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Suzanne Aubers and the meeting of languageThe following article by Jessie Munro was first presented as a paper at Victoria University of Wellington for the 1996 conference of the New Zealand Historical Association and Te Pouhere Korero. [Note: Although Suzanne Aubert’s phrasebook did use macrons in the spelling of Maori words, they were combined with other diacritical marks that were not always consistently applied by her or the printer. Because of this, and the absence of macrons in Henry Kemp’s manual also quoted from in this article, it was decided for consistency not to use vowel markers in any Maori quotations in this text.] 'Now I begin to see the meaning of your word: Suzanne Aubert and the Meeting of LanguageI tai atu o te ngahere et tu ana te puke tiketike, e paritu ana, e toru maero te roa. E hohonu ana te awa i konei, e kaha ana te ia, e tino tere ana nga wai. E tu ana te whare i tetahi wahi watea, i tetahi taha tonu o te pä. Kei te piata nga whetu. Kua mutu te ua. Kei te waipuke te awa. Ka pö rawa. Ka taka te taima o te haere ki te moe. Kua puta mai tetahi whakaaro nei. He korero Maori koia täu? He pukapuka täu? Tena ano ahau e mahi ki te whakaoti. Kua kitea e au he whakaaro. Ka pirangi ahau ki te tuhituhi /he pukapuka / o te korero Maori. Ka ma hi paitia e au. Whakawhirinaki ki tena. Beyond the bush there is a very high hill, almost straight up; it is three miles long. The river here is very deep, swift, and strong. The house stands on a slightly rising ground somewhat apart from the village. The stars are shining. The rain is over. The river is rising. It is very late. It is time to go to bed. I have thought of something. Do you speak Maori? Have you a book? An idea strikes me. I wish to write / a book / on the Maori language. I shall do my best. You may rely on it. This patchwork of language has been taken verbatim here and there from an old phrase book, to set the scene. It is sometime in 1884, at Hiruharama up the Whanganui River. Suzanne Aubert, who is Sister Mary Joseph, sits with her candle close to the page and begins writing this book. It's probably very late at night, because that is the way it often was with her, the only time at the end of an active day. The two or three Sisters who are with her at that time will be asleep. The only sounds might be the odd dog or two still barking down in the two marae below the old government schoolhouse, maybe a morepork in the bush, – and the sound of the scratching of her pen: Suzanne AubertSuzanne Aubert came to New Zealand from France in 1860. Bishop Pompallier introduced her to the Maori language on the voyage out. He gave lessons on deck to the twenty-six missionaries. They must have been handed copies of his just re-edited little French-Maori grammar.[i] But Suzanne’s real knowledge of Maori was first acquired from the North, mostly from Peata and her companions. Peata was the first Maori woman in Catholic religious life, and the name was a baptismal name, Latin Beata or Blessed. Her own name was Hoki of Nga Puhi.[ii] She was born about 1821 and was said to be a niece of Rewa. The story says that Peata used to go with Suzanne to marae around Auckland, for her to learn language and customs, to listen to whakapapa. This is quite likely, because if Peata were a niece of Rewa, she would have close kinship links with Ngati Whatua leaders.[iii] [iv] Suzanne left Auckland in 1871 and was in Hawke's Bay until 1883. She would walk or ride around a wide circuit of marae, from closer Omahu and Pakowhai to distant Opepe in the hills towards Taupo. Many of the names are documented in baptismal registers.[v] The registers show her baptising babies who were in danger of dying, and there were a lot of them at the time. William Leonard William’s journals, written in the same area and at the same time, show his concern, too, at the sickness and epidemics around. There were also the pakeha babies of the Vogel settlers flooding into Hawke’s Bay in the 1870s. Susan Nairn, one of the runholder women, commented that ‘N. Zealand is a dreadful place for babies – everyone has an annual affair – it must be the climate’.[vi] Suzanne had stood sponsor, for the baby of Marata and Urupene Puhara. So babies and godparents go into her book: Kua whanau te tamaiti a Heni. Jane had a son. Her letters and other Hawke’s Bay contemporary records tell of her nursing, even vaccinating against smallpox. She was the Sister Mary Joseph who runs through Rev Philip Anderson’s diaries, coming frequently on sickcall to the Taradale Anglican vicarage. People would see her, up on the hillsides or pushing through the swamps and the bush, gathering medicinal plants with Maori women as companions. Later notes from Renata Kawepo and Paoro Kaiwhata document her reputation among Maori for medicine. And many phrases on medicine and doctoring go into her book: Kainga tö rongoa i te ata, i te ahiahi. Take your medicine in the morning and in the evening. By 1880 she was living among the Maori of Pakipaki. She was known occasionally to sleep on the marae in the wharenui, not just here but elsewhere. This must have been unusual for nineteenth-century pakeha women, even mission women. Circumstances had brought her back to a quasi-lay state during these twelve years, so she had a greater freedom of movement than in