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The Whangaroa Incident, 16 July 1824A European–Māori Encounter and ItsMany IncarnationsAlexander Maxwella & Evan Robertsb

a History Programme, Victoria University of Wellingtonb History Department, University of Minnesota.Published online: 17 Jun 2014.

To cite this article: Alexander Maxwell & Evan Roberts (2014) The Whangaroa Incident, 16 July1824 A European–Māori Encounter and Its Many Incarnations, The Journal of Pacific History, 49:1,50-75, DOI: 10.1080/00223344.2013.869845

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The Whangaroa Incident, 16 July 1824

A European–Maori Encounter and Its Many Incarnations

ALEXANDER MAXWELL AND EVAN ROBERTS

ABSTRACT

This paper examines an incident in 1824 in which the Ngati Pou of Whangaroa Harbour(New Zealand) boarded a European ship, holding its crew and three missionaries captivefor two hours. During the 19th century the incident was retold approximately 30 times inEurope and America. This paper describes the original incident from primary sources andthen discusses how the various incarnations of the story enabled different authors to drawdiverse moral lessons. The changing narrative provides a window into various Europeanattitudes towards the Indigenous peoples of New Zealand.

Key words: Whangaroa, Endeavour, New Zealand, Maori, representation, Journal of Voyagesand Travels, missionaries

On 15 July 1824 the ship Endeavour anchored in Whangaroa Harbour, on the north-east coast of New Zealand’s North Island. The four-day stay contained a dramaticincident: on 16 July the local Maori people, the Ngati Pou, held the ship’s passengershostage for two hours and threatened them with death. The incident ended peacefullyafter the intervention of Te Ara, chief of the neighbouring Ngati Uru. The incidentattracted considerable attention during the mid-19th century. Multiple versions ofthe Whangaroa incident show the range and flexibility of European attitudestowards New Zealand’s Indigenous peoples.

This paper compares more than two dozen accounts of the Whangaroa inci-dent published between 1824 and 1878. The first half of the paper describes the eventsat Whangaroa, drawing on a variety of accounts from participants and eyewitnesses.Unfortunately noMaori accounts of the incident survive, yet as far as we are aware, noprevious narrative of the Whangaroa incident has drawn on all the sources adducedhere. The second half then examines how European editors and authors retold thestory in a wide variety of contexts. Thematically similar accounts are analysedtogether, though the accounts appear in roughly chronological order.

© 2014 The Journal of Pacific History, Inc.

Alexander Maxwell – History Programme, Victoria University of Wellington. alexander.maxwell@vuw.ac.nz

Evan Roberts – History Department, University of Minnesota. eroberts@umn.edu

The Journal of Pacific History, 2014Vol. 49, No. 1, 50–75, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2013.869845

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Focusing on multiple accounts of a single event spanning a half century illus-trates how European perceptions of Maori changed. Many studies examining 19th-century European attitudes to Indigenous people compare multiple interactions,each occurring in unique circumstances. Studying how many narratives of a singleincident evolve over time focuses attention on changes in European perspectives.Various authors relating the Whangaroa encounter omitted or invented criticalelements of the story, dramatically changing the meaning of the narrative and thelessons to be drawn from it.

Most versions of the story emphasise moral responsibility. Early versionshighlighted the possibility that missionary efforts might bring Christian redemptionto Maori. While depicting Maori as wild barbarians, early authors held out thepromise that Maori might be saved, reflecting the early 19th-century missionarybelief in both the ‘equality of human debasement’ and the equally universal human-ity.1 Great attention was paid to Indigenous individuals who helped Europeans, sincetheir assistance supposedly demonstrated the Maori capacity for civilisation.

Later in the 19th century, Europeans began to derive Maori barbarism notfrom a lack of Christianity but from their inherent character. As Maori increasinglyaccepted Christianity, racism replaced religious chauvinism. Europeans slowlydeprived Maori actors of their individuality, increasingly relying on caricatures ofpre-Christian Maori wickedness, against which European missionaries demonstratedpiety, fortitude and virtue. In the 1820s and 1830s European authors remained inter-ested in the personalities of the actors involved in the incident. By the 1850s the eventhad become a parable, often in the most literal sense. Significantly, these later Euro-pean accounts blamed Maori for the conflict more forcefully than had contempor-aries, despite the 1853 publication of evidence suggesting the incident arose fromclashing cultural expectations.

THE EVENTS OF 16 JULY 1824

Between 1821 and 1829, Revds Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet travelledaround the world to provide a comparative account of the progress of missionarywork. They acted as deputies of the London Missionary Society (LMS), whichwanted to know how well the various missions were doing so that scarce resources,both of missionaries and money, could be prioritised.2 Tyerman died in Madagascarin 1828, but Bennet returned to England alone in 1829.3 He then wrote a bookabout the voyage with the help of his friend James Montgomery, who presumablytook dictation. The two worked from ‘condensed extracts from journals and letters

1 Richard Price, review of Alison Twells, The Civilising Mission and the English Middle Class, 1792–1850:

the ‘heathen’ at home and overseas (Basingstoke, UK 2008), International Journal of Social History, 54:3(2009), 519.2 Andrew Porter, Religion Versus Empire? British Protestant missionaries and overseas expansion, 1700–1914(Manchester 2004), 164.3 ‘Obituary of Rev. Daniel Tyerman’, Missionary Register, June 1829, 241.

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… during their travels and narratives produced by Bennet on his return to Britain’.4

The resulting two-volume Journal of Voyages and Travels appeared in London in 1831.5

The Journal provides the most detailed account of the incident and forms the basisfor nearly all subsequent versions, including that given here. Since, however, Bennetand Tyerman discussed the incident in various speeches and letters, we attribute theJournal to Montgomery, even though Montgomery himself never visited NewZealand.

Bennet and Tyerman travelled to New Zealand from Tahiti on the Endeavour,under the command of part-owner Ranulph Dacre.6 Bennet and Tyerman also tra-velled with Lancelot Threlkeld, who had worked as a missionary in Tahiti since1818. Threlkeld had been unhappy in Tahiti and, when his wife died, left for Sydneyto seek a new wife.7 The Endeavour originally sailed for the Bay of Islands, but poorweather diverted it to the north. The ship sought shelter in Whangaroa Harbour.8

Entering Whangaroa late in the day, the passengers on the Endeavour observedthe Ngati Pou settlement of Te Pere on Ohauroro Island (Peach Island; see Figure 1), atthe mouth of the harbour. Canoes sailed alongside the boat to greet and examine thenewcomers. Bennet and Tyerman found the Ngati Pou ‘disgusting, and contrary todecorum’, declaring Maori tattoos less elegant than those in the Society Islands. Never-theless the Ngati Pou seemed ‘friendly, without any war-weapons that we could dis-cover, except two old spears’. The Ngati Pou offered vegetables, poultry and ‘naturalcuriosities’ to the Europeans, who were themselves short on ‘hogs, water and wood’,but during the first evening demanded such high prices that commerce was limited.9

The missionaries were anxious to visit their colleagues in their settlement atWesleydale, a mission station in Kaeo. They tried to hire a canoe, but failed owingto stormy weather and winter cold. Dacre thus set off for the mission in the ship’sboat, leaving in command the captain, Dibbs. Dacre received a warm welcome atWesleydale: the isolated missionaries were lonely and enjoyed visitors. According tothe Wesleyan mission diary, ‘interesting conversation kept us up till a very late hour’.10

4 Alison Twells, ‘“A Christian and civilised land”: the British middle class and the civilising mission,1820–42’, in Alan Kidd and David Nichols (eds), Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: middle-class iden-tity in Britain, 1800–1940 (Manchester 1999), 55.5 James Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels: by the Rev. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, Esq.deputed from the London Missionary Society to visit their various stations in the South Sea Islands, China, India,

&c., between the years 1821 and 1829, 2 vols (London 1831). We cite throughout this paper aBoston reprint, which differs from the British original only in pagination and headers: James Mon-tgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels… , 3 vols (Boston 1832), II, 128–40.6 D. Shineberg, ‘Dacre, Ranulph (1797–1884)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 1: 1788–1850,A–H (Melbourne 1966), 275.7 On Threlkeld see L.E. Threlkeld, Australian Reminiscences & Papers of L.E. Threlkeld, Missionary to the

Aborigines, 1824–1859, 2 vols, ed. Niel Gunson (Canberra 1974).8 ‘Auftritte in Neuseeland’, Calwer Missions-Blatt, 9 Oct. 1830, 85.9 Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels, II, 247–48.10 The diary is cited in Alexander Strachan, Remarkable Incidents in the Life of Rev. Samuel Leigh: mission-ary to the settlers and savages of Australia and New Zealand… (London 1855 [1853]), 184.

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Early the next morning, 16 July, Ngati Pou canoes surrounded the Endeavour,and ‘several hundreds of the natives’, men, women and children, came aboard. Themissionaries barred the quarterdeck to ‘tabu it from intrusion’11 but rubbed noses withtheir guests following Maori custom. Barter was friendly and brisk. As the crowd grew,however, ‘the natives began to exercise their pilfering tricks’.12 Other Europeans hadreported similar problems with theft in dealings with Maori. Richard Cruise, a Britishnaval officer on the Dromedary, had visited New Zealand in 1820 and wrote that whileEuropean property was secured on land if a chief placed it under his tapu, Maori onboard ships would steal anything.13

Montgomery provided a blow-by-blow account of thefts on the Endeavour. Firstthe cook cried out that an unnamed ‘kitchen item’ was missing, then the beef in the potand then his cooking pan. Captain Dibbs became angry and ordered the deck cleared.Then yet another crewmember announced that clothes had been taken from the cap-tain’s trunk. Dibbs then began waving a burning brand back and forth, saying, ‘Youmust go! You must go!’ In 1830 Bennet recalled that one Ngati Pou chief retreatedto the edge of the deck, ‘and as the captain gestured, as if he would hit him, he retreatedbackwards and fell over the edge of the ship into the water’.14 Bennet’s memoirs, as

FIGURE 1: Whangaroa Harbour.

