No. 14

Mr. S. LOCKE to the Hon. the NATIVE MINISTER

Napier, 30th May, 1874

SIR,-

I have the honour to forward the following report, for the past year, of the general state of Natives in the East Coast and Taupo districts, including Hawke's Bay, Wairoa, Poverty Bay, Waiapu, East Cape, Taupo, Tuhoe or Uriwera, and Patea.

Hawke's Bay

The Maoris of this part of the country are in that position where they find the balance of power turned in favour of the European. They feel that their old mana and customs and power of their chiefs are gone; at the same time they have only acquired that amount of knowledge that makes them jealous of the change going on around them, without having, for the altered position in which they are placed, learnt those habits of steady industry and application of general principles for their guidance, to allow of their participating freely in the general progress. The rapid exchange of property that that has taken place during the past few years put large sums of money into their hands, which, in many cases, they squandered in a most reckless manner, living at the same time an idle life without attempting to provide for the future, so that when the time came that this source of revenue ceased, and it became necessary to turn again to labour, a feeling of discontent arose, and in some instances with an appearance of reason for it, one of the causes being through the grantees getting all the proceeds of the sales or leases, and spending it on themselves, without dividing it amongst their relatives, whom they were presumed to represent. . . . There has sprung up. . . a league. . . whose ostensible object is to look into past land transactions, and also practically for the passive resistance to all land sales, etc, and the opening up of the country. Amongst other things, they oppose the education of children in English. . . . [T]his movement will probably gain followers – at all events for a time. With an excitable, untutored people, such movements will speedily fall from the want of organization, or end in a far different result, and more disastrous than that contemplated by its promoters. . . .

On the other hand there is a large party of industrious Natives in the district who cultivate extensively, paying all their attention to improving their properties and educating the rising generation. Over 2,000 bushels of wheat and 200 tons of potatoes, exclusive of maize, etc, were grown on the plains last year. There are two schools established in the district, under the provisions of the Native Schools Act, . . . both of which are conducted in a most satisfactory manner, and the children show great progress in their knowledge of the English language, considering the short time they have been learning; so much so, that it is time to consider some way of providing for some of them by apprenticing them to useful trades. . . .

Even casual visitors to the American Memory website are bound to find themselves lingering longer than intended, drawn in by the website's compelling treasures. Beautifully designed, American Memory offers primary sources (in full-text documents, sound files, photographs, and even films) culled from the collections of the Library of Congress—the largest library in the world—as well as from other, collaborating libraries.

For a scholar of children's history, American Memory has much to offer if you know where and how to look. Avoid using "children" as a search-term on the main page – it will yield 5,000 hits. Begin by glancing at the "Collection Highlights" on the main page, where librarians rotate various collections. By coincidence, the collections spotlighted as of this writing—March 2008—are both pertinent to the history of childhood, showcasing children's recreational pastimes (baseball) and reading habits (Sunday-school literature) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Spalding Base Ball Guide collection, comprising issues from 1889-1939, offers data on "rules and 'how-to's' of the game, information on the game's founding fathers, photographic illustrations of teams and players from across the land, and game statistics." Supporting collections include Baseball Cards, 1887-1914, with stunning high-quality images of the fronts and backs of each card, and the impressive Baseball and Jackie Robinson collection, documenting the story of the first African-American to play in the Major Leagues, and thus, one of the first professional sports heroes for African-American boys.

These collections do more than chart baseball's history; they illuminate the culture of the sport, the discursive field in which baseball is situated. That many baseball-enthused children use statistical knoweldge as "cultural capital" with each other is a fact that spans historical periods, just as true today as it was 100 years ago. A student who loves baseball might find much in these collections that s/he can relate to personally, as well as uncovering a rich resource for studying childhood.

