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The child […] is nursed with affection and tenderness, either by the mother or by some other
woman of the tribe, who gives it her breast. During a great part of its infancy it is taken care of by
the father, who evinces admirable patience and forbearance. It remains unclothed and exposed to
the inclemency of the weather, but often takes refuge in the warm blanket of the father or mother.
It is lulled to sleep by songs which […] happily express those feelings and sentiments that so
delight us in our own nursery rhymes. (II:26f.) 89
The only blemish is the “unnatural crime” (II:24) of infanticide, or ‘roromi’, which the Maori,
like all Pacific Island savages, are accused of committing. The prevailing image of female
infanticide is based on the theory that as barbaric savages placed sole importance on warlike
pursuits, which females did not take part in, preference for rearing males in order to become
warriors resulted in the killing of female infants. 90 Ironically, this image conflicts with the earlier
stereotype as there would be few females to do the manual work in the first place if most of them
had been killed at birth. However, Dieffenbach does not view this as a widespread custom, rather
an act of revenge due to “broken faith, or desertion by the husband, the illegitimacy of the
children, matrimonial dissensions, illicit connections with Europeans, slavery during pregnancy,
and separation from the husband”, or else the “result of superstition of the grossest character, and
is occasioned by fear of divine anger and punishment” (II:24f.), whereby no distinction is
therefore made between male and female. 91
Here, he emphasises the freedom of a liberal childhood, rather than creating an
atmosphere of disobedience and immorality, in which their education is “left almost entirely to
nature”:
89 Earle likewise gives the generous picture of two Maori parents who are “excessively fond of their children”, in
which, whilst travelling, “it is more usual to see the father carrying his infant than the mother; and all the little offices
of a nurse are performed by him with the tenderest care and good humour” (Earle, Nine Months’ Residence, 85).
90 As Earle writes: “Before our intercourse took place with the New Zealanders, a universal and unnatural custom
existed amongst them, which was that of destroying most of their female children in infancy, their excuse being that
they were quite as much trouble to rear, and consumed just as much food, as a male child, and yet, when grown up,
they were not fit to go to war as their boys were. The strength and pride of a chief then consisted in the number of his
sons; while the few females who had been suffered to live were invariably looked down upon by all with utmost
contempt. They led a life of misery and degradation. The difference now is most remarkable. The natives, seeing with
what admiration strangers beheld their fine young women, and what handsome presents were made to them, by
which their families were benefited, feeling also that their influence was so powerful over the white men, have been
latterly as anxious to cherish and protect their infant girls as they were formerly cruelly bent on destroying them.
Therefore, if one sin has been, to a certain degree, encouraged, a much greater one has been annihilated. Infanticide,
the former curse of this country, and the cause of its scanty population, a crime every way calculated to make men
bloody-minded and ferocious, and to stifle every benevolent and tender feeling, has totally disappeared wherever an
intercourse has taken place between the natives and the crews of the European vessels” (ibid., 80f.).
91 However, he does comment that “if the woman is desirous that her child should be of the one sex, and has boasted
that she knows it will be so, on its proving of the other sex she frequently sacrifices it” (II:26). Yet “maternal love”
often wins in the end, unless the mother or relatives later murder the child out of jealousy or anger (II:26; cf.
Dieffenbach, “Report to the New Zealand Company”, 109; New Zealand and the New Zealanders, 26).
86