Drawings of Moko

Te Ao Hou, June 1963, Page 34

Drawings of Moko Three of the illustrations accompanying this article are drawings of moko which were made by Maoris in the early years of their contact with Europeans. In these first years Maoris were naturally not able to sign their names in the pakeha way. Sometimes, though, when a chief was selling some land and had to put his name on the document recording the sale, he did not merely put a clumsy mark in the place where the pakeha told him to. Instead, he made a drawing of his moko; doing this was, to him, much more meaningful as a signature than making a simple mark, or writing his name in the pakeha way, would have been. Most of them had never handled a pen or pencil before, and in most cases they would not have been specialised artists. It is remarkable to see how exactly they knew the lines of their moko, and with what sureness and sensitivity they depicted them. These drawings of moko are works of art in their own right; the more one studies them, the more apparent this becomes. Although Maori drawings of moko were apparently fairly common once, they are not found everywhere; for instance, the signatures on the Treaty of Waitangi do not take this form. They occur only on very early legal agreements, as Maoris stopped drawing them when they learnt writing. Apart from Major-General Robley, whose book ‘Moko’ was published in 1896, few people have shown an interest in these Maori moko drawings, and apparently no collections of them have been made. The editor of ‘Te Ao Hou’ has located a few others apart from the ones illustrated, but apparently surprisingly few of them have survived. She would greatly appreciate hearing from anyone who may be able to tell her of any more such drawings. The lines in the facial moko which were the same for all men were chiefly the curving lines around the mouth and the lines on the forehead over the eyes. If the moko was a full one there were usually two large spirals on either cheek, though differences between these spirals are to be found. Occasionally, too, one of these spirals was not present, being replaced by other patterns. This was, for example, the case with the preserved head which was used as a model for the drawing on page 30. There are many other more subtle regularities; for instance, the spirals on the nostrils always have much the same form, and certain lines in the central forehead pattern seem always to be the same. It is interesting to compare the detail of one moko with another, for this makes it possible to understand better the nature of the differences between them, and to appreciate how ingenious and beautiful these differences of detail are. The harmony of the whole becomes most clear when one studies closely the way in which these infinite variations are possible within the framework of such a strict discipline.