Te Puna - A New Zealand Mission Station: Historical Archaeology in New Zealand

283 Pages·2008·5.36 MB·English

by  Angela Middleton (auth.)

Te Puna – A New Zealand
Mission Station
CONTRIBUTIONS TO GLOBAL HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Series Editor:
Charles E. Orser, Jr., New York State Museum, Albany, New York
TE PUNA: A New Zealand Mission Station: Historical Archaeology in New Zealand
Angela Middleton
A SPACE OF THEIR OWN: Lunatic Asylums in Britain, South Australia,
and Tasmania
Susan Piddock
AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY OF RURAL CAPITALISM AND MATERIAL
LIFE: The Gibbs Farmstead in Southern Appalachia, 1790–1920
Mark D. Groover
ARCHAEOLOGY AND CREATED MEMORY: Public History in a National Park
Paul A. Schackel
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF HISTORY AND TRADITION: Moments of Danger in
the Annapolis Landscape
Christopher N. Matthews
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF MANNERS: The Polite World of the Merchant Elite
of Colonial Massachusetts
Lorinda B.R. Goodwin
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SOCIAL SPACE: Analyzing Coffee Plantations
in Jamaica’s Blue Mountains
James A. Delle
DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE AND POWER: The Historical Archaeology
of Colonial Ecuador
Ross W. Jamieson
HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGIES OF CAPITALISM
Edited by Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr.
THE HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGIES OF BUENOS AIRES: A City at the End
of the World
Daniel Schavelzon
A HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE: Breaking New
Ground
Edited by Uzi Baram and Lynda Carroll
MEANING AND IDEOLOGY IN HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLGY: Style, Social
Identity, and Capitalism in an Australian
Heather Burke
RACE AND AFFLUENCE: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer
Culture
Paul R. Mullins
RURAL SOCIETY IN THE AGE OF REASON: An Archaeology of the E mergence
of Modern Life in the Southern Scottish Highlands
Chris Dalglish
A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will
bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed
only upon actual shipment. For further information please contact the publisher.
Te Puna – A New Zealand
Mission Station
Historical Archaeology in New Zealand
Angela Middleton
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
Angela Middleton
University of Otago
Dunedin
New Zealand
[email protected]
ISBN: 978-0-387-77620-0 e-ISBN: 978-0-387-77622-4
DOI:10.1007/978-0-387-77622-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008926764
© 2008 Springer Science + Business Media, LLC
All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written
permission of the publisher (Springer Science + Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York,
NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in
connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer
software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden.
The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they
are not identifi ed as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are
subject to proprietary rights.
Cover illustration: (Figure 4.12 from book) Te Puna Mission Station, looking towards the east,
c. 1839-1841 (Richard Taylor 1805-1873, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, E-296-q-160-1)
Printed on acid-free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
springer.com
Preface
This study is concerned with some of the central themes of historical
archeology, those concerning colonization, cultural engagement, gender,
ethnicity, and class. These themes are examined through the lens of
mission archeology, and in particular through the case study of Te
Puna, a nineteenth-century mission station situated in a remote location
of Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Evangelical missionary societies have been associated with the
processes of colonization throughout the globe, from India to Africa
and into the Pacific. In late eighteenth century Britain the Church
Missionary Society (CMS) for Africa and the East began its mission-
ary ventures, and in the first decade of the nineteenth century
sent three of its members to New South Wales, Australia, and to New
Zealand, then an unknown, little-explored part of the world. The London
Missionary Society had already made efforts to establish a mission in
Tahiti, with uncertain success. Subsequently, the Wesleyans joined the
field with their own society, but the different evangelical societies often
worked cooperatively in the face of their common enemy, perceived as
the devil, and personified for them in indigenous cultural practices.
American efforts in Hawaii began in 1820.
In all of these locations, common themes of interaction with indigenous
peoples, household economy, the development of commerce, and social
and gender relations were played out. Across the globe, a common
material culture traveled with its evangelizing (and later colonizing)
settlers, with similar artifacts appearing as cultural markers, from
Cape Town in South Africa to Tasmania and Victoria in Australia, and
the even more remote Bay of Islands in New Zealand. After missioni-
zation, colonization occurred.
The New Zealand CMS mission station, Te Puna, was first settled in
1832 following the closure of the nearby Oihi mission, New Zealand's
first station and first permanent European settlement. While the Te Puna
mission had a comparatively short life, the much broader dramas of
v
vi Preface
settlement, colonization, and culture contact were clearly reflected
there, brought to life by the archeological and archival records. Despite
its isolation, Te Puna was connected through its CMS networks, and
through its material culture, with Sydney in New South Wales and
London. Mission recruits traveled over networks that included these
locations, as well as others in the Pacific, visiting Te Puna as part of
their itinerary. Mission supplies were ordered from Sydney as well as
from Great Britain. Staffordshire ceramics found their way to Te Puna,
where they were recovered from the archeological context, as well as to
