Dicky Barrett (Dealer)

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Richard "Dicky" Barrett (* 1807 , † 1847 ) was one of the first European dealers in New Zealand . He acted as a translator for land purchases by European settlers from the Māori in New Plymouth and Wellington . He was a key figure in the early days of New Plymouth. He was described by Edward Jerningham Wakefield, son of the founder of the New Zealand Company , Edward Gibbon Wakefield , as "short, stout, perfectly rounded, and enthusiastic about wild adventures and crystal clear escapes".

Sailor, trader and whaler

Barrett was born and raised in Durham or Bermondsey in England. He worked as a seaman for six years and arrived in Taranaki in March 1828 as mate of the merchant ship Adventure from Sydney . He and Captain John Agar "Jacky" Love set up a trading post in Ngamotu (now New Plymouth). They exchanged muskets and trinkets for flax , corn, wheat and vegetables. These were grown by the local Māori of the Te Atiawa . The trading post attracted the interest of an increasing number of passing ships.

Barrett acquired a rudimentary knowledge of the Māori language , was given the name Tiki Parete and married Rawinia, daughter of a local chief. In 1832 Barrett and his former teammates (written down in 1873 as Akerau [possibly Akers], Tamiriri [Wright?], Kopiri [Phillips?] And Oliver) joined the local Māori in Pā "Otaka" in Ngamotu to attack from Māori Fend off Waikato . They shot at the attackers with three cannons, which they loaded with nails, scrap and stones. The siege lasted three weeks before the attackers withdrew. The battlefield was left littered with dead, many victims of cannibalism . In June, Barrett and Love moved south with 3,000 Atiawa-Māori.

In late 1833 or early 1834, Barrett and Love established a whaling station in Queen Charlotte Sound .

translator

In September 1839, Barrett sailed from Queen Charlotte Sound to Port Nicholson with representatives of the New Zealand Company on the Tory to help negotiate land purchases. The group stayed for 10 days and eventually received the signature of 16 Māori on a deed in English for the purchase of an estimated 64,000 hectares in the Wellington area. The Waitangi Tribunal , in its 2003 report on the land purchases in Port Nicholson, states that Barrett - who showed a remarkable incompetence as a translator - was unable to translate the document into Māori and that he was barely able to understand its meaning to make clear to the assembled Māori.

Barrett was later referred to by a contemporary as "the spokesman for Whaler Māori (whalers-Māori), a jargon that has a similar relationship to Māori as the Chinese pidgin English to our mother tongues".

In November 1839 Barrett came to Taranaki on the Tory to negotiate land purchases with his wife's Iwi . He stayed here while Wakefield traveled north to Kaipara . On February 1, 1840, he "translated" sales documents and received 72 signatures for the purchase of a huge area in Taranaki, which stretched from Mokau to Cape Egmont and inland to the upper reaches of the Whanganui River . Payment was made with muskets, blankets and similar goods.

J. Houston wrote in Maori Life at Old Taranaki in 1965 : “Many of the actual owners were absent, others had been enslaved by the Waikatos in the north. So the 72 chiefs of the Ngamotu happily sold land in which they themselves had no interest, also land in which they only had joint ownership rights with several others. "

The Māori were given little opportunity to understand the real meaning of the business because of Barrett's inadequate translator skills. At a hearing of the Land Claims Commission in Wellington in 1843, he was asked to translate a lengthy purchase agreement for land in Māori to prove his skills. He "turned a 1,600-word document written in English into 115 meaningless Māori words".

"Agent for the Natives" and settlers

Dicky Barrett's grave on Lower Bayly Road, Ngamotu, New Plymouth .

Barrett moved to Wellington to open a hotel. In early 1840 he was named "Agent for the Natives" by Wakefield. Wakefield said that role would make him "the mediator between the settlers and their dark-skinned neighbors in all disputes and in the allocation of reservations in the land they now inhabit and cultivate". The position was linked to an annual salary of ₤ 100. Barrett received much praise from Wakefield for his loyalty and success, as well as his skills as a translator.

In 1841 he returned to New Plymouth with Frederic Alonzo Carrington , a surveyor hired by the New Zealand Company to survey the new town. in the same year he married Rawinia. In the marriage certificate, he describes himself as "of age whaling captain".

Barrett returned to the growing New Plymouth settlement and established a commercially successful whaling station. He worked as the unofficial harbor master and helped the immigrants off board the arriving ships ashore. He also did horticulture and agriculture. He drove the first cattle and sheep from Wellington to Taranaki and introduced numerous new grains and vegetables to New Zealand. He missed the arrival of the first settlers, who arrived on the William Bryan in 1841 , as he was about 6 miles inland looking for peach trees that he had previously planted there.

When the Land Claims Commission held a controversial land purchase hearing in New Plymouth in 1844, it attributed 24,000 acres of "lawfully acquired" land to the New Zealand Company, including 72 acres for Barrett and his family.

Fall from grace

From 1842 Barrett became a persona non grata and was accused by the Atiawa-Māori, the settlers and Governor Robert FitzRoy of having contributed to tensions regarding the settlement of Māori land through his original conduct of negotiations. These tensions later led to the First Taranaki War .

Barrett died in 1847, possibly of complications from a heart attack. Claims, published in the Taranaki Herald in 1941, that he was fatally injured in killing a whale off the New Plymouth coast are unsupported by contemporary sources. He was buried in Wahitapu Cemetery on Bayly Road in New Plymouth. His wife and an eight-year-old daughter are also named on the tombstone.

The Barrett Lagoon, Barrett Reef, Barrett Domain, Barrett Road and Barrett Street (and the Barrett Street Hospital, which was previously located here ) are named after him in New Plymouth . The Barrett Reef in Wellington Harbor is also named after him.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Edward Jerningham Wakefield: Adventures in New Zealand. , Vol. 1, 1845.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Angela Caughey : The Interpreter: The Biography of Richard "Dicky" Barrett . David Bateman Ltd , 1998, ISBN 1-86953-346-1 (English).
  3. ^ A b c Rhonda Bartle : The Story of Richard (Dicky) Barrett . In: Puke Ariki . New Plymouth District Council , November 12, 2004, accessed February 23, 2016 .
  4. ^ B. Wells : The history of Taranaki: a standard work on the history of the province . Edmondson & Avery , New Plymouth 1878 (English, online [TXT; accessed April 8, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Te Whanganui a Tara me ona Takiwa . In: Waitangi Tribunal Report 2003 . WAI 145 , May 16, 2003, p.  63–65 (English, online [PDF; 12.9 MB ; accessed on April 8, 2018]).
  6. ^ Protector of Aborigines George Clark in Notes on Early Life in New Zealand, cited by Waitangi Tribunal Report on the Wellington District, page 52.
  7. ^ J. Houston: Maori Life in Old Taranaki , 1965 cited by JS Tullett The Industrious Heart: A History of New Plymout. 1981, p. 8
  8. ↑ Rhonda Bartle : Dicky Barrett Part 3: Quest for Land . In: Puke Ariki . New Plymouth District Council , November 12, 2004, accessed February 23, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Barrett, Dicky
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barrett, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION New Zealand trader, whaling captain and translator
DATE OF BIRTH 1807
DATE OF DEATH 1847