11 Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels, II, 248.12 Ibid., 249.13 Richard Alexander Cruise, Journal of a Ten Months’ Residence in New Zealand (London 1824), 22. Forother examples see ‘William Hall’s journal, 1819–1825’, in John Rawson Elder (ed.),Marsden’s Lieu-

tenants (Dunedin 1934), 238; Granville Allen Mawer, Ahab’s Trade: the saga of South Seas whaling (StLeonards 1999), 150.14 ‘Auftritte in Neuseeland’, 86.

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dictated to Montgomery and published in 1832, report that Dibbs ‘jostled’ the chief.15

Whether Dibbs struck, shoved, touched or merely threatened the chief, retribution wasswift: Ngati Pou armed with clubs and spears immediately took control of the ship. Themissionaries below deck, who only learned afterwards about the altercation betweenDibbs and the chief, were completely surprised.

Montgomery wrote that the insult to the Ngati Pou chief was ‘seized instan-taneously as the pretext for commencing hostilities’,16 but the presence of Ngati Pouwomen and children aboard suggests otherwise. Richard Cruise remarked that it was‘well known’ that Maori withdrew women before attacking (though women participatedin the 1816 attack on the Agnes).17 The women and children fled to their canoes when theconfrontation began. The Wesleyan missionaries in Whangaroa, for their part, thoughtthat ‘the petulance of the captain occasioned this rupture’,18 without giving further details.

Victorious, the Ngati Pou then performed a haka (an aggressive dance), whichterrified the missionaries: ‘tremendous were the howlings and screechings of the bar-barians – while they stamped, and brandished their weapons’. A chief with ‘his cookies(slaves)’ surrounded Dibbs, pointing spears at him. Other groups surroundedTyerman and Bennet. Threlkeld and his six-year-old son were trapped aft, though‘not under the direct manual grasp of the savages’.19

A chief who had been trading with Bennet then began rapidly and repeatedlyshouting, ‘Tangata New Zealandi, tangata kakino?’ (Man of New Zealand, is he a badman?) Bennet understood the question through his Tahitian20 and realised that theNgati Pou felt they had been poorly treated.21 He replied, ‘Kaore kakino, tangata New

Zealandi, tangata kapai’ (Not bad; the New Zealander is a good man). This processwas repeated ‘a hundred times’. Bennet eventually beseeched the chief: ‘Why is allthis uproar? Why cannot we still rub noses, and buy and sell and barter as before?’In response a slave ‘pinioned both his [Bennet’s] arms to his sides’. Bennet, fearingviolence, did not resist. After Bennet asked the chief the price of a neck ornament,another slave raised an axe over Bennet’s head, asking permission to strike.22

Bennet’s bartering became desperate. Spotting a young man carrying a fish,Bennet asked a price and was given a figure in fishhooks. Bennet agreed: ‘Well,then, put your hand in my pocket and take them’. The young man did so. ‘Nowput the fish down there, on the binnacle, and bring me some more if you haveany.’ The man walked behind Bennet’s back and offered to sell the same fish

15 Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels, II, 249.16 Ibid., emphasis added.17 Cruise, Journal of a Ten Months’ Residence, 218; George L. Craik, The New Zealanders (London 1830),94.18 Strachan, Remarkable Incidents, 185, emphasis original. Also quoted in R.A.A. Sherrin and J.H.Wallace, Early history of New Zealand, ed. Thomson W. Leys (Auckland 1890), 277.19 Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels, II, 249.20 On Bennet’s Polynesian language skills see Merze Tate, ‘The Sandwich Islands missionariescreate a literature’, Church History, 31:2 (1962), 182–202, especially 184.21 ‘Auftritte in Neuseeland’, 87.22 Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels, II, 249.

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again. Bennet feigned ignorance: ‘What shall I give you for that fish?’ ‘So manyhooks.’ ‘Take them: have you no other fish to sell?’ When Bennet bought thesame fish a fourth time, the Ngati Pou laughed, exclaiming, ‘We are cheating theforeigner’. When a ‘slave’ removed Bennet’s sealskin cap, Bennet thought tohimself that an axe blow on his bare head would be more likely to kill in a singlestroke and began to pray.23

Tyerman’s captors were meanwhile fondling various parts of his body tojudge the quality of the meat, proceedings which reminded Montgomery ofMilton’s Death, who ‘grinn’d horribly, a ghastly smile/And bless’d his maw,destin’d to that good hour’. The ship’s cook and carpenter then said to Bennet,‘Sir, we shall all be murdered and eaten up, in a few minutes’. Bennet replied: ‘Car-penter, I believe we shall certainly all be in eternity by that time, but we are in thehands of God.’ The carpenter then crawled onto the yard-arm with weights on hisbody, explaining afterwards: ‘I knew that I must die, but I was resolved that thesavages should not eat me… I would have dropped down into the sea and onlybeen drowned’. Threlkeld’s frightened young son, meanwhile, asked his father interror: ‘When they have killed us, – will it – will it hurt us when they eat us?’24

The captives’ fear of cannibalism was heightened by the known fate of theBoyd. In 1809, Ngati Uru chief Te Ara, known to Europeans as George,25 hadjoined the crew of the Boyd in exchange for passage. When Te Ara refused toperform menial tasks, the captain had him flogged. When the Boyd returned to Whan-garoa, Te Ara showed the stripes on his back to his kin, provoking a combined attackby Ngati Pou and Ngati Uru.26 All but two of the Boyd’s passengers were killed andeaten. According to Montgomery, the wreck of the Boyd was visible from the Endeavour,and the sight reminded the captives of their peril. The Boyd massacre ultimatelybecame an icon of Maori brutality,27 though several precolonial European accountsexpressed sympathy for Te Ara.28 The Boyd incident has subsequently generated scho-larly controversy. Some scholars have questioned the accuracy of Europeanaccounts.29 Wade Doak has suggested that the Boyd massacre arose from ‘cultureclash’ between Europeans and Maori.30

23 Ibid., 244–50.24 Ibid., 251–52.25 Ibid., 253. Cruise warned his readers to distinguish ‘George of Whangaroa’ from ‘King George’in the Bay of Islands; see Cruise, Journal of a Ten Months’ Residence, 74.26 David A. Chappell, Double Ghosts: Oceanian voyagers on Euroamerican ships (Armonk, NY 1997), 113.27 See for example Walter Wright, The Burning of the Boyd, Whangaroa Harbour, 1809, oil on canvas,Auckland Art Gallery/Toi a Tamaki, ref. 1908/1/3; Tony Simpson, Art & Massacre: documentary

racism in the Burning of the Boyd (Wellington 1993).28 Ernst Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand: with contributions to the geography, geology, botany and natural

history of that country, 2 vols (London 1843), II, 131.29 See for example Lydia Wevers, Country of Writing: travel writing and New Zealand, 1809–1900 (Auck-land 2002), 7–33; Trevor Bentley, Captured by Maori: white female captives, sex and racism on the nineteenth-

century New Zealand frontier (Auckland 2004), 42–64.30 Wade Doak, The Burning of the ‘Boyd’: a saga of culture clash (Auckland 1984).

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Te Ara eventually regretted the destruction of the Boyd. His father, Pipikoi-tareke, died in a gunpowder explosion during the plunder.31 Te Ara spent the restof his life fearing European vengeance.32 Moreover the massacre frightened awayEuropean shipping, preventing Whangaroa-area tribes from obtaining muskets.33

Te Ara took considerable pains to welcome later Europeans. When SamuelMarsden, an agent of the Church Missionary Society, visited Whangaroa in 1814,Ngati Pou and Ngati Uru displayed extravagant hospitality.34 Te Ara told Marsden‘he had been despised and insulted’ by other hapu (clans) because of the attack.35 In1815–16 John Nicholas reported that Te Ara ‘showed special consideration for us’and tried to make everything ‘very comfortable’.36 Cruise similarly found that TeAra ‘appeared studiously to endeavour to ingratiate himself to our people’.37 Com-mercial considerations probably explain why Te Ara had encouraged Wesleyan mis-sionaries to settle in Whangaroa in the first place. Te Ara’s protection, however, diedwith him: Wesleydale was attacked and destroyed in 1827.38

In 1824, however, Te Ara’s eagerness to conciliate Europeans saved the passen-gers on the Endeavour. After two hours, ‘during which the cannibals never ceased to rage’,Dacre’s boat returned from Wesleydale carrying Te Ara and Wesleyan missionaryWilliam White. Te Ara interceded for the captives. Once aboard ship, he greeted thechief of Ngati Pou by pressing noses and asked, ‘Do you realize what you are doing?Do you want the English to come and destroy us, and rule our land?’39 A standoffensued: the Ngati Pou demanded retribution, and the captain denied any wrongdoing.Te Ara’s full negotiations with the Ngati Pou remain a matter of speculation; the Euro-pean visitors presumably could not understand the finer points of the tense discussion inthe Maori language. In the end, however, the Ngati Pou released their captives.

The passengers and crew of the Endeavour understandably wanted to leaveNew Zealand immediately but found themselves unable to refuse Te Ara’s hospitality,especially when he agreed to remain aboard ship. Bennet, Tyerman and Dacre left forKaeo, arriving after a three-hour journey. Kaeo did not impress the visitors, who

31 T.M.I. Williment, John Hobbs, 1800–1883: Wesleyan missionary to the Ngapuhi Tribe of northern New

Zealand (Wellington 1985), 25.32 See Doak, The Burning of the ‘Boyd’, 150.33 See James Belich, Making Peoples: a history of the New Zealanders, from Polynesian settlement to the end of the

nineteenth century (Auckland 1996), 171; AndrewP.Vayda, ‘Maoris andmuskets inNewZealand: disrup-tionof awar system’,Political ScienceQuarterly, 85:4 (1970), 560–84;WilliamC.Schaniel, ‘European tech-nology and the New Zealand Maori economy: 1769–1840’, Social Science Journal, 38:1 (2001), 137–46.34 See Patricia Bawden, The Years Before Waitangi: a story of early Maori/European contact in New Zealand

(Auckland 1987), 69–73.35 J.M.R. Owens, Prophets in the Wilderness: the Wesleyan mission to New Zealand, 1819–27 (Auckland1974), 36; see also Cruise, Journal of a Ten Months’ Residence, 76.36 John Liddiard Nicholas, Reise nach und in Neuseeland in den Jahren 1814 und 1815 mit den, von Neuhol-

land dahin reisenden, Missionarien gemacht (Weimar 1819), 92, 104.37 Cruise, Journal of a Ten Months’ Residence, 154; Owens, Prophets in the Wilderness, 36–39.38 For a contemporary account see The Australian, 3 and 6 Mar. 1827.39 ‘Auftritte in Neuseeland’, 87.