The other spotlighted collection, Sunday School Books: Shaping the Values of Youth in Nineteenth Century America, offers full-text access to 163 texts known as "Sunday-school literature," a genre often dismissed as too pious and boringly repressive to warrant study. But, as the most widespread form of children's literature before and during the Civil War, Sunday-school books are vital sources of information about the values inculcated in 19th-century American children. Texts in this collection—easily searchable by title, author, or subject—include such eye-catching titles as "Sarah's Home: The Story of a Poor Girl Whose Father Was a Drunkard and Whose Mother Was Unkind."

Most of the material about children on the American Memory site is not conveniently categorized as such; it is contained within collections organized around different foci. Click on "List All Collections" on the main page, and scan all the collections' titles. Some, like Maps of Liberia, immediately reveal themselves as less relevant to a children's historian; however, any collection on cultural history, race, gender, or popular culture has something to offer, as do many on politics, reform, and photography.

Collections on minority populations often include vivid photographs of children in those communities. American Memory is perhaps the best source on the Internet for high-quality historical photographs; for example, a photo of children at the Supai Indian School is reproduced in such high detail that one can clearly see signs of the forced "civilization" that Native-American children endured in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the government removed them from their tribes and sent them to boarding schools to learn "American" ways. The photo shows children gathering for a meal with their heads shaved, wearing Anglo clothing. Similarly, The African-American Experience in Ohio contains numerous newspaper articles about children, as well as photographs like this one of pupils at a "colored" school. In The Chinese in California, 1850-1925 one finds multiple photographs of Chinese American children in their daily contexts of family, school, and play.

Some of the richest photographic collections are regional in focus: Photographs from the Chicago Daily News, 1902-1933 and Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920 provide dozens of photos of children and teens as school students, sweatshop workers, game players, and family members. These photos can be analyzed easily in classrooms for the details they reveal about the dress, comportment, and activities of youth, as well as the ideologies of the institutions in which children gather. For example, the site's numerous photos of early 20th-century schoolrooms and playgrounds—scattered throughout several collections—reveal a pedagogical philosophy of uniformity and regimentation unfamiliar to people educated after the 1970s.

Children's history is not only about the lived experiences of actual children; it is also about the role that children play in the adult creative imagination. Both sides are well represented throughout American Memory; the collection of films and sound recordings from the Edison Company is one of the most fruitful to explore. Searching with terms like "children," "boys," and "girls," one will find films that document real historical events, like the activities of the newsboys and "street Arabs" who worked on the sidewalks of New York at the turn of the last century. But there are also fictional films here that unfailingly cast children as mischievous, subversive irritants to adult peace of mind—films such as Maude's Naughty Little Brother, Love in a Hammock, Little Mischief, and Grandma and the Bad Boys. The narrative strategy that uses "child" as a short-hand for "inappropriate disruption" is another defunct idea in American popular consciousness; watching these films leads to some eye-opening comparisons between different social constructions of the category of "child."

Finding sources on adolescents, rather than children, is more of a challenge. "Adolescent" and "teen" are not frequently used in the Library of Congress's catalog descriptions, so using those as search-terms will yield few results. One can find good material on older children in two ways: first, by examining artifacts categorized by the word "children." Some of the youngsters in such photographs, or in the imagined audiences of some texts, are clearly high-school aged. The second method is to search collections that relate to pastimes of adolescence—like dancing and listening to popular music. Dance Instruction Manuals, 1490-1920s is not explicitly about children, but since dancing was a popular pastime among young people, these manuals reveal part of the cultural life of middle-class American teens in earlier times. That same collection contains a pamphlet published by the U.S. government: "Public Dance Halls: their regulation and place in the recreation of adolescents." In Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz, one can scan the subject-index to find entries like "Dancers" and "Jazz Audiences." Though few, these photographs show enthusiasts who are obviously in their teens and early twenties, passionately involved in their musical pastimes.

The collections described above are merely a tiny sample of what's available at American Memory; rich and fascinating sources on youth history can also be found in Nineteenth Century in Print; America from the Great Depression to World War II; Motion Pictures from 1894 - 1915 and Voices from the Dust Bowl, among many others. With more than 100 different collections on the site, at least half of which contain pertinent material, there are literally thousands of artifacts here that document the histories of children and youth. A teacher or student who devotes some time to exploring this site will find countless inspirations for research and classroom activities.

I teach an undergraduate American Studies course on "Children's Literature and American Culture," which uses children's literature as a lens for examining the history of childhood (and American cultural history more generally). I use the Norton Critical Edition of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868-69), edited by Anne K. Phillips and Gregory Eiselein (2004) as the core text in a three-week unit on girlhood in the late 19th century.

Scholars often label the period between 1865 and 1920 the "Golden Age" of Anglo-American children's literature, as this is the period when many of the classics were written and published, including Alice in Wonderland (1865), Ragged Dick (1868), Tom Sawyer (1876), Treasure Island (1884), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), The Secret Garden (1911) to name just a few. This "golden age" came about because of changes in American childhood that produced the impetus to create and the market to consume books written primarily with the aim of entertaining children.

Why I Taught the Source

Little Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy stands at the threshold of changing notions about childhood (and consequent changes in children's literature), between the more didactic literature from earlier in the century that aimed to mold a moral, rational child, and the more purely amusing literature written decades later. The enormously popular and enduring book, focusing on four sisters in a middle-class New England family that has fallen into hard times financially, gives particular insight into the changing position of girls and women in American society. Moreover, the wealth of detail in the book reveals a great deal about the quotidian dimensions of children's daily lives in the late 19th century, from what they read, ate, wore, and played to their schooling, chores, and dating rituals. Finally, the moralizing dimensions of the book make explicit a set of ethical and moral assumptions that guided young people at this time in their thinking about class, gender, nationality, friendship, marriage, parenthood, and a range of other issues.

Little Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy was originally published in two volumes by Roberts Brothers: the first volume was published in 1868, the second in 1869. The two volumes were published as a set in 1870; this edition was republished several times over the next decade. A set of revisions between 1880 and 1881 resulted in what became known as the "regular edition," which was reprinted countless times. In the last several years, the original 1868-1869 work has received new critical attention, and it is this edition that is reprinted as the Norton Critical Edition.

The Norton Critical Edition of Little Women contains a wealth of materials that enhance one's ability to teach Little Women as both a literary and a historical document. Not only does the edition include biographical information, writings by Alcott, reviews of the book from the time, and recent literary criticism, it also reprints several earlier works that are key to understanding the form and content of Little Women, including relevant chapters from a 19th-century American edition of Pilgrim's Progress and Maria Edgeworth's short story, "The Purple Jar" (1801). The former is an excellent example of a religious and highly moralistic—yet exciting—text read by children from the Puritan era into the 19th century; the latter, read alongside material on the literary and historical context of the early 19th century, aptly represents a didactic tradition that emphasized moral lessons, yet portrayed children as capable of making and accepting responsibility for their own decisions.

How I Introduce the Source

These earlier literary works lay essential groundwork for a discussion of Little Women: Alcott uses Pilgrim's Progress as a central structuring and metaphorical device in her novel (chapter titles include "Burdens," "Beth finds the Palace Beautiful," "Amy's Valley of Humiliation," "Jo Meets Apollyon," and "Meg Goes to Vanity Fair") so that a reading of relevant chapters in Bunyan's tale greatly enhances students' understanding of Little Women. Alcott draws on the metaphors employed in Pilgrim's Progress to communicate moral lessons, but one can also find explicit and implicit debt to Edgeworth, whose work the girls' mother, Marmee, reads aloud to them after a particularly trying day. The central tension in Little Women is Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth's struggle to be good amidst all the temptations of vanity, self-indulgence, materialism, laziness, gluttony, selfishness, ambition, and, in Jo's case, willfulness. From Edgeworth Alcott seems to have borrowed the practice of teaching children moral lessons through example. Several vivid chapters in the book illustrate this, such as a the hilarious "Amy's Valley of Humiliation," in which Amy gets caught in school with pickled limes and must bear the humiliation of her punishment, and "Meg Goes to Vanity Fair," in which Meg attends a much anticipated society soiree and returns home feeling an uncomfortable combination of exhilaration and shame: shame about letting herself get so dolled up that she was unrecognizable, and about vicious gossip she overheard. In this instance, just in case Meg hasn't learned the lesson herself, Marmee, with quiet scorn, remarks upon that class of "worldly [but] ill-bred" people, "full of those vulgar ideas about young people" (83).

