Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author. · Ruth Ross New Zealand Scholar I Treaty Scholar Massey University Library A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History at Massey University Rachael Bell 2005 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..... ........... ... ................ .......... .. ........ ...... .. ...... ...... .. ii ABBREVIATIONS ..... ... ..... .... .... .... ... ...... .................. .. ........ ... ............. .. ........ iii INTRODUCTION ..... ... .. ...... ..... .. ... .. .................... .. .. ... .. , ... .. ..... .. .... ........ .... .... 1 CHAPTER I: A Model for Post-war History .............................. .. ................. 16 CHAPTER II: The Introduction to the Facsimiles ..... ....... .... .. ... .... ....... .. ..... . 32 CHAPTER Ill: 'Texts and Translations' ......................... ..................... ... ...... 50 CHAPTER IV: Tradition ... ... ...... .... .................................................. ............ 65 CONCLUSION ......................... .... .... ... .... ......................... ............... ...... .. .... 88 BIBLIOGRAPHY .. .. .. .. ...... .... .... ... ... ... ... ............ .... .. ... ...... ..... ..... ............ ...... 94 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My principal debt in this thesis is to my supervisor Basil Poff, for his wealth of knowledge and inspiration. It is a privilege to have worked with you. I would also like to thank the following people, Dr Bronwyn Dalley for first alerting me to this topic; the Ross family for making the personal correspondence of the Ruth Ross papers open for research; Mrs. Mary Boyd and Dr. Chris Hilliard for their early discussions; the staff of the Auckland Museum and Institute and Alexander Turnbull Libraries, in particular Robert Carlyle for assisting me with access and Mrs. Leone Garmaz for her help and speedy photocopying; the staff of the School of History, Philosophy and Politics at Massey University for their interest and encouragement; my support crew, the sort of people that no thesis is likely to be completed without, my friends Carol Davenport, Helen Dollery, and Jane Ferguson, and Brent Whitman; and my sister Tracey Bell for her countless hours of editing and encouragement. Thank you. In 1954 Ruth Ross wrote of balancing research with the needs of a young family: 'I go like mad for about six weeks, then I find the weeds are shoulder high, no one has any whole garments, and I've had it in more ways than one .. . '1 To two people who know this process better than many I give my special thanks: to my children, Tom and Helen, for their patience, flexibility, humour and endless good faith. 1 Ross to Dora and Graham Bagnall, 16 Novem, ber 1954, MS 1442 90:2, AR. ABBREV/A TIONS AR Auckland Museum and Institute Library CMS Church Missionary Society DNZB Dictionary of New Zealand Biography NZJH New Zealand Journal of History WMS Wesleyan Missionary Society WTU Alexandra Turnbull Library 1 INTRODUCTION In 1972 Ruth Ross presented an analysis of the Treaty of Waitangi that was to underpin interpretations of the Treaty for the next thirty years. Its purpose was . threefold: to untangle the various instructions and translations that contributed to the drafting of the Treaty in 1840; to determine the intentions and understandings of the Treaty partners, Maori and Pakeha; to historicise the signing of the Treaty, thus returning an element of objectivity and distance to an event whose symbolism, she believed , had come to outstrip both scholarly understanding and documentary evidence. From 'Pakeha self­ righteousness' to 'Maori disillusionment', she concluded , the Treaty of Waitangi had come to say 'whatever we want it to say' . The impact of her paper was considerable. It was first presented as a seminar, then published in an expanded form as 'Te Tiriti o Waitangi : Texts and Translations' in the New Zealand Journal of History. 2 Its fine-grained analysis won the respect of the scholarly community and has. gone on to inform a number of influential works, including those of Ranginui Walker and Claudia Orange. After more than thirty years in the Treaty debate it is still regarded as the 'most penetrating critique in recent times of the events surrounding the drafting and signing of the Treaty' .3 The article also captured attention at the broader social level. At a time when, willingly or otherwise, an understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi was becoming increasingly requisite, Ross challenged New Zealanders' view of their past. With its provocative wording, her outspoken conclusion became a catchphrase in the argument over the role of the Treaty in New Zealand. 2 Ruth Ross, 'The Treaty of Waitangi: Texts and Translations' , NZJH, 6:2, October 1972, ry 129-154. 3 Ranginui Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou, Struggle Without End, 2"d Edition, Auckland: Penguin Books, p. 90. I I\ L 2 Ross' article . was in many ways a turning point in Treaty scholarship. It insisted on the text in Maori as a being the Treaty ·of Waitangi. This moved the focus from the Colonial Office, which had dominated earlier studies, and asked instead what the Treaty had meant here, in New Zealand, a country still only sparsely populated by non:.Maori inhabitants. In its criticism of the documentary sources, emphasis on a New Zealand perspedive and sceptical view of previous interpretations of the Treaty, the article was a fine exC!mple of the scholarship of the 'post-war' generation of New Zealand historians: historians who, in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, through their academic training and methodological consciousness, saw themselves as challenging the orthodox view of New Zealand history. J.C. Beaglehole was a teacher and mentor of this generation. In his lectures and essays he presented a vision for the role of history in New Zealand society. Beaglehole was an empiricist. Like others in his group, he had learnt methods for the critical evaluation of documents while studying abroad and sought, on his return, to introduce them to New Zealand. With his interest in national consciousness and the emergence of a New Zealand tradition, he was also a nationalist. He envisaged an empirical history put to a national purpose. He sought to engage New Zealanders more closely with the past of their own country, to build a firm foundation from which they could move forward, confidently, to determine their future. Beaglehole saw his own generation of inter-war historians as being on the cusp of this change. It was the next generation, his students, Ross and others, who would carry it to fruition. This thesis explores the relationship between this mode of nationalist empiricist history in post-war New Zealand and the formation of Ross' ideas on the Treaty of Waitangi. It posits the three decades between 1940 and 1970 as being a particular era in New Zealand historiography, something of a watershed between the amateur I journalistic histories that had preceded it 3 and the more complex interpretations of post-colonialism and post-modernism that followed. It was an era which retained a certain confidence in the attainability of historical 'truth' and a sense of moral obligation to 'set the record straight'. Ross' article, 'Texts and Translations', was the culmination of almost twenty years of scholarly development in this direction. Beaglehole was a spokesman for the historical issues confronting pbst-war New Zealand. He was a close personal friend and a mentor to Ross. His essays have been drawn on in this thesis to form a model from which to view her methodology. The elements in the model were complementary, but also, to a certain extent, contradictory. On the one side there was empirical, or 'scientific' historical analysis, with its twin elements of heuristic and hermeneutic: the collation , critical analysis, and logical interpretation of documentary records. On the other was 'tradition', Beaglehole's term for the cultivation of a new historical understanding at the level of a 'felt' national consciousness. Empiricist history informed the tradition but needed in itself to be transformed in the process. The balance between these two elements could be adjusted according to the historical medium and the intended audience. Ruth Ross' work on the Treaty of Waitangi fell into three distinct phases. The first was between 1954 and 1957 when she was preparing an introduction for a reissue of the Treaty facsimiles for the Government Printer. The second was writing on the Treaty at a popular level, first in a Primary School Bulletin in 1958 and later in an article for Northland, a small local magazine, in 1963. The third was the seminar paper presented at Victoria University in February 1972 and her article 'Te Tiriti o Waitangi: Texts and Translations,' published later that year. Viewed collectively these pieces are an example of Beaglehole's model in practice. An examination of each of these phases in relation to a particular aspect of the model forms the -structure of this thesis. 4 Chapter One examines the model itself and the interrelationship that Beaglehole envisaged between empiricist history and a national tradition. It then places Ross in relation to Beaglehole, and considers the ways in which some of her early work under his influence at the Historical Branch of Internal Affairs impacted on her later Treaty scholarship. Chapter Two deals with Ross' first project on the Treaty, the introdu·ction to the facsimile edition in 1954. Preparing material for the introduction involved a great deal of documentary research, locating and collating primary sources on the Treaty. The government archive was not sufficiently organised in the 1950s to support Ross at this level, which caused her eventually to call the project off. Her experiences on the facsimile introduction represented some of the issues around access to documentary sources that confronted empiricist historians in the post-war period. Her work at this time is discussed, therefore, in relation to the first element of empiricism in Beaglehole's model, the heuristic. By the early 1970s, significant improvements to research facilities meant that many issues of heuristic had been resolved. In the highly charged social and political atmosphere surrounding the Treaty, however, understanding the meaning of the Treaty documents became a priority. Chapter Three examines the writing of Ross' seminar and article in 1972, with regard to the second element of empiricism, analytical and interpretative operations or hermeneutic. It uses the classic eryipiricist manual, Introduction to the Study of History, to trace the way in which Ross conducted her analysis of the Treaty text and which lead her to confront many of the popular beliefs about the Treaty.4 4 Ch.V. Langlois and Ch. Seignobos, Introduction to the Study of History, trans G.G. Beny, London: Duckworth, l 898. 