do as soon as you turn your back and walk away? Compete for it, fight for it, kill for it, blood spilt on the ground, the sculpture in shattered fragments. And men will boast that they have won a bloodstained fragment of stone from the fray, though they know it to be worthless! Or that they held the ladder for a moment longer than their neighbour did before it was torn from their grasp. Oh yes, they will boast over such things, and treasure them jealously against those who would try to take them away. And it would never occur to them to work together, to cooperate, to climb the ladders together and carefully take the sculpture down, and enjoy its fruits together.
Such are the kings who have fought over the world for as far as the memory of mankind goes back. Humanity deserves better.”
– Pablo Sanchez, 1854 speech; quoted in “Fever Dreams: Sanchez the Parablist” by Agnes Scrope (1976)
*
From: “Culture War: A History of Native Resistance to Colonialism” by Jonathan V. Graves (1981)—
Why the Mauré? The question has been asked so many times, not least by the Mauré themselves. Many of the syncretic religions in Autiaraux would attribute it to them being the chosen people of God, or whichever hybrid deity or deities they place at the top of their faith. It says something of Mauré history that, perhaps, the cynical reader is not quite so ready as to dismiss this idea as he might be of the similar ones claimed by so many other cultures.
On the face of it, the Mauré had no chance of any kind of determined resistance to colonialism. They were a Stone Age people, having been cut off and isolated in Autiaraux for around a thousand years, having forgotten much of the craft that had brought them there in the first place in their great voyages of exploration. They had little in the way of crops and no form of writing. In many ways they were worse off than some native peoples whose fate was to vanish altogether in everything but genetic record under a tidal wave of Europeans. Yet a different destiny was prescribed for the people of Autiaraux, the Land of the Long White Cloud.[1] What reasons have we, as historians with the benefit of hindsight, considered to produce this result?
Through happenstance or providence, the Mauré’s culture and worldview made them better able to react and respond to early contacts with Europeans than many native peoples’. Many native peoples, on exposure to superior European technology and knowledge, either dismissed it as unimportant or treated it as magic and worshipped the Europeans as gods.[2] Either approach ultimately ended in destruction of one degree or another. The Mauré’s response on the other hand was generally to recognise that the Europeans had superior technology and knowledge, work out the potential implications and opportunities, and then to seek those things for themselves. This combination of humility, cunning and pragmatism served them well in their dealings with Europeans. There were naturally some Mauré who
did reject European weapons and knowledge as alien and un-Mauré, but these ideas generally had little time to take root in the wars that soon swept Autiaraux and placed the musket-users on top, and their attitude with them.[3]
Of course, this attitude alone would not have been enough to preserve them from colonialism. There are plenty of examples of peoples elsewhere who had similarly sensible attitudes but failed to resist colonisation nonetheless. The other advantages of the Mauré were not ones they had conscious control over: geography and happenstance. It is hard for us to appreciate in the modern global era just how isolated Autiaraux was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Almost directly opposite Europe on the globe, the land was poetically described as ‘Finisterre’ by some writers: literally
The End of the World. Autiaraux was not particularly close to any other land. Antipodea, the closest major landmass, was of some interest to Europeans even before and besides La Pérouse’s discovery of its most habitable regions—its proximity to the East Indies and their rich trade meant Antipodea could be a useful base, or at least a coastline worth knowing about in case one’s ship got wrecked on it during an East Indies trade voyage. Autiaraux’s isolation by contrast meant the only interest in the land was for its own sake. This might not have been enough—Autiaraux was still good, rich land ripe for farming and European settlement—had it not been for the happy coincidence (for the Mauré) that the Jacobin Wars intruded and ensured that no nation would be in a position to launch a state-sponsored colonisation attempt for some time. Individual adventurers were another matter, but we will come to that in time.
It is this chronological as well as geographical isolation that benefited the Mauré. Unusually among native peoples, they had many years in which to consider and accept the impact of contact with Europeans before Europeans were in a position to arrive in large numbers. Technically first contact between Mauré and Europeans was the voyage of Abel Tasman in 1642, which—like many other encounters—ended bloodily with a Mauré attack in what Tasman called Murderers’ Bay, but now bears his own name.[4] However this contact, followed by sporadic and debated ones for the next 150 years, had little lasting impact: scholars still debate how common European metal trade goods circulating in Autiaraux around this time were. Not that the land was known as Autiaraux at the time—nothing was known of the Mauré language or culture. Tasman had named the islands ‘Staten Landt’, assuming they were part of the great mythical southern continent generally known as Terra Australis Incognita. When this was shown not to be the case, the Dutch then renamed them ‘Nieuw Zeeland’ (i.e. ‘New Zealand’), and for many years this was the name shown on European maps.
