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state of decrepitude as that exhibited by the Maori inhabitants of this country will, from causes
strictly intrinsic, proceed to its final catastrophe at a greatly accelerated pace, unless, indeed, the
causes of decay be ascertained and removed. Moreover, the history of the relations of the white
with the colored races in other countries where they have come into contiguity must suggest the
apprehension that when the relative numbers of each become such as to banish the necessity for
respect and caution in the conduct of the former to the latter, other causes of diminution will begin
to operate, the ultimate result of which will be the speedy obliteration of the colored race from the
list of peoples. 133
As if that is not enough, however, Hochstetter states four years later: “In consequence of the most
bloody war of the last years this proportion has become much less favourable for the Maoris,
whilst the European population of the South Island was increased by immigration in a proportion
quite unexpected, in consequence of the gold discoveries.” 134
Importantly, it is this same Darwinian process, in Hochstetter’s view, which accounts for
the rise of cannibalism in the Maori and, moreover, their present conflicts with the British. When
he ponders the question over the state of the country when the first Polynesians set foot on New
Zealand soil, he comes to the conclusion that apart from the native rat and a number of small
birds, there could only be one other main food source to support a population in excess of
100,000, namely the moa: “Ja ohne diese großen Vögel wäre es ganz undenkbar, wovon 200,000
oder 300,000 Menschen auf Neu-Seeland, das außer den Farnwurzeln auch im Pflanzenreich
nichts zur Nahrung bot, hätten leben können” (460). Yet with the extinction of the moa four to
five centuries prior to European colonisation, 135 the “unnatürliche Zustand” (462) of cannibalism
took over as a consequence of the lack of game to sustain their population growth:
133 Fenton, Observations, 29.
134 Hochstetter, New Zealand, 222n.
135 Recent research suggests the moa population became extinct within the first 100 years of Polynesian settlement, or
at least by 1400, through Maori hunting and loss of habitat (R. N. Holdaway and C. Jacomb, “Rapid Extinction of the
Moas (Aves: Dinornithiformes): Model, Test, and Implications”, in: Science 287 24 March (2000): 2250-54; Worthy
and Holdaway, Lost World of the Moa, 545f.). Haast, on the other hand, went against the norm by maintaining the
moa had in fact died out much earlier through being hunted not by the Maori, but rather by the previous inhabitants
of the country, who he referred to as ‘Moa hunters’. He argued that the claims of the Maori that their forefathers had
hunted and ate moa could not be taken at face value, as no mention of the bird appeared in the accounts of the early
explorers. In his view, it was only when the Europeans introduced notions of giant flightless birds that it started
appearing in their myths and histories. In other words, the growing number of inquiries and emphasis on finding moa
bones led to its adoption and assimilation into their oral histories, as was the case with European knowledge and
concepts in general. This opinion sparked a controversy amongst other local scholars who believed the Maori were
responsible for the disappearance of the moa, which therefore only recently became extinct. (See, for example, Julius
von Haast, “Moas and Moa Hunters”, in: Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute [=TPNZI] 4
(1871): 66-107; Haast, Geology of Canterbury and Westland, 407-31; Atholl Anderson, Prodigious Birds: Moas and
Moa-Hunting in Pre-Historic New Zealand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, esp. 97-109; H. von
Haast, Life and Times, 703-58; Burdon, New Zealand Notables, 178-92.)
195