5 The thesis concludes by considering the implications of Ross' research for the national tradition. The principal requirement of post-war history as Beaglehole presented it was that it should impact on the 'unconscious' level of national life, that people might benefit from a sense of heritage and belonging without being actively aware of its presence. It was important that the history that informed the national tradition should be, as much as was possible, empirically grounded, reliable. Chapter Four returns to Ross' pieces_ on the Treaty written for School Publications and Northland magazine. It examines the ways in which she incorporated her research findings into narratives for popular consumption that were engaging, but also challenging to the orthodox view of the Treaty. While some of these techniques were also apparent in 'Texts and Translations,' the article addressed the misconceptions surrounding the Treaty more directly, even aggressively. The final section of the chapter looks at the extent to which 'Texts and Translations' refuted the Treaty myth and the vehicles Ross used for conveying her findings to the general public. This study of Ross has been informed by a number of sources. Foremost has been the personal correspondence of Ross herself, now housed in the Ruth Ross Papers at the Auckland Museum and lnstitute.5 These ninety boxes of research material and ten of personal correspondence are a remarkable historiographical resource. Many of her correspondents, such as Beaglehole, Charles Brasch, Michael Standish, Graham Bagnall, Michael Turnbull, Janet and Blackwood Paul, and Keith Sinclair set the historical and intellectual tenor of New Zealand in the post-war decades. The letters of others, such as James K. Baxter, Sir Howard Kippenberger and Rear Admiral John Ross are interesting for the alternative perspectives they bring to well kflown New Zealand identities or public figures. This thesis is, it would appear, the first 5 Ruth Ross Papers, MSS 1442 and 94 I 23, AR. 6 historical foray into these letters. The direction of its inquiry ls only one of any number open to researchers using this material in the future. Of secondary sources, the principal work to date on the relationship between the writing of New Zealand history and national consciousness is Peter Gibbons' essay, 'Non Fiction', in The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English.6 Following from this has been the historiographical work of Chris Hilliard in his MA thesis, 'Island Stories', subsequent articles, and his review of government sponsored histories in the early to mid-20th century. 7 In his essay, 'A Prehistory of Public History: Monuments, Explanations and Promotions, 1900 - 1970', Hilliard discusses Ross' work on the Centennial Atlas while at the Historical Branch in the early 1940s. He notes the extent to which it pushed at the boundaries of academic history as they were at that time. 8 Parts of this thesis complement and expand Hilliard's observations in this respect. In addition, this thesis complements Grant Young's work on the relationship between the writing of New Zealand history and the development of research services in the post-war era.9 Several historiographical essays have dealt with J.C. Beaglehole's work as a model for history in post-war New Zealand . The Beaglehole Memorial Lecture 6 Peter Gibbons, 'Non Fiction' in The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, 2"d Edition, Terry Sturm (ed.), Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 31-118. 7 Chris Hilliard, ' Island Stories', MA Thesis in History, University of Auckland, 1997; 'James Cowan and the Frontiers ofNew Zealand History', NZJH, 31 :2, October 1997, pp. 219-233; 'Colonial Culture and the Province of Cultural History', NZJH, 36:1, April 2002, pp. 82-93; 'A Prehistory of Public History: Monuments, Explanations and Promotions, 1900 - 1970,' in Going Public: the Changing Face of New Zealand History, Bronwyn Dalley and Jock Phillips (eds.), Auckland: Auckland University Press, 200 l, pp. 30-54. 8 Chris Hilliard, 'A Prehistory of Public History', pp. 39-42. 9 Grant Young, "'The War for Intellectual Independence"?: New Zealand Historians and Their History', MA Thesis in History, University of Auckland, 1998. 7 at the conferences of the New Zealand Historical Association has prompted both W.L. Renwick and Jock Phillips to use Beaglehole's 1954 lecture, 'The New Zealand Scholar', as a starting point for their own addresses.10 Their comments on Beaglehole have been incorporated into the discussion of his model in Chapter One. Renwick's essay, "'Show Us These Islands and Ourselves ... Give Us a Home In Thought,"' has taken the matter further and addressed Beaglehole's work directly in relation to Ross. Renwick establishes Ross as representative of the post-war generation and examines the ways in which her essay, 'The Autochthonous New Zealand Soil', brought issues of historical interpretation into a bicultural perspective. Renwick's piece on Ross is a direct precursor to this thesis and has influenced its direction. Hilliard's work views Ross at the beginning of the post-war era, Renwick's at the end . This thesis addresses the years of her scholarship in between. The principal methodological work that informs the thesis is the 1898 text Introduction to the Study of History, by Charles Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos of the Sorbonne. It has been used to provide the empiricist framework for Beaglehole's model and as a means of examining Ross' method of critical analysis of the Treaty texts. Although obviously dated by the time Ross published her article in 1972, there are a number of reasons for using this text. Firstly, it was seminal in its time as a 'manifesto' of empiricism, 'promoting the authority of historians and stating how descriptions of the past 10 J.C. Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand Scholar' , in The Feel of Truth; Essays in New Zealand and Pacific History Presented to F.L.W Wood and JC. Beaglehole on the Occasion of Their Retirement, Peter Munz (ed.), Wellington: A.H. & A.W. Redd, 1969, pp. 235-252; W.L. Renwick, ' "Show Us e. I these Islands and Ourselves ... Give Us a Home in Thought", Beaglehole Memorial Lecture, 1987 ', NZJH, 21 :2, October 1987, pp. 197-214; Jock Phillips, 'Our History, Our Selves; The Historian and National Identity' NZJH, 30:2, October 1996, pp. 107-123 . 8 should be written'. 11 It ran to a number of editions and was still used as recommended reading for university history courses at the time that Ross attended in 1939. 12 In choosing a textual approach to her work on the Treaty, Ross was deliberately returning to the standards and methods of this style of empiricism. Secondly, the methodology set out in Introduction to the Study of History was one which Beaglehole, as a young lecturer returning from England in the 1930s, subscribed to. Its techniques were similar to those he taught in his papers, and echoed in his call for those who would 'learn to think historically', meaning critically. 13 Beaglehole endorsed the text in his own post-primary bulletin, How History is Written, when he quoted it directly: 'No documents, no history' . 14 It can be assumed, therefore, that the Introduction to the Study of History formed part of the grounding in empiricism that Ross received from Beagle hole and the 'scholarly standards he set [her] to aspire to' .15 Thirdly, as a manual of instruction, Langlois and Seignobos provided a detailed breakdown of empiricist technique: particularly hermeneutic, and the individual steps to be followed. It is a useful template of the methodology and 11 T.D. Shepard, 'Seignobos, Charles 1854 - 1942,' in Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Vol. 2, Kelly Boyd (ed.), USA: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999, p. 1081. 12 J . Rutherford ' Selected "Suggestions to Honours Students on Method of Study of Documents of Responsible Government in New Zealand'", Documents Relative to the Development of Responsible Government in New Zealand 1839-1865, Auckland: University of New Zealand: 1949, p. 2. 13 J.C. Beaglehole, ' History and the New Zealander', in The University and the Community, Essays in Honour of Thomas Alexander Hunter, Earnest Beaglehole (ed.), Wellington: Victoria University College, 1946, p. 105. 14 J.C. Beaglehole, How History is Written, Post-Primary School Bulletin 1 :8, Wellington: Hutcheson, Bowman & Stewart Ltd. for School Publications Branch, Department of Education, 1947, p. 119; although he qualified and extended his case to include also material remains; original quote, Langlois and Seignobos, p. 17. 15 Ross to Elsie Beaglehole, 11October1971, MS 1442, 98:2, AR. ) 9 the critical groundwork which Ross felt New Zealanders, in their haste to apply the Treaty to their current situation, had failed to pursue. Introduction to the Study of History is a fascinating text and read completely it provides a valuable insight into the historical attitudes and assumptions of its era. Works providing Maori perspectives on the Treaty and the colonising processes have included those by Sir Apirana Ngata, I.LG. Sutherland, Ranginui Walker, Donna Awatere Huata and Linda Tuhiwai Smith. 16 As this thesis is the study of a particular era of historical writing it has been couched, as much as possible, in the terms used by the historians of the time: Ross, Beaglehole and their colleagues. Not only is this important in establishing the argument and atmosphere of the work, but it also aids continuity between the referenced material and the discussion. For example, Beaglehole's gendered pronoun has been continued in the commentary to avoid disrupting modes of expression . Some of the terms that underwrite Beaglehole's model , however, were used in opposing ways, or in ways that are contradictory to their historical usage today. Some explanation, therefore, is required . Beaglehole used the word 'conscious' in two ways with regard to historical thought in post-war New Zealand. Firstly he used it in the manner of a broad sense of identity on a national level, in the way of 'national consciousness'. Paradoxically, this form of awareness was, he believed, most effective when operating at what we would probably regard now as the 'subconscious', but which he termed 'unconscious', level. Secondly, he used it in relation to 16 Aptrana Ngata, The Treaty of Waitangi, an Explanation I Te Tiriti o Waitiangi, trans. M.R. Jones, VI New Zealand: Pegasus Press for the Maori Purposes Fund, 1922; Donna Awatere Huata, My Journey, New Zealand: Seaview Press, 1996; Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, Research and "'- lndigienous Peoples, Dunedin: University ofOtago Press, 1999; Ranginui Walker, passim. 10 empirical niethod in the sense of historians' awareness ·of the historical process, a 'methodological consciousness'. In this respect the two usages were almost opposite, the· one broad and subjective, · the other focused and objective. A second somewhat ambiguous term was 'criticism'. Criticism, in the sense of the analytical processes aimed at disassociating the historian from existing beliefs and objectively evaluating documentary sources, was the cornerstone of empirical method. Langlois and Seignobos spoke of the 'extreme complexity and absolute necessity of Historical Criticism' .17 Beaglehole also referred to the need for conscious and deliberate objectivity: 'Our history must be unfolded by the trained - let me say it once more - the critical mind, and by great labour.'18 However, post-war historians were also often critical, in the sense of censorious judgements of earlier more subjective histories. Ross was no exception in her propensity to criticise. A third term in the model in contradictory usage is the term 'text'. When Ross used this term she was referring to the particular contemporary documents from which she was deriving her account of the past. She was not engaging with current concerns that all history is textual and all texts historical. Historical terms can thus change between generations and between contesting branches of the discipline. One term that carried a particular loading in the post-war era, and has in many ways been problematic to this thesis, was that of 'professional historian'. History can be defined to mean 'writing about the past which claims factual 17 Langlois and Seignobos, p. 67. 18 Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand Scholar', p. 251. 11 instead of or as well as, artistic 'truth". 19 The term 'professional historian' could reasonably be applied, therefore, to anyone who wrote history for a living, including the amateur journalistic styled historians. More likely, however, 'professional historians' were seen as those · operating within the universities or a government department, the Historical or War Histories Branch or National Archives, and who aimed in their work to supersede amateurs and journalists. The term 'professional' came to be syno~ymous with 'academically trained'. It was, however, as Hilliard has suggested, a term 'best kept in quotation marks' . 