John Rutherford, the White Chief Part 14

"They would have flogged the rest also had not I interceded for them, considering that there might be still some of my unfortunate shipmates living on sh.o.r.e, on whom they might avenge themselves.

"The captain now consented to take me along with him; and, the canoe having been set adrift, we stood off from the island. For the first sixteen months of my residence in New Zealand, I had counted the days by means of notches on a stick; but after that I had kept no reckoning. I now learned, however, that the day on which I was taken off the island was January 9th, 1826. I had, therefore, been a prisoner among these savages ten years, all but two months."

Captain Jackson now gave Rutherford such clothes as he stood in need of, in return for which the latter made him a present of his New Zealand dress and battle axe.

The ship then proceeded to the Society Islands, and anch.o.r.ed on February 10th off Otaheite.

Here Rutherford went into the service of the British consul, by whom he was employed in sawing wood. On May 26th he was married to a chief woman, whose name, he says, was Nowyrooa, by Mr. Pritchard, one of the English missionaries. While he resided here, he was also employed as an interpreter by Captain Peachy, of the "Blossom" sloop of war, then engaged in surveying those islands.

Still, however, longing very much to see his native country, he embarked on January 6th, 1827, on board the brig "Macquarie," commanded by Captain Hunter, and bound for Port Jackson. On taking leave of his wife and friends, he made them a promise to return to the island in two years, "which," says he, "I intend to keep, if it is in my power, and end my days there."

The "Macquarie" reached Port Jackson on February 19th, and Rutherford states that he met there a young woman who had been saved from the ma.s.sacre of those on board the "Boyd," and who gave him an account of that event. This was probably the daughter of a woman whom Mr. Berry brought to Lima.

He also found at Port Jackson two vessels on their way back to England, with a body of persons who had attempted to form a settlement in New Zealand, but who had been compelled to abandon their design, as he understood, by the treacherous behaviour of the natives.

He now embarked on board the Sydney packet, commanded by Captain Tailor, which proceeded first for Hobart Town, in Van Diemen's Land,[CP] and after lying there for about a fortnight set sail again for Rio de Janeiro.

On his arrival there he went into the service of Mr. Harris, a Dutch gentleman. Mr. Harris, on learning his history, had him presented to the Emperor Don Pedro, who asked him many questions by an interpreter, and made him a present of eighty dollars. He also offered him employment in his navy; but this Rutherford refused, preferring to return to England in the "Blanche" frigate, then on the point of sailing, in which he obtained a pa.s.sage by an application to the British consul. On the arrival of the ship at Spithead, he immediately left her, and proceeded to Manchester, his native town, which he had not seen since he first went to sea in the year 1806.

After his return to England Rutherford occasionally maintained himself by accompanying a travelling caravan of wonders, showing his tattooing, and telling something of his extraordinary adventures.

The publisher of this volume had many conversations with him in January, 1829, when he was exhibited in London. He was evidently a person of considerable quickness, and great powers of observation. He went over every part of his journal, which was read to him, with considerable care, explaining any difficulties, and communicating several points of information, of which we have availed ourselves in the course of this narrative.

His manners were mild and courteous; he was fond of children, to whom he appeared happy to explain the causes of his singular appearance and he was evidently a man of very sober habits. He was pleased with the idea of his adventures being published; and was delighted to have his portrait painted, though he suffered much inconvenience in sitting to the artist, with the upper part of his body uncovered, in a severe frost.

Upon the whole he seemed to have acquired a great deal of the frankness and easy confidence of the people with whom he had been living, and was somewhat out of his element amidst the constrained intercourse and unvarying occupations of England. He greatly disliked being shown for money, which he submitted to princ.i.p.ally that he might acquire a sum, in addition to what he received for his ma.n.u.script, to return to Otaheite.

We have not heard of him since that time; and the probability is that he has accomplished his wishes. He said that he should have no hesitation in going to New Zealand; that his old companions would readily believe that he had been carried away by force; that from his knowledge of their customs, he could be most advantageously employed in trading with them; and that, above all, if he were to take back a blacksmith with him, and plenty of iron, he might acquire many of the most valuable productions of the country, particularly tortoisesh.e.l.l,[CQ] which he considered the best object for an English commercial adventure.[CR]

Rutherford is not the only native of a civilized country whose fate it has been to become resident for some time among the savages of New Zealand. Besides his shipmates, who were taken prisoners along with him, he himself, indeed, as we have seen, mentions two other individuals whom he met with while in the country, one of whom had been eight years there, and did not seem to have any wish to leave it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Maori war canoe.]

Savage gives a short notice of a European who was living in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands when he was there in 1805. This person, whose native country, or the circ.u.mstances that had induced him to take up his abode where he then was, Savage could not discover, shunned all intercourse with Europeans, and was wont to retire to the interior whenever a ship approached the coast. The natives, however, whose customs and manners he had adopted, spoke well of him; and Savage often saw a New Zealand woman who lived with him, and one of their children, which he represents as very far from exhibiting any superiority either in mind or person over his a.s.sociates of unmixed breed. Its complexion was the same as that of the others, being distinguished from them only by its light flaxen hair.