A chapter from Anne Scott MacLeod's American Childhood: Essays on Children's Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Georgia 1994) on "American Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century: Caddie Woodlawn's Sisters," provides an extremely useful framework for thinking about Little Women. Using examples from several 19th-century stories with girl protagonists, MacLeod suggests that this literature (including Little Women) reveals, on the one hand, the relative freedom afforded young girls and their involvement in rough and tumble outdoor pursuits, and, on the other hand, that this freedom ended rather abruptly as girls reached womanhood and were expected not only to get married, but also to assume a "womanly" demeanor and a range of household duties. These themes are echoed in Steve Mintz's Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood (Belknap 2005): chapters on "Inventing the Middle-Class Child" and "Children Under the Magnifying Glass" likewise work well with Little Women, offering useful background on childhood during this era. Such themes as expressed by MacLeod and Mintz clearly play out in Alcott's autobiographical Little Women, which betrays nostalgia for the girls' relative freedom and their grand aspirations for the future, in contrast with the rather settled lives they will lead as women.

Reading the Source

Teaching Little Women, I start with background on the period and on Alcott, and then we move into a discussion of the book, reading, along with the text itself, relevant chapters in Mintz and MacLeod, as well as literary criticism included in the Norton Critical Edition.

We spend three weeks studying Little Women and related texts and approaches, with the book serving as the central case study in a more general discussion of childhood and the "Golden Age of Children's Literature." Earlier in the course, students read excepts from Pilgrim's Progress and Maria Edgeworth's "The Purple Jar" as part of their study of Puritan-era and early republican children's literature. This also prepares them to follow allusions to these sources as they come up in Little Women.

In the first class period of the "Golden Age" unit (my class meets twice a week, for 75 minutes each class period), we discuss the relevant historical, literary, and biographical backgrounds to the book, with students reading Anne Scott MacLeod's essay, "American Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century: Caddie Woodlawn's Sisters," Alcott's own "Reflections of My Childhood" (collected in the Norton Critical Edition of LW), and a chapter of Steve Mintz's Huck's Raft that deals with childhood in the late 19th century. I give a mini-lecture on trends in childhood and in children's literature of this period, and briefly go over Alcott's biography; as a class we discuss the key ideas that came up in the readings, particularly in the MacLeod piece, as they help to illuminate the experience of American girlhood in the late 19th century. By the second class period in the unit, students need to have read the first 12 chapters of Little Women. Prior to this, I ask different students to read for specific issues: some focus on the development of particular characters (Jo, Beth, Amy, Marmee, Mr. Laurence, Laurie, etc.); others look for moral and/or religious messages; the image of childhood, home and family life; gendered messages and/or imagery; messages about class; and the way in which Pilgrim's Progress serves as a framing device for the book.