20 In her work at the Historical Branch, Ross encountered many amateur and family historians whose research skills she felt matched those of her colleagues. Conversely, there were untrained historians in professional positions within government institutions, such as Sir Howard Kippenberger, whose technical capacities she severely doubted. It was 'still sometimes difficult in New Zealand to tell,' she noted while at the Branch, 'where one branch of the species ends and the other begins' .21 For women historians such as Ross terms such as 'professional' were particularly problematic. Balancing their research with family commitments meant that much of their historical work was carried on outside professional institutions. Yet, -as Mary Boyd has noted, the quality was often 'outstanding', and a bibliography of their collective contribution would 'run to many pages'.22 For Ross, the term 'academically trained' historian was more problematic still, as she transferred to the Historical Branch before finishing her degree and, in 19 Hilliard, ' Island Stories', p. 7. 20 Hilliard, ' A Prehistory of Public History' , p. 34. 21 Memo, Guscott [Ross] to Heenan, 'Gisbome Trip ', 18 March, Historical Atlas Material, MS 230, '·· folder 8, WTU. ' 22 Mary Boyd, ' Women in the Historical Profession: Women Historians in the 1940s', Women's Studies Journal, 4: l, September 1988, pp. 76-86, pp. 84-85 . .................... _, __ .... 1 12 the manner discussed in Chapter One, honed her research skills on the government archive rather than on postgraduate research. · Her standards and knowledge, however, were · formidable. Those challenging either were left in little doubt of her capacity for detail and analysis.23 What linked the post-war group of historians, irrespective of their professional status, was their commitment to empirical technique and its application to New Zealand history. For this reason the terms 'empirical' and 'empiricist' have been used to describe and differentiate them in this thesis. This thesis is not a biography. It is rather, to borrow a phrase from C.E. Beeby, the 'biography of an idea'. 24 Few aspects of Ross' personal life have been included other than those that impacted on her Treaty scholarship. The path of Ross' life was an interesting one, however, and to set the scene for her approach to the Treaty, a brief sketch is provided here. Ruth Ross was born Ruth Miriam Guscott in Wanganui, on New Years Day, 1920. She attended, and was head prefect of, Wanganui Girls' College. Her father was a stock buyer and while accompanying him on his trips into the Wanganui hinterland, she balanced her urban upbringing with a feel for the bush and rural life. Based on these early experiences, Ross strongly refuted Beaglehole's view that New Zealanders were dislocated, belonging neither fully to Britain nor New Zealand, as he expressed in his essay 'The New Zealand Scholar'. 25 23 See for example, Ross to Keith Sinclair, 10 August 1956, MS 1442, 91 : 1; Keith Sinclair to Ross, 17 August 1956, MS 1442, 91:1 , AR. 24 C.E. Beeby, The Biography of an Idea: Beeby on Education, Wellington: The New Zealand Council for Educational Research, 1992. 25 Ross to Beaglehole, 22 September 1954, MS 1442, 24:5, AR. 13 Although not from 'what you would call a very intellectual household' she arrived at Victoria University College (VUC) in 1939, stylish, confident and as she later joked, 'obnoxiously' self-conscious.26 She attended university until 1941 . In 1942, without having graduated, she joined as a researcher at the Centennial, later the Historical , Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs. In 1945 she transferred briefly to the newly formed War History Branch where she met and married Ian Ross. Ian had been a journalist but retrain~d as a primary school teacher following the war.27 Ruth and Ian had two sons. After . living for some years in Auckland, Ian transferred to the Maori School Service and the family moved to Motukiore on the Hokianga Harbour in May of 1955. Ruth was very happy in the largely Maori community at Motukiore . While she felt that as a family they were 'treading on egg shells' for their first year there, writing later of that time she said: '[A]ll four of us, I discovered ... look back on those years at Motukiore as a golden age. There was a grim side, a depressing side. But the people and the place, we all loved them.'28 The years at Motukiore were also a particularly rich time for Ruth 's scholarship. Most of her work on the introduction to the facsimile edition of the Treaty, and her School Publications work, including the bulletin Te Tiriti o Waitangi, was written there. Her essay, 'The Autochthonous New Zealand Soil' (1969), was a reminiscence of this time. In 1960 the family moved to Rangitane School at Puoto, then to Oakura in Taranaki before returning to Auckland in 1964. In 1959 Ruth joined the Northland Committee of the Historic Places Trust. Over the many years of her association on local and national levels, she produced a number of small but 26 Ross to Beaglehole, 25 February 1955, MS 1442, 24:5, AR. 27 Mary Boyd, 'Ross, Ruth Miriam, 1920 - 1982', DNZB, Vol. Five ( 194 1-1960), 2000, pp. 45 1-2. 28 Ross to Alan Mulgan, 23 June 1957, MS 1442, 9 1:1; Ross to Beaglehole, 22 November 1969, MS 1442, 96:3, AR. 14 meticulously researched publications for the Trust. Her work in this area could provide a rich basis for the study of another form of historical expression and of national tradition. From 1976 to '79, Ruth was the Arts Faculty Senior Research Fellow at University of Auckland . She died in 1982, survived by Ian and her two sons. I would like to end this introduction on a personal note. Although the brief biography above must suffice for this thesis, the use of Ross' personal correspondence as the primary material for much of its argument makes it inevitable that her personality will shine through. As a scholar, Ross was principled and courageous. Indications are that she also was in her personal life - that it was a life well lived and one which she found rich and rewarding . 'Minor riches and small rewards perhaps,' she wrote, 'but I find them worthwhile and satisfying.'29 To give one's papers over to public scrutiny is in itself a courageous act. Many of the issues discussed in this thesis were matters on which Ross felt particularly strongly. She dealt with them in her forthright manner, but not without humour or compassion. In as much as she issued criticism, she was prepared in equal part to receive it, usually with honesty and good grace. These elements of humour, compassion, honesty and grace are aspects of Ruth Ross that I hope to have conveyed in my text, and that some subsequent historian, as her biographer, will expose to a greater degree. It is not easy to write about a strong and exacting personality: 'What with the vision of you standing over me supervising every note I write for Capt. Cook,' Beaglehole joked with her of his own work, 'and E. H. McCormick standing over me supervising every sentence of English prose, I lead a pretty miserable life.'30 Writing this thesis has been a far from miserable experience, 29 Ross to Beaglehole, 25 February 1955, MS 1442, 24:5, AR. 30 Beaglehole to Ross, 19 May 1957, MS 1442, 91 :1, AR. 15 but in my own way I too have wrestled with Ruth Ross at my shoulder. I hope the picture that has emerged is of a person for whom, while I have not always agreed with her, I have great respect. That has been my intention. 16 CHAPTER I: A Model for Post-war History Ruth Ross met John Beaglehole on her first day at Victoria University College in 1939. He became her teacher, mentor, and friend for the next thirty years. '[l]n so far as I ever learnt to think', she wrote of him after his death, 'it was he who taught me.' 31 Beaglehole was a pervading force in New Z~aland's historical community. This chapter looks at his vision for history in post-war New Zealand, which forms the broader context in which Ross developed as a historian. It draws on three of Beaglehole's essays written between 1940 and 1954 to examine his model of history as a science at the service of the community, and the inherent tension between scientific empiricism and developing a national tradition. The chapter then places Ross in relation to this model and outlines her understanding of the role of an historian and of history. It also considers the ways in which her early work under Beaglehole at the Centennial and Historical Branches of Internal Affairs influenced her later scholarship. John Beaglehole was one of the earliest New Zealand historians to travel to England for doctoral study and return home to teach. In 1936 he was appointed to a lectureship at Victoria University College where, with Professor Fred Wood, he developed the History Department into a hub for the changes that occurred within the historical profession over the next decade. Beaglehole's education at London University provided an 'intensive grounding in [the] historical method and research' of scientific empiricism, and set the standards that he later advocated for New Zealand historians.32 It was his association with the London School of Economics, however, that exposed him 31 Ross to Elsie Beaglehole, 11October1971 , MS 1442 98:2, AR. 32 T.H. Beaglehole, "'Home?" J . C. Beaglehole in London, 1926 - 1929', The Turnbull Library Record, 14:2, October 1981, p. 74. 17 to the political and humanitarian vision of some of London's leading intellectuals. The Sunday afternoon gatherings at the home of Harold Laski may have been models for the discussion evenings and parties Beaglehole later held for his own students.33 On his return to New Zealand in 1932, Beaglehole was struck by the complacency of his homeland, where he found political and social life was 'not exactly encouraging to the free human spirit'. 34 He wrote and published widely. Through his essays he began to explore the New Zealand condition and to consider the role of history in New Zealanders' lives. Three essays in · particular contained the nucleus of his ideas on New Zealand history, 'The New Zealand Mind' (1940), 'History and the New Zealander' (1946), and 'The New Zealand Scholar' (1954). For this reason, they have been used to construct the model which informs this thesis. 35 Read together, these essays suggest a remarkably consistent picture of the Pakeha cultural outlook over the middle decades of last century, of a people beginning to outgrow their emotional colonialism, and the potential to fill the void of receding imperialism with an honest and balanced account of New Zealand's past. Beaglehole saw New Zealand in the process of developing a sense of independent nationhood. This was manifesting itself in many aspects of society at the time; the works of artists, writers such as McCormick and 33 See T.H. Beaglehole for a description ofLaski's gatherings, p. 75. 34 J.C. Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand Scholar', in The Feel of Truth, Essays in New Zealand and Pacific History Presented to F. L. W. Wood and J. C. Beaglehole on the Occasion of Their Retirement, Peter Munz (ed.), Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed for the Victoria University of Wellington, 1969, pp. 237-52, p. 243 . 35 J.C. Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand Mind', The Australian Quarterly, 12:4, December 1940, pp. 40- 50; J.C. Beaglehole, 'History and the New Zealander', in The University and the Community, Essays in Honour of Thomas Alexander Hunter, ~a_r:~est Beaglehole (ed.), Wellington: Victoria University ' > College, 1946, pp. 98-124; J.C. Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand Scholar', passim. 18 Sargeson and in the Centennial Surveys, for example.36 Scientific history was, he felt, to be put to this service. To develop a sense of nationhood it was necessary for a people to engage actively with their past.37 An understanding of a collective history contributed to an individual's sense of place and time, to the notion of citizenship, and to national cohesion and security. In the context of New Zealand, it could provide 'individuality and self reliance to a very small nation in a very complicated age.'38 Beaglehole believed that, individually and collectively, self-knowledge, was historical knowledge; the 'one sure preliminary' to national feeling and a 'permanent individual existence for a people'. 