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characterised the Ngati Uru settlement as ‘hovels’ and found the landscape barren incomparison to Tahiti. The lonely Wesleyan missionaries, however, proved convivial,and they ‘spent the evening, till a late hour, in Christian fellowship, instructive con-versation and prayer’.40 The Wesleyans sought to persuade their visitors the dangerhad been slight, but Bennet, Tyerman and Dacre remained frightened, particularlyafter an additional petty theft. They returned to their ship on 17 July and sailed forAustralia the next day.

INITIAL ACCOUNTS OF THE WHANGAROA INCIDENT

The missionaries arrived in Sydney on 19 August 1824. Early accounts of the incidentwere published in Australia and then republished in Christian periodicals in Britain.These initial accounts of the Whangaroa incident did not influence later versions ofthe account, most of which rely on Montgomery. Nevertheless the initial accountsdeserve attention because they downplay the possibility of violence. In April 1825Threlkeld even grumbled that ‘some in this colony [New South Wales]… treatedthe recital of our escape…with cool indifference, as though it was wished to heightenthe appearance of danger’.41 Subsequent accounts from later authors would increas-ingly emphasise peril and danger.

The first public discussion of the Whangaroa incident occurred on Sunday,22 August, when Tyerman spoke to a ‘crowded congregation’ at a Sydney church.After refreshing readers’ memories about the burning of the Boyd, the correspondentfor the Sydney Gazette related the narrative as an adventure story. The correspondentomitted the fishhook bargains but otherwise gave a detailed narrative, includingThrelkeld’s son’s question, the cook’s plans for suicide, and the raised axe. TheSydney Gazette described the cause of the confrontation delicately: ‘Several theftswere found to have been perpetrated. An attempt was then made to clear the deck,in effecting which one of the natives fell overboard.’ Though it claimed that White‘addressed the savages, upon their conduct’, it credited Te Ara for saving the captives.

Threlkeld also described the event in a letter to the LMS, which had pre-viously published much of his correspondence from Polynesia. Threlkeld’s originalhas eluded us, but it was evidently written after their arrival in Sydney since Threl-keld’s London correspondent speculated by return post that Tyerman, Bennet andThrelkeld owed their warm reception in Sydney to their ‘provident escape’. TheLMS celebrated ‘the very merciful and singular interposition of divine providencein Whangaroa bay’.42 Divine intervention would feature prominently in several sub-sequent clerical versions of the incident.

40 Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels, II, 254.41 Letter from Threlkeld to G. Burder and W.A. Hankey, 23 Apr. 1825, in Threlkeld, AustralianReminiscences & Papers, II, 181.42 LMS to Revd L. Threlkeld, 29 Aug. 1825, Newcastle, Miromaa Aboriginal Language and Tech-nology Centre (hereinafter MALTC), Threlkeld Papers, notebook 5847 (1817–1871), p. 21. Copyalso available at Sydney, Mitchell Library, CY reel 341.

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Tyerman downplayed the danger of the incident in a November 1824letter to the Revds Samuel Leigh and George Erskine. Leigh had spent twoyears in Whangaroa since 1819 and established the Wesleydale mission in 1823.Tyerman proposed an additional mission be established on Ohauroro Island; hethought the Ngati Pou were ‘desirous of having missionaries’. Most of the letteroptimistically described the missionaries’ progress at Wesleydale, concluding ‘weconfidently anticipate their ultimate success’.43 Tyerman adduced the Whangaroaincident as an argument for further missionary work: ‘their residence… wouldprevent…misunderstandings with foreigners… of which we ourselves hadnearly fallen a sacrifice’. Tyerman believed any future missionaries would‘reside, in full security’.44

Tyerman’s optimism proved unfounded. Wesleydale survived until January1827, but as early as March 1825, when Ngati Pou attacked the ship Mercury,rumours circulated of its destruction. In an April 1825 letter, Threlkeld reported asfact the rumour that

the Wesleyan Missionaries have been attacked, nearly killed, haveescaped with their lives, their property seized by the natives, and avessel the Mercury was seized plundered and burnt at the very spotwhere we (the Deputation) were in such imminent danger.

Threlkeld assumed that Te Ara lay behind these disturbances: ‘George… has givenhis dying charge to the natives,… to kill the Missionaries and seize their property as aretaliation for the Death of his father who was blown up in the destruction of theBoyd’.45

Additional speeches and letters by Bennet from 1829 briefly mention theincident as an unusually interesting incident from his travels.46 In 1831, shortlybefore publication of the Journal of Voyages and Travels, a profile of Bennetappeared in the Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle. The three-pageunsigned profile found the Whangaroa incident significant enough to mentionas ‘the most signal escape’ on the voyage from the ‘grasp and axes of the canni-bals’.47 After attracting little attention for seven years, the two-hour incident atWhangaroa was becoming better known, as the dramatic events formed a narra-tive in Bennet’s mind.

43 Daniel Tyerman to George Erskine and Samuel Leigh, Sydney, 5 Nov. 1824, reprinted in RobertMcNab (ed.), Historical Records of New Zealand, 2 vols (Wellington 1908–1914), I, 633.44 Ibid.45 Threlkeld to G. Burder and W.A. Hankey, 23 Apr. 1825.46 George Bennet, letter to Richard Miles, Capetown, 24 Mar. 1829, Christian Advocate, 7 (1829),473; also printed in Imperial Magazine; or, compendium of religious, moral & philosophical knowledge, 11(1829), 880.47 ‘Brief sketch of the missionary career and personal history of George Bennet, Esq.’, EvangelicalMagazine and Missionary Chronicle (1831), 178.

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THE WHANGAROA INCIDENT AS JUSTIFICATION FOR MISSIONARY WORK

The Journal of Voyages and Travels is the most important legacy of Tyerman and Bennet’svoyage. The voyage contributed little to the missionary endeavour. Niel Gunson, ahistorian of missionary work in Polynesia, concluded that ‘little practical benefit…seems to have been derived’ from their visit.48 Poor personal relations betweenTyerman and Bennet may have played a role: the two were barely on speakingterms by the time they reached Sydney,49 a petulance that, according to Threlkeld,had ‘rendered them unhappy in the Islands and ridiculed in [New South Wales]’.50

The Journal of Voyages and Travels, however, makes an interesting read and enjoyed con-siderable success. A Boston printer issued a three-volume edition in 1832, a Germantranslation appeared in Basel in 1833, and a London reprint appeared in 1841. Ascholarly reissue appeared in 2005.51

The Journal of Voyages and Travels described the Whangaroa incident overseveral pages. It became the authoritative source on the incident in the sense that itinformed all subsequent European views. It was sufficiently detailed for laterauthors to select and emphasise different aspects of the story.

Montgomery placed the Whangaroa incident in a religious context. Tyermanand Bennet are the protagonists of the Journal as a whole. While not hagiographic, theJournal emphasises Bennet and Tyerman’s courage and fortitude. In Whangaroa,Montgomery claimed, Bennet ‘maintained his calmness’ as his arms were pinned tohis sides; even the axe hovering overhead ‘did not give him particular alarm’.Bennet’s composure demonstrated both courage and Christian faith.52

Much as the Journal of Voyages and Travels treats Tyerman and Bennet asheroes, it turns the Maori into villains. Montgomery repeatedly used terms such as‘savages’ and ‘barbarians’, telling readers, for example, ‘of the almost preternaturalfury which savages can throw into their distorted countenances’.53 Tyerman hadcharacterised the events at Whangaroa as a human misunderstanding, but Montgom-ery believed the Ngati Pou had been ‘possessed by the legion-fiend of rage, cupidityand revenge’,54 who ultimately could only ‘threaten a destruction which an invisibleand mighty hand stayed them from executing’.55 Given the terrifying experience of

48 Niel Gunson, Messengers of Grace: evangelical missionaries in the South Seas 1797–1860 (Melbourne1978), 124.49 Anna Johnston, Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800–1860 (Cambridge 2003), 136–39.50 Threlkeld to Revd W. Orme, 16 Dec. 1824, MALTC, Threlkeld Papers, notebook 5846 (1815–1862), p. 37. Copy also available at Sydney, Mitchell Library, ML ref. A382, CY reel 820.51 Die erste Missionsreise um die Welt, welche in den Jahren 1821–1829 die beyden Abgeordneten der Londner

Missionsgesellschaft, Herr Daniel Tyermann und Georg Bennet, gemacht haben (Basel 1833); Voyages and

Travels round the World: by the Rev. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, Esq.… between the years 1821 and

1829 (London 1841); the 2005 reprint from Eilbron Classics comes from the 1831 London original.52 Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels, II, 250.53 Ibid., 250, 251.54 Ibid., 250.55 Ibid., 252.

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captivity, Montgomery’s unflattering description of the Ngati Pou may seem unsur-prising. Yet overall Montgomery painted a fairly complex picture of Maori. AlisonTwells argues that Bennet and Tyerman believed ‘that all peoples, whatever theirdegree of savagery, were part of the human family’.56 They depicted Europeans inAustralia as more morally debased than Aborigines57 and praised Maori as ‘magnifi-cent barbarians, both in person and intellect, compared with the abject natives of NewHolland’.58

Most significantly, Te Ara, previously responsible for burning the Boyd, ulti-mately rescued Tyerman and Bennet. Te Ara’s protection offset Ngati Pou theft andthreats of violence, suggesting the possibility of better Maori–European relations.Montgomery’s emphasis on potential Maori redemption also supported the mission-ary work that had taken Tyerman and Bennet to New Zealand.