the Nazareth Institution in 1860s Auckland. And circumstances had also by then made her the only operational Catholic Maori missioner in Wellington Diocese. Her knowledge of all things Maori would have deepened enormously in this time with Ngati Kahungunu. When Christian mission started up again after the lapsed decade of the wars, the old question was raised: if Christian, which denomination? Suzanne was there in the middle of it all, hearing reports of runanga discussion and present at hui as the only active Catholic missioner. But she was just a woman, not a priest. There was nobody to bring Catholic sacraments to the Maori. Several chiefs of Ngati Kahungunu were linked to the Church of England but Suzanne suggests they were still keeping a dignified independence of choice. For there to be a choice, in her eyes, she had to get a priest to them. From 1875 to 1878, Suzanne was writing letters to the Marists in France and to the bishop in Wellington, pleading for at least one priest. By 1877, the tone of her letters was urgent: Now is the right moment. The leading Maori chiefs have formed a committee and are holding meetings in all the main pa to get reforms underway to protect their race. The religious question is being discussed strongly. The chiefs are working hard at making religious worship an obligation. In spite of the incredible efforts of the Protestant ministers, in spite of the way we have neglected the Maori, I was pleased to hear that these poor people have declared that 'Protestantism and Catholicism are equally good'. The chiefs are leaving the people free to choose. They have decided that a church must be built in all the main pa, that there must be native catechists for the ordinary occasions and a visiting European minister for certain set times. By this very fact, they will all definitely turn to Protestantism, unless you hurry up and send priests.[vii] For all this mission zeal, Suzanne was still the person who would set an example to New Zealand through her whole life for denominational tolerance, respect and cooperation. This is part of the wider story. But her attitude was undoubtedly formed in part by the approach adopted by Maori themselves. It would not just be for marketing reasons that the phrases for religious observance in her book are inclusive:
Perhaps unconsciously she wrote the two sentences in this way, leaving the future tense to the priest! The New and Complete Manual of Maori Conversation, 1885The days in Hawke’s Bay were over. From 1883, she was up the Whanganui River, with Ngati Hau and Ngati Ruaka of Te Atihaunui-a-Paparangi. It was there, with already twenty-four years behind her of life spent among Maori, that she wrote her book through 1884. In 1885 it was published by Lyon and Blair of Wellington. The title page listed it as: New and Complete Manual of Maori Conversation: containing Phrases and Dialogues in a variety of useful and interesting topics, together with a few general Rules of Grammar; and a Comprehensive Vocabulary. It might be an expansive title, but it is accurate identification. The author, presumably from scruples of religious reticence, is signalled only by her initials: S.A. It is time for me to say why I am talking about this book. My viewpoint is not that of a scholar of Maori or of published works in Maori but as Suzanne's biographer looking for the woman writing it. And she does come out of the pages. There are hundreds of other examples to the ones I have sketched above, where the language of the book is revealing her story, her experience, her personality. For example, the fun in her character that people spoke of comes through. Playing (ball, football, top, whip, swing, marbles, kite, doll, cricket, to play, to slide) takes up over a third of the education vocabulary section. ‘Plays and Amusements’ progresses through kids: ‘Hullo, children, are you romping about?’ to a suggestion of budding tourism: ‘They are dancing Maori dances’. Horse-racing starts off this section. That was an area where Maori and pakeha interracted from early on: Tëra koe e haere i runga i täku hoiho. You shall ride on my horse. As a language teacher, I became fascinated by this phrasebook, and by its continuing story over the years. 'Quaint' is the semi-apologetic word that has often cropped up in references to it, partly because it is a book that was still being used generations away from the context in which it was written and partly because English was not Suzanne Aubert’s native language in the first place. I do find some bits in the English that are 'quaint' – linguistically or culturally quirky and dated. And there are a few examples that seem culturally insensitive to us, yet for years and years they were left unaltered in successive editions passing through Maori hands.