During the next class period we discuss these issues as they play out in the book, with students or groups of students reporting on what they found in the reading. In class I also ask students (in small groups) to find details in the text that describe clothing, food, play (there are wonderful examples of children's theatrics, a self-produced newspaper, and chores made into games); domestic furnishings; courting rituals; and gender roles. I also ask them to consider the book's take on religion and spirituality; attitudes about class; attitudes about immigrants and foreigners; and discourses around health and mortality. In preparation for the next class discussion, I ask students to post their own questions on blackboard (covering up through Book II, chapter V of the story). Students' questions have addressed romantic relationships in the book, patriotism, publishing, characterization, education, changes in tone from Book I to Book II, shifts away from the tone and style of earlier publications for children, religion, morality, marriage, and a range of other issues. These questions wind up taking more than one class period to discuss; I have students devote a portion of the time to small group discussions, but the class tends to be small enough that we can fruitfully discuss as a whole class. During the last two periods we begin to bring in other readings again: they read an essay by MacLeod on "American Boys" and use this to think about how Little Women fits into the "Bad Boy" tradition in American children's literature (think of Tom Sawyer and Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy), and I also have students pose additional questions on blackboard once they have finished reading the book. The last day of our discussion is focused on literary criticism, using the criticism that is collected in the Norton Critical Edition. All students read Elizabeth Vincent's "Subversive Miss Alcott," and then each student chooses one other piece to read carefully and summarize: their choices include Catharine R. Stimpson, "Reading for Love: Canons, Paracanons, and Whistling Jo March," Barbara Sicherman, "Reading Little Women: The Many Lives of a Text" and Elizabeth Keyser, "Portrait(s) of the Artist: Little Women." Students bring written summaries of their articles to class, discuss their articles in small groups, and then report on the articles to the rest of the class. We also have a more general discussion about how literary criticism can open up our understanding of texts.

The paper assigned as a culminating exercise for this unit asks students to use Little Women as the starting point for a discussion of childhood or girlhood in the late 19th century, using both historical frameworks provided by MacLeod, Mintz, or other background, as well as at least one piece of literary criticism from the Norton Critical edition. The ways in which the book both challenges and reinscribes gender roles in the late 19th century makes it an obvious text for students of American girlhood, but there are a wealth of other historical arenas that one could explore by starting with Little Women.

Reflections

What I really enjoy about teaching this book is that most students know about it, but few have read the original source, and they wind up enjoying it much more than they expect to, especially when given historical and literary backgrounds with which to frame their reading of the book. I also like the practice of pairing literary texts with historical ones. I have only taught this class once, but it was one of the more successful courses I've taught. I have never before devoted three weeks to a single book, but it worked very well, especially with assignments and related reading structured in.

Literary materials are somewhat complicated artifacts for use in the history of childhood, but they tell us a great deal about how children were imagined and addressed by adults and, in the case of a book with a long and devoted following among children, they can tell us about children's interests and reading habits. Moreover, the details of this particular book, while not a documentary record, do give students a rich portrait of life in a particular place, at a particular time, for middle-class, Anglo-American girls, a portrait far more textured than might be available in other kinds of historical documents.

Although I use Little Women in an upper-level, writing-intensive undergraduate American Studies course, I think the book could be used very fruitfully in a course on the history of childhood or the history of girlhood, with, perhaps, less emphasis on literary criticism and more emphasis on the ways in which various details (e.g. about chores, or the girls' reading, or religious mores, or games, etc.) can be corroborated through other historical sources.

The causes of bad attendance, exclusive of bad roads and inclement weather, may be classed under two heads - (1) The home circumstances of the pupils, and (2) the school and its authorities. Under the first head I may mention parental indifference or neglect and excessive work required from children of very tender years. I know that during the milking season some children have to milk as many as ten cows every morning, and, if they come to school at all, arrive late, and are so fatigued as to be unfit for the work of the day. Though I regret the fact, I am afraid that in some cases there is no just remedy, as in some of the outlying districts the struggle for existence is harder than many people imagine. I was told by one teacher that children at his school had to gather fungus during the day in order that the bare necessaries of life might be procured for the families, and I have no reason for doubting his word. . . . Under the second of the above heads there is ample scope for attraction. When a school building is ill-lighted, gloomy, and depressing one cannot wonder at children preferring to stay away more than at their preferring sunshine to dulness [sic]. Then by all means let our schools be cheerful, bright, and attractive, and let the walls be covered with interesting and instructive charts and pictures such as will arouse and sustain curiosity. . . . Let the first impressions of the school-day be pleasant ones. Let us have means by which the children may amuse themselves during the recesses and before school opens, and they will, if possible, come early and regularly for a brief interval of companionship and amusement. . . . Again, the personality of the teacher is a well-known factor in producing good or bad attendance. Lack of sympathy, harshness, carelessness, and incompetency will inevitably lower the attendance. . . .

