No Cultural Areas

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 136, 30 August 1927, Page 8

No Cultural Areas

Difficult to Define Maori Art Influences

TE RAUPARAHA, who has sometimes been called the Maori Napoleon because of" his inordinate desire for conquest, once possessed a flute. The instrument was renowned in song and story. To-day it reposes in the Auckland Museum, one of the most cherished possessions in the richest Maori treasure trove in New Zealand.

A LMOST forgotten, the flute of Te A Rauparaha was eventually discovered at Rapaki, in Lyttelton Harbour. Eventually it was purchased from Maoris there for the Auckland Museum.

last night not to accept articles from certain places as peculiar to that district.

It was dangerous to be too dogmatic, he said, about such matters. Nevertheless, he urged unceasing study, especially into Maori mythology, which was interwoven with the ancient history of the Polynesian.

It was some time, however, before that flute was identified as the historic flute of the old warrior. A drawing In Hamilton’s “Maori Art” led to this conclusion. The flute from Rapaki

The Maoris, after their arrival in this country were in a continual state of warfare. War parties from the North went as far South as Otago. Beautiful carvings to be seen in the vicinity of Cook Strait had been accomplished by artists from as far distant as Poverty Bay. Carvings were made by slaves taken from other districts. It was the same with garments. It was impossible, therefore, to define New Zealand into cultural areas as far as Maori art is concerned. There was a desire on the part of certain Maoris, said Mr. Graham, to delve into the secrets of the past, and to preserve their traditions and genealogical tables. Etiquette of rank was still preserved, as Mr. Graham instanced a recent meeting where a claimant was ordered to take his seat because he was descended from a junior wife of a chieftain who reigned many generations back. The Maoris were endeavouring, as in this particular instance, to preserve these family trees, and after careful examination, to record the findings on paper. And he hoped the time would come when these materials would be available to the student. The curator of the Museum, Mr. Gilbert Archey, said he recognised that it would not be possible to obtain information from valuable articles, as, for example, the Te Rauparaha flute. Yet knowledge could he obtained from common things, which their former Maori owners did not value, and left in the districts where they had been manufactured. One farmer in the Waikato had sent the museum a collection of 400 adzes all ploughed up from his neighbourhood. Ninety per cent, of these were found to be of the one type.

and the drawing of that which had belonged to Te Rauparaha were considered identical. The example of this flute was used by way of illustration when Mr. George Graham, the Auckland Maori scholar, issued a warning to the Maori Race Section of the Institute