39 'Unavoidably, inevitably, deliberately or unconsciously,' he wrote, 'we use history to understand ourselves. •40 Beaglehole called this national historical knowledge 'tradition ': by his own admission it was 'a peculiar thing '.41 It constituted a cultural legacy, but it was not constant, it waxed and waned , as he put it, 'under the treatment of men'.42 On the one hand it was spontaneous and unconscious: 'Its strength is, precisely, that it is not concerned with itself, that it grows without fuss into a pattern of life.'43 On the other, it was open to manipulation, to be taught, weeded, created or strengthened, 'rewoven with quite exciting new strands'. 44 Tradition derived from a quest for the essential on a national level. While left to its own devices it tended to settle upon somewhat inappropriate symbols to express that desire, in the right hands it could represent a powerful tool for 36 See for example, Stuart Murray, Never a Soul at Home: New Zealand literary Nationalism and the 1930s, Wellington: Victoria University Press: l998. 37 > Beaglehole, ' History and the New Zealander', pp. I 09-11 l. 38 Ibid., p. 11 l. 39 Ibid., p. 110. 40 [bid., p. I 07. 41 Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand Scholar', p. 249. 42 Ibid., p. 250. 43 Ibid., p. 249. 44 Beaglehole, ' History and the New Zealander', p. I 07; 'The New Zealand Scholar', p. 250. ) 19 change.45 'If we are to profit from it', Beaglehole wrote in 'The New Zealand Scholar', 'to extract from its richness the maximum nourishment, we must discover it. It needs critical inquiry, conscious exploration.'46 This was the role Beaglehole perceived for the historian in the New Zealand community. 'It is the scholar's job to make the tradition plain' , Beaglehole wrote. 'As he disentangles our tradition, as he makes us conscious of ourselves, h'e gives us ourselves.' 47 The historian acted at the interface between history and tradition, as the rational and analytical mind behind the 'felt background' and fabric of a nation's daily life. To do this he needed both an awareness of his own place in society and the ability to distance himself sufficiently to determine the historical pattern. He needed, at one and the same time, to be in, of, and yet outside of the tradition. 48 Consciousness of the historical process, and the systematic analysis of historical evidence this required, were the tenets of scientific empiricism: the method of enquiry Beaglehole brought with him from his time in London and which he, and others like him now sought to foster within the New Zealand academy. New Zealand had reached a stage, Beaglehole maintained, 'when one of its principal needs is a fine and disinterested critical integrity' .49 The empirical method aspired to raise history from a literary art to an objective science. It was based on the study of documents, which it privileged above other forms of historical evidence. A series of analytical operations had been developed to separate the historian from both his own preconceptions and prejudices, and those of the documents' authors. The aim was to reduce historical evidence contained in the documents to a series of well-made observations 45 Beaglehole, ' History and the New Zealander', p. 118; 'The New Zealand Scholar', p. 250. 46 Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand Scholar' , p. 250. 47 Ibid. , p. 250, 251. 48 Ibid., p. 250. 49 Beaglehole, ' History and the New Zealander', p. 124. 20 ready for analysis in the manner of other more direct sciences. 50 It was a method, as he described it in his essays, of 'elaborate technique', requiring breadth of knowledge, patience, and the 'stringently trained power of unbroken logical thought'. 51 Beaglehole believed it was the role of the universities to foster these skills in their students, who would write the history of New Zealand for subsequent generations. 52 Empirical document-based history entailed first an ability to find, restore, date, collate and verify the historical records. Langlois and Seignobos, influential guides to empirical research, called this heuristic (from the Greek word 'to find') . 53 This procedure disposed of forgeries, corrupted copies, selectively edited versions and so on . Secondly, they advocated analysis of the verified documents to determine what facts about past events could be derived from them, including 'facts ' about intention and motive. As none of this could be taken directly off the document, it had to be inferred from close and critical reading . Such inferences had to conform to rigorous rules of logic and were the product of trained thought. For this reason Langlois and Seignobos refereed to this v' process as the 'hermeneutic' (from the Greek word 'to interpret') .54 It was with this understanding of historical method that Beaglehole and his peers approached their work. Langlois and Seignobos were not regarded as prescribers of method, so much as architects of the particular house of history from which Beaglehole's model for post-war history operated. Langlois and Seignobos extended their Introduction to the synthesising process, which 50 Langlois and Seignobos, p. 67. 51 Beaglehole, ' History and the New Zealander', p. 106. 52 Ibid., p. 124. 53 Langlois and Seignobos, p. 18. 54 Ibid., p. 64. 21 followed hermeneutic, proposing an austere objectivity and authorial disengagement right through to final exposition to the reader. However, Beaglehole sought to bring historical synthesis to a national audience, to generate a historical tradition in which all could 'feel' at home. For that reason, there was licence for some divergence from strict empiricism when it came to addressing the audience. The heuristic in post-war New . Zealand was in a poor state. The official archives in the 1940s and early '50s were shambolic. The collection and preservation of government records was of particular concern to New Zealand historians. Beaglehole took an active part in the long campaigns for the establishment of a national archive and library, couching them in terms of 'civilisation' and duty. 55 'We have burnt our history with the same blind stupidity as we have burnt our forests,' he wrote in 1954. 'We have already permanently maimed our national life . . . . It is the plain duty of the New Zealand Scholar, among his other duties, not to rest until they are conserved .'56 Analytical operations, on the other hand, advanced more steadily. The critical analysis of documents was a defining characteristic of the post-war generation of academically trained New Zealand historians. While amateur historians had continued enthusiastically to collect and write up historical material, their unquestioning acceptance of historical 'fact' and belief that history could and would speak for itself had tended to result in a lack of analysis and the perpetuation of 'myths' and stereotypes. Hermeneutic operated from a position of mistrust and methodical scepticism, systemically criticising each 55 Grant Young, 'The Construction of National Storehouses of Knowledge in Post-War New Zealand, and the Difference Between History and Myth', The Turnbull Library Record, Vol. 35, 2002, pp. 61- 70; J.C. Beaglehole, ' Why Archives?', The New Zealand Journal of Public Administration, 15: 1, September 1952, pp. 9-16. 56 Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand Scholar' , p. 251 . 22 document, eliminating points of error or opinion to deduce historical truth or fact. To Beaglehole and his colleagues, therefore, it provided an admirable basis for re-examining national history and for the construction of 'ampler and more adequate foundations' on which to build a tradition. 57 Beaglehole envisaged that empirical method be applied to the broad sweep of New Zealand history: social, economic and cultural. Whereas· poorly constructed national history could tend toward the vainglorious and the political, critical reassessment required the acceptance of failu re as well as success.58 He referred particularly to the shortcomings of the New Zealand Company, founding politicians, pioneers, and the resort to interracial warfare. An honest engagement with the past could free a people from the 'dead hand' of history and the weight of 'smugness and satisfaction'.59 It allowed them to view themselves more completely, move forward confidently as a people, to ~ progress. In 1940 Beaglehole regarded New Zealander's timidity, dependence '/ on Britain and 'inadequate consciousness of self' to be the logical resu lt of their incapacity or unwillingness to engage honestly with their history.60 By 1954, however, he believed he could see the seeds of a New Zealand tradition beginning to 'sprout' as the work of the Centennial, Historical and School Publications Branches uncovered and made explicit the rich patterns of New Zealand's life.61 As the universities expanded and the archives and research libraries came slowly into being a new generation of New Zealand historians, academically trained, critical and pedantic, were beginning to make their presence felt. Ross was among this generation, mentored by historians such as Beaglehole and Wood, and working to the benchmarks they set. 57 Beaglehole, ' History and the New Zealander', p. 107. 58 Ibid., pp. 109, 112- 113. 59 Ibid., p. 111. 60 Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand Mind' , pp. 48-9. 61 Beaglehole, 'NZ Scholar', p. 248. 23 Ross began studying at Victoria University College in 1939, a time when history there was beginning to gain momentum. It was a time of particularly positive staff I student relations with fluid boundaries between academic and social life. Both lecturers welcomed students into their homes. 'We were the fortunate ones, I think', Ross later wrote, 'to have been around ·in more leisurely, less populous times; some of the details of those wonderful Beagle hole parties, .. . the glow of being around people whose minds were so alive.'62 While Ross saw Wood as the better teacher and more rigorous critic, it was Beaglehole who 'changed the quality of one's life and thought' and who proved to be the more enduring influence.63 Ross studied Beaglehole's undergraduate papers on the Colonial Office and the expansion of Europe. Although she left university before completing her degree, he maintained his influence by including her in his 'kindergarten,' the group of talented women graduates he employed at the Centennial, or as it was later, Historical Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs. 64 There were unprecedented opportunities for women in historical work as the male researchers left for war. The contribution of Internal Affairs in establishing professional standards of history and in linking these to a national identity has been well documented.65 62 Ross to Elsie Beaglehole, 11 October 1971 , MS 1442 98:2, AR. 63 Ross to Ormond Wilson, 20 October 1971 , MS 1442, 98 :2, AR. 64 Although Graham Bagnall in his obituary on Ross plays down Beaglehole's influence on her work at the Historical Branch, there is ample evidence of it in her personal correspondence. See for example Ross to Beaglehole, 25 February 1955, MS 1442, 24:5 , AR. and Ross to Beaglehole, 22 November 1968, MS 1442, 96:3, AR. Bagnall ' s chronology regarding the Primary School Bulletin, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and the commission to write the introduction for the facsimile edition of the Treaty of Waitangi is wrong. Graham Bagnall, 'Obituary; Ruth Miriam Ross, 1920 - 1982', The Turnbull Library Record, 16: l, May 1983, pp. 54-60. 65 See for example, Anthony Booker, 'The Centennial Surveys of New Zealand,_ 1936-41 ' , BA Hons Research Exercise in History, Massey University, 1983 ; Rachel Barrowman, '"Culture Organising": 24 In his capacity as Historical and Typographical Advisor to the Department, Beaglehole's vision permeated the workings of the Historical Branch. Ross began researching for the Historical Atlas, an ambitious Centennial project still underway when she started in 1941. As increasing numbers of the men departed, she became the 'virtual representative' of the project. 