Ebook: The Legacy of Guilt: A Life of Thomas Kendall

"In recent New Zealand writing Thomas Kendall has come to be regarded as a typical if not archetypal figure: the Evangelical Englishman overturned by his meeting with Polynesia. He was among the first group of lay missionaries settled in New Zealand by the Church Missionary Society in 1814. They were all devout but ill-educated, utterly unprepared for the life they were to lead, and for the society of the people they were intended to convert. Living together in a tiny community the settlers were soon at odds with one another, with the Rev. Samuel Marsden in New South Wales, and with the remote Missionary Society in London. To assure their livelihoods and even their lives they were obliged to trade in firearms with the Maoris. Kendall went further: he became fascinated with the myths and beliefs of the Maori. For this first full-length biography of Kendall, Mrs Binney has searched not only the historical records, but the background of Evangelical belief, which explains much in Kendall's behaviour that must otherwise seem the result of individual weakness. She has also analyzed Kendall's manuscript notes on Maori religion and has shown that, with no training in ethnology, he confused what he observed with what he read in popular books of the time about Middle Eastern peoples."-Dust jacket.