The success of the Journal of Voyages and Travels attracted attention. While somefound the volume ‘prolix’,59 the narrative generated discussion in both religious andsecular journals in England, Scotland, the United States and Ireland60 as well as in thenon-anglophone press in Wales, Switzerland, Russia and France.61 Not all reviewersdiscussed the Whangaroa incident, but clerical readers tended to accept Montgom-ery’s interpretation of the events.

In July 1831, Dublin’s Christian Examiner and Church of Ireland Magazine high-lighted the evangelical interest of Montgomery’s work in order to praise the mission-ary endeavour. The Christian Examiner described the Whangaroa incident in a three-page excerpt that ended with Te Ara rescuing the missionaries – in other words,when the slaughterer of the Boyd became the unexpected saviour. The Christian

Examiner thought Te Ara’s shift from persecutor to protector demonstrated ‘thepower of that “age” which has come, and the proclaiming of which, under God,can turn the rudest savage that ever threw a spear… into a meek and cultivated

56 Twells, ‘“A Christian and civilised land”’, 57.57 Johnston, Missionary Writing and Empire, 176–77; see also Anna Johnston, ‘Antipodean heathens:the London Missionary Society in Polynesia and Australia, 1800–1850’, in Lynette Russell (ed.),Colonial Frontiers: Indigenous–European encounters in settler societies (Manchester 2001), 76.58 Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels, II, 280.59 Tim Youngs, Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century: filling the blank spaces (London 2006), 206.60 Review of Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels… (London 1831), Monthly Review, 3:1 (1831),96–97; Review of Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels… (London 1831), Christian Guardian andChurch of England Magazine, Aug. 1831, 309; Review of Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels…(London 1831), Baptist Magazine, Sep. 1831, 417–18; Review of Montgomery, Journal of Voyages andTravels… (Boston 1832), American Quarterly Register, 4:3 (1832), 231; Review of Montgomery, Journal ofVoyages and Travels… (Boston 1832),Quarterly Christian Spectator, 4:1 (1832), 14–15; Review ofMontgom-ery, Journal of Voyages and Travels… (London 1831),Edinburgh Review or Critical Journal, 57:115 (1833), 80–95; ‘Slanders upon the missions in the Islands of the Pacific’, Spirit of the Pilgrims, 5:10 (1832), 594.61 ‘Dyfyniadau’, Y Gwyliedydd, Nov. 1831, 341–42; ‘Wiederlegung einer öffentlichenVerläumdung desMissionswerkes auf denGesellschafts-Inseln’,Magazin für die neueste Geschichte der evangelischenMissions- und

Bibelgesellschaften, 1831, 167; E.F.Korsh, ‘PuteshestviyaTeyermena i Benneta’,Biblioteka dlya chteniya, 2:3(1834), 89–112; ‘Variétés’, Le Semeur: journal religieux, politique, philosophique et littéraire, 4:33 (1833), 246.

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creature’.62 Te Ara never accepted Christianity, but the Christian Examiner impliedthat he had.

The following year John Young described the Whangaroa incident in hisRecord of Providence. Young told the story in his own words and, strangely, gave Threl-keld credit for actions Montgomery ascribed to Bennet, such as calmly awaiting theaxe blow and speaking Maori. Young stressed Maori cruelty, describing the NgatiPou as ‘savages’ and ‘monsters’.63 Nevertheless the moral of Young’s story resemblesthose found in Montgomery and the Christian Examiner: divine providence had trans-formed Te Ara from savage to protector.64 By making Te Ara central to the narrative,Montgomery, the Christian Examiner and Young contrasted Ngati Pou savagery withTe Ara’s transformation from persecutor to protector. For a Christian audienceprone to conflate moral transformation with conversion to Christianity, these narra-tives bolstered the missionary endeavour. The Christian Examiner even made the pointexplicit by turning Te Ara into a Christian.

A final version from the 1830s told the Whangaroa incident with a strikinglydifferent moral. In 1837 the Scottish Christian Herald reprinted Montgomery’s text ver-batim, beginning as the Ngati Pou boarded the ship and ending with Te Ara’s inter-vention. The text contrasted Te Ara’s protection of the Endeavour with his persecutionof the Boyd but showed no interest in his moral transformation or the potential moraltransformation of Maori. Instead an introductory paragraph briefly explained whyTyerman and Bennet went to New Zealand and framed the story simply as ‘aninstance of savage barbarity’.65

Maori barbarism featured equally prominently in an 1844 essay by WilhelmHoffmann, a professor of Lutheran theology in Basel, Switzerland, who may have metBennet when Bennet visited the Basel Bible Society.66 Hoffmann evocativelydescribed the climate, landscapes and natural beauty of New Zealand, yet warnedthat ‘people are the only predators… the most dangerous and horrible possible’.67

Summarising traditional Maori religious beliefs, he declared that ‘the cultural influ-ence of such a religion is unmistakable, since New Zealand is a land of liars’, forwhom ‘stealing has become second nature’.68 The Whangaroa incident provided evi-dence. Hoffman described ‘a swarm of dirty’ Maori boarding the ship and had themholding a spear to the captain’s breast and an axe over Bennet’s head, feeling the fleshon Tyerman’s arms. Te Ara loses his individuality: the arriving ship bore ‘one of theWesleyan missionaries and a chief’. Women and children leaping overboard is the

62 Review of Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels… (London 1831), Christian Examiner, July1831, 545.63 John Young, The Record of Providence; or, the government of God displayed in a series of interesting facts fromsacred and profane history (London 1832), 129.64 Ibid., 130.65 ‘The ferocity of the New Zealanders’, Scottish Christian Herald, 4 Feb. 1837, 69–70.66 On Bennet’s visit see Dr A.O., ‘Erinnerungen an Dr. C. Malan’, Bibelblätter, 1/2 (1867), 10–11.67 Wilhelm Hoffman, ‘Dritte Missionsstunde, Neuzeeland I (1844)’, Missions-Stunden: Zweiunddreißig

Vorträge über das evangelische Missionswerk (Stuttgart 1848 [1844]), 32.68 Ibid., 34.

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only nonviolent detail appearing in Hoffman’s account.69 Hoffman and the Scottish

Christian Herald foreshadowed an emphasis on savagery that would characteriseseveral post-1840 versions of the story.

A French account from 1871, appearing in Louis Gaussen’s commentary onthe book of Joshua, used the incident to illustrate missionary fortitude. Gaussen hasBennet arriving in Whangaroa ‘several days’ after the destruction of the Boyd,where he ‘almost suffered the same fate. One of the chiefs held an axe to his head’.After describing how Tyerman’s limbs were fondled, Gaussen immediately turnedto an unrelated missionary martyr, who ‘was massacred and will receive the crownof glory before God on the day of resurrection’.70 Gaussen so decontextualised theWhangaroa incident as to omit any reference to the Endeavour or its capture. ForGaussen, the Whangaroa incident became a moral homily: he ascribed neither mis-sionaries nor Maori any individuality.

SECULAR VERSIONS OF THE WHANGAROA INCIDENT

Montgomery’s Journal of Voyages and Travels also found a secular audience as anexample of travel literature. Secular versions of the incident reflected secular interests.Some authors saw the Whangaroa incident as an entertaining adventure story, othersas a source of ethnographic information about New Zealand, and one author, as weshall see, used it to explain New Zealand politics to the British public.

Writing from different motives, secular authors depicted the Maori quite dif-ferently than had their missionary predecessors. While missionaries often saw a con-tinuum of human debasement along which all might rise, secular accounts generallyposited a sharper dichotomy between barbarism and civilisation. In 1831, London’sEclectic Review surveyed several books on British missionary work in a two-partarticle, including a lengthy review of Montgomery with long quotations describingthe Whangaroa incident. The Eclectic Review turned Bennet and Tyerman intosecular protagonists. Where missionary accounts praised the missionaries for theirfaith in God and credited Te Ara’s timely arrival to divine intervention, the Eclectic

Review commended Bennet’s ‘admirable presence of mind and tact’. It underscoredthe fishhook bargains as ‘the means of staying their murderous proceedings’.71

British ingenuity, rather than divine intervention, saved the captives.While many excerpts of Montgomery’s account omitted various details, the

Eclectic Review removed the crucial fact that Captain Dibbs had ‘jostled’ the NgatiPou chief overboard. While ‘jostling’ would hardly justify cannibalism in Europeaneyes, it explained why commerce had turned to confrontation. The Eclectic Review,however, wrote merely that ‘a misunderstanding arose’, in which Indigenous NewZealanders ‘were the aggressors’. Ultimately the Eclectic Review explained the attack

69 Ibid., 34–35.70 Louis Gaussen, Leçons sur les 7 prem. chap. de Josué (Tolouse 1870), 98–99.71 Review of Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels… (London 1831), Eclectic Review, Aug. 1831,201.

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through essentialist stereotyping: ‘The ferocious and thoroughly depraved characterof the natives is well known.’72 The Eclectic Review’s interpretation of Maori savageryreflected scepticism about the missionary endeavour. While it reproduced Montgom-ery’s account of Te Ara’s transformation, it provided no commentary and apparentlyincluded the story only to respect the integrity of Montgomery’s paragraph break.Maori barbarism was an ineradicable racial characteristic that missionary interven-tion could not change.

The Eclectic Review’s version of the Whangaroa incident, differing significantlyfrom Montgomery’s, also illustrated the story’s potential as a self-contained narrative.A popular German version from 1831 entirely separated the Whangaroa incidentfrom Montgomery’s Journal. In July 1831 Munich’s Ausland printed a German trans-lation of the Whangaroa incident entitled ‘An adventure in New Zealand (the tale of amissionary)’.73 The text had such potential as an adventure story that later that year itwas reprinted verbatim in both Budapest and Linz.74 Budapest’s Spiegel für Kunst,

Eleganz und Mode even split the story into two parts, creating a cliff-hanger as theaxe was raised above Bennet’s head. Ausland cited Montgomery, but neither Spiegelnor Linz’s Oesterreichisches Bürgerblatt attributed the story or provided any backgroundabout its characters.