[viii] But far outweighing any reservations is my respect for the dynamic conversational energy she released in it. The communication flows back and forth between the two languages, with a wealth of nuance and choice, enough shades of meaning to suit people who are wanting real human contact. Most Maori language was being acquired orally, of course, especially in areas of traditional culture, although earlier missionaries Robert Maunsell, William Williams, William Leonard Williams, William Colenso and Richard Taylor wrote dictionaries, grammars or vocabulary books themselves as the years went by. But Suzanne wrote her book for a different era, with a different purpose. She documented the language where it could interface, or overlap, with the settler world. Some of the ‘quaintness’ label pinned to this book comes from its very existence at all as a comprehensive conversation manual, given the norm. But it does still exist, with an imprint as recently as 1991, and it has had a long life. Of its type, it seems to have stood alone in scale and aim. Previous phrasebooksSuzanne’s book came a long way into the history of published Maori, seventy years after Thomas Kendall printed in 1815 the first known work.[ix] Herbert Williams listed it at No. 700 in A Bibliography of Printed Maori to 1900, although large parts of the numbered listings are re-impressions or re-editions of previous works. At least seventy-five percent of this publishing was mission or government content.[x] Among the remaining small proportion came the dictionaries, grammars, phrasebooks which are the stuff of my comparison with Suzanne's book. There was not a wide range of them at all but they were the type of printed Maori most often accessed by ordinary pakeha settlers newly arrived and engaged in secular pursuits. The earliest semi-government language manual was by Henry Tacy Kemp, Native Secretary, who was described by Williams as 'the well-known Maori scholar'.[xi] His manual was a survival kit for incoming pakeha and was first printed in 1848 under ‘the special patronage of the Colonial Government’. It was re-edited four times over the years, and reprinted often under the title Chapman's Handy Book for New Zealand. The Preface recommended its series of conversations ‘on various subjects of everyday importance to settlers and traders’. Kemp's book had just fourteen pages of these conversations.[xii] Yet even the fourth edition from 1875 still has the Preface claiming that: ‘To understand Maori and to be able to converse with a New Zealander, a handy book like this “First Step”, has been found quite sufficient.’ Chapmans’ advertisements in newspapers also emphasise this limiting definition of conversation. Leonard Williams’s First Lessons in the Maori Language with a Short Vocabulary, first published in 1862, had a conversation section as well but it is only eight pages of practical phrases, whereas Suzanne's 197 pages offered 150 pages of wide-ranging, communicative phrases. Even in the 1875 edition, Kemp's dialogues remain predictably manual, colonial, exploitative – the language that must have sounded with the swinging of axes in the lowland coastal forests of Geoff Park’s Nga Uruora:
Articulate opposition to signing the Treaty of Waitangi came from Peata’s uncle, Rewa. A strong argument he put forward went in the official report back to London: ‘Send the man away; do not sign the paper; if you do, you will be reduced to the condition of slaves, and be obliged to break stones for the roads. Your land will be taken from you, and your dignity as chiefs will be destroyed’.[xiii] The picture that Rewa painted in 1840 and feared, at least for his fellow chiefs, is starkly outlined in Kemp's few conversations. Here is the entire text of the fourth, headed Conversation about Land:
In fact, Rewa's prophetic reference to roadmaking comes in an extract from the section called Conversation about Roads:
Like Kemp, Suzanne Aubert also states that her book gives ‘a chance of being able to understand the most useful topics and to ask for the most necessary things’. Parts are definitely utilitarian, ‘To engage a servant’ for instance. But there’s a ring of courtesy, even if wages negotiation seems a bit one-sided: E pai ranei koe kia mahi mäku? Are you disposed to enter on my service? Rather than saying her book is ‘quite sufficient’, as Kemp does, Suzanne indicates the opposite. She says it is not ‘complete or perfect’ at all; it will be a way to begin bilingual exchange. The preface is modest, friendly, almost chatty. The book, she says, is in answer to a perceived need:
She sees a two-way need: ‘We also beg to remark that we have endeavoured to make this little book useful to Maoris as well as to Europeans’. She goes on to refer to the different dialects, says she has lived among many tribes herself, and explains she has tried to frame the Maori so it will be ‘understood at least through the whole North Island’. The grammar will just be given once-over-lightly. As she says: ‘We give a few general rules of grammar to gratify the reader’s curiosity’. Then she launches into her conversational phrases. She sets the framework of time, and the basic needs of human survival – expressing hunger and thirst – then off she goes into her packed pages, starting with the notion of communication itself. Mo te Korero : For Speaking starts with: Korero mai ki a au : Speak to me, and expands out to entries like:
– and finishes its forty-eight entries with a very positive:
