Mediating Revenge: Utu and Māori war captives
Hazel Petrie
Abstract
Popular misapprehensions typecasting Māori society as being in a constant state of
retaliatory warfare have been strengthened by translations of the word ‘utu’ as
revenge. Revenge implies a negative, probably hostile response, whereas utu can
also be a positive response to an act of friendship. Cultural difference has
confounded misunderstandings. Translation is not a simple matter of replacing a
word in one language with that of another if that other language and culture have
no real equivalent. Utu could be glossed simply as ‘to make a response’, but a
better definition might be ‘to restore balance or maintain mana (authority and
power)’. Mana is the fundamental basis of chiefly leadership in Māori society. It
has a spiritual source, tapu, and can be inherited or acquired through achievement
but can also be weakened or lost. Injuries or even insults, often considered trivial
by European observers, could represent a serious attack on the mana of the victim
or their tribal group, the maintenance of which was essential to the integrity of
descent groups. Satisfaction for offences was often gained by non-violent means
but, when that did not succeed and warfare ensued, it was nonetheless aimed at
resolving the conflict and restoring stable peace. Consequently, warfare, which
offered an opportunity to reclaim lost mana, played an important role in intergroup relations. Military success restored or enhanced the mana of the victor, but
captivity and enslavement represented a massive loss of tapu and mana for the
defeated. This paper will discuss the concept of utu with particular attention to the
variety of circumstances in which war captives (typically referred to in English as
‘slaves’) found themselves and how their treatment was tailored to fit the
circumstances, maintain balance, and restore peace. In doing so, it will also
consider claims that Christian teaching ended intertribal warfare and captivetaking.
Key Words
Māori, slavery, utu, revenge, mana, war captives, cross-cultural
*****
1. Introduction
Despite the word having positive as well as negative connotations, the
perception of pre-colonial Māori as constantly seeking ‘utu’ in the sense of revenge
and consequently being in a perpetual state of inter-tribal warfare persists. The
prevalence of such ideas in popular and academic arenas underscores the
difficulties not merely of translation but of fully comprehending culture-specific
concepts. Misapprehensions have been strengthened by poor translation and the
loss of many early texts so that the original Māori words, translated as revenge, are
Mediating Revenge: Utu and Māori war captives
no longer recoverable.1 This is an important consideration because, despite
frequent rendering as revenge, utu more properly means to restore balance and
harmony. Other common assumptions are that Christian teachings were responsible
for ending both intertribal warfare and slavery in Māori society, but the reality may
not be so simple. Angela Ballara, who undertook a comprehensive study of Māori
attitudes to warfare in the early nineteenth century, responded to scholarly
predecessors who claimed that Māori society lacked ‘institutionalized processes for
the redress of wrongs’, by arguing that the joint mechanisms of warfare and its
related peacekeeping initiatives actually constituted such institutions.2 Taking the
treatment of war captives as a point of reference, this paper will suggest that the
restoration of balance was the natural precursor to peace and that Christian
teachings were less the key catalyst for change than a means to an end.
2. Utu, mana, and tapu
Utu operates to maintain or enhance mana (authority and power), the
fundamental and all-important basis of leadership in Māori society. Derived from
the ancestor gods, the source of mana is tapu — a powerful spiritual property or
state of untouchability. The mana of powerful chiefs empowered them to wield
spiritual forces that protected the tribal groups under their leadership but could also
harm those who breached their tapu — whether tribal members or not. However,
although mana can be inherited or acquired through achievement, it can also be
weakened or lost. Hence the importance of utu.
Maintaining mana was vital for group wellbeing. But, because the key purpose
of utu was to restore balance it was also important not to go too far in taking
revenge or seeking compensation for wrongs and equally important not to be so
generous that the receiver of largesse would be unable to respond sufficiently. If a
chief or his tribe wanted to damage the mana of another, it could be done just as
effectively by overwhelming them with gifts or hospitality they could not
reciprocate.
Although wrongs always demanded utu, non-violent means of resolving
conflicts were preferred. Disputes might be settled through pre-emptive
peacemaking but another method of avoiding warfare was muru, a form of ritual
plunder or process of restorative justice. However, when such systems failed to
satisfy, human sacrifice or warfare might be necessary.
