History of The Otago Region - Whalers, Sealers and Traders

Whalers, Sealers and Traders

In the late 18th century several European naval expeditions visited southernmost New Zealand, notably the three of Captain James Cook, who put Dusky Sound on the world map. As a consequence, following the settlement of Sydney Cove in New South Wales in 1788, visits by several private ventures followed. These saw the first European women to visit New Zealand (in 1792) and to sojourn there (1795–1797), the sojourn of 244 people on an inhospitable shore for several years, and the building of the first European house and ship in New Zealand. Some of these ventures resulted from the pursuit of seals and constituted the first sealing boom. The visitors encountered few Māori (few lived in the relevant areas), and their presents of iron tools perhaps led to those people's demise at the hands of their countrymen. The revival of New Zealand sealing in 1803 saw the detailed exploration of the south west coast and the penetration of Foveaux Strait from the west. At the same time visitors explored the east coast and the sub-Antarctic islands: principally American ships, which produced Owen Folger Smith's charting of Foveaux Strait from the east in 1804. From 1805 to 1807 a boom took place at the Antipodes Islands — territorially part of historical Otago, and probably the source of the Creed manuscript's early European visitors to Otago harbour about 1806/1807. In any case, Sydney sealers operated on the Dunedin coast by late 1809 and had "long" traded for pigs and potatoes at Otago Harbour by 1810, the year in which hostilities broke out there been Māori and Pākehā in the thirteen-year long feud called the Sealers' War.

In 1809 Robert Murray witnessed the cultivation of potatoes in the Foveaux Strait area, and when Captain Fowler anchored at Otago Harbour the locals already grew potatoes — which they wanted to exchange for iron. The pattern of Māori settlement may have changed over time to take advantage of the Tongata Bulla — people of the boats — and the new goods. In 1810 the Sydney Gazette described the Māori of Foveaux Strait as "particularly friendly" and anxious to swap potatoes for iron tools. The Ngai Tahu lived around Otago and wanted to trade, but in their inexperience of the Tongata Bulla remained too truculent. Fowler never discovered this. Before coming to Otago Harbour he had visited the west coast, where six of his Lascar seamen deserted. Later, at Stewart Island, he sent an open boat under Robert Brown to search for them. Brown cruised up the east coast, touched at Cape Saunders on the Otago Peninsula before continuing north to a point eight miles (13 km) north of Moeraki. There a group of Māori, incensed by an earlier incident on Otago Harbour in 1810, set upon and eventually killed Brown's whole party. These early contacts left a number of Pākehā (non-Māori people) living in the south: James Caddell an English boy-sealer captured from the Sydney Cove in 1810; three Lascars (Indian seamen), survivors of the deserting six from the Matilda, one of them called by Māori "Te Anu". In 1815 William Tucker settled at Whareakeake, later Murdering Beach, where he kept goats and sheep, had a Māori wife and apparently fostered an export trade in greenstone hei-tiki. After a time he left and returned on the Sophia, a Hobart Town sealer commanded by James Kelly.

In 1817 Kelly anchored in Otago Harbour. The local chief Korako failed to ferry over Māori from Whareakeake who wanted to receive their share of Tucker's gifts. When Kelly, Tucker and five others later went in an open boat along the coast to Whareakeake, the Māori there attacked them, killing Tucker and two others because of this slight, but also because of the general souring of relations since the incident of 1810. Kelly and the remainder retreated to the Sophia, only to find it occupied by Māori, intent — they believed — on attacking them. Armed with sealing knives, the Tongata Bulla drove the invaders off, resisted another attack, then destroyed "all their navy" and burnt "the beautiful city of Otago". The death toll remains much disputed, but while Kelly probably exaggerated the extent of his revenge, it seems likely he killed several people wholly innocent of the killing of his men.

