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Jumping the Fences: Maori women's resistance to missionary schooling in northern New Zealand 1823‐1835

This article examines the educative activities of Marianne Coldham Williams and Jane Nelson Williams, who were recruited by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in the 1820s to serve in its New Zealand mission. As educated, middle class Anglican women, Marianne and Jane held firm beliefs regarding the role of Christian wives and mothers and it was this evangelical framework that guided their missionary work and activities. From the outset, the CMS and its missionaries believed that Maori, as an indigenous people, were in need of salvation and those religious and cultural changes that missionaries introduced were beneficial to Maori. Although Maori welcomed the arrival of Pakeha (European) for the new knowledge that they brought, they did not seek knowledge to change, replace or transform their world. The purpose of the second CMS mission to northern New Zealand in the 1820s was twofold; to civilise local Maori (Nga Puhi) and, secondly, spread the teachings of the Gospel. There were two related aspects to this civilisation. In the first instance, missionary women and men were required to provide the model example of the Christian family. Secondly, schools were established to teach Nga Puhi Scriptural knowledge in the hope that this would transform them from heathen savages to Christian women and men. More specifically, Nga Puhi women were considered far more (morally) degraded than men and in need of the civilising influence and Christian teachings of missionary women. Consequently, the first school that was opened was for Nga Puhi women. The school curriculum supported the policies and practices of civilisation and Christianisation based on exigencies of race and gender and its relationship with domesticity and labour. A direct consequence of this was that Nga Puhi women were trapped between the two competing worlds. They did not conform to missionary expectations and contested their dual positioning by engaging in acts designed to undermine Marianne and Jane's attempts to re‐form them as useful Christian women. This involved attempts to subvert Marianne and Jane's educative activities through the public display of resistance to schooling and associated Christian practices that were introduced