JUVENILE DEPRAVITY SUPPRESSION BILL

Mr W. HUTCHINSON [member for Dunedin City] said this was a Bill entirely on the right lines, and he congratulated the Premier on its introduction; at the same time, he would allow him to say that it did not go far enough. The question was one of momentous importance, deeply affecting all the towns, and more especially all the cities and principal centres of population. . . . There were a number of young children amongst us painfully demoralised – so young, some of them, that the policeman could not think of interfering with them – children suffering from a so- called liberty run unto utter license and lawlessness; and all this arising largely from parental carelessness or positive neglect. He was not going to trouble the House with statistics. He did not know that statistics bearing precisely upon this point were available, and he had no wish to draw any darker picture of the case than the facts warranted. They were bad enough as it was. From communications he had had from Auckland, he found that this city suffered terribly from this blight of juvenile vice. . . .

He had no information that he could quote from Wellington or Christchurch, but there was little doubt that these cities were neither better nor worse than their neighbours. . . . He was glad to say that the large majority of our people cherished the love of their children and the purity of their households above all other possessions; they desire such legislation as is now proposed; and this all the more because there were poor children of the streets – strayed and straying – whose numbers were sometimes recruited by children from very respectable families – showing us a cruel and savage side to our civilisation. These mere children got together at the street-corner or under a dark verandah; they talked, or they listened to talk, not the sweet babble of childhood, mixed with its laugh of innocence, but talk that need not be described; they got into temptations of all kinds before they understood the disastrous results which certainly followed. He ventured to suggest that these young children should be dealt with before they come to those of more advanced age. The Bill before them took no note of this incipiency in vice, yet it was here the mischief began. The Bill was a police Bill, pure and simple; but they needed more. It was an out-worn but still perfectly true axiom that prevention was better than cure. Children up to ten years of age living in all our towns should be under the shelter of the household roof after nightfall; and the parents and guardians of these children should be responsible that it was so, under a penalty. If the children were out of doors they should be in the care of some grown-up person. Did anyone who knew what childhood was – its susceptibility to external influences and its facile aptitude to learn and assimilate impressions – doubt this proposition. There was a social gangrene. He would cut it out of the body politic by clearing the streets of all young children after dark. Surely there would be no hardship – no invasion of liberty, rightly understood – in doing so. A certain number of young children – very young children – had drifted away from parental care, and hung about the streets at night. It was not only wretchedness for themselves, and from which they had to be protected, but they were too apt to lead others into equal wretchedness; so that their protection was not only for themselves, but for others who might fall a prey to their evil example. He would not proposed to punish these unfortunate children. They had been neglected by their parents, and it was therefore on these parents the blame primarily rested. They must exercise their lawful authority, and see that their children were in the house at reasonable hours or take the consequence. . . . Turning to another phase of the question, he had become acquainted with cases in which the father told the Magistrate that his child was beyond control – that the child was unmanageable; and he dared say the father was correct. But it was only a confession of culpable and criminal weakness all the same. The child was certainly not beyond control when first he or she was permitted to roam the streets at improper hours; and the parental neglect demanded punishment. . . .

SHOCKING DISASTER AT CAMBRIDGE
Three Children Burned to Death

One of the saddest fatalities that have ever shocked the senses of the people of this district occurred at Cambridge on Thursday afternoon, resulting in the burning to death of three young children, Hedley James Osborne, aged four years, Julietta Alice Osborne, aged two years, and Mary Agnes Osborne, aged five months. . . .

Mrs Osborne, having some shopping to do in the town, put her infant child to bed, and locked it up by itself in the bedroom, so that it should not be disturbed by the other two children. Seeing that everything was safe, there being no fire in the house since breakfast time, she shut up the boy and the girl in the kitchen, and proceeded to town on her business. When leaving her home in this way, it was a usual thing for Mrs Osborne to shut up her children, believing that did she not do so they would find their way to the river, only a few chains distant, or to a deep well adjoining. . . .

