Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story

By Christina Thompson

A beautifully written, fiercely intelligent and boldly conceived book that puts the author's unlikely marriage to a Maori man into the context of the history of Western colonization of New Zealand and the South Pacific.

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man.

As an American graduate student studying history in Australia, Thompson traveled to New Zealand and met a Maori known as "Seven." Their relationship is one of opposites: he is a tradesman, she is an intellectual; he comes from a background of rural poverty, she from one of middleclass privilege; he is a "native," she descends directly from "colonizers." Nevertheless, they shared a similar sense of adventure and a willingness to depart from the customs of their families and forge a life together on their own.

In this book, which grows out of decades of reading and research, Thompson explores cultural displacement through the ages and the fascinating history of Europeans in the South Pacific, beginning with Abel Tasman's discovery of New Zealand in 1642 and Cook's circumnavigation of 1770. Transporting us back and forth in time and around the world, from Australia to Hawaii to tribal New Zealand and finally to a house in New England that has ghosts of its own, Come on Shore brings to life a lush variety of characters and settings. Yet at its core, it is the story of two people who meet, fall in love, and are forever changed.

"A multilayered, highly informative and insightful book that blends memoir, historical and travel narrative...vivid and meticulously researched."--San Francisco Chronicle

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Release date: Nov 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781608196388

Christina Thompson

Christina Thompson is the editor of Harvard Review and the author of Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story, which was shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her essays and criticism have appeared in numerous publications, including Vogue, the American Scholar, the Journal of Pacific History, and three editions of Best Australian Essays. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Writer's Grant from the Australia Council, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award. A dual citizen of the US and Australia, she lives outside of Boston with her family.

Book preview

COME ON SHORE

AND WE WILL KILL

AND EAT YOU ALL

A New Zealand Story

CHRISTINA THOMPSON

BLOOMSBURY

Time is a flattened landscape, a land of unlinked lakes seen from the air.

—Annie Dillard, Living by Fiction

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue: New Zealand, 1642

1   Paihia

2   Abominably Saucy

3   Mangonui

4   Terra Incognita

5   Present Perfect

6   The Venus

7   A Natural Gentleman

8   A Dangerous People

9   Smoked Heads

10   Turton’s Land Deeds

11   Nana Miri

12   Hawaiki

13   Once Were Warriors

14   Gu, Choki, Pa

15   Matariki

16   Thieves and Indian-Killers

17   One Summer

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Maps

Epilogue: New Zealand, 1642

Glossary

Selected Bibliography

A Note on the Author

A Note on Pronunciation and Spelling

Imprint

For Aperahama, Matiu, and Dani Matariki

Prologue: New Zealand, 1642

It is the evening of December 18, 1642, about an hour after sunset, ten, perhaps ten thirty at night, with the sky still holding the last vestige of light on the western horizon. The crews of the two ships Heemskerck and Zeehaen see the light of many fires on shore and four canoes, two of which come toward them through the deepening gloom. It is not their first indication that this island or continent—they know not which—is inhabited, but it is the first time they have been close enough to make out the people.

For five days they have been following the coast, running north with a wide, open sea to their left, rolling in great billows and swells, and a high, mountainous land to their right, masked by low-lying clouds. They have been keeping well out to sea lest the wind, which is predominantly from the southwest, should freshen and drive them onto the shore. They are looking for a landlocked bay or sheltered harbor where they might safely go ashore and see what kind of country this is they have discovered. They want wood and water, fresh food, game, and greens. When they find a long, low sand spit curving round to the east enclosing a large, open bay, they call a meeting of the ships’ council and make a resolution to land.

The two ships set sail in August from the Dutch outpost of Batavia, now the Indonesian city of Jakarta. They were under the command of Abel Janszoon Tasman, a captain in the service of the Dutch East India Company, and were commissioned to explore what lay south of Java between the Indian Ocean and the coast of the New World. Sailing west and south with the winds to Mauritius, Tasman’s ships described a great arc through the Indian and Southern oceans. When they turned east in the high southern latitudes, they passed into a region that was largely unknown. They sailed south of mainland Australia, missing the continent entirely, and made their first landfall on the island now known as Tasmania, which they named Van Diemen’s Land in honor of the governor-general of the Dutch Indies.

Here they landed long enough to see smoke and signs of fires. They heard people singing and playing a gong somewhere in the forest. They found notches cut into a tree at five-foot intervals and, believing these to be steps, concluded that the people must be giants. But the Tasmanian Aborigines remained hidden in the bush, with watching eyes on our proceedings, or so the nervous Dutchmen believed. There was, in any case, nothing of interest to the Company and so Tasman set sail again to the east. Eight days later they sighted a large land, uplifted high: the first recorded European glimpse of New Zealand.

The evening of December 18 finds them anchored in fifteen fathoms. The wind dies with the setting sun and there follows an hour of glassy calm, broken only by voices and the splash of oars. The Zeehaen’s boats have been sent to reconnoiter the bay and, when they return with the fading light, they are followed at some distance by two canoes. These come within a stone’s throw of the Dutch ships and lie there, riding on the swell. Each of the canoes carries a dozen well-made men of average height with skin of a color between brown and yellow and thick black hair tied up in the fashion of the Japanese. Their chests are bare but around their waists they wear some kind of mat or clothing.

After a while, a man in the prow of the larger canoe stands and calls out in a guttural voice words that no one on board the ships can decipher. The master’s mate calls back in Dutch and then the man in the canoe lifts something to his lips and blows a blast on what sounds to the sailors like a Moorish trumpet. The second officer of the Zeehaen, who has come out to the Indies as a trumpeter, is sent to fetch his horn and ordered to play a tune. This exchange is repeated a number of times and, when it finally grows too dark to see, the canoes turn and paddle back to shore. Uncertain of the natives’ intentions, Tasman sets a double watch and sees that the men have muskets, pikes, and cutlasses to hand.

Early the next morning, a canoe carrying thirteen men approaches. The Dutch sailors lean over the rails, showing white linen and knives and trying to indicate by signs that they want to trade. But the natives keep their distance and eventually they leave. Tasman calls a council of his officers and resolves to bring the ships inshore, since, as he notes in his journal, these people (as it seems) are seeking friendship.

But barely has this decision been reached when seven canoes set out from shore, speeding across the water. The Zeehaen’s skipper, who is on board the Heemskerck, grows nervous about having left his crew unsupervised and sends his quartermaster, Cornells Joppen, back in the cockboat with instructions to the junior officers to be on their guard. The canoes, meanwhile, having reached the ships, take up positions on either side.

Joppen delivers his message and gets back in the cockboat, ordering his rowers to return to the commander’s ship. As if on cue, the nearest canoe begins paddling furiously in his direction. Joppen has his back to the canoe and, at first, he does not see it coming. The sailors on board the ships begin to shout, but the natives in the other canoes are also shouting and waving their paddles in the air. The canoe, now flying over the water, rams the cockboat so violently that two of the sailors are tossed into the sea. Joppen reels and grabs for the gunwale but a native jabs him in the neck with a spear and hurls him overboard. The rest of the natives leap from their canoe and fall upon the sailors with clubs, beating them so furiously about the head that three sailors are killed instantly; a fourth lies bleeding in the bottom of the boat.

Joppen and the two sailors manage to swim away and the shallop is sent to rescue them. The natives drown one of the bodies and drag another into their canoe. The Dutch fire heavily with muskets and guns but miss their mark and the natives retreat to shore without suffering any casualties. The Heemskerck’s skipper is sent to recover the cockboat with its grisly cargo of dead and dying men, and Tasman gives the order to set sail, since no friendship could be made with these people.

The ships weigh anchor and begin to move but the sailors can see a fleet of twenty-two canoes massing like storm clouds in the distance. The canoes, which are much faster and more mobile than the heavy ships, advance with alarming speed, obviously intending to cut off the intruders before they can escape from the confines of the bay. The Dutch wait until the natives are within range and then fire, this time rattling the canoes with shot and hitting a man in the leading canoe who is standing with a little white flag in his hand. The natives abruptly stop paddling. The Dutch spread what canvas they have and the Heemskerck and Zeehaen sail away, leaving behind the Maori armada and the bodies of two of their men.

Tasman calls a meeting of the ships’ council and then goes below to commit his account of what has happened to paper. Since the detestable deed, he writes, of these inhabitants, committed this morning against four of the Zeehaen’s crew, teaches us a lesson, we consider the inhabitants of this country as enemies. And to this place he gives the name of Murderers’ Bay.

I

Paihia

If you stick a hatpin in at Boston and drive it through the center of the earth, you come out very near the Bay of Islands. The first Europeans to go south of the equator expected to find a sort of looking-glass world, backward but recognizable, like people who resembled them but walked on their hands. This, of course, is not how it was, though there were birds that scuttled and animals that flew, trees that lost their bark and kept their leaves, pools of bubbling mud and other wonders. But even today there is something about the antipodes that makes one feel estranged, as if time had stopped or begun reversing, as if under a different heavens one were breathing a different air.

The first time I was in New Zealand it was as a tourist. I had been living in the Pacific for about three years, studying at the University of Melbourne, and I was on my way back to Australia after spending Christmas with my family in the States. I was traveling alone with no real plans, only that I wanted to spend a week somewhere, and New Zealand, like Tahiti or Rarotonga, was conveniently on the way. I had been to the islands on previous trips and I was looking for something uncomplicated, someplace I could just relax before starting the new academic year. At the tourist bureau in Auckland they suggested I try the Bay of Islands. It’s beautiful up there, said the girl at the counter with a sigh. So I took a bus to Whangarei and got up early the next morning to catch the milk run going north.

There were only a handful of passengers on the bus, all half-asleep. The front two seats were stacked with mailbags and parcels. I took a seat halfway back and watched as we pulled away from a Victorian country railway station on a defunct stretch of line. The sun was climbing into the sky and the day promised to be hot and bright.

We left town by the industrial quarter, a series of low, corrugated aluminum sheds, chain-link fences, boats on blocks, and the hulks of rusting machinery. We passed a three-story Victorian corner hotel painted blue, the Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant, the vast, empty parking lot of Pak ‘n Pay. Then we were on the outskirts of town, row after row of little wooden houses, yellow and white, each with a concrete step and a patch of yard and a Hill’s hoist gleaming in the morning sun. Every couple of blocks there was a corner store already open for business, the day’s headlines blaring in four-inch type from posters propped outside—FINANCE MINISTER SACKED; FRENCH EMBROILED IN DIPLOMATIC SCANDAL. I caught a glimpse of dim interiors behind strips of fluttering plastic, the poor man’s fly-screen door.

