Pencil sketch of single and double hulled canoe. Boultbee, John 1799-1854 : Journal of a rambler with a sketch of his life from 1817 to 1834, including a narrative of 3 years’ residence in New Zealand. Ref: qMS-0257-01. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/22782017
This shows there was knowledge of carving as well as a unique understanding of the qualities in one piece of wood. The paiaka was a type of tewhatewha where the blade was formed from the hard, knotty base of a tree where it becomes the root. In fact, paiaka actually means “the root of a tree”. Another early story, that of the battles of Rakawahakura, recounts how, following an insult to his sister, an invitation is sent out to Raka’s enemy to help with an ohu, or working project, to prepare a garden. The sister, Te Ahu, said, “Haere ka tarai mai i te tahi kāheru māku,” – “Go and make a digging spade for me.” All of her brothers went to the forest to gather the appropriated wood. They used this karakia: He tomo whaka a Nuku, He tomo whaka a Rangi, He putanga, He reanga, Kei te reanga nui nō Rangi. They selected maire, an extremely hard wood, took it back to the village, and in the morning performed rituals. They made a māipi, or taiaha, and named it Pai-okaoka. The whole village then proceeded to create kāheru, or spades, that had sharp blades. Once the work began, Raka’s party turned on the enemy and used the kāheru as weapons. There are several different types and styles of southern weapons
to be found in family collections and museums. All have been fashioned in one way or another, and some are decorated with elaborate carvings. On a small scale, they represent the classic recognised stylised imagery of the whākana and the whātero, the wide pāua shell eyes and protruding tongue. Larger carved structures were less common. However, large canoes with carved decorations were evident in the later periods of pre-European Māori culture. Captain Cook and his crew observed many large canoes off the Kaikōura coast and around Banks Peninsula. Whilst in Dusky Sound on their 1773 journey, the naturalist Forster noted these details of a canoe: “…which appeared to be old and in bad order, consisted of two troughs or boats joined together with sticks tied across the gunwales with strings of the New Zealand flax-plant. Each part consisted of planks sewed together with ropes made of flax-plant, and had a carved head coarsely representing a human face, with eyes made of round pieces of ear-shell [pāua].” Some of the earliest known images of canoes within Ngāi Tahu were drawn in approximately 1827 by sealer and diarist John Boultbee whilst he was living in Murihiku. He witnessed a canoe-borne war party quite possibly heading to Canterbury during the Kai Huanga war, and captured an image of what he saw. Although crude, the illustration clearly shows a carved tauihu and taurapa. Boultbee described them as follows:
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