"I was in the habit of leaving my children at home by themselves about once a week. I was generally away from about one to two hours. I very often took the baby with me. . . . There was neither fire nor ashes in the stove when I left home at twenty minutes to one. I forgot to put the matches away. The matches were on the ledge over the mantelpiece, and the boy must have got the broom and knocked them down. I have seen the boy get the matches frequently and try to light his father's pipe. . . I was generally careful in keeping the matches out of his way. There was some paper underneath the sofa, and under the cushion of the chair there was a Weekly News. The children were in the habit of reading the paper and playing with it. The inside of the house was papered. . . I usually keep the matches in the bedroom, and the children saw me put them above the fireplace before I left."

The Coroner then summed up. He referred to the boy's habit of using matches as described by the mother, and he had no doubt but that the fire originated by the boy getting hold of the matches on this occasion, and in some way setting fire to their clothes or some paper that may have been lying about. . . . He thought that the children might have been left with some neighbour.

A juryman informed the coroner that there were no neighbours in the vicinity, and the unfortunate people were not in a position to employ a girl to look after the house in their absence.

A verdict of accidental death by burning was returned.

September 1, Sunday [1839]. After prayers on board [the Tory], we landed and visited the whaling-town of Te-awa-iti [Te Awaiti, in Queen Charlotte's Sound]. . . . There were about twenty houses presented to our view; the walls generally constructed of wattled supple-jack, called kareau, filled in with clay; the roof thatched with reeds; and a large unsightly chimney at one of the ends, constructed of either the same materials as the walls, or of stones heaped together by rude masonry. Dicky Barrett's house, or ware [whare] as it is called in maori or native language, was a very superior edifice, built of sawn timber, floored and lined inside, and sheltered in front by an ample veranda. A long room was half full of natives and whalers. His wife E Rangi, a fine stately woman, gave us a dignified welcome; and his pretty half-caste children laughed and commented on our appearance, to some of their mother's relations, in their own language. He had three girls of his own, and had adopted a son of an old trader and friend of his named Jacky Love, who was on his death-bed, regretted by the natives as one of themselves. He had married a young chieftainess of great rank, and his son Dan was treated with that universal respect and kindness to which he was entitled by the character of his father and the rank of his mother. . . .

There were about twenty-five half-caste children at Te-awa-iti. They were all strikingly comely, and many of them quite fair, with light hair and rosy cheeks; active and hardy as the goats with which the settlement also swarmed. The women of the whalers were remarkable for their cleanliness and the order which they preserved in their companion's house. They were most of them dressed in loose gowns or printed calico, and their hair, generally very fine, was always clean and well-combed.

Francisco Ferreyra versus Don Pedro Sueldo about reclaims. Córdoba, May 12th, 1853. In Villa de Rosario [Córdoba province] on May 17th, 1852, witnesses testified that Sueldo had escaped to Santa Fe [province] to avoid prosecution, and they did not know if the animals that he took belonged specifically to Vicente Ferreyra. Francisco Ferreyra on June 3rd, 1852 accused Sueldo of taking his family's estancia during the 1840s. He stated that the order came specifically from the government. One witness saw the Ferreyra family's brand mark on one cow. He also brought witnesses who worked for Sueldo.

For all of the declarations that have been brought, Señor Mayor, Sueldo disposed of our property as if he was the owner of all our property. . . The most serious measures were taken [against our family] for the security and tranquility of the province. . . [in the 1840s] Don Vicente Ferreyra found out somewhere that it was said that Colonel Salas would march to the province of Córdoba with force, but in fact, he had escaped with various soldiers at his command to Santa Fe, Don Ferreyra having been one among them. . . Ferreyra also drove toward Sante Fe, and he and others emigrated after being ordered to do so. . .

On July 29th, 1852, it is the order of this court, considering first that the estancia was taken with public authority without which had been proven and that [Sueldo] was given permission to its particular uses; second, that Sueldo had used the embargoed property in Calchín; third, that the same [Sueldo] took the [Ferreyras'] furniture; and fourth, that Sueldo took all of the animals out of the province for Santa Fe. . . Don Pedro Sueldo would be absolved of the first three charges; [however,] he is ordered to pay in money or value the attached appraisal of 27 sheep, 70 goats, 21 bushels of wheat, 15 milking cows, etc with more than 200 pesos multiplied by the private interest which accrued during the course of eleven years. . . Tomás Garzón.

[Pedro Sueldo was not satisfied with the verdict and appealed. Daniel, Francisco's brother, responded to one of Sueldo's appeal.]

In the name of the offended, justice commands silence to those, like Sueldo, who have the audacity to say that they served the Patria, [and] who invoke a reputation [and] a good name that they never had received [in the first place]. They talk about their services to the state! These [services] are evident in Villa [de Rosario], a place once full of respectable families before and now depopulated [and] in ruins. They refer to their work for the Patria, but those like [Sueldo] only served as instruments of tyranny to tie the hands and feet [of the Country], sending it to the monster that devours it!!! Oh! No, it is better that Sueldo remain silent. Daniel Ferreyra

To the Spirits of Camila O'Gorman

In vain the echo of my dark accent
To vindicate your spirit it rises,
Because my voice drowns in the throat
Of the passions the violent din. . .

But it does not matter!. . . If the barbaric assassin
That ended your miserable days
Has left evil roots
In the bosom of the Argentine space

A new progeny rises
That now stomps the threshold of the future
And it will root out those germs of the crime
With the ease of his angered sole!. . .

A new progeny, that imbued
Of the thought that May gave birth to,
Will fulminate with implacable ray
The remains of the despotic murderer!. . .

It is her turn to remove the graves. . .
To wash the stains that imprint on you
Those that applaud, sacrilegious, the crime
That in you, Camila, Rosas perpetrated.

H.C.F.

Buenos Aires, October 30, 1856

LONG LIVE THE ARGENTINE FEDERATION! DEATH TO THE SAVAGE UNITARIANS!

Buenos Aires on 21 December 1847
Most Excellent Señor:

I take the liberty of addressing Your Excellency by means of this letter, to raise to your Superior understanding the most atrocious act ever heard of in this country; and convinced of Your Excellency's rectitude, I find a consolation in sharing with you the desolation in which all the family is submerged.

Most Excellent Señor, Monday the sixteenth of the current month I was advised at La Matanza (where I reside) that my youngest daughter had disappeared; I instantly returned and have learned that a clergyman from Tucumán named Ladislao Gutiérrez had seduced her under the guise of religion, and stole her away abandoning the parish on the twelfth of this month, letting it be understood that in the evening he needed to go to Quilmes.

Most Excellent Señor, the preparations he has made indicate that he is heading inland, and I have no doubt he will cross into Bolivia, if possible, since the wound that this act has caused is mortal for my unfortunate family, and the clergy in general; consequently he will not feel secure in the Argentine Republic. Thus, Señor, I beg Your Excellency to send orders in every direction to prevent this poor wretch finds herself reduced to despair, and, understanding that she is lost, she may rush headlong into infamy.

Most Excellent Señor, that my presumptuous letter may find you at Lujan, and the state of affliction in which I find myself, both compel me to bring to the attention of Your Excellency these descriptions of the fugitives. The male individual is of average height, thin of body, moreno in color, large brown eyes that bulge somewhat, curly black hair, a full but short beard of twelve to fifteen days; he has two woven ponchos, one black and the other dark with red stripes, he has used them to cover pistols in his saddlebags. The girl is very tall, black eyes, white skin, chestnut hair, thin of body, and has a front tooth that sticks out a bit.

Most Excellent Señor, deign to overlook the style of this letter. Your Excellency is a father and the only one capable of remediating a case of transcendental importance for all of my family, if this becomes public knowledge. All of them add their pleas to mine, to implore the protection of Your Excellency whose humble servant is Adolfo O'Gorman.