TheGerman text differs fromMontgomery’s original. Some differences reflectan imperfect translation, but other changes downplay the Christian content of Mont-gomery’s narrative. Ausland and Spiegel, like the Eclectic Review, ignored Te Ara’s trans-formation. Most strikingly they omitted a parenthetical description of the ‘invisibleand almighty hand’ that saved themissionaries. Such changes transformed amissionaryhomily into an adventure story. Travel stories formed a staple of the Spiegel: in 1833 itpublished several articles about Polynesian cultures in a series called ‘Pictures from theSouthern Sea’,75 all presumably derived ultimately from English sources.

Ethnographic pedagogy also permeated Joel Polack’s 1838 New Zealand: being

a narrative of travels and adventures. Polack, the first Jew in New Zealand, advocated Britishcolonisation and published his account with immigrants in mind.76 Polack retold theWhangaroa incident in his own words, and his account differs factually from Mon-tgomery’s. Omitting reference to Dibbs’s jostling, he wrote that ‘the accidentalfalling overboard of one of their number caused them to make an attack on the

72 Ibid.73 ‘Ein Abenteuer auf Neuseeland (Erzählung eines Missionärs)’, Das Ausland, 4:209 (1831), 835–36.74 ‘Ein Abenteuer auf Neuseeland (Erzählung eines Missionärs)’, Spiegel für Kunst, Eleganz und Mode,77 (1831), 610–12; 78 (1831), 18–20. ‘Ein Abenteuer auf Neuseeland (Erzählung eines Missionärs)’,Oesterreichisches Bürgerblatt für Verstand, Herz und gute Laune, 89:12 (1831), 2–4.75 For stories on Bora Bora, Hawai‘i, Polynesian religious beliefs (highlighting human sacrifice), theSociety Islands and Polynesian kingship, see, respectively, ‘Bilder aus der Südsee’, Spiegel für Kunst,Eleganz und Mode, 35 (1833), 275–79; 36 (1833), 281–83; 43 (1833), 341–43; 44 (1833), 349–50; 45(1833), 355–57; see also ‘Die Sandwichinseln’, 98 (1833), 780–81.76 Joel Samuel Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders: with notes corroborative of their habits,

usages, etc., and remarks to intending emigrants, 2 vols (London 1840).

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crew and passengers’. Polack may have depicted the attack as unprovoked because hebelieved Dibbs acted in legitimate defence of property; he also claimed that Ngati Pou‘commenced hostilities by acts of theft’.77

Polack’s account differs most dramatically frommissionary accounts in its treat-ment of Te Ara. Polack, uniquely, suggested that Te Ara saved the captives to restoretrade with European ships. His narrative moves from the 1809 Boyd attack to the 1820Dromedary visit (during which Te Ara was ‘continually harassing’78 the ship’s officers), tothe 1824 Endeavour capture, and finally to the 1825 Mercury attack, which supposedlyprovoked Ngapuhi leader Hongi Hika, a key figure in the Musket Wars, to driveNgati Uru and Ngati Pou from the Whangaroa region.79 Instead of a Christianhomily, Polack offered a political moral about the necessity of peaceful trading. Unpro-voked attacks on European ships caused Ngati Uru and Ngati Pou to lose control overland ‘they had proved themselves unworthy to occupy’.80

Another secular version of the Whangaroa incident emerged in 1870. JohnGeorge Wood, a popular scientific writer whose faith sometimes infused his scientificwriting,81 dispensed with the supernatural in his version of the Whangaroa incident.In his 1870 Natural History of Man: being an account of the manners and customs of the uncivilized

races of men, Wood discussed the Maori as an anthropological curiosity, much as he dis-cussed zoological curiosities in his other works. Wood classified the ‘fierce andwarlike’82 Maori as one of the ‘uncivilized races’ yet believed that uncivilised races,like exotic animals, deserved scholarly attention. Wood specifically used the Wha-ngaroa incident to describe Maori fighting tactics. According to Wood, Maoriwishing to seize foreign ships would

mingle freely with the crew until each man was close to one of thesailors. At a signal from the chief, the concealed merai [mere, a tra-ditional Maori weapon] was snatched from beneath the mat, andin a moment had crushed through the head of the selectedvictim.83

The Ngati Pou’s seizure of the Endeavour showed the tactic remained success-ful even after ‘this ruse’ became familiar. Wood quoted verbatim from the Journal ofVoyages and Travels, ending with Bennet’s repeated purchase of the same fish.84 Like

77 Joel Samuel Polack, New Zealand: being a narrative of travels and adventures during a residence in that country

between the years 1831 and 1837, 2 vols (London 1838), II, 173.78 Ibid., 171.79 Ibid., 176. For a contemporary account of Hongi’s campaign see Samuel Marsden, The Lettersand Journals of Samuel Marsden, 1765–1838, ed. John Rawson Elder (Dunedin 1932), 428–29.80 Polack, New Zealand, II, 177.81 See Bernard Lightman, ‘“The voices of nature”: popularizing Victorian science’, in BernardLightman (ed.), Victorian Science in Context (Chicago 1997), 201.82 J.G. Wood, The Natural History of Man: being an account of the manners and customs of the uncivilized races of

men, 2 vols (London 1868), II, 159.83 Ibid.84 Ibid., 160.

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the Eclectic Magazine, Wood treated Bennet’s negotiations as a means of buying timeuntil help returned.85 Montgomery, by contrast, had written that, for Bennet, hopeof rescue had ‘no conscious place in his mind’.86

Proliferating accounts of the Whangaroa incident hint at the diverse Euro-pean audiences interested in New Zealand. Britain’s imperial interests featured pro-minently. Where the Christian Examiner speculated about the potential for Britishexpansion, the Eclectic Review and Polack explicitly advocated colonisation. Theaccount in the Spiegel, however, suggests the story could interest European editorswho lacked any vested interest in British imperial expansion. The narrow escapefrom cannibals made a good adventure story, all the more compelling since basedon actual events. Indeed theWhangaroa incident fitted neatly into the popular literarygenre of shipwrecks and captivity,87 the conventions of which were sufficiently estab-lished for Jonathan Swift to parody them in Gulliver’s Travels.88 Such narratives playedan important role in European imaginations,89 and the Whangaroa incident endured,in part, because it resembled a common narrative genre.

85 For a similar rendering of the Whangaroa incident as illustrating how cultural differences couldbe used to deceive, see Henry Davenport Northrop, Earth, sea and sky; or, marvels of the universe

(Chicago 1887), 147–51.86 Montgomery, Journal of Voyages and Travels, II, 251.87 For factual accounts of shipwrecks see Remarkable Shipwrecks; or, a collection of interesting naval disasters… (Hartford 1813); Cyrus Redding, A History of Shipwrecks, and Disasters at Sea, from the Most Authentic

Sources, 2 vols (London 1833); Pierre-Joseph Dumont, The African Captive… (Edinburgh 1830);William O.S. Gilly, Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy: between 1793 and 1849, compiled principally

from official documents in the Admiralty (London 1850). For a scholarly study of an African shipwreck seeStephen Taylor, Caliban’s Shore: the wreck of the Grosvenor and the strange fate of her survivors (New York2004). For novels depicting shipwrecks see Agnes Strickland, The Rival Crusoes; or, the shipwreck(London 1836); Jane Strickland, The Orphan Captive; or, Christian endurance (London 1848); AnneBowman, The Castaways; or, the adventures of a family in the wilds of Africa (London 1857); JessieSaxby, Breakers Ahead; or, Uncle Jack’s stories of great shipwrecks of recent times, 1869 to 1880 (London 1882).88 Johnathan Swift (as Lemuel Gulliver), Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World (London 1727).89 On these narratives in British culture see Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the world, 1600–1850 (London 2004); Joe Snader, Caught Between Worlds: British captivity narratives in fact and fiction (Lex-ington, KY 2000). On Pacific captivity narratives see Ian Campbell, ‘Gone Native’ in Polynesia: captivitynarratives and experiences from the South Pacific (Westport, CT 1998); Barbara Creed and Jeanette Hoorn(eds), Body Trade: captivity, cannibalism and colonialism in the Pacific (London 2002). On Australian cap-tivity narratives see Kate Darian-Smith, Roslyn Poignant and Kay Schaffer (eds), Captured Lives: Aus-tralian captivity narratives (London 1993); Kay Schaffer, In the Wake of First Contact: the Eliza Fraser stories

(Cambridge 1995). On American captivity narratives see Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney (eds),Captive Histories: English, French, and Native narratives of the 1704 Deerfield raid (Boston 2006); PaulineTurner Strong, Captive Selves, Captivating Others: the politics and poetics of colonial American captivity narratives(Boulder 2000); Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: the mythology of the American frontier, 1600–1860 (Norman, OK 1973); Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola and James Arthur Levernier, TheIndian Captivity Narrative, 1550–1900 (New York 1993). On Spanish captivity narratives see FernandoOperé, Indian Captivity in Spanish America: frontier narratives, tr. Gustvo Pellón (Charlottesville, VA2008).

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THE WHANGAROA INCIDENT AS JUSTIFICATION FOR IMPERIALISM

British colonisation of New Zealand transformed Christian narratives of the Wha-ngaroa incident. John Beecham, speaking to the House of Lords in 1838, quotedMontgomery to argue that missionary work helped ‘make New Zealand a Place ofsafe Resort to our Merchants and Seamen’.90 The Whangaroa incident showed thedangers of pre-Christianised New Zealand, but missionary labours had supposedlytransformed the situation: ‘The Contrast between New Zealand at the Commence-ment of Missionary Labours there and what it is at the present Time is most striking… now Ships visit it safely’.91

The Mariners’ Church Gospel Temperance Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Magazine abridgedBeecham’s testimony for sailors. Describing the ship’s capture complete with ‘howl-ings and screechings’, it ignored the personal reactions of Threlkeld, Tyerman andBennet and emphasised the story’s moral with italic type: ‘the natives, by means ofmissionary exertions, have been so far tamed and humanized, that New Zealandhas become a place of safe resort for our merchants and sailors’.92 The Mariners’Church, unusually, emphasised that disputes ‘generally originated in our ships’,giving several examples of wronged natives.