Marsden, also, in a letter written in 1813 to the secretary of the Church Missionary Society, mentions a young man, a native of America, with whom he had conversed in New South Wales, and who had lived for above a year with the New Zealanders.

During all this time these savages, he said, had shown him the greatest attention, and he would have been very glad to return to live among them if he could have found any other Europeans to go with him.

Since the Bay of Islands has become so much the resort of shipping, many seamen have left their ships and taken up their residence of their own accord among the natives. The "Missionary Reports" state that, about the close of the year 1824, there were perhaps twenty men who had thus found their way into the country, and were living on plunder; and that within the year not less, it was supposed, than a hundred sailors had in the same manner taken refuge for a time in the island.

Although these men had all run away from their own ships, the captains of other vessels touching at any part of the coast did not hesitate to employ them when they wanted hands.

Mawman, whom Rutherford met with at Kiperra, had, it will be recollected, made his escape, according to his own account, from a sloop of war. These fugitives, however, it would appear, do not always succeed in establishing themselves among the natives. Cruise mentions one who, having run away from the "Anne" whaler, hid himself at first in the woods, but soon after came on board the "Dromedary" in a most miserable state, beseeching to be taken on the strength of the ship.

Convicts, too, occasionally make their escape to New Zealand, and attempt to secrete themselves in the interior of the country. When the "Active" was at the Bay of Islands in 1815, two men and a woman of this description were sent on board to be taken back to New South Wales. The woman, Nicholas says, was particularly dejected on being retaken; and it was found that while on sh.o.r.e she had done everything in her power to prevail upon one of the native females to a.s.sist her in her attempt to conceal herself. Her friend, however, resisted all her entreaties; and well knowing the hardships to which the poor creature would have exposed herself, only replied to her importunate solicitations, "Me would, Mary, but me got no tea, me got no sugar, no bed, no good things for you; me grieve to see you, you cannot live like New Zealand woman, you cannot sleep on the ground."

The Rev. Mr. Butler, in March, 1821, found two convicts who had escaped from a whaler, in the hands of one of the chiefs, who was just preparing to put them to death. On Butler interfering and begging that their lives might be spared, the New Zealanders replied: "They are nothing but slaves and thieves; they look like bad men, and are very ragged; they do not belong to you, and we think they are some of King George's bad cookees." After a great deal of discussion, however, they yielded so far to Butler's entreaties and arguments as to agree not to kill the two men; but the chief insisted that they should go home with him and work for him four months, after which he said that he would give them up to any ship that would take them to "King George's farm at Port Jackson."

When Nicholas was in New Zealand in 1815, he met with a Hindoo, who had made his escape from Captain Patterson's ship, the "City of Edinburgh,"

about five years before, and had been living among the natives ever since. Compared with the New Zealanders, he looked, Nicholas says, like a pigmy among giants. However, he had got so much attached to the manners of his new a.s.sociates that he declared he would much rather remain where he was than return to his own country. He had married a native woman, and was treated, he said, in the kindest manner by the New Zealanders, who always supplied him with plenty of food without compelling him to do more work than he chose. Nicholas offered him some rice, but he intimated that he decidedly preferred fern-root.

The circ.u.mstances of Rutherford's capture and detention in New Zealand were but indifferently calculated to reconcile him to the new state of society in which he was there compelled to mix, notwithstanding the rank to which his superior intelligence and activity raised him.

Though a chief, he was still a prisoner; and even all the favour with which he had himself been treated could not make him forget the fate of his companions, or the warning which it afforded him to how sudden or slight an accident his own life might at any time fall a sacrifice. But it is certain that, where no such sense of constraint is felt, not only the notion, but even the reality, of savage life has a strong charm for many minds. The insecurity and privation which attend upon it are deemed but a slight counterbalance to the independence, the exemption from regular labour, and above all the variety of adventure, which it promises to ardent and reckless spirits.

Generally, however, the Europeans that have adopted the life of the savage have been men driven out from civilization, or disinclined to systematic industry. They have not chosen the imaginary freedom and security of barbarians, in contempt of the artificial restraints and legal oppressions of a refined state of society, in the way that the Greek did, whom Priscus found in the camp of Attila, declaring that he lived more happily amongst the wild Scythians than ever he did under the Roman government.

But if those who have been accustomed to the comforts of civilization have not infrequently felt the influence of the seductions which a barbarous condition offers to an excited imagination, it may well be conceived that, to the man who has been born a savage, and nurtured in all the feelings and habits of that state of society, they must address themselves with still more irresistible effect.

We have many examples, accordingly, of how difficult it is to extinguish, by any culture, either in an old or a young savage, his innate pa.s.sion for the wild life of his fathers.

Tippahee's son, Matara, on his return from England, strove to regain an acquaintance with his native customs. Moyhanger, Savage's friend, might be quoted as another instance, in whom all the wonders and attractions of London would appear not to have excited a wish to see it again. Nor does any great preference for civilized life seem to have been produced in other cases, by even a much longer experience of its accommodations.

When Nicholas and Marsden visited New Zealand in 1815, they met at the North Cape, where they first put on sh.o.r.e, a native of Otaheite, who had been brought from his own country to Port Jackson when a boy of about eleven or twelve years old. Here he had lived for some years in the family of Mr. McArthur, where he had been treated with great kindness, and brought up in all respects as an English boy would have been. Having been sent to school he soon learned not only to speak English with fluency, but to read and write it with very superior ability; and he showed himself besides in everything remarkably tractable and obedient.

Yet nothing could wean him from his partiality to his original condition; and he at last quitted the house of his protector, and contrived to find his way to New Zealand. Here he settled among a people even still more uncivilized than his own countrymen, and married the daughter of one of the chiefs, to whose territories he had succeeded when Nicholas met with him.

Jem (that was the name by which he had been known at Port Jackson) was then a young man of about twenty-three years of age. Unlike his brother chiefs, he was cleanly in his person; and his countenance not being tattooed, nor darker than that of a Spaniard, while his manners displayed a European polish, it was only his dress that betokened the savage.

"His hair," says Nicholas, "which had been very carefully combed, was tied up in a knot upon the crown of his head, and adorned with a long white feather fancifully stuck in it; in his ears were large bunches of the down of the gannet, white as the driven snow, and napping about his cheeks with every gale. Like the natives, he wore the mat thrown over his shoulders; but the one he had on was bordered with a deep Vand.y.k.e of different colours, and gaily bedizened with the feathers of parrots and other birds, reflecting at the same moment all the various shades in the rainbow. He carried a musket in his hand, and had a martial and imposing air about him, which was quite in character with the station he maintained."

He brought his wife with him in a canoe to the ship; and having known Marsden well in New South Wales, was delighted to see that gentleman, and proved of considerable use to him in his intercourse with the other New Zealanders. Although not accustomed to speak English in his new country, Jem had by no means forgotten that language. He had been on three warlike expeditions to the East Cape in the course of the past five years; but had gone, he said, only because he could not help it, and had never a.s.sisted in devouring the prisoners. Dillon met both Jem and the Hindoo, when he was at the Bay of Islands in July, 1827. The former had his son with him, a boy about twelve years of age.

These, and many other examples which might be added, exhibit the force of habit which governs the actions of all men, whether in a savage or civilized state. There are, of course, exceptions. When Cook left Omai,[CS] during his last voyage, at Huaheine, with every provision for his comfort, he earnestly begged to return to England. It was nothing that a grant of land was made to him at the interposition of his English friends, that a house was built and a garden planted for his use. He wept bitter tears; for he was naturally afraid that his new riches would make him an object of hatred to his countrymen. He was much caressed in England; and he took back many valuable possessions and some knowledge.

But he was originally one of the common people; and he soon saw, although he was not sensible of it at first, that without rank he could obtain no authority. He forgot this, when he was away from the people with whom he was to end his days; but he seemed to feel that he should be insecure when his protector, Cook, had left their sh.o.r.es. He divided his presents with the chiefs; and the great navigator threatened them with his vengeance if Omai was molested. The reluctance of this man to return to his original conditions was princ.i.p.ally derived from these considerations, which were to him of a strictly personal nature. The picture which a popular poet has drawn of the feelings of Omai is very beautiful, and in great part true as applied to him as an individual; but it is not true of the ma.s.s of savages.

The habits amidst which they were born may be modified by an intercourse with civilized men, but they cannot be eradicated. The following is the poetical pa.s.sage to which we alluded. Omai had, altogether, a more distinguished destiny than any other savage--he was cherished by Cook, painted by Reynolds, and apostrophised by Cowper:--

"The dream is past, and thou hast found again Thy cocoas and bananas, palms and yams, And homestall thatch'd with leaves. But hast thou found Their former charms? And, having seen our state, Our palaces, our ladies, and our pomp Of equipage, our gardens, and our sports, And heard our music, are thy simple friends, Thy simple fare, and all thy plain delights, As dear to thee as once? And have thy joys Lost nothing by comparison with ours?

Rude as thou art (for we return'd thee rude And ignorant, except of outward show) I cannot think thee yet so dull of heart And spiritless, as never to regret Sweets tasted here, and left as soon as known.

Methinks I see thee straying on the beach, And asking of the surge that bathes thy foot, If ever it has wash'd our distant sh.o.r.e.

I see thee weep, and thine are honest tears, A patriot's for his country: thou art sad At thought of her forlorn and abject state, From which no power of thine can raise her up."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote CO: Kaipuke, a ship.]

[Footnote CP: That is, Tasmania.]

[Footnote CQ: There are no tortoises in New Zealand.]

[Footnote CR: Rutherford did not return to New Zealand, and nothing more was heard of him. On December 5th, 1828, "The Australian," which 'was published in Sydney, stated that a man named Rutherford, who had been tattooed by the Maoris, and naturalized by them, was then in London, practising the trade of a pickpocket, in the character of a New Zealand chief, but that was before he supplied his story for "The New Zealanders."]

[Footnote CS: Omai was an islander, who was taken to England, where he was lionized, and was afterwards taken back to the islands during Cook's last voyage.]