Waitangi Treaty Grounds

I already wrote about part of this day, spent in the Bay of Islands, from the road. There is a picture of the boat here, and you can read the account of our time on it at http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2008/10/bay-of-islands.html.

The ride was not great, but it was only part of the trip. First we stopped off at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds.

On the way, they played a video about the history of the area, so I had some background. One downside to being relatively close to a large penal colony is that you are the first logical stop for anyone who escapes or is released. New Zealand started having a problem with lawlessness, and the Maori made a treaty with England to establish law and bring order to the area. The chief donated a flagpole.

One of the tidbits they will tell you is that the original Waitangi treaty is unique in not having sprung from a war. This sounds nice, except much like English-Native American translations, some concepts were understood differently by the two sides, and so conflict arose from it, including the flagpole being chopped down by the Maori multiple times. You can see the current flagpole in the photo with our guide.

I'm afraid she was much more boring than she should have been. When we were looking at the waka (war canoe--that really long boat that I can't fit into a single frame), there was another guide talking to a couple, and he was obviously so much more engaging. Fortunately he offered to jump in and she accepted, and then the history came alive. I suppose the personal connection could have been a factor. His grandfather helped carve the boat, and his father and he had both paddled it (to give you an idea of the size, it can hold 150 people, and requires at least 100 paddling to get it to move). Still, the female guide was a descendent of Abel Tasman, who discovered New Zealand, so she could have felt connected. Maybe he was just more charismatic.

So, your guide can make a big difference; no surprise there.

For the site itself, I have to say I found the house museum boring, although the garden was nice. However, there is a lot of history there, the grounds have a lot of native plants, and you have two great examples of Maori craftmanship. One is the waka, and the other is the marae.

This is the traditional meeting house, and you will find them all over. However, the one at Waitangi was built to bring the different tribes together, so every tribe of the North Island contributed a pair of carvings. The pair face each other, and they are generally husband-wife pairs or father-son pairs.

Apparently there is only one South Island tribe, and they have a different relationship with the North (don't know what that means, it was the girl guide), so instead of a pair of carvings they donated a throne. Still, everyone contributed something.

The Bay itself is okay, but we simply did not fall in love with it the way we did with the South. More on that later.



http://www.waitangi.net.nz/