While individual missionaries facilitated British–Maori interactions, formal colo-nisation eventually reduced the importance of missionaries as cultural intermediaries.Colonisation also led to military conflict between Europeans and Maori. DespiteBennet’s death in 1841 and the subsequent reissue of Montgomery’s text, the incidentpassed into relative obscurity in the 1840s.93 Whangaroa narratives enjoyed a strongrevival in the 1850s, with new versions appearing every year from 1852 to 1855. Inter-vening political developments affected subsequent versions of the Whangaroa incident.

Most of the second generation of Whangaroa accounts derive from Mont-gomery; those that do not will be treated in a final section below. Though Montgom-ery’s text had inspired numerous retellings in the 1830s, versions from the 1850snoticeably changed the meaning of the story through selective editing. They neglectedTe Ara and indeed ceased to distinguish individual Maori actors. Since large numbersof Maori had converted to Christianity, later accounts no longer struggled to persuadethe reader of the potential for Maori conversion and redemption. They insteaddepicted the pre-Christian Maori in the darkest possible terms so as to draw a dra-matic contrast with the happy Christian present. Versions from the 1850s, finally,exaggerated the importance and accomplishments of European missionaries.

90 Great Britain Parliament, Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords Appointed to Inquire into the

Present State of the Islands of New Zealand… (London 1838), 288. The Whangaroa incident is cited onpp. 288–90.91 Ibid., 290.92 ‘Sailors’ quarrel and murder at New Zealand’, Mariners’ Church Gospel Temperance Soldiers’ and

Sailors’ Magazine, 25:8 (1848), 364–65.93 On Bennet’s death see Tom Hiney, On the Missionary Trail: a journey through Polynesia, Asia and Africa

with the London Missionary Society (London 2000), 314.

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The second generation of Whangaroa narratives began with Alfred Barrett’s1852 biography of John Bumby. Bumby, a Wesleyan missionary to the Bay of Islands,drowned in June 1840 shortly after arriving in New Zealand. Barrett used Bumby’sjournals to write a hagiography. His interpretation of the Whangaroa incidentshows contempt for Maori religion, calling it ‘a kind of polytheism… charity, good-ness, love and hope were unknown’. Barrett believed Maori owed their ‘transitionfrom a barbarous to a civilized state’ to missionary work and supplemented his biogra-phy with a short history of the mission.94

Barrett cited Montgomery’s version of the incident in a five-page footnote,ending with the carpenter’s plans for suicide, the resolution of the story being sum-marised. Barrett incorrectly identified Dacre’s ship as the Mercury and omittedBennet’s repeated fish purchases.95 Barrett also downplayed the importance of TeAra, claiming Bennet and Tyerman were saved ‘by the arrival of the Wesleyan Mis-sionary in a boat, accompanied by the Chief George’.96 Barrett mentioned Te Ara’srole in the Boyd massacre, but where earlier accounts imply Christianity had trans-formed Te Ara’s character, Barrett focused his attention on William White, whomhe depicted as ‘instrumental in quelling an outbreak of jealousy on the part of thenatives’.97

The London Tract Society’s 1853 Remarkable Escapes from Peril also deprivesMaori actors of agency. Divine forces ‘restrained the rage of the savages’ while they‘held possession of the ship’ because ‘the Lord God Almighty’ had heard the captives’prayers.98 Curiously the missionaries receive praise less for their piety than for their‘presence of mind… looking calmly at the peril… instead of being paralyzed by exci-tement’.99 Tyerman and Bennet’s story in Remarkable Escapes is followed by a story ofhow passengers aboard the East Indiaman Kent saved themselves by remaining calmwhen their ship caught fire.100 The unrelated stories depict a deity that actively inter-venes in the world to protect believers.

While extolling missionary heroism, Remarkable Escapes removes both Maoriactors and European culpability. Crucially the jostled chief is omitted. The NgatiPou began stealing, their women and children fled, and their warriors took the ship– all without apparent provocation. The rescuing boat carried ‘Mr. White, a Wesley-an missionary, and the principal chief of that part of the island’.101 By omitting Te

94 Alfred Barrett, The Life of the Rev. John Hewgill Bumby: with a brief history of the commencement and progressof the Wesleyan mission in New-Zealand (London 1852), 120–21, 203, 223, 297.95 Barrett signalled his omission as follows: ‘After describing the methods adopted by Mr. Bennet toconciliate the natives, the narrative proceeds’. Ibid., 133.96 Ibid., 135.97 Ibid., 130.98 Samuel Manning., Remarkable Escapes from Peril (London n.d.), 130–31. Several library cataloguesdate the book to 1853.99 Ibid., 128.100 Ibid., 131–32. The original text appeared as Duncan Macgregor, A Narrative of the Loss of theKentEast Indiaman, by Fire, in the Bay of Biscay… (Edinburgh 1825).101 Manning, Remarkable Escapes, 131.

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Ara’s name, Remarkable Escapes avoids having to explain his transformation. Maorimight still be elevated from barbarism; Remarkable Escapes lauds previous missionariesfor ‘sowing the precious seed of which the present generation are reaping the fruits’.Yet by removing individual Maori actors from the story, Remarkable Escapes depictsMaori as indistinguishable ‘fierce savages’ who were ‘almost to a man cannibals,and… the dread of sailors’.102

TheWhangaroa incident also appears in the 1854 issue of the Juvenile Mission-

ary Magazine, published by the LMS. An anonymous European missionary travelling tohis unspecified post in the South Pacific paraphrased Montgomery’s account withoutcitation. The novice missionary reported that the natives, now ‘professed Christians’,were pleased to see him and contrasted his own warm welcome with Tyerman andBennet’s experiences back ‘when [Maori] were amongst the fiercest heathens andthe worst cannibals’.103 The novice missionary summarised the Whangaroa incidentin a single paragraph that omitted Bennet’s negotiations, Threlkeld’s son and Te Ara’stransformation. He did not even say whether Bennet and Tyerman had escaped!Instead the Juvenile Missionary Magazine contrasted the pleasant Christian presentwith a dark heathen past represented by the Whangaroa incident.104

The brief account of Robert Young, aWesleyan deputy who visited the SouthPacific, also removed Maori agency to glorify European missionary work. Youngmentioned the incident as one of a series of Whangaroa-based Maori outrages: theburning of the Boyd in 1809, the destruction of theMercury in 1825 and the plunderingof Wesleydale in 1827. Young claimed that Tyerman and Bennet had been saved‘only by the timely interposition of the Missionaries’. Young juxtaposed these outrageswith an idyllic present: ‘a happy change has been affected. “The wolf also shall dwellwith the lamb”’.105

In August 1855 theWesleyan Juvenile Offering made the same point with cruderdidacticism in the article ‘Now and then’: ‘Now a great number of the New-Zealandersare Christians, then they were Heathens. Now they are peaceful and industrious, thenthey were fond of fighting, killing, and eating their enemies.’106 The Offering exagger-ated Maori piety, claiming Maori were grateful for missionaries and donated moneyfor missionary causes in other countries.107 The Offering used the Whangaroa incidentto illustrate the dark past, providing a highly abbreviated version of Montgomery’stext, including only aggressive Maori acts and making them simultaneous.108 Theydescribed the chief being jostled and did not glorify Bennet and Tyerman’s calmness,yet while Bennet and Tyerman were not heroes, the Ngati Pou remained villains.

102 Ibid., 128.103 ‘Pleasant sights, no. 2’, Juvenile Missionary Magazine, 11 (1854), 133.104 Ibid., 134.105 Robert Young, The Southern World: journal of a deputation from the Wesleyan Conference to Australia and

Polynesia… (London 1854), 142–43.106 ‘Now and then: Wesleyan Mission Station, New-Zealand’, Wesleyan Juvenile Offering, Aug. 1855,85.107 Ibid., 85–86.108 Ibid., 87.

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Maori wickedness and moral transformation dominated a brief account of theWhangaroa incident in the Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle of 1861. TheEvangelical Magazine used the Whangaroa incident primarily as evidence of Maori bar-barism before ‘intercourse with the British’ had ‘greatly improved them’.109 It down-played Tyerman and Bennet’s heroism, calling them ‘trembling prisoners’.110 Dibbs’sjostling of the chief mitigated Ngati Pou savagery and was therefore omitted; the inci-dent arose because of an ‘accident’ that served as ‘a pretext for commencing hostili-ties’. Yet the Evangelical Magazine also characterised Ngati Pou as having ‘intellectualcharacter far beyond most savage tribes’. Since Te Ara’s protection demonstratedMaori potential, the Evangelical Magazine acknowledged his role in the rescue butgave divine powers ultimate credit. The Evangelical Magazine was equivocal about con-verting Maori, thinking European settlement would Christianise New Zealand.111

Alluding to the Taranaki war (1860–61), they concluded that ‘the native race, fromnatural causes… is rapidly diminishing’.112

James Buller’s autobiographical Forty Years in New Zealand similarly supportedEuropean colonisation. Writing in 1878, he argued that European religion had trans-formed Maori savagery.113 The Whangaroa incident appears as one of a series ofMaori outrages committed against the long-suffering Wesleyans at Kaeo.114

Buller’s account paraphrases Montgomery, includes the jostling of the chief andcredits the rescue to ‘one of the missionaries and the chief Te Ara’.115 Yet Bullermade no claims about moral transformation among Whangaroa Maori: Te Araremained a heathen and cannibal.116 When visiting Whangaroa, Buller recalled theBoyd, not the Endeavour.117

While varying in their characterisation of Tyerman and Bennet, all the1850s versions of the Whangaroa incident emphasise Maori violence, often exag-gerating its capriciousness by removing important elements from Montgomery’snarrative. Remarkable Escapes, the Missionary Magazine, and the Evangelical Magazine

all omitted Dibbs’s jostling of the chief. Among missionary accounts published inthe 1850s, only the Evangelical Magazine described Te Ara’s transformation frompersecutor to protector, the event which the Christian Examiner had used to justifythe missionary endeavour in 1831. Patrick Brantlinger has written that ‘in later mis-sionary discourse… the “horrid customs” of the Maori and the various Polynesianislands compete for something like the record or nadir of devilish degradation

109 ‘Our colonies’, Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, new ser., 3 (1861), 188.110 Ibid., 189.111 Ibid., 191.112 Ibid.113 James Buller, Forty Years in New Zealand: including a personal narrative, an account of Maoridom, and of the

Christianization and colonization of the country (London 1878), 207, 232.114 Ibid., 284–88.115 Buller was the only 19th-century author to refer to Te Ara by his Maori name. Ibid., 287.116 Ibid.117 Ibid., 148. Buller also discussed the Boyd. Ibid., 102, 251, 263.

