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Abstract
When Lore and History of the South Island Maori was published in 1952 it filled a vacuum in terms of accessible Ngāi Tahu history in the public domain. Despite its scholarly shortcomings, it remained one of the only readily available texts on Ngāi Tahu history for another thirty years. A major element of the publication was its inclusion of photographs, all taken by the author, William Anderson Taylor. Using the Ngāi Tahu portraits in Lore and History as a starting point, and informed where possible by oral interviews with their descendants, this article introduces some of the tribal members who were Taylor’s informants, friends, and photographic subjects. Through a reading of the photographs, the article will briefly trace the trajectory of Taylor’s relationship with Ngāi Tahu and consider how the visual stories illuminate the text of Lore and History and Taylor’s wider body of work with the iwi (tribe) in the first half of the twentieth century. While Taylor is best known as an amateur historian and ethnographer, his photographic practice was also fundamental to his ethnographic research. The photographic contracts that Taylor entered into with the Ngāi Tahu subjects of his photographs created an environment that facilitated exchange, rapport, empathy, and, frequently, enduring bonds.
Notes
1 The Taylor family also donated W. A. Taylor’s Magic Lantern and several thousand celluloid negatives. However, the Canterbury Museum has no specific record of these items and could not locate them at the time of this research. Stuart Taylor, personal communication, 17 July 2015.
2 Canterbury Museum Christchurch New Zealand 1867–1969: Annual Report for the year 1968–69, Christchurch: Canterbury Museum 1969, 25.
3 An analogy between camera and gun was famously drawn by Susan Sontag in 1977. See Susan Sontag, On Photography, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1977, 10. Building upon this metaphor, Graham-Stewart notes that the camera is sometimes likened to the gun as an instrument of colonial repression whereby ‘Not only do the visitors write the history but they also get to take the photographs.’ See Michael Graham-Stewart, Out of Time: Maori and the Photographer 1860–1940: The Ngawini Cooper Trust Collection, Auckland: John Leech Gallery 2006, 17. The work of scholars such as Jane Lydon in Australia is beginning to collapse such binaries and reposition indigenous perspectives at the centre of the scholarship through collaboration with descendants. Lydon has worked with indigenous communities in Australia to identify people in the nineteenth-century photographic archive in order to understand the legacy of those archives for descendants and their communities. Contributors to the collaborative book Calling the Shots: Aboriginal Photographies explore Indigenous Australians’ perspectives on photography and ‘examine historical interactions between photographer and Indigenous people and the ways that such images can be understood to express the process of cross cultural exchange, as well as the rich and vital meaning photographs have today’. See Calling the Shots: Aboriginal Photographies, ed. Jane Lydon, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press 2014, 2. The present work on William Anderson Taylor applies a similar approach; informed by input from descendants, it explores the agency of Ngāi Tahu in their willingness to share information with Taylor and be photographed by him.
4 For example, see James West Stack, South Island Maoris: A Sketch of their History and Legendary Lore, Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs 1898; James Cowan, Maori Folk-Tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand, Auckland: Whitcombe and Tombs 1923; and the works of James Herries Beattie including Tikao Talks: Traditions and Tales, Dunedin: Reed 1939; Māori Place Names of Otago, Gore: Otago Daily Times 1944; Maori Lore of Lake Alp and Fiord, Dunedin: Otago Daily Times 1945; Maori Place Names of Canterbury, Dunedin: Otago Daily Times 1945; The Maoris and Fiordland, Dunedin: Otago Daily Times 1949; and Our Southernmost Maoris, Dunedin: Otago Daily Times 1954. Beattie was a prolific writer who produced a number of books dedicated to the place names and traditions of southern Māori. Beattie and Taylor corresponded regularly throughout the 1930s, comparing information, particularly regarding place names. In Maori Place Names of Canterbury, Beattie quotes extensively from Taylor.
5 Three years later, Reverend T. A. Pybus published The Maoris of the South Island (1954) which covered some similar ground. Since the 1990s the collective work of historians including Atholl Anderson, Te Maire Tau, Michael Stevens, Angela Wanhalla, Bill Dacker, and Harry Evison has started to place Ngāi Tahu in some historical context.
6 W. V., ‘Book Notices’, Journal of the Polynesian Society, 61:3 (1952), 309.
7 William Anderson Taylor to James Herries Beattie, 3 June 1944, Letters from William Taylor relating to Māori research matters, MS-582/c/27, Hocken Library, University of Otago, Dunedin.