What is generally regarded as the ‘true’ first contact is, of course, that of La Pérouse and the
D’Estaing in 1788. The great French explorer, not content with the discovery of the habitable portions of Antipodea and producing new maps of Asia, was ultimately responsible for opening up Autiaraux to the world—and popularising that name rather than ‘Nieuw Zeeland’. La Pérouse introduced many things to the Mauré; unfortunately, one of those things was European diseases, particularly smallpox. These ravaged the population for the next twenty years alongside the warfare we shall discuss later, but the population began to rebound in the second decade of the nineteenth century.
It is worth, at this point, considering the issue of European attitudes to the Mauré. It is often (see P. Hartley in
The New Journal of South Seas Studies, vol. VI, pp 242-263 (
1966)) wrongly assumed that European exceptionalist attitudes towards the Mauré are purely the product of, and a reaction to, the Mauré’s successful resistance of colonialism. Pleasing though this theory may be to those of us keen to paint European colonisers of the day as supremacist Racists by default until reality forced them to reconsider, it does not match the facts. Approving European accounts of the Mauré date back to La Pérouse’s first voyage—though of course mixed with critical ones, mostly aimed at their practices of cannibalism and killing a percentage of female children at birth, both a product of their warrior-focused society. We need to consider the origins of these attitudes.
Certainly part of the issue is that most of the early Europeans who encountered the Mauré were, obviously, sailors. Though the Mauré had forgotten much of the navigational and shipbuilding skills that had first brought them to Autiaraux in the fourteenth century, a lot still remained. European sailors were somewhat impressed that the Mauré were capable of sailing out in their canoes to meet European ships in Autiaraux bays before their anchored, and far more so that they could sometimes follow them on quite long and complex voyages around the islands as they sought better trade opportunities. Further, damaged European ships could sometimes be repaired with Mauré help: though the Mauré initially lacked iron tools, they were able to apply the techniques they used to make their own large canoes to help the Europeans—for a price of course, usually in the form of muskets and gunpowder. Of course these factors also apply to other peoples of the South Seas, many of whom at this point had superior navigational learning, having retained what the Mauré had lost. A typical example can be found in Jan Soutendijk’s account of the visit to Amsterdam of Lee Boe, a prince of Palau, in 1784.[5] Though the Mauré might lack writing, from the point of view of the average illiterate European sailor their skill on the sea more than negated that, and in some ways set them above supposedly superior Asian civilisations.
Undeniably another factor—one that would doubtless reduce Sanchezistas to tears—is that
war brought Mauré and Europeans together. From the very start, from La Pérouse’s first voyage (and especially from his second in 1795), Europeans were able to observe Mauré warfare and write accounts of it. Once again, they were impressed, in particular with the Mauré’s tactics and command of siege warfare. Prior to European contact, the chief weapons of the Mauré had included the
tau spear,
patou club and
taïeia quarterstaff.[6] Despite these limitations, the Mauré had developed sophisticated forms of warfare focusing around the
pa fort, which (as many Europeans observed) allowed even some tribes lacking muskets to hold off those equipped with them. The early
pa forts were sometimes compared to motte-and-bailey castles from Europe’s past. It is true that there are different strands of thought among the generally positive European accounts, some of whom belong more to the ‘noble savage’ ideal which compare the Mauré’s use of primitive weapons and oral tradition to the Ancient Greek epics the Europeans admired. Similar such accounts can be found in descriptions of other native peoples around the world, particularly in Africa. It is the second strand which is more unique to the Mauré: the observation that the Mauré rapidly adapted their tactics and
pa-building techniques as European weapons such as iron blades and muskets came into use through trade. Some noted that the Mauré had learned similar lessons as Europe itself had, with high-walled castles being replaced by low bastions in response to the proliferation of cannon capable of knocking such walls down, and thus demonstrated themselves worthy of respect by making such a military analysis.
Mauré culture, at this point rather inextricable from the discussion of war, was viewed as more ambiguous. Many Europeans initially found it difficult to understand the concept of
mana which underpinned Mauré (and indeed much South Seas islander in general) culture, which sometimes led to clashes and bloodshed between Mauré and European traders. It was of course La Pérouse’s people, who fled to Autiaraux from Jacobin-controlled Antipodea in 1802 and lived among the Mauré for years afterwards, who had the best view of their culture. Some of those who eventually returned to France in 1814 after the Jacobin Wars wrote on the subject, and the best-known account is that of Henri Comeau in his
Savages and Civilised Men: Life Among the People of Autiaraux. Comeau had been badly shaken by the excesses of the Revolution when he had first returned to France with La Pérouse in 1800, and his book presents an overly romanticised picture of the Mauré contrasted favourably with the course of civilisation back in Europe: the twist of the title is that the ‘savages’ turn out to be the French and the ‘civilised men’ are the Mauré. There was much criticism of this even from Comeau’s fellow members of La Pérouse’s crew, who pointed out he had brushed over issues like cannibalism. Despite this, the book was a bestseller and helped create a mythic view of the Mauré in the eyes of the French and eventually other Europeans. Comeau’s sardonic tone doubtless helped. One of the more famous quotes from the book concerns Comeau’s description of
muru, a Mauré practice by which upon the death of an important
rangatira (chief), the neighbouring tribes would all promptly invade to take advantage of the ensuing chaos. Comeau pointed out that ‘given the late history of our own continent for the past hundred years with a War of Succession breaking out every time a crowned head slips from this earthly abode, who are we to name them savages?’
Comeau is also noted for his description of
mana, in which he compared the idea to that of duty and honour in European usage, noting that the two were not entirely synonymous but there were some points of comparison. ‘The Mauré, for example, can quite readily understand why our soldiers place such value on a piece of colourful cloth on a stick [i.e. the regimental colours] and will fight and die to prevent them falling into enemy hands: they symbolise and embody the honour and identity of the regiment, and if they are lost then the regiment itself ceases to exist in shame’. While there was still a lot of confusion and clashes due to the Mauré’s different conception of property (they believed that whoever produced a raw material ultimately owned any item that had been produced from that raw material by someone else, for example), the points Comeau made about the nature of
mana generally helped ease relations between European traders and the Mauré and other South Sea islanders.
As well as painting a generally favourable picture of the Mauré in European eyes, the fact that Comeau’s book did not gloss over the Mauré’s war practices tended to discourage the exhausted states of the early Watchful Peace from launching any serious colonial expeditions there. Comeau’s version of events suggested any band of colonists would be torn to shreds as soon as they got off their boat, and though the Mauré might be easily overcome with enough armed troops, it didn’t seem worth it. There were easier targets. Of course, what put off the budget-balancing states only attracted individual adventurers intrigued by Comeau’s description.
Because the Mauré themselves did not have writing at this point (though, characteristically, they swiftly realised its value and began to adopt it) we have to rely solely on European-penned reports to cover the early period of the Mauré’s reaction to European contact. This is not only problematic because of the obvious biases, but also because Europeans could not be everywhere and doubtless many important clashes are lost to history—sometimes remembered in Mauré oral tradition, but even then the wars of this period, with
iwis[7] clashing, defeating each other and often being wiped out or absorbed into another, mean that even that resource can be lost. All we can do is cover the very broad trends of the period.
What is known is that the Tainui, a tribal confederation of initially four
iwi, benefited considerably from being the first people to trade with La Pérouse in 1788. The importance of their acquisition of muskets at this point is sometimes overstated. There were relatively few muskets involved, not enough to make that much of a difference in warfare: far more important were the iron blades the Tainui acquired in trade, considerably superior to the materials the Mauré had previously had for creating weapons—bone, wood, shark’s teeth, and so forth. The Mauré mostly used the blades as spearheads or short stabbing swords, fitting what their existing martial training regime was designed for: they lacked the skills to fit the use of long swords. Iron alone, as ancient peoples had long ago discovered in encounters with the Hittite Empire, was superweapon enough in itself.
Furthermore the Tainui could not produce their own muskets, repair them or produce their own gunpowder, although they did sometimes shape their own bullets from sanded-down stones to replace those lost. The Tainui are believed to have cleverly used the muskets where they were most important to defeat their enemies, with tactics such as identifying chiefs and other important enemy leaders and shooting them down from a distance, disguising muskets as quarterstaffs to make the enemy paranoid about where the shots were coming from and how many of the quarterstaffs were actually muskets, and using drums to imitate the sound of muskets to make it look as though they had more than they did. By ensuring there were a few high-profile musket shootings and then conserving their muskets and using these terror tactics to spread paranoia about the number of muskets, the Tainui were able to make several rapid conquests.
By the time La Pérouse returned for the first time in 1795, the Tainui’s expansionistic period had petered out as they had run into organised opposition from an alliance of the Touaritaux and Touaux tribes, who massed many more to their banner. Furthermore the Tainui had run out of gunpowder for their muskets. They were able to trade for more weapons with La Pérouse as well as the formula for gunpowder in the hope that this would allow them to conquer the Alliance, but the formula soon leaked out and soon both sides had the weapon. The Tainui might have more muskets, but the Alliance was helped by a defector from La Pérouse’s crew who showed them how to build crude catapults capable of hurling home-made grenades—rude devices mainly consisting of sharpened rock and bone shards bound together with flax twine[8] and being flung apart by gunpowder charges, but effective nonetheless. After a while the Tainui and Alliance rarely clashed directly in combat, these battles between two powder-using sides being bloody and inconclusive: one such battle, its exact location unclear but probably somewhere in or near Tetaitocquerau,[9] is often cited (based on its role in laments in the oral tradition) as being the ultimate origin of a tide of criticism of the idea of glorious warfare in Mauré culture. Instead, the Tainui and Alliance mostly expanded at the expense of other
iwis, drawing them in or conquering them, until Autiaraux was divided between the two blocs—war canoes being used to cross to Tavay Pocnamoo and dominate that island as well.[10] The latter step was aided by La Pérouse’s voluntary exile among the Mauré from 1802 to 1814 and the fact that some of his men under Valéry Élouard went over from the Tainui to the Alliance after a disagreement with their leader.
The Tainui and Alliance almost came to major blows again in 1814 as Eahcinomawe[11] now being totally divided between the two meant clashes were almost inevitable. Precisely what averted the major conflict is debated, with possible factors including an impassioned speech by La Pérouse warning of external powers that would take advantage of Mauré infighting and politicking on the part of a Tainui leader named Ruatara.[12] Another factor may simply have been exhaustion on the part of the Mauré. The ‘Gunpowder Wars’ had killed a significant portion of the population and had left both sides ruling over large numbers of resentful subordinates from other
iwis now subsumed, meaning they struggled to maintain control and put down rebellions. War between the two sides receded as a threat, and much of Tavay Pocnamoo remained ripe for conquest and settlement. Contact with the French continued, but intermittently, occasional ships from Albi in Antipodea arriving for trade. European reports from these missions continued to filter back to Europe and did nothing to dent the favourable image of the Mauré projected by books like those written by Élouard and Comeau. “It seems the Mowry [sic] people of New Zealand [sic] seem to enjoy a decade’s worth of advancement in every year,” Philip Bulkeley commented on one such report. “Swift was right; it must be all those babies they eat.”[13]
Both Mauré blocs were keen to trade for more information and technology from the Europeans, which ultimately led to the construction of new seagoing canoes like those that had plied the waves so many years before—with European help—and visits to the French colony in Antipodea. Thus unlike so many other native peoples, the Mauré did not trade with Europeans solely on the Europeans’ terms. Some Mauré even settled in French Antipodea, often after being dispossessed as a result of the wars back home. Their skill with melee weapons was particularly prized and led to many Mauré being employed as guards by French colonial expeditions concerned about attacks by Antipodean Indiens[14]—the French had plenty of people experienced fighting with muskets, but muskets could and did run out of ammunition on long exploratory voyages and become useless, unlike spears.
Such Mauré who settled among
kéroi (Europeans)[15] were often disparagingly referred to as ‘ones without
mana’ by the Mauré back in Autiaraux, a term they also applied to the Mimauré people of Ouarekauré[16] when these islands were conquered and their people enslaved by the Alliance in 1819.[17] The Mimauré were viewed with contempt by the Mauré as they did not make war upon each other and though they duelled to resolve disagreements they did not do so to the death. This was simply pragmatism based on the harsh conditions of the Ouarekauré islands, but nonetheless led to the Mauré viewing them as ‘weak’. Slaves were a valuable commodity in the new Autiaraux, with some Mauré raiding the Antipodean coast for Indiens for the purpose as well. The Mauré had already had some degree of agriculture before European first contact, but lacked many crops beyond
kumara (Polynesian sweet potato) and their mobile lifestyle, with few really permanent settlements due to the need to decamp to
pa-forts in the event of war, had discouraged widespread farming. The introduction of the American potato changed that considerably, as did the general outbreak of peace among the war-exhausted and smallpox-ravaged population following the 1810s. Despite these losses, the potato made a dramatic difference, as it had in Ireland and so many other countries. A reliable and hearty staple crop encouraged greater development of permanent settlements with true farming, but there were still some cultural taboos against the Mauré, or at least their nobles, involving themselves directly with it. They were meant to be a warrior race, after all. Women often became responsible for farms for this reason, but they made use of slave labour to actually work them. The introduction of European farm animals also made a huge difference, especially sheep. One
rangatira was mocked by a European writer for referring to them as ‘little clouds come down to the ground’, the European not realising that the
rangatira was making a symbolic point to disgruntled Mauré complaining about eating an alien animal—he was poetically saying that the sheep were now of Autiaraux, the Land of the Long White Cloud, and used their appearance as a pun to emphasise the point.
