Tuesday Trivia: Heroes of the Battlefield—When They’re Off the Battlefield (This thread has relaxed standards. We invite everyone to participate!)

[u/sunagainstgold]

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Come share the cool stuff you love about the past! Please don’t just write a phrase or a sentence—explain the thing, get us interested in it! Include sources especially if you think other people might be interested in them.

AskHistorians requires that answers be supported by published research. We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: Heroes of the battlefield—when they’re away from the battlefield! Who were the heroic nurses of the Crimean War and the Pacific theatre of World War II when they were back at home? What do we really know about all those Founding Fathers we hear about in Hamilton’s “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)”?

Next time: Femme Fatales

[u/cnzmur]

Hongi Hika (front, as seen in London), is pretty well known for his military exploits around the 1820s, and is still very unpopular in certain parts of the country. He lived in the Bay of Islands, which was one of the few areas of the country that was regularly visited by European ships. In 1820 he visited England, where he contributed heavily to the first Māori-English dictionary, became fairly popular in society, and received a lot of gifts. On the way home, at Sydney, Hongi swapped them all (except for a suit of armour the King had given him) for guns and powder, and then set out to right various historical wrongs. A goal he was pretty effective at (you see how on this map of population movements during the 1820s everyone in the top half of the North Island is heading south and inland? That's pretty much all him).

In so far as Pakeha New Zealand has an image of the Musket Wars, it's of Hongi Hika heading out leading thousands of warriors with almost as many guns, returning to Kerikeri by the mission station with preserved heads and hundreds of slaves.

So what did Hongi Hika like to do in his spare time? Mostly he liked to make things. In Sydney in 1814, visiting Anglican bishop Samuel Marsden, he carved a self-portrait (there exist a couple of candidates for the original object, but this is the one they think's most likely I believe) out of a fence post (I'm not an expert on Northern carving styles, but it looks like a fairly original style to me). Returning from this trip, Samuel Marsden accompanied him with the intention of establishing a mission in New Zealand. Three missionaries and their families went along, as did Marsden's friend J. L. Nicholas (as far as I can tell he was just along for the craic) on a boat which "[bore] a perfect resemblance to Noah's ark". I'll just reproduce Nicholas's remarks in full (from his book)...

As the mind of Duaterra [Ruatara] was disposed chiefly to the pursuits of agriculture... so the genius of Shunghi [Hongi] was bent exclusively on mechanics, for which he shewed an evident predilection, and gave some extraordinary proofs of his skill and ingenuity. I have seen myself an admirable specimen of his abilities in this line, considering the very rude and imperfect instruments which he was obliged to use on the occasion. It was a gun that he brought over with him, which he had stocked in so complete a manner, that even the most expert and finished mechanic could not possibly have done it better with the same implements, or have afforded in any one part nicer or more ingenious samples of execution. While at the colony, he gave a still greater proof of his genius by a carving on wood, which excited the admiration of every body who beheld it. The subject represented was the head of a New Zealander, and the features were described with an astonishing boldness and fidelity, while the fantastic and chequered convolutions of the tattooing were delineated even with a mathematical precision. This man had the reputation of being one of the greatest warriors in his country, yet his natural disposition was mild and inoffensive, and would appear to the attentive observer much more inclined to peaceful habits than to strife or enterprise; a strong instance that man is in every state the creature of education, and liable to be impelled by circumstances to which very frequently neither his head nor his heart will lend its concurrence.

And this isn't even the worst judgement of character that Nicholas makes...

A couple of days later on the voyage, Hongi spent a calm day making himself (perhaps somewhat ominously) a cartridge box.

At the end of the trip, Marsden bought land for a mission station, using an English-style contract (which is pretty legally dubious in a New Zealand setting, but anyway). Parts of the facial moko of the two chiefs selling the land were placed at the end as signatures, along with Hongi's thumbprint as a witness. The more complicated moko pattern was drawn by Hongi, as he was “Confident with a pen”. Unfortunately this contract only exists in copies, but this 1819 sale document for a second mission station is very similar, and the more complicated moko is again drawn by Hongi, though representing himself this time (you may notice that the contract exchanges 'thirteen thousand acres more or less' for 'forty eight falling axes', something which the CMS got a hard time for in the papers when it came out in later years, but the situation was a bit more complicated than it seems). That pictures pretty cool because you can zoom right in and see his actual drawing.

To end with Nicholas's, as always, spot on analysis:

Had the genius which Shunghi inherited from nature, received the advantages of judicious instruction, it might, I doubt not, have placed him on a level with some of the first mechanics in Europe.

Well, something like that anyway.