Maori Guides and Gold Miners

[unknown]
Location: Te Wai Pounamu South Island, Aotearoa New Zealand
Surnames/tags: Poutini Kai Tahu Kehu Tarapuhi

PURPOSE

Early explorers depended to a significant degree on Māori to guide them across mountain passes, through difficult bush, pakihi and swampy terrain and across the swift rivers and many creeks of Te Wai Pounamu, South Island, Aotearoa New Zealand. Several explorers owed their survival to the manaakitanga (hpsptiality, care and support of Māori. Nga wahine (wives) sometimes accompanied their tāne (husbands) .Some of the Māori recruited to help the Māori guides were Māori slaves.

Slaves (taurekareka or mōkai) were members of rival tribes who had been taken prisoner during warfare and were made to work on non-tapu activities. The term taurekareka was also used to denote something abhorrent and signifies the complete loss of mana of slaves. During the period of the Musket Wars the number of slaves taken as prisoners increased immensely and became an important part of some tribes' social structure.
^[1]

Māori had also discovered gold long before other ethnic groups that came to the country, but had no use for it. They were able to show prospectors where to find gold and they became gold prospectors and miners themselves.

This page is an attempt to bring together what information can be found about Māori guides and gold miners in Te Wai Pounamu South Island (Middle Island) Aotearoa New Zealand from the early 1940s until the early 1870s. It is written in conjunction with the Free Space page "Historic Place Names of the West Coast."

BACKGROUND HISTORY

Māori had encounters with European explorers from ships captained by Able Tasman in 1642, James Cook three times between 1769 - 1777, Jean-François de Surville in 1769 and Marian du Fresne in 1772. Some were violent encounters and someincluded also trade and exchange. Māori learned about firearms and it is thought that the first firearms were acquired by Bay of Islands Māori around 1806.

At the turn of the century Māori came in contact with whaling ships from America, France, Norway and Spain. Also, the British corporation the East India Company visited regularly, setting conditions for a period of trade.

Māori travelled overseas from the late 1790s with chiefs going to Sydney 'in search of bartering opportunities', and some working on various types of ships travelling to Britain, Australia and America. With trade and travel Māori shifted to intensive horticulture and pastoral agriculture and as early as 1803 they were trading goods such as potatoes, pigs and maize. Māori invested in ploughs, mills, carts, and ships to transport their goods. The first Māori water-powered mill was built at Aotea, Raglan Harbour in 1846 and many more had been built by 1860.

Early industry by Māori was in part driven by the desire to trade for firearm's. The Musket Wars (of 1807–1837) significantly altered intertribal conflict and there was saw a dramatic increase in casualties with many thousands of Māori people killed, some estimates over 60,000.

Populations of Māori to Europeans changed greatly during the 1800s. The drop in population was mostly due to the introduction of European diseases (measles and influenza) and to the Musket Wars. The Pākehā population doubled in the 1850s, surpassing the Māori population by the late 1860s, 1896 Māori population was about 40,000 and Pākehā was 700,000.

Alcohol was not present in Māori culture before European contact. Many Māori supported Henry Williams who opposed "the activities of grog-sellers, gun-runners and other irreligious Europeans in the Bay of Islands". The mission at "Paihia, directly opposite the notoriously lawless settlement of Kororāreka (later Russell), was set up to contrast Christianity with the decadent forms of European life".

Māori hapū of the north proclaimed the sovereign independence of New Zealand in 1835 with the signing of He Whakaputanga (The Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand). A follow-up to this was the Treaty of Waitangi that was first signed in 1840, in part that the Queen of England could control her 'lawless subjects'. New Zealand was proclaimed a British colony in 1841, and the New Zealand Parliament was established in 1852. Māori had no representation in the early years (1854-1868) of the New Zealand Parliament. Votes for the members of Parliament required individual land-ownership so Māori were not able to vote as they owned land collectively.

In 1842 the first planned settlement in the South Island was founded at Blind Bay (Tasman Bay), Nelson. The shortage of suitable quality land led the Nelson explorers over the south-west ranges to the West Coast.

Māori customs, rules and values, known as tikanga, were not recognised in parliament and there was an assumption that European values and traditions were superior. The "judiciary simply denied that tikanga existed, the legislative suppressed aspects of tikanga, and together they altered the social structures of Māori in which tikanga existed, the overall effect being the social, economic, spiritual and political degradation of Māori society. To this day Māori society has still not recovered from this suppression of tikanga."
^[2]

Māori hold a deep respect for, spiritual connection to, and responsibility for the land as tangata whenua (people of the land). As the government sought land for newly arriving immigrants, laws like the Native Lands Act 1865 changed the relationship Māori had with land.

WEST COAST

Explorers

Thomas Brunner was sent to explore the Motueka River Valley and he returned with Māori advice about 'plains of grassy land' within about a four days' journey from Nelson.

KEHU of Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri.

