John Rutherford, The White Chief - George Lillie Craik

On January 9, 1826, an American brig was boarded by a canoe at Poverty Bay. Upon seeing an incongruous figure step out (heavily tattooed, dressed in cloak and feathers, and armed with a battle-axe) the captain exclaimed, "Here is a white New Zealander!" The figure (John Rutherford) corrected him: "I am not a New Zealander. I am an Englishman." Rutherford then proceeded to unfold the astonishing adventures which had befallen him.

Rutherford had arrived in New Zealand some ten years previously aboard the American brig Agnes. After an initial show of friendliness, the natives attacked the ship, slayed the captain and two of the crew, and took the others hostage. On being brought ashore, six of the captives fell immediately to the Māori ovens, while Rutherford and five others remained prisoners.

But as Rutherford's precarious situation evolved, he was able to befriend and eventually earn the respect and trust of his captors. Living among them, he adapted Māori customs and lifestyle, including having himself tattooed, and was even elevated to the rank of Chief, until his eventual escape a decade later.

On his return home, Rutherford produced quite a sensation. At a time when most Europeans knew nothing of New Zealand and had never even seen tattoos, he went on a touring exhibition--wowing crowds with his exotic body art and the wild story of his capture by "savage cannibals."

Just as Melville's excursion to the Marquesas earned him the moniker, "the man who lived among the cannibals," Rutherford became renown as "the white New Zealander." The stories of both men were met with skepticism. But Rutherford (unlike Melville) had allowed his face to be tattooed in the native fashion, and moreover he was illiterate. So the account of his experience--supplemented with "entertaining knowledge" about geography and anthropology--was preserved in writing by George Lillie Craik.

John Rutherford, The White Chief (1908) is an abridged version of The New Zealanders, primarily focusing on Rutherford's biography.

John Rutherford, The White Chief:

• Kindle
• Gutenberg
• Internet Archive

Extracts:

• "...she put in here about two years ago, and sent one watch off on liberty; they never were heard of again for a week—the natives swore they didn't know where they were—and only three of them ever got back to the ship again, and one with his face damaged for life, for the cursed heathens tattooed a broad patch clean across his figure-head." (Typee, 6)
• "Soon after, the canoe came alongside. In it were eight or ten natives.... With them also came a stranger, a renegade from Christendom and humanity—a white man, in the South Sea girdle, and tattooed in the face.... Some of us gazed upon this man with a feeling akin to horror..." (Omoo, 7)
• "...good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark, purplish, yellow color, here and there stuck over with large blackish looking squares.... They were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this; but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story of a white man—a whaleman too—who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by them." (Moby-Dick, 3)

This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.