A QUESTION OF LANGUAGE: FROM MOKOMOKAI AND MOKAMOKAI TO TOI MOKO
CHAPTER II
INTRODUCTION One of the most vexing questions surrounding preserved Maori tattooed heads has been what is the Maori word to describe them? Over a period of some two hundred years different Maori words have been used for heads, but there has been little attempt to explain these differences and the forces behind them. Even today debate surrounds the appropriate term. Despite this, the earliest definitions, often obtained after prolonged consultation with Maori, yield valuable clues as to how they understood the meaning of certain words. The following is an attempt to explore some of the issues surrounding the terminology used to describe heads, but more research is needed, including published and unpublished sources and contemporary oral usage.
MOKOMOKAI VERSUS MOKAMOKAI None of the earliest English written accounts of Maori preserved heads contain a Maori word to describe them, even though other Maori words appear.The first printed appearance of the word mokomokai was in 1820 in A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of New Zealand, the joint work of the Reverend Thomas Kendall and Professor Samuel Lee.1 This volume was preceded by the first book printed in Maori in 1815, but that work did not contain any Maori term for preserved heads.2 In the 1820 dictionary, moko mokai is defined as: “The tattooed decapitated head of a man.” The word mokaikai also appears and is defined as: “The heads of enemies preserved to look at; name of a person; also the name of a place.” Mokai is defined as “a person in a low situation, poor.” Samuel Lee was a professor of languages at Cambridge University. He and Kendall worked together for two months at Cambridge, with the Maori chiefs Hongi Hika and Waikato, to produce the 1820 dictionary.3 Tooi (or Tui) was Kendall’s first instructor in the Maori language when he went to New South Wales in 1814. Tooi subsequently visited England in 1818 and, with Titore, assisted Professor Lee with Maori vocabulary.4 Despite the existence of the 1820 dictionary, neither of the above terms was commonly used in early published works about New Zealand. In his 1843 work, Ernst Dieffenbach described the preservation of heads and stated: “These heads are called moko-mokai.”5
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TATTOOED HISTORY: THE STORY OF MOKOMOKAI
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