Behold the Moon

Behold the Moon describes the European history of the Dunedin district (New Zealand) before the arrival of the Scottish settlers in 1848.It details a forgotten war between Maori and Pakeha sparked by a Maori chief's theft of a red shirt and a sealer's excessive revenge. It describes William Tucker's residence at Whareakeake and his fostering of an export trade in hei-tiki, the rise and decline of sealing and flax trading before permanent European occupation was started in 1831 by the Weller brothers, whalers and New Zealand-wide traders. There is an impression that the Scots who came in 1848 entered an empty territory and bought this excellent real estate from a few tattooed tribesman who inexplicably wished to give up their ancestral land. By contrast the Creed manuscript by a missionary reports fatal encounters from a spiraling feud between Maori and Pakeha in what is now the Dunedin district.