MAORIS GET THEIR BODY BACK

Press, 29 May 1985, Page 19

MAORIS GET THEIR BODY BACK

It was all done in utmost secrecy

For more than a century, Maoris have burned with indignation at the theft of bodies from sacred burial caves high in limestone cliffs at Kawhia, on the west coast of the North Island, in the King Country. They were taken to Austria with a huge collection of Maori artefacts and came to be known as the Kawhia mummies. Now, Austrian museum authorities have released the body of a Maori chief, and it has been returned to New Zealand amid a cloak of secrecy. The story of deceit and its significance for museum collections all over the world has been pieced together by KEN COATES from various sources, not the least of which is New Zealand historian Michael King’s book, “The Collector.”

The return by Austria of a stolen Kawhia mummy is to New Zealand what the sending back of Britain’s Elgin Marbles would be to Greece.

The so-called mummy, a shrunken corpse of a Maori chief, was snatched at night from almost inaccessible King Country burial caves at Kawhia a century ago by an Austrian, Andreas Reischek, a self-educated naturalist. He came to New Zealand to work for Canterbury Museum’s founder, the celebrated Sir Julius von Haast, as a taxidermist, and did excellent work. In a bid for wealth and fame in his homeland, Reischek posed as friend and confidant of Maoris, abused a chief’s hospitality, and bribed local Maoris to help him steal two bodies.

Eventually, he returned to Vienna with them—and with a huge collection of 14,000 Maori artefacts and wildlife specimens, including 37 Maori skulls. For more than 40 years, New Zealand has made sporadic attempts to retrieve the body of the chief. The second body, that of a child, has apparently disappeared. The dessicated corpse of the chief, Tupahau, was finally brought back to New Zealand a few weeks ago by Dr Haans Peter, of the Volkerkunde (Ethnological) Museum in Vienna amid a conspiracy of silence. Only the briefest official mention has been made of the move which, with the emergence and national awareness of Third World countries, raises an issue of world-wide significance:

Should artefacts and works of art acquired during colonial times be returned to the country of origin?

If such a principle were generally accepted, the major museums of the Western world would be stripped of their most precious ethnological exhibits. The chief’s body has been quietly buried by Maoris at Mount Taupiri, near Ngaruawahia, in a sacred burial ground reserved for highranking Maori leaders. Whether Dr Peter brought Maori skulls from the Vienna museum, stolen by Reischek, or other rare ornaments, weapons, cloaks, and artefacts, is not known.

Attempts to gain information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from the Department of Maori Affairs, and even from Maoris themselves, has resulted in elaborate buck-passing hedged by comments that it is all “a sensitive issue.”

A spokesman for the National Museum in Wellington, where the body was first taken for safe-

keeping, said: “We are not allowed to talk about it.” It is understandable that the Austrians should be reticent. It is on record that 30 years ago, when the New Zealand Government first raised the return of the Reischek collection, the Museum Fur Volkerkunde feared it would set a precedent leading to other countries asking for the return of their relics.

Many treasures passed to the Hapsburgs in dubious circumstances—the Crown of Montezuma, a trophy taken by Cortes from Mexico and acquired by Emperor Charles V, is one of the museum’s prized exhibits. It is understandable, too, that descendants of the chief Tupahau, and this includes the Maori Queen, Dame Te Atairangikaahu, would be reticent.

It is also suggested that Maori Affairs officials might not wish to discuss the return of the body lest they be seen to be speaking for the tribal group most concerned. Even so, there seems little reason why important questions concerning the remainder of the Reischek collection in Vienna should not be answered; nor whether the return of the chief’s body was an exchange, or a purchase involving taxpayers’ funds, or a gesture of good will on the part of the Austrian museum authorities.

In a sense, it is almost inconceivable that the famous Kawhia mummy should have, at last, been returned to New Zealand with almost no publicity, in the light of the brilliant detective work by the historian, Michael King. His recent book, "The Collector,’’ not only documents Reischek’s 12year stay in New Zealand, including the underhand way in which he stole the bodies, but also outlines the hitherto unsuccessful official efforts to have them returned. Neither corpse was a true mummy, but was simply a body that became dessicated in the dry atmosphere of a limestone cave, with shrinking and preservation of some muscle tissue. The whereabouts of the child’s body taken from Kawhia is unknown. During the Second World War, collections from the museum in Vienna were dispersed around the city, as protection against Russian bombing. It is thought some items were misplaced on return. Michael King's well-researched book, which followed studies the author did in Vienna, revealed that the body of the chief was not valued highly by the Volkerkunde Museum, had been seen by few people, and in fact had reposed for years in a cobweb-covered cupboard.

His detailed account of the collapse of elaborate plans by New Zealand to retrieve the chief’s body—involving a visit to Vienna by the Maori Queen in 1975—could well have led to renewed initiatives to have the body returned.

Full realisation of what Reischek had done came 40 years ago when a book the Austrian’s son wrote from papers and diaries after his father’s death was translated into English. This appeared as “Yesterdays in

Maoriland,” and must have caused Reischek to turn in his grave as it contained the bald account of how he abused the hospitality of the chief Tawhiao, bribed local Maoris, and ignored the tapu. When he had won their trust and confidence, the King Country Maoris told him how in former times their famous chiefs were mummified. "The intestines were removed and the pit of the stomach stuffed with dry seaweed. Then the body was tightly bound up in a sitting position, smoked, and dried in the sun. “The brain and the more fleshy parts were removed, and the head steamed in a cooking-pit and afterwards smoke-dried.”

At last, in the heart of Maoriland, in the King Country, Reischek found mummies. “Two Maoris who had already become sufficiently Europeanised to be willing to renounce their national and religious principles for gold, led me one night to a cave near Kawhia. “There, I found four mummies, of which two were in a state of perfect preservation.” Reischek says the undertaking was dangerous for discovery could have cost him his life. In the night, he had the mummies removed and then well hidden; during the next night they were carried still further away, and so on, until they were safely over the boundaries of Maoriland.

“But even then I kept them cautiously hidden from sight right up to the time of my departure from New Zealand."

King recounts how the Maori Battalion was stationed at Trieste in 1945. Lieutenant Colonel Arapeta Awatere, the commander, was all for a “mission” to Vienna to seize the bodies, skulls, and other burial remains from the Reischek collection, along with some Austrian trophies for revenge, and carry these back to New Zealand. The colonel had read “Yesterdays in Maoriland” and was incensed by Reischek’s account of how he obtained the Kawhia corpses.

How would Austrians feel, he used to ask, if Maoris went into their country and helped themselves to material from recognised public cemeteries? Eventually, Awatere was talked out of the exercise and the mission of revenge did not leave Trieste. After the New Zealand Government took up the issue of the return of the mummies, as they

were called, the Austrians revealed how they felt. In a reply to overtures made through the British, surprise is expressed concerning relics “legally acquired by the Austrian archaeologist Andreas Reischek about 1882, in the same way as remnants of Maori origin were collected by British, American, and French archaeologists for the British Museum...

“It would be interesting to know whether the Maoris have put their claims to the British Museum.” (Reischek was, of course, not an archaeologist.) In 1972, as Minister of Finance, Robert Muldoon visited Vienna and was shown part of the Reischek collection. When he learnt it was not on public display, he prompted an investigation as to whether New Zealand might have a case for return of the collection under a United Nations resolution governing restitution of works of art to countries victims of expropriation. In 1974, the then Prime Minister, Mr Norman Kirk, made a further attempt to secure the Reischek mummies. The Austrians agreed, provided the corpse was removed for burial and not for exhibition, if something was given in exchange justifying removal as a cultural exchange, if New Zealand agreed to drop all claims to other Reischek material, and if there was no publicity. Although the stage was set the following year and the Maori Queen went to the museum in Vienna, she was not shown, the Reischek collection, New Zealand’s Ambassador was unavoidably absent, and the Queen felt protocol did not permit her requesting to see it.

ing misused and resolved to have nothing further to do with negotiations for the body. A visit to New Zealand by a new director of the museum in Vienna led to a reopening of negotiations, though the Maori Queen insisted that the body’s return should not be the subject of an exchange. Another factor that could have led to final success is that at the time she made the visit, the Maori Queen was apparently unaware she was a descendant of the chief, Tupahau. Reischek’s early association with Canterbury was a result of the Germanic scientific connection with New Zealand that extended

more than 100 years before his visit, and which is examined by Michael King. The Austrian taxidermist was recommended to Haast by Ferdinand von Hochstetter. who had spent nine months making geological surveys in New Zealand, and later became director of Vienna’s Imperial Museum of Natural History. Reischek, like other Austrians associated with early New Zealand, loved the Southern Alps and made two expeditions from Christchurch after mounting displays ready for opening of a new museum wing in 1877. Although newly married, he left his wife behind, came for two years, and stayed for 12. His burning ambition seemed to be to gather as much Maori material and wildlife specimens as he could to sell and gain recognition in Austria.

He was unqualified, but Reischek travelled tirelessly throughout the country, including Fiordland, gathering birds and other specimens which he meticulously identified and labelled. He worked occasionally as a taxidermist at other museums, and lectured frequently. Hailed by some as one of New Zealand’s great early explorers and scientists, he eventually died in poverty. Others see Reischek as an accomplished charlatan who bribed and cheated his way through the country. Reischek left his run too late. By the time he returned, Hochstetter had died, and the grand expansive days when Austrian museums were endowed to pay fabulous sums for collections were over.

He ended his days in obscurity as a factotum in a small museum at Linz.

Bald account of abuse

Care not to be caught

Accordingly, she left Vienna feel-