That sets the tone for the fifty-nine functions of language or situations which follow, ranging over: To offer and thank, To deny and call into question, To express friendship, To inquire about a person, At a dinner party, With a photographer, On plays and amusements, and so on. The book has less the language of the traditional culture than the neologisms or borrowings of European influence (coffee pot, bananas, lemonade). It was the language of contact. That was the nature of the woman she was. At least she was not merely sitting back waiting for the race to die out, as the current thought was. There is much in the book that is not utilitarian at all. ‘Of News : Ko nga korero o te ao’ is far removed from Kemp’s field of reference: He rongo ranei tö tenei rä? Is there any news today? The overseas references may not have been as unrealistic as they seem. In 1884 Ngati Hau were crowding into the school at Jerusalem and there were newspapers there for them. James Pope was improving the materials sent to Native Schools, and English periodicals were being passed on to Maori adult students. And just then Ngati Hau were often down in the town of Wanganui for the Native Land Court. There was discussion going on. The section on war also overlaps international politics. Suzanne was arbitrary with her examples and there may have been some editorial reflection. In her manuscript she has crossed out a putative ‘The Americans have sunk an English ironclad with 150 men on board’. That may have been seen as detrimental to the image of Empire. She wrote carefully over the top some wishful Franco-Prussian War retribution: ‘The French have sunk a German ironclad...’. Perhaps she steered herself away from that, too, in the Prussian climate of Victorian 1884, because in print it became the French sinking the Americans. She was fairly astute with language, aware of what would work or not. Suzanne’s book has much of the character of the phrasebooks carted around Europe at the time. There is one in the Home of Compassion Archives that she owned, though it is dated later, from 1905. It is Spanish-French. It gives some insight into her approach, because as well as straight word lists and practical phrases, it has pages of lively dialogue in almost playlet form. They seem to be there for comic entertainment as well as for pedagogy. One on railway travel starts off with a traveller putting the simple question which French teachers teach countless times: '‘What time does the train leave for Paris?’ But we are quickly into comedy as the traveller is blocked from entry to the platforms. He has staggered up with a large retinue of luggage, the long list ending with ‘a rifle, a small dog and two Turkish pipes'. The interrogation begins. No, he doesn’t want his little dog, Azor, muzzled like a bulldog and packed off to a special kennel compartment. He’ll tuck him under his coat. No, his rifle isn’t loaded. No, he hasn’t got a passport and gendarmes and police have never bothered him before. No, he’s not a revolutionary, just a peaceful citizen who’s devoted his whole life to the manufacture of cotton nightcaps... And on it goes, with the passenger in the end, of course, missing his train. This is relevant to Suzanne's story. She would laugh over The Pickwick Papers. She had a theatrical streak, liked dialogue and repartee. She was also an animal lover. She once smuggled a cat back on the tram to Island Bay wrapped in a baby's shawl. She actually had a little dog she called Azor. She loved it but it drove the other Sisters barmy. One of the orphans thought he'd have a go at poisoning it. And as for the suspected revolutionary bit, over World War One she would have a lot of trouble in Rome at the prospect of crossing borders because a woman travelling alone in nun's habit was often thought to be a spy. This might seem a sidetrack, a parenthesis, but it does help show why Suzanne’s book is also alive. She is writing to get over the cultural border. It assumes a populace of pakeha and Maori who would be wanting to communicate, to gossip (Töna ora he pinono : He gets his living by sponging on others), to travel in company (Ka nui te maniania. Kia tupato koe, kei hinga ki raro : It is very slippery; take care not to fall), to weather storms together (Me noho tatou i tetahi wahi maru : Let us shelter ourselves). Suzanne Aubert’s previous writing in MaoriHer book came in a renewed wave of publishing and re-editing in Maori. Suzanne herself had already published before. Her writing dates back to the 1870s’ need to salvage the Catholic mission and to prepare for new, young priests, first with a prayerbook for Maori: ‘Give priests, give books,' she wrote to the Marists, 'as they do not even have the aid of prayerbooks. The supply ran out a long time ago, and there are several villages where there would be a renewal of prayer if there were only a book to give the Catechist.’[xv] Bishop Redwood gave her the task of revising the Maori prayerbook. It was two years before Ko te Ako me te Karakia o te Hahi Katorika Romana was printed in Napier.[xvi] She tried to produce a book to be as all-encompassing as possible and she ended up doubling the size of the original 1847 prayerbook. Suzanne never needed much sleep. Her daily medical and mission routine would have stayed largely the same while candles burned down steadily through the nights. The stack of pages in her enthusiasm grew higher and higher. Maybe she was thinking, too, of the traditional value once placed by Maori on the impressiveness and size of the printed volume. And she was incorporating elements of the Old Testament which had high value for Maori now.