Before The Settlement.

The Maori history of Canterbury extends as far back as the 15th century. About that time the Waitaha, migrating from the North Island, settled along Pegasus Bay, and moved inland. So late as 1850 the remains of an old pa at the Cust, three miles in length, testified to their strength and their numbers. After a century of rule, the Waitaha seem to have been enslaved in turn by the Ngatimamoe, who, moving down from the north, occupied Banks' Peninsula. During the latter half of the seventeenth century the Ngai Tahu— the tribe represented by the present Maori inhabitants—in their turn swept over the island from the north. They fortified an impregnable stronghold at Kaiapohia; and under their chief, Tamaiharanui, dealt with the land as their own by right of conquest. But page 4 the Ngaitahu incurred the hatred of Te Rauparaha the famous Ngatitoa chieftain; and after the Ngai Tahu chief had been treacherously seized and murdered, Rauparaha attacked and captured the Kaiapoi Pa. In the slaughter that followed, and in the subsequent massacre at Onawe, Akaroa Harbour, the power of the local tribes seemed utterly broken. But the supremacy of the Ngatitoa was by no means assured. The southern chief Taiaroa led the Ngai Tahu successfully against the invaders, and when Christianity came with the missionaries to the North Island, the son and nephew of Te Rauparaha were among the first to carry the new faith to their old enemies. At Port Levy, on the north side of Banks' Peninsula, the northern chiefs met Taiaroa and confirmed with him a friendly alliance. The first white settlers thus found the Ngai Tahu still supreme in the country, and it was from them that, in 1848, two years before the official settlement of the province, the New Zealand Company bought the whole of the land from Kaiapoi to Port Chalmers.

The earliest European settlers in the country were whalers. In “Old New Zealand” Judge Maning has graphically described the character and life of these wanderers; many of them ex-convicts, and most of them as savage and barbarous as the natives themselves. It seems that the whaling industry was established in the South Island about 1827, when settlements were formed at Queen Charlotte's Sound and Cloudy Bay. E. J. Wakefield's “Adventures in New Zealand” gives some idea of the strangely compounded nature of these sea-rovers. Courageous, but cunning, dissipated, but strong and manly, ferocious, yet kindly and generous, they combined in strange ways the vices of the European with the virtues of the savage. These men were the first to explore the coasts of the islands, and to familiarise the natives with the appearance and manners of white men. In 1834 there were eight whale ships at Kaikoura, four near Lyttelton, nine on the south of Banks' Peninsula, and eleven on the Otago coast. These employed about 650 men, and the value of their catch in 1833 was at least £50,000. These facts may give some notion of the importance and scope of the whaling industry. Even the refuse from the whaling crews— the drunken, idle, irreclaimable “beachcomber”—did something for civilisation; and when the provinces were settled there were few corners of the coast where white men had not already penetrated and prepared the way for organised European occupation.

The first transfer of native land to Europeans in Canterbury seems to date from the year 1837. Captain Hempleman, a German whaler, sailed from Sydney in November, 1835, and after many dangerous adventures reached Banks' Peninsula. Whaling on this coast was still very profitable, and Hempleman soon became familiar with the natives. According to his own statement—which is supported by credible evidence—in 1837 he purchased almost the whole of the Peninsula from Taiaroa, Tuhawaiki, and other wellknown chiefs. The transfer seems to have been freely admitted by the Maoris, and Hempleman, feeling secure in his rights, made no protest against the subsequent occupation of his land by French and English settlers between 1840 and 1850. But when in 1852 he found that the Peninsula had been included in the Canterbury Association block, he complained to the Lieutenant-Governor of this infringement of his claims. For many years after his supposed purchase he lived quietly at Peraki and at German Bay; and his diary, still preserved, gives much interesting information about the Peninsula Maoris and the feuds of the notorious “Bloody Jack” (Tuhawaiki). Hempleman died in 1880 at an advanced age, and for the last twenty-five years of his life he continually urged his claim for compensation upon the Governments of the day. He was offered various large blocks of land as a compromise, but he resolutely stuck to his original demands. It is very probable that the Maoris sold their land to Hempleman, and subsequently sold the same land again to the French settlers, from whom the New Zealand Company acquired it. In any case, Hempleman will always be a most interesting figure in early colonial history as the first European whose claim to Canterbury land was recognised by the natives themselves.

The year in which Hempleman is supposed to have purchased Akaroa was the year in which the New Zealand Association was formed. Its moving spirit was Edward Gibbon Wakefield who succeeded in developing from it a New Zealand Land Company to promote the colonisation of these islands. In 1839 Colonel Wakefield and a party of surveyors reached Wellington, and formally took possession on behalf of the company. It was not the policy of the British Government of the day to take up new colonies; but its hand was to some extent forced by the action of the New Zealand Company. Accordingly, in 1839, Captain Hobson was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of all territory acquired, or to be acquired, in New Zealand, and in February, 1840, by the Treaty of Waitangi, over 500 Maori chiefs ceded the sovereignty of the islands to the British Crown. To ensure the British claims, Governor Hobson, in May, 1840, issued a proclamation taking possession of the Middle Island and Stewart Island also in the Queen's name, and in June, 1840, the Union Jack was hoisted on the shore of Cloudy Bay.

Meantime the story of Hempleman had repeated itself in Banks' Peninsula; this time with a French whaler as hero. In 1836 Captain L'Anglois had reached Akaroa Harbour in his wanderings, and, like Hempleman, claimed to have purchased most of the Peninsula from the Maoris. In 1838 he returned to France, and through his representations a commercial company—the Nanto-Bordelaise Company—was formed, to colonise the newly acquired land. In 1840 a party of fifty-nine French emigrants and six Germans sailed in the Comte de Paris to take possession of the peninsula which L'Anglois sold to the company. In July, 1840, L'Aube, a French frigate called at the Bay of Islands, and Governor Hobson learned that the vessel was on her way to Akaroa to annex the Middle Island on behalf of the Nanto-Bordelaise colonists. He at once despatched Captain Stanley in the Britomart, with a magistrate named Robinson, to take possession of the peninsula on behalf of England. After a stormy trip the Britomart reached Akaroa Harbour, and on the 11th of August, 1840, the British flag was hoisted. On the 13th of August the French commodore, M. Lavaud, arrived, to find the English already in possession. The situation is very dramatic; but it must be remembered that the hoisting of the flag at Cloudy Bay two months before would have been sufficient to page 5 secure the British claims. However, Commodore Lavaud accepted the position, and when the Comte de Paris arrived on the 16th of August with the French immigrants, it was agreed to avoid friction by keeping the newcomers in ignorance of the real facts of the case. It was not till years later that the Frenchmen learned that they were really subjects of Queen Victoria. Apart from other questions, the French Government had intended to use some portion of the peninsula as a penal station; and the prompt action of Governor Hobson prevented any chance of establishing another New Caledonia in New Zealand. The French settlers at once took up the five-acre blocks to which they were entitled. The six Germans, wishing to live together, moved further up the harbour to the spot since known as German Bay. The Frenchmen had brought a large variety of seeds and some vine stocks, but no domestic animals; and they soon settled down to colonial life. The New Zealand Government then bought out the Nanto-Bordelaise Company, and the French Government offered to convey their colonists to Tahiti free of charge, and give them allotments there. The Frenchmen, however, chose to remain; but though their descendants have become much respected citizens. they did not show the same aptitude as men of British race for facing the struggles and hardships of early colonial existence.

A few months before the hoisting of the flag at Akaroa there arrived in New Zealand a party of colonists destined to play an important part in the early history of Canterbury. In February, 1840, the Bengal Merchant reached Wellington, carrying a Scotch family named Hay, who had come to take up land there. In 1841 the Blenheim brought out Captain Sinclair, who soon built a schooner, in which Mr. Hay became part owner. Being dissatisfied with their prospects of obtaining the land they wanted, Messrs Hay and Sinclair got their land orders transferred by the New Zealand Company to the South Island, and started in their little beat to explore it. They landed at Port Cooper (Lyttelton Harbour), and worked their way up the end of the bay by Gebbie's Valley; but they seem to have overlooked the possibilities of the site later chosen for Christchurch. They went down the coast as far as Otago, but saw nothing to equal Banks' Peninsula in fertility and general convenience, and so they returned to Wellington, having decided to fix their home at Pigeon Bay. They found Messrs W. and J. Deans, who had also transferred their land licenses, ready to go down to the South Island, and take up their abode on the Canterbury Plains, of which they had heard good accounts. The schooner took down the families of Deans, Gebbie, and Manson, who thus formed the first genuine settlement on the Canterbury Plains; though, as a matter of fact, the Gebbies and Mansons later on took up land among the hills and dales near Lake Ellesmere, and the Deans brothers, taking their possessions up the Avon by boat, built their home at Riccarton. The Hays and Sinclairs reached Pigeon Bay in April, 1843.

Just at this time the news of the Wairau Massacre had terrified all the Europeans in the colony, and roused the hostility of the natives against the strangers. There were rumours that the murderers of Colonel Wakefield were coming down the coast to burn and slay, and the Hays and Sinclairs and their servants—thirty men in all—prepared to sell their lives dearly. Happily, the aggressors had already retired to the North Island. But the Peninsula natives, encouraged by these reports, conspired to destroy at one blow all the European colonists in the Middle Island. Separate parties were told off to murder the Hays, Sinclairs, Deans, Mansons, and Gebbies, and the colonists at Akaroa. But the plot was disclosed by the Maori wife of an English whaler, and the natives, knowing that the colonists were strong and well armed, refrained from the attempt. Another serious danger threatened the little English community when “Blue-Cap,” the Australian bushranger, paid them a visit with some of his gang, but though the robbers did their work well at Purau (Rhodes' Bay), the Deans and the Hays were too formidable a lot of men to tackle. In 1847 Captain Sinclair was lost in his schooner, the Jessie Millar, while on a voyage to Wellington, and his family subsequently left the colony for Honolulu. A few years later the Hays narrowly escaped a similar fate, when, while returning from a trip to Wellington, they were blown off shore as far north as Auckland, and were almost starved before regaining land. The life of these pioneers was a series of struggles against privations and hardships such as few of those who arrived later can possibly realise or understand.

It would be impossible to notice in a limited space all the individual attempts page 6 at settlement made in Canterbury before the coming of the “First Four Ships” in 1850. So early as 1829 Joseph Price, a Sydney sailor, who lived for many years at Little River, paid a visit to the Peninsula and Kaiapoi. (Price died in 1901, in Canterbury, aged ninety-two.) In 1830 two white men were living near Akarca just before Te Rauparaha captured Tamniharanui. The claims for purchase of land at Akaroa would make a long list. In 1839–40 alone “proofs of purchase” for over eight million acres were filed in various places; and it must be remembered that they all referred to an area of about 300,000 acres! No wonder that Hemploman and L'Anglois were confused about their titles. Thus, in 1839, Captain W. B. Rhodes—a family name famous in Canterbury's history—bought from Taiaroa the same fifteen square miles of territory near Akaroa which figured in Hempleman's claims. Mr. Rhodes set up a cattle station near Akaroa, and traded regularly with Sydney. Mr. Birdling was overseer for Mr. Rhodes, but took up for himself the land now known as Birdling's Flat, near Little River. Magnet Bay takes its name from a vessel wrecked there, the property of Captain James Bruce, who arrived in the Peninsula as early as 1836. In 1841 there were as many as thirteen large whalers at Akaroa, and it was necessary to appoint a police magistrate. The first to hold the office was Mr. Charles Barrington Robinson, who had presided at the unfurling of the British flag. Mr. Buchanan was one of the many land owners who tried whale fishing between 1840 and 1850. He bought out the run at Little River previously held by Mr. Robinson, and the Okute Valley proporty still remains with his family. But the most important addition to the scattered population of the Peninsula was made when the Monarch arrived at Akaron from London in 1850. The passengers soon found the Hays, of Pigeon Bay, and the Deans, of Ricearton; and one of them, Mr S. C. Farr, still of Christchurch, gives in his “Reminiscences” (published by the New Zealand Natives' Association) a vivid picture of the hardships endured by this first band of Pilgrim Fathers.

Canterbury had been thus partly settled by Europeans some time before the official foundation of the province. “Pakehas” and whalers and ex-convicts prepared the way for those who, like the Deans and the Hays, came here while the land was yet a wilderness to fight against the rude force of nature, and to prevail. The attempted French colonisation of Akaroa did something to improve the prospects for later arrivals. The gradual growth of trade with Sydney, and the value of the whale fisheries attracted other enterprising adventurers to these shores. When in 1855 the Canterbury Association fixed the site of Christchurch on the plains, the country could already boast of a long and stirring history—the record of those pioneers who led the way for the higher civilisation which was to follow them.