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This extract originally appeared in Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2024) on pages 207-210.
This extract was authored by Michael Fitzgerald.
One day in early June 1914, the ethnographer Elsdon Best found a collection of old maps in the Dominion Museum. Puzzled by the ‘weird marks’ on them, he sent a note to a Mr Smith, asking if he could explain them. There was a good chance Smith could oblige. He was Maurice Crompton Smith (1864–1953), a draughtsman in the Survey Office and a son of Stephenson Percy Smith (1840–1922),1 the well-known early surveyor and a co-founder of the Polynesian Society. Maurice Smith promptly wrote to his ‘dear Father’ in New Plymouth, asking, ‘Mr Best has found a lot of these maps in the Museum & we are tired of guessing what it means. Will you have a try?’2
The elder Smith’s reply came a few days later, and Maurice reported to Best:
This is what my father says ‘There is no need for me to have to try at guessing what the map is for I drew it in 1863 to illustrate Mr Alfred Domett’s scheme of military settlements under the Military Settlers Act 1863. The little xxxx are the principal localities of Maori habitation & the red lines are the proposed main roads. I forget who it was lithographed by but probably the ‘Southern Cross’ [newspaper] office. This was just at the commencement of the war in Waikato after the armistice of Taranaki.’
Smith went on to inform Best, ‘So now you know all about it. Please let me have a copy if there is one to spare or perhaps two. M.C. Smith 15.6.14.’ Serving as colonial secretary, Alfred Domett was New Zealand’s premier from 6 August 1862 to 30 October 1863.3 His scheme was indeed a bold one: the ‘formation of military settlements throughout the Island, similar to that which the Romans carried out on the Gaulish frontier, to repel the hostile incursions of their hardy and dangerous neighbours’.4 His plans were reported in colonial newspapers, which described how he proposed ‘the making of roads that could be used by the military everywhere throughout the country, and the introduction of such an amount of armed population, formed into defensive settlements, as would overawe the native tribes, or if not overawe them, at least be always ready and able to check or punish their excursions and depredations’.5
1 Giselle M Byrnes. ‘Smith, Stephenson Percy’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography [1993], Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand (teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2s33/smith-stephenson-percy, accessed 26 February 2021).
2 Note from M Smith to SP Smith, 8 June 2014, attached to CA000501/004/0004, Te Papa Archives.
3 Until 1907, when New Zealand became a dominion, prime ministers were called premiers. See ‘Alfred Domett’, New Zealand History (nzhistory.govt.nz/people/alfred-domett, accessed 26 February 2021).
4 Hawke’s Bay Herald, 11 November 1863, p. 2. 280 ‘The New Colonisation Scheme’, Wellington Independent, 16 April 1864, p. 2.