New Books: Pakeha Ta Moko, by Trevor Bentley

Pakeha Ta Moko: A History of the Europeans Traditionally Tattooed by Maori
by Trevor Bentley

This book explores the hidden history of the European men and women who were traditionally tattooed by Maori in 19th century New Zealand. Tattooing might seem an unusual subject for an historian, but it was one of the most effective methods Maori used to assimilate Pakehas captives and voluntary culture-crossers into their communities.

While the book describes the Pakeha women and girls who received chin, lip and body moko moko, its primary focus is the lives and fates of the 58 Pakeha men identified to date who were incised with ta moko or full-face tattoos. The tattooing range in location from Northland to Foveaux Strait, and chronologically from 1777, when one of Cook’s runaway sailors was ‘tattowed head to toe’ at Queen Charlotte Sound, to the 1870s, when the last Pakeha men and women adorned with puhoro-raperape (buttock and thigh moko) were seen and reported.

Many Pacific Islands had their semi-indigenised, tattooed beachcombers and in the Marquesas, a number received facial tatau. What set New Zealand apart was the large number of Europeans who became Pakeha-Maori (Europeans gone native) and acquired body and limb moko. Additionally, more Pakeha males were tattooed on the face in New Zealand than anywhere else among the islands of Oceania. Given the numbers of European men and women who crossed cultures semi permanently and permanently in 19th century New Zealand, those described in this work represent but a portion of their original number.

Pakeha men and women with face tattoos are an elusive minority and this work draws on a myriad of sources, including contemporary accounts by Maori, Pakeha and Pakeha-Maori who witnessed and described the moko ritual and/or were themselves tattooed. It also draws on numerous published primary sources as well as the works of Maori and Pakeha historians, anthropologists and moko/tattoo scholars and practitioners, past and present, whose contributions are evident in the text and bibliography.

The book is, in part, a testament of respect to the courage and adaptability of the European men and women who crossed cultures to live and die as tattooed Pakeha-Maori, far from their original kinsfolk and native lands. It is also a testament to the Maori cultural practices of manaakitanga and whanaungatanga, whereby disoriented and vulnerable European shipwreck survivors, captives, runaway sailors and fugitive convict men and women were reassured, shown kindness and integrated into Maori families and communities.

Tauranga Connections

The area between Motiti Island and Mt Maunganui was a main anchorage for whaling vessels seeking provisions in the Bay of Plenty during the early 1800s. Tauranga’s first non-Maori resident was probably ‘Robson’, a convict who fled ashore from the pirated NSW brig Mercury during the early 1820s and became a trading intermediary. When the Sydney whaler Caroline anchored to trade pigs and potatoes for muskets and lead in 1827, the sailor James Heberley recorded that Robson had ‘got tattooed like the natives’.

Robson’s fate is unknown, unlike that of the Ngati Porou flax trader Barnet Burns. Burns claimed to have had one quarter of his face tattooed after being captured by a Ngai Te Rangi raiding party near the Motu River entrance around 1832. He alone survived the attack on his Maori trading party. Held captive for several months, almost certainly at Tauranga, he was befriended by a wahine rangatira who saved his life after he had been caught trying to escape.

Barnet Burn’s elaborate ta moko incorporated both Ngati Porou and Ngai Te Rangi motifs
J. Sutcliffe, ‘Pahe A Rance, The New Zealand chief Barnet Burns’, B-110-061-a, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington

Burns’ Ngai Te Rangi captors insisted that he be tattooed like them, trade and fight for them ‘and in every way become a member of the tribe’. Burns finally consented, and the ta moko operation immediately began. The tohunga ta moko cut his patterns with bone chisels, a process he described as ‘tedious and painful’. Escaping during a storm, Burns eluded his pursuers and following an arduous, barefoot journey, he returned to Ngati Porou and the East Coast where the remainder of his ta moko was completed.

Though based at Maketu during the 1830s, the Danish trader Phillip Tapsell frequently exchanged muskets and munitions for flax at Tauranga, either in person or through his agent James Farrow at Otumoetai Pa. Tapsell’s integration into te ao Maori (the world of Maori), was typical of that made by trader Pakeha-Maori, John B. Williams, the American Consul at the Bay of Islands noted in 1842, [he putting] ‘himself on a footing with the Chiefs, allowing his hair and beard to grow long, having himself occasionally tattooed, assuming the authority of king [and] proclaiming himself as such’.

Pakeha women fully integrated into Maori communities as whangai or adoptees in the Bay of Plenty during the 1800s, were gifted chin and lip tattoos (moko kauae and ngutu purua) if they had served their communities well, were considered deserving and understood the significance of the designs.

In 1864 Major Horatio Robley, a British Army officer and artist, was present in Tauranga during the battles of Gate Pa and Te Ranga. While stationed at Te Papa he encountered a Pakeha woman who had married a sailor named Anaru in  Sydney and was living nearby in one of the local pa. Robley reported  that she had not yet received the womens’ moko kauae or chin moko, suggesting that in due course she may have become eligible.

This privilege may have previously been extended to a fugitive convict woman who, along with two male companions, made their way to the Bay of Plenty during the 1810s and disappeared among the Te Arawa people. This anonymous Bay of Plenty female culture-crosser was by no means alone. According to the Te Arawa knowledge keeper Tui Ranapiri-Ransfield:

The Pakeha women we adopted were expected to marry and become part of the community in every way, including moko and haka. Because they were raised as Maori, and had Maori children and grandchildren, they became part of our whakapapa [genealogy] right down to their receiving land that was gifted or inherited. They do not appear in our whakapapa as Pakeha, but as Maori tupuna [ancestors], because that is what they became and that is how we remember them.

The Author

As many readers know, Trevor Bentley is a member of the society and an active contributor to this blog. He has a special interest in researching and writing about the interaction of Maori and Pakeha in 19^th century New Zealand as well as its maritime and military history. Dr Bentley is the author of six previous New Zealand history books. His interest in New Zealand history began as a teenager when he read Frederick Maning’s rollicking colonial classic, Old New Zealand: A Tale of the Good Old Times by a Pakeha Maori (1863).

Book Details

Pakeha Ta Moko is currently available at all good New Zealand bookshops.

Bentley, Trevor, Pakeha Ta Moko: A History of the Europeans Traditionally Tattooed by Maori, Upstart Press, Auckland, 2022.

ISBN 978-1-990003-69-1