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However, given that preconceptions of ‘savage life’ were probably more complex than such
simple bipolar stereotyping might suggest, 3 early European explorers’ accounts of the South
Pacific were nevertheless centred around notions of good and evil, where instead of a vast
continent they found beautiful and exotic tropical island paradises, on which even the crudest of
weary sailors could be welcomed by South Sea maidens who freely engaged in sexual exchanges,
while other islands were often tainted by the objectionable acts of cannibalism committed by the
mostly suspicious and warlike savages who inhabited them. 4 The question then is how did this
mentality affect the depiction of New Zealand and the indigenous Maori in general? Could
cannibals really live in paradise?
As these observations were based on the European belief and value systems, they often
said more about their own ethnocentric views and preconceptions, than the actual traits of the
indigenous peoples they encountered:
The stereotyping distorted ‘Us’ as well as ‘Them’, through racial ‘archetyping’ and ‘antityping’.
An archetype positively idealised Us, teaching you what to be; an antitype negatively idealised
Them, teaching you what not to be. The worst of non-European societies was compared to the best
of European. […] Such stereotyping varied quite predictably, more according to the needs of the
observers than the actual character of the observed. […] While most stereotypes played up or
invented Maori vices, others played up or invented virtues. 5
darker races, it resulted in a self-perpetuating myth that soon spread beyond anthropologist circles (Ter Ellingson,
The Myth of the Noble Savage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, esp. 21-34, 80-95, 290-302).
However, while the assertion of ‘universal savage nobility’ has been put to the test in this study, the views which
formed the main characteristics of the ‘Noble Savage’, including viewpoints expressing nobility in certain savage
nations, did already exist in some form, especially among the vanguard of the Romantic movement. (See, for
example, Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific. 2 nd Ed. New Haven; London: Yale University
Press, 1985.)
3
See I. C. Campbell, “Savages Noble and Ignoble: Preconceptions of Early European Voyagers in Polynesia”, in:
Pacific Studies 4:1 (1980): 45-59.
4
See, for instance, Christiane Küchler Williams, Erotische Paradiese: Zur europäischen Südseerezeption im 18.
Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004; K. R. Howe, Nature, Culture, and History: The “Knowing” of Oceania.
Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000, 6-21; Anne Salmond, Between Worlds: Early Exchanges between
Maori and Europeans 1773-1815. Auckland: Viking, 1997; Salmond, Two Worlds; Lynne Withey, Voyages of
Discovery: Captain Cook and the Exploration of the Pacific. London; Melbourne: Hutchinson, 1988; Smith,
European Vision and the South Pacific; Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow, Das Bild und der Spiegel: Europäische Literatur
im 18. Jahrhundert. München; Wien: Hanser, 1984; Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow, Die erfahrene Welt: Europäische
Reiseliteratur im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Frankfurt a/M: Insel, 1980; Urs Bitterli, Die ‘Wilden’ und die
‘Zivilisierten’: Grundzüge einer Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte der europäisch-überseeischen Begegnung. München:
Beck, 1976.
5
James Belich, Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders: From Polynesian Settlement to the End of the
Nineteenth Century. London: Allen Lane; Auckland: Penguin Press, 1996, 20. This stereotyping was not confined to
literature, however, but was also present in European art which was shaped according to the various beliefs, values
and tastes of the painter and society at large, not to mention the wants of the audience and patron: “European artists
formulated multiple, at times seemingly conflicting, views of Maori people, culture, and history. For instance, Maori
could be presented as savages existing at a primitive stage of social development. Maori could be presented as
romantic beings, as noble, as ignoble, as relics of antiquity, as exotic curiosities, as picturesque, as hostile, as friendly
or deferential, as objects of desire or display, as participants in a spectacle, as members of a dying race, as
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