66 Ross worked primarily in locating areas of European settlement prior to 1840. She was one of the first historians to access Old Land Claim (OLC) and Native Land Court records, with the wealth of information they contained on the pre-colonial and early colonial eras. In accord with Beaglehole's bel ief in the importance of place as part of the historical record , she also conducted research trips to the Wairarapa , Auckland , Northland, Gisborne and Maketu, to access primary documents and interview descendants.67 The Centennial Atlas was, as Hilliard has noted, a marked departure in New Zealand historiography.68 The maps required the amalgamation of work by Maori, local and amateur historians and of academically trained researchers. For Ross, the Atlas, and the supportive atmosphere with in the Branch, were opportunities to explore the possibilities of empirical method. She honed her research skills among the OLC and other government records, available for the first time. Collating th is material with the information from private collections, she amassed a formidable catalogue of facts , including her Joe Heenan and the Beginnings o f State Patronage of the Arts', New Zealand Studies, 6:2, 1996; Hill iard, 'A Prehistory of Public History: Monuments, Explanations and Promotions, 1900-1970' in Going Public: The Changing Face of New Zealand History, Bronwyn Dalley and Jock Phillips (eds.), Auckland: Auckland University Press, 200 I, pp. 30-54. 66 'Memorandum for the Under-Secretary, Department of Internal Affairs ', 6 April 194 1, MS 1442, 90:1 , AR. 67 T.H. Beagleho le, 'Beagleho le, John Cawte 1901 - 1971'. DNZB, Volume Five ( 194 1-1960), Auckland: Auckland University Press, p. 44. 68 Chris Hilliard, ' A Prehistory of Puoiic History' p. 39. '}, 25 remarkable 'census' of early immigrants to the Bay of Islands in the 1820s and '30s. 69 In much the same way that this material formed the basis of her historical writing for the next twenty . years, the research practices she developed working at the Branch set a benchmark for the 'impeccable' standards and professionalism that she maintained throughout her career, and which lead Keith Sinclair by the 1950s, to regard her as 'the sternest perfectionist in New Zealand'.70 Ross was exacting in her emphasis on primary documentary sources. Their assessment and analysis, she believed , set her generation of professional historians apart from the antiquarians and family historians with whom she worked . 'As one brought up to believe the original MS as sacrosanct', she shunned secondary interpretations and took pains to seek out and work with the most original material available. She was highly critical of James Cowan, and later Professor James Rutherford, for compromising the integrity of such documents in their work. 71 In 1954 she embarked on an extended and acrimonious debate in Landfall with Sir Howard Kippenberger, Editor in Chief of the War History Branch.72 Ross believed Kippenberger's poor scholarship and inadequate consciousness of empirical method had so altered the material presented in 69 Hilliard, 'Prehistory of Public History', p. 41. 7° Keith Sinclair to Ross, 17 August 1956, MS 1442, 91: 1, AR. 71 Memo, Guscott [Ross_!:ito Heenan, 'Gisbome Trip', 18 March 1943, MS 230, folder 8, WTU; Ruth ';11 M. Ross, New Zealand's First Capital, Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1946, pp. 15 - 16, f.n. 72 Ruth Ross, ' Review: Documents Relati~g to New Zealand's Participation in the Second World War, 1939 - 1945, Volumes I and II, Wellington: War history Branch, 1949 and 1951 ', Landfall, 8:4, December 1954, pp. 310-13. 26 his Documents series that 'no single document published [could] be accepted as a true copy of the original'. 73 Ross carried this emphasis on original source documents with her into her subsequent research. While university teaching on the Treaty generally worked off a translation of the Treaty of Waitangi by Professor James Rutherford, it was her determination to identify and work from the. original Treaty text which began her investigation into the drafts and copies discussed in Chapter Three. While at the Historical Branch, Ross published a booklet from her Atlas research, New Zealand's First Capital. It was a micro-study of Hobson's purchase of the Okiato property in the Bay of Islands and described as an 'outstanding example of historical reconstruction' that demonstrated the possibilities of New Zealand's government archive.74 But, this booklet was the only publication to arise from the Atlas research. For all the information she and her colleagues had provided, the Atlas remained unpublished and was eventually abandoned in the early 1950s. Differences in representation between cartographers and historians and difficulties in translating the wealth of detail into a visual form 'doomed the Atlas to incompleteness'.75 The files remained stored at Internal Affairs, unknown to other historians and overlooked by librarians. They received neither the credit nor recognition that Ross felt were their due.76 73 Ruth Ross, 'Review: Documents', p. 311. See bibliography for subsequent publications in this debate. 74 Graham Bagnall, 'Obituary; Ruth Miriam Ross, 1920- 1982', Turnbull Library Record, Vol. 16, No. l, May 1983, p. 56. 75 Hilliard, 'A Prehistory of Public History', p. 42. 76 Ross to Alan Mulgan, 11April1956, MS 1442, 91:1, AR. 27 The Atlas provided a valuable lesson on the limitations of empiricist technique that was not lost on Ross. Firstly, she came to believe that empiricist documentary research could, in practice, be 'incredibly narrowing'; shutting the historian off to the wider implications of their findings. Secondly, it showed her that facts alone did not make a history. Without interpretation and presentation they were of use to few people but the historian. The Atlas was an example of a tension inherent in the use of empiricism for the formation of national tradition and the scholarly yet popular forms of publication the Branch aimed to produce. Beaglehole considered it an important test of an historians' ability to 'write about aspects of our culture in ways that were true to what had to be said and suitably adapted to the understanding of the readers for whom they were intended'.77 Yet Jock Phillips, in reviewing 'The New Zealand Scholar,' noted these tensions within Beaglehole's own histories and observed: 'The historian, with a training in searching out the evidence, questioning received wisdom and appreciating complexity, does not find it easy to construct the simple myths which help define national identity.' 78 While Phillips believed Beaglehole had a 'significant impact' on the standards of historical practice, he found it doubtful if his major pieces on Cook, which were the product of several decades of meticulous research and amounted to four volumes in five parts, were at a level which had 'much influence at all upon New Zealand's sense of national identity' .79 Beaglehole may also have recognised this: ' ... an important contribution to a silly sort of scholarship', he remarked to Janet Paul in 1951. 'It's a pity it doesn't matter more.'80 77 W.L. Renwick, '"Show Us These Islands and Ourselves ... Give us a Home in Thought": Beaglehole Memorial Lecture, 1987', NZJH, 21 :2, October 1987, p. 203. 78 Jock Phillips, 'Our History, Our Selves: the Historian and National Identity', New Zealand Journal of History, 30:2, October 1996, p. 112. · 79 Ibid. 80 Janet Paul, ' Some Documents Recalling 1951 ', landfall, No. 185, 1:1, April 1993, p. 27. 28 The documentary emphasis and methodological rigour of empiricism could tend toward elitism. In following up the leads from her research for the Historical Atlas and shaping them into material for the School Publications Branch, Ross was very conscious of the manipulation required to engage her young readers at the level of a felt tradition. Similarly with her early pieces on the Treaty, although she was uncompromising in her research standards and her criticism of the primary material, she was prepared in her presentation to make the accommodations necessary to write to the level of a general readership. The unused files of the Historical Atlas alerted her to the futility of doing otherwise. For Ross, the third aspect of her Atlas work to impact on her Treaty scholarship was her exposure to Maori historical perspectives. In researching OLCs and Native Land Court Minute books, she encountered in the verbatim records of Maori claimants a remarkable counter-narrative to that of European settlement. In the manner characteristic of colonising histories, accounts of Pakeha pioneers in New Zealand were generally couched in terms of material and moral advancement. The Centennial publications contributed to this narrative. In the OLCs, however, Ross read in the Maori testimonies a record of short dealings, frustration, and loss. Between the Maori and Pakeha claimants there were differences in perspectives on the meanings of place, time, and possession that amounted to very different ways of viewing the past. Ross encountered these also in her field work, and in her discussions with Maori from different locations and backgrounds. She enjoyed immensely her time among Maori on the field trips. On occasion she interviewed elders who spoke no English, requiring 'three cornered conversations' with interpreters 29 and much patience and good humour on both sides.81 She emerged with an understanding of what it meant to be on the outside of a language. She developed a strong respect for the 'sensible Maori mind'.82 These were essential influences on her later scholarship on the Treaty. The combination of her personal experience of translation, awareness of the often conflicting narratives of Maori and Pakeha experiences during the ·pre- and early colonial era, and her empirical emphasis on a document's language as the basis for critical analysis were fundamental to her approach and interpretation in researching the Treaty. It is this respect in which Ross diverged most from Beaglehole's model for history and identity in the post-war period. Reviews of Beaglehole's lecture, 'The New Zealand Scholar,' by Bill Renwick and Jock Phillips have noted the conspicuous absence of Maori from his discussion of a New Zealand tradition. Beaglehole's 'natives' were New Zealand born Pakeha; the 'complications' of his age were Cold War politics, not the interracial dynamics of his own country. From this both Renwick and Phillips imply that Maori were absent from Beaglehole's view of New Zealand history entirely. 83 A wider reading of Beaglehole's essays, however, shows this is not so. In both 'The New Zealand Mind' and 'History and the New Zealand er', Beaglehole confronts the issue of the history of racial conflict and chides Pakeha New Zealanders for allowing this aspect of their past to slip 'so long, and so complacently' from the national tradition. 84 In 'The New Zealand Mind', 81 See for example, Guscott, [Ross] letter of thanks to Ruru Family, Maketu, 23 March 1943, MS 230 folder 8, WTU. 82 Memo, Guscott [Ross} to Heenan, 'Gisborne Trip ', 18 March 1943, MS 230, folder 8, WTU. ..~ ,; 83 Renwick, p. 20 I ; Phillips, p. l l l . 84 Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand Mind', p. 49. 30 he explicitly cites the Maori 'renascence' as an example of what a healthy engagement with a felt tradition can achieve: '[I]t is the story above all of the utilisation, the working out, the logic of a tradition maintained with the tenacity of despair, realised anew with the tenacity of hope .. . . There is relatively little, in the realm of the spirit, that the European New Zealander, with his overwhelming preponderance in numbers, can place beside th!s, as an individual product of the joining of man to the land. ' 85 What can be said of Beaglehole's view of Maori in the New Zealand tradition is that he perceived two 'modes of thought' in New Zealand, parallel streams of tradition which, while they may at certain points meet, and 'increasingly, in certain matters, they may merge,' would remain separate for generations to come. 86 The continuing of the Maori tradition , Beaglehole believed , was 'for the Maori to do'; while he saw ample scope for the Pakeha historian to resolving for Pakeha New Zealanders the dissonance between a European heritage and a feeling for the land of their birth .87 For Ross , Renwick noted, 'relating ourselves to a broad Western tradition was not the issue'. 