8 Taylor to Beattie, 31 July 1934, MS-582/c/27.
9 David Macmillan, ‘Dedication’, in By-Ways of History and Medicine (with special reference to Canterbury, New Zealand), Christchurch: N. M. Peryer 1946, frontispiece.
10 John Nelson Taylor first travelled to New Zealand in 1887 to work for the Caxton Printing Company in Dunedin. He then worked as a lithographic transferer and printer in Melbourne for several years before returning to New Zealand in 1892. William and his mother visited New Zealand in 1887 but then returned to Scotland, eventually emigrating permanently to join John Nelson in New Zealand in 1892 when William was nine years old.
11 William Anderson Taylor, ‘Photography. A Pleasurable Hobby’, Akaroa Mail in Notebook No. 12, Folder 89, Box 11, William Anderson Taylor Manuscript Collection, Canterbury Museum, Christchurch. While John Nelson Taylor’s photographic work is well known (examples of his glass plate negatives and photographs on paper are held at the Canterbury Museum), the photographic work of William Taylor’s ‘maternal grandfather’ in Scotland requires further research. The grandfather referred to by Taylor may have been his biological grandfather, Thomas Dakers, or his step-grandfather, William Anderson, after whom he was presumably named.
12 The Press 1861–1961: The Story of a Newspaper, Christchurch: Christchurch Press Company 1963, 122.
13 Stuart Taylor, personal communication, 17 July 2015.
14 ‘Obituary: Mr. W.A. Taylor’, Ellesmere Guardian (29 June 1951), in ‘Transcripts of Historical Articles in the Ellesmere Guardian 1891–1951’, Private collection.
15 Taylor to Beattie, 8 January 1941, MS-582/c/27.
16 Christchurch representative on the Freelance, ‘Christchurch Historian: Writes Maori as Easily as English but he can’t speak it’, New Zealand Freelance (2 May 1951), in ‘Correspondence, Newspaper Cuttings [1917–1951]’, Folder 109, Box 15, William Anderson Taylor Manuscript Collection, Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, 194.
17 William Anderson Taylor to James Cowan, 18 August 1935, MS-Papers-11310-146, Research Papers Relating to Ngai Tahu History, James Cowan, 1870–1943: Papers, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.
18 Puketeraki is properly the name for the hill above the Karitāne township. Karitāne was the name applied to the township that was established on the flatter land adjacent to the Waikouaiti River and the sea that was originally known as Waikouaiti, later ‘Old Waikouaiti’. For the purposes of this article the name Puketeraki is used to refer to the entire Karitāne/Puketeraki area.
19 Taylor to Beattie, 14 July 1934, MS-582/c/27.
20 See ‘List of Illustrations’, in William Anderson Taylor, Lore and History of the South Island Maori, Christchurch: Bascands 1952, 6.
21 ‘Otago Witness 1851–1915, Background, Papers Past’, available at https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/otago-witness (accessed 29 January 2017).
22 Martin Blythe, Naming the Other: Images of the Maori in New Zealand Film and Television, Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press 1994, 16.
23 As noted by a visiting journalist who attended a church service at Puketeraki in 1887 (twenty years prior to Taylor’s photograph shoot with Tikini): ‘our first thought on looking around is who are Maoris and who are not? For all are neatly dressed, quite a la mode, nothing ontré, as regards fashion in colour or make’. See ‘The Maoris. Moeraki and Puketiraki kaiks. The Maori Church at Waikouaiti. Some Notes on a Recent Visit’, Otago Witness (14 January 1887), 14.
24 Michael King, Maori: A Photographic and Social History, Wellington: Reed 1996, 2.
25 Taylor, Lore and History, 115.
26 William Anderson Taylor to George Craig Thomson, 2 August 1935, unfiled letters from front of correspondence file, MS-439/010, Hocken Library, University of Otago, Dunedin.
27 Ibid.
28 William Anderson Taylor to M. A. Rugby Pratt, 26 July 1935, MS-0439-010.
29 See ‘List of Illustrations’, in Taylor, Lore and History, 6; for a biography of Mere Harper, see Helen Brown, ‘Mere Harper (1842–1924)’, in Tāngata Ngāi Tahu: People of Ngāi Tahu, ed. Helen Brown and Takerei Norton, Wellington: Bridget Williams Books; Christchurch: Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu 2017, 74–79.
30 William Anderson Taylor, ‘Karitane: A Famous Māori Stronghold’, Press (19 January 1939), 4.
31 Ibid.; and Joe Apes and Nicola Walsh, ‘William Elisha Apes’, in Southern People: A Dictionary of Otago Southland Biography, ed. Jane Thomson, Dunedin: Longacre Press 1998, 13.
32 William Anderson Taylor, ‘History in Place Names: Old Waikouaiti and its Story. Origin of Name Karitane. Romantic Maori Tales’, Star Sun (August 1936), in ‘Articles by W.A. Taylor No. 7’, Folder 84, Box 10, William Anderson Taylor Manuscript Collection, Canterbury Museum, Christchurch.
33 Ann Barber, personal communication, 23 November 2016; and Jim and Betty Apes, personal communication, 30 September 2015.
34 Matiu Prebble and David Mules for Kati Huirapa ki Puketeraki, To hikoia mai Hikaroroa ki Waikouaiti – kua te ra, ka te ahi: A Journey from Hikaroroa to Waikouaiti – The Sun has Set, the Fire is Now Alight: A Contribution to the Cultural History of the Waikouaiti River and Surrounding Environs, Puketeraki: A Matauranga Kura Taiao/Ngā Whenua Rāhui Collaboration 2004, 27.
35 Ibid.
36 Taylor, ‘History in Place Names’.
37 Ibid.; and Taylor, ‘Karitane’, 4.
38 Taylor, ‘Karitane’, 4.
39 ‘Waikouaiti (Mrs Harper, Mohi Woods, Mr Apes)’ [place names recorded by William Anderson Taylor], Maori History Notebook 1, Box 1, Folder 1, 109–12; and Old Waikouaiti Place names (Mrs Harper, Mr Apes, Hoani Matiu and Dr. Moore) [place names recorded by William Anderson Taylor], Maori Topics Notebook 6, Box 1, Folder 6, 64–66, William Anderson Taylor Manuscript Collection, Canterbury Museum.
40 By 1849 when the Crown began defaulting on the terms of a series of major land purchases dating from 1844, earlier suspicions of the Crown’s good faith by some of the Ngāi Tahu chiefs were confirmed, and the Ngāi Tahu Claim ‘Te Kerēme’ was born. The Crown had promised to set aside adequate reserves to have been approximately ten per cent of the 34.5 million acres sold – but this was never done. There were also disputes over boundaries, and the Crown’s failure to establish schools and hospitals, as promised. In addition, the tribe lost its access to its mahinga kai, or food gathering resources, and other sacred places. Ngāi Tahu made its first claim against the Crown for breach of contract in 1849. See http://ngaitahu.iwi.nz/ngai-tahu/the-settlement/claim-history/ (accessed 30 October 2017).
41 Parata was the member of parliament for the Southern Māori electorate from 1885 to 1911 and a member of the Legislative Council from 1912 to 1917.
42 Matapura Ellison, ‘Hoani Tamahika Matiu (1854–1944)’, in Southern People, ed. Thomson, 333.
43 See ‘List of Illustrations’, in Taylor, Lore and History, 6.
44 Maurice Manawatu, personal communication, 21 September 2015.
45 Taylor, Lore and History, 18.
46 Maurice Manawatu and Mark Solomon, Text for Hākui: Women of Kai Tahu exhibition held at Otago Museum, 19 November 2015–8 May 2016; and Tipene O’Regan, ‘Pitini-Morera, Hariata Whakatau’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, available at http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/3p28/pitini-morera-hariata-whakatau (accessed 13 February 2017).
47 William Anderson Taylor, ‘Maori History’ notebooks 2, 26, 27, 28, and 36, William Anderson Taylor Manuscript Collection, Canterbury Museum.
48 Maurice Manawatu, personal communication, 21 September 2015; and William Anderson Taylor, [Genealogy Mrs Beaton to Turakautahi] in ‘Maori Notes’, Book 9, Box 2, Folder 9, 53, William Anderson Taylor Manuscript Collection, Canterbury Museum.
49 Maurice Manawatu, personal communication, 21 September 2015.
50 Taylor to Beattie, 30 June 1944, MS-582/c/27.
51 Taylor, Lore and History, 26.
52 For example, Taylor assisted Te Aritaua Pitama with the geographical placement of names when he was translating a manuscript outlining the escape of fugitives from Kaiapoi Pā (the Natanahira Waruwarutu Manuscript); he assisted Taiaroa with the location of pā on Banks Peninsula; he assisted Henare Te Ara Jacobs with advocacy for the return to Ngāi Tahu of Ōnawe Pā in Akaroa harbour; and he advised William Barrett on general matters related to the Ngāi Tahu Claim.
53 W. A. Taylor, ‘Ngai Tahu-Mamoe Claim’ [Letter to the Editor], Press (11 January 1938), 12.
54 See ‘List of Illustrations’, in Taylor, Lore and History, 6; for a biography of Rahera Muriwai Morrison, see Helen Brown, ‘Rahera Muriwai Morrison (c.1870–1930)’, in Tāngata Ngāi Tahu: People of Ngāi Tahu, ed. Brown and Norton, 110–15.
55 Whakapapa File 35, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, Christchurch.
56 Ibid.
57 Barbara Brookes, A History of New Zealand Women, Wellington: Bridget Williams Books 2016, 145.
58 ‘Maori Princess Dead. Mrs Rahera Morrison. Last South Island ruler’, Auckland Star, 7 June 1930, 10.
59 Rahera Muriwai Morrison [original print], 19XX.2.3251, William Anderson Taylor Photograph Collection, Canterbury Museum.
60 ‘A considerable amount of the history given was gleaned in 1924 from the late Mrs Rahira Muriwai Morrison, a descendant of Wereta Tainui, who passed away in 1930’. Taylor, Lore and History, 194.
61 ‘Wereta Tainui Greymouth’, 1968.213.3407, William Anderson Taylor Photograph Collection, Canterbury Museum.
62 See ‘List of Illustrations’, in Taylor, Lore and History, 6.
63 P. Potiki, ‘Māori Personalities in Sport. The Late Dick Taiaroa’, Te Ao Hou, 9 (Spring 1954), 44, available at http://teaohou.natlib.govt.nz/journals/teaohou/issue/Mao09TeA/c22.html (accessed on 31 October 2017).
64 ‘You know and I know you have to see Maoris personally to get what you want’. Taylor to Beattie, 28 March 1942, MS-582/c/27.
65 The original glass-plate negative from which the photograph was printed is a full-length portrait rather than the published mid-shot.
66 William Anderson Taylor, ‘The Tribe of Taumutu: Page of Māori History. Taiaroa, a Merciful Chief, Upheld High tTadition of Native Chivalry’, Star-Sun (May 1936) [newspaper clipping] in Box 25, Folder 163, Miscellaneous 1897–1939, H. K. Taiaroa Collection, Canterbury Museum.
67 Ibid.
68 Taylor to Beattie, 17 March 1936, MS-582/c/27.
69 Harry C. Evison. ‘Taiaroa, Hori Kerei’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, available at http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2t1/taiaroa-hori-kerei (accessed 30 October 2017).
70 Taylor to Beattie, 4 April 1936, MS-582/c/27.
71 William Anderson Taylor, ‘Taumutu: The pa of the Ruahikihiki hapu’, Press (12 January 1939), 4.
72 Taylor to Beattie, 4 March 1943, MS-582/c/27.
73 William Anderson Taylor, Waihora: Maori Associations with Lake Ellesmere, Christchurch: Ellesmere Guardian 1944.
74 Taylor to Beattie, 8 January 1941, MS-582/c/27.
75 R. T. M. Taiaroa to William Anderson Taylor, 7 January 1940, Box 9, Folder 77, W. A. Taylor Manuscript Collection, Canterbury Museum.
76 Taylor’s photographs of Ngāi Tahu letters and documents were catalogued by him as a group, ‘WAT171’. Taylor catalogued his entire collection by subject. The Canterbury Museum has retained his numbers alongside its own cataloguing system.
77 See ‘List of Illustrations’, in Taylor, Lore and History, 6; for a biography of Amiria Puhirere Hokianga, see Helen Brown, ‘Amiria Puhirere Hokianga (c.1855–1944)’, in Tāngata Ngāi Tahu: People of Ngāi Tahu, ed. Brown and Norton, 86–91.
78 The photograph appeared in the newspaper unattributed. It was printed alongside several articles related to the centennial commemorations. See Press (22 April 1940), 11.
79 ‘Obituary: Hamiria Pehorere [sic] Hokianga’, Press (1 August 1944), 2.
80 Several undated and unattributed photographs of Amiria Puhirere and Peni Hokianga posing with the family taiaha are held in the collection of the Akaroa Museum.
81 See ‘List of Illustrations’, in Taylor, Lore and History, 6.
82 Chris Hilliard, ‘Stories of Becoming: The Centennial Surveys and the Colonization of New Zealand’, New Zealand Journal of History, 33:1 (April 1999), 3–19.
83 J. Morgan, ‘Maori Welfare’ [Letter to the Editor], Press (29 June 1938), 18.
84 William Anderson Taylor, ‘Maori Place Names of Banks Peninsula. Maori Names from Sketch Plans Supplied by Canon (James W.) Stack 19.11.94. Additional names by (W. H. S. Roberts & Others)’, [Cartographic material], Christchurch City Libraries.
85 Louis Vangioni to William Anderson Taylor, 6 November 1934, Folder 77, Box 9, W. A. Taylor Manuscript Collection, Canterbury Museum.
86 William Anderson Taylor, ‘The kainga of the Ngai Tarawa Hapu’, Press (2 March 1939), 7; William Anderson Taylor, ‘Flea Bay. Historic Territory near Akaroa. Story of a Wreck’, Star (June 1935), in ‘Articles by W. A. Taylor No. 6’, Folder 83, Box 10, W. A. Taylor Manuscript Collection, Canterbury Museum; and William Anderson Taylor, ‘Father Time’ [transcript of radio programme on 3ZB], Folder 81, Box 10, W. A. Taylor Manuscript Collection, Canterbury Museum.
87 Taylor to Beattie, 19 October 1941, MS-582/c/27.
88 Chris Hilliard, ‘James Cowan and the Frontiers of New Zealand History, Island Stories: The Writing of New Zealand History 1920–1940’, MA thesis, University of Auckland 1997, 41.
89 Taylor to Beattie, 24 May 1939, MS-582/c/27.
90 Hardwicke Knight, Photography in New Zealand: A Social and Technical History, Dunedin: J. McIndoe 1971, 26.
91 Ibid.
92 Taylor to Beattie, 11 September 1934, MS-582/c/27.
93 Stuart Taylor, personal communication, 17 July 2015.
94 Max Rogers [Managing Editor The Plainsman] to William Anderson Taylor, 21 December 1949, Correspondence Book 1936–1950, Folder 78, William Anderson Taylor Manuscript Collection, Canterbury Museum.
95 Taylor to Beattie, 24 May1939, MS-582/c/27.
96 T. Maguire, The Lantern was Lighted: An Historical Record of the First One Hundred Years of the Dunedin Photographic Society, Dunedin: Dunedin Photographic Society 1990.
97 ‘Maoris of South Island. Human Habitation 1000 years Ago. Fierce Tribal Battles Recalled’, Press (1 July 1935), 12.
98 ‘Lectures, W.E.A.’, Press (28 June 1935), 1.
99 ‘Maoris of South Island’, Press (1 July 1935), 12.
100 John Wylie, personal communication, 15 June 2014.
101 Wiremu Teira, ‘Maori Welfare’ [Letter to the Editor], Press (30 June 1938), 3.
102 In 1944 the New Zealand government made the state’s first major concession to the Ngāi Tahu Claim. The Ngaitahu Claim Settlement Act 1944 authorised annual payments to the iwi of £10,000 a year for thirty years. The crux of Taylor’s opposition to the legislation was the fact that the Crown had failed to adequately consult the tribe before the legislation was passed – a sentiment shared by many Ngāi Tahu. However, there was a general acceptance of the Act amongst Ngāi Tahu on the grounds that something was better than nothing. More than fifty years later, a more equitable settlement was obtained when the Ngai Tahu Claims Settlement Act was passed in 1998. For a comprehensive history of Ngāi Tahu in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Harry Evison, Te Wai Pounamu: The Greenstone Island: A History of the Southern Maori during the European Colonisation of New Zealand, Wellington: Aoraki Press 1993. For a brief overview of Ngāi Tahu history in this period, see Michael J. Stevens, ‘Ngāi Tahu whānui’, in Tāngata Ngāi Tahu: People of Ngāi Tahu, ed. Brown and Norton, 12–20.