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among all the primitive races and cultures of the world’.118 What explains thisincreasing demonisation?

Some degree of contempt for non-Christian culture is inherent in the mission-ary idea. People who travelled abroad hoping to replace Indigenous beliefs with theirown had a tendency, in Angela Ballara’s words, ‘to wish to destroy any culturalphenomenon that clashed with their proselytising aims’.119 Yet the evangelical workof early missionaries required some engagement with non-Christian cultures inorder to befriend potential converts. Missionaries to Maori peoples learned somethingabout the Maori worldview to transmit their message. At Wesleydale, for example,Hobbs explained Christ’s death ‘as an utu [rectification, often in the sense of retribu-tion] for God’s ancestors’ because Adam and Eve ‘had defied the tapu [taboo] of theforbidden fruit’.120 European Christians would not have understood the crucifixion insuch terms. By the 1850s, however, European settlers were losing their familiarity withbasic Maori concepts such as utu and tapu.121 Perhaps later missionaries engaged lesswith Maori pagan traditions. Bennet had been comfortable rubbing noses with NgatiPou, but when Bumby purchased land for his mission, he disliked being ‘obliged tosubmit… to the disagreeable ceremony’.122

As Christianity took root in New Zealand, missionaries increasingly empha-sised the contrast between the happy present and the heathen past. Where Montgom-ery had argued missionary work would redeem Maori cannibals, subsequent authorsclaimed cannibals had already become meek Christians. Since various disputes haddriven Maori and Europeans to war on several occasions after 1845, narratives ofmeek Maori conversion found little resonance with European audiences. The latergeneration of missionaries, therefore, concentrated on depicting the pre-Christianpast in the most bloodthirsty terms possible.123 Thus later missionaries neglectedthe ultimately unharmed Tyerman and Bennet and dwelt instead on the Boyd

massacre.124

Missionaries also had economic incentives to highlight Maori barbarism. TheNew Zealand missions were expensive and depended on London’s financialsupport.125 Missionaries worried about the financial sustainability of their missionsexpressed relief at signs their congregations were becoming self-sustaining. Some

118 Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: discourse on the extinction of primitive races, 1800–1930 (Ithaca2003), 144.119 Angela Ballara, Iwi: the dynamics of Maori tribal organisation from c. 1769 to c. 1945 (Wellington 1998),61.120 Paraphrased in Williment, John Hobbs, 36.121 See for example Henry Sewell, The Journal of Henry Sewell, 1853–7, ed. W. David McIntyre, 2 vols(Christchurch 1980), I, 119.122 Barrett, The Life of the Rev. John Hewgill Bumby, 211.123 Jack Lee, The Bay of Islands (Hong Kong 1996 [1983]), 118.124 The Boyd story retained its popularity at least until 1921; see W.J. Williams, Centenary Sketches ofNew Zealand Methodism (Christchurch 1921), 14.125 Carolyn Cordery, ‘Hallowed treasures: sacred, secular and the Wesleyan Methodists in NewZealand, 1819–1840’, Accounting History, 11:2 (2006), 199–216, particularly 211–12.

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even measured Maori piety in financial terms. The Wesleyan Juvenile Offering rejoicedthat Maori gave money to support missions ‘where the people are still Heathens’.126

Buller could remember how much money he had made from various church collec-tions 30 years previously; he justified his careful accounting on the grounds that ‘a reli-gion that costs nothing is worth nothing’.127

THE VIEW FROM WESLEYDALE: STRACHAN AND HIS LACK OF IMPACT

A final version of the Whangaroa incident published in the 1850s differs strikinglyfrom other later versions. Alexander Strachan’s account appeared in a biography ofSamuel Leigh, a Wesleyan missionary at Kaeo. Strachan referred to Montgomery’saccount but also had access to Wesleydale correspondence, Leigh’s journals and‘those of his early coadjutors’. He also spoke with Leigh himself.128 Access toadditional information made Strachan sceptical of Montgomery. Since some sub-sequent versions of the Whangaroa incident drew on Strachan’s account, these ver-sions must be discussed separately from those based on Montgomery alone.

Strachan gave the Whangaroa incident little framing: one paragraphdescribes a Wesleyan visit to ‘the village of Whau Puké’129 on 11 July; the nextannounces the Endeavour’s arrival on the 15th. Strachan cited Montgomery insidequotation marks but dramatically abbreviated his text. The lengthiest passage Stra-chan quoted unchanged from Montgomery reads, ‘Tremendous were the howlingsand screechings of the barbarians, while they stamped and brandished their clubsand spears’. Strachan included the jostling of the chief, but omitted Bennet’s nego-tiations, the carpenter’s plans for suicide and the fears of Threlkeld’s son. He alsoignored Te Ara’s connection to the Boyd, describing Te Ara simply as ‘a chiefwho had come to invite the gentlemen of the deputation to Wesleydale’. The prison-ers were released when they saw ‘one of the Wesleyan missionaries, and the chief TeAra’.130

Strachan appended to his abbreviated version of Montgomery’s narrative apassage from the mission diary. The missionary journal recounted the conversationwith Bennet, Tyerman and Threlkeld about missionary work in New Zealand. TheWesleydale missionaries were disappointed that their guests intended to leave sud-denly, believing they ‘were not in such imminent danger as they apprehended…the whole scene was a stratagem of the natives, intended to intimidate the strangers’.The Wesleydale missionaries thought the incident had ‘occurred in consequence ofthe violence of the captain, without any real intention, on the part of the natives, to

126 ‘Now and then’, 86.127 Buller, Forty Years in New Zealand, 104–06.128 Strachan, Remarkable Incidents, 1.129 The University of Auckland Library’s Early New Zealand Books Project includes this placenamein its ‘list of names not matched’. ‘Variant Spellings’, Early New Zealand Books, http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/document?wid=102&page=1 (accessed 6 Mar. 2008).130 Strachan, Remarkable Incidents, 184.

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do them any serious injury’.131 Strachan commented that the perspective of theWesleydale missionaries did ‘not invalidate’ Montgomery’s account but ‘softenssome of its sterner features’. While acknowledging that the Europeans on board theEndeavour ‘expected every moment to be their last’, Strachan emphasised that ‘the pet-ulance of the captain occasioned this rupture’.132 No other version of the Whangaroa incidentdepicts the Ngati Pou in so sympathetic a light.

Strachan’s biography found a wide audience but had little impact on sub-sequent versions of the Whangaroa incident, even among authors who read hisversion. Harvey Newcomb’s 1855 Cyclopedia of Missions provided the first version ofthe Whangaroa incident to cite Strachan explicitly. Newcomb, describing Leigh’sactivities in New Zealand, appears to have synthesised Barrett’s and Strachan’saccounts. Barrett had implied that Te Ara acted at White’s bidding; Newcombremoved him entirely, leaving the missionaries as the leading actors: ‘the missionarieshad been instrumental in quelling an outbreak of jealousy on the part of the natives’and ‘thereby saving their [Tyerman’s and Bennet’s] lives’.133 The mediated retellingof the Whangaroa incident led to the progressive marginalisation of Te Ara.Newcomb also treated the Ngati Pou and Ngati Uru as undifferentiated natives.

In the 1870s, during significant conflict between Maori and British troops,134

WilliamMoister and Robert Ward retold the Whangaroa incident with access to Stra-chan. Ward’s 1872 Life among the Maories of New Zealand reproduces Strachan’s abbre-viated account with minor stylistic changes,135 citing Montgomery as the originalsource.136 Moister listed no sources, but his work refers to other incidents mentionedin Strachan.137 Moister’s account differs significantly from previous versions in havingthe Ngati Pou seize the Endeavour while Tyerman and Bennet were visiting Wesley-dale.138 Nobody reading Montgomery’s account could make this mistake, but Stra-chan’s abridged version obscures the chronology. Textual evidence thus suggeststhat Moister drew from Strachan, not from Montgomery.

Both Moister and Ward emphasised Maori wickedness and glorified mission-ary heroism. Like those of many authors before him, Moister’s account makes nomention of the chief’s jostling. Te Ara and White receive joint credit for saving thedeputation, but Tyerman and Bennet nevertheless ‘were in danger of falling a prey

131 Ibid., 185.132 Ibid., emphasis in original.133 Harvey Newcomb, A Cyclopedia of Missions: containing a comprehensive view of missionary operations

throughout the world… (New York 1855), 577.134 James Belich, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (Auckland 1987).135 Strachan’s ‘while’, for example, became ‘whilst’; a semicolon became a colon. Compare RobertWard, Life among the Maories of New Zealand: being a description of missionary, colonial and military achieve-

ments, ed. Thomas Lowe and William Whitby (London 1872), 120–21; Strachan, Remarkable Inci-dents, 184.136 Ward, Life among the Maories, 120.137 See William Moister, A History of Wesleyan Missions in all Parts of the World: from their commencement to

the present time (London 1871), 329, 332; Strachan, Remarkable Incidents, 145, 149.138 Moister, A History of Wesleyan Missions, 332–33.