88 Ross felt no conflicting loyalties toward Britain and New Zealand , and grew increasingly frustrated at the 'intellectual bellyaching' which distracted New Zealand historians from issues crucial to both Maori and Pakeha understandings of their place in New Zealand society.89 While it was implicit at all levels of New Zealand life that Maori would attempt to engage and understand Pakeha cultural practices and perspectives, she thought it 85 Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand Mind' , p. 50. 86 Beaglehole, ' History and the New Zealander', p. 113 . 87 Ibid. 88 Renwick, p. 203. 89 Ross to Beaglehole, 22 September 1954, MS 1442, 24:5 , AR; Ross to Michael Turnbull, 23 September 1955, MS 1442, 90:3 , AR. 31 equally important that Pakeha attempt to accept Maori viewpoints and history. A two-way integration, a meeting on equal terms was integral to Ross' view of the role of history; there was room within the one tradition ·for dual perspectives. So while Beaglehole, in handing Ross the commission for the facsimile introduction, had not, himself, envisaged a major reworking to include an analysis of the Maori text, he was not surprised when she chose to approach it from that angle. 'But of course I knew you'd hare off and rewrite the history of the Maori race and Pakeha - Maori relations before you finished', he teased her, 'and if expostulated you'd look down you nose and make some dirty crack about my historical I research standards.'90 And actually she did.91 Ross' approach to her subsequent Treaty research was in many ways a reflection and an extension of her university education and her experiences at the Historical Branch. Fundamental to these had been the influence of Beaglehole and the methodological standards he had exposed her to. The remainder of this thesis looks at the development of Ross' Treaty scholarship, especially with regard to the relationship he sought between empiricist research and the creation of an authentic national tradition . 90 Beaglehole to Ross, 19 May 1957, MS 1442, 91:1, AR. 91 Ross to Michael Standish, 26 June 1958, MS 1442, 91:2, AR. 32 CHAPTER II: The Introduction to the Facsimiles Ruth Ross' first commission on the Treaty of Waitangi came in June 1953 when John Beaglehole asked her to write an introduction for a reissue of the facsimile of the Treaty documents by the Government Printer. She had been 'playing about, ' as she termed it, with the Treaty of Waitangi since her time at the Historical Branch. Her sceptical attitude was already evident in New Zealand's First Capital where she described Waitangi as the place which 'popular opinion has come to regard as the birth place of our history, a historical pre-eminence to which it could never justly lay claim'.92 Beaglehole had encouraged her to set out her ideas in relation to the Treaty, however 'half-baked' she may have thought them. In her more positive moments she wondered if he hadn't talked the Government Printer into the facs imile edition specifically so that he could ask her to write them up.93 (Less charitably, she was also inclined to believe he chose her principally to break the hold on the Treaty of James Rutherford and N.A. Foden and their extended debate over the acquisition of British sovereignty. 94 ) This chapter examines some of the issues Ross encountered working on the Treaty documents in the 1950s. It begins by surveying the preceding historical writing, and traces the factors that influenced her choice of direction. 92 Ruth Ross, New Zealand's First Capital, Wellington: Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd for The Department of Internal Affairs, 1946, p. 66. 93 Ross to Elsie Beaglehole, 28 January 1973, MS 1442, 99:2, AR. 94 See J. Rutherford, The Treaty of Waitangi and the Acquisition of British Sovereignty in New Zealand, 1840, Auckland: Pelorus Press for Auckland University College, 1948, p. 3; N.A. Foden, Constitutional Development of New Zealand in the First Decade, 1839-1849, Wellington: L.T. Watkins, 1938; 33 The principal challenges facing Ross' research in the '50s were heuristic - locating and collating documentary material on the Treaty. Ross was free to write the introduction to the facsimiles any way she wished. She favoured a textual analysis, believing that previous historians had failed to examine closely enough the contents of the Treaty documents. This was particularly so with the Maori text which , as the document signed by those who ceded under the agreement, she believed to be the actual Treaty of Waitangi. This amounted to a radical reworking of both the documentary evidence regarding the Treaty and the assumptions that had been drawn from it. The project thus became, although inadvertently, an example of precisely the style of history Beaglehole had envisaged in his model for history in post­ war New Zealand. It was a difficult approach; 'the hardest possible road ', Ross thought, to understanding the Treaty. 95 She worked on the introduction from 1954 to 1957 before abandoning the project. In these three years there seemed to be few rewards. The government archive was not sufficiently organised to supply the full range of documents she required, and, as her findings ran contrary to the teachings of the academy, such conclusions as she did come to did not seem particularly welcome. She believed an archivist needed to take up the work she had begun on the documents and felt, as an historian , that she could proceed no further until they did. While the project had not been a success, the ideas she developed during this period formed the basis of the article she wrote in 1972. She also worked them, in story form, into her Primary School Bulletin , Te Tiriti o Waitangi, in 1958. Owing to its _popular conception as New Zealand's founding document a considerable number of histories on the Treaty had been written prior to the 95 Ross to Dora and Graham Bagnell, 16 November 1954, MS 1442, 90:2, AR. /') '.\..· 34 1950s. Many of them appeared dubious to Ross. '(W)hat a hell of a subject', she wrote to Beaglehole after her initial foray into the literature, 'The ground to be covered is appalling, the number of people who have already written on it are (sic) appalling, and what some of them have written is even more appalling.'96 The works of principal interest to Ross were those of H.H. Turton (1877), T. Lindsay Buick (1914, with subsequent editions in 1932 and 1936), Sir Apirana Ngata (1922), and James Rutherford (1948). Ross thought Turton, as the editor of the original facsimile edition, had completed a 'useful and competent job' .97 Along with the Treaty documents and . their drafts, he had provided typescripts of the English version of the Treaty, the Maori text, copies of reports and letters of Hobson and of those he sent out to gather Treaty signatures. All extracts were retained in their primary form. No translation of the Maori text was provided, nor any major attempt made at analysis, apart from the act of selection itself, of the supporting documents. Other than his guarded comment that 'without some such agreement between the two races as was determined by "the Treaty of Waitangi", the Queen's authority and government would never have been so peaceably admitted and established in this country', Turton was prepared to 'leave these sheets to the scrutiny of all interested inquirers'.98 By contrast, T. Lindsay Buick's The Treaty of Waitangi, or How New Zealand Became a British Colony, was intended as a popular historical narrative. 99 It was an authoritative yet accessible account, relating the story of the Treaty with what Chris Hilliard has described as an air of 'literary statesmanship' .100 96 Ross to Beaglehole, 1 April 1954, MS 1442, 24:5, AR. 97 H. H. Turton (ed.), Facsimiles of the Declaration of Independence and the Treaty of Waitangi, 2"d Edition, Wellington: R.E. Owen, 1960; Ross to Beaglehole, 2 July 1957, MS 1442, 91:1, AR. 98 Turton, Preface. 99 T. Lindsay Buick, The Treaty of Waitangi or How New Zealand Became a British Colony, Wellington: S. & W. Mackay, 1914.; 2"d Edition, 1932; 3rd Edition, 1936. 10° Chris Hilliard, 'Island Stories, The Writing of New Zealand History 1920 - 1940 ', MA Thesis in History, University of Auckland, 1997, p. 70. \ >( I ./ ; i . ..... /1 ' ( . 35 Through its selection or omission of material it confirmed . the notion of the Treaty as . a symbol of 'Maori acceptance of British ways' and the 'wholesome mythology of "he iwi tahi tatou"' .101 Although it was uncritical in its use of sources, several of which Ross was later to refute, it was the most comprehensive synthesis of historical evidence regarding the Treaty of its time, and continued as a reference text well into the 1970s.102 Buick's work both reflected and sustained the popular conceptions of the Treaty. It was of interest to Ross as a starting point and as the source of some possible leads. However, his lack of referencing 'drove her mad' trying to track down his material. 103 Buick's theme was the successful and peaceable acquisition of sovereignty. He was largely uncritical of the Maori text. In his original 1914 edition he had enthusiastically described William\s'! translation as ! 'a perfect native reflex of the European mind, conveying in all probability a clearer view to the Maori of what the treaty meant than the English version has done to the average Pakeha.' 104 By the 1936 edition, which had been substantially reworked, he had moderated his praise: ' ... although its phrase taonga katoa fails clearly to specify the reservation of "forests and fisheries" which it includes under the general term of "other properties", it has stood the crucial test of time fairly well, and gives to the Maori as clear a view of what the treaty means as the English version has given to the average Pakeha. '105 He continued to assert, however, as he had in 1914, that sovereignty had clearly been ceded through the Treaty, and that although the 'forms by which our sovereignty was exercised were doubtless new and strange to them', 101 Chris Hilliard, ' lsland Stories', pp. 71-73 . Hilliard is working from Buick's 1936 edition. 102 Claudia Orange, The Treaty of Waitangi, Wellington: Allen & Unwin Port Nicholson Press in Association with Historical Publications Branch, Department oflnternal Affairs, 1987, p. ix. 10' 0 Ross to Alan Mulgan, 22 June 1956, MS 1442, 91 :1, AR. 104 Buick, 1914, p. 92. 105 Buick, 1936, p. 113. I' . i 36 Maori 'understood clearly enough that for the advantages they hope to reap from the treaty they were yielding much of their existing power .... '106 To Ross, these were errors of judgement arising from poor scholarship. Despite his extensive use of primary material , often quoted in bulk, it was not until the third edition, when he had gained the assistance of Sir Apirana Ngata, that she thought he had begun to really look at the Treaty documents. 107 Ngata's translation had accounted for Buick's more critical assessment of the Maori text. However, the alterations appeared to be of minimal significance to Buick himself, who advised his readers in his preface that while some changes to the letterpress had been made in the third edition, 'in the main these are unimportant' .108 Buick's narrative of the acquisition of sovereignty was essentially unaltered. Ngata's own booklet, The Treaty of Waitangi, an Explanation I Te Tiriti o Waitangi, he Whakamarama, was published in 1922.109 It was sponsored by the Maori Purposes Funds Board to explain the Treaty to the Maori people. It was interesting to Ross for a number of reasons. Firstly Ngata was the only historian to deal primarily with the Maori text. He aimed to clarify it from a Maori perspective and in doing so was openly, if only mildly, critical of its translation: 'The English expressions in the Treaty were not adequately rendered into Maori. There were minor parts left out. ' This apart, Ngata maintained that the Maori text 'clearly explained the main provisions of the Treaty' .110 Somewhat paradoxically, however, he continued to structure his 106 Buick, 19 14, p. 227; 1936, p. 283. 