Introduction

A QUESTION OF LANGUAGE: FROM MOKOMOKAI AND MOKAMOKAI TO TOI MOKO

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of the issues surrounding the terminology used to describe heads, but more research is needed, including published and unpublished sources and contemporary oral usage.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

CHAPTER II

2 3

fig. 2 Title page, Thomas Kendall and Samuel Lee, A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of New Zealand (London, 1820) [private collection]

fig. 3 [Courtesy J. C. Beaglehole Room, Victoria University of Wellington Library] formerly belonged to the bibliophile Horace Fildes, now in the collection of the Victoria University of Wellington library, the word mokomokai appears to have been crossed out in pencil by Fildes and changed to mokamokai. Presumably Fildes did this based on the spelling mokamokai in Williams’s fourth edition, published in 1892.

The lips of the preserved heads of relatives were usually sewn together.16 Dr. Hazel Petrie thinks that perhaps the adoption of the spelling mokamokai was with reference to these heads since moka can mean “a muzzle for the mouth.”17 This would mean that mokomokai could still refer to the heads of enemies whose lips were not sewn.

The English definitions of mokamokai in Williams’s third edition (1871) and Tregear (1891) both incorporate the word “curiosity,” but it would seem unlikely that the word was used by Maori as meaning something strange or unusual. Another explanation could be that moka, meaning “end or extremity,” was used so that the term mokamokai would include all dried heads, whether tattooed or not.

MAUI POMARE AND THE ADOPTION OF TOI MOKO Maui Ormond Woodbine Pomare was a leader of the modern movement to secure the repatriation to New Zealand of Maori ancestral remains (koiwi tangata) including mokomokai from foreign museums and other institutions. He was the guardian (kaitiaki) of his people’s taonga (treasures) and actively made purchases of Maori material from abroad.18 While chair of the National Museum Council he organized the return of a large number of Maori ancestral remains to New Zealand.

Pomare was the first to support the adoption of the words toi moko (“the art of tattooing”) to describe preserved tattooed Maori heads. He said that the accepted Maori term for tattooed preserved heads was nga toi moko. Since preserved heads could be both those of slaves and loved ones, and that mokomokai referred to the heads of slaves, Pomare thought it an appropriate usage.

The first edition of William Williams’s A Dictionary of the New Zealand Language and a Concise Grammar was published in 1844.6 Williams, like Kendall, was also a missionary and arrived in New Zealand in 1826 at the age of twenty-six. His linguistic aptitude led him to produce several Maori translations of Christian tracts, but his most enduring work was the dictionary that was first published at Paihia in 1844. It defines mokomokai as “a dried human head” and states that the word is a synonym of mokaikai. Both definitions were repeated in the second edition of Williams’s dictionary published in 1852.7

The first appearance of the word mokamokai to describe heads appears to be in an 1849 manuscript about Ngapuhi history and genealogy by Aperahama Taonui:8 “Ka mea te kai patu kia kotia te matenga hei [mokamokai]. Ka mea etahi kaua e kotia he matenga kino ka hore he moko[.] Ka mahue ia te kai patu.” (The killer said the head should be cut off to be preserved; others said, “Don’t cut it off, it’s a bad head, there’s no tattooing.” He was left by the killer.)9 Aperahama Taonui was the son of a Ngapuhi chief and a teacher, historian, and prophet. He was born around 1815 and was a signatory of the Treaty of Waitangi.

The Williams dictionaries became a family affair. The third edition of Williams’s dictionary, prepared by his son, William Leonard Williams, was 1 published in 1871. In it, the spelling of mokomokai changes to mokamokai but is still defined as a “dried human head.”10 This spelling is repeated in all subsequent editions.11 Edward Tregear’s The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary of 1891 also contains the word mokamokai, which is defined, among other ways, as “A curiosity, as a dried human head.”12

There appears to be no explanation for the reasons for the change in spelling of words that have the same meaning. Dr. Jane McRae suggests that perhaps the change was simply to correct what was perceived as a mishearing of a word.13

John White’s fifth volume of The Ancient History of the Maori, His Mythology and Traditions: Tai Nui, published in 1888, includes an example of the use of the word mokomokai in the description of an ancient war party: “Ara ki nga kai patu mo Hotumauea, ‘Kaua e patua ki te pane, kei pakaru te mokomokai.’” (Do not strike him on the head, lest the skull be cracked and the head be ruined when cured.)14

In his famous 1896 work Moko or Maori Tattooing, Horatio Gordon Robley uses the word mokomokai to describe preserved Maori heads.15 In the copy of this work that

fig. 1 “Tooi, A Late Chief in New Zealand” (Missionary Papers, 1826).

COLONIAL COMMODITIES: TRAFFICKING IN MOKOMOKAI, FROM 1770 TO 1840

INTRODUCTION The history of the earliest exchanges of mokomokai between Maori and outsiders is mostly one of opportunistic transactions occurring in the context of what were later seen to be enormous cultural changes that followed European conflict and settlement. The earliest recorded example involved Joseph Banks’s purchase of a head at Queen Charlotte Sound in 1770.1 Later, Samuel Marsden described how heads were brought back from conflicts as trophies and sometimes restored to former enemies after peace was restored.2 Then preserved heads of enemies could serve as agents of reconciliation between warring sides. On the other hand, if peace was not desired by the victor he might “dispose of the heads of those chiefs whom he kills in battle to ships or any persons who will buy them.”3 In 1819, Marsden wrote:

I could hear of no instance of any man ever being killed merely to gratify the appetite; nor of any killed for the purpose of selling their heads to the Europeans or other nations. The heads which are cured and sold are those of the slain in war which are not intended to be returned to their friends. At the same time I am of opinion that it is not safe or prudent for masters of vessels, or any of the crews, to purchase heads from the natives; for if a tribe knew that the head of their chief was on board any vessel it is more than probable they would make an attempt upon the vessel in order to obtain the head, from the high veneration and esteem in which they hold these relics of their departed leaders.4

Despite this assessment of the risks for outsiders in acquiring mokomokai, a brisk trade in heads was already underway.

EARLY TRAFFICKING IN HEADS What appears to be the earliest recorded instance of mokomokai being brought from New Zealand, after Banks, was by William Tucker in 1811. Tucker was an ex-convict who came to Otago in 1809 on a sealing ship.5 “Candor,” a correspondent to the Sydney Gazette, writing about the early trade in mokomokai, said: