Bartered moa bones basis of collection

Press, 9 March 1984, Page 17

Bartered moa bones basis of collection

One of the oldest and most basic ways of obtaining something you want is by barter — by exchanging something you have for something of equal value that somebody else has. The system is universal; governments employ it in million dollar trade deals, and the kids at school swap sandwiches — it is all the same thing. Museums, especially in the past, indulged in it a great deal. A recent “Museum Pieces” (January 28) noted that one of the Canterbury Museum’s Benin bronzes was obtained in 1904 in return for moa bones.

Julius von Haast, Canterbury Museum’s first director, was a past master of the art of barter, and in the huge quantities of moa bones, obtained last century from the swamps of Canterbury as they were drained for farmland, he found an ideal, internationally desired, form of currency. In the museum library is a little book entitled “Colonial Facts and Fallacies,” written in 1886. In it, the author, Mark Kershaw, has a lighthearted look at Haast’s propensity for acquiring overseas material for his new museum by way of exchange. This takes the form of a conversation with a Chinaman, named John, met during a museum visit: “You never hea?” inquired John; ‘no man talkee you about Mr Haast? Mr Haast dig garden one day, find plenty moa bones. Then he send letter all country: ‘Suppose you send me twenty piecee mummy, 400 piecee papyros, two sphinxes, one small pyramid,’ ‘he talkee Egyptian man, ! ‘I sendie you one piecee moa.’ ”

John then said that the Egyptian Government were delighted with the offer, and sent the twenty piecee mummy, 400 piecee papyros, two sphinxes, and the small pyramid, and then received their allowance of moa.

“Next time he write that man live top side North Pole.”

I suppose John meant that he

entered into communication with the Esquimaux. “ ‘You sendee two piecee polar bear, and one piecee iceberg, you can catchee all same Egypt man.’ ”

Of course the Esquimaux were delighted, Next, John told us he wrote to the British Government.

“ ‘I wantee five piecee steamer, four piecee outside walkee can see, and another piecee inside walkee no can see; I pay you plenty moa bones.’ ”

And according to our friend he went on swapping moa bones all over the universe, obtaining in exchange Turner’s masterpieces, button-hooks, anchors, relics from ancient Rome, specimens of small volcanoes, pumpkins, and, in short, almost everything you see in the museum.

Haast was certainly as successful in his efforts as Kershaw suggests (although the small volcanoes and pumpkins are no longer in evidence), but wholesale exchange of such valuable scientific material as moa skeletons would certainly not be approved of today, and neither would Kershaw’s rather derogatory portrayal of Chinese speech. Contributing to the loss was the general attitude that only in the great museums and universities of Britain and Europe were there scientists of sufficient skill and knowledge to properly study moa relics. Thus much of the better material was simply sent off to these institutions as a matter of course, with nothing obtained in return.

Today, scientists wishing to study the moa in depth really need to travel extensively outside New Zealand in order to examine some more important specimens. There is a present a move towards having ethnic material returned to its country of origin. Perhaps one day, natural history items, such as the moa pictured, may also be returned to become New Zealand museum pieces, as they really should be.