For nearly four hours we ground our way up steep, volcanic hillsides between dense patches of native bush, thickets of manuka and giant fern. Then down the other side, the engine whining in protest and the landscape opening out before us like a nineteenth-century painting. The names of suburbs and towns rolled by: Kamo, Hikurangi, Whakapara, Waiotu, Moerewa. I looked them up in my dictionary of place names: Kamo—to bubble up, descriptive of hot springs; Hikurangi—point or summit of the sky; Whakapara—to make a clearing in the forest; Waiotu—spring or pool of Tu, the god of war; Moerewa—floating like a bird in sleep or, perhaps, to sleep on high. In between, the country was empty. Stripped of its native covering, it looked smooth and bald. Sheep the color of dust grazed on hillsides covered with a stubble of grass and the scoria of ancient volcanic explosions. In the vales and clefts the grass was startlingly green; on the hills it was burnt golden brown by the fierce antipodean summer. There were farms every so often and once or twice a view of the sea, glimmering far off.

At Puketona we left the main road and made a steep descent through a twisting, deeply shaded ravine, emerging suddenly into a blinding world of sunlight and water. WELCOME TO PAIHIA, said a sign by the roadside, JEWEL OF THE BAY OF ISLANDS.

Paihia is not a Maori name. It is widely believed to be a pidgin expression: pai means good in Maori, while hia is thought to be a transliteration of the English word here. According to a popular story, the Reverend Henry Williams, who established a mission there in 1823, was so enchanted by the site that he exclaimed, "Pai here! meaning What a good place this is! or How good it is to be here!" The experts, though, cast doubt upon this explanation, arguing that it seems too good to be true. At least two other early commentators had spelled the name differently, referring to it as Pahia, which, in Maori, means to slap.

Today Paihia is a tight half mile of chip shops, milkbars, seaside motels, and concrete condominiums, a pale, patterned grid of balconies and awnings set against a backdrop of brooding, prehistoric bush. Across the road is the Pacific Ocean. Not the open sea, but the Bay of Islands, a sublimely beautiful stretch of water with dozens of islets and a complex, meandering coastline, named in 1769 by Captain James Cook, who was the first European to see it.

My bus rumbled to a stop at the edge of the wharf. The passengers all got off and stood outside, blinking and stretching and putting on hats and shading their eyes with their hands. I stayed where I was for a moment, staring out at the glittering sea and thinking about the long January arc of the sun as it made its way across the southern hemisphere. In Boston, where I had just come from, it was pitch-dark at four thirty.

After a minute the bus driver stuck his head back in. You need any help there?

I got off the bus and walked out onto the pier. To my right an arm of the coastline reached out into the bay, enfolding a little harbor. A number of yachts and launches bobbed at anchor and I caught the faint, melodic clanking of wires hitting the aluminum masts. To my left and beyond was the open bay and the myriad islands like the hills of a drowned continent sticking up out of the sea. There were dozens of boats out on the water, their brightly colored spinnakers bellied out in the breeze. But the air on shore was still and the sun hot in a cloudless sky.

In Australia I often used to stand on the beach and look out to sea and think about what it must have been like to see these places for the first time. It was a curious thought, since the view from where I stood was exactly the opposite of what those first Europeans saw. They, seeing land from sea, recorded it in gently undulating profiles, taking note of any distinctive formations that might prove useful to future navigators. To them it was a stretch of rocky coastline, miles of inscrutable gray-green bush, a series of possible landfalls, inlets and bays where one might get water, reefs and sandbars to avoid. To me, standing there with my back to the cliffs, it was a great reach of emptiness, a stretch of possibility, the gentle curve of the horizon at the edge of the sea. Still, I thought I understood something of the sense of expectation those early explorers must have felt as they approached an unknown coastline for the first time.

The Pacific was an enormous challenge for Europeans. It was so far away, so difficult to get to, and, when they finally reached it, so unexpectedly immense. The early explorers suffered terribly from scurvy, hunger, thirst, not to mention disorientation in the course of voyages that often lasted for years. But it was not just the size of the Pacific that confounded them. It was its emptiness, a reality all the more distressing for the fact that it was not at all what they had imagined they would find.

For centuries the map of the world showed a huge mysterious landmass to the south peopled by men with funny hats or the heads of dogs, wielding spears and praying to idols. It was known as Terra Australis Incognita, the Unknown South Land—or sometimes, more optimistically, Terra Australis Nondum Cognita, the South Land Not Yet Known—and its existence was an article of faith among European geographers for fifteen hundred years.

The theory, first articulated by the ancient Greeks, was that the landmasses of the northern hemisphere must be counterbalanced by an equal weight of continental matter in the south, or else the world would topple over. But although European explorers crisscrossed the Pacific, beginning with Magellan in 1520, the great South Land remained stubbornly elusive. There were tantalizing hints, rumors of sightings: an island auspiciously named Austrialia del Espiritu Santo by Quirós in 1605, something called Davis Land in the eastern Pacific, sighted by an English buccaneer in 1687 and never seen again, suggestions of continental shadows, of land birds too far out to sea, of unexpected cloud formations in places where they shouldn’t be. There were bits of Australia, a tip of Tasmania, a coast of New Zealand, islands scattered here and there, but few complete outlines well into the eighteenth century. And in the absence of conclusive proof to the contrary, many continued to cherish the idea of a strange and marvelous country somewhere in the South Seas.

But if Europeans in the Pacific were always hoping to stumble upon some great good place, experience often disappointed them. The Solomon Islands, named for the biblical King Solomon (and his gold) by the sixteenth-century Spanish explorer Alvaro de Mendaña, turned out to be inhabited by cannibals. Australia, first visited in the early seventeenth century by the Dutch, was, in the view of Jan Cartensz, the most arid and barren region that could be found anywhere on earth, while New Zealand was inhabited by a people so treacherous and belligerent that anyone hoping to land there would, at least according to Abel Tasman, have to fight his way to shore.

Of course, none of this stopped Europeans from coming—far from it—but it did occasionally give them pause as they peered into the early-morning mist, trying to decide if that smudge on the horizon were the coast of some undiscovered country or a bank of low-lying cloud, or wondering, as they drew near some unknown coastline, what manner of men they might find.