[xvii] The prayerbook was ready for the new priest finally on his way to Pakipaki. But there was still the question of how he was to learn Maori as quickly as possible when total immersion was no longer feasible in Hawke’s Bay. The poor Frenchman would have interference from learning English as well. Redwood thought proofreading something as familiar to Father Soulas as a prayerbook would be a good way for him to learn Maori fast.[xviii] The prayerbook was for his pastoral work but Suzanne was also preparing him for his daily life. She wrote for him a book full of phrases in Maori with their French equivalents. It was never published, of course, but the numbering of the manuscript extracts that survive indicate that it was lengthy. The copy pages that remain seem similar to Colenso’s Wee Willie’s First English Book. They give phrases for daily occurrences in a Maori community. Suzanne was going to make sure, for example, that the new priest from France could pick his way safely through the dogs bounding around the pa at Pakipaki:
Other French priests who came would use the increasingly battered manuscript until it was last seen at the Wanganui Presbytery around 1915.[xix] From the late 1870s she was also working on a major English-Maori dictionary. A heavy leatherbound volume from Dinwiddie, Morrison & Co, the Napier firm who had printed the prayerbook, is filled with the impressive figure of about 17 000 English entries and many Maori equivalents already alongside.[xx] It remained unfinished however. Perhaps she abandoned it in the busyness of her life, perhaps the project was superseded by re-editions of Williams, and by the promise of Colenso’s Lexicon. The idea of publishing Maori/English had therefore probably germinated before the Whanganui River days. But there was another incentive. From July 1883 she was up the river with two Australian Sisters who had recently arrived in New Zealand, who were unused to Maori custom and did not know the language. So she would have been doing the same in English for them as she had done in French for Soulas. Then there was the need for money. The Maori Mission was always in dire straits financially. Father Soulas was always compulsively concerned about money, was always dreaming up schemes to finance it. Protestant missionaries and ex-missionaries had been selling grammars, dictionaries and phrase books.[xxi] Colenso's Willie’s First English Book was stocking the Native Schools. Rev. Richard Taylor too had reissued his book covering botanical, zoological, geographical and some traditional cultural word lists.[xxii] And there was Edward Shortland's How to learn Maori, in 1883. Nothing would have seemed more sensible than publishing and selling Suzanne’s work. Inclusion and adaptation of material from Grey’s 1855 publicationIt was openly to raise sales potential that she adapted material from Sir George Grey’s 1855 English and Maori publication: Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealand Race.[xxiii] She wrote to Grey for permission in May 1884: ‘The aim of this publication’ she explained, ‘is to facilitate among the Maori people the work of the Sisters of the Third Order of Mary that Monsignor Redwood has just charged me with founding at Hiruharama.’[xxiv] Grey fished back in his memory for the nun he had met in Auckland in the 1860s and scribbled in the margin a correct and even understated image from those days: ‘a poor but hard-working nun’. Presumably Grey was already planning another edition, or did her May 1884 letter prompt him to bring out his own second edition in 1885? She was sufficiently effusive in her acknowledgement but in using his text to corroborate her own knowledge of legend and tradition, she certainly framed material in her own way. Grey represented Hinemoa in her hot pool ‘trembling all over, partly from the cold [...] and partly also, perhaps, from modesty’. Suzanne, with missionary weighting, put it the other way round: ‘She was ashamed, and therefore she shivered, and sat in the hot springs to warm herself; but love was stronger than shame.’ The way she ended her sentence is vintage Aubert. Suzanne nearly always settled on a positive, optimistic note. Initial and subsequent publishing historySuzanne had been in touch with James Pope, Inspector for Native Schools. She would be testing the educational market. He had written back in October 1885 that it would be ‘an extremely useful book’ and that he would return ‘the marked proofs’.[xxv] Nine years later, in 1894, Whitcombe and Tombs bought out Lyon and Blair.[xxvi] In 1901 a second edition came out.[xxvii] But Suzanne’s initials had disappeared and A.T. Ngata (Barrister-at-Law) was acknowledged as editor.[xxviii] She had not been consulted about this at all. She only found out later on. Yet under an 1842 Ordinance, the copyright for her text was hers.[xxix] Whitcombe and Tombs, on their own or in consultation, started a process in the publishing history of this phrasebook which effaced the discreetly initialled S.A.[xxx] [xxxi] Perhaps all worked out for the best. For years it was the language manual marketing Maori scholarship under Maori mana, even if Whitcombe and Tombs benefited. Ngata’s name was a worthwhile ‘imprimatur’ and it sold thousands of copies. Whitcombe and Tombs would have had educational sales in mind, because the grammar section was greatly enlarged. Ngata supplied more detail, gave examples and elaborated on difficult points.