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to the cruel natives’, elsewhere described as ‘the infuriated mob’.139 By emphasisingcapricious Maori violence, Moister extolled the self-sacrifice of the Wesleyan mission-aries. Ward, for his part, thought the incident illustrated ‘the perilous circumstances’that the missionaries faced.140 Ward claimed to have spoken with White and heardwhat Strachan also found in the mission journal: ‘the danger was more apparentthan real’. Yet Ward did not believe White entirely, concluding that the incident‘shews the perils’ the mission faced. The Wesleyans owed their ‘continued safety’ to‘divine protection’.141 Moister’s and Ward’s versions thus resemble the missionaryaccounts from the 1850s, perhaps unsurprising given that both had been active mis-sionaries and written several religious books.142

Strachan’s conscious effort to tell the Maori side of the Whangaroa incidentthus left little trace on authors who derived their account of the story from his version.The needs of missionary work so strongly determined howmissionaries interpreted thestory that even the extra information in the Kaeo missionary diary made littleimpression on the subsequent interpretation of the Whangaroa incident. Europeanauthors, even when exposed to Strachan’s evidence, found it easier to blame the inci-dent on Maori. These accounts even gave the Wesleyan missionaries credit for TeAra’s intervention, apparently in order to exaggerate their influence. While Christianmissions in New Zealand eventually transformed Maori society, in 1824 their influ-ence at Whangaroa remained slight.143 When Tyerman and Bennet arrived, thechapel at Wesleydale was just over one month old and offered, in Tyerman’swords, only the ‘promise of success’.144

Strachan’s unsuccessful attempt to provide the Maori side of the story, finally,highlights the absence of primary sources that provide a Maori perspective. Most earlyMaori texts, such as The Lore of the Whare-wananga or The Coming of the Maori, discuss

139 Ibid., 333.140 Ward, Life among the Maories, 119.141 Ibid., 121.142 Robert Ward, Lectures from New Zealand Addressed to Young Men (London 1862), i, iii; the preface ofthis work claims that Ward had been living in New Zealand for 17 years. On his emigration, seeJohn Petty, The History of the Primitive Methodist Connexion: from its origin to the Conference of 1860, the

jubilee year of the Connexion (London 1864), 480. The works of William Moister include Memorials of

Missionary Labours in Western Africa, the West Indies, and at the Cape of Good Hope (London 1866);Mission-

ary Pioneers: being memorial sketches of eminent ministers who have led the way in different parts of the mission field

(London 1871); Missionary Anecdotes: sketches, facts and incidents… (London 1875); Missionary Worthies,

Being Brief Memorial Sketches of Ministers Sent Forth by the Wesleyan Society… (London 1885); Missionary

Stories, Narratives, Scenes, and Incidents, Illustrative of the Providence and Grace of God in Connection with the

Propagation of the Gospel in Heathen Lands (London 1889); The Story of My Life and Missionary Labours:

in Europe, Africa, America and the West Indies (London 1886). He also wrote tracts on temperance.143 For a concise summary of the early missionary–Maori encounter see Judith Binney, ‘Two com-munities’, in Judith Binney, Judith Bassett and Erik Olssen (eds), The People and the Land = Te Tangata

me Te Whenua: an illustrated history of New Zealand, 1820–1920 (Auckland 1990), 12–29.144 J.G. Turner, The Pioneer Missionary: life of the Rev. Nathaniel Turner, missionary in New Zealand, Tonga,

and Australia (Melbourne 1872), 50; Revd Daniel Tyerman to George Erskine and Samuel Leigh,Sydney, 5 Nov. 1824, reprinted in McNab, Historical Records of New Zealand, I, 633.

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cosmology and genealogy rather than daily incidents.145 Te Ara left no diary behind,and the Maori press, as archived by the New Zealand Digital Library, never discussedthe Whangaroa incident.146 Where vividly Bennet recalled his fear of death, the NgatiPou presumably found the capture of the Endeavour less memorable than other trau-matic incidents from the 1820s, a period of continuous warfare on the NorthIsland. Indeed, Hongi Hika drove both Ngati Pou and Ngati Uru entirely fromWhan-garoa in 1827,147 an incident that appears in John White’s The Ancient History of theMaori mostly to explain why Hongi was apart from his second wife when shedied.148 Given that Northland memory treats the expulsion of Ngati Pou from theirhomes so lightly, one can hardly expect a bloodless incident in Whangaroa to havemade much of an impression. However unsatisfying contemporary readers mayfind our lack of Indigenous accounts, no historian can be expected to analyse non-existent sources.

CONCLUSION: AN ADAPTABLE STORY WITH MULTIPLE MORALS

European authors wrote about the Whangaroa incident not as an event of intrinsicinterest but as a case study intended to buttress broader claims about Maori character.Several abbreviated versions of the story mentioned the 1809 burning of the Boyd andthe 1825 sacking of theMercury, both of which took place at Whangaroa; together thethree narratives were used to support authors’ claims of Maori barbarism. The Mar-

iners’ Church account provides a rule-proving exception, situating the incident in thecontext of European misbehaviour to emphasise Maori docility and thus the efficacyof missionary work and the ease of colonisation.

Almost all variants of the Whangaroa incident highlight European superior-ity, though the exceptional Strachan implicitly condemned the chauvinism of hispeers. Most accounts were not merely told from Bennet and Tyerman’s perspectivebut treated the missionaries as heroes, or at least protagonists. Most authors, forexample, omitted Bennet’s undignified willingness to be cheated, which Bennet

145 H.T. Whatahoro, The Lore of the Whare-wánanga; or, teachings of the Maori college on religion, cosmogony

and history, tr. S. Percy Smith, 2 vols (New Plymouth 1913–1915); Te Rangi Hiroa, The Coming of theMaori (Wellington 1950).146 A search of newspapers published for a Maori audience between 1842 and 1932 turns up no hitsfor ‘Tyerman’, ‘Bennet’ or ‘Wesleydale’ and no relevant hits for ‘Whangaroa’. See ‘Niupepa: Maorinewspapers’, New Zealand Digital Library, http://www.nzdl.org/gsdlmod?a=p&p=about&c=niupepa&l=mi&nw=utf-8 (accessed 30 Nov. 2011).147 Survivors fled south. The Ngati Pou settled in Rangiriri and signed the treaty of Waitangi as ahapu (clan) of Waitangi; the Ngati Uru fled to Waihou and signed the treaty of Waitangi as a hapu ofNga Puhi. See Ballara, Iwi, 131–32; ‘Waitangi Treaty copy’, New Zealand History Online, http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/interactive/treaty-of-waitangi-copy (accessed 12 Mar. 2008).148 ‘The cause of Hongi-Hika’s attack on part of his own tribe the Nga-ti-uru at Whanga-Roa’, inJohn White, The Ancient History of the Maori, His Mythology and Traditions. Nga-Puhi, vol. 10, NewZealand Electronic Text Collection, http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Whi10EAnci-t1-body-d44.html#n266 (accessed 18 Nov. 2013).

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himself had emphasised both when speaking in London and in his dictated memoirs.Montgomery reported that Bennet’s fish purchases provoked scorn and laughteramong Ngati Pou, but the only later versions to mention the fish bargaining, the Eclec-tic Review and Wood’s Natural History, depicted it as clever and praiseworthy. No Euro-pean account raised the possibility that Bennet had abased himself from fear.

The Whangaroa incident occurred in a wider imperial context, and whilechurchmen were primarily interested in spreading Christianity, several versionsallude to British interests.149 British expansion coincided with Maori populationdecline.150 European attitudes toward Maori decline varied,151 but Patrick Brantlin-ger has suggested that several missionaries attributed Maori decline to ‘God’s will,because these savages had been, ever since the Flood, in Satan’s thrall’.152 Accountsof the Whangaroa incident, however, suggest alternative explanations. The EvangelicalMagazine spoke of unspecified ‘natural causes’,153 and Barrett suggested that Europeanclothing made the Maori ‘more liable to danger from wet and exposure’ by increasingthe risk of ‘inflammation, consumption and death’. (Barrett nevertheless continued topromote the use of European clothing: ‘Many died about this time; but they died inthe Lord’.)154

Christian versions of the Whangaroa incident shifted according to the pro-gress of Christianity in New Zealand. While Montgomery and the Christian Examiner

used Te Ara to symbolise Maori redemption, subsequent missionary publicationsemphasised the brutality and barbarism of pre-Christian Maori. The increasing inac-curacy of missionary accounts tracks a declining willingness to engage with non-Chris-tian Maori society and culture. The heroism of missionaries came less from theirefforts to convert heathen Maori than from fortitude in the face of Maori barbarism.Publication of stories like the Whangaroa incident illustrated why widespread conver-sion had not occurred: Maori were irredeemably savage.

Secular versions of theWhangaroa incident hint at other reasons for its endur-ing popularity among diverse European readerships. The multiple versions of the nar-rative illustrate its flexibility. The incident could serve not only as amorality tale but as asource of political information or ethnographic data, as an argument for British imperi-alism or, most importantly, as an adventure story. The Whangaroa incident has a dra-matic narrative with a happy ending in that its dramatis personae suffered no lasting harm.Capable of supporting many different morals through selective editing, the 1824 inci-dent ultimately achieved its longevity because it made a good story.

149 See W.N. Gunson, ‘Missionary interest in British expansion in the South Pacific in the nine-teenth century’, Journal of Religious History, 3:4 (1965), 298, 307.150 James Belich, ‘Disease and depopulation’, in Belich, Making Peoples, 173–78; Raeburn Lange,May the People Live: a history of Maori health development 1900–1920 (Auckland 1999), 17–52, 270.151 Lange, May the People Live, 53–83.152 Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings, 142.153 ‘Our Colonies’, 191.154 Barrett, The Life of the Rev. John Hewgill Bumby, 203.

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