I took a long last look out across the bay and made my way back up the pier to where the bus was idling. All the other passengers had vanished, merging into the crowd of tourists and shoppers on the opposite side of the road. For a moment I thought about following them. It was an appealing sort of place, touristy but recognizable in the way that resort towns often are, an easy sort of place to imagine staying. But the ticket I was holding was not for Paihia. It was for an inland agricultural center called Kerikeri, where, in an effort to economize, I had booked a bed at the local youth hostel.

The driver was already in his seat and he gave me a nod as I climbed back on the bus. It was just the two of us, and as soon as I was settled, he yanked the door shut and we pulled out into the stream of traffic snaking through the town.

We passed a series of gift shops and tearooms, a couple of real estate agencies, a one-hour photo lab, some restaurants, a hairdresser, and a bank. There were signs for at least a dozen motels that I might have stayed at: the Dolphin, the Outrigger, the Nautilus, the Admiral’s View. There was one with a nice ring to it called Cook’s Lookout and another with the oddly ironic name the Abel Tasman Lodge. But it was not a big place and before long we had reached the end of Paihia proper. Then trundling over the Waitangi Bridge, we left the motels and spinnakers behind us and climbed back into the green and shadowed bush.

Kerikeri, known to the missionaries as Kiddy-kiddy, lies upriver from the Bay of Islands just beyond the navigable head of the Kerikeri River. There is a famous mission house there and the oldest stone building in New Zealand and, not too far from either of these, the ruins of a Maori pa, or fortified village, known in pre-European times as Te Waha-o-te-riri, or the Mouth of War.

At thirty-five degrees south latitude, well watered, and protected from the prevailing winds, the inland Bay of Islands is a gardener’s paradise. Charles Darwin, visiting the region in December 1835 on the homeward leg of his voyage in the Beagle, described crops of barley and wheat standing in full ear and fields of potatoes and clover. There were large gardens, he wrote, with every fruit and vegetable which England produces; and many belonging to a warmer clime … asparagus, kidney beans, cucumbers, rhubarb, apples, pears, figs, peaches, apricots, grapes, olives, gooseberries, currants, hops, gorse for fences, and English oaks; also many kinds of flowers. Kerikeri, which means, literally, dig, dig, still produces all this and more, including many fruits unknown to Europeans in Darwin’s day, like passion fruit, feijoas, and tamarillos.

Like most ordinary towns, Kerikeri is made up of concentric circles. It has a small retail center with a handful of shops, a newsagent, a couple of banks, a Laundromat, a supermarket, a post office, and a pub. Outside this is a ring of marine and agricultural businesses: tractor sales and tire centers and places to get a boat engine overhauled. Then there’s a suburban belt of ranches and bungalows on quarter-acre blocks, beyond which lie the commercial orchards and farms.

Kerikeri is a prosperous town with an air of solid, middle-class well-being. A sizable chunk of the population is made up of local farmers and businessmen, some of whose families have lived in the area for generations. In recent years it has attracted a large number of new arrivals: rose growers and hobby farmers and well-heeled retirees, drawn to the region by the gentle climate and the pleasant way of life. Somewhat less expectedly, Kerikeri is also home to a thriving alternative fringe. Tucked in between the farm stands on the road to Whangarei are pottery barns and woodworking studios. You can easily find someone who does shiatsu massage or aromatherapy, and at least one store in town sells Indian cottons, crystals, and healing CDs.

On certain days of the week there are great congregations of Maoris in Kerikeri. They sit in parked cars and chat through the window. They buy fish-and-chips at the takeaway and eat it off butcher paper in the park. They splurge on lotto tickets, tailor-mades, pies with sauce, cream buns, and cases of beer. You can see them in the Laundromat, folding and gossiping while the kids play video games, or queueing up at the supermarket, their trolleys piled high with staples: flour in twenty-kilo bags, sugar, tea, milk, potatoes, pumpkins, butter, eggs, and jam.

Most of the Maoris in Kerikeri live out beyond the smaller landholdings, beyond the orchards

Reviews for Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All

[poetreegirl · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I can't say I didn't learn anything by reading this book, but it was difficult to get through. I would not recommend it or choose to read anything else by this author.

[undeadgoat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I started reading this book in the middle of a hectic semester, so took a long time to finish it; probably I should have sat down an read it all at once to do a proper review. I personally found the book fascinating, both as a memoir and as a story of New Zealand. I have a personal fascination with the Pacific and with New Zealand in general (why I requested the book), and unlike a lot of other reviewers really enjoyed the structure--sort of an intellectual digression, a journey of the mind. Like many travel books, personal experience and intellectual research inspire each other; however, unlike a travel book, the framing story is of a life, not a journey. This book is not necessarily for everyone, but it is definitely for people like me, who enjoy books about many facets of a place, other people's struggles with "white guilt", and selected bibliographies.

[meggyweg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a book that doesn't seem to know what it wants to me. Christina Thompson has a PhD in English and the book definitely has a literary style, but the topic is more historical/anthropological. Certainly it's part memoir also, but I think the majority of page space is taken up by her history of the Maori people. Then at the end she throws in a history of her own white American relatives and the white settlers' obliteration of the Native American tribes. I understand we're meant to draw a parallel between that and the Maori history of colonial exploitation, but it really didn't belong.The memoir parts of the book seemed quite insubstantial to me. I couldn't get a sense of how she was feeling at different parts of the story, and her husband had no personality at all. She seemed to drift into cohabitation and marriage with him much the same way she drifted randomly into the bar where they met. Obviously she loves the guy -- they've been married twenty years, moved back and forth across the equator innumerable times, have three kids, yada yada -- but I don't get any sense of their love. She seems to focus much more on how little she and her husband have in common, in terms of appearance, family background, cultural heritage, education, interests...Possibly I am being overcritical. I don't think this was a bad book. In fact I really enjoyed reading it and learning about a people I previously knew little of. I just think it needed a lot more focus, mainly.

[birdmaddgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

i started this book in the boston airport and finished it in the cancun airport. well-paced, engaging, thoughtful. thompson tells the story of her love for new zealand and the maori man who became her husband, but this is not a love memoir. it's the story of cultures interacting, of the history and future of new zealand, and of the consequences of colonialism. highly recommended reading.

[dannelke · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful blend of travelogue, maritime history and cross -cultural polination. I've seen a couple of reviews of this title that complained about being whip-sawed a bit between the past and present but in my opinion such reviews entirely miss the point of the author's approach. Mainly that the past is always with us and colors our interactions and perceptions and the more mindful we are of the past the more we are equipped to better understand the experiences of the moment.Anyone who appreciates the writing of John McPhee or Simon Winchester will find much to admire here.

[ms8c8earthsci · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. I am planning to visit New Zealand next year and had no idea of the history of the people there. Reading "Come on Shore" helped me understand NZ history and culture better and was easy to read. The basic story is that of an American woman who travels round Australia and New Zealand while writing her doctoral thesis and meets and falls in love with a Maori man. Their ensuing marriage brings to light many of the cultural differences between Western culture and other cultures who are seen as disorganized or indifferent, In reality our way of life is less natural and more constrictive than that of the Maori and Polynesian cultures and there are hilarious moments in the book where the author's boyfriend ( and later husband) just doesn't understand what all the fuss is about when not following the expected daily routines when he comes to live in the States.

[laurabrook_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I pick up a travel book, there are always a few expectations - funny language miscommunications, getting lost, discovering new things about yourself - that I look forward too. This book has all of these elements, but it also has a wonderful thing that I wasn't expecting. Mixed into Christina's life experience, there is a wonderful history of the Maoris and New Zealand. It made reading slightly less smooth (not necessarily a bad thing), and it added more depth to her story. In fact, it's unlike any other travel book I've read. It's like a cousin to the typical travel lit book. Her writing and use of language is a pleasure, and the way that she simultaneously points out and embraces cultural differences is thought-provoking and comforting. Having always had a fascination with Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, it was truly enjoyable to learn a little more about the history of the countries. I'd highly recommend this book if you're looking for armchair travel with a bit of learning thrown into the mix. Christina Thompson has a new fan!

[labfs39 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I began reading this book, not knowing what to expect. The title was a bit off-putting, and I had read a review that warned readers off in no uncertain terms. But from the prologue on, I found the book to be engaging and a wonderful read. The history of the Maori people and the colonization of New Zealand by the Europeans was exotic and yet very familiar to a New Englander raised on tales of hardy settlers versus the noble but warlike "Indians". I felt a special affinity for the author's experience having spent many years as a graduate student in history myself, and I admired her ability to reflect about herself as clearmindedly as she did about 17th century seafaring encounters. She makes of her own life a case study in cross-cultural first contact and understanding. The drawback to this detached style, however, is that there is little romance on which to envision how two people from such different cultures could make a life together for over twenty years. I was left wondering about the inner lives of the people involved, not just the prototypes that they represent. This book is not a memoir of a woman and her Maori husband; it is a anthropological study on the crash of cultures and the tidal lands where they intersect.

[phinz_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Christina Thompson takes all of her research into the history of New Zealand and mixes it up in a pot with all of her personal experience of her marriage to Seven, a Maori man. What she cooks up for us is a wonderful tale of the decline of the Maori dynasty in New Zealand and its reasons, the rise of Colonialism in New Zealand and a better understanding of how and why many events took place during this period. Jumping back and forth between the past and the present, Thompson kept me interested the entire time, wondering what was to come next. Her exposition of her own family's history was a glorious icing on the cake. I couldn't put this book down and found myself wanting to read more about New Zealand, a country as far removed and mysterious to me as my country is close and familiar. Highly recommended for one who loves memoirs with history and humor mixed in.

[kphillip9 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Who would not want to read this book after reading the title? As other reviewers have mentioned, I was hoping to receive more background information on New Zealand. That way, I could have hopefully envisioned the environment a little better. It also would have added to the storyline a great deal. However, the story dives into Christina's relationship with a Maori man, while she has missed a flight back home. The idea is romantic, but I did not think that the writing was that interesting. I really wanted to enjoy this book, but the author tended to give too much time to some of the lesser details in the memoir. It was a good read, but unfortunately, a little slow.

[literarysarah · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Christina Thompson has written a thoughtful memoir about her marriage to a Maori man and their efforts to understand each other as well as their extended families despite their cultural differences. As a scholar who has spent many years studying the South Pacific, Thompson brings a larger historical perspective to the story by describing some of the early encounters between Europeans and Maoris. The result is a charming and very readable examination of her experiences and her thoughts on her children's legacy. Cross-cultural marriages are not uncommon, but such well considered and well written studies of the roots and implications of cultural differences are rare indeed.

[madhatter22 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is part memoir, part travel narrative, part history, part anthropology. Some of these parts work better than others. I really enjoyed the sections of the book that dealt with early contact between Maoris and Europeans, and with the results of the two cultures coming together. I'm part Hawaiian, and I found the parallels between the arrival of Europeans in New Zealand and in Hawaii interesting, as well as the discussion of the settling of the various Polynesian islands.I enjoyed reading the author's first impressions of the Maori village her husband grew up in, its inhabitants, and the differences between her culture and theirs, but I found myself wishing for more history, and less memoir. The descriptions of their moves from city to city and inadequate apartment to inadequate apartment seemed like filler, and the author's wondering what everything meant got repetitive. (One place in the memoir where I would have liked a little more description was when she met her future husband. She sees him and gives a few sentences on his appearance and their brief conversation, he invites her to leave with him after she misses her bus, they go to a party where he isn't mentioned, she wakes up the next day, and suddenly they're living together in a shack by the beach, without ever a word about any attraction to or feelings for him. I had to go back to see if I'd missed something.)Overall this was an enjoyable book. If Christina Thompson ever writes a book that's strictly history, done in this same engaging, non-academic style, I'd love to read it.

[leebot_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My husband and I have twice visited New Zealand -- one of our favorite places to travel, so I am always interested in reading about the country from a variety of perspectives and this book did not disappoint. It is, as the sub-title suggests -- "A New Zealand story" -- which I interpret as one of the many many stories New Zealand has to offer, and I loved reading more about some of the places we've visited. The author's writing style is skillful and a delight to read.At the beginning of the story, the author meets a Maori man, Seven, who later becomes her husband. Her bond with him and his family prompts her to expand her academic research into the history of the Maori culture and the colonization of New Zealand. She interweaves historical and anthropological perspectives into her own personal history, finding symbolic similarities in how disparate cultures engage or clash with her own experience navigating a marriage with someone from a very different culture. The author seems very sanguine about some of these differences -- for example, she believes in buying life insurance whereas he believes such an action would be "asking for it." What struck me in particular was the insights the author gained from her own experiences. For instance, at the beginning of the story, she talks about her first impressions and assumptions about a bar fight she witnesses, and how quickly she discovered that she had completely misread the situation. Toward the end of the book, she realizes that she needs to understand her own family's history to help complete the circle -- and indeed, she was unstinting in drawing parallels between the role her own ancestors played in the subjugation of the American Indian population to that of the devastating effects of white colonization on the Maori people. I suppose every reader will feel that something or other has been left out; indeed, with such a richly woven tapestry as this story is, there will undoubtedly be some oversights. For me, I was surprised not to see much mention of some of the more recent developments in the ongoing Maori-Pakeha story. Perhaps that will appear in a sequel.

[karenweyant · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Be prepared to read Christina Thompson's book in pieces. Part history book, part anthropology book, part memoir, Thompson's work is not a linear read. Thompson aproaches the history of the native people of New Zealand by recounting her own life with a Maori man and her own personal academic research. Because her story does not have a clear start (or a clear ending). some readers may have a hard time following Thompson's direction. But the content of this book is well worth the wait. Interesting and insightful, the book was chalked full of facts and ideas I didn't know. In fact, the only reason I gave this book four stars was because I wanted more. After finishing this book, I felt that Thompson only barely scraped the surface of New Zealand's rich and wonderful history!

[leesylou · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Christina Thompson is a lyrical, thoughtful writer with a background in English literature. The pity is, she has nothing compelling to say. This memoir of her life to date discusses her marriage to a Maori New Zealand native and her family's moves through the mainland US, Hawai'i, Australia, and New Zealand, but never really offers more than that. She gives a bit of European New Zealand discovery history, discusses her own feelings about it, and rarely truly delves into the Maori experience. In fact, in her foreword, she explicitly states that since her husband's family's story is not hers to tell, she has made a point in this volume of generalizing their stories and changing names.If you are looking for a quick beach read or a book about an American woman's experience with a young family, this is a pleasant enough book. If you are searching for depth on minority aboriginal history, culture, and experience, look elsewhere.

[sean191 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have mixed emotions with this book. I think it was interesting - but I think it was too scholarly and there wasn't as much personal emotion invested in it. That's disappointing considering it could have been so much more. I feel the author's husband is someone I would have enjoyed reading more about - even the children. But, maybe there was too much trying to be squeezed into the book - crossing back and forth between historical anecdotes and familial (much like the crossing back and forth between new and old homes) left too much ground to cover and not enough time to do it.

[lollypop917 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received this book through the first reads program at goodreads.com and will have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. This book looks at the effects of colonization as seen through both the colonizers and the natives. The author looks at this subject through her relationship with her Maori husband and takes the reader on a journey through the past and present. Through her fascination with New Zealand's native Maori's we learn a good deal about the culture itself. I really enjoyed her use of historical references for the first meeting of the Maori's with the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman. She continues to employ this method of describing the past through references which works very well in my opinion. The entire book weaves from past to present giving details of the Maori's culture to explain cross-cultural differences between her husband and herself in current circumstances. I would recommend this book to all lovers of history, anthropology, as well as anyone who enjoys reading about New Zealand.