[xxxii] For instance, she had not highlighted the fact that Maori adjectives come after the noun, that Maori singular possessive adjectives are different before plural nouns, that the definite article te changes to nga in the plural. As a French speaker, this was all natural to her. He explained it clearly for people used to English. There was a new, much briefer preface, written either by Ngata or somone at Whitcombe and Tombs. It said the book was ‘designed to aid both Englishman and Maori in the acquirement of each other's language’. So the new edition was launched still with her aim. Apart from this changed preface and the grammar section, the main body of text, at this point, was a straight reprint of her work with whatever quirks it might have. The publishing record of her book, however, is an example of the rewriting of history. Although Ngata did not claim to have written it, by the 1964 edition the preface was stating: ‘The book was originally prepared under the guidance of the late Sir Apirana Ngata, the notable Maori scholar, who edited the text.’ Her book was reprinted again and again with just a few editorial changes over the years. A 27 May 1948 letter from Whitcombe and Tombs to William Bird stated it took all their time to keep it in print and it was reprinting once again right then. It seems to have been used extensively up to about this time in the denominational schools like Te Aute and St Stephen’s.[xxxiii] It helped Maori to learn English; it helped Maori to learn written Maori; it helped English to learn Maori. It may have helped Maori to learn Maori. Opinion still holds that it was multipurpose.[xxxiv] ‘Quaint’ as it now is, it has been reprinted recently.[xxxv] At a government commission in 1906, William Bird, the inspector then in charge of Maori education, stated that the Department of Education’s purpose was ‘educating Maori boys and girls for the Maori people only and not to mingle with Europeans and compete with Europeans in trade and commerce’.[xxxvi] But the tone of the Aubert-Ngata book is not separatist like this, but definitely one of mingling. And as for competition in trade and commerce, Suzanne had sections on farming, fishing, market and trade. She wrote a section headed ‘On New Zealand’ and in it she gave a long extract from a newspaper report detailing all the produce Maori were selling in Auckland at the time of their commercial triumph in the 1850s. But competition was not the overriding theme. The section ‘On work’ has:
One hundred and ten years after Suzanne's book was printed, on National Maori Language Day, 14 September 1995, the Wellington paper City Voice ran an article called 'The Saving of a language'. In it, Victoria University lecturer Lee Smith is quoted asking: 'Why are there only 110 Pakeha who are fluent speakers of Maori? And most of those are Catholic priests!' This fact has probably nothing to do with Suzanne Aubert's book, although she too was a Catholic missioner, but it may have something to do with her spirit. Even sixty years after she arrived, her standpoint was basically unchanged. In the early 1920s, the Wellington Diocese was discussing a possible Catholic mission based in the settlement of Kaiwhaiki on the lower reaches of the Whanganui River. Suzanne was willing to staff it but the numbers of Sisters of Compassion were too few, overstretched already by the social welfare works in Wellington. And Suzanne would not send just any Sister to be with Nga Paerangi. The Minutes of that meeting record her explaining why: 'She said it would need five Sisters to begin with, of whom one at least must speak Maori well & understand the Maori ways.' Suzanne Aubert was attuned to context, to nuances in language and culture. She understood the need to understand, and to empathise. She would have really intended the shade of meaning, the courteous attentiveness, the present and future commitment to the meeting of language and culture that are all contained in this sentence from her phrase book: Na katahi ahau ka kite i te tikanga o to koutou kupu' [i] Notes Grammaticales Sur la Langue Maorie ou Néo-Zélandaise, Rome, Imprimerie de la Propagande, 1860, first published in 1848, ACPF SRC Oceania Vol 6, f.908-927. It had twenty-two pages of grammar and sixteen pages of French-to-Maori alphabetical vocabulary [ii] As given in 1840 documentation by Pompallier and also by Bishop Ullathorne. [iii] For instance with both the first wife and the second wife of Paora Tuhaere of Okahu, at Orakei. His first wife was Tupanapana, granddaughter of Te Wharerahi, Rewa's brother; his second wife, Harata, was a daughter of Rawiri Tarapata Moka and granddaughter of Moka, Rewa's other influential brother. [iv] By 1868 Suzanne definitely knew Paora Tuhaere who succeeded Te Kawau as 'leader of Ngati Whatua'. See Oliver, S., 'Paora Tuhaere, The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Vol 1 1769-1869, Wellington 1990, pp 552-553; Aubert, 6 May 1868, Aide-mémoire, ms HOC A [v] Waiohiki, Petane, Omahu, Te Pakipaki, Pakowhai, Te Karamu, Ohiti, Ngatahira, Matiawi, Koupatiki, Opepe, Te Karaka, Ngahape, Moteo and more. [vi] Nairn to S. Wright [her father], 4 March 1877, Nairn Papers, Folder 2, ATL [vii] Aubert to Poupinel, 22 April, 1877, HOC A Env 3d. She was fallible, did use pauvre, ‘poor’ occasionally, but usually when she was trying to arouse