Dear Is Mise,

Sigh.

Perhaps you had better review the differences between stocked and stooked. You seemed to be a little confused.

So here is the actually quote from Mitchell;

“The seed is made by the natives into a kind of paste or bread. Dry heaps of this grass, that has been pulled expressly for this purpose of gathering the seed, lay along our path for many miles. I counted nine miles along the river, in which we rode through this grass only, reaching our saddle girths...”

Your issue now seems to be that the 'many miles' may not have equated to the 'nine miles' so Pascoe was perhaps incorrect in his description.

Well hell mate, aren't you splitting hairs? If this is the level of minutia that you are forcing yourself into in order to discredit the bloke you need to reassess your priorities. This is rubbish.

Pascoe has every right to use these descriptions to weave his narrative. The man is a generalist rather than a dry historian I will grant that, but it certainly doesn't invalidate his position. This is more from Mitchell;

“In the neighbourhood of our camp the grass had been pulled to a very great extent, and piled in hay-ricks so that the aspect of the desert was softened into the agreeable semblance of a hay-field. The grass had evidently been thus laid up by the natives, but for what purpose we could not imagine. At first I thought the heaps were only the remains of encampments, as the aborigines sometimes sleep on a little dry grass; but when we found the ricks, or haycocks, extending for miles we were quite at a loss to understand why they had been made.”

A town of 1000 people could not survive without extensive agriculture.
And animal husbandry. All the surrounding game would have been long hunted out, and even if there were miles of grain ready to be winnowed, that wouldn’t feed 1000 people for long plus they couldn’t live on grain alone. There would also need to be a very reliable water supply and some form of sewage system to prevent disease.
No one has ever denied that groups of aboriginal people got together at Times for ceremonial and group hunting purposes, so perhaps these “ huts” were left over from one of these gatherings.
But an occasional gathering of people doesn’t make a town.

I think Mitchell used the term "stooped", meaning "stooked", i.e. "stacked". It's what gatherers do. Mitchell was oblivious to any evidence of actual cultivation of the land i.e. farming. What he observed was preparatory to gathering: the "stacking" of grain by gatherers.

Joe

Hi Joe,

I spoke with the wife, re Maori gardens. In the past she understands the gardens were in the vicinity of the village located close to, or inside a Pa (fortress). The Pa was essentially a fortified strong point, a place of refuge if attacked, and it occupied a strategically prominent position. Lookouts could spot "visitors" from some distance away. The wife believes gardens were constructed much the same in past times as they were when she was a child. Kumara (sweet potato) and riwai (potato) grown on the inside with kamo kamo (squash) around the outside, European corn and pumpkins were also grown in that garden . She said poha and other greens grew wild in the garden and in the surrounds, and watercress was always in the creek. Two people could maintain a garden of about 3 acres by hand, the main tool was the hoe, but that would have been a stone adze in the old days, did use other modern garden hand tools as well. The wife said the big advantage, and why the large garden for 2 people to maintain was they didn't have to do a lot of watering, the high rainfall seen to that, the main job besides planting was weeding. Storage was in the taka, a raised shed, which kept the root crops fresh for months, they had two such sheds at their homestead. They also stored European vegs, onions etc, as well from the house garden, which was about half an acre, she thinks. Grew lots of different veg and herbs in the house garden. Much of the produce went to whanau in the valley, including old folks who didn't have gardens, and those who lived on smaller blocks, some had orchards or dairies, other family members got plenty of seafood. Fruit, milk and seafood was always around for everyone. Seems her Grandmother had a very big orchard which everyone took advantage of, her mum did a lot of preserving at home, jars were never thrown away. I can attest to the quality of the seafood from my recent visit.

Hi Paul,

I'm confused why the Evils, according to Pascoe, would want to destroy any trace whatever of Aboriginal farming over here, in seven million square km, but have no probs with Maori farming over there, with only a piddly 200 thousand sq km ? Why put huge efforts into destroying every trace of farming here, but not give a toss about intensive farming and/or gardening in Aotearoa ?

After all, it was the same Evils, all whites, all British. Natural Evils. Of course, the Australian land mass was vastly bigger than NZ's, the transformation of which into hunting and gathering environments must have taken up all the time and effort of many tens of thousands of early so-called 'settlers' here, with no known inter-communication (except perhaps by word of mouth), all of them devoted to destroying fences and storage pits and villages in the many thousands - and without bulldozers.

And then stopping Aboriginal people from ever again using any farming terms, and forcing hunting and gathering onto them. And also destroying any identifiable farming implements and substituting hunting and digging implements, and teaching people how to use them. Which they readily abandoned once the ration system was viciously imposed on people by evil missionaries and Protectors.

And the whites were so calculating that they made sure that there was absolutely no evidence of what had existed for fifty thousand years.

And then missionaries stamping out any farming dances, rituals, songs, etc. All utter bastards. But of course, we now know that all whites are utter bastards.

Blacks good, whites bad.

You can always rely on the gullibles, they'll believe anything that they want to believe, even without a scrap of evidence, even AGAINST the available evidence - but of course we're all entitled to be bigots :)

Cheers,

Joe

Steele,

What you describe, via Mitchell, is gathering not farming.

What Joe said is right, how did the early settlers obliterate all the evidence?
Why did Pascoe apparently lie about his heritage?
You haven't tackled that question yet.

Maybe it doesn't matter as he's only "generalising".