In a common theme, the Mauré were generally able to adapt European knowledge and practices and incorporate them almost seamlessly into their existing culture, rather than it becoming an either/or proposition. Mauré culture had already had the concept of the
tohunga or ‘expert’, an honourific given to people (mostly men) recognised as having expertise in a particular subject. Pre-contact
tohunga are sometimes mistakenly thought of purely as priests or witch doctors, but in fact multiple ‘scientific’, artistic and engineering disciplines already existed as well, such as shipbuilding, linguistics, carving sculptures and astronomy—though these were all often considered to have a spiritual aspect as well. New
tohunga disciplines arose in response to contact with Europeans, such as expertise in gunpowder or muskets, expertise in ironworking (often considered to be the most important of the new disciplines), expertise in European shipbuilding and navigation techniques, and expertise in dealing with Europeans: the latter being necessary to gain the former. Christianity spread among the Mauré in this time, with mostly French Catholic missionaries having been sent to spread the word. The new religion was popular there, sometimes being adopted in an orthodox form but more often in various heterodox syncretic ones that incorporated some South Seas spiritual ideas as well. Missionaries benefited from Comeau’s book as it let them put Christian theology in terms familiar to Mauré, such as suggesting that Christ had sacrificed all his own
mana in order to repay all the
mana debts of the people of the world, and thus none of the
utu blood vendettas were necessary anymore—the price had been paid. This message found a receptive audience in the battered and exhausted Mauré population after the Gunpowder Wars—although of course there was always a minority who preferred the ‘eye for an eye’ attitude of the Old Testament, so fitting with their own notions of
utu.
The Mauré did not only encounter slavery on the giving end. Many adventurers came to Autiaraux, inspired by Comeau’s book or other rumours. They included William Goodman, the younger brother of the Russian-aligned British freebooter John Goodman, who arrived in 1816 with ambitions of carving out his own kingdom there. His designs were quickly disabused when he faced Mauré in combat for the first time, but Goodman swiftly adapted and instead made himself an important man within the Mauré’s own power structure, trading on his knowledge not only of European technology and tactics but of European politics, helping the Alliance trade more effectively with other Europeans. Goodman was one of the first people besides La Pérouse’s men to be acknowledged as ‘
Kéroi-Mauré’, being white but also recognised as a Mauré.[18] The fact that the Mauré identity was based more on shared values, beliefs and rituals than blood—though blood was still important of course—helped them assimilate such men as Goodman and ultimately stood them in good stead in the long run.
Not all adventurers shared the same ambitions or fate as Goodman. In 1815 in the United Provinces of South America, a scandal broke that despite slavery being officially illegal, the sitting President-General José Carriego was secretly involved in rogue slave-trading operations as part of his financial interests. His successor, Pablo Portillo, clamped down hard on such rogues, leading to many Meridian slave-traders looking elsewhere for business. The Empire of New Spain was a place where slavery was still firmly legal, and all they needed was a market to supply the slaves. The South Seas seemed a good bet, and many islands were stripped of people before one such slaver, Sebastián Duarte, decided to try raiding Autiaraux in 1819. His first two missions were successful, and unbeknownst to Duarte the first happened to fall in an area held by the Tainui and the second in one held by the Alliance. At first of course the two blocs accused each other of the attack and war seemed to loom on the horizon again, but evidence collected by Kéroi-Mauré including William Goodman from their contacts revealed the real culprit. This meant that when Duarte arrived again in his brigantine
El Dorado for a third raid in 1821, both sides had agreed to cooperate against him. Having mapped out some likely sites for the raid, Goodman’s men used crude portable semaphore telegraphs to quickly let the nearest Mauré forces know which bay it would be. Although these Optel devices were far less capable than those now in use back in Europe, they made an impression on the Mauré and soon each
pa-fort would sport its own Optel tower—using mechanical arms like the older Chappe towers rather than the more advanced shutterboxes, but useful nonetheless.
