Finding Thomas Kendall’s 1823 Marianna Consignment of Whakairo Rākau (Māori Wood Carvings)

Abstract

In 1823, the Church Missionary Society missionary Thomas Kendall sent 18 whakairo rākau (Māori wood carvings) in three consignments from the Bay of Islands in Aotearoa New Zealand to the Society’s headquarters in London. They were accompanied by his letters that described the whakairo rākau’s spiritual meanings and a diagram of one carving, depicting the legendary ancestor Nukutawhiti, based on information supplied by Rangihoua Māori and conflated with Kendall’s own Māori origin theories. While the letters and diagram arrived (and later influenced twentieth-century Māori art scholarship), one consignment was lost at sea and a second went missing in Australia. The whereabouts of the third consignment has been a mystery, despite an extensive search by the historian Judith Binney. This article presents new archival, photographic and museum research that rediscovers the third consignment’s whakairo rākau by tracking them through countries, collections and conflicts. Reassociating Kendall’s narratives with the whakairo rākau extends Binney’s analysis of them and their meanings and reunites the Nukutawhiti diagram with the whakairo rākau it depicts. The research also reconnects the whakairo rākau, which have existed without provenance for over 200 years in New Zealand, European and United States museums and collections, with their Ngāpuhi tribal origins.