[oregonobsessionz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is an odd little book. It is very difficult to describe, and it definitely won’t please everyone. Readers who expect a story to proceed in a linear fashion will be driven crazy by all of the digressions. But if you are willing to go along for the ride as the author jumps from thought to thought, century to century, and continent to continent, you may find it very enjoyable.The story begins with the author returning to Melbourne to continue her graduate work in Pacific studies, after a visit with her family near Boston. She decides to stop over for a week in New Zealand. Someone recommends the Bay of Islands at the north end of the North Island, so she travels there by bus. In the last hours of her visit, killing time in a pub while awaiting the return bus, Thompson met a handsome Maori man named Seven, and immediately felt comfortable with him. Distracted by a fight that broke out, and by the colorful characters in the pub, Thompson discovered that the pub was closing and she had missed her bus back to Auckland. With nowhere to go, she accompanied Seven and his friends to someone’s home. In the morning, realizing that she had also missed her plane to Australia, she accompanied Seven to his home village, met his family, and camped out on the beach for a week.I suppose everyone has at some time or other entertained a fantasy of meeting an attractive companion in an exotic location. Thompson had a chance to live that fantasy, and (probably predisposed by her interest in Maori culture) she went for it without hesitation. Shortly after resuming her studies in Melbourne, Thompson contacted Seven and asked him to come to Australia. Eventually they married and started a family. Apparently this has worked out for them – they are still together some 20 years later, and this book is partially a memoir of their life together, as Thompson moved from job to job in Australia, Boston, Hawaii, and back again. The personal story is interspersed with chapters on the history of the Polynesian people, and on the early European discovery and settlement of New Zealand. A section on the genealogy of Thompson’s family includes her ancestors’ encounters with various American Indian tribes in post-civil war Minnesota. As the mother of biracial children, Thompson has become deeply interested in cultural stereotypes and misunderstandings. In particular, she focuses on “first contact” situations, where people from different cultures have no context for understanding one another. The title of the book comes from the journals of Joseph Banks, who sailed with Captain James Cook, as paraphrased by Charles Darwin. Maori warriors supposedly chanted these words across the water as they shook their spears at the intruders. Or did they? The English and the Maoris had no language in common, so their words were translated by a Tahitian accompanying the expedition. Even if correctly translated, were these words intended as an agressive threat? A deterrent? Or something else? Captain Cook reported that after shouting such threats, the Maoris would often approach his ships for trade. The author is intrigued by these encounters and their meaning.The book ends with a 9-page bibliography including journals of early explorers as well as modern cultural studies.

[gmillar_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed reading this book. I frequently found myself saying: "Yes," as Ms. Thompson put into words many of the thoughts I have had over the years about what to accept as fact with respect to culture clashes and the New Zealand experience in particular. I have read many of the books noted in the Bibliography so I accept her due diligence. I liked her lacing historical thought through her current experience. I also enjoyed being reminded of the places in New Zealand that she visited. In all I liked her style and will watch for availability of "Sea People."

[gbelik_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is both a story of the author's personal romance and the British settlement of New Zealand.

[froxgirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a fascinating mélange of personal and colonial history! The author, from Boston, became enamored with the Antipodes and met and married a Maori man she met while researching New Zealand history. Chapters alternate between descriptions of the invasion of New Zealand by the Dutch, Captain Cook, and various biologists, and the author's personal experiences with her husband's kin. She covers other Pacific Island cultures as well, demonstrating similarities between Hawaiians, Marshall Islanders, and aborigines of Australia. The reader cannot help but draw parallels with the destruction of Native Americans, especially when the author recounts stories from her maternal ancestors, who were among the first non-Native settlers of Minnesota. Her sensitivity to cultural contrasts and her sharing of the struggles in her own marriage make this a remarkable read.Quotes: "Maori values are tribal: what is good for the group is good for the individual, whereas the reverse does not necessarily hold true. The result is a society where everyone is cared for, but also one in which individual achievement is the exception rather than the norm. From the Pakeha (white) point of view, Maoris often look unambitious, while Pakehas, seen from the Maori perspective, look ruthless, isolated, and cold."

[jessicaofthebees · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very enjoyable. Well written soup of memoir, travel journal, history, and anthropology.

[valerietheblonde-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very enjoyable. Well written soup of memoir, travel journal, history, and anthropology.

[mstrust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Subtitled A New Zealand Story, this is the history of European contact with the native Maori people of New Zealand. Between the discussions of Captain Cook's or Darwin's impressions of the Maori hundreds of years ago is the story of Thompson, an academic from Boston, meeting and marrying her Maori husband and fitting into his family. She discusses the differences between Maori and New Zealanders of European descent in terms of quality of life, and one chapter is about the gruesome trade of Maori heads that began as sacred items among the tribes, but once Europeans got involved, became souvenirs that led to random deaths.

[sunnycouger-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was attracted to this because it was a cross between a personal memoir and an anthropology account, but to be honest it kinda just skirted both genres. It was okay, without being great and it provided basics, without giving anything really in depth and although it was okay, it didn't really seem to have a massive point. The past and the present aspects worked well enough, but the whole book just seemed to meander along and although you obviously can't manipulate petty dramas in a factual book, I guess the whole thing just seemed to peter along at a fairly even, easy osey pace which I guess is fine, but didn't make for an overly engrossing read.

It was a fair enough book and a decent enough insight into cross cultures but perhaps a little lacking in certain aspects to be fully satisfying for either genre. Some decent observations about Darwin, Cook and other older explorers. I perhaps found the the historical contexts the most engrossing parts of the book and again, although it lacked the depth of a true anthropological account it does provide a decent beginners guide to the problems of making contact with new cultures and civilisations and the way initial contacts and be construed and have a lasting impact on society.

All in all, it was worth picking up but probably not going to be high on any re-reads. The historical content was too scattered, the present day context too flimsy and the insertion of her own family's background happens too late in the day for it to seem as anything other than an attempt at marrying the story together in a 'look how far we've come' sort of way which was a nice tying up of sorts, but I almost wish we could have got the contrasting views a little earlier in the day to give a sort of tie in between everything that was happening.

It's an easy book to read, and informative enough to be worth it if you have any interest in the area and I know it probably sounds like I didn't enjoy it, but it wasn't a bad book, just maybe not what I was expecting.

[periodista_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The premise, the set-up, is promising but ends up unsatisfying on all counts. Too fragmented, unfocused. American academic marries working-class Maori man. At the time she met her future husband, Thompson was briefly stopping over in the Bay of Islands, north of North Island, while studying for a PhD in literature in Melbourne, Australia. She meets Seven in a pub, where a fight breaks out, and then very late at night traipses back with him to a house soon filled with drunken, then sleeping Maori. There's very little interaction with Seven here but she possibly makes a terrible faux pas in spontaneously offering an earring to one man. You wonder, too, what Seven's family makes of it when this white woman quickly decamps with Seven to live with him on a beach for a week (no intimate details disclosed). Funny thing is, you never find out! For example, do Maori (like, say, Thai and so many other peoples) perceive Western women as very sexually loose, prone to sleeping with any man they talk to for more than ten minutes? What is the sex and marriage code for Maori women? How are inter-marriages with Pakeha regarded? Is an American preferable to a white Kiwi? Are all Maori pretty much Christian? Nominally anyway?Then there’s the matter that Thompson was originally drawn to study in Australia because of her interest in colonial narratives of exploration. Very old fashioned, in the mid-1980s and now. At least she’s not into deconstructionism, etc.,-- her writing is fine -- but I’m not sure how far she got into exploding the myths, what her research focus was or is, or how much she delved into native perceptions and accounts of the conqueror. Is it even possible? How much material is there? She just glances off all these topics.Ditto she very briefly touches on the issue of an American and a Maori living in Australia. In a way, they’re on equal terms, both trying to figure out the byways of a strange land. Neither is obliged to defend certain Aussie behavior. We get a racist Aussie (I think this was Brisbane) telling Seven about the degeneracy of Aborigines. What does he make out of this? Isn't Melbourne a pot of many cultures by this time> Or for that matter of Hawaii (where the couple lived on a fellowship of some sort), Mass., or any other parts of the US vis a via Oz or NZ. Nothing at all!Ditto this is *not* your intro to New Zealand conquest and settlement a la The Fatal Shore, although there is a bibliography and Thompson’s recommendations that could point you there. I already knew that New Zealanders usually gloss over how much Maori were screwed over, probably because the Maori are more likely to pull themselves into the middle-class, whitish world than Oz’s aboriginal people. I recall that Michael Dorris quickly came to that conclusion. All the indices of education, income, alcoholism, etc. are quite bad. But this is only skimmed as well. I kept asking myself: Who is she writing this book for?Then you’ve got the PhD married to a manual laborer that doesn’t have any interest in pulling himself up and out. That’s not quite correct; she mentions that, with her encouragement, he did take some community college-type courses. But I don’t know how interested he was or why. Could be just to satisfy her. You really get very little sense of Seven's personality, except that he's very easy-going and generous. You wonder how his and her colleagues in Australia and the US all got along. Does the couple lead separate lives some of the time? (Might be better for a male spouse than a female spouse at a faculty party; men of any class can always talk sports.)This aspect is touched on even less. What about their three sons? Of course, she’d assume they’d all go on to university, but her husband’s attitudes could come into play. Finally, we end up with a quickie tour of Thompson’s family to find that they could be stand-ins for the British in NZ because they swindled Native Americans and made a very good long-term profits from the landholdings.Her ancestors have been in the US for a long time and she mentions that it’s been generations since they have had blue-collar type jobs. I’d never thought in such terms; Of course, she’s very unusual for an American; I guess I must have known a few Americans like that. It’s easier to find people with colonial roots in NZ. That’s neat but the book over all just … doesn’t hang together. You're left hungry.

[trojanpotato · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is a book that should probably have been read all at once, or as close to that as possible, because it felt a little disjointed at times. This is probably also due to the wide variety of topics the author was including: history, family dynamics and two family's histories, colonization and its effects, travel...I never felt well settled in the book except when the author spoke of Mangonui, the town where her husband is from and where most of his family is. The descriptions and evocation of setting were very good, and if the book had chosen to focus here (or anywhere, really), it would have been a far more engaging read. As it was, it was enjoyable and informative, but I'm not really going to recommend it or feel a need to re-read it.

[michaelm42071 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Finishing a Ph.D. in Pacific literature at the University of Melbourne, twenty-something Christina Thompson takes a travel agent’s suggestion she spend a week in the Bay of Islands, at the northern end of New Zealand’s North Island. There she meets a Maori man, accompanies him to his village and meets his family, invites him to come to Melbourne, and eventually marries him.This antipodal romance (she is from Boston) is juxtaposed here with an account of the first contacts between Europeans and Maoris. The title of the book is Darwin’s version of what John Hawkesworth said that Captain James Cook said a Maori shouted at him when he first approached New Zealand. Thompson notes how the difficulties inherent in first contacts were not made easier by the sudden violence that frequently erupted on one side or the other.As their children are born, Thompson and her husband move from Melbourne to Boston, to Hawai’i, back to Australia, and finally to Boston again, where they settle in to help her mother and ailing father in an extended family arrangement not unlike that of the household in which her husband grew up in Mangonui, New Zealand. The trans-Pacific travel enables Thompson to pursue her career of scholar, editor, and writer. And as she and her husband move in and out of each other’s parts of the world, she compares her own experiences with his, her family’s with those of his. She observes wryly that her family’s comparative wealth came at the cost of dispossession of New England native populations in colonial times; her husband’s family’s poverty was caused by being on the other side of such a dispossession.A literary person with the eye of an ethnographer, Thompson, who is editor of Harvard Review, tells her own story and that of New Zealand with style and clarity, letting each illuminate the other.