When Charles Heaphy, Thomas Brunner and William Fox left Nelson 2 February 1846, Kehu, who had recently visited the interior of the Islandand was a first-rate bushman, was their guide. They reached Lake Rotoiti five days later, 7 February 1846. From there they reached the Buller River and followed it to the Puawini (Howard). A tributary of the Buller River, the Hinemoatū/Howard starts at the confluence of the Hodgson and Tier Streams in the Travers Range of Nelson Lakes National Park, flowing north between Lakes Rotoroa and Rotoiti, before reaching the Buller between Kawatiri and Saint Arnaud. Kehu led the three explorers up the Howard, over ridges and down into Lake Rotoroa. In a Māori waka (canoe) they they crthe extensive plains that Maori had described.ossed the lake to an abandoned cultivation on the southern shore. Kehu encoraged then along the way by imitating short-winded pakeha explorers and on the lake chanted the Wesleyan service mixed with incantations to the taipo (demon, devil) of lake and river, sometimes diversified with whaling station epithets.

From the outlet of Lake Rotoroa, the Gowan River, Kehu led the party south-south-west into the Tiraumea Valley and followed the Mangles River to its junction with the Buller, then west down the Buller River. Thomas Brunner thought that they had travelled to within 20 miles of the coast (it was 50 miles) and 19 February the party decided to turn back with out discovering the extensive plains Māori had described.

Three weeks later, in March 1846, when Charles Heaphy and Thomas Brunner set off again to find the mouth of the Buller, Kehu was again their guide. At Pakawau Pa, Ngai Tahu slave, Etau, who had previously travelled down the coast to Arahura, was recruited to help carry the swags.

This journey was along the coast and among problems encountered were high rocky bluffs and rivers swollen by heavy rain. When supplies diminished, they ate kai moana - kine (sea urchins) and anga anemone moana (sea anemones). They crossed the Karamea River on a flax mōkihi (raft) which became so waterlogged Charles Heaphy and their fox terrier swam part of the way. Having passed Cape Foulwind and the Mohihinui River, they met Aperahama who was taking his son and daughter to Nelson to be baptised. Aperahama gave the party a meal of whitebait from the Arahura River and potatoes.

Surveyors

Māwhera Maori

In 1863 when surveyor and engineer Arthur Dudley Dobson found his chartered schooner "Gypsy" to be 'rolling like a cork' and i mpossible off the entrance to the Māwheranui River 13 September the boat became stranded in the falling tide. On the beach were thirty or more Māori from the Māwhera Pa (Kainga) who were waiting to assist land the stores and move everything that could be moved above the high tide mark and made secure.
^[3]

Maori and Gold
1863 In his letter from Mawhera, 30 October 1863, to the Editor of the "Lyttelton Times', about the Teremakau (Taramakau) Goldfield, Arthur Dudley Dobson wrote that:

Gold was discovered in the Teremakau River first by Dixon of the schooner 'Emerald Isle', in a small creek at the mouth of the river, then by some Maori in the Ohome, a stream which runs into the Teremakau, about six miles from the beach....in neither place does the gold occur in payable quantities.

'I have prospected in the Grey (Māwhēranui, Teremakau, (Taramakau) and the Arehaura (Arahura) and the Okitiki (Hokitika) have been prospected by the Maori with about the same success; the colour (very fine) everywhere, but nothing more'.

1864

On July 4 1864, Mr W.H.Revell, superintendent of the Government Depot on the Grey (Māwhēranui) River accompanied by Mr Hammett, a survivor of Mr Howitt's exploring party, met a party of Maori men, women and children passing by to dig gold. They had previously been looking for greenstone, but finding old, transferred their attention to the more valuable commodity.......

Hammett and Mr Revell visited diggings in Greenstone Creek, a few miles off the track from Lake Brunner to the Taramakau, where they foud the Maori party doing well. They also found Arthur Hutt who was making about 50 shillings a week. A few potatos and tree fern formed the subsistance of the Maori party and Hunt, with a little help from the Government store.

In August, Arthur Hunt marked out a claim, about five miles up Greenstone Creek and above th junction with the Hohony Creek, and obtained assistance from one of the Maori to help strip it. From two the six feet of soil were removed in the thick bush. He then worked it alone and turned out a quantity of gold, the amount of which he would not specify.

In September 1864 in the Grey diggings, some Maori were reported to have had great success and to 'keep their earnings close'. In the language of diggers they "all are making their tucker and not a few are doing more."

In September twenty men who arrived on the SS Nelson and SS Mary, tried to 'bounce the natives out of their claims on the (Greenstone) Creek.' Maori had managed to find the best ground to be had along Greenstone Creek, The claim of Simon the Maori some days washed as mush as six ounces a day for four men.

At the suggestion of Mr Rochfort a runanga was held between Maori and white men on Greenstone Creek, The size of the claims were determined at 72 square feet per man. Thus aparty of four had a block of land 96 yards long and 24 years wide. All cliams were worked by sluicing and the gold was coarse.