107 Ross to Ormond Wilson, 2 February 1972, MS 1442, 91 :1, AR. 108 Buick, 1936, p. xii. 109 Sir Apirana Ngata, The Treaty of Waitangi, an Explanation I Te Tiriti o Waitangi, he Whakamarama, trans. M.R.Jones, New Zealand: Pegasus Press for the Maori Purposes Fund Board, 1922. 110 Ngata, p. 2. 37 argument around the English terms, and their intended meanings, as the conditions the Maori signatories had agreed to. Ngata explained the issue of kawanantanga and 'governance' in Article One of the Maori text in terms of British sovereignty: 'What is a "Government?" The English ~ord is "Sovereignty". The English word for such a personage as a King or a Queen is "Sovereign". This is the same as the Maori words "Ariki Tapairu" and is referred to as the absolute authority.'111 Similarly, with regard to rangatiratanga in Article Two, Ngata accepted it as being a close translation of sovereignty, but confined it to the concept of independent ownership, as intended in the English text: 'What is this authority, this sovereignty that is referred to in the second article? It is quite clear, the right of a Maori to his land, to his property, to his individual right to such possessions whereby he could declare, "This is my land ... .'"112 He interpreted the pre-emption clause in Article Two as the 'giving of the right to the Queen to acquire Maori land'. 113 While Ngata was critical of government land purchasing, he maintained that it was the policy of individual governments that was at fault and that 'the blame cannot be placed on the Treaty of Waitangi which laid down this basis'. 114 Ngata's adherence to the English text was in line with thinking in his day and with his own general policy of 'co-operation within the parameters defined by the state' . 115 He emphasised Maori agency and expected Maori to take responsibility for their part in signing the Treaty. To his Maori readers he went so far as to conclude: 'If you think these th ings are wrong and bad then blame Ill N gata, p. 5. 112 Ibid., p. 8. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid., p. 10. 115 Ranginui Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou, Struggle Without End, Auckland: Penguin Books, 1990, p. 174. 38 our ancestors who gave away their rights in the days when they were powerful. '116 The other historian to recognise discrepancies in understandings of the Treaty was Professor James Rutherford in his two published lectures, Hone Heke's Rebellion, 1844-1846: An Episode in the Establishment of British Rule in New Zealand, and The Treaty of Waitangi and the Acquisition of British Sovereignty in New Zealand, 1840.117 Both were intended as part of a larger study of Maori political ideas that remained unpublished.118 Of the two, Hone Heke's Rebellion dealt more directly with Maori interpretation of the Treaty. Rutherford noted that there was ambiguity surrounding the notions of sovereignty in Articles One and Two in the Maori text. He believed the concept had been poorly explained to Maori at the Waitangi signing , with insufficient emphasis given to the 'restraints and restrictions and responsibilities' it implied. 11 9 The term 'Kawana-tanga' had been a poor translation of British expectations of sovereignty. Furthermore, Busby, as the principal role model available to Maori , had provided but a 'feeble and inadequate illustration' as precedent.120 'Rangatira-tanga ', on the other hand, seemed to Rutherford to be a 'far stronger term used . . . to describe the authority they retained ... which taken literally seemed to imply that, on their own lands, the Maori chiefs would retain all their power, authority and "mana" as rangatira over their own people' .121 Despite these observations, however, like Ngata, Rutherford continued to couch his discussion in terms of the 'official English version' of the Treaty. He 116 Ngata, p. 16. 117 J. Rutherford, Hone Heke's Rebellion, 1844-1846: an Episode in the Establishment of British Rule in New Zealand, Auckland: Auckland University College, 1947; J. Rutherford, The Treaty of Waitangi and the Acquisition of British Sovereignty in New Zealand, 1840, passim. 118 Rutherford, 'Acquisition of British Sovereignty', Preface. 119 Rutherford, Hone Heke 's Rebellion, p. 8. 120 Ibid. 121 Ibid. 39 recognised that there had been among the Maori signatories an 'undercurrent of real apprehension' and among the missionaries a 'certain amount of soft­ pedalling on the subject of British sovereignty' . He stopped short, however, of suggesting 'deliberate double dealing' .122 Ross thought Rutherford's lectures were well done and well documented. (Foden's claims on the other side of the sovereignty debate she dismissed as 'fanciful notions'123 ) . Her principal concern with Rutherford was the way in which his rough translation of the Maori text, created to the best of her knowledge by 'looking up nouns and verbs in a dictionary', had come to dominate, and mislead, academic interpretations of the Treaty.124 Indeed, for want of any other, it was to continue as the accepted orthodoxy in university teaching until the 1970s.125 While Ross thought it important to use these earlier historians as starting points, none appeared to adequately address the discrepancies she saw in the Treaty. Through a lack of critical groundwork, or in pursuit of their individual arguments, all had missed, she thought, a fundamental point. While each acknowledged to a greater or lesser extent that there were gaps in understanding between the English and the Maori texts, all unquestioningly gave primacy to the English text. The Treaty was a document drawn by the British Crown. What the Crown had intended, they, therefore, assumed was what the Treaty had meant. Early in the course of her research Ross became convinced that the reverse approach to the Treaty was true; that it was the Treaty document as signed and understood by Maori that constituted the Treaty of Waitangi, irrespective of Crown intentions. Any consideration of the Treaty, Ross concluded , had therefore, to begin with the Maori text. 122 Rutherford, Hone Heke 's Rebellion, p. 9. 123 Ross to Beagelhole, 1 April 1954, MS 1442, 24 :5, AR. 124 Ross to Keith Sinclair, 8 May 1972, MS 1442, 83 :4, AR. 125 Ross to Keith Sinclair, 13 April 1973, MS 1442, 83:4, AR. 40 The emphasis Ross gave to the Maori text marked a significant departure in Treaty historiography. It became a signature of her scholarship and was, eventually, to become a broadly accepted academic view. In 1954, however, it required considerable working through. Empiricism, with its strong emphasis on documentary sources, can certainly account for her treatment of the Treaty text once she came to this decision, but not entirely for the decision itself. Rutherford for example, also an academically trained historian, examined the Treaty in some depth without coming to the same conclusion. To Ross it seemed to be matter of logic. There were, however, a number of other factors worth considering. Firstly, Ross was aware of an alternative Maori view of the Treaty from her time at the Historical Branch. As discussed in Chapter One, researching Native Land Court records and OLCs for the Atlas had exposed her to a Maori perspective of early land transactions. Background experience of this sort was probably unusual among academic historians. Ross often used material from her Atlas research in her school publications and it influenced her approach to the Treaty also. 126 Once she began research for the introduction to the facsimiles, Ross developed a network of Maori advisors. This gave her the confidence to pursue her alternative approach. 'Of course I could not have taken this course unaided', she wrote to Beaglehole of her decision to concentrate on the Maori text, 'and have had wonderful help from Mat Te Hau [sic] and Pei Jones particularly, and can tap Bruce Biggs and Maha Winiata.' 127 These people helped Ross with translations, read drafts, and discussed ideas. When she moved to the Hokianga in 1955 she recruited the help of local Maori. Life 126 For an example of this see letters Ross to Pei Te Hurinui Jones, 21 February 1955: Pei Te Hurinui Jones to Ross, 3 March 1955, MS 1442, 90:2, AR. 127 Ross to Beaglehole, 19 April 1955, MS 1442, 24:5, AR. 41 away from the influence of the academy and in a largely Maori community encouraged an independent approach: ' .. . for the two years I worked on the job , before turning it in,' she wrote to Beaglehole, 'I was working in a historical vacuum. I did discuss the matter once or twice, but only briefly, with Keith Sinclair. Otherwise Waitangi was a topic for unacademic conversation at home and with various Maori friends, some of them recognised scholars, others just the old men up here. It wasn't until I went to Wellington [in 1956] that I was able to air my views to the historically informed.' 128 Increasingly for Ross, studying the Treaty from a Maori perspective was not just one of a number of possible approaches, but, ethically and logically, the only one. It was a perspective she was determined to emphasise in her School Bulletin in 1958, the writing of which is discussed in Chapter Four. If, as Mohi Tawhai had predicted, the Maori view of the Treaty was to 'sink like a stone', and from her search for documents it appeared to her that it had, her network of Maori advisors made it at least possible to work toward re­ establishing a Maori perspective of the Treaty text in academic scholarship. 129 Ross found historical precedent for privileging the Maori text. In researching early New Zealand Parliamentary Papers she was drawn to the pamphlet wars of the 1860s as 'the first occasion when the actual treaty, i.e. the text and its meaning, was taken out and aired'. 130 Here she found Chief Justice Sir William Martin's notes on the differences in interpretation of the terms of the Treaty and his suggestion that preference be given to the Maori text. 128 Ross to Beaglehole, 2 July 1957, MS 1442, 91: l, AR. 129 Michael Standish to Ross, 12 November 1958, MS 1442, 91:2, AR. l'O , Ross to Beaglehole, 2 July 1957, MS 1442, 91:1, AR. 42 Ross thought these significant, even if they were an example of settlers favouring the Treaty for their own purposes. All historical analysis under the empiricist model began with investigation of the primary documents. Writing in 1898, the French archivist Charles Victor Langlois had decried the difficulties faced by European historians when the '[p]rogress of history depends in great measure on the progress of th~ general cataloguing of historical documents which is still very far from being adequately realised .'131 That th is statement still applied to New Zealand at the time of Ross' early research was obvious, while her revisionist approach made a sound documentary base al l the more important. The inability of the archives in the 1950s to provide such a base could , she felt, be held against her, and ultimately it called a halt to her research. At the conclusion of her work in 1957 her friend and National Archivist, Michael Standish wrote: 'No one can write the sort of thi ng you have written without looki ng into every likely and unlike ly source and these are not available to you at present. You wi ll never satisfy the Rutherfords of this country unless you have every little thing sewn up, unless you can demonstrate that, short of a miraculous hoard o_f records turning up, you have seen and compared everything .... people wi ll not be satisfied until you do . . . . The "last word" I suppose can never be written, but you can be certa in (more certain than you are) about some things if you have searched and searched 132 everywhere'. When Ross had begun working at the Historical Branch in the 1940s, government historical records were poorly ordered and inadequately housed. Frequent mention was made in letters and memos between colleagues of the documents' 'nutritive role' among the cats, rats and insects that lived in the 13 1 Ch.V. Langlois and Ch. Seignobos, Introduction to the Study of History, trans. G.G. Berry, London: Duckworth, 1898, p. 27. 