Some Arawa legends, between 1860-1880

Some Arawa legends, between 1860-1880

This manuscript was written by the Te Arawa kaumatua, Eruera te Uremutu (?1820-1897), late in his life. It gives whakapapa and other history of his iwi, and several pages are devoted to conflict with the Bay of Plenty hapū Ngai Te Rangi in the mid 1840s. These pages illustrate the waka involved in these taua expeditions. Te Uremutu either gave it to, or was asked to write it by, George Davies, a long time Native Department official. Davies later gave the manuscript to the Polynesian Society, and in turn it came into the Alexander Turnbull Library as part of the Polynesian Society collection.

The Society was established to ‘rescue from oblivion the fast-fading knowledge of the past among the natives of New Zealand and the South Seas.’ Or as Rachel Barrowman puts it in The Turnbull: A Library and Its World, ‘In essence its programme was to construct a Pakeha cultural identity by discovering, textualising and thus appropriating the country’s Maori history (and also to construct a scholarly identity within the context of European intellectual discourse).’ This is no neutral activity, and represents one of the central aspects of power that structures the collector’s relationship to what is collected.

Permission of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga O Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image

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