other British colonies.
Daily life at Te Puna, revealed through the archeological record as
well as through the archival sources, tells much about cultural engage-
ment in the New Zealand context and missionary incursions into Maori
life, as well as the ways in which missionary activity was defined and
limited by Maori. In the early days, New Zealand missionaries were
dependent upon their Maori patrons for food as well as for protection
from hostile tribes. This demonstrates one important feature of the
New Zealand situation, where colonization and culture contact were
not unidirectional processes.
The New Zealand case study reflects local differences as well as
common patterns in the role that missions played in globalization. The
archeology of Te Puna brings to life the particularities of one far-flung
outpost of early nineteenth-century British colonization, but its story
resonates around the globe. New Zealand missions operated as small
family households rather than the larger institutions as seen in parts
of North America and Australia. However, in both types of missions,
domesticity is revealed as a central, unifying theme of the “ civilizing
mission. ” This focus on domesticity can be identified in archival sources
as well as in items of material culture associated with the maintenance
of appearances and gender roles, and the processes of transforming
and clothing indigenous people.
This work provides the first archeological examination of a New
Zealand mission station. It situates the case study in a global context,
examining the international field of mission archeology and shedding
light on the material culture of the country¢s first European settlers,
providing a point of comparison with other outposts of British coloniza-
tion. The humble, austere artifacts that constitute the material culture
of the Te Puna assemblage reveal the actual processes of colonization
in daily life and everyday events, as well as the processes of the mis-
sion, such as schooling, the purchase of food and domestic labor, the
purchase of land and building of houses, the stitching of fabric, and
ironing of garments. These practices predate, but also anticipate the
better-known grand historical dramas such as the signing of the Treaty
Preface vii
of Waitangi, glorified but also critiqued as the defining moment of the
relationship between Maori and European and of colonization.
Te Puna presented an apparently forgotten, abandoned landscape
when I first visited it in 2001; even the better known site of Oihi, New
Zealand's first mission station located in an adjacent bay, seemed to be
little acknowledged for its significance as the place where the engage-
ment between Maori and European really began. I hope that this study
will assist in bringing the sites of Te Puna and Oihi into their true
place of central importance in New Zealand's historiography, and that
the processes of missionization in Aotearoa/New Zealand can be located
within the global field of mission archeology.
Angela Middleton
Dunedin, New Zealand
Acknowledgments
Many people have assisted in this project over the last 7 years. It
has also been supported with financial assistance from a number of
organizations in its initial form as my Ph.D. thesis: the Department
of Anthropology and the Graduate Research Fund, University of
Auckland; the Green Foundation for Polynesian Research; the New
Zealand Federation of Graduate Women; the Skinner Fund of the
Royal Society of New Zealand; and Walter C. Mountain Landing Ltd.
Thanks to the Department of Anthropology, University of Otago, for
providing me with the resources in the recent months to finalize this
manuscript. I also thank the following organizations for permission to
reproduce their images: the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington,
New Zealand; the Hocken Library, Dunedin, New Zealand; the Mitchell
Library of the State Library of NSW, Australia; the National Library
of Australia, Canberra; and the Auckland Institute and Museum,
Auckland, New Zealand. Thanks also to the New Zealand Historic
Places Trust for providing access to their collections and permission to
photograph them.
The research would not have been possible without two essential
teams of people, mostly students from the Anthropology Department
at the University of Auckland: those who helped in the initial field
surveying, many of whom continued with the subsequent excavation.
Thanks are also to a number of other people, especially my Ph.D. super-
visors, Associate Professor Harry Allen, and Associate Professor Peter
Shepherd of the Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland,
for their detailed reading of many drafts along the way, astute sugges-
tions, support, and encouragement.
Thanks are also due to Peter Cooper of Walter C. Mountain Landing
Ltd for providing access to Te Puna, making possible the fieldwork as
well as the archeological investigation of the mission house site; the
Mountain family, Bill, Avis, and Shane, for sharing information about
family lands; and Sue and Fergus Clunie, for being available at the
ix
x Acknowledgments
Kerikeri Mission House and Stone Store for ongoing consultation,
access to archives, comparison of material, and their excellent knowl-
edge of missionary culture. I would also like to acknowledge those who
have mana whenua at Te Puna, whose ancestors occupied the land
before missionary arrivals and who welcomed those first Europeans
to Te Puna, the hapu of Ngati Tore Hina at Wharengaere, in particu-
lar Whakaaropai Rihari for sharing knowledge and for support dur-
ing fieldwork in January 2002, and Hugh Rihari and Herb Rihari for
consultation.
Many thanks to Susan Lawrence of La Trobe University, Victoria,
Australia. Susan has read and commented on drafts of this manu-
script; her expert knowledge in the field of historical archeology has
been a valuable source of encouragement and support over the last few
years. And to my partner Ian Smith, special thanks for many things,
but in particular for codirecting the investigation of the site of Te Puna
Mission House in March/April 2002, and for our ongoing engagement
with and shared passion for archeology and its dissemination.