132 Michael Standish to Ross, 13 June 1958, MS 1442, 91:2, AR. 43 cellars and attics in which they were stored. 133 Conditions had improved over the decade, and at the commencement of Ross' Treaty research Standish was in the process of transferring government records to one location in preparation for establishing a central archive. She was able to access the Parliamentary Papers of both Great Britain and New Zealand, the Colonial Secretary's Record and Letter books, and microfilm of the Colonial Office records. Material was still being ordered, however, and cataloguing was poor. The material regarding the Treaty was not yet completely catalogued.or under a single collection. On two occasions during her research, Standish produced new evidence regarding Hobson's proclamation of sovereignty that had been previously missing from the records. 134 It was unsettling to Ross that so much laborious research and speculation in one direction could be contradicted or negated by the arrival of a piece of evidence to the contrary. Even within National Archives the ability to locate information was still 'hit and miss,' and reliant on the knowledge of the individual archivists. They, on the other hand were under-resourced and unable to respond with the breadth of knowledge expected of them. 'What I know is spread horrifyingly thin', Standish confessed jokingly, ' ... it takes a great deal of ingenuity not to be discovered'.135 The other institutional and public libraries Ross worked from were similar. Poor cataloguing and storage of manuscript collections meant getting information was again dependent largely on the knowledge of individual librarians. The Auckland Public Library Ross found particularly frustrating for their poor cataloguing and unhelpful staff. The previous practice of allowing researchers to take manuscripts out of the library had also resulted in lost information that impeded research .136 13" , See for example, Guscott [Ross] to Heenan, ' Memo to the Undersecretary, Auckland I Northland Trip ', 31March1944, MS 230, folder 8, WTU. 134 Ross to Michael Standish, 26 June 1958, MS 1442, 91 :1, AR. 135 Michael Standish to Ross, 13 June 1958, MS 1442, 91, AR. 136 Ross to Dora and Graham Bagnell, 16 November, MS 1442; 90:2, AR. 44 So heuristic, during the early stages of Ross' research, was improving but still relatively precarious. While working at a distance, Ross felt by 1957 that she might have come fairly well to grips with her subject. A final research trip to Wellington in March 1956, however, convinced her of the opposite. She had gone to complete the last details of her research, but 'a few days in Archives', she explained to Beaglehole, 'showed me that instead of tying up a few loose ends I was only just beginning'. 137 Ross was unable to find accounts of the signatory meetings she was looking for, but her searching turned up other documents with regard to the Treaty that she was not aware had existed . This convinced her that New Zealand 's archives were still too haphazard to support research along the close documentary lines she had envisaged. Although in her particular situation, as the mother of young children and one who lived 'five hundred odd miles and twenty four damn uncomfortable hours away' from the archive, she was in no position to spend more time there , this was only a part, and not the full extent, of the problem.138 It was simply that the heuristic was not sufficiently advanced. The archive, she felt, needed to be systematically combed and catalogued in conjunction with the Turnbull Library and New South Wales governmental records . 'It's the turn of the archivist now', she wrote to Beaglehole, 'to make the historian take a look at the actual documents. They'll be surprised.' 139 Ross had also begun to lose confidence in the validity of her textual approach . During her research trip to Wellington, she had been disappointed at the reaction of the VUC History staff at an informal presentation of her Treaty findings. There had been considerable opposition to the primacy she afforded to the Maori text, some going so far as to regard it as being 'historically worthless' . 140 She was also surprised to find that she had unearthed a document regarding the acquisition of sovereignty that was unknown to the 137 Ross to Beaglehole, 2 July 1957, MS 1442, 91 :1, AR. 138 Ibid. 139 Ross to Beaglehole, 18 April 1957, MS 1442, 91 :1, AR. 140 Ross to Beaglehole, 2 July 1957, MS 1442, 91 :1, AR. 45 Victorian historians. The presentation had shown to Ross the extent to which her research was at odds with conventional scholarship as well as public sentiment. She wondered privately if the Government Printer would even publish the introduction as she had planned it, based on an analysis of a Maori text by a non-Maori-speaking Pakeha. She thought perhaps they would be fools if they did .141 She also began to ask herself if she had become too preoccupied with the text. Has this been to the detriment of other possible angles? While she acknowledged that an introduction that steered clear of the text may have been an adequate approach to a facsimile edition, she knew that she was not the person to write it. 142 With a combination of frustration and regret, she turned the facsimile introduction in. Ross had hoped that Michael Standish would take up the challenge of completing the introduction, but he tried to lure her back to the job with the possibility of travelling and copying grants. 14\ 'You saying you're sick to death of the T of W makes me nervous,' Standish wrote to her, 'but here goes .... ') If not Standish, then perhaps Wellington historian Ian Wards. In the event, neither Ross, Wards nor Standish completed the introduction. The facsimiles were reissued in 1960 under the original 1877 preface by Henry Turton , with an introductory note by C. R. H. Taylor, the Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library. 144 The concept of the Treaty as a treaty in English · and containing the 'simplest and clearest ideas' for a people 'with no experience of a civilised legal code' was continued. 145 14 1 Ross to Michael Standish, 26 June 1958, MS 1442, 91 :2, AR. 142 Ibid. 143 Michael Standish to Ross, 14 May 1957; Ross to Michael Standish, 26 June 1958, MS 1442, 91:2, AR. 144 C.H.R. Taylor, ' Introductory Note' in Facsimiles of the Declaration of Independence and the Treaty of Waitangi, 2"d Edition, H.H. Turton (ed.), Wellington: R.E. Owen, 1960. 145 Ibid. ( ... ,) . I'\.· 46 The adequate collation and cataloguing of Treaty docume·nts was remedied . over the following decades. By the time Ross wrote her 1972 article , archival and library services had developed to the extent that she was relatively confident about the completeness of her primary sources, or could identify the gaps. Presenting a critical analysis of the Treaty from the perspective of the Maori text, however, encountered other difficulties with regard to heuristic, and with the tenets of empiricism as a whole. The concluding sectio!1 of th is chapter discusses issues of heuristic with regard to Maori sources. The empirical method was based on the objective and critical analysis of historical records. The privileging of documentary evidence meant that whatever records remained in written form came to represent the historical experience. This was openly acknowledged. In their classic empiricist text, used as a basis to analysis in Chapter Three, Langlois and Seignobos asserted: 'The historian works with documents. Documents are the traces that have been left by the thoughts and actions of men of former times .... every thought and every action that has left no traces, or none but what have since disappeared, is lost for history; is as though it had never been .... For there is no substitute for documents: no documents, no history.' 146 For the empirical analysis of colonial history this had obvious implications. For Ross, researching the translation and interpretation of the Maori text of the Treaty, the absence of a Maori written record from the archive was particularly apparent. As Michael Standish wrote to her: "We are chock-a-block with Pakeha scribble which we treasure up, and how little there is of the Maori here. Faint echoes, inarticulate protests, distant pleas .. .. . We (I mean us archivists) have to remind ourselves that there were more than just a handful of savages 146 Langlois and Seignobos, p. 17. 47 around when Hobson and Wakefield and all the rest of them started gushing forth .'147 For information on the precedents in meaning and the explanation of the Maori text, Ross was reliant wholly on missionary or Crown records and their interpretation of Maori speeches and reactions. Of these Ross considered William Colenso's The Authentic and Genuine History of the Signing-to be the most rel iable. 148 While she and other historians could incorporate these accounts as much as possible into their analysis, they were clearly, in being translations, already one step further removed from the Maori narrative of events. As translations, they also appeared particularly open to further reinterpretation by historians in support of their own arguments. The variety of meanings attributed to Nopera's 'too often quoted epigram' regarding the shadow of the land was one example. In the works of Ngata and Rutherford, who argued from the perspective of the English text, this was taken to indicate the cession of sovereignty. 'The only thing wrong with that, ' Ross wrote to Beaglehole, 'is that people have assumed that by shadow Nopera meant sovereignty and substance he meant land.' From her own interpretation of the Maori text she believed Nopera to have meant the opposite: 'By substance I think he meant everything and by shadow nothing, or nothing of importance.'149 The alternative to Pakeha accounts of Maori responses to the Treaty were Maori oral traditions, or accounts written subsequently from the Maori oral record. In her own work with Maori regarding the Treaty, Ross had noted a 'missing generation' between the signatories of the Treaty records and the accounts of ancestors known to the elders at Motukiore. There was also confusion arising from the variations between traditional names and the 147 Michael Standish to Ross, 12 November 1958, MS 1442, 91 :1, AR. 149 Ross to Beaglehole, 2 July 1957, MS 1442, 91 :1, AR. Christianised names taken on later by Treaty signatories. 150 Although Ross herself became more comfortable with the fluid nature of Maori oral traditions and approach to history generally, it is unlikely that evidence of this nature, had she chosen to use it, would have been accepted within the historical academy. Recent post-colonial perspectives have argued that science-orientate_d quests for objectivity, such as empiricism, have contributed to the dehumanisation of indigenous people by Western researchers.151 In the case of history, the oral traditions, multiple and contested accounts legitimate within indigenous cultures , are seen as having 'collided' with the 'synthesis and firm authorial authority' valued by professional Western historians.152 This analysis seems applicable to post-war New Zealand. The loading against Maori oral traditions was evident in Beaglehole's essay, 'History and the New Zealander,' when he juxtaposed Maori oral history, however 'devotedly' transmitted, against 'historical knowledge in the true sense, the fruit of hard and long-continued labour on material remains and on documents .... '153 In 1966, Keith Sinclair, in his overview of New Zealand historiography, took this idea further and explicitly cautioned against the use of Maori sources. He listed a number of Pakeha analyses of Maori experiences that he considered superior to the accounts of Maori themselves , and specifically cited Waikato historian Pei Te Hurinui Jones' work on Potatau