Some customary responses may seem unjust to non-Māori. For example, when
a Te Whanau-a-Apanui chief who had joined his tribe’s Whakatohea allies was
killed fighting the people of Whakatane, his people sought utu, not from
Whakatane but Whakatohea because their request for support had led to his death.3
Similarly, when a chiefly woman was killed by a fall from a horse, the horse was
killed as utu.4Other responses strike Westerners, who privilege individual
responsibility, as abhorrent. But in communal societies, responsibility is
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communal, the blame and penalty falling to all members of the culprit’s group as
the loss of mana impacts all members of the victim’s group. The greater the mana
of the victim, the greater the loss to the group. Nor did Māori law distinguish
between injury and mere harm. Whether the hurt was deliberate or inadvertent, utu
was required. As one man explained with regard to pre-Christian times, it was
customary:
to kill someone in revenge for the death of a relative, and provided that
someone was killed it did not matter whether the person who committed
the crime or others suffered for it.5
Because the culprit’s people would want to avoid sacrificing one of their own,
they might prefer to substitute a surrogate and a ‘slave’ (war captive) from another
tribe could serve as payment. But a life for a life was not necessarily sufficient. The
life of a chief was not equivalent to that of a slave or commoner so several captive
deaths might be necessary to restore balance following the loss of a chief.
Moreover, unrequited killings did not go away with time. Obligations for utu might
remain for generations and it would be incumbent on descendants to obtain
satisfaction for outstanding wrongs. Nevertheless, observed practice indicates that
the level of compensation was typically measured against the seriousness of the
offence. It was not tika or correct to take too heavy retribution for offences
committed.
When all else failed, warfare served to avenge insults or murder, settle disputes,
or achieve political dominance. But whereas military success restored or enhanced
the mana of the victor, captivity and enslavement represented a massive loss of
tapu and mana for the defeated. A large number of enslaved captives symbolised
the high status of successful tribal leaders and the degraded, subservient state of the
vanquished. War captives were typically assigned jobs that were both menial and
tapu-destroying — such as making fires, preparing and cooking food. Cooked food
is noa, the antithesis of tapu, and people of rank had to keep well clear of places
where food was cooked. Thus the availability of captive labour allowed the
conquerors to maintain their tapu and mana while destroying that of the defeated.
But, having said that, the lives of captives varied greatly from menial drudges or
mistreated concubines to favoured wives or trusted companions.
3. Appropriate conditions of captivity
Being captured by the enemy might not mean instant ‘slavery’. In the worstcase scenario, captives taken back to the conquerors’ home could be killed
immediately by grieving widows of fallen warriors. On the other hand, people with
desirable skills were occasionally taken selectively so their captors might take
advantage of their talents. Men with expertise in carving or tattooing might be
valued and respected as young beautiful women could gain status as beloved
Mediating Revenge: Utu and Māori war captives
secondary wives. And captives of either sex could become close friends and
confidantes of their masters and mistresses, especially if they were of chiefly birth.
It is also evident that captives of high rank were typically treated differently from
commoners and there are many accounts of victors recoiling from manhandling
chiefly opponents in the aftermath of battle. The capture of a chief might be a
lawful act of justice by one equal to another but ‘for any common person to lay
violent hands on the sacred person of a chief, even one destined for the oven, was
highly offensive to Māori susceptibilities’.6
Much like the American Civil War, the New Zealand wars of the 1860s pitted
family against family, tribe against tribe. Following one 1864 battle, therefore,
those who had fought in support of the government were very reluctant to
surrender their prisoners to the Crown. The remarks of one leader reflect the
feeling that by having given them military support, the British should not expect
further sacrifice:
We have fought for the Queen and for the protection of the Pakehas
[settlers]. We have killed … many of our nearest relations and friends.
We have taken others of them prisoners. Have we not done enough …’?
They were especially concerned for the Hauhau (anti-government) chief Raimona
who, as they said, was ‘nearly related to every Chief of this river, to all of us’ and
repeatedly asked for his release:
If we lay hands on him he will be degraded, and looked upon as a slave
for ever. We are, therefore, trying to persuade him to walk down to the
canoe without our touching him.7
So they sought to avoid desecrating his tapu through physical contact and tipping
the balance of reasonable revenge.
It was not a new phenomenon for Māori combatants to find themselves set
against kinfolk on the battlefield. However, the deferential treatment of chiefly
relatives and the capture of Raimona confirm that such situations required delicate
handling. Edward Tregear described a process sometimes employed to obviate the
enslavement of chiefs, nearly related to both sides, who were likely to be captured
in battle. He wrote that when one of the contending armies was about to be routed,
the leader of the victors was permitted to call out the name or names of certain
warriors among the enemy. If one of those immediately accepted the invitation and
joined them, he was treated as a visitor rather than a prisoner and often as a highlyhonoured guest.8 That practice would have avoided the humiliation of chiefly
kinsmen. Unrelated, chiefs were, perhaps, more often killed than taken prisoner but
it does seem that, when captured, they were treated with greater respect than more
lowly folk and might be treated as ‘hostages’ rather than prisoners or slaves with a
Hazel Petrie
view to a subsequent diplomatic resolution.9 To mistreat a captive of rank from the
opposing tribe would likely defeat the aim of re-establishing balance.
Polygamy was the norm for men of rank and diplomatic marriages with a
chiefly woman from the contending party could seal the peace when hostilities
ceased. Captive women of any rank might be taken as secondary wives by the
victors but were not necessarily deemed ‘slave’ wives and might be accorded
chiefly status.10 The same might apply, albeit less often, to men taken as husbands
by a woman on the winning side.11
Because people of rank were tapu in their physical person, items in contact
with their body were imbued with that tapu. So, by placing a garment, usually their
cloak, over someone about to be slain, they could indicate that the individual was
now under their mana and protection.12 They were spared but consequently owed
obeisance to the cloak’s owner. In similar vein, it is recorded that when a particular
pā (fortified settlement) was taken and the chief captured, the conquering chief
spread his cloak on the ground and invited the defeated leader to sit on it. By
agreeing to do so, he not only saved his own life but those of his people who would
likely become a vassal tribe.13 Similar policies allowed a member of a war party
who had relatives among the people about to be attacked to go ahead and warn
them of the approaching danger.14 The same applied when the first war party was
approaching the tribal settlement from which they sought utu. They would not
attack until they had been seen by their intended victims.15 An expectation of
military fairness surely lay behind the response of the leading chief at the battle of
Rangiriri in 1863, who initially declined the opposing British general’s call for
surrender saying: ‘Ho mai he paura’ (‘Give us some gunpowder’) as they had run
out but hoped to continue the fight.16
4. Maintaining chiefly mana
As in the case of human sacrifice, maintaining chiefly dignity or mana, was
quite often at the expense of war captives. So if a person of rank was suspected of
theft, a slave was likely to take the blame. And woe betide a slave who witnessed
their master or mistress committing a misdemeanour and blabbed about it for they,
too, were likely to face punishment for the damage done to the miscreant’s mana.
The same rules, that is, Māori law, applied to Europeans. That was evident
when the Boyd, a British trading ship, arrived at Whangaroa Harbour from Sydney
in 1809 with 70 people on board including a young Whangaroa chief named Te
Ara. The captain had expected Te Ara to work his passage as a member of the crew
but, for reasons lost to time, he refused to follow orders. Whether that refusal was
because the work was inappropriate for a man of his rank, because he was ill or
incapacitated, or for some other reason is uncertain but we do know that he
suffered a flogging and was denied food. When the ship arrived at his home port
Mediating Revenge: Utu and Māori war captives
and his relatives learned of his mistreatment, the dramatic response, necessary in
terms of utu, was unexpected by the crew.
Oblivious to the dreadful offence they had caused, the Boyd’s captain and
several crew members, who went ashore in search of a cargo, were attacked, killed,
and eaten. At nightfall, the ship was assaulted and most of those left on board
suffered the same fate. In what has become a well-known tragedy in New Zealand
history – and one which gained a great deal of negative publicity internationally —
the ship was pillaged, gunpowder stored on board exploded, and the vessel was
burned. However, a few of the ship’s passengers and crew did survive. One was a
cabin boy named Thom Davis, spared because he had looked after Te Ara when he
was flogged and even smuggled food to him. The second mate fared differently,
however. He was treated as a slave, being put to work making fish-hooks and
barrel hoops which were items of Western technology Māori were keen to acquire.
But when his work disappointed, he succumbed to the fate of his shipmates.
5. The demise of slavery begins
As the concept of utu has been frequently misunderstood, so have the
mechanisms for restoring balance when things got out of hand gone similarly
unrecognised or attributed to outside causes. A very particular case in point relates
to the advent of muskets in a society previously restricted to hand-to-hand
weapons. From the late 1810s, Māori warfare expanded to an unprecedented
extent. Leaders like Hongi Hika, who controlled the harbours most frequented by
Western trading vessels and, consequently, access to muskets, were able to take
revenge for outstanding grievances supremely confident that those they attacked
lacked any effective defence. These battles also provided Hongi with the
opportunity to capture some 2,000 ‘workers’ to increase his production at a crucial
time. His armies wreaked havoc over a vast geographic area until he died from a
bullet wound in 1828 and balance began to be restored. It was from that time and
through the 1830s that large numbers of captives were released and allowed to
return home.
Unfortunately for historiography, however, this period coincides with the
arrival of missionaries and increasing visits from European mariners whose
writings form the basis of most publications on the subject of Māori warfare. But it
was an atypical era, during which the balance of power altered dramatically to
favour leaders at locations preferred by Western shipping. A situation that has been
assumed to be ‘normal’ was, in fact, extremely abnormal.
Missionaries believed or claimed to believe that their teachings were
responsible for the widespread release of captives. But religious conversion was far
from general by the 1830s and especially not among the chiefly classes responsible
for their release. The apparent immunity of Christians to the lethal forces of tapu
did nonetheless reduce its relevance and diminish the authority of chiefly leaders.
Hazel Petrie
With hindsight though, it appears that Christianity was less a religious conviction
than an excuse for putting the brakes on warfare which had reached unprecedented
levels in extent and killing power. Moreover, the freeing of captives was very
convenient at this time. Changes in the market for Māori trade goods meant that
enormous labour forces were no longer required and idle labourers had become a
burden. And, now that the distribution of muskets had reached saturation point,
tribes at a distance from the principle trading ports that had held the initial
advantage were as well-armed as their erstwhile tormentors, and retaliation was
highly likely. So returning their captured kinfolk was expedient and an excellent
peace-making initiative. New moral values may have been less the result of
Christian teaching than an innate response to changed circumstances. Declaring
peace in the name of a missionary rather than the chief was an effective facesaving/mana preserving approach. Balance was being restored but the impetus for
change had come from within. Māori society was, ultimately, self-regulating, utu
was not interminable, and a captive labour force was no longer essential.
Notes
1 See, for example, Angela Ballara, Taua: ‘Musket wars’, ‘land wars’ or tikanga? Warfare in Maori
Society in the Early Nineteenth Century (Auckland
Penguin Books, 2003). 83.
2 ———, "The Role of Warfare in Maori Society in the Early Contact Period," Journal of the
Polynesian Society 85, no. 4 (1976): 488-89. Her 2003 book, Taua, is the more comprehensive
discussion of the period.
3 Elsdon Best, Tuhoe: The Children of the Mist, 2nd ed., 2 vols., vol. 1 (Wellington: A. H. & A. W.
Reed Ltd, 1971). 112-13.
4 Paora Tokoahu, letter to the Editor in "Te Waka Māori o Niu tirani," ( 4 April 1875), 89.
5 Evidence of Te Piri re Pāraeroa Block, Waipiro Wp7B/272 of 19 March 1885 cited in Monty Soutar,
"Ngāti Porou Leadership - Rāpata Wahawaha and the politics of Conflict" (Massey University, 2000),
78.
6 Arthur Hugh Carrington, Ngāi Tahu: A Migration History: The Carrington Text, ed. Te Maire Tau &
Atholl Anderson (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2008). 183.
7 Memorandum by William Fox, GBPP, Vol. 14, Enc. 2 in No. 22, pp.79-81.
8 Edward Tregear, The Maori Race, Wanganui, 1904, p.155.
9 Ballara, Taua: ‘Musket wars’, ‘land wars’ or tikanga? Warfare in Maori Society in the Early
Nineteenth Century: 157.
10 Ibid., 155.
11 See, for example, the case of Te Rangi Topeora taking Te Ratutonu, a Taranaki chief, for a husband
by throwing her dog-skin cloak over him (Victoria University of Wellington Department of Maori
Studies, Te whakatuwheratanga o Te Tumu Herenga Waka (Wellington: Part of New Zealand Texts
Collection,
New
Zealand
Electronic
Texts
Centre,
6
December
1986),
http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-VUWMarae1986-t2-body-d4-d34-d1a.html.)
12 For example, Elsdon Best, "Notes on the art of war, as conducted by the Maori of New Zealand, with accounts of
various customs, rites, superstitions, &c., pertaining to war, as practised and believed in by the ancient Maori," Journal of
the Polynesian Society 12, no. 3 (1903): 161.
13 T. W. Downes, "History of Ngati-Haku-Ngunu," Journal of the Polynesian Society 25, no. 97
(1916): 7.
14 Lieut. Col. Gudgeon, "Maori wars," Journal of the Polynesian Society 16, no. 1 (1907): 32.
15 John White, The Ancient History of the Maori, his mythology and traditions 13 vols., vol. 9
(Hamilton: University of Waikato Library, 2001).(B No.1 White)(142)
16 James Cowan, The New Zealand Wars: A History of the Maori Campaigns and the Pioneering
Period, vol. 1 (Wellington: R. E. Owen, 1955). 334.
Bibliography
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no. 4 (1976): 487-506.
———. Taua: ‘Musket Wars’, ‘Land Wars’ or Tikanga? Warfare in Maori Society in the Early Nineteenth Century.
Auckland: Penguin Books, 2003.
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Rites, Superstitions, &C., Pertaining to War, as Practised and Believed in by the Ancient Maori." Journal of the
Polynesian Society 12, no. 3 (1903).
———. Tuhoe: The Children of the Mist. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Vol. 1, Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed Ltd, 1971. 1925.
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Hazel Petrie is a research fellow in the Department of Māori Studies at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her
current work focuses on war captives in Māori society and British perceptions of it as well as chiefly entrepreneurship.