compassion in order to achieve some action. [viii] An interesting fact is that subsequent editions left the few entries that are culturally insensitive. She did not flinch from including a few remarks on the drinking problems of Maori which now seem judgementally onesided. Ngata left those sentences exactly as they were. Another example is the following: S.A. p 48: Under ''To express antipathy': Heoi ano täna mahi he kai, he pupuhi paipa, he moe Totally unchanged in Ngata. Smiler, in 1964 has: Heoi ano täna mahi he kai, he kai paipa, he moe – i.e. he has only clarified the English, left the Maori as it is. [ix] A Korao no New Zealand, compiled by Kendall. See Williams, Introduction, p i; Binney, J, A Legacy of Guilt: A Life of Thomas Kendall, Auck. 1968, pp 49-50 [x] Well over half of printed Maori up to 1900 was from missionary sources. For the first thirty years, the mission presses were responsible for almost all the output. Then a further quarter was government printing, official and gazetted publications. Even the few non-religious and non-official works, like Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe, still came under government patronage as they were considered to be edifying. The remaining twenty percent included newspapers, most with a political purpose. [xi] No 174 in Williams' bibliography: The First Step to Maori Conversation, being a Collection of some of the most useful Nouns, Adjectives, and Verbs, with a Series of Useful Phrases, and Elementary Sentences, Alphabetically arranged, in two Parts (intended for the use of the Colonists), by Henry Tacy Kemps, J.P., Native Secretary, Wellington: Printed at the Office of the "Independent", Corner of Willis Street and Lambton Quay, Port Nicholson, New Zealand, 1848. [Part II, phrases and sentences (pp 30-48)] The earliest was the 1820 CMS A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of New Zealand, Rev. Samuel Lee, Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, from information supplied by Thomas Kendall, Hongi Hika of Ngai Tawake and Waikato of Rangihoua. These three worked in Cambridge with Lee. The book is 230 pages long, and pp 61-130 are 'phrases, sentences, dialogues etc'. Prior to Kemps' was also the beginnings of William Williams' Grammar and Dictionary, c. 1838 [see p 7]. This comes officially as no 107: A Dictionary of the New Zealand Language and A Concise Grammar; to which are added a Selection of Colloquial Sentences, 1844. The sentences range over five pages only, pp 191-195, in seven brief sections. Maunsells' 1842 Grammar (No 82) did not have phrases. No 190: Notes Grammaticales Sur la Langue Maorie ou Néo-Zélandaise, Par Mgr Pompallier, Lyon, 1849 40 pp; Grammar in six chapters (pp 3-22); Vocabulary of 441 words (pp 23-40). Another edition was published in 1860 (No 319). This is what Suzanne would have had access to on ship. [xii] There are in all somewhat over 1,200 items dealt with in the present work; of these, 50 percent are of not more than four pages, a further 36 per cent. are of not more than forty-eight pages, leaving 14 percent of forty-nine pages and upward.' [p xiv] [xiii] Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers relative to New Zealand [G.B.P.P.], 1841/311, p 8, quoted in Binney, J., 'Christianity and the Maoris to 1840', in NZJH, Vol 3, No 2, Oct 1969, p 155 [xiv] The Pakeha Maori (Kemp, Henry Tacy [?]), The First Step to Maori Conversation: A Grammar and Phrase Book of the New Zealand Language, Fourth Edition, pub. Geo. T. Chapman, Auckland, 1882 [?], pp 33-36 [xv] Aubert to Poupinel, 22 April, 1877, HOC A Env 3d [xvi] A lot of hope, and also frustration, must have gone into the prayerbook. 'Bishop Redwood is doing what he can. He has ordered the book of Maori prayers to be corrected, so it can be reprinted, but what can the book do without the priest?' But somehow she tried to make the prayerbook do as much as it could as a counter-attraction to the Protestant literature. The first Catholic Maori prayerbook had been printed at Kororareka in 1847, while Pompallier was in Europe. Its vocabulary had included many coinings in Maori of Latin words such as epikopo for bishop, rehina for queen, owheteria for offertory. Suzanne updated these words and brought them into line with the vast Protestant stock of church printing. Pikopo had been used generally for Catholic, anyway, so bishop became pihopa in line with Church of England usage since the arrival of Selwyn. Kuini was queen. She also used more genuinely Maori terms: kawenga replaced owheteria, rongo pai for gospel replaced evangelist wangeriona. The Protestants had the full bible in Maori by now. Maori appreciated the epic nature of the Old Testament with its emphasis on exploits, whakapapa and tapu. Into her prayerbook, therefore, went almost a hundred pages of Old Testament stories. She was shrewd. She offered the novelty of an abbreviated Book of Maccabees, which was not included in the Protestant bible. (If this addition was her version in Maori, the result was not overly successful. 