Where is Heretaunga? – Rose Mohi

No introduction; Ngati Kahungunu elder Rose Mohi, speaking at Duart House on 19th August 2015. The topic is ’Where is Heretaunga?’ [Te Whare O Heretaunga, a meeting house at Pakowhai] Rose shows slides throughout the talk of the carvings originally meant for the meeting house. Recording begins mid-sentence.

Rose Mohi: … over the Chesterhope Bridge. [Microphone interference] That’s the view of Te Mata Peak – we’re not looking at the Hastings view. So this is the area that we’re talking about; this is within Heretaunga.

And this is my great-great-grandfather, [Karaitiana Takamoana] the man who commissioned these carvings to be done. He was fully tattooed … well, he stopped when he became a Christian; didn’t do any more. And we don’t know when he was born but he bridges that time between no Pakeha and then Pakeha settlers. So he took place [part] in many battles; he was celebrated, and became a member of the House of Representatives, the second one here, representing Eastern Maori which he held for eight years, and died in office. He had three brothers; they all became significant, and I’m very proud of them.

This was the area he knew, and this is recorded as an unknown meeting house, but I’ve done a bit of digging here and this figure that sits at the front I’ve blown up; and this piece is in the family’s possession now so I can identify that as coming from us quite readily. I talked to the very informed historian Roger Neich about this and he accepted my theory on this. These carvings here are done by Ngati Pikiao, and in Kahungunu we’re not carvers; we never were, we imported people from other tribes to carve for us. This is deserted at this stage, and you can see this picket fence around it, and gum trees, so we put this in the 1880s.

Well, there were carvings done; this was a very energetic man called Augustus Hamilton who arrived here in the 1870s. And he was interested in history, he was interested in ferns, he was interested in photography, and he was very energetic – my friend, Elizabeth Pishief did her Masters on him – so Augustus got himself involved with these carvings. He’s [a] photographer, so he takes them front and back, but I’ll just tell you a little bit about these ones. This one here’s his back view, but it’s [the] front view here. This is in Otago Museum now; this is in Napier now, on display.

Now Hamilton is sitting here in Hastings; his father was one of the first doctors in Hastings. And Doctor [Thomas Morland] Hocken had got himself up here when Karaitiana died and went to the tangi, which was quite unusual, and wrote an account of it. Hocken was another enthusiastic man, he was very little, very short and very enthusiastic, [chuckles] and he wanted to collect everything; he’d collect maps, books, anything he could think of, and he wanted these carvings. So he talked to Hamilton, and he lured Hamilton to get them brought down to Otago, and then he managed to buy them and in doing so he also gave Augustus Hamilton a job – he became the Registrar of Otago Museum. Hocken loved everything, and he gave all his collection to the [cough] Otago University. As you know there’s now his own museum, but at the time his collection was housed in the annexe. Hocken had bought sixty-one carvings [cough] – look at them, they’re wallpaper. They’re lining these walls. And just to tell you a little bit, these ones here … five metres tall, made of totara, [a] foot thick. And Augustus Hamilton … Hocken’s died; Augustus Hamilton does sort of flower arranging.

In 1906 we see them again, and they go down to the Christchurch Exposition which is what followed the New Zealand [and] South Seas Exhibition. And my family sent other carvings down there, but I don’t know who those men are … non-entities in my opinion. [Laughter] So here they are again, they lined the walls of that exposition.

This one is Whakatua and he’s in my possession, so if people come to my house they see him. You’re all welcome. It’s quite interesting here because he’s actually got hair, if you look carefully … [they] put hair on him, and he has an earring. Yesterday he got an earring again, as a special treat.

This is another academic from Otago, Henry Skinner. He took over as Director of the Otago Museum, and he was an ethnologist … very clever man, and in fact the annexe is now named after him, as the Skinner Annexe. But under his watch some things happened – the exchanges started, the swapping – St Louis [USA] got two; Australia Museum in 1921 actually; South Australia in Adelaide, they got two. These are large [coughing] – these are like, six to eight feet high.

I’m coming back to Augustus, ’cause [coughing] he’s always important in all of this, ’cause Augustus, having got to Otago and being an energetic man, he got himself then to run the Dominion Museum. He was at the Colonial [and] became the Director of the Dominion Museum. I think he lived next door to Alexander Turnbull, and you can imagine them walking up and down The Terrace [chuckles] planning and plotting their lives. Augustus Hamilton was very artistic, so he did a lot of artistic arrangements for taonga. But there’s one [carving] there and there’s another one up there, and Hocken had let him keep four or five of them for himself. After his death he gave them to what is now Te Papa [Museum]. And this was his favourite one, and it is magnificent, it’s just lovely. [Phone rings] So you see we have two figures, the finest of carving; the father’s at the bottom and the son stands on his shoulders. Now I can’t interpret all of these, I know little bits – the carver is Hoani Ngatoto from Ngati Porou.

In 1989, this is the opening of the Tangata Whenua Gallery in Otago Museum … if you go there, this is what you see. It’s still there now. So this big pou here – this is the big five foot [metre] one – these two figures here are twins. They sit in our legends; we have stories of the twins, and one is killed. So that makes it very much our stories; we know these stories. We know these people.

There was a little bit of a misunderstanding; Dimitri Anson curated that, and things weren’t quite what he thought they should’ve been, because some people were to say [thought] that these were theirs;  and they got there and they said, “These aren’t ours.” So he got himself cracking and he wrote an article in the Polynesian Journal, rectifying some mistakes. And I’m just going to show you this detail again, because sometimes the detail of these is the most fascinating thing. I can understand to Pakeha eyes they might’ve seemed … “Oh, we’ve [cough] got sixty-one of these, they all look the same.” [Cough] They’re not all the same; they’ve got fascinating differences.

So here he’s eating a lizard, and I take that to mean it’s death … death’s coming. We’ve got these little figures that happen underneath and between legs; I don’t know what they are, whether they’re wives, or children or whatever. We have ornate carving down the sides with paua shell … varies with each one. So that’s the detail.

Dimitri took me around when I went down there for the first time, and showed me the things that’ve come from there, ‘cause they were sitting all over the place. This one’s in the Dunedin Public Library, right upstairs on the top floor, and the librarian said, “Don’t tell them we’ve got it – we think they’ve forgotten.” [Chuckles] “We love it.” They’re photographs; Dimitri also gave me six pages of photographs like this, but they’re quite little and I have trouble peering at them. [Chuckles]

This is an unfinished one that’s on display, and it’s quite nice to see that you can get the feeling of how they carved them and the displaying of them, and [I] think that’s a nice episode.

And Rose Chapman went on holiday to Denmark, and I said to Rose, “If you’re going to Denmark, would you go and do something for me?” So she did a lot of talking to other people, and she got to see this one – it’s the one lying down in front of Augustus Hamilton* – but it wasn’t easy to find. This is where Rose went, forty ks [kilometres] out of Copenhagen she had to go to this storage room. Fortunately she had a nephew who spoke Danish and could interpret for her. Getting to find these pieces is quite difficult – it’s not like they’re sitting there waiting at the door and you say, “I’m Rose Mohi …” [Chuckles] Doesn’t work like that.

I’ve been to see this one in Melbourne; that’s in an off site repository in Melbourne. They brought it out for me to see, and I said, “Can I have a photographer there?” “Oh, yes, we’ll do that.” And look what he turned out – it’s hopeless. They’re very hard to photograph, I’ll give that; the size of them, you sort of need them flat. And Dimitri sat on ladders to photograph them. They are difficult.

This is the one in Hawke’s Bay now, and this is a lovely one ‘cause it’s got lovely ornate carving. I don’t know what’s happening here, but I think that’s fabulous. And there’s another little face underneath there that’s looking up. The detail is fantastic.

My friend, Heather Reeve, her mother lives in Toronto, and I said to her, “Ooh, do you think you could go to the” [chuckles] “Royal Ontario ..?” “Yep”, she said, so off she went. She didn’t know anything [coughing] about Maoridom – nothing, but off she went and talked to them. And she came home with some pictures, and she had a wonderful time in the back rooms. And they had these on display, so it was lovely.

I thought I’d just show this – this is a storeroom in Te Papa; so these are some carvings here, and there are the Lindauers [paintings] at the back that Te Papa hold.

Berkeley in San Francisco – I see that in two weeks’ time. I’m excited about that.  I’m just giving you some detail because when I went down to Dunedin, they’ve not really looked at the detail of them. This one here’s in Otago, and when you get up close you see two lizards here, and you see this is a woman. You see some carving on the face; obviously different tribes, different places. It’s different either side of the face, giving a mother’s and a father’s lineage, so the detail in them is fantastic.

And that’s the Napier one again, with that little face looking up, and there’s [the] tongue and … I don’t know what that means.

Bishop Museum Hawaii … they have two; Peabody [Museum], Harvard – this was exciting for me because I knew there was one there, and when I went onto their website and started emailing their curator there she sent me a picture of two. I didn’t know they had two, so suddenly, from one I’ve got two there; and I see that in September, too.

Migoto Eria was the previous Maori curator at Otago [Napier] and she got snaffled up by Otago. She was at the … well it was the MTG. [Museum, Theatre, Gallery] And anyway, I took her down there. At her powhiri; and this photograph of course shows one here; this character here’s smoking a pipe too, which is quite interesting … well, it looks like a pipe, I don’t know what else it would be.

In Otago this was the storeroom – I went down here; there’s the manager of the storeroom and the lovely Maori woman on the left was the accountant, so she was thrilled to see it all. And she’s Maori … looking very pale around there. [Chuckles] Those two pieces there were both about eighteen feet long, they were the long barge boards.

Now this is a picture I’ve got, and if any of you went to the exhibition of Marian Maguire, this was one of her lithographs. And I got excited when I saw this, so I went to her and I said, “Where did you see this?” She said to me, “Otago.” So she’d copied it and put it in this picture, and that was only within the last decade. But this actually depicts **Herakles signing the Treaty of Waitangi, (which we don’t think that matches, but [chuckles] that’s okay) … and [Queen] Victoria of course, and the Maori chief. But she [Marian] was very interested in classical vases and things like that, and she gave the most wonderful talk, how the most dominant piece in a picture is always on the left hand side, which is why Victoria’s there. And he might look magnificent, but he’s already out of the picture ‘cause he’s on the right. [Chuckles]

So, this is the talk: ‘Where in the world is Heretaunga?’ Well, I’ve got to sixty-eight in all. [Cough] Eleven in America, two Canada, England … if my pennies stack up and everything I’ll get to see the European ones; maybe not Copenhagen ‘cause Rose has done that … England, Scotland, there’s one turned up five years ago in Tahiti, two are in Hawaii I think, Australia has five, and we’ve got forty here. Some are in private collections. So it’s the most scattered meeting house in the world. You can probably guess what I’m doing – trying to find them all, see them all, get photograph[s].

But I just wanted to say that when you think, into an English culture and you go into a stately house and you see up the staircases all those photographs [paintings] of their ancestors, well in Maoridom we did the same; it’s the bloodlines, but it’s just in a meeting house, and it’s shared by everyone. So that’s what we’re doing.

And thank you very much, and if you want to ask any questions I’m happy to take them. That’s left you stunned!

[Chuckles and applause]

Question: Do you know how many you’re looking for?

Rose: Well I know Augustus Hamilton bought sixty-one. No. I know some were burnt after the Christchurch Exhibition – my family sent more down then. And no. And the reason they didn’t quite get completed and put up into the meeting house is they had trouble finding a barge board. The trees came from Raukawa, down the line in the forests there.

Question: So how large would this whare have been had it been put together, do you think?

Rose: At least forty feet long. It’s a long one; it’s a major one. ‘Cause Otago also had Mataatua Wharenui down there – that was a major one. There were a few built about that time. In Maniapoto they’ve got one, Te Tokanganui a Noho – that’s a major large one. We don’t have a major one here, and that’s what he was trying to achieve, because … poor old Karaitiana, you know, we were bruised here from the musket wars. Everything had been decimated, and the previous Heretaunga was up in Pakipaki, above the hills there, [?].

Question: I know there were lots of smaller family … whanau groups within the area that sort of occupied different parts of it, but would this whare have been – like a cathedral might’ve been for early Europeans – a place for everyone?

Rose: Yes, I think so. Karaitiana means Christian, so he took the name Karaitiana. I think he wanted the name God, but they told him he couldn’t be God. [Laughter]

Amber Aranui: But he did have three wives …

Rose: It got a bit tricky around then. [Laughter] He spends a lot of time with Colenso; in fact Colenso’s mission station was just cooee from where he was. When Colenso arrives here he says that there is a whare built that can hold … Peter, how many people?

Peter: I can’t remember, a lot.

Rose: Large, very large. They were waiting for Christianity to come; they were wanting all this. Karaitiana was very keen on this too – he wanted a big gathering place. If you want to know where it is now, it’s under the Ngaruroro River at Chesterhope Bridge.

Amber: The large carvings are five metres tall, which will give you an idea of just how big … it was meant to be the jewel in the crown for Heretaunga; the walls were to tell all the great stories of the people. Rose and I can [coughing] sit there looking at them, and some of them we can actually work out which stories they are. And we had an interesting conversation, I was asking Rose if she thought something was an eel ‘cause it had this sort of hand thing, a sinuous shape. Rose said, “I think they’re seals – it would be Pania.” Of course it would be Pania’s story, because you know, it was an integral part of the region is the story of Pania.

Rose Chapman: Rose, do you think that any of these pou pou could ever be repatriated to Hawke’s Bay?

Rose: Ah, Rose, it’s always my wish of course. It is in our Treaty claim, and I’m lead to believe that the New Zealand ones we can probably certainly get back. I think getting things from overseas museums will be very difficult. But you know, it’s a digital age now, and we’re all up to date with the digital age so we could get digital copies. Once we get them we can start sort of putting the stories together, but unless you sort of see them quite close you can’t get the stories. But they’re very hard on those pictures, as you would’ve seen. It’s my hope … it might not be my journey, though, Rose; got to leave something for others to do.

Question: Carvings were exchanged – do you know what they were exchanged for?

Rose: I hate to think; maybe bows and arrows …

Amber: There was a craze in the Victorian era for Pacific art and artifacts.

Rose: They wanted Maori things. Augustus Hamilton tried to bring in … sort of sat on [the] Parliamentary doorstep to try and stop people sending the artifacts out of the country, except it didn’t seem to apply to the museums.

Amber: There’s a way of funding a collection here to do an exchange obviously, instead of cash. There’s a letter that Rose has; chap in it says – this was going to the Pacific Northwest in America – “I’ve got some of the finest examples of Maori carving in New Zealand”, which were these pou. “Would you like to swap them for some” … I think it was [?] or something else … “artifacts?” So they had their things sent here, and so you know, one got quite a good profile overseas if you could swap all these fancy things.

Rose: [I’ll] tell you, Napier swapped one in ‘57. It went to Pitt Rivers [Museum, Oxford UK]. That’s the latest one I saw going. Extraordinary, isn’t it?

Question: Rose, when they were being carved originally, were they all carved on one site?

Rose: Yes. Yes, they would normally be carved on one site.

Reply: So where did they store them all, ‘cause they would’ve been enormous?

Rose: At Pakowhai. Pakowhai was quite a modern place by the seventies; it had … well, I pointed out the picket fence. They had two storey houses that the Maori were living in then; they had the first school here. Karaitiana was a great believer in schools. In fact he stood up in Parliament and he wanted every Maori taught English – which is quoted back to me quite often, that I’m the reason Maori don’t speak English; I don’t speak Maori because he wanted us to understand that. [Cough] He was a man of enlightenment and wanted things differently. It was big, and … I think it’s ‘The History of Hawke’s Bay’ says that Pakowhai would not be amiss in the main street of Auckland, it’s so modern. This is in the 1860s and ‘70s. All gone now; we’ve gone backwards, maybe.

Michael Fowler: Thank you, Rose. We’ve had lots of chats about your ancestor, Karaitiana, and occasionally I come across something and send it off to Rose, about Karaitiana.  So you’re justifiably very very proud of your ancestor. And I was just thinking when you were doing your presentation, although possibly they had various motives when they did it, we look back now and think, ‘What a terrible thing.’  But it’s a bit like a European household where somebody comes in, takes all your treasures and just swaps them and exchanges them all over …

Rose: We’ve all got those stories … ‘Aunty So-and-so got that, it should’ve been mine.’ [Laughter]

Michael: So I know it’s been a passion of yours for a long time, and it’s great to see you not be a shrinking violet and get up and tell your story, ‘cause I know you’re very much a researcher in the background, so I’m very pleased that you’re now speaking and even going to Washington and enlightening the Americans about Heretaunga. So thank you.

Rose: Thank you, Michael.

[Applause]