The Mauré set a trap and closed it masterfully around Duarte’s landing party, taking them prisoner while using their canoes to take the unsuspecting
El Dorado by cover of darkness. It is unclear whether the Mauré actually intended to blow up the ship to send a message (as is generally claimed) or whether it was an accident, but whatever the reason, the next day Duarte had to watch his ship sink beneath the waves. And that was not all. The biter bit; the slaver became the slave.
Yet though Duarte had been handily defeated, the raids had had a strong alienistic [psychological] impact upon the Mauré. La Pérouse’s warnings of external forces that would seek to take advantage of their divisions had proved true. There was widespread anger and concern that this would happen again. And, as before, the Mauré were swift to jump to a conclusion: the way to stop evil
kéroi from raiding Autiaraux was to ensure Autiaraux was protected at sea. And that meant, once again, they would take to the waves.
The two power blocs gradually disappeared into a whole. One important symbolic action was the Treaty of Tetaitocquerau in 1825, signed at the place where legend said the Mauré had first landed in Autiaraux. Having learned from European practices, the Mauré secured the peace with a dynastic marriage: but unlike European practices, they didn’t stop at one marriage, instead countless
rangatiras marrying their daughters to the sons of the
rangatiras from the other side. This was no time for half measures. It is debatable when the ‘United Mauré’ became a reality rather than what both sides probably considered to be a temporary passing phase. Certainly the language they used in the treaty (whose text survived, literacy now having spread to most of the Mauré upper classes) implies that it was intended to be a temporary ceasefire, but it ended up being one that was never officially broken. The Treaty also established a Hira Hui (High Assembly) of
rangatiras or their representatives and some important
tohungas, who would manage the peace and punish those who broke it. Among these
rangatiras was a man named Apehimana, who would go on to have an intriguing career...
[1] What ‘Aotearoa’ (Autiaraux in its Frenchified form in TTL) actually means is somewhat debated by translators, but just as in OTL this is the most common rendering—not least because it sounds nicely dramatic and mythic. Though ‘Land of Abiding Dawn/Forever Day’, an alternative translation, isn’t bad either.
[2] A bit of an unfair generalisation, but this author is trying a bit hard to set the Mauré on a pedestal compared to other peoples.
[3] The author is being simplistic here. In OTL the first Maori to obtain muskets actually lost their first battle against Maori using traditional weapons. Technological superiority isn’t everything. In the long run however it made a difference.
[4] TTL’s “Tasman Bay” is known as “Golden Bay” in OTL. Note the mixing of Mauré and European names: generally coastal features have more European names and inland features have more Mauré ones in usage in TTL.
[5] In OTL Lee Boo (as his name was spelled in English) instead visited Britain, having returned along with Henry Wilson and HMS
Antelope after that ship had crashed on Palau and been repaired with Palauan help. He sadly succumbed to smallpox soon afterwards, but accounts of his visit illustrate the kind of attitude described by the author here—Europeans being impressed at South Sea islanders’ skill at navigation and shipbuilding.
[6] These names are spelled
tao,
patu and
taiaha in OTL English transliteration of Maori.
[7] Usually translated as ‘tribes’.
[8] New Zealand Flax, two related plants
Phormium tenax and
Phormium colensoi, known to the Maori as
harakeke and
wharariki, which the Maori used (and use) in OTL to make a versatile range of fibres for clothing, fishing nets, rope and more.
[9] The Northland region of New Zealand.
[10] The South Island.
[11] The North Island.
[12] Not the same as the OTL Maori with that name.
[13] Referring to
A Modest Proposal of course. Bulkeley is deliberately or accidentally conflating the Maori’s practices of cannibalism and euthanising female babies into eating babies.
[14] I.e. Australian Aborigines.
[15]
Kéroi is a Frenchified spelling of
kehua (‘ghost’) referring to Europeans’ paler skin. It has the same meaning as
Pakeha in OTL.
[16] OTL: The Moriori people of Wharekauri (i.e. the Chatham Islands).
[17] The conquest happened in a similar way in OTL, except in 1835 and with transport provided for the Maori by a British mercenary ship rather than them building their own ships.
[18] Much like ‘Pakeha-Maori’ in OTL.
