Tuai's 1818 drawing in England of a waka is one of the earliest drawings by Māori on paper. Photo / Doug Sherring
Tuai's 1818 drawing in England of a waka is one of the earliest drawings by Māori on paper. Photo / Doug Sherring
Some of the earliest known Māori drawings on paper are being painstakingly prepared in Auckland to travel to where they were made around 200 years ago - England.
The drawings were held privately until 1897, when the man who had inherited them gave them to Auckland Library. This was after he read in the Herald about the Māori chiefs who made them.
The fragile pen-and-ink drawings, by Northlanders Tuai and Tītere, have undergone repairs at the Auckland Central Library and new mounts and a special box have been made.
Historic drawings by the Māori chief Tuai are being repaired in preparation for an exhibition in London. Photo / Doug Sherring.
Some will be displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts in London at an exhibition starting in September to mark the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook's departure in August 1768 on the first of his scientific and exploratory voyages to the Pacific Ocean.
Others of the five drawings - which depict kites, weapons, the moko of Tuai's brother Korokoro, and waka, some bearing human-like characters - will be exhibited in Paris.
Historic drawing by the Māori chief Tuai of his brother Korokoro's moko. Photo / Doug Sherring
Historic drawings by the Māori chief Tuai are being repaired in preparation for an exhibition in London. Photo / Doug Sherring
Tuai was of the first generation of Māori to travel confidently to Europe, says Alison Jones and Kuni Kaa Jenkins in their book on the man they dub "a traveller in two worlds".
Born around 1897, Tuai would have been in his early 20s when he and Tītere went to Britain in 1818-19, where they were hosted by the Church Missionary Society.
Titere's historic drawing of kites is among those being repaired in preparation for an exhibition. Photo / Doug Sherring
In 1813, Tuai was at Parramatta, New South Wales with the missionary Samuel Marsden, where he taught Māori language and helped prepare the first book using te reo.
A versatile man, he was a go-between in Marsden's efforts to establish a Pākehā settlement in the Bay of Islands, a warrior chief on Hongi Hika's devastating raids of 1821-23, a navigator for Royal Navy ships seeking kauri, and a "prostitution controller" in the bay area.
Portrait of Tuai by James Barry. Source / Alexander Turnbull Library
As potential recruiters of New Zealand souls, Tuai and Tītere were sent to Bible study by the missionaries in London, but they preferred to work on farms, visit factories and perform haka at parties.
They met a linguistics professor Samuel Lee to help him write what would become the first book on Māori grammar and vocabulary but were both sick and instead drew their now-precious sketches.
Portrait of Tītere by James Barry. Source / Alexander Turnbull Library
They also dictated letters to an English companion who wrote them on slate for the New Zealanders to copy with pen and paper. Jones says the 19 letters still in existence represent the first written Māori expression in English.
The five drawings were with George Bull, a clergyman who wrote on one of them that he nursed Tuai and Tītere, whose names were sometimes spelled Tooi and Titerree.
"I hope their relations will be kind to William Greenwood for he is a good man and will not cheat them."
Bull gave the drawings to Greenwood, who came to New Zealand in 1840. They passed to a son who contacted the Herald in 1897 after reading a story about Tuai and Tītere's letters being shown at a London Missionary Society meeting.
Herald article in 1897 when the private holder of the drawings gave them to Auckland Library.
The drawings were studied by Dunedin historian Dr Thomas Hocken and sent back to a Herald staff member who forwarded them, via the Auckland Mayor, to the library.
Hocken said in the Herald: "It is apparent that Mr Bull's present of these drawings with his imprimatur was to be used as letters conciliatory and introductory to any cannibals with whom his friend might meet in the then little known country of New Zealand."
The library's 2018 preservation manager, David Ashman, said the drawings had deteriorated, partly because the highly acidic traditional black ink damaged the paper. Also, the drawings had, until this project, been mounted in a book and the flexing with the turning of the pages had caused more harm.
Some of the gaps where the paper has crumbled have been patched together with a fine Japanese tissue paper, lightly moistened with a gelatine adhesive.
"They have been around for 200 years. Now we've got the optimum storage conditions we can reckon they are going to be around another 500 years - or more."