'The Maori limps’, says Fr James Durning) Suzanne was also nothing if not pragmatic. The gospels she included were borrowed from the Protestant Bible Society translations. [xvii] The farm at Meeanee advanced money for the printing. Reignier's Ledger and Memorandum Book indicates that sales and the Diocese had paid off the loan by October, 1881. It is quite likely that some of her own family money went into the book as it did later into the building of the Pakipaki church. But its cost was six shillings and sixpence, too expensive. New Zealand was pitching into depression by the close of the 1870s. And Protestants were giving, not selling, their bibles. The Catholic Maori Mission would always be run on a shoestring of a budget and had no chance of giving the book away. A cheaper selection of forty-five pages, Ko etahi Ako me etahi Karakia o te Hahi Katorika Romana, was hastily printed in 1881. [xviii] Redwood to Favre, Wellington 12 Jan 1879, Wellington Archdiocesan Archives, Redwood Letterbook 1, p 341 [xix] Venning, A. to Aubert, HOC A Env 5d [xx] 434 pages, 40 lines to page = 17, 360. It would be less than this with the occasional incomplete page. [xxi] William Leonard Williams' 'First Lessons in the Maori Language of New Zealand came out in 1882, being the third edition of the 1862 work. [xxii] Taylor, R., A Leaf from the Natural History of New Zealand; or a Vocabulary of its different productions &c, &c, with their native names, 1st ed. 1848, reedited about 1870 under the title Maori and English Dictionary (Nos 176, 450) [xxiii] The 1870 edition of Taylor’s work had added an article on 'Tradition' which included a longish quotation in Maori from Grey's work. And the second edition of Kemp's work had fifteen pages of extracts from Grey. But these seem to have gone from its next edition. Perhaps Grey objected. pp 51-64 in the second edition. The third edition is listed in Williams as being identical for the first 50 pages; it has in P. 3 a list of the tribes copied from Parliamentary returns for 1870. Would this be instead of Grey? I have not had access to these two editions. [xxiv] Aubert to Grey, Wanganui, 29 May 1884, APL Grey Collection, GL. NZ A16A [xxv] Pope, J. to Aubert, Wellington, 16 Oct 1885, HOC A [xxvi] McLaren, I., Whitcombe’s Story Books: A Trans-Tasman Survey, typescript, Melbourne, 1984, p 205 [xxvii] See Bagnall, A., New Zealand National Bibliography 1890-1960, p 49 for successive printing history. Williams, H., A Bibliography of Printed Maori to 1900, Wellington 1924, p 148 notes that in 1897 Whitcombe and Tombs also took the remaining stock of Tregear’s Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary , first published by Lyon and Blair in 1891, and issued it with a new, undated title-page. [xxviii] Apirana Ngata, with Reweti Morgan, had been working on Maori education and health during his student years, in close association with James Pope. They were also helping distribute Pope's own book The Health of the Maori or Te Ora mo te Maori.See AJHR E-2 Native Schools, 1892, pp 3-5, p 14. Pope was present at Te Aute in 1897 at the meeting which launched the Young Maori Party. [xxix]New Zealand had an 1842 Ordinance which granted to the author of any printed and published book ‘the sole liberty of printing and re-printing such Book’ for a period of 28 years from the date of first publishing or for the author’s life, if still living after 28 years. The copyright for her text was technically hers. ‘Rights Reserved’ was printed on her title page. Lyon and Blair are signalled there as printers, not publishers. The standard practice in the 19th century was lump sum payment. It presumably suited Whitcombe and Tombs to interpret Lyon and Blair as publishers for Suzanne’s book, for which they might presume a lump sum payment. The property would now be deemed theirs, and they went ahead. My thanks to Jim Traue for this clarification. [xxx] If it was Pope it seems out of character. See Renwick, W., ‘James Henry Pope’ in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Vol 2, 1993, p 394-395. There does not seem to be any record of a contract between Whitcombe and Tombs and Ngata, or of correspondence, but there must have been. The Whitcombe and Tombs files show their correspondence with W. Bird, who prepared later editions: see Whitcombe and Tombs file 93, Bird, W.W., Hugh Price Collection, Wellington [xxxi] The book did not go on to the government-provided booklist for Native Schools. e.g. N.A. BAAA 1001/772c; 773c, 774a, 782a, 1915-1945. Correspondence and booklists do not mention the Manual. [xxxii] My thanks to Jenny Jacobs and the Maori Language Commission for helping to analyse the differences. [xxxiii] Barrington, J. and Beaglehole, J., p 207 [xxxiv] ‘Aubert’s contribution was to provide a useable source of colloquial, idiomatic Maori for those learning Maori and to a certain extent for those learning English [her original dual intention], not as the main learning tool but as something to extend it. Many people, of course, used the book to give them enough to work on then went out to use it not worrying about any formal learning.’ Simmons, D., 14 June 1993. The Maori of this book has always been regarded as good Maori. Ngata’s direct reprint is proof enough that he thought it acceptable. Simmons, 14 June 1993 and Biggs, B., 25 June 1993 support this from their experience. [xxxv] As recently as 1979, 1984, and a 1991 Southern Reprints, Christchurch, issue. [xxxvi] Quoted in Barrington, J., ‘History plays part in failure’, Evening Post, 10 June 1993. (William Bird later re-edited Aubert/Ngata’s text). |
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