Māori/Pākehā relations — peaceful from the time of Cook's visit and through the first sealing boom from 1792-1797 — soured with the theft of a red shirt, a knife and other articles by a chief Te Wahia from the Sydney Cove on the Otago Harbour late in 1810 — and by his killing by an angered sealer. From this there ensued the Sealers' War a series of attacks and counter-attacks, carried out by persons who soon lost sight of the original cause. Māori killed four men from the schooner The Brothers (massacred at Molyneux Harbour); several sailors from the General Gates, and three lascars from the brig Matilda. The feud continued until 1823 when Captain Edwardson succeeded in ending it, thus sparking a new sealing boom desired by both Māori and Pākehā.

Edwardson, sent from Sydney in the Mermaid to investigate the prospects for a flax-industry, explained Māori truculence in terms of their "vindictive", "crafty" and "lying" character which, he opined, made them "sensitive to the slightest offence". But Edwardson realised that the Māori wanted to trade. With the assistance of Caddell, whom he took to Sydney, the parties negotiated a truce. The attacks and lower prices for skins had dampened the trade, but the restoration of peace saw its brief revival.

In the ensuing peace even the "unpredictably ferocious" Otago harbour Māori modified their behaviour in the interests of trade. Their kin at Ruapuke not only held their traditional monopoly over the sooty shearwaters, or New Zealand muttonbirds, but had effectively monopolized te tongata bulla and its wealth. Some 15 to 20 Europeans, many of them with Māori wives, lived on Codfish Island although they moved freely among the Māori kaiks on the mainland. These Europeans complied with Māori customs for fear of triggering that much-feared "touchiness". The Journal of John Boultbee, a sealer in the Otago region during the late 1820s, provides ample illustration. On one occasion he went to gather some vegetables which grew wild:

But my cannibal friends told me they were taboo (Tapu, meaning sacred), and I had to throw them away as they had been gathered from a place where a house had been built. Another time I happened to lay my knife on Tiroa's cap, on this he took the knife & kept it 2 or 3 days, saying it was taboo taboo. I was therefore obliged to eat with my fingers.

Boultbee did not understand the "strange custom of tabooing", but he recognized that "any willful breach of it considered a serious matter, & in severe cases punishable by death". The security of the intruders depended upon the goodwill of the paramount rangatira in Murihiku, Te Whakataupuka. The son of Honegai, who had harried the Tongata Bulla wherever he could, Te Whakataupuka proved less truculent and more skillful in manipulating the new arrivals. He became the first to recognize the strategic importance of Ruapuke: he shifted from the mouth of the Matua-a to make his home on the island. Te Whakataupuka impressed John Boultbee as "the most complete model of strength, activity & elegance I had seen combined in any man". He placed the Europeans under his chiefly protection and at times played and joked with them freely. Limits existed to this familiarity. Once, when a group of Pākehā engaged in a mock battle with the chief, one accidentally hit his head with a potato (the head of the chief being tapu). This "excited him suddenly & caused him to seize a tremendous log of wood, which he threw at them...." Cooling quickly, he told them to desist lest he should "perhaps get vexed & hurt them, which he would be sorry to do". When Te Whakataupuka's son, who preferred to live with the Europeans, died, Boultbee and his companions feared that Te Whakataupuka might hold them responsible for the boy's death. Despite his grief the rangatira refused to allow his warriors to exact revenge.

The various hapu at Otago from the early 1820s until the 1850s had as their chiefs Tahatu, Karetai and Taiaroa. Unlike Te Whakataupuka and his nephew, Tuhawaiki, who became the paramount rangatira in 1834, neither Taiaroa nor Karetai earned renown for physical feats or for warrior habits. Tensions existed between them. Karetai functioned as the local chief, but Taiaroa, who had close kinship ties with the Canterbury Ngai Tahu, had been given land on the western side of the harbour where he established a small settlement. When Europeans began visiting regularly he moved his village to the eastern side, close by Karetai's, in order to muscle in on the trade. Trade had increased rapidly. In 1823 Kent noted only three villages within the harbour; in 1826 Captain Herd reported five. The Otago harbour Māori prospered and Boultbee recorded the arrival at Ruapuke of a boat from Otago laden with '2 large fat hogs & 100 baskets of potatoes each weighing 35 lb (16 kg)' For this they received two muskets and one adze.