Just
after the New Year, after planning for weeks to take a walk to the Howick
Historical Village, I finally did it. The village structure is situated not far
from the Burswood neighbourhood, where I live. A short walk through the
neighbourhood, up a hilly path, through a children’s playground and onto
Golfland Drive I went. From this point, I followed the road signs through busy
traffic, complete with honking cars, until a got to the dirt road closed off
from cars by a chain link. This appeared to be the back entrance to the village.
Howick Historical Village is a reincarnation of the European settlers, who
lived in this defence outpost and presents life as it was from 1840 to 1880.
The historical buildings and landmarks, distinguishing this settlement, have
been preserved by the Howick Historical Society, and give visitors the feeling
of having walked back in time. If you have ever been to the Old Sturbridge
Village in western Massachusetts, then you can imagine what this one is like.
I was not able to go in, as I was afraid still at the time to randomly pay for
entry fees to museums, but I was still able to get inside the yard and onto the
porch of the Bell house, which sits astride the edge of the village quarters.
From my vantage point, I could see people in costume milling about, pretending
to have (I presume) conversations regarding matters in their lives as they were
important to them then.
I did a bit of reading on the history of this village and the surrounding
areas. The village is located in the historical city of Howick, renamed as such
by Earl George Grey, a former Governor Captain, from the name given to the area
of Owairoa (flat waters). When the Europeans arrived, the Maoris (the Ngaitai
Tainui) had already inhabited the area since more than 1,000 years ago. When
the Europeans arrived, the Maoris perceived them as a threat, but Chief Wiremu
of Ngati-noho, curbed a potentially volatile relationship by using diplomacy
and sharing of goods.
Earl Grey had converted Howick into a strategic buffer to
protect Auckland from invaders from the south. From walking around and reading
little historical tidbits here and there from signposts marking physical
landmarks, I deduced that this area, Howick, Mangere, Panmure, and Pakuranga
were former defencible (soldier settler) areas set up to create a military
buffer around Auckland. It seems the in-migration of Europeans, despite efforts
to welcome them peacefully, ultimately resulted in land wars that displaced
Maori maraes from lands considered to be invaluable to cultural survival – not
unlike the land displacement histories of Native Americans and other indigenous
peoples.
One name, in particular, kept popping up as I visited places
and read placards: Robert Massey. He owned large tracts of lands that were
eventually parcelled out and bequeathed to government and possibly returned to
some Maori tribes. Two homesteads, in Howick and Mangere, commemorate his
contribution to New Zealand history.
The recognition of Maori presence in the Howick Historical
Village barely shows up. I looked at photographs from a book on the village’s
history (An Introduction to the Howick Historical Village by Alan La Roche),
and apart from a raupo cottage, which looks very much like a bontoc (of
the Philippines) house on stilts, there was very little to speak of in the
make-up of Howick’s first settlers in the Howick Historical Village.
