By John O'Hare

WAIMATE NORTH: Evidence of early bilingual attempts at communication between Māori and Pākehā can be found at Te Waimate Mission, the historic property in Waimate North cared for by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. 

A display exploring early European and Māori life at Te Waimate Mission is currently taking place at the second oldest building in New Zealand. 

Te Waimate has one of the earliest ‘how to speak te reo’ guides ever produced in its collection.

Written by Professor Samuel Lee of Cambridge University in 1820 – with assistance from two rangatira who were in Britain at the time, Hongi Hika and Waikato – A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of New Zealand is an extremely rare taonga that illustrates the attempts, by both Māori and Pākehā, to communicate with each other. 

Another example has also surfaced from within Te Waimate Mission’s collection – this one dating to a time about 20 years later, when Bishop George Augustus Selwyn was attempting to transform the first inland Christian mission into a kind of theological college. 

As well as higher theological learning, including equipping Māori catechists to spread the Christian message, it looks like Selwyn was also tackling the day-to-day challenges of improving communication between Māori and Pākehā. 

One example of this is a kind of phrase book that was produced by the Bishop listing different Māori names for the body for use in a medical consultation – or ‘Physic’ as it was described.

Words for visible parts of the body – as well as organs – were included in the guide which would presumably have allowed for a productive consultation; though a generic script between a patient and medical person hints at a gulf between mutual understanding, which may have persisted despite people’s efforts. 

The rather stilted – almost painful – conversation was translated as follows: 

A: Give me some physic. 
B: For whom?
A: For a certain man.
B: Where. 
A: In the Native place. 
B: Where is his illness?
A: All over. 
B: Let him come here. 
A: He is not strong enough; give me the physic. 
B: I cannot give physic at a guess; lest the medicine should be wrong, and the man die: there is a different physic for each illness; bring him here. 

If Te Waimate Mission’s medic showed reluctance to make visits to patients’ houses back in the 1840s, this was only reinforced by a kind of early, somewhat crude, medical policy entitled ‘The Law of the Bishop to all persons who want Physic’.

“The Bishop orders that people shall come in the morning to fetch physic, and not keep dropping in all day long, because it plagues the Doctor.”

Whether the Bishop was using the word ‘plague’ in a humorous, even lighthearted way in this context is unknown – though the feeling is probably not.