18.2 The Historicity of the Heke
305
Once central to the study of Polynesian and Maori prehistory, the study of Pacific
genealogies by European scholars has been discredited and effectively abandoned
in the past 30 years. This followed the wide acceptance of David Simmons’ deconstructionist approach to New Zealand prehistory [1]. Simmons argued that, in New
Zealand, traditional histories had been subverted by pakeha historians (historians of
European descent) who imposed their own myths and created their own distorting
syntheses and chronologies from “timeless” tradition.
At the time Simmons’ book was published, increased emphasis on the need for a
more systematic and scientific approach to archaeology, with a focus on stratigraphy
and context, coincided with Simmons’ debunking of European attempts to establish
a chronology from Maori traditions. For European scholars the study of traditional
history became dangerously unsound: both politically incorrect and academically
dubious. In Part III, we seek sensible new ways to resume the abandoned attempt
to derive a sound chronology from tradition for Maori and Polynesian prehistory by
exploring new contexts and new sources of evidence, both scientific and traditional.
18.2 The Historicity of the Heke
Arguing for a Lapita-age first settlement of New Zealand flows against the tide of
research of the past 50 years. The challenge we set ourselves in Part III of constructing a reliable chronology from Polynesian genealogies flows just as strongly
against modern research directions. So much is this the case that the very existence
of the Heke as an historical event has to be defended before we can attempt to date
it. And the possibility of using genealogies to generate a sound chronology has to
be justified before we can set about our task.
Using the data inherent in genealogies to create a framing chronology for Maori
prehistory tempted Europeans from the outset. New Zealand Maori preserved a
remarkable oral history and a large body of associated genealogies which captured
the imaginations of many European historians in the 19th century. Many became
adept speakers of Maori, spoke extensively with Maori on their traditions and made
detailed records. The Auckland Museum and Library, for example, has about 10,000
manuscript pages written in Maori by the British Governor, George Grey, on Maori
tradition, only a few percent of which have been published. A number of books were
published in the 19th century, perhaps most notably the volumes of John White [2],
though as with many such collections of traditional knowledge, proper historiographical assessment of sources was very often lacking. In 1892 the Journal of the
Polynesian Society, now in its second century, was founded by S. Percy Smith and
Edward Tregear.
Smith was largely responsible for crystallizing out of the vast body of tradition collected by Europeans a skeleton chronology for Maori and, more broadly,
Polynesian prehistory. His approach to the task of assigning dates to key events was
to count generations back through Maori lineages to those events. Multiplying the
number of generations back to an event by the mean length of a generation and
subtracting the resultant period away from the date when the genealogy was
recorded provided a dating estimate for the event.
305
Once central to the study of Polynesian and Maori prehistory, the study of Pacific
genealogies by European scholars has been discredited and effectively abandoned
in the past 30 years. This followed the wide acceptance of David Simmons’ deconstructionist approach to New Zealand prehistory [1]. Simmons argued that, in New
Zealand, traditional histories had been subverted by pakeha historians (historians of
European descent) who imposed their own myths and created their own distorting
syntheses and chronologies from “timeless” tradition.
At the time Simmons’ book was published, increased emphasis on the need for a
more systematic and scientific approach to archaeology, with a focus on stratigraphy
and context, coincided with Simmons’ debunking of European attempts to establish
a chronology from Maori traditions. For European scholars the study of traditional
history became dangerously unsound: both politically incorrect and academically
dubious. In Part III, we seek sensible new ways to resume the abandoned attempt
to derive a sound chronology from tradition for Maori and Polynesian prehistory by
exploring new contexts and new sources of evidence, both scientific and traditional.
18.2 The Historicity of the Heke
Arguing for a Lapita-age first settlement of New Zealand flows against the tide of
research of the past 50 years. The challenge we set ourselves in Part III of constructing a reliable chronology from Polynesian genealogies flows just as strongly
against modern research directions. So much is this the case that the very existence
of the Heke as an historical event has to be defended before we can attempt to date
it. And the possibility of using genealogies to generate a sound chronology has to
be justified before we can set about our task.
Using the data inherent in genealogies to create a framing chronology for Maori
prehistory tempted Europeans from the outset. New Zealand Maori preserved a
remarkable oral history and a large body of associated genealogies which captured
the imaginations of many European historians in the 19th century. Many became
adept speakers of Maori, spoke extensively with Maori on their traditions and made
detailed records. The Auckland Museum and Library, for example, has about 10,000
manuscript pages written in Maori by the British Governor, George Grey, on Maori
tradition, only a few percent of which have been published. A number of books were
published in the 19th century, perhaps most notably the volumes of John White [2],
though as with many such collections of traditional knowledge, proper historiographical assessment of sources was very often lacking. In 1892 the Journal of the
Polynesian Society, now in its second century, was founded by S. Percy Smith and
Edward Tregear.
Smith was largely responsible for crystallizing out of the vast body of tradition collected by Europeans a skeleton chronology for Maori and, more broadly,
Polynesian prehistory. His approach to the task of assigning dates to key events was
to count generations back through Maori lineages to those events. Multiplying the
number of generations back to an event by the mean length of a generation and
subtracting the resultant period away from the date when the genealogy was
recorded provided a dating estimate for the event.