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Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 256, 27 September 1945, Page 4

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MUMMIFIED BODIES. PETITION "BY MAORIS

(Special.) "WELLINGTON, Sept. 27. The return to New Zealand of mummified Maori bodies and simils, aiso other Maori objects allegedly removed from New Zealand in the ’eighties by an Austrian naturalist, Andreas Reiscliek, and placed in the ethnographical collection of the Imperial Natural History Museum of Vienna, was sought in a Maori petition presented in the House of Representatives yesterday. The petitioners declared that in 101 l Reischek visited New Zealand and was the first white man permitted to enter the King Country by King Tawhio after the Maori wars. Professor Hochstetter had induced Reischek to come to New Zealand. Professor Hochstetter had been in New Zealand niany years before and had become friendly with two chiefs. Wireama Toitoi and Hemara te Rerehau, whom he persuaded to journey to Europe with him in the frigate Novara. The party visited Vienna and were received at Court by Archduke Maximillian. who presented them with a printing pen, with which they subsequently started the political paper Hokioi. In 1882, continued tlie petitioners, Reischek became a friend of Wahanui Honana and Te Witiora, who gave him free access to the King Country. MUSEUM ATTRACTIONS.

“With this background,” stated the petition, “we go back to the earlier days when tlie bodies of the more prominent chiefs were mummified and placed in holes or in trees and preserved in a sitting position. These bodies appealed to Reischek as good potential museum pieces, and so he bribed two Maoris to lead him to a cave where mummified bodies could be found. In the night, and by stealth (Reischek recounts in his own book) he removed some of the bodies at the risk of his life and got them over the boundaries of the King Country and eventually spirited them away to Europe, where they were placed in the ethnographical collection of the Imperial Natural History Museum of Vienna, Austria. “The Imperial Museum is now a State institution. In it is housed the last great collection of Maori objects to reach Europe, the collection including 37 Maori skulls and a number of mummified Maori bodies. This ghoulish act was a serious betrayal of trust by Reischek which caused a deep grievance to the late Maori king, chiefs and Maori people.” Now that Vienna had fallen, the petitioners prayed that the House would take action to have restitution made on behalf of the Maori people by taking steps to have tlie whole of the collection returned to the Dominion.