Before the Pioneers

AMONG dim figures at the far beginning of this thin white line is Thomas Maxwell, credibly said to have lived as a Pakeha-Maori at Maraetai, in the Hauraki Gulf, as early as 1817, and to have built there a boat in which he sailed upon the waters of the Waitemata before Marsden made his memorable tour thereabouts in 1820. Old records show that Maxwell’s service to his tribe left him large liberty.

An independent resident trader in flax, Captain Payne, occupied a little sheltered nook near the Waikato Heads, and performed exploits of bargain­ing and shipping. The most impressive claim to honour as an individual settler of this sort, how­ever, must be made for Captain William Marshall, in whose memoirs Captain Payne vividly appears. Marshall came in 1830, permanently establishing himself in the Waikato some time after Payne’s arrival, and living through the stirring times this region was to see in the sixties. Eminently capable Marshall succeeded in enterprises that would have been beyond the skill and endurance of many another maker of such ventures.

Flax, in the dressing of which the Maori, notably his womankind, was highly proficient, provided the staple line of trade for all these pioneers of settlement, but the scene changes when their line is traced through the South Island. To make the land yield new products was there the splendid ambition of ‘the little gray company before the pioneers,’ Canterbury in particular having its record of individual courage dating much earlier than ‘the first four ships’ in 1850. The names of McGillivray, Heriot and Greenwood, all associated with misfortune, and of Rhodes